Catherine Grant, Baby Butches and Reluctant Lolitas: Performances of Adolescence  Collier Schorr and Hellen van Meene are contemporary photographers who are both known for their seductive, glossy portraits of adolescent girls, coming to prominence in the 1990s with a number of other women photographers who focus on the adolescent in their photography. Their portraits play with traditional voyeuristic modes of looking, with the older female photographer taking the place of the voyeuristic male and the model taking the place of 'Lolita'.

Dorothy Rowe, Wigs of Wonderment: Performing Race and Gender in the work of moti roti  Wigs of Wonderment, a performance piece by Keith Khan's live art group, moti roti, is a self-declared 'investigation of issues around race and gender, as manifest in hair and beauty' where the experience of beauty is performed as a 'sensory journey' for and by its performer-participants.

Gavin Butt, You Cannot Be Serious!: Gender Performance and Queer Authenticity  Performance has often been approached as a sign of non-serious or value-less activity in the 20th and 21st century. For instance, in speaking pejoratively of someone as 'theatrical', we can see how performance is sometimes associated with a lack of authenticity, in this case by implying that they are exaggerated or affected, 'too much' to be taken seriously.

Melanie Manchot, Kathy Battista and Gill Perry, Discussion 1  A discussion between Gill Perry, Melanie Manchot and Kathy Battista along with questions from the audience.

Melanie Manchot, Artist's Presentation  Melanie Manchot will talk through a selection of recent works in relation to a performative approach to photography and portraiture. She will discuss her use of cameras, both moving and still, as tools to create encounters on the threshold between staged and documentary practice. Many of these works are made with strangers, often in public spaces, and aim to articulate relationships between the individual and collective space.

Kathy Battista, Women Artists, Pain and Self-Portraiture  Kathy Battista explores how women artists have used pain (both physical and emotional) as a medium. She considers three historical moments: Frida Kahlo’s works from the 1940s including Without Hope, 1945, Tree of Hope, Keep Firm, 1946, and The Broken Column, 1944; feminist artists Hannah Wilke and Jo Spence’s work from the late 1980s and early 1990s including Intra Venus (Wilke) 1993 and Narratives of Dis-ease (Spence) 1989; and Tracey Emin’s work from the late 1990s.

Gill Perry, Introduction to the Themes of the Day  Germaine Greer has described Kahlo as 'the first ever true performance artist'. Gill Perry considers this claim in relation to recent debates about the meanings of performance art, and in comparison with the activities of a later generation of women artists, including the work of Carolee Schneemann, Ana Mendieta and Hannah Wilke from the 1960s and 70s.

Sophie Howarth, Ian White and Claire Bishop, Discussion 2  The speakers consider how changing Utopian ideologies have motivated artists, architects, designers and filmmakers in Europe and America over the last hundred years. The topics covered include the pioneering first wave of abstract art in the early twentieth century, visions of Utopia in avant-garde film, and post-modern explorations of the concept of Utopia by contemporary artists

Claire Bishop, Cinema, Utopias and Microtopias  Claire's talk addresses the idea of Utopia as it has been played out in contemporary art since the 1990s, focusing in particular on the notion of the work of art as a 'microtopia'. She makes reference to two contemporary artists: Rirkrit Tiravanija and Thomas Hirschhorn. Further Reading Relational Aesthetics, Nicolas Bourriaud, Paris: Presses du Réel, 1998. Thomas Hirschhorn, Carlos Basualdo, Alison Gingeras et al, London: Phaidon, 2004. Antagonism and Relational Aesthetics, Claire Bishop, October no.110, 2004.

Ian White, Cinema, Cinema, Utopia  Ian's talk considers representations of Utopia in classic and experimental cinema asking how these reflect not only the general idea and operating principles of an avant-garde but also how they mimic the way in which the cinema auditorium itself functions. Further Reading Close Up 1927-1933, ed. James Donald, Anne Friedberg, Laura Marcus (Cassell, London 1998) The Great Art of Light and Shadow; Archaeology of the cinema, Laurent Mannoni (University of Exeter Press, Exeter, 2000) A History of Experimental Film and Video, A.L. Rees (British Film Institute, London 1999)