Registration open for Photomemory: commemoration, memory, archive symposium at the University of Sussex, 4th and 5th September 2018.

Registration is now open for the COMMEMORATION, MEMORY, ARCHIVE Symposium at the Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts, University of Sussex on 4^th and 5^th September 2018. The symposium investigates commemorative and memorial uses of personal, non-professional images in the digital age in the Global South. More information is available here:

http://www.warandmedia.org/photomemory/

The commemorative and memorial use of personal, private images in the context of large-scale violence and death has a long history. Private images have been continually employed to access worlds that no longer exist, to de-anonymize, individualize or humanize victims, to identify murderers and the murdered, to evidence contested events and to prove the existence of life before death. They populate archives, memorials and museums, places of public protest and, increasingly, myriad regions of the internet. This two-day symposium at the University of Sussex aims to explore real and perceived changes in the relationship(s) between private still images and the memorialization and commemoration of mass violence – including trauma – with a particular focus on practices in Asia, Africa, the Middle East and South and Central America in the digital age. 

Keynote speakers:

• Professor Elizabeth Edwards, FBA (De Montfort University)
• Professor Ludmila da Silva Catela(Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, Córdoba Museum of Anthropology, Archivo Provincial de la Memoria) 
• Claver Irakoze(Rwanda Genocide Archive/Aegis Trust Rwanda)
• Dr Gil Pasternak(De Montfort University)

The symposium will also feature a free screening of The Faces We Lost (2017) – a documentary film about the memorial and commemorative uses of private photographs in Rwanda – followed by a Q&A with the director.

The symposium is free to attend but you will need to register here:

http://www.warandmedia.org/photomemory/registration/

Registration closes on 27^th August.

Here you will find a provisional programme. Please disseminate this to anyone who might be interested. I hope to see to see some of you there!

Best wishes,

Piotr