Kulturelles Gedächtnis und Kunst in und über Südosteuropa
Cultural Memory and the Arts in/on Southeast Europe
Internationale und interdisziplinäre Konferenz an der Karl-Franzens-Universität Graz,
Graz, 24.-25. Mai 2012
Organisiert von den
Hertha-Firnberg- und Elise-Richter-Stelleninhaberinnen
Dr. Zsuzsa Barbarics-Hermanik und Dr. Tatjana Marković
Institut für Geschichte, Südosteuropäische Geschichte und Anthropologie,
Institut für Musikwissenschaft der Karl-Franzens-Universität Graz
Cultural memory, as the social constructions of the past, is a basis of collective identity and manifests itself
through different rituals and ceremonies. It provides continuity, unity and singularity of a society in a given social,
historical, and geographical context. As being constructed in accordance to the mentioned context/s, it has been
regularly re-interpreted. Therefore, the concept of cultural memory involves articulation of past not only through
remembering, but also through forgetting.
Since the 1980s, the concept of cultural memory signifies an interdisciplinary research perspective by
archeologists, historians, anthropologists, historians and theoreticians of the arts as well as by researchers of
other disciplines. The process of creating a narrative of remembering, forgetting or repressing contributes to the
construction, reconstruction or deconstruction of cultural and national identity. Southeast European cultural
memories are undoubtedly marked by their own changeable historical, political, cultural, social contexts, first of all
through the imperial influences. Consequently, the culture of memory (or amnesia) of Southeast Europe demands
necessarily (re)considering the intertextuality of the Ottoman, the Habsburg, or the Mediterranean worlds. The
concept of cultural memory is thus possible to research through the presentation or self-representation of
Southeast Europe – in the works of art in or on the region.
There are three coexisting aspects of the lieux de mémoire: material, symbolic, and functional (Nora), embodied
in museums, archives, cemeteries, festivals, anniversaries, treaties, depositions, monuments, texts, and also in
theatre plays, films, music compositions and instruments, photography and other loci memoriae. We welcome
(re)considering the formation or abandoning the past through the works of art, their reception, or artistic practice,
in order to present elements of cultural identity/identities of a multiethnic, multireligous, multicultural complex
network. Therefore the conference aims at covering a wide range of artistic disciplines, such as literature, material
culture and architecture, music, theatre, visual arts and cinema, among others.