W/ apologies for cross postings.

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The conference 'Technologies of Memory in the Arts' focuses on art as a
cultural and technological practice to process and construct the past in
the present. Central questions to this conference are: How do art and
artistic practices function as technologies of memory? How are cultural
artefacts implicated in complex processes of remembering and forgetting, of
recollecting and disremembering, of amnesia and anamnesia?

As a shared artistic and social practice, cultural memory links the present
to the past. In doing so, cultural memory has strong ethical and political
aspects. The arts are continuously engaged in non-linear processes of
remembering and forgetting, characterised by repetition, rearrangement,
revision, and rejection. In artistic representations new memories are thus
constantly constructed, deconstructed and reconstructed by narrative
strategies, visual and aural styles, intertextuality and intermediality,
representations of time and space, and rituals of remembrance. These
complex processes of representation are what we understand by the term
'technologies of memory'.
The contemporary fascination with history and memory is accompanied by
developments in media technology that have simultaneously a petrifying and
a virtualising effect. Both individual and cultural memory are increasingly
mediated by modern technologies, which means that memories are not only
recorded and recollected by media, but are also shaped and produced by
them. The digital media, in particular, allow for new ways of storing,
retrieving and archiving personal and collective memories, as well as
cultural artefacts.
The conference theme Technologies of memory in the arts specifically
addresses the material construction of cultural memory. Some panels will
explore procedures of memory in both traditional and new media. Other
panels will investigate the role of digitalisation of art and culture in
relation to memory. Generally, the focus of this conference will be on the
materiality of representation and on the relation between the medium and
the construction of cultural memory.

Key note speakers:
- Marita Sturken (University of Southern California)
- Ann Rigney (Utrecht University)

Panels and papers on the conference theme are invited before 1 November 2005.
Suggested topics:
- Mediated memories
- Narrative strategies
- Intertextuality / intermediality
- Music as memory work
- Urban space and spatial dimensions
- Tourism and heritage
- Musical subcultures as memory space
- Representations of memory in the arts
- Amnesia and anamnesia
- Icons of the recent past
- Rituals of remembrance
- Rituals, music and the shape of memory
- Nostalgia and pastiche
- Retro styles as forms of cultural memory
- Rewritings of the classics
- Digitalisation of archives
- Music/sound recordings and the technology of memory

The department of Comparative Arts and Cultural Studies of the Radboud
University Nijmegen participates in the EU-sponsored research network
ACUME, a network of over thirty European countries researching cultural
memory from an interdisciplinary perspective.
Conference committee: Sophie Levie, Edwin van Meerkerk, Liedeke Plate,
Mathijs Sanders and Anneke Smelik

More information and submission:
http://www.ru.nl/comparativearts/research/technologies_of
Contact information: Edwin van Meerkerk,
<mailto:e.v.meerkerk_at_let.ru.nl>e.v.meerkerk_at_let.ru.nl, tel. +3124 3615543

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Received on Sat Sep 10 2005 - 12:38:49 EDT