Symposium 6 - 8 May 2024
at the University of Arts Linz

The symposium takes place in presence, and online live-stream with the possibility to raise questions via chat will be provided. To take part online please register here.

PASS(ED) ON - Narrativization of vernacular archives within intergenerational and transnational memory transfer

This three-day symposium at the University of Arts Linz, Austria, deals with vernacular and family archives from the 20th century. Throughout three panels and a round table, we present different academic and artistic research projects that investigate distinct modes of intergenerational and transnational memory transfer. The archives they deal with are addressed as places of storage, of consignment and visibility, but also of concealment of power over history, histories and discourse. The different research projects and positions assembled in PASS(ED) ON represent a broad spectrum of theoretical and practice-based methodologies of examining archives, stemming from cultural sciences, artistic research and memory studies.

The vernacular and family archives under investigation exist as organic bodies of collected documents, oral histories and different kinds of memorabilia. These media objects are generally assembled and stored according to autobiographical and idiosyncratic criteria. The focus of PASS(ED) ON lays upon how to reflect, relate to and reproduce the collective social processes in which they exist and, at the same time, to see in which ways they transcend them. By focusing on these archives’ specific operational mechanisms, and by acknowledging them as places for the articulation of lived and transmitted experience with macro-political and historical dimensions, the interest of this symposium is to inquire about the way they entangle with institutionalized and cultural memory.

Each panel of PASS(ED) ON – 1. The mute archive: Post generational work on violence and perpetration within concealed archives; 2. Migrating memories: Intergenerational transfer of material narratives in the contexts of migration and 3. Inherited Revolution: Privatization and intergenerational transfer of narratives of collective upheaval – addresses vernacular archives through different historical and contextual focal points which bring together diverse methodologies to critically inform us on the different collective processes at stake and on the routes of their transfers of memory. With the round table From the attic to the museum: inscribing vernacular archives into collective history, we venture into a presentation and discussion of different projects in which vernacular archives undergo a process of institutionalization and of inscription into historiography and collective history.

PASS(ED) ON is conceived by Ana de Almeida, Lena Ditte Nissen and Elif Süsler-Rohringer as part of their DOC-Team project “Stay and tell: memory objects and narratives of appropriation. Tracing social change in text, photographs and patterns within personal archives” which is funded by the ÖAW – Austrian Academy of the Sciences. The symposium is generously supported by the University of Arts Linz, by the Zentrum Fokus Forschung - University of Applied Arts Vienna and the Academy of Fine Arts of Vienna.

Speakers: Andrea Ancira, Vida Bakondy, Ana de Almeida, Georgia Holz, Berthold Molden, Lena Ditte Nissen, Monika Palmberger, Edward Serotta, Elif Süsler-Rohringer, Huda Takriti, Marcela Torres Heredia, Markus Wurzer, Mai Ling.

Moderation: Alison J. Clarke, Karin Harrasser, Gudrun Rath, Mariel Rodríguez Rodríguez

Venue: University of Arts Linz, Hauptplatz 6, 5. OG, Hörsaal C, 4020 Linz / Austria  

Photo & Video Disclaimer: We will take photos during the event and publish them via our communication channels. The symposium will be live streamed on DORF TV. By participating in this event, you acknowledge this. Of course, you can ask the photographer and camera not to include you in their frame.

Contact: lena.nissen@kunstuni-linz.at

You can find more on the symposium here.