[Discussion] CFP: Technologies of Memory in the Arts (Netherlands) (11/1/05; 5/19/06-5/20/06)

[gpultar@cstgroup.org]

From: Edwin van Meerkerk <e.v.meerkerk@let.ru.nl>

The conference 'Technologies of Memory in the Arts' focuses on art as a cultural
and technological practice to process and construct the past in the present.
Central questions to this conference are: How do art and artistic practices
function as technologies of memory? How are cultural artefacts implicated in
complex processes of remembering and forgetting, of recollecting and
disremembering, of amnesia and anamnesia?

As a shared artistic and social practice, cultural memory links the present to
the past. In doing so, cultural memory has strong ethical and political aspects.
The arts are continuously engaged in non-linear processes of remembering and
forgetting, characterised by repetition, rearrangement, revision, and rejection.
In artistic representations new memories are thus constantly constructed,
deconstructed and reconstructed by narrative strategies, visual and aural
styles, intertextuality and intermediality, representations of time and space,
and rituals of remembrance. These complex processes of representation are what
we understand by the term 'technologies of memory'.

The contemporary fascination with history and memory is accompanied by
developments in media technology that have simultaneously a petrifying and a
virtualising effect. Both individual and cultural memory are increasingly
mediated by modern technologies, which means that memories are not only recorded
and recollected by media, but are also shaped and produced by them. The digital
media, in particular, allow for new ways of storing, retrieving and archiving
personal and collective memories, as well as cultural artefacts.

The conference theme Technologies of memory in the arts specifically addresses
the material construction of cultural memory. Some panels will explore
procedures of memory in both traditional and new media. Other panels will
investigate the role of digitalisation of art and culture in relation to memory.
Generally, the focus of this conference will be on the materiality of
representation and on the relation between the medium and the construction of
cultural memory.

Key note speakers:
- Marita Sturken (University of Southern California)
- Ann Rigney (Utrecht University)

Panels and papers on the conference theme are invited before 1 November 2005.
Suggested topics:
- Mediated memories
- Narrative strategies
- Intertextuality / intermediality
- Music as memory work
- Urban space and spatial dimensions
- Tourism and heritage
- Musical subcultures as memory space
- Representations of memory in the arts
- Amnesia and anamnesia
- Icons of the recent past
- Rituals of remembrance
- Rituals, music and the shape of memory
- Nostalgia and pastiche
- Retro styles as forms of cultural memory
- Rewritings of the classics
- Digitalisation of archives
- Music/sound recordings and the technology of memory

The department  of Comparative Arts and Cultural Studies of the Radboud
University Nijmegen participates in the EU-sponsored research network ACUME, a
network of over thirty European countries researching cultural memory from an
interdisciplinary perspective.

Conference committee: Sophie Levie, Edwin van Meerkerk, Liedeke Plate,
Mathijs Sanders and Anneke Smelik

More information and submission:
http://www.ru.nl/comparativearts/research/technologies_of

Contact information: Edwin van Meerkerk,
e.v.meerkerk@let.ru.nl, tel. +3124 3615543



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