Walid Raad
On October 26 we had an Image&Word meeting in Hasselt. For that occasion I prepared a short presentation on Walid Raad’s The Atlas Group: an imaginary foundation whose objective is to research and document Lebanon’s contemporary history. In Raad’s own words:
“Our aim with this project has never been to fool viewers and listeners by presenting stories and documents about anything and anyone in order to see what we can ‘get away with’. (…) This project operates between what is sayable, believable and known (as true or false). (…) Hence we would urge you to approach these documents we present as we do, as ‘hysterical symptoms’ based not on any one person’s actual memories but on cultural fantasies erected from the material of collective memories.”
(quoted from “Let’s Be Honest, the Rain helped // 2003” in Merewether, Charles. Documents of Contemporary Art: The Archive. Whitechapel Gallery and The MIT Press, 2006.)
The visuals of the presentation can be found here.
Alternative Worlds
Alternative Worlds
A retrospective of the last 111 years
Call for Papers/ Art Presentations
Seminar in Visual Culture 2011
Deadline for proposals: 13 Dec. 2010
Institute of Germanic & Romance Studies, Room ST 274 (School of Advanced Study, Stewart House, 32 Russell Square, WC1B 5DN London)
This series of seminars acts as a forum for practicing artists, researchers, curators, students, and others interested in visual culture who are invited to present, discuss and explore a given theme within the broad field of Visual Culture.
In an attempt to escape the doom and gloom of the economic crisis the theme for 2011 is ‘Alternative Worlds’. The aim is to examine the dreams, plans and hopes, but also the nightmares and fears reflected in utopian thinking since 1900 in the Western hemisphere. What has become of all those possible worlds? How do they reflect their contemporary culture and society and what, if anything, do or can they mean for our present, or indeed, our future? What alternative worlds are engendered by our own times, by the world of 2011 itself? This is, hence not only a retrospective of past utopias and their after-lives but also an invitation to look towards our possible futures.
Space, Time, Mobility
Space, Time and Mobility: Which Memory for *Augmented Reality*?
*Conserveries Memorielles*, an on-line interdisciplinary journal,* *invites to submit articles for a special issue about the various interactions which take place between space and human being when moving. Precisely, we would like to point out what’s remembered from journeys using any kind of transportation and how being in motion – by foot or by a mean of transportation – affects our perception of time and space.
This special issue is edited by Etienne Faugier (Ph. D. student at Laval & Lyon 2 Lumiere Universities) and Arnaud Passalacqua (assistant professor in contemporary history, Paris Diderot – Paris 7 University).
A complete version of the call for papers is available at *http://cm.revues.org/774*.
If you have any questions or would like to discuss a submission, please contact *mobilityspacetime@gmail.com*.
Festival & Conference: Memorimage
Festival Memorimage: Films of Today with Images of Yesterday is a competitive international film festival targeting films that use archival footage.
Memorimage is an innovative initiative that promotes the conservation and restoration of our audiovisual heritage. An event that asserts the importance of the image in the makeup of the individual and collective memory.
For this year’s celebration, Memorimage presents a programme that places priority on quality and seeks out the most recent film productions that include the use of archival footage. The festival schedule also features a number of additional activities for sector professionals, students and the general community, making Memorimage a strategic point of encounter to learn about and debate on the use of archival footage.