Art/Archaeology

Exhibitions / installations

The University of the Highlands and Islands in Scotland has launched an exciting new degree program that will be of interest to all art/archaeologists.

The new MA programme is unique in the UK in linking the fields of contemporary art and archaeology. It encourages students to take a collaborative and interdisciplinary approach to artmaking and research-led creative practice. Core modules will immerse students in an established, interdisciplinary community of practice operating not only n Orkney, but also in Shetland, the Western Isles, and the mainland of Scotland.

The MA embraces these settings by providing creative and interdisciplinary approaches to the scholarly study of material and visual culture, arts, and heritage. From crafting landscapes and ancient monuments to renewable energy and cutting-edge technology, the Highlands and Islands is where past, present, and future meet, at the interface of the global and local. Specialist optional modules in art or archaeology will allow students to build a bespoke MA which explores both the deep past of this fascinating region and plays a role in its sustainable, creative future.

This MA in Contemporary Art and Archaeology will allow students to explore, both independently and collaboratively, original and creative responses to current issues and develop individual student practice as a uniquely interdisciplinary art and archaeology practitioner.

Special features

• Developed and directed by a specialist team of academics and visual artists based in Orkney, allowing access to world-famous archaeology

• The only course of its kind to link contemporary art practice with archaeological study

• The course is delivered online and can, therefore, be studied from anywhere in the world

• Specialist optional modules in art and archaeology will allow you to tailor your course to your own interests

Full details of the degree will be found through this link:

https://www.uhi.ac.uk/en/courses/ma-contemporary-art-and-archaeology/

Art/Archaeology conference: Creative (un)makings: Disruptions in Art/Archaeology (International Museum of Contemporary Art, Santo Tirso, Portugal, Saturday March 7th, 2020 - 14.30-18.30)

How do we move beyond practicing an archaeology of art that normally sees artefacts as art objects for us to examine and interpret? Is there any fresh territory available for us to work in that exists beyond the well-worn paths taken either by contemporary artists (such as Mark Dion) who play with archaeological materials to make their museum and gallery installations or by archaeologists who look to modern artists (such as Anthony Gormley) for new ways to explain behavior and patterns in the past?

In this conference, we suggest that one way forward is to explore the potentials of an art/archaeology. Our proposal is that we should move beyond traditional efforts to explain or interpret the past, and that we do this in a creative way that has impact on contemporary societies. To make such a move is to break with long-standing traditions of archaeological practice and thinking. An art/archaeology follows three steps: disarticulation (i.e., to break an object from its historical context); repurposing (i.e., to use that object as a raw material to make new creative work); and disruption (i.e., to fashion that new creative work in such a way that it has impact in contemporary social and political debate).

PROGRAMA / PROGRAM

14:30 Art/Archaeology: Releasing the Archive and the Ineligible project
(Doug Bailey (Universidade de São Francisco, EUA State University of San Francisco, USA)
15:00 Finding a foothold: strategies for creating with found objects
(Dov Ganchrow (Academia de Artes e Design de Bezalel, Israel Bezalel Arts and Design Academy)
15:30 Contact paintings
(Simon Callery (Artista Independente, Reino Unido Indendent artist, UK)
16:00 We don’t break through the surface
(Patrik Elgström and Jenny Magnusson (Artistas Independentes, Suécia Independent artists, Sweden)
16:30 Collaborative bodies in the (un)making
(Suvi Tuominen (Universidade de Artes de Helsínquia, Finlândia University of the Arts Helsinki, Finland)
17:30 Homelessness in the Living Room
(Jana Sophia Nolle (Artista Independente, EUA/Alemanha Independent artist, USA/Germany)
18:00 On the aesthetic in art/archaeology
(Marko Marila (Universidade de Helsínquia, Finlândia University of Helsinki, Finland)

Creative (un)makings: Disruptions in Art/Archaeology (International Museum of Contemporary Art, Santo Tirso, Portugal, Friday March 6- Saturday June 14, 2020 - Opening: Friday March 6 at 19.30)

Seen from the standard perspective of traditional academic and cultural subjects, art and archaeology have comfortable relationships: collaboration, co-inspiration, shared aims to advance knowledge of human behavior and thought. Art/archaeology, a new transdisciplinary practice has fractured that perspective, and the exhibition Creative (un)making brings that disruption to the museum world for the first time. Creative (un)makings: Disruptions in Art/archaeology presents this new approach to the past in three provocative installations.

• The first (Releasing the Archive) presents photographs and videos in order to turn upside down the standard values that museums and institutional collections use to preserve historic objects and images.

