Iconoclastic Controversies: A visual sociology of statues and commemoration sites in the southern regions of Cyprus -Venue: NeMe Arts Centre, Limassol, Cyprus -Duration: 23/1-6/2/2016 The Iconoclastic Controversies exhibition, by Nico Carpentier, will take place at the NeMe Arts Centre, from 23 January until 6 February 2016. On Saturday 23 January NeMe invites you to opening the exhibition and to the accompanying seminar, Monuments and Memorials as Rhetoric / Objectivity as Male. The exhibition which will take place at the NeMe Arts Centre contains 20 photographs, accompanying text panels and eight listening posts of recorded interviews that investigate the monuments, landmarks and statues that are part of the everyday life of Greek Cypriots. âThe statues are vehicles of communication. They are vehicles of ideology and of informationâ, explains Nico Carpentier, âand they allow us to reflect about past, present and future.â The photographs are used to analyse how statues and commemoration sites in the Greek Cypriot community narrate and frame the Cyprus conflict, and how they in many cases contain references to the âSelfâ and the âOtherâ. They present a heroic âSelfâ to the âOwnâ community, or show the suffering of the âSelfâ. But the exhibition also investigates how some (exceptional) sculptures undermine this traditional presentation of the âSelfâ and offer a different narrative of the conflict, and of the identities of the people involved. The photographs were taken during Carpentierâs stay on the island, from September of 2013 to September 2014. This project moves away from traditional academic texts to examine and analyse complicated social phenomena, such as those produced by the political situation in Cyprus. The idea behind this exhibition is that photographs can work just as effectively to communicate an academic analysis. Quite possibly they work even more intuitively. Seminar On 23 January 2016, at 18:30, before the opening of the exhibition, NeMe has organised a seminar to stimulate further reflection. This seminar, Monuments and Memorials as rhetoric / Objectivity as male will be in English. It is open to the public and will take place at the Photography Lab Room at Heroesâ square (at the corner of Pavlou Mela and Vasilou Makedonos, Limassol). Speakers are Vayia Karaiskou, Aysu Arsoy and Chrystalleni Loizidou. The moderator is Vicky Triga. Dates Exhibition: Iconoclastic Controversies: A visual sociology of statues and commemoration sites in the southern regions of Cyprus -Venue: NeMe Arts Centre, Limassol, Cyprus -Opening: 23/1/2016, 8.30pm -Duration: 23/1-6/2/2016 -Opening Times ****Tuesday-Friday: 17:30-20:30 ****Saturday: 10:00-13:00 Seminar: Monuments and Memorials as rhetoric / Objectivity as male -Venue: CUT Photography Lab Room at Heroesâ square, Limassol, Cyprus -Date/Time: 23/1/2016, 6pm-8pm ++++++++++++++++++++ Seminar: Monuments and Memorials as Rhetoric / Objectivity as Male At Cyprus University of Technology Photography Lab Room situated in Heroesâ square, Limassol, Cyprus 23/1/2016, 6pm-8pm âMemories are not ready-made reflections of the past, but eclectic, selective reconstructions based on subsequent actions and perceptions and on ever-changing codes by which we delineate, symbolise, and classify the world around us.â (David Lowenthal, The Past is a Foreign Country; Cambridge University press, 1985, p. 210.) The recent renewed interest in what may be seen as augmenting a Cypriot collective memory through examining our public history is fed by the desire to improve the relations between the two main communities in Cyprus. Negotiation and (possible) reconciliation about a shared past, in combination with education, then become significant tools to turn this desire into a cultural reality. Understanding the loaded narratives of public monuments and memorials, since mainly all are commissioned by political parties in power and not private individuals, is a fundamental area for analysis and reflection. It is worth noting that commemorating heroes of past conflict means privileging some versions of history and discounting others. As such, memorials and monuments are a means of forgetting as well as remembering. Art historian and critic Arthur Danto states a relevant clarification that the term âmonumentâ signifies celebration, positive remembrance, and the eternal present, while the term âmemorialâ denotes the sacred, mourning, and the finality of the past. Dantoâs definition together with the 80âs feminist slogan: Objectivity is male subjectivity frame the seminarâs discussion about the dominant ideas on patriotism, heroism, service and sacrifice. In nearly all cases, the masculine interpretation becomes the voice of our idea of history because patriarchy had the means to create this visual legacy of public commemoration. Traditional commemorative representational memorials, using socially unconnected modernist formalism, promote a rhetoric which is a synthetic version of a past reality. They are carefully crafted to promote a heroic translation of events and are equally imbued with a subtext expressing not the imitation of actual reality but a desired reality or political outcome fraught with historical contingency. Nietzsche in his âOn the Utility and Liability of History for Lifeâ states that history inscribed in the physicality of monuments represents âa belief in the coherence and continuity of what is great in all ages, it is a protest against the change of generations and against transitorinessâ. History, of course, and especially very recent history in our immediate region, has proved that the concepts of continuity and coherence of place or ideals have been replaced with a forceful scale of insecurity and transitoriness. Speakers: Vayia Karaiskou, Aysu Arsoy and Chrystalleni Loizidou. Moderator: Vicky Triga ++++++++++++++++++++ In collaboration with: the Association for Historical Dialogue & Research (AHDR), the Cyprus Community Media Centre (CCMC), CUT-radio, and NeMe Supported by: the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB - Belgium), Uppsala University, the Research Foundation â Flanders (FWO - Belgium) and the Cyprus University of Technology Thanks to: Yiannis Christidis, Vaia Doudaki, Fatma Nazli Köksal ++++++++++++++++++++ See http://nicocarpentier.net/icontroversies/ http://www.neme.org/1777/iconoclastic-controversies ++++++++++++++++++++ -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Nico Carpentier ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Uppsala University Department of Informatics and Media Kyrkogårdsgatan 10 753 13 Uppsala Sweden ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) - Free University of Brussels & Charles University in Prague ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Iconoclastic controversies exhibition: A visual sociology of statues and commemoration sites in the southern regions of Cyprus http://nicocarpentier.net/icontroversies/ ---------------------------- New article (open access): Differentiating between access, interaction and participation Conjunctions, Vol 2, No 2 (2015) http://www.conjunctions-tjcp.com/article/view/22915 ----------------------------------------------------------------------- DESIRE Centre for the study of Democracy, Signification and Resistance http://researchcentredesire.eu/ ---------------------------- International Association for Media and Communication Research http://www.iamcr.org/ ---------------------------- ECREA mailing list http://commlist.org/ ---------------------------- European Media and Communication Doctoral Summer School http://www.comsummerschool.org/ ---------------------------- E-mail (UUppsala): [log in to unmask] E-mail (VUBrussels): [log in to unmask] T (UUppsala): +46 (0)18 471 6341 Room (UUppsala): Ekonomikum building E329 Web: http://nicocarpentier.net/ ----------------------------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------------------- MeCCSA mailing list -------------------------------------------------------- To manage your subscription or unsubscribe from the MECCSA list, please visit: https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?SUBED1=MECCSA&A=1 ------------------------------------------------------- MeCCSA is the subject association for the field of media, communication and cultural studies in UK Higher Education. 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