archive as project : the poetics and politics of the (photo)archive

On May 13-14th, 2011 the Archeology of Photography Foundation in Warsaw, Poland, organises an interdisciplinary conference dedicated to the practice and theory/critique of the photographic archive. The conference is in the frame of “PhotoRegister” project. In the wake of the “archival turn” that took place in the last 15 years or so, there seems to be an urgent need to reflect on the role of the photographic archive in Central and Eastern Europe, not only for the humanities, but also in the context of art and politics – on the perspectives it opens and the dangers it creates.

The debates will concentrate on such issues, as “The totality/fragmentariness of the archive,” “Memory, history and the question of technology,” “The Institutional Perspective – questions of acquisition, research, and publicity,” and two main topics: “The poetics/politics of the archive” and “The archive holy/unholy — the archive secret/public,” whose aim is to raise key questions concerning the archive as metaphor and political practice, as well as the issue of the accessibility of archives in the age of digitalization.