-----Original Message-----
From: [log in to unmask] [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Louise Owen
Sent: 09 August 2006 21:16
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [Ica-l] CFP : Sighting the Document (UK) (grad)

SIGHTING THE DOCUMENT: THE BUILDING OF THE ARCHIVE An interdisciplinary conference for graduate students in the humanities Friday 20 & Saturday 21 October 2006

Funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, this interdisciplinary conference event explores the document - in its widest possible sense - and its relationship to the archive.

With the conceptual and practical tools a performance studies perspective offers, SIGHTING THE DOCUMENT approaches documentation and archival work as situated processes.  In any such conversation, questions related to the production and reception of knowledge emerge.  How might the material constitution of the document affect its reception?  What changes when the document is recontextualised, and what role does this play in the enactment of everyday life?  What are the theoretical and practical consequences of calling the stability of archives, sites of the containment and transmission of knowledge, into question?  What are the historiographical and epistemological challenges that research faces if the document 'itself' is problematized?  Is this liberating (opening up a wealth of possibilities as to what might count as 'document' and 'archive'), intractable (fraught with incapacitating relativism) or something else, suggesting perhaps a different set of ethical questions?

SIGHTING THE DOCUMENT is an opportunity for graduate researchers across the humanities to present papers that relate to the scope of this theme.  Topics might include (but are not restricted to): nostalgia and other manifestations of cultural memory; commerce and the commoditization of knowledge; shopping (barter, exchange, purchase, selection); the body as/of the archive; intermediality; the ontology of the document; how and where the archive is sighted, sited or cited.  The aim of the event is to cultivate productive opportunities for disciplinary paths to connect, in part to discover how discipline-specific methodologies might usefully apply to other fields.  Papers should not exceed fifteen minutes.  The deadline for submission of 250-500 word abstracts is 28 September 2006.

SIGHTING THE DOCUMENT will consist of:

*	Panel presentations, for which papers of 15 minutes are invited
*	A performance event on the theme of the archive
*	A range of parallel practice-based training workshops on the sensory 
themes of 'Touch' (the body as a site of memory and archival knowledge), 'Sight' (the archive in visual cultures), 'Hearing' (the role of sound in cultural memory) and 'Disappearing' (archiving the 'ephemerality' of
performance)
*	Round table discussions on themes emerging during the proceedings

We are delighted to welcome Alan Read as the keynote speaker for SIGHTING THE DOCUMENT.  Alan Read is Professor of Theatre in the Department of English at King's College, University of London.  He is the author of Theatre and Everyday Life: An Ethics of Performance (1995), and the editor of Spaced Out: Architecture, Art and the City at the Millennium (1999) and Architecturally Speaking: Practices of Art, Architecture and the Everyday (2000).

SIGHTING THE DOCUMENT is an occasion for mutually enriching exchange to take place between geographical, historical, aesthetic and pragmatic approaches to documentation and the archive.

Information and booking:

This day-and-a-half long conference event costs £20 per delegate, including lunch, refreshments throughout, choice of research training workshop and a ticket to the performance.  It takes place at Queen Mary, University of London.

To propose a paper, to receive further information or to book a place, email [log in to unmask]