31 Mar 2010

Afterlives of Monuments Conference

TrAIN/University of the Arts London
The Afterlives of Monuments Conference 29&30 April 2010

This two day conference, including an evening lecture event on Thursday 29 April, brings together leading scholars from within and outside South Asia to create an international forum to debate the status and survivals of key markers in the colonial and post- colonial histories and spaces of South Asia. Speakers consider the �afterlives’ of monuments, variously addressing 3 key questions relevant globally as well as locally: what makes a monument, under what conditions does it endure and for whom? They address how monuments have been reinvented and transformed for a succession of presents, for changing audiences and diverse communities. As one identifies, �the memorial can only survive through reinvention’.

Architecture, sculpture, popular culture – monuments are multi-dimensional and multi-media, and speakers are from anthropology, art history, media studies, architecture, the museum world, and contemporary artistic practice. The period considered is from 1850s to the present. South Asian examples and settings are contextualised with a comparator of Ottoman monuments to explore the links between the afterlives of monuments and the aftermaths of empires. The objective is to facilitate cross-cultural histories and interdisciplinary approaches and to bring together scholars from diverse locations that are at different stages of their careers. Transnational scholarly collaboration across cultures and generations is facilitated by the mix of distinguished speakers and younger scholars.

The conference includes papers on India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Tibet alongside historical considerations of colony and metropolis and it interrogates the prevailing �memory model’, which connects monuments and memorials primarily to memory. The larger purpose is to scrutinise the vast diversity of monuments (and conceptions of monuments) in South Asia in the past and the present, and to test whether and to what extent South Asian examples demand not only a challenge to western paradigms but the creation of new conceptual models and theories.

Speakers include: Professor Tapati Guha Thakurta, Dr Hilal Ahmed, Dr Tracy Anderson, Professor Zeynep Celik, Sutapa Biswas, Dr Adam Hardy, Dr Clare Harris, Partha Mitter and Professor Deborah Cherry.

The conference will take place at Central Saint Martins College of Arts in London.
For a full list of speakers, more information, ticket prices or to reserve seats, please contact e.broer@chelsea.arts.ac.uk


Evening lecture and reception
Thursday 29 April 6.30pm
Professor Tapati Guha-Thakurta, The Sanchi Stupa in Colonial India

Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design
Southampton Row, London WC1B 4AP
Nearest underground: Holborn

www.transnational.org.uk