Uncommon Senses: An Interdisciplinary Conference on the Senses in Art and Culture
	Concordia University, Montreal April 27-29, 2000 Organized by Constance Classen, Jim Drobnick, Jennifer Fisher, and David Howes

Uncommon Senses was a major international conference that comprised 46 panels, 180 presenters and 330 registered participants dedicated to exploring the diversity of sensory experience in art and culture. Critiques of ocularcentrism strive to deconstruct the authority of vision, but by their very emphasis on visuality tend to confirm the priority of sight over the other senses. Uncommon Senses sought to redress this sensory imbalance by bringing to the fore the cultural, political and aesthetic significance of non-visual modes of sensorial engagement. Drawing inspiration from research on the senses in the social sciences, literature and art, Uncommon Senses posed a series of questions: What models of sensory aesthetics do non-Western cultures offer? How is technology reinventing the senses? What are the historical roots of contemporary sensory paradigms? How are the senses engaged (or manipulated) in popular culture? In what manners can difference -- whether based on culture, class, disability or sexuality -- be mobilized to counter and reconfigure hegemonic understandings of the senses? Scholars were drawn from a wide diversity of disciplines, including art history, anthropology, cultural studies, literary studies, philosophy, sociology, communications and the fine arts. Panels examined innovative uses of the senses in art, architecture, performance and other media; sensory transgressions and redefinitions of aesthetics; the history and anthropology of the senses; technology and the future of perception; the senses inflected by gender, class, disability and cultural difference; synaesthesia and “total” artworks; and sensation in popular and postmodern culture. The conference was accompanied by an exhibition and performance series of sensory-based artworks at the Leonard and Bina Ellen Art Gallery – Vital Signs and Sentience (curated by DisplayCult and Colette Tougas) – and a video series "Sense Machines" curated by Nelson Henricks. Plenary Speakers Richard Schechner, New York University “Rasaesthetics” Robert Desjarlais, Sarah Lawrence College “Movement, Stillness: On the Sensory World of a Shelter for the ‘Homeless Mentally Ill’” Brian Massumi, State University of New York “The Parable of the Cave (Blind Version)” Constance Classen, Lonergan College “The Futurist Sensorium and the Cultural Politics of the Senses” Joanna Frueh, University of Nevada, Reno “Vaginal Aesthetics” Jim Drobnick, Concordia University “Corrupting the Purity of the White Cube” Related Events Vital Signs The Leonard and Bina Ellen Art Gallery an exhibition curated by DisplayCult and Colette Tougas Sense Machines video screenings programmed by Nelson Henricks Sentience performances organized by DisplayCult Conference Program Thursday, April 27 10:00-12:45: Plenary I       Richard Schechner       Robert Desjarlais 2:00-3:45       Anthropology of the Senses I: Material Culture       Digital Aesthetics       Engendering the Senses: Feminism and the Body       Exhibition Practices       Installation/Interactivity       Senses of Space I 4:00-5:45       Anthropology of the Senses II: States of Perception       Haptics       Popular Culture: Affects and Effects       Per_Sen_Test       Senses of Space II       Sensing the Sacred Friday, April 28 9:00-10:45       Cybersenses       Deaf Cultures       Embodied Reading       Experiencing the Atmosphere       Sensorial Strategies in Art History       Staging Sensoriality 11:00-12:45       Cinematic Senses       Cuts and Caresses: The Body in Pleasure and Pain       Helen Keller       Philosophical Aesthetics: Sensorial Investigations       A Sensory Primer       Writing the Senses 2:00-3:45: Plenary II       Brian Massumi       Constance Classen 4:00-5:45       Amerindian Aesthetics       Artistic Process       Critiques of Ocularcentrism       Feminist Aesthetic Practices       Making Sense of Texts       Rasaboxes: Workshop Saturday, April 29 9:00-10:45       Aurality I       Cultural Histories of the Senses I       Feeling Difference: The Sensory Politics of Alterity       Synaesthesia       Taste I 11:00-12:45       Aurality II       Cultural Histories of the Senses II       Disability and Technology: Reconfiguring the Senses       Sense Appeals       The Tactility of Vision: Readings in Photography, Film and Video       Taste II 2:00-3:45: Plenary III       Joanna Frueh       Jim Drobnick 4:00-5:45       Altered States       From the Tactile to the Embrace       Perceptual Pedagogies       Sociology of the Senses       The “Total Artwork “ (Gesamtkunstwerk)

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