Imaging the Past Collecting the Future: Archive, Photography, Cinema, Museums

Fueled by the focus of the LYNX research center, specifically the interdisciplinary analysis of images, this conference proposes to investigate photographic and cinematographic images (as both lens-based products and the fruit of new media technologies) in terms of their form, the systems that produce them, the modes and techniques of perception associated with them and the processes and trajectories through which they circulate by exploring the multiple, diverse relations between these images and the primary spaces dedicated to their preservation and conservation, namely archives and museums. While this conference is grounded in certain precise conceptual perspectives on the archive (Giorgio Agamben, Jacques Derrida), it is not intended to explore the discursive form of photographic and cinematographic archives and museums; rather, it proposes to analyze the various practices through which they are constructed and contested as well as the diverse functions and uses of archives and museums as physical and institutional sites (participation and access), both in terms of the content (material or non) they contain and the way this content is interpreted, (re)configured, (re)activated, (re)animated and (re)appropriated. This conference proposes to employ diverse perspectives and methodological approaches to reflect on the relationships between archives, museums and memory (with particular emphasis on the role of the image as evidence, proof, documentation and memorandum). It also seeks to go beyond this nexus, however, by inviting participants to reflect on the relationship between images and power as a complex horizon that shapes analytical perspectives on operations of positioning and arranging images (photographic and cinematographic, in this case) within the institutions dedicated to preserving them. Indeed, any act of selecting, conserving and reproducing images might be seen as a specific articulation of the relationship between images and power.