The Visual Arts Center will host a symposium that brings together scholars and critics, as well as The University of Texas at Austin faculty and students, to discuss a variety of themes connected to the multi-venue exhibition Strange Pilgrims. Speakers include Andrea Lissoni, senior curator of International Art (Film) at Tate Modern; Valerie Smith, freelance curator and writer; Ann Reynolds, associate professor of Art History in the Department of Art and Art History and the Center for Women’s & Gender Studies in the College of Liberal Arts; Michael Smith, professor of Studio Art in Transmedia in the Department of Art and Art History; Rachel Stuckey, MFA candidate in Studio Art; and Department of Art and Art History PhD candidates in Art History Dorota Biczel, Kate Green, and Robin Williams.

The symposium will be organized around the exhibition’s three thematic sections - Environment & Place, Performance & Process, and Technology & Information - and utilize the 250-page, full-color catalogue for Strange Pilgrims distributed by the University of Texas Press as a launching point for discussion. This academic gathering provides a forum for viewers of the exhibition and scholars in the field to unpack and develop new ideas around the exhibiting and historicizing of time-based media and ephemeral art and to discuss the redefinition of “experiential art” as work that is immersive, participatory, performative, or kinetic.