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Sep. 21 | Oral History As Engaged Community Listening, Ceremonial Practice and Performative Art

  • Knox Hall Room 509, Columbia University 606 West 122nd Street New York, NY, 10027 United States (map)
Playa de los Lances, Tarifa, Spain 2009, Photographer: Eva LeitolfA vessel with more than thirty people on board sank near Tarifa on 15 September 1997. Six passengers survived, fourteen corpses were found on the Playa de los Lances and an unknown nu…

Playa de los Lances, Tarifa, Spain 2009, Photographer: Eva Leitolf

A vessel with more than thirty people on board sank near Tarifa on 15 September 1997. Six passengers survived, fourteen corpses were found on the Playa de los Lances and an unknown number were lost at sea.

El País, 16 September 1997

WHEN: Thursday, September 21, 2017, 6:00 - 7:30 pm

WHERE: 606 W 122nd Street, Knox Hall 509, Columbia University

This talk will be based on a work in progress for the European Research Council research project “Bodies Across Borders: Oral and visual memory in Europe and beyond”, and more specifically on Luisa Passerini's interviews with various visual artists, including video-artist Ursula Biemann and photographer Eva Leitolf. Both artists have worked on migration, documenting the problems of external and internal borders of Europe (images of their work will be shown).

In interviewing the artists, Passerini was especially interested in the methodology they follow and the preliminary research they lead before creating their videos or photographs. Many similarities emerged between the research procedures they follow and those of the cultural and oral history of migration, particularly when these include visual memory. However, differences of great relevance also became evident, for instance on the attitude towards subjectivity and intersubjectivity, as well as for what concerns the relationship with the audience and the format of the results.

 


Luisa Passerini is Part-time Professor at the European University Institute, Florence, Italy; Former Professor of Cultural History at the University of Turin, Italy; and Principal Investigator of the European Research Council Project "Bodies Across Borders. Oral and Visual Memory in Europe and Beyond". Among her books: Women and Men in Love: European Identities in the Twentieth Century (2012); Sogno di Europa (2009); Memory and Utopia: The Primacy of Intersubjectivity (2007); Europe in Love, Love in Europe (1999); Autobiography of a Generation: Italy 1968, (1996); Fascism in Popular Memory (1987).


INFORMATION: For more information, please email Amy Starecheski at aas39@columbia.edu.

This event is FREE and open to the public. Refreshments will be served.

No registration is required, but RSVPs on the event Facebook page (to be posted) are appreciated to gauge attendance.