[Commlist] CFP: Mediating Cultural Heritage: Narrative Strategies and Tactics

MeCCSA subscribers may be interested in the call for papers below: 
'*Mediating Cultural Heritage: Narrative Strategies and Tactics*'. 
Submission. *Deadline 29^th  February.*

This stream is running as part of the *London Conference in Critical 
Thought, at the University of Greenwich, London 28 & 29^th  June, 2024*. 
Abstracts should be submitted by *29^th  February* as Word documents, 
max 250 words to *(londoncritical /at/ gmail.com). Please indicate the stream 
title 'Mediating Cultural Heritage: Narrative Strategies and Tactics' in 
the subject line*.

The London Conference in Critical Thought is an annual interdisciplinary 
conference that provides a forum for emergent critical scholarship. The 
event is always free to attend and it follows a nonhierarchical model 
that seeks to foster opportunities for intellectual critical exchanges, 
where all are treated equally regardless of affiliation or seniority. 
There are no keynotes and the conference is envisaged as a space for 
those who share intellectual approaches and interests but may find 
themselves on the margins of their academic department or discipline.
Full details of the conference and all the subject streams running in 
the conference can be found here https://www.londoncritical.co.uk 
<https://www.londoncritical.co.uk>

The London Conference in Critical Thought is an in-person conference.

Mediating Cultural Heritage: Narrative Strategies and Tactics


This stream is concerned with the role of both media and narrative in 
the way that cultural heritage is defined, represented, contested and 
promoted. Taking de Certeau’s notion of /strategies /and /tactics /as a 
starting point, the aim is to consider the different ways that 
individuals, collectives and institutions employ and engage with 
particular media, in order to produce, inhabit, rework and challenge 
narratives of and about places, objects and practices of cultural 
significance.


In contemporary cultures and in common with other sectors, cultural 
heritage institutions typically consider the production of narratives to 
be a core activity. This relates both to their interpretation strategies 
and to how they construct their own institutional narrative. They may 
employ many types of media and work with a variety of creative 
practitioners to construct and share these narratives with audiences.


Meanwhile, many forms of cultural heritage are maintained outside 
hegemonic cultural institutions, by a range of individuals, groups and 
organisations, who also employ different creative methods and media to 
produce narratives that may, explicitly or implicitly, question, refute 
or defy official narratives and make visible what such narratives ignore.


Largely in response to such counter-hegemonic practices, institutional 
discourses of cultural heritage have started to include a wider scope of 
tangible and intangible culture in designations of cultural heritage, 
from which preservation and promotion strategies proceed. Moreover, 
cultural heritage institutions have begun to produce different 
narratives about long established sites, artefacts and practices of 
cultural heritage, with the aim of acknowledging problematic histories 
and/or marginalised experiences. Such changes are not always easily 
accommodated within existing norms of cultural heritage conservation and 
interpretation, however, creating tension both within cultural heritage 
institutions and in their relations with other actors, including 
governmental bodies and different community sectors.


If, as in de Certeau’s formulation, hegemonic institutions serve to 
circumscribe the ‘proper place’ of cultural heritage, then we might see 
such attempts to change and multiply the narratives they produce as 
strategies to redraw the boundaries of the institution. What 
opportunities and limits for tactical ‘insinuations’ might this process 
of redrawing offer? Does this destabilising of the boundaries constitute 
a temporary or a permanent process?


When considering cultural heritage narratives produced outside such 
institutions, how might we consider them to operate as tactics of 
creative resistance? Might we also see them as attempts to circumscribe 
a rival ‘proper place’?


In what ways do contemporary cultural heritage narrative strategies 
actively seek to encourage/co-opt tactical transformations by cultural 
heritage ‘consumers’ and what are the implications of this?


This stream invites presentations from both practitioners and theorists, 
which may take the form of artworks and practice-based research, as well 
as more traditional presentations. Areas/questions to explore might 
include, but are not limited to:


  *

    Creative media as strategy/tactic in cultural heritage narratives

  *

    Artistic practices and practitioners in cultural heritage

  *

    The role of the ‘consumer’ in cultural heritage narratives

  *

    Contested and multiple narratives and cultural heritage

  *

    Cultural heritage narratives as a way of imagining potential futures

  *

    The limits of narrative as a way to engage with cultural heritage



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