[Commlist] Call for Abstracts · Spring Seminar 2022 · Traumatic Landscapes

Spring Seminar 2022

Traumatic Landscapes

WEBSITE > https://artes.porto.ucp.pt/pt/springseminar

4-6 MAY 2022

Porto, Portugal

Call for Abstracts: 28 FEB 2022
Acceptance note: March 15th 2022



Keynote Speakers and Artist Talks: 
- Alice Miceli

- Susana Meiselas (tbc)

- More tbc

Organizing Committee:
- Pedro Andrade

- Nuno Crespo

- Alice Miceli

- Luiz Camillo Osorio

- Daniel Ribas


The Spring Seminar 2022 takes as its starting point issues raised by the 
photographic work of Brazilian artist Alice Miceli. In Depth: minefields 
displays four series of images taken in various  regions across 
countries where landmines and other explosives remnants of war play an 
invisible yet all-determining role, namely, Cambodia, Bosnia, Colombia 
and Angola.

Landmines are remnants of war, weapons placed to kill and maim, which 
continue to be dangerous even decades after a conflict has ended. They 
are remainders of a cruel logic that is indifferent to the lived 
experience of a place. In the world today, there are an estimated one 
hundred million mines scattered around seventy countries, and every two 
hours someone is either killed or injured by one. In some regions of 
Cambodia or Angola, for instance, mines outnumber people, quietly 
transforming entire landscapes into everlasting impenetrable spaces.

Photography is inherently a formal practice. The capturing of an image 
is bound to systems involving matters of light, framing, positioning, 
movement and the suggestion of space. Looking at times at seemingly 
“undisturbed” landscapes, what these series of images capture is, in 
fact, something else. Something that lays beyond a simple appearance, 
and which, in reality, conceals a dormant destruction; images that  
together constitute a choreography of (literal) steps across landscapes 
of potential disaster, bringing forward a debate around the different 
elements at stake involved  in the crafting of a photograph as well as 
questions relating to landscape representation in a post-colonial context.

If photography can be an instant that creates a voluntary memory, a mine 
that explodes is the reverse: an instant that annihilates – death in the 
age of its mechanical reproduction. This work constitutes an action that 
is both a performance (that of the artist’s body off-screen, in the 
organization of the physical presence of her gaze in direct relationship 
to an obscured subject matter) and an exploration of what this action 
means for the image. It displays visual narratives with which to 
experience journeys across the topography of mine-contaminated lands 
that interconnect space, positioning and movement, both in the field and 
in the photographs.

This seminar aims at fostering dialogues around the relationship of 
images and traumatic historical, spatial and political realities. How 
can images be both artistic and political? How can we picture the 
invisibility of traumatic situations and experiences? Can we represent a 
post-colonial reality and offer points of view from within lands taken 
by unexploded mines? How can works of art contribute to the task of 
opening debates around the debts of cold-war policies?

Finally, the minefield images (and the action of  walking across 
potentially  explosive landscapes) can be thought  as a lived as well as 
a visual testimony to some consequences of the Anthropocene – our 
current era in which human intervention is altering the geological 
composition of the Earth to such an extent that its massive impacts 
start to be deemed irreversible. Miceli’s work provides the conceptual, 
political and artistic issues that our seminar will develop. We welcome 
proposals in the following topics or others considered pertinent in the 
context of this call, within the fields of cinema, photography, and 
other visual arts:

- wastelands and traumatic landscapes

- contemporary art and (war) trauma

- relations between contemporary art with memory and history (of war)

- artistic vs political images

- history (of war) and its materiality

- decolonial theory and trauma

Guidelines for submissions:

- The proposals should be comprised of an abstract (about 300 words), a 
biographical note (about 100 words), 4-6 keywords and contact and 
affiliation information of the author(s);

- The proposals should be sent in a single word document (.doc or .docx);

- All submissions should be sent to (springseminar.arts /at/ porto.ucp.pt).

The evaluation of the proposals will follow a double-blinded peer-review 
process.

+ info: (springseminar.arts /at/ porto.ucp.pt)





---------------
The COMMLIST
---------------
This mailing list is a free service offered by Nico Carpentier. Please use it responsibly and wisely.
--
To subscribe or unsubscribe, please visit http://commlist.org/
--
Before sending a posting request, please always read the guidelines at http://commlist.org/
--
To contact the mailing list manager:
Email: (nico.carpentier /at/ vub.ac.be)
URL: http://nicocarpentier.net
---------------