05 MAIO 2021 - 07 MAIO 2021 | ESCOLA DAS ARTES - UNIVERSIDADE CATÓLICA PORTUGUESA
Conferência Híbrida (presencial e online)

CONFERENCISTAS E ARTISTAS DO PAINEL
Esther Peeren
João Pedro Rodrigues
José Bértolo
Loretta Fahrenholz
Margarida Medeiros
Ulrich Baer

Some artworks, from cinema to visual arts and photography, have absorbed phenomena like ghosts, zombies, illness, death, spectra, apparitions, and other kind of “in-between” states of being. This kind of liminality is a way of bringing forward in our historical present its profound ambiguity. 
 
Images are ontologically problematic in their approach to reality. They are always a representation of a time and a space, and their manipulation puts into question their indexicality.
 
This liminality of ghosts, spectra and apparitions is also a way of analyzing the complexity of our historical present, in both its linearity and a cross-over of past, present and future. Therefore, these “in-between” states discuss issues of the traumatic past, as are empowerments to change the future. That is, the traumatic past haunts the historical present demanding new ways of knowing the world and history that will transform power structures.
 
This seminar aims to map and discuss contemporary manifestations in art & cinema of these phenomena.
 
We welcome papers on the following topics:

• Critical theory on spectrology, haunting and ghosts
• Cinema and visual arts that incorporate or relate to ghosts, zombies or dead people
• Spaces of liminality in cinema and contemporary art
• Artworks that use spectrology, haunting and ghosts as means to speak trauma
• Alternative uses of narrative dealing with these “in-between” states
• How certain images haunt the historical present
• Uncovering archives