European Commission - 7th Framework Programme European Museums and Libraries in/of the age of migrations last updated: February 2015


Spaces of Memory & Performance: Trauma, Affect, Displacement

20-21 June 2014

London, United Kingdom | Centre of Performing Arts Development, University of East London

 

The two-day International Conference is supported by British Academy Mobile Partnership Scheme & The University of East London.

The aftermath of episodes of trauma and loss have traditionally given way to urban rituals and encounters with sites of public grieving. Even so, the emergence of disparate sites of trauma has not been enough addressed from a performative perspective. The very existence of the so-called ‘spaces of memory’ requests the reconfiguration of modes of engagement with the public space in the face of trauma and its performance. With this in mind, this two-day international conference explores unconventional forms of intervention in performance and visual arts in a wide spectrum of geographical scenarios. The question that underlines the event is: how can we possibly propitiate public pathways to engage with loss and trauma among expanded publics?
Featuring a range of panels, paper presentations, keynote addresses and performative lectures, live performances, film showings, provocations and round table discussions, this conference meeting interrogates embodied, ephemeral and unmarked spaces as sites of enchantment and public gathering while it explores transitional and diasporic interventions that might envisage news forms of being together. The event, finally but not least, invites us to imagine the futurity of sites of memory and simultaneously explores fictions that may transform the politics of spectatorship in the present.

Keynote speakers: Maria Delgado (Queen Mary), Carl Lavery, (Glasgow University), Leigh Payne (Oxford University), Alan Marcus (Aberdeen University), Lola Arias (Theatre Director), Claudia Fontes (Visual Artist), Marcelo Brodsky (Photographer Artist), Valentina Salvi (University Tres de Febrero).

For information, please contact organizers: Cecilia Sosa (University of East London) c.sosa(at)uel.ac.uk and/or Eve Katsouraki (University of East London) e.katsouraki(at)uel.ac.uk.

 

» link to the Conference