Reviving the anti-colonial archives.
The 2018 edition of the School in Visual Sociology will be organized in Genoa by the Visual Sociology Lab, together with the Faculty of Film Studies and the Global Emergent Media Lab at Concordia University (Montreal).
The school will be held in English and will include, during five days (from June 11thto June 15th), alternating theoretical lectures, roundtables and speeches in the morning, and practical workshops in the afternoon. The current edition is specifically dedicated to visual archives, their use and possible re-interpretation. Particularly, it will address a peculiar kind of historical archive, one based on visual narratives and documents concerning anti-colonial struggles and movements.
The school will be held in English and will include, during five days (from June 11thto June 15th), alternating theoretical lectures, roundtables and speeches in the morning, and practical workshops in the afternoon. The current edition is specifically dedicated to visual archives, their use and possible re-interpretation. Particularly, it will address a peculiar kind of historical archive, one based on visual narratives and documents concerning anti-colonial struggles and movements.
A whole series of questions arise here: how can we manage and engage with this specific repertoire of images? How can we read and use them in a present where domination, oppression and violence are still at stake and— at the same time—seem to define their updated actuality and failure? The assumption is that, in giving account of a crucial point in XX century’s global history, these images relay back to us a message which is arguably betrayed and yet still alive.
The main aim of the school is to provide participants with a range of both theoretical and practical tools in order to work on those specific visual archives, by reading, materially deconstructing, re-editing and reviving them. In a multi or trans-disciplinary engagement, participants will be supported in such a collective attempt by sociologists, anthropologists, visual scholars, artists, filmmakers and visual researchers.
The main aim of the school is to provide participants with a range of both theoretical and practical tools in order to work on those specific visual archives, by reading, materially deconstructing, re-editing and reviving them. In a multi or trans-disciplinary engagement, participants will be supported in such a collective attempt by sociologists, anthropologists, visual scholars, artists, filmmakers and visual researchers.
In sociological documentaries and films, editing does not represent a mere technical function. Rather, even without a predetermined screenplay or plot, it corresponds to an act of writing, one that is based upon the specific archives (of images, notes, impressions) collected during ethnographic fieldwork and research. It is a crucial, creative and po(i)etic moment, frequently under-recognized in visual social sciences. What does it mean to edit or re-edit a sequence of historical images, assuming their weight and failures as well as the promises and hopes they still express? At stake—in the Benjaminian sense—is a kind of cross-fertilization: the possibility of a new and critical gaze which is focused on the past, by projecting it on and comparing with contemporary predicaments, as well as over the present, by re-telling and reopening hidden and betrayed histories and promises of different futures. Eventually, to address and (re)edit anti-colonial archives is a way of talking about, and dealing with, the postcolonial present—addressing postcolonial predicaments means to bear witness to (and take charge of) anti-colonial tensions and aspirations.
In Genoa, we will gather a group of scholars, artists, and students, who will have a chance to collaborate on a series of unsolved issues linked with the anticolonial heritage: neocolonialism, decolonization, dislocation, migration; more generally, problematics generated by the uneven geography of contemporary globalization, and their genealogies in the recent de-colonial past. The event will be structured around a permanent dialogue between theory and practice, between makers (artists, curators, filmmakers, etc.) and thinkers (scholars, researchers, students, etc), all involved in critical visual studies and practices.
Every day, participants will attend two different sets of activities. In the morning, lectures held by keynote speakers and roundtables will address theoretical issues related to the role of images and archives in anticolonial and postcolonial movements and struggles. In the afternoon sessions, a set of parallel workshops held by filmmakers and researchers will tackle—together with participants—the challenge of editing and reviving visual archives, by directly intervening on them.