Conference on “Archival addresses: photographies, practices, positionalities”

At the March 2015 conference  "Archival addresses: photographies, practices, positionalities" convened by Leora Farber of the Visual identities in Art and Design (VIAD) Research Centre,  University of Johannesburg, APC Research Chair Carolyn Hamilton gave the opening address ("Lines of sight: archives, counter archives and the revisioning work of cross-medium archival engagements") as well as one of two conference summations.  Her opening address was followed by a second opening presentation on "Archivy, hauntology and banditry" by APC research associate Verne Harris. 

APC doctoral fellow George Mahashe presented "Stuck in the middle/side and going nowhere" in a panel on "Photographies, Complicities and Possibilities"; and new APC research associate Rael Salley (Michaelis, UCT) presented on "Zanele Muholi: on picturing the invisible" in a panel on "The archive in practice". Two other papers were delivered by UCT colleagues, viz. "Snapshots of Freedom" by Siona O’Connell and "In search of South African photographic archives" by Paul Weinberg.

The three-day programme of invited papers was eclectic and wide-ranging, involving addresses, panels, film showings, and visual presentations, held against a backdrop exhibition,  “Past Imperfect//Future Present”. (See www.uj.ac.za/EN/Faculties/fada/).  

Contributions that APC associates are likely to want to follow up on included: Sipho Mdanda’s critique of the filmic recreations of the pre-colonial past delivered in relation to Freedom Park’s commissioned film "Coloniser/Colonised"; Mary Corrigall’s  "Wearing the Archive: Immersion via dress", an examination of how performance and visual artists immerse themselves in archive via dress, a presentation that drew attention to the multiple temporal strands involved in the performance of a contemporary artist like Neliswa Xaba reaching for "syncopated time"; Raimi Gbadamosi’s "Time in the Cemetery"  a reflection on the making of canons and archives as graves with life: and Jennifer Bajorek’s work on locative media and tagging "in/as archival practice."  A selection of conference papers will be published in Critical Arts.