[ecrea] CALL FOR PAPERS The Postcolonial Museum

*The Postcolonial Museum: the Pressures of Memory and the Bodies of 
History *

International Conference
as part of the European Museums in an Age of Migrations (MeLA)
European Commission FP7-funded project

Organised by the
*University of Naples "l'Orientale", MeLa RF2.*
7-8 February 2013


*Call for Papers*

How to conceive of a "postcolonial museum" in the contemporary epoch of 
mass migrations, Internet and digital technologies? How to consider this 
space, practices and institutions in the light of the repressed 
histories, sounds, voices, images, memories, bodies, expression and 
cultures that the Occident has either denied or investigated as merely 
objects of traditional display practices? How to retrace and re-route 
museums perspectives taking into account the pressures of the denied 
bodies of European history repressed in its colonial past and present?
How to re-think memory and its means in the light of the dissonant, 
asynchronous and displaced memories coming to meet us from the 
unregistered present, and the future narration of contemporary migration?
How to re-open the museum space, in order to transform it from a place 
of national identity and the accumulative logic multiculturalism, to a 
site of contaminations, fluxes, border-crossings and migrating memories?

Focusing on the transformation of museums (meant as cultural spaces 
rather than physical places) into living archive through creation, 
participation, production and innovation we will also consider the 
following issues:
How does the museum reshape its cultural spaces in the light of the 
precarious conditions of work of the subjectivities working within its 
context? How are those subjectivities produced within this context?
How do new media arts participate in the complex transformation of 
cultural artwork?

How to work towards new forms of archiving --- "affective", sensorial, 
sound and fluid archives --- even in conventional museum spaces?

MeLa Research Field 2 (http://wp2.mela-project.eu/), composed of 
Researchers from the University of Naples "l'Orientale", is 
investigating these issues in order to contribute to a different 
comprehension of museums and archiving practices that respond to 
postcolonial and cultural studies in order rethink museums as mobile and 
"heterotopic spaces", rather than stable places of institutional memory.

Invited speakers include:
Ursula Biemann, artist, curator and researcher, Institute for Theory of 
Art and Design, Zurich, Switzerland.
Tarek Elhaik, anthropolgist and curator, San Francisco State University, USA
Viviana Gravano, Professor of Arts, Academy of Fine Arts, Brera, Italy
Achille Mbembe, Professor in History and Politics, University of the 
Witwatersrand, South Africa
Fiamma Montezemolo, Artist and Lecturer of Art Practice at Berkeley 
University and of Critical Studies at the California College of the Arts.
Ebadur Rahman, Chief curator of «Bengal Foundation» and Editor of 
Jamini-International Art Magazine, Dhaka, Bangladesh
Françoise Vergès, Reader at the Centre for Cultural Studies, Goldsmith 
College, London, and President of the Comité pour la Mémoire de 
l'Esclavage, France

Submissions are invited in the following areas:
a) Migrating Museums
. Theoretical contributions to the study of museums and archiving 
practices in migrating, postcolonial and multicultural societies.
. Migration, border-crossings and the pressures of the denied and 
patrolled bodies of migrants: how to conceive and promote different 
European citizenships.

b) From the single artist to participative museums and social technology.
. Beyond institutional representation: practices of shared curatorial 
experiences in community museums and participative art.
. New forms of sociability (social participation/ digital technologies). 
The museum from an institutional dispositif of modernity to a social 
technology.

c) Subjectivity and artists in the age of precariousness and immaterial 
labour
. The role of the artist: political activism/cognitarian labour versus 
capitalism.
. Immaterial and affective labour in the museum: precarization and the 
production of subjectivities in arts practices.

d)  Museums, digital archives and new media arts
. Digital and Internet technologies as alternative forms of archiving 
and "making memory".
. New media arts and artworking:  acknowledging the changed conditions 
of the production of cultural artwork in neo-liberal societies and 
transnational spaces.

e) Alternative archiving practices.
. From display, exhibition and collection practices to transforming and 
"affective" museum experiences.
. Art practices and fluid archives.
. Music and sound as a vehicle for different modes of experiencing and 
transmitting memory.


Instructions for submission
Abstracts of maximum 300 words for individual papers should be submitted 
to Mariangela Orabona ((mariangelaorabona /at/ gmail.com) 
<mailto:(mariangelaorabona /at/ gmail.com)>) by 14thSept. 2012.
The abstracts should include the following information:
. Title of paper
. Author name(s)
. Affiliation and position
. Email address
. Abstract
. Keywords (maximum 5)
Authors will be notified of the acceptance of their proposals by 24th 
Sept;on that occasion they will receive the publication 
stylesheet.Accepted speakers will be required to submit a full paper of 
minimum 4000 words in advance of the conference to Mariangela Orabona 
 by 7thJanuary 2013.
Paper presentations at the conference should summarise the key arguments 
and findings of the full paper, which will be published in March 2013 by 
Ashgate Publishing.
There is no registration fee for the conference and buffet lunch will be 
provided.

Proceedings:
A selection of the conference proceedings, presented in person at the 
The Postcolonial Museum: the Pressures of Memory and the Bodies of 
History International Conference, in a volume to be published by 
Ashgate. The material is expected to be original and to have not been 
already published elsewhere. Young scholars are warmly invited to 
participate.

MeLA RF2 Conference organising committee,
University of Naples "l'Orientale":
Prof. Iain M. Chambers (RF2 leader)
Prof. Lidia Curti (Honorary Professor)
Dr Alessandra De Angelis, Beatrice Ferrara, Giulia Grechi, Mariangela 
Orabona (MeLa researchers)




--
*********************

Mariangela Orabona*
/*Appointed Researcher*

/Research Field *"Cultural Memory, Migrating Modernities and Museum 
Practices"*
*EU Project* *MeLa* - Museums in an Age of Migrations 
*(http://www.mela-project.eu/)

(mariangelaorabona /at/ gmail.com) <mailto:(mariangelaorabona /at/ gmail.com)>
+39 349 570 92 46