REACTIVATING ARCHIVES IN CONTEMPORARY ART.

supported by the Leverhulme Trust and IHA - NOVA FCSH /IN2PAST

Keynote speakers:
Sara Callahan (Malmö University)
Graciela Carnevale (Argentinian artist, archivist and educator)

This international conference brings together researchers from diverse geographies and disciplines to discuss the production, use, articulation, and reinvention of archival materials in contemporary art. The event's main objective is to problematize and reframe notions such as presence, visibility, access, neutrality, (re)appropriation, and transmission through critical and creative perspectives.

Exploring processes of montage, deconstruction, and reassemblage in contemporary art, and celebrating artistic projects based on archival research, the selected papers address topics such as the institutionalization of archives and the imposition of "official" histories; the role of affective memories and imagination in cultural production; activism against the erasure of identities and memories; and the challenges and strategies for managing artistic archives.

Registration is free via the website, for either in-person or online attendance.
Registration link: https://forms.gle/njvemJRUKSC5pbF29
The form is also available in the conference website: https://reactivatingarchives.wixsite.com/conference

PROGRAMME

DAY 1: THURSDAY, 2 OCTOBER 2025

10am-10.15am: Welcome & Opening Remarks

10.15am - 11.15am: Keynote Speaker
Sara Callahan (Malmö University)
Metaphors we live by? The archive and the cloud in contemporary cultural discourse

11.15am - 11.45am: Coffee break

1.45am - 1.15pm: Parallel Panels 1

Panel 1a. Classification systems and knowledge institutions
- Uncovering the Unseen: Archival Structures and Social Narratives in Taryn Simon’s Reimagining of the Picture Collection (Yonit Aronowicz — Université Paris Cité)
- Susan Dobson: Slide⏐Lecture. Reactivating slides libraries as art history archives (Audrey Leblanc — EHESS – École des hautes études en sciences sociales)
- Becoming matters. A new materialist approach to art-education archives and its challenges (Renata Cervetto — Universitat Oberta de Catalunya)

Panel 1b. Rethinking places and bodies with the archive
- Walking Through the Living Image of Dead Things: ‘Unearthing’ archived bodies in Juha Suonpää’s Isoisä (2018) (online) (Carlos Idrobo — University of Turku)
- The body as living archive: feminist performance and archival reappropriation in post-dictatorship Argentina and Chile (Nayeli Moctezuma — University Paris Nanterre / University of Cádiz)
- Confronting Racism in Álbum de Desesquecimentos, by Mayara Ferrão, in the Public Domain Archives of the Colonial Era in Brazil (Ana Catarina Maia — Universidade Nova de Lisboa)

1.15pm - 2.15pm: Lunch

2.15pm - 4.15pm: Parallel Panels 2

Panel 2a. Queering the archive to imagine otherwise
- Archivo de la Memoria Trans: the vital archive of trans activism in Argentina (online) (Luise Malmaceda — Columbia University)
- Archival ellipses: Dreaming in the gaps of evidence (Sophie Mak-Schram — University of Leeds)
- Traces and Overflows: Rethinking Archival Presence (Sandro Weilenmann — Maastricht University)

Panel 2b. Archival (dis)continuities and resistances
- Reappearing: The Sensitive Archive between Erasure and Resistance in Chilean Art (1973–1990) (Roberta Garieri — Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne)
- The Immersive Archive: Iranian Photo-based Artists and the Visual Legacy of the Iran-Iraq War (Hoda Nedaeifar — University of Toronto)
- The Specter of modernism haunts the "Lost Territories”: The photographic archive of Sputnik Photos (Dorota Łuczak — Adam Mickiewicz University)
- Thinking Visually: Representation, Gesture, and Reparation (Ines da Silva Beleza Barreiros — Universidade Nova de Lisboa)

