The workshop “Remains, Ruins, Landscapes” is the first workshop of the autumn cycle that the SNF-project “Contested Amnesia and Dissonant Narratives in the Global South: Post-conflict in Literature, Art, and Emergent Archives” at the University of Zurich initiates with the Latin American Center Zurich on Latin American Studies in a global perspective.
The workshop will focus on the role of artifacts and objects in cultural critical and aesthetic research, in its forms of academic, artistic and activist approaches, to re-evaluate the diverse processes of remembrance and historical memory, reconciliation and reparation, both symbolic and material, in post-conflict situations. A special emphasis is given to the arts and architectures that define, in a particular way, the material relationship with the violent pasts and the cultural heritage of the different regions of the Global South. Examining the material manifestations and remnants, in their forms of remains, ruins or landscapes, the workshop will discuss the recent artistic, curatorial and archivist engagement with the often invisible or invisibilized material testimonies, traces, and leftovers. It aims to consider the work of contemporary interventions by artists, architects, academics, museologists and curators who work at the intersections of aesthetics, cultural criticism, and forensic studies.