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On April 11th, Ruth Noack, Leader of the MeLa Research Field 04 from the Royal College of Art, will participate in the Para/Site International Conference, that will take place at Para Site contemporary art space in Hong Kong. This three-day forum brings together a group of original thinkers, artists and curators from around the world to discuss and navigate on the spectral contemporary condition of art. The conference will present different contextual genealogies, realities of production and interpretative vocabularies and allow for their reading from the perspective of Hong Kong and its changing position in the globalized contemporary art field.
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A view of the exhibition. Photo: Paulo Lobo.
From 14 December to 17 February, the photo exhibition La face cachée des mots is on display at the Kreutzbeg Museum, Berlin. Conceived and produced by the Centre de Documentation sur les Migrations Humaines in Dudelange, Luxemburg, it deals with the theme of the relationship between migration and democracy, and it does so by questioning artists in a visual form. Paulo Lobo, photographer born in Portugal, took pictures of musicians, poets, actors, painters etc. in an empty swimming pool, putting them in a dialogic dimension in respect to a sentence they has previously written or chosen. The result is sometimes cryptic, sometimes funny, other times bitter, but it always succeeds in stimulating reflection about one’s perception of identity and of its possible visual translations.
The exhibition is curated by Christine Muller and Dario Cieol.
Martin Düspohl, director of Kreutzberg Museum, led [...]
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MeLa-PoliMi participated in the international conference Museum Policies in Europe 1990-2010: Negotiating professional and political utopia, organized by the European research project EuNaMus on June 27-29. The conference was held in Norway at the University of Oslo. Focused on the impact of policies on today’s national museums, the conference addressed crucial themes of the contemporary museum debate, as migration, diverse social groups, minorities, conflicting demands and cultural cohesiveness. Over the three days, invited speakers and EuNaMus contributors debated the following questions:
- What are the practical functions of national museums?
- Is the national narrative (still) too strong?
- What are the limits/limitations of politics for national museums?
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Anna Chiara Cimoli from Politecnico di Milano recently visited the Museo d’ Història de la Inmigraciò de Catalunya. Besides describing the museum activities, objectives and challenges, director Imma Boj discussed the temporary exhibition “El viatge de Gaye”, curated by Tatiana Donoso and Magda Bandera, which suggests through photography a relationship among a person, his/her migration story (real, imagined or refused) and the food he/she eats. This allows a reflection, suitable in particular for schools, about an ideal pyramid where, instead of nutrition elements, there is a series of values going from the most basic (phisiological necessities) to the intermediate (security, social acceptance, self-esteem) to the highest (self-fulfilment).
Anna Chiara also visited the “Pandalla global” (Global screen) exhibition in CCCB (Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona).
MeLa RF03 Brainstorming workshop on European heritage, migrations and new media: networks and collaborations across museums, libraries and public cultural institutions was held on 23 April 2012 at the University of Glasgow. During this successful and interactive event, MeLa Consortium members and invited guests from the Research Field 03 expert group discussed topics of collaboration across museums, libraries and public cultural institutions, migration and European cultural and scientific heritage.
The workshop was kicked off by the local hosts Dr John Richards, Head of History of Art at the University of Glasgow and Perla Innocenti, Research Fellow and RF03 Leader, who provided an overview of MeLa and Rf03.
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The paper “Bridging multicultural communities: developing the framework for a EU Transnational Museums and Libraries Network” by Perla Innocenti, John Richards, Sabine Wieber (University of Glasgow) has been successfully accepted at the Digital Humaties (DH) International Conference 2012.
The theme of the conference, which is taking place on 16 – 22 july 2012 at the University of Hamburg, Germany, focuses on ‘Digital Diversity: Cultures, languages and method’, is also relevant for MeLA topics. Conference organisers specifically invited proposals on the potential and impact of digital methods and models in fostering multilingualism and multiculturalism, and on the challenges and potential presented to DH in terms of linguistic and cultural diversity. Our paper has been highly praised by the reviewers, and we are looking forward to disseminating MeLA and RF03 research !
On 3rd February 2012 Susannah Eckersley of UNEW attended one of the Zeitgeist seminars organised by the Institute for German Studies at Birmingham University. The topic of the seminar was ‘Multiculturalism and Germanness’, with a paper presented by Dr Birgit zur Nieden of the Institut fuer Sozialwissenschaften’s Diversity and Social Conflict Team at the Humboldt University, Berlin and Simon Green, Professor of Politics at Aston University and Co-Director of the Aston Centre for Europe as discussant. The seminar provided a wide-ranging and thorough exploration of the intellectual discourses and everyday realities of multiculturalism in contemporary Germany, with particular reference to how the question of ‘Germanness’ is, and has been, perceived in the public realm.
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The EU-funded project MeLA is developing multi-disciplinary resources for investigating major European public museums, supporting their collaboration with libraries and public cultural institutions, and helping them to address contemporary challenges of globalization, European integration, and new media.
In MeLA Research Field 03 (Network of Museums, Libraries and Public Cultural Institutions) we wish to find out experiences of collaborative projects between transnational museums, libraries and other cultural institutions, focusing on multiculturalism, migration and the use of new media. Our geographic focus at this stage is on transnational and/or national partnerships within Europe and/or at extra-European level.
An online survey is available at http://tinyurl.com/MeLAproject-survey . The results of this survey will contribute to our investigation on innovative coordination strategies between museums and other cultural institutions, which will be presented to the European Commission.
Some information about this survey: – The survey consists of 30 research questions and it will take about [...]
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