[artinfo] Call for papers: "Life of Crops: Towards Investigative Memorialization" conference

[Art & Education]

Life of Crops: Towards Investigative Memorialization,

call for papers
Submission deadline: May 15

IZK Institute for Contemporary Art

November 8-9, 2019

Neue Galerie Graz - Universalmuseum Joanneum
Joanneumsviertel
8010 Graz
Austria

<https://interspire.e-flux.com/link.php?M=2690&N=25605&L=173168&F=H>www.memorialinbecoming.net

Seeing World War II and National Socialism as the 
moment in which colonial practices return to the 
European continent enables an understanding of 
how this moment continues to inform realities 
that define current everyday practices. Evolving 
from the vibrant and manifold agency of soil, the 
conference "Life of Crops" seeks to unfold the 
memory of war and labor within the earth, 
starting from the repressed history of the labor 
camp Aflenz in the south of Austria, established 
between 1944 and 1945. The cross-analysis of soil 
reveals its performative agency for building 
ideological hierarchies of class and race through 
the relations of labor and property ownership. 
The colonial condition of the soil turns it into 
a living archive, a landscape bearing all layers 
of ambivalence, shifting between life and 
genocide.

The conference 
<https://interspire.e-flux.com/link.php?M=2690&N=25605&L=173169&F=H>Life 
of Crops: Towards an Investigative 
Memorialization will take place at the 
Universalmuseum Joanneum in Graz, Austria on 
November 8 and 9, 2019. It is a foundational 
component of a collaborative, cross-disciplinary 
project established by artist Milica Tomiç that 
considers memorialization as a living 
investigative process of reassembling, 
actualizing, and activating knowledge in the 
present.

To create such a setting we would like to bring 
established thinkers and practitioners working on 
key topics of the conference together with an 
inspiring younger generation of researchers. 
Among the confirmed speakers are Éric Alliez 
(Kingston University), Ivana Bago (Duke 
University), Brenna Bhandar (SOAS, University of 
London), Filipa César (artist and filmmaker), Rui 
Gomes de Coelho (Rutgers University), Andrew 
Herscher (University of Michigan), Alfredo 
Gonzales Ruibal (SCIS, Spanish National Research 
Council), Tiago Saraiva (Drexel University), 
Shela Sheik (Goldsmiths, University of London) 
and Branimir Stojanoviç (Center for 
Psychoanalysis).

Aspiring to engender an environment of unexpected 
alliances, the main pillars of this conference 
will be Soil, Labor, Property, 
Science/Technology, and Archaeology. "Life of 
Crops" strives to provide a setting for this 
marginally considered constellation of research 
across time and geographical contexts while 
fostering theoretical, scientific, and artistic 
thought along analytical practices.

With this 
<https://interspire.e-flux.com/link.php?M=2690&N=25605&L=173167&F=H>call 
for papers we would like to invite researchers 
working in the fields of archeology, 
anthropology, history, art, science and 
technology, sociology, legal studies who are 
interested in discussing soil as an active agent 
in the establishment of ideological hierarchies, 
particularly in recognizing the ways in which 
class and race are constructed by the relations 
of labor and property ownership and inscribed 
into the different historical and geographical 
layers of soil.

Selected participants will present their work in 
the form of 20 minutes papers or artistic 
statements as part of the general discussion as 
well as contributing to the working groups formed 
around the main pillars (Soil, Labor, Property, 
Science/Technology, and Archaeology) of the 
conference. Participation in the two-day 
conference and working groups is free of charge.

Convened by Dubravka Sekuliç, Milica Tomiç, and 
Övu¨l O. Durmusoglu, with assistance of Philipp 
Sattler, this two-day conference will be 
developed in conjunction with Art in Public 
Space, Universalmuseum Joanneum; Municipality of 
Wagna, Austria; Future Fund of the Republic of 
Austria; and IZK Institute for Contemporary Art, 
Architecture Faculty, Graz University of 
Technology. Graphic design by Îiga Testen.

Please send your 300 word abstracts by May 15, 
2019, plus a short biography (150 words max) 
indicating which working group or groups you 
think your research falls into. The working 
language of the conference is English. Selected 
participants will be informed in early June 2019.

For submissions and general enquiries please 
email: 
<mailto:conference at memorialinbecoming.net>conference at memorialinbecoming.net