Over the past decades, and especially since the generalization of the Internet, artists have been actively exploring the potentialities of new media languages and communities, often blurring artistic categories. Movements like Digital Art or Internet Art clearly demonstrate how these technological means came to shape challenging new territories for contemporary art, not only in terms of creation, reception and participation, but also regarding its preservation, collection, curatorship or exhibition.

Yet, to what extent is the permanence of the ‘physical’ determining the shape of virtual art works and environments? What are the differences between digital representations of an existing museum building and a purely virtual, web-based exhibition space? How are we to study, classify, preserve and exhibit Internet art works and collections? How is the emergence of the ‘intangible’ affecting heritage, exhibitions design, art practices and public participation? Is ‘intangible museography’ a new field of specialization for scholars, museum professionals and independent curators?

In this conference, organized within the framework of the unplace project, we aim to critically examine the different ways by which museums, artists, curators, conservators and academics are dealing with these questions.

To attend the International Conference “Uncertain Spaces: Virtual Configurations in Contemporary Art and Museums” you must register in advance. For more information: www.unplace.org

PROGRAMME*

Friday, 31st October

[8:30 – 9:30 Participants’ registration]

9:30 Opening session

10:00 Keynote Speaker: Annet Dekker – Curating in Progress. Moving between objects and networked processes

Debate

Chair: Susana S. Martins

[11:00 Coffee break]

11:30 Session 01: Online Collections, Archives and Databases

Andrew Brooks - The Planetary Datalinks

Teresa Nobre – Owner rights vs. User rights: the role of museums and galleries in the copyright play

Colectivo de Curadores - ProjectoMAP - Map of Portuguese Artists

Sören Meschede - Curators’ Network: digital tools for interconnecting peripheries

Debate

Chair: Rita Macedo

[13:30 Lunch break]

15:00 Session 02: Virtual Museums and Exhibitions

Guest Speaker: Alexandra Bounia – Beyond the’ virtual’: intangible museographies and collaborative museum experiences

Marialaura Ghidini - Curating web platforms: the rise of the distributed exhibition, online and offline.

Ja-Mei Or - Audience as Art: Redefining Taste, Consumption, and the Art Object within Individual Engagement with Internet Art Platforms

Debate

Chair: Maria Vlachou

[16:30 Coffee break]

17:00 Keynote Speaker: Giselle Beiguelman – Corrupted Memories: aesthetics of ruins and digital museums

Debate

Chair: Clara Caldeira

Saturday, 1st November

10:00 Keynote Speaker: Juan Martín Prada - Curating Internet art today

Debate

Chair: Helena Barranha

[11:00 Coffee break]

11:30 Session 03: Digital and Internet Art

Guest Speaker: János Tari - AVICOM and FIAMP.2014 - Promoting digital projects and virtual exhibitions worldwide

Marie Meixnerová – The situation of Net Art and Post-Internet Art in the Czech Republic and current strategies of its presentation in an international setting

Catarina Carneiro de Sousa & Luís Eustáquio - Art Practice in Collaborative Virtual Environments

Rita Sá – Individually Collaborative - A Case Study on Open Art and Technology-Driven Open Communities

Debate

Chair: Carlos Pimenta

[13:30 Lunch break]

15:00 Session 04: Network Cultures, Politics and Participation

Andrew Dewdney - Resolutely Analogue: Museums, Media and Interface Value

Roberto Terracciano - On Geo-Poetic Systems: geo-hacking and virtual interventions inside and outside the museum space

Luise Reitstätter & Florian Bettel - Right to the City! Right to the Museum!

Stefanie Kogler – Digital Histories and Digital Archives of Latin American and Latino Art – New Constellations for Old Problems

Debate

Chair: Alexandra Bounia

[17:00 Coffee break]

17:30 Closing session

* The conference will be in English, and there will be no simultaneous translation into other languages.