Steve Edwards, Martin Gaughan and Gail Day, Plenary 1  This discussion forms part of the study day that explores concepts of avant-gardism, and the ways in which these have been deployed to historicise and interpret twentieth century art.

Dada to Surrealism: Continuity  Speaker: Martin Gaughan, writer and former Head of the History and Theory of Art at the University of Wales Institute, Cardiff .This talk traces some of the issues which informed work in the different Dada centres, establishing their origins and concerns, and considering how the relationships between the different moments can be characterized.

Steve Edwards, USSR in Construction  Speaker: Steve Edwards, Research Lecturer in History of Art at The Open University. This talk looks at Russian art from just before World War 1 until the middle of the 1930s, considering the relation between Constructivist art and the politics of the period. In the wake of the 1917 revolution many avant-garde artists identified with the aims of the Bolshevik regime.

Gail Day, Theories of the Avant-Garde  Speaker: Gail Day, Senior Lecturer in art theory and history at Wimbledon School of Art and an editor of the Oxford Art Journal.This talk sets up the day's discussions by considering the interrelated concepts of the 'avant-garde' and 'neo-avant-garde'.

Steve Edwards, Mohini Chandra, Marcus Verhagen and Dominic Willsdon, Discussion 2  This video recording from the Contemporary Art and Globalisation Study Day features a panel discussion between speakers.

Marcus Verhagen and Dominic Willsdon, The Rise and Rise of the Biennial  Over the last 20 years a number of new biennials have been established and the older biennials have, by all accounts, played an increasingly important role in sanctioning tendencies, entrenching reputations and directing debate in the art world. This trend has not always been well received.

Mohini Chandra and Dominic Willsdon, Travels in a New World  In exploring the nature of diaspora and visual culture, through installation based art work, texts and other publications, Chandra’s practice involves a multiplicity of cross-cultural dialogues with disciplines such as history, anthropology and geography, suggesting new ways of mapping cultural experience through personal memory.

Steve Edwards and Dominic Willsdon, Photography and Social Space  In an era of increasingly global capitalist production, photographers have become more and more preoccupied with documenting social spaces. Steve Edwards’ talk considers the work that has emerged from both the documentary tradition and the legacy of conceptual art.

Suman Gupta, Sonia Boyce, Paul Wood, Dominic Willsdon, Discussion 1  This video recording from the Contemporary Art and Globalisation Study Day features a panel discussion between speakers.

Sonia Boyce and Dominic Willsdon, Glocal: somewhere between the local and the global  Many contemporary artists reject the idea of their work as ‘political’, as if such a label prohibits it from also being poetic. Sonia Boyce rejects this distinction and discusses how circumstances have conspired to ensure her politicisation. She reflects on why she increasingly falls back on the old feminist adage ‘the personal is political’ to consider the question of the local in relation to the global, and how these two states intertwine.