Seminar 42 // 28, 29, 30 November 2013 // London
Programme Curatorial/Knowledge Seminar, Goldsmiths
28–30 November 2013
Thursday, 28 November 2013, 11 a.m. – 5 p.m.
Location: Prokofiev Room, Library (Rutherford Building)
11 a.m. – 2 p.m.:
Seminar on ‘Colonial Archives’, by Stefan Nowotny
Following up on last month’s discussions about archives and witnessing and also on our broader context of discussions about justice, this seminar day will focus on the question of colonial archives: If one aspect of the archive is that it “separates us from what we can no longer say” (Foucault), then what could it possibly mean to not only analyse and deconstruct colonial archives, but also ‘do justice’ to what they have silenced? We will look at three different approaches to this question (V.Y. Mudimbe, Ann Laura Stoler, and a video project by Brigitta Kuster and Moise Merlin Mabouna), but also have a closer look at Foucault’s conceptualization of the archive.
Readings:
– Michel Foucault, The Historical a priori and the Archive
– V.Y. Mudimbe, Horizons of Knowledge
– Ann Laura Stoler, Colonial Archives and the Arts of Governance
2 p.m. – 3 p.m.:
Lunch break
3 p.m. – 5 p.m.:
Continuation of the seminar on ‘Colonial Archives’
Thursday, 28 November 2013, 5–7 p.m.
Location: Ian Gulland, Whitehead Building
Visual Cultures Public Programme: Lecture by Jean-Paul Martinon on ‘Jean-Luc Nancy and Globalization’
(The lecture by Sylvestre Nzahabwanayo from the Kigali Institute of Education in Rwanda, as announced in the Calendar, had to be cancelled.)
Friday, 29 November 2013, 11 a.m. – 6 p.m.
Location: Prokofiev Room, Library (Rutherford Building)
11 a.m. – 2 p.m.:
Seminar with Connal Parsley (Kent Law School, University of Kent)
In the first 3-hour session, I was thinking of presenting a pretty detailed account of the critique of representation I have reconstructed from Agamben's work, taking in its motivations, antecedents and consequences as well as structural and conceptual features. Not forgetting the interest in justice I'll be sure to address that within this format. In the second three-hour session, I was actually hoping to do something rather more loose and speculative. I am going to raise a range of questions that come out of the work in the morning session that are guiding my current thinking. The questions would be directed at rediscovering bridges between art and law/politics that Modernity has destroyed but were present in medieval thought: for example, ideas about the authority of the artist and the humanity of representation.
Readings:
– Giorgio Agamben, Art, Inactivity, Politics
– Giorgio Agamben, Difference and Repetition: On Guy Debord’s Films
– Connal Parsley, Image (from Agamben Dictionary)
– Connal Parsley, The Mask and Agamben: the Transitional Juridical Technics of Legal Relation
2 p.m. – 3 p.m.:
Lunch break
3 p.m. – 6 p.m.:
Continuation of the seminar with Connal Parsley
Saturday, 30 November 2013, 12 a.m. – 5 p.m.
Location: Raven Row (56 Artillery Lane, London E1 7LS; closest tube: Liverpool Street Station)
Reading group: A close reading of Giorgio Agamben’s essay ‘What Is the Contemporary?’
Readings:
– Giorgio Agamben, What Is the Contemporary?