• The second installation (Beyond Reconstruction) displays an array of ceramic fragments that resulted from the construction/deconstruction of a figure; in addition it includes documentary photographs of the works, highlights the limits of the archaeological reconstruction, and opens a new creative space beyond.

• The third installation (Ineligible) takes artifacts from an excavation in San Francisco and uses them as raw materials in order to make new artistic work that stimulates museum viewers’ thoughts about modern political and social issues, such as homelessness and income inequality.
  
  Curators: Doug Bailey, Sara Navarro
  
  Participants: Thomas Andersson, Doug Bailey, Jéssica Burrinha, Simon Callery, João Castro Silva, Shaun Caton, Rui Gomes Coelho, Jim Cogswell, Tiago Costa and Daniel Freire Santos, Ilana Crispi, Patrik Elgström and Jenny Magnusson, Dov Ganchrow, Stefan Gant, Cornelius Holtorf with Martin Kunze, Alfredo González-Ruibal and Álvaro Minguito Palomares, Cheryl E. Leonard, Nicola Lidstone, Marko Marila and Tony Sikström, Alison McNulty, Daniel V. Melim, Colleen Morgan, Sara Navarro, Jana Sophia Nolle, Laurent Olivier, Luisa da Rocha, Filomena Rodrigues, Suvi Tuominen, Ruth M. Van Dyke, Valter Ventura, Vanessa Woods.
  
  

  For more information, follow this link:
  http://miec.cm-stirso.pt/en/portfolio/creativeunmakings/

  
  For a quick look at the exhibition opening, here is a spot from the local television network:

  Creative (Un)makings: disruptions in art/archaeology: opening

Glitches, Disruptions, and Material Re-articulations: Introducing Art/Archaeological Methods lecture by Suvi Tuominen and Marko Marila (Helsinki Archaeology Seminar, University of Helsinki, Unionionkatu 38, Lecture Room F115, Helinki, Finland, Friday February 28th, 2020)

To see a video of this lecture follow this YouTube link:

Glitches, Disruptions, and Material Re-articulations

THIS MOMENT is the BEGINNING Performance, talk and exhibition (Thorvaldsens Museum, Copenhagen, Denmark Sunday Sept 1st, 2019, 11.00-12.00)

A short talk and performance from 11:00 - 12:00 Sunday September 1st. The event is part of CHART Art Fair's program. Museum Director Annette Johansen and Hesselholdt & Mejlvang will introduce the exhibition. Afterwards Hesselholdt & Mejlvang will show their performance This MOMENT is the BEGINNING' featuring actors Marie-Lydie Nokouda, Mireia Serra Voltas, Ernesto Piga Carbone, Hamun Maghsodlo, and trumpetist Anders Juhl Nielsen.

September 1st 2019 is also the final day of the exhibition THIS MOMENT is the BEGINNING, that takes over the famous Thorvaldsens Museum. Hesselholdt & Mejlvang go into dialogue with the works of Bertel Thorvaldsen pointing to contemporary issues. Freedom, equality and multiculturalism are among the themes in this total installation, which re-actualises Thorvaldsen and his contemporary political opinions. This was a time when revolutionary ideas flourished, and the social classes were shaken. Sculptor Bertel Thorvaldsen (1770-1844) grew up in Copenhagen in poor circumstances. He was admitted to the Royal Academy of Fine Arts at a young age and travelled to Rome, where he carved out a career for himself as an international artist. He returned to the city of his birth as a world-famous superstar who had created works of art for the Pope, Napo­leon and the royal families of Europe. Thorvaldsens Museum was built to house the works of Bertel Thorvaldsen and was the first museum building in Denmark. The artist didn't live to see the opening of the museum, but was buried in the building's central courtyard, where he remains today.

For details try this link: https://www.thorvaldsensmuseum.dk/en

Prehistory: A Modern Engima (Centre Pompidou, Paris – May 8 – September 16, 2019)

With this new exhibition the Centre Pompidou puts the spotlight on the link uniting prehistory to modern and contemporary art. In the course of a chronological tour, discover how artists and society have experienced the attraction of our origins during the modern period, yielding to a fantasy vision of what existed before history. A rich collection of more than three hundred works and documents, some specially created for the occasion, shows how prehistoric art established itself not only as an object of fascination but also as a concrete model for varying kinds of experiences. Discover, alongside iconic prehistoric works like the Venus of Lespugue and the Mammoth of the Madeleine, the works of essential modern artists such as Louise Bourgeois, Paul Cézanne and Marguerite Duras, and contemporary artists like Dove Allouche, Pierre Huyghe and Giuseppe Penone. This vast body of works is also complemented by films and books such as Jurassic Park and La Guerre du feu, evoking the dissemination of prehistory in popular culture.

