1080 Chapel Street
New Haven, Connecticut 06510
United States
Across a diverse body of work spanning thirty years, Black British artist and filmmaker Steve McQueen (b. 1969, London) has documented stories of incarceration and violence, intimacy and vulnerability. On October 28 and 29, the Yale Center for British Art will convene an international symposium that investigates the range of McQueen’s artistic and film practice. To coincide with and precede the program, a single work by the artist, Lynching Tree (2013), will be on view at the museum through October 30.
The symposium will take place in the YCBA Lecture Hall and be livestreamed. Watch the livestream here.
Schedule (all times Eastern Time):
Friday, October 28, 2022
3:30–5pm: Welcome & roundtable discussion. Welcome with Courtney J. Martin (Yale PhD 2009), Paul Mellon Director, Yale Center for British Art. Roundtable discussion: “The Place and Importance of McQueen’s Work across Cultural Spaces.” Chair: Karen Alexander, Independent Curator and Lecturer. Discussants: Stuart Comer, The Lonti Ebers Chief Curator of Media and Performance, The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Cheryl Finley (Yale PhD 2002), Associate Professor of Art History, Cornell University; Donna De Salvo, Senior Adjunct Curator, Special Projects, Dia Art Foundation, New York; Hamza Walker, Director of LAXART, Los Angeles
Saturday, October 29, 2022
9:15–9:30am: Welcome, Courtney J. Martin.
9:30–10:45am: Session one: “The Cinema of Color and Light.” Chair: Hamza Walker
9:30–9:50am: “Blackness in McQueen’s ‘Western Deep.’” Delinda Collier, Professor and Interim Dean of Graduate Studies, School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
9:50–10:10am: “The Blues of Steve McQueen.” Alan Longino, PhD candidate, University of Chicago.
10:10–10:30am: “‘Nothingness in the Cage’: Darkness, Blueness, and Blackness in the Work of Steve McQueen.” *Charlotte Ickes (Yale BA 2008), Curator of time-based media art and special projects, Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, Washington, DC.
10:30–10:45am: Q&A
10:45–11am: Break
11 am–12pm: Session two: “Frames of Viewing: Television & Film.” Chair: Stuart Comer.
11–11:20am: “Genealogies of Film in Steve McQueen’s Video Installations.” Sarah Durcan, Independent Writer and Artist
11:20–11:40am: “‘Small Axe’ and/as Cinematic Television.” Hannah Andrews, Associate Professor in Film and Media, University of Lincoln.
11:40–12pm: Q&A
12–1:30pm: Lunch break
1:30–3pm: Session three: “Temporality and Stasis.” Chair: Donna De Salvo.
1:30–1:50pm: “Surplus Liveness and Black Male Performance in ‘Girls, Tricky.’” *James Harvey, Lecturer in Film, Queen Mary University of London.
1:50–2:10pm: “From ‘Exodus’ to ‘Small Axe’: Steve McQueen’s Filmic World of Two Halves.” *Elisabetta Fabrizi, Independent Scholar.
2:10–2:30pm: “Steve McQueen’s Holding Time.” David Sledge, PhD Candidate in Art History, Columbia University.
2:30–3pm: Q&A
3–3:30pm: Break
3:30–5pm: Conversation: “Histories of the Real and Fabricated in McQueen’s Films and Photographs.” Karen Alexander and Kimberly Juanita Brown (Yale PhD 2006), Associate Professor of English and Creative Writing, Dartmouth.
4:45–5pm: Q&A
*Speakers participating remotely.
