PrintTHE POLITICS OF MEMORY A ONE DAY CONFERENCE
The Conference Room - 9.30 - 17.00
Imperial War Museum London
Lambeth Road
London SE1 6HZ
Free entry but prior registration required on:
politicsofmemory(at)polishculture.org.uk
Last year, the fiftieth anniversary of the International Competition for a ‘Memorial to the Victims of Fascism’ at the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau passed unnoticed. Were it not for a small display in Room 18 at Tate Britain (closes 12 June), it would have been forgotten entirely. And yet the competition tells us much about divergent attitudes to commemorative sculpture, as well as the distortion of memory for political ends. Questions about how to memorialise an event of such enormity as the Holocaust remain as relevant today as they were in Cold-War Europe.
On Wednesday 9 June, 9.30am-5pm, a conference organised by the Imperial War Museum and the Polish Cultural Institute, with support from The Henry Moore Foundation, brings together artists, cultural historians and museum professionals to debate some of the implications of the Auschwitz competition (1959), as well as the broader subject of the manipulation of memory. Leading contemporary artists will review their approaches to the making of new memorials, and curators their work in shaping public history.
Speakers include: Zygmunt Bauman, Emeritus Professor of Sociology, University of Leeds (keynote speaker), Miroslaw Balka, artist, Richard Calvocoressi, Director, The Henry Moore Foundation, Antony Gormley, artist, Langlands and Bell, artists, Miroslaw Nizio, museum and exhibition designer, Agnieszka Rudzinska, Deputy Director, Museum of the History of Polish Jews, Warsaw, and Roger Tolson, Head of Art, Imperial War Museum.
PROGRAMME:
09.30 - 10.00 Registration
MORNING SESSION
10.00 - 10.20 Introduction, Richard Calvocoressi
10.20 - 11.00 Zygmunt Bauman, keynote speaker:
‘Can we learn from history lessons, and if not, why not?
11.05 - 11.35 Agnieszka Rudzinska and Miroslaw Nizio:
‘Remembrance’s strategies’
11.35 - 11.50 Break
11.50 - 12.20 Roger Tolson:
‘Displays of conflict: Art at the Imperial War Museum’
12.25 - 12.50 Richard Calvocoressi:
‘Rachel Whiteread’s Holocaust Memorial in Vienna’
12.50 - 13.10 Panel Discussion
13.10 - 14.00 Lunch
AFTERNOON SESSION
14.00 - 14.10 Introduction, Roger Tolson
14.10 - 14.40 Artistic Practice I: Langlands and Bell
14.45 - 15.15 Artistic Practice II: Miroslaw Balka
15.15 - 15.30 Break
15.30 - 16.00 Artistic Practice III: Antony Gormley
16.05 - 16.35 Michael Rustin:
‘Concluding Reflections’
16.40 - 17.00 Closing Panel