Maya Schweizer, Which Story Would You Prefer Not to Recall?, (detail), 2009 – 13

This event included a range of presentations by postgraduate researchers responding to the themes of art, memory and place. The purpose of this seminar was to provide a forum for researchers exploring these themes within academic settings so that they might have a broader reach and wider application. For example, Dr. Lisa Foran considered memorialisation in terms of the ‘Politics of the Future’ and what we decide to forget. Some researchers focused on particular sites of memory such as Steven Nestor who talks about the city of Cassino in Italy, destroyed during World War II, in terms of a ‘martyred’ city; while Martina Clearyconsidered the photograph as a site of mnemonic return. Several presentations focused on the work of particular artists whose work is concerned with memory such as Sue Rainsford’s study of the work of Scottish artist Susan Philipsz in terms of ‘Fragmentation and Embodiment;’ Joseph Murphy’s exploration of the work of Irish artist Willie Doherty and Kerry Guinan’s focus on the work of Polish artist Artur Zmijewski.

PANEL 1 |Theory
Chair: Dr. Sinéad Hogan, IADT
Dave Loder (University Ulster): Echoing the Past: A Proposal for a Counter-Monument.
Martin Grünfeld (UCD school of Philosophy): Ranciere and the Poetics of Remembrance.
Rónán MacDubhghaill (Sorbonne, Paris): Photography as traces of lieux de memoire.
Cécile Chevalier (University of Sussex): Memory, Relational Materialities and the Web place.

PANEL 2: Remembrance and Forgetting
Chair: Dr. Karen Till, Maynooth University
Dr Kieran Cashell (LIT): Haunted by the Past: Passages:Dani Karavan’s Memorial to Walter Benjamin at Portbou.
Dr Lisa Foran (Newcastle University): Deciding What to Forget: Memorialisation and The Politics of the Future.
Sue Rainsford (TCD/IADT):Fragmentation & Embodiment in the work of Susan Philipsz.
Kerry Guinan (NCAD): ‘What for..?’ Trauma and the Political in Artur Zmijewski’s 80064.

PANEL 3: Place
Chair: Dr. Gerry Kearns, Maynooth University
Steven  Nestor (IADT ARC): City, Martyred
Dr Penny Grennan (Northumbria University): Making the Eiffel Tower Mine – Materialising Memory.Kirstie North (UCC): Art Historical Memory in Contemporary British Art.
Dr Silvia Loeffler: Glás, Deep Mappings of Dun Laoghaire Harbour.
Joseph Murphy, (NCAD): Willie Doherty, Duncan Campbell: A generational study of contemporary Northern Irish Art.

PANEL 4: Archive/Media
Chair: Dr. Brian Fay, DIT
Mirjami Schuppert (Ulster University); Memory Play: The role of the curator in mediating artistic interventions into photographic archives.
Martina Cleary (EU Centre for Photographic Research, Newport): The photograph as a site of Mnemonic return, using the photograph to preserve, construct and trigger memory.
Kirstie North (UCC): Art Historical Memory in Contemporary British Art.

A full programme including abstracts of the research presented is available to download here (Adobe.pdf file).

To listen back to the research seminar click on the following links to each panel:
Panel 1: Theory
Panel 2: Remembrance and Forgetting
Panel 3: Place
Panel 4: Archive