For full details follow this link:

https://www.centrepompidou.fr/en

Exhibition is curated by Cécile Debray (Director of the Musée de l'Orangerie); Rémi Labrusse, (Professor of Art History, Université Paris Nanterre); and Maria Stavrinaki (Lecturer in Art History, Université Paris I Panthéon Sorbonne).

Abfutura: A Contemporary Art Exhibition on Near-Absence. (Archaeological Museum of Heraklion, Crete - July 11-28, 2019).

Abfutura is a Latin verb, conjugated in the plural neutral, which means “what is about to disappear”. Playing on the archaeological theme, this contemporary art exhibition addresses the notions of excavating, curating and conserving near-absence. The mixed-media installations, in which clay is the dominating material, consist of a collection of traces - traces of things (objects? constructions?) which are now conspicuous through their absence. Significant for their sheer quantity, the traces are expressive of the melancholy brought about by the slow decay of a past long gone, but are also suggestive of a future: there is space for creativity in disappearance. Abfutura is curated by Céline Murphy, who will be presenting on art and archaeology at the exhibition on July 11th and 18th. If you want to contact Céline then here is her email: celine.s.murphy@gmail.com.

Soundmarks: Exhibition and Sound Installation (The Shed, Aldborough Manor, Aldborough, York, YO51 9EP - 24th-31st August, 2019; Private view - Friday 23rd August)

Soundmarks is an art/archaeology collaboration between Rose Ferraby and Rob St. John at Roman Town in North Yorkshire. Beneath the quiet streets and farmland of the North Yorkshire village of Aldborough lies the Roman town of Isurium Brigantum. Recent work by the Aldborough Roman Town Project has revealed that it was a town of great importance in the Roman north; a key trading point and busy hub. It was a busy town with a central forum and basilica, large town houses, warehouses and workshops, an amphitheatre and large suburbs. This year, a collaboration spanning art, sound, and archaeology has explored and documented Aldborough’s hidden sub-surface landscape, leading to an art exhibition and sound installation and a series of public events. A free “art trail” will be launched alongside the exhibition, allowing the public to navigate eight “soundmark” sites through the village. Each soundmark is located on an important Roman site – such as the Forum, amphitheatre and river – and will be accessed either using a free interactive mobile app, or using a paper map distributed through the village. At each soundmark, visitors can view Rose’s visual work and listen to Rob’s sound work, each interpreting the character and history of the site. The soundmark trail (which takes around an hour to walk in full) is designed to encourage people to explore Aldborough’s unique landscape, and to gain new perspectives on its rich Roman history. At The Shed, visitors can view Rose’s original visual works and listen to an immersive ambient sound piece created by Rob using the sounds of Aldborough, and produced using compositional cues from archaeological techniques, datasets and maps.

Rose and Rob will run a series of free workshops on the 17th and 18th August, where the public can learn drawing and sound recording techniques to create their own ‘creative place portraits’ of Aldborough. Two invited guest speakers – Dr. Lesley McFadyen, an archaeologist from Birkbeck, University of London, and Dr. Jos Smith, an environmental landscape writer from the University of East Anglia – will give talks on Saturday 31st August, alongside an artist Q+A. An artist book documenting the Soundmarks collaboration – containing a download of Rob’s sound installation piece – will be available to purchase. For more details:

• www.soundmarks.co.uk/press-resources

• www.eventbrite.com/o/soundmarks-24785936487

• www.aldboroughromantown.wordpress.com

TAG #39: Archaeology and the camera truelle - Theorising Archaeology through the Moving Image (Theoretical Archaeology Group - Stanford University - May 1-3, 2020)

This session invites archaeologists and aligned heritage and media practitioners to discuss, screen, and share film, video, or animation works (completed or in-production) that actively use the medium of the moving image to generate and construct archaeological knowledge and theories. Speakers are also invited to develop their presentations into articles as part of a planned edited volume on the subject.

KEYWORDS: Film, video, animation, recording, drones, underwater filming, ethnographic film, CGI, 3D modelling, film archives, online platforms, databases, social media, live streaming, research design, film theory, media theory, archaeology theory.

FORMAT: Standard paper session: 20-minute papers, plus 5 minutes screening time, and 5 minutes discussion time per speaker.

SUBMIT: Email your title, 250 words abstract, name & affiliation, to Angela, Kate or Tanya by 02.09.2019.

ORGANISERS: Dr Angela Piccini, University of Bristol (a.a.piccini@bristol.ac.uk); Kate Rogers, University of Southampton (kate.rogers@soton.ac.uk); Tanya Freke, University of Exeter, Historic England (ttv252@exeter.ac.uk).

Find out more: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/archaeology/newsevents/conferences/tag-2019/conferencesessions-31-55