4.15pm-4.45pm: Coffee break & wrap up

DAY 2: FRIDAY, 3 OCTOBER 2025

10am - 11am: Keynote Speaker
Graciela Carnevale (Artist, Archivist and Educator — Rosário, Argentina)
In Conversation with Graciela Carnevale: Archive, Art and Politics

11am - 11.30am: Coffee break

11.30am - 1pm: Parallel Panels 3

Panel 3a - Affective heritages and family archives
- Performing family archives: dictatorships through women’s gaze (Ana Janeiro, Ana Pérez-Quiroga e Bruno Marques — Universidade Nova de Lisboa/Universidade de Évora/Universidade Nova de Lisboa)
- An Immigrants Biscuit Tins: Reframing a Family Archive (Susan Ribeiro — University of Westminster)
- Family archives, photographic artefacts and paintings in the work of Gabriela Bettini (online) (Natalia Fortuny — Universidad de Buenos Aires)

Panel 3b. Ethnographic methods and immaterial heritages
- The curator-as-ethnographer (Rita Cêpa — Universidade Nova de Lisboa)
- The Artist as Ethnographer: Archiving Vernacular Heritages (Maria Manuela Restivo — Centro em Rede de Investigação em Antropologia (CRIA))
- Nomadic Memories as Artistic Archives: Central Asian Counter Narratives in Gulzat Egemberdieva’s Films (Birgit Eusterschulte — Freie Universität Berlin)

1pm-2pm: Lunch

2pm - 4pm: Parallel Panels 4

Panel 4a. Archives of conflict and the fight against memory loss
- “The need to assert one’s presence is not an uncommon one": Archiving and Critique in the Practices of Akram Zaatari, Jumana Manna, and Farah Saleh (online) (Rebecca Hanna John — Leuphana University Luneburg)
- Archives and Traces of Lost Worlds in the Theories of Georges Didi-Huberman and Ariella Aïsha Azoulay (Stijn de Cauwer — Leiden University)
- “Doing Representation Otherwise”. Art, Archives and Violence (Julia Rensing — University of Basel)
- The Subversive Stitch: Gender, Archive, and Memory in the Work of Silvina der Meguerditchian (Elif Karakaya — University of Rochester / EHESS Paris)

Panel 4b. Creating community with(in) archives
- Broadcasting the Archive: Radio Art as Epistemic Disobedience (Giulia Crisci — IAUV University of Venice)
- Nature, Archive and Community: Exploring the spiralling kinships of Luta Ca Caba and Mediateca Onshore (Tom Vickery — University of Leeds)
- Remembering Panaf 1969: The archival impulse of Zineb Sedira (Youri Hammache-Sigour — Université Paris Nanterre / Università di Roma La Sapienza)
- Carrie Mae Weems’ Family Pictures and Stories and the archive of Black photography (Ariel Evans — University of Texas at Austin)

4pm - 4.30pm: Coffee break

4.30pm - 6pm: Parallel Panels 5

Panel 5a. Managing, researching and sharing artist’s archives
- Tunga’s Catalogue Raisonné: Research and Archival Reactivation in the Artist’s Personal Archive (online) (Julia Cavalcante de Andrade and Martina Benassi — Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro and Instituto Tunga)
- Archiving Roberto Chabet (online) (Ringo Bunoan — University College London)
- From the Studio to the Archive: Managing Artistic Legacies in a Historical Context (Sara Quintero Pomares, Diana Angoso de Guzmán — Universidad Complutense de Madrid/Universidad de Salamanca)

Panel 5b. Archival gaps and the power of fictionalisation
- Making Space and Filling the Gaps: Constructing a Fictional Archive to Retell the Stories of the Exiled Citizens of the Aegean Sea (Vasiliki Stasinaki — Belfast School of Art, Ulster University)
- Archival Absences: Parafiction and Performance in The Natalie Brettschneider Archive (Clare Sully-Stendahl — University of King’s College)
- Lost voices?: artists responding to missing archives (Thomas Laval — Université de Lille)

6pm - 6.15pm: Closing remarks