The symposium is supported and produced by Iaspis and Nifca. The project is also supported by Nordisk Kulturfond.
More information:
http://www.iaspis.com
http://www.nifca.org
The symposium Slowly learning to survive the desire to simplify: A symposium on critical documents addresses the media’s increasing monopoly on depictions of reality and weighs this against contemporary artists’ interest in the political. Participants from the fields of art, film, media criticism and political theory, among others, will discuss the writing of history and narrative structure. Which stories are awarded space and which are denied it in present-day society?
Stefan Jonsson (writer, researcher and senior literary critic at Dagens Nyheter, Sweden’s major newspaper) will suggest how the documentary tradition of the twentieth century may usefully be linked to certain theories of critical realism in literature, art, and photography. Such an approach helps us see the interconnections and similarities between the ways in which different media —image, narrative, film, written text— produce critical documents. Patrik Sjöberg (Ph.D, Assistant Professor of Film Studies) will discuss what are sometimes called “regimes of truth”, or institutions for producing truth. The legal system, on the one hand, and the documentary film tradition (and perhaps a wider understanding of the ability of films to “capture” something truthful), on the other, assess truthfulness in different ways. Monica Mazzitelli, from the writing/reading collective iQuindici, follows the trails of a very old story, Homer’s Iliad, and shows the importance of culture being shared by all. Ronny Ambjörnsson (writer and Professor Emeritus, History of Ideas at Umeå University) will discuss the broad treatment of the history of utopias, with the Bible as the foremost source of utopian ideas in the Western world. Rabih Mroué (performance artist, Beirut) will make an attempt to destroy a memory that doesn’t know how to erase itself and is hoping that —by making it public— he can get rid of its weight. Olivia Plender (artist, London) has created a studio-like installation in which the symposium will be held. She has used TV stage sets and TV produced documentaries in earlier work as well.
Before and during the symposium several films and the videos, The revolution will not be televised/Chavez: Inside the coup by Kim Bartley and Donnacha O’Brien, which deal with history’s most short-lived coup in Venezuela, and Peter Watkin’s futurist satire, The Gladiators, will be shown.
Invited participants include Ronny Ambjörnsson (writer and Professor Emeritus, Department of History of Ideas, Umeå University), Angelika Bartl (artist and art historian, Berlin), Matthew Buckingham (artist, New York/Berlin/Malmö), Carola Dertnig (artist, Vienna), Emma Hedditch (artist, London), Stefan Jonsson (writer, scholar and literary critic at Dagens Nyheter, Stockholm), Åsa Linderborg (writer, lecturer at Södertörns University College, Stockholm), Jee Eun Kim (artist, Seoul/Malmö), Monica Mazzitelli /iQuindici (writing/reading collective, Rome), Antonio Muntadas (artist, New York), Rabih Mroué (artist, Beirut), Patrik Sjöberg (Assistant Professor of Film Studies, Karlstad) and Hito Steyerl (artist, film-maker and writer, Vienna/Berlin).
The symposium is initiated and curated by Produktionsenheten (The Production Unit), which is a network for artists working with documentary storytelling, media critique and narrative experiments. The project focuses on a critical analysis of history writing and how narratives and investigative journalism are used for political ends. Produktionsenheten includes Petra Bauer, Nanna Debois Buhl, Kajsa Dahlberg, Johanna Gustafsson, Sara Jordenö, Conny Karlsson, Runo Lagomarsino, Ditte Lyngkaer Pedersen and Ylva Westerlund.
The symposium is supported and produced by Iaspis and Nifca. The project is also supported by Nordisk Kulturfond.
More information: http://www.iaspis.com or http://www.nifca.org
