The 11th Art of Management & Organization Conference theme is ‘New Total Arts for Sustainable Futures’
Hosted by ICN Creactive Business School
New Total Arts for Sustainable Futures
The Art of Management & Organization Conference Nancy, 21-24 August 2024
Since 2002, the aim of this conference series has been to explore and promote the arts as a means of understanding management and organization. Artists inspire the business world, in the best case with artistic interventions and new discourses. But the impression persists that art does not go beyond the level of an aesthetic activity which is merely consumed in organizations. At its best, art holds up a critical mirror that shocks the organization into some kind of specific change. But does art ever change business as usual?
AoMO 2024 wants to approach management and organization from a New Total Arts perspective – art as an attitude, philosophy and guiding principle which should enable sustainable futures. Total Art strongly resonates with trans-disciplinarity but gains its strength in action and doing. Correspondingly, we want to take philosophies of action, of sensation, of embodiment and of objects into consideration, as they have been revisited in philosophies of the late 20th & early 21st centuries. In combination with Total Art these philosophies inspire The Art of Management & Organization Conference in Nancy.
Art is emotion … provocation … confrontation … protest … disruption … politics … activism … departure … development … reflection … transformation.
We need art in all these manifestations for sustainable futures. Art could be the gamechanger for organizations trying to make serious changes as we struggle to rethink our way of relating to the natural world of the planet, the climate, resources and other species that coexist upon it. New ways of being will depend upon new ways of seeing, and such perspectives are only possible if management and organization make a combined use of multiple art forms and processes.
Total art (art totale or Gesamtkunstwerk) has enjoyed canonical status in aesthetic theory since the late 20th century. For sustainable futures, two movements of Total Art are springboards for the conference: Art Nouveau and Art Déco.
Art Nouveau is an international style of art, architecture, and design with Nancy as one of its capitals. Art Nouveau was a reaction against academic art, eclecticism and historicism of 19th century architecture and decoration. The revolutionary approach was to break down the traditional distinction between arts, architecture and design, and develop a holistic understanding on the search for Total Art. Art Nouveau was inspired by natural forms, dynamism, asymmetry, and the use of modern materials, therefore synergistically combining art, nature and technology. Its political purpose was to address anyone and escaping the elitist audiences, issuing series production rather than unique originals, incorporating the industrial techniques into the art world, creating total environments and atmospheres. Art Déco was the main successor of Art Nouveau from 1910s onwards, first in France, later on international. Art Déco experimented with the genres of design, painting, furniture, architecture, and building within its stylistic realm characterized by vivid colours and daring geometry that led to extremely luxurious and detailed artworks. The urban expansion of the time spread this new fashion in Nancy. The former members of the Ecole de Nancy like Antonin Daum, Jacques Gruber, Louis Majorelle or Victor Prouvé were still present and developed their aesthetic further. Nancy remains a leading artistic capital during the 1920s and 1930s and still is a city with a lively art and cultural scene.
In a nutshell, New Total Arts for Sustainable Futures in Nancy means …
- Let’s break down our traditional distinctions of disciplines!
- Let’s incorporate art into every management and organizational process!
- Let’s turn organizations into New Total Arts!
- Let’s develop our “New Total Arts” for Sustainable Futures!
Call for Creative Contributions
The Art of Management & Organization 2024 wants to revisit Art Nouveau and Art Déco to inspire participants before the conference to develop their New Total Arts contributions and during the conference to create new connections. We welcome all kinds of contributions which support us further develop our understanding, theorizing, discussing, organizing, and realizing of “management and organization as New Total Arts”. To uphold the playful and inspirational art and aesthetics tradition of The Art of Management & Organization, we encourage all contributors to be creative and create untraditional performances, provocative presentations, thrilling events, evocative exhibitions, unconventional papers, and much more.
AoMO 2024 invites proposals for larger scale activities – streams, workshops, performances and special events – that will involve most of the attendees, or might not fit within the normal structures of conference activities. In its 20 years of existence, AoMO has pushed the boundaries of what can be done in a conference presentation from a play performed entirely by robots, to an audience experiencing leadership in action by sitting distributed throughout an orchestra as they rehearse and perform a piece of classical music. We embrace all the arts and are open to everything – poetry, theatre, dance, song, film, painting, sculpture, musicals, even circus! Check out previous conference on our website http://www.artofmanagement.org. AoMO 2024 will approach management and organization from a New Total Arts perspective – tell us what that means for you!
Streams we like to be theme-based – last year in Liverpool each one had a Beatles-based title, this year we’d welcome Art Nouveau and Art Déco – but this should be in no way restrictive. A creative stimulus but not a constraint. The Art of Management & Organization 2024 wants to revisit Art Nouveau and Art Déco to inspire participants before the conference to develop their New Total Arts contributions and during the conference to create new connections. We welcome all kinds of contributions which support us further develop our understanding, theorizing, discussing, organizing, and realizing of New Total Arts for Sustainable Futures. To uphold the playful and inspirational art and aesthetics tradition of The Art of Management & Organization, we encourage all contributors to be creative and create untraditional performances, provocative presentations, thrilling events, evocative exhibitions, unconventional papers, and much more. But we are always a forum for presentation, dialogue and exploration to reflect what is currently happening in the field, so submissions are not limited to the conference theme. We welcome the contributions of work that you wish to share, discuss and develop, whatever its focus is within the field engaging with arts and aesthetics in management and organization whether it follows the theme or not. So as usual we will have an Open Stream.
Please let us have your outline proposal of 200-500 words, with any images, diagrams, links etc. that will help us to understand what you want to do by May 31st 2023. Send to aomo2024nancy@gmail.com copying stephan.sonnenburg@icn-artem.com. Direct any inquiries to jenna.aomo@gmail.com.
This call is for streams and events that don’t fit within normal stream conventions – there will be a second Call for Papers, Presentations and Performances once the streams and events are determined.
The Art of Management & Organization 