The Archive of Exile (9/July)

Call for participation   Symposium – The Archive of Exile   Saturday 9^th July 2011, 11.30-4.30pm, Domino Hall, Sheffield Cathedral, Sheffield   In association with the AHRC-funded Archive of Exile project, University of Sheffield, www.archiveofexile.org   We are seeking participants from across academic, artistic, curatorial, and archivist and other related communities for a one-day symposium centred on the radical possibilities of the archive and the creative act in exile.
  Themes of the symposium will include:

• place, the creative act, and placelessness
• archives and place
• creative approaches to ‘documenting’ and ‘recording’ acts, lives, spaces, and voices
• radical possibilities of archives
• the archive as sedentary, inactive, homely; the archive as lively, energetic, exilic
• the voice and exile; voices of exile; voices in exile
• the artistic act and the archive; archives of the ephemeral 

  The displaced, the placeless, the wanderer; the exile has been a key figure throughout history, right up to the present day, but the peculiar creativity of the exile is rarely considered. The exile is one who leaves their home with no expectation of return, but more widely, the exile is anyone who loses the traditional frame by which they make sense of their world, who is left out-of-place or out-of-time, who must make a life in absence of the co-ordinates with which they were born. The Archive of Exile project has sought to apply the radical mobility of exile to the more typically sedentary figure of the archive, opening up new possibilities for the lively and evocative archiving of the world, its acts and its voices. We seek to bring together a diverse range of participants to explore the themes listed above from artistic, academic, curatorial and archival points of view.   The event will consist of an opportunity to:

• view the Archive of Exile exhibition at Bank Street Arts, Sheffield
• discuss the work and its themes with participating artists and their academic collaborators
• network and engage in formal and informal discussion with other professionals involved in curatorship, archiving, art in various media, and collaborative research.

  The one-day symposium will be structured around brief talks by academics and artists, followed by open discussions between all participants. The event will start at 11.30pm with an introduction to the Archive of Exile exhibition and project followed by a buffet lunch and a chance to view the work at the nearby Bank Street Arts centre. It will then move on to an extended discussion, with an opportunity to network and engage with other participants. The symposium will take place at Sheffield Cathedral, in Sheffield’s city centre.
  To express an interest in attending:   Attendance is free; there is no charge to attend this event and lunch will be provided. Numbers are limited and we are keen to achieve a broad range of participants. If interested, please send your name, email address, any affiliation, and your background (eg artist, academic, curator, archivist, etc) to Matt Collins, at m.t.collins@shef.ac.uk by 30^th June 2011 at the latest.