Copy-Past. Revaluating History, Memory and Archive in Cinema, Performing Arts and Visual Culture
Recent developments in academic scholarship and artistic practices in various fields have seen an increasing interest in the productive and intellectual potential of interpreting history, memory and archive. This preoccupation opened up a wide space of analysis and debate that sees the past not only as a passive “has-been” but rather as a probable “would be” – for better or worse. It is noteworthy that one of the most frequent warnings today regarding the political evolution in certain contexts points to the risk of repeating the past – about making the present an uncritical and blind “Copy-Past.” However, internalizing the significant moments of the past is part of our contemporary cultural construction in which history, memory and archive are the catalysts for some of the most progressive endeavours. The idea synthesized by the phrase “Copy-Past” is, after all, the motor of our cultural system of representation, the source-model conceived and symbolized through—and departing from—the indicators of the past.
The conference Copy-Past – Memory, archive, revaluations in cinema, performing arts and visual culture proposes a double articulation of the concept of past: it proposes equally a discourse of history and a discourse on history. That is, on the one hand, it proposes a discussion addressing the historical factuality (and its historiographic understandings) as well as the mechanisms to work, interpret and visualize historical facts and their relevance in contemporary artistic practice and critical thinking. On the other hand, it proposes to reflect on the methodological and theoretical interpretations stemming from and critically departing from various historicist approaches. More precisely, it expects to theorize on the very possibility of historicity: the interpreting solutions addressing the evolution of ideas, methodologies and systems of historical and critical research of artistic creation, in relation to the social and political contexts.
Abstracts (up to 300 words) are requested in English for all papers related to any aspect the conference topics. Approaches from a range of disciplines and interdisciplinary studies are accepted if related to any aspect of art, cinema, media, visual culture, and any sub-genre of those fields. Researchers from all disciplines, as well as PhD students and artists who are active in research activities are welcome to participate.
The sessions of paper presentations will include about 4 theoretical papers, while practitioners will be presenting their findings in distinct workshops. Each panel will have an invited key speaker (to be confirmed). The information requested with abstract submission must include the name(s) of the author(s), any institutional affiliation, mailing address and email, proposed title of presentation (changes are allowed up to the registration deadline).
Topics could include, but are not restricted to:
Appropriation and recycling images
Adaptation and remediation in cinema, theatre and visual culture
Critical re-evaluations of artistic production: between ethics and aesthetics
The critical discourse as interface between the artist and the audience
Criticism and normativity: what history has to do with it
New Historicism 2.0.
Media archaeology
Found footage film and alternative history
Preservation / archiving historical artistic production
Curatorship – capitalizing the artistic heritage
Historical “truth” vs. the transmedial question
Post-production as post-history
New-new historicism
Collective memories vs. Collected memories
Claudiu Turcus, Babes-Bolyai University, Film and Media Department