Place Listening: Exploring Material Narratives

The 9th Annual Concordia University Art History

Throughout human history there has been a perpetual presence of visual culture, resulting in the need for documentation, records of events and physical memorabilia. With colonialism’s dependency on visual repertoire and the appropriation of cultural artefacts informing the basis of Art History today, a linear narrative is projected onto information to omit certain voices. Drawing on the history of world fairs, museum practices, architecture and new media, these power structures are seen in the way images are displayed and understood. Still echoed in today’s society, power distribution is tied into notions of nationhood calling to mind the idea of a conditioned gaze that influence the way we move through space.

With a vast colonial history, material facets of everyday interactions in Turtle Island (Canada) can act as reminders and triggers of violent pasts. Architectural structures and the experiences attached within these sites can serve as fabricated imperialism that raises questions about the limitations of one’s mobility in a city, who is welcomed, and entitled to a space. Furthermore, with remnants of a colonial mindset remaining in institutional archives, the process of digitization can perpetuate this ideology onto the virtual sphere. As topics concerning immigration and citizenship become more prominent today, shifts within communities and their roles in the development of public spaces challenges these narratives of exclusion.

In this years Annual Undergraduate Art History Conference, we aim to bring together research by artists, scholars, and students to initiate discussion on overlapping historical narratives, common histories, and involuntary memory to open a discourse for reconciliation. Whether it be from a place’s physical structure, to the virtual realm of archival practices on social media and by museums, we aim to open a dialogue on questions of nationhood, globalization, and deconstruction of barriers and placemaking within a contemporary landscape.

Click the link below to our facebook event of our conference:

Main Conference Facebook Event

Finissage/ EAHR Publication Launch at 4TH SPACE Facebook Event

Itinerary

Wednesday, March 4th, 2019

10:30 a.m. – Introductory Remarks by Vania Djelani
10:45 a.m. – Professional Panel: Elaine Speight on The Ontology and Embodiment of Place Listening
11:15 p.m. – Student panel: Place Listening in a Canadian Setting (Hannah Deskin, Diane Wong)
12 p.m. – Professional Panel: Melissa Patel and Nalini Mohabir on Memories of Migration
1 p.m. – 2 p.m.- Lunch (provided)
2 p.m. – Student Panel: Disturbing Material Memory (Ariel St-Louis – one presentation will be in French, Aurelie Bezacier, Alyse Tunnell)
3 p.m. – EAHR Panel: Waterways: Asian Indigenous Relations in Contemporary Art
4 – 4:30 – Coffee Break
4:30 p.m. – Professional Curatorial Panel: Eunice Belidor and Sandra Brewster on Forming Narratives in an Institutional Setting
5:30 p.m. – Puppet Making Workshop
6:30 p.m. – Finissage/ EAHR Publication Launch at 4TH SPACE