Fifth (and final) seminar of the Associated Laboratory IN2PAST, dedicated to the Exploratory Projects ongoing in 2023. PI: Hélia Marçal.

MATERIA: Towards a critical lexicon of materiality in the arts and heritage

Apresentação de Hélia Marçal (IR; IHC — NOVA FCSH / UCL) e demais equipa do projecto: Daniela Salazar (IHA — NOVA FCSH), Rui Lopes (IHC — NOVA FCSH) e Leonel Alegre (HERCULES — Universidade de Évora).

Comentários de Sónia Vespeira de Almeida (CRIA — NOVA FCSH)

Although matter and materiality are intrinsic to the arts and heritage fields, the terms underpinning discourse and practice around its manifestations are arguably more contested than ever. Negotiating terms and their boundaries becomes an essential task when redefining materialities and their past, present, and future. Understanding what matters in material culture and the various disciplines underpinning its study will help us understand decision-making processes regarding the conservation, historicisation, and overall transmission of art and heritage practices.
This seed project aims to set the basis for creating a critical lexicon addressing the diverse ways in which materiality is performed within the arts and heritage fields, and, specifically, in museum practice. It draws on existing efforts to interrogate how we understand matter and knowledge (specifically through posthumanism) to expand the idea of materiality in itself by creating a lexicon. Due to their intrinsic relationship with language (and, therefore, culture and practice), lexicons have particular potential to emerge as critical tools to rehearse forms of situated practice.
The project will be developed in three stages: (1) identification of challenges current terms pose to a posthuman ideal of arts and heritage, (2) identification of critical terms, (3) writing up of entries for 12 terms. Relevant challenges will include the current climate emergency, social erasures of racialised groups, and forms of capitalist extractivism. Applicable terms will be identified through three collaborative laboratories that will bring together team members and invited contributors. In these Collaborative Laboratories (CL) context, the project will reach out to scholars and practitioners from critical race and decolonial theory, philosophy of science, and ecofeminism to address issues of misrecognition and extractivism, alternative epistemologies, and climate emergency, respectively. Specifically, we will invite participants from the areas of (CL1) performing arts and critical race and decolonial theory, (CL2) the visual arts and philosophy of science, and (CL3) historiographical practices and ecofeminism.

SESSÃO ONLINE

🔗 Link para a sessão via Zoom