UWS presents Out of the Past, Into the Present: Reframing Heritage through Art Practice

There is a growing interest in heritage activism aimed at the production and dissemination of alternative understandings of the present and visions of the past to the dominant historical narrative. One of the key functions that the past performs, through its uses in heritage, is a production of a sense of belonging and identity construction through the representation of a place or an event (Ashworth et al, 2007)1. The audio-visual value of cultural heritage and its artistic representation is thus increasingly important, giving rise to new ways of interpreting heritage in a digital age. New constructed knowledge, questioning and subverting the common sense, fills the gaps in what is missing. Such attempts also stimulate shifts in memory archives, envisioning alternative futures, rewriting the past while reframing the present.

In an iconic film noir Out of the Past, the story revolves around a man who tries to break with his past and his weaknesses to start all over again with a new life. Yet his old life reaches out and pulls him back. The UWS symposium chaired by Katarzyna Kosmala features the new moving image works by Caoimhe Hernon, Gordon Doherty, Ilona Koscieja and Tony Grace, new sound works by Joshua McGeechan, Graham Jeffery and Ben Parry who unlike Robert Mitchum, reach out of the past to pull it out to the present.

–

Symposium 10.00 am – 13.00pm
Screenings 1330 – 17.30 pm

Schedule:

10.00 Registration/Welcome

10.10 – 10.20 Introduction. Out of the Past, Into the Present: Reframing Heritage through Art Practice. Professor Katarzyna Kosmala

10.20- 11.20 Panel 1 Sounding out the Places. Out of the Past; Into the Present Graham Jeffery - The Past, Present and Possible Futures of Dharavi - Sonic Materials/Remaking Futures through HipHop (with Ben Parry)

Joshua McGeechan – Celebrating Places through Field Recordings. Other Dimensions of Time and Memory in Flux/ Rhuveig.

Paul McGeechan – reSonance - Redeploying Analogue Sounds in a Digital Era

11.20-11.40 Panel 1 discussion. Chair: David Scott

11.40 – 12.50 Panel 1. Heritage Activism through Moving Image: Reframing Gendered Past

Ilona Koscieja – Making of Red Dust. Heritage Activism and Working with Communities.

Gordon Doherty – Psycho-Geographic Intervention into Scottish Masculinity. Collecting Memories for a Home Movie.

Screening of A Weaver’s Thimble and a Woman’s Mind/Mearacán Táilliúra agus Intinn na mBann, by Caoimhe Hernon with Introduction from Tony Grace on Reframing Gendered Histories in Connemara, Ireland.

Tony Grace – Reaching out into Archives. Engineering History in A Car for a Women and Other Stories

12.50 Panel 1 discussion Chair: Katarzyna Kosmala

13.00 Symposium closes

13. 05 –13.30 Sonic Performance of Paul McGeechan’s reSonance with the exhibit of analogue synthesisers

Screenings 13.30pm- 530pm

Caoimhe Hernon, A Weaver’s Thimble and a Woman’s Mind/Mearacán Táilliúra agus Intinn na mBann, 2018

Gordon Doherty, A Home Movie, 2018

Ilona Koscieja, Red Dust, 2013

Tony Grace, A Car for a Women and Other Stories, 2019