This symposium, held jointly at the University of Amsterdam and Concordia University, aims to establish cross-border solidarities and foster transdisciplinary dialogues while enhancing voices from diverse regions that address colonial legacies. It focuses on art as a medium to touch upon and aesthetically transform spectral traces and explores the decolonial potentiality of institutional sites such as archives and museums. 

Marked by the publication of Derrida’s Specters of Marx in 1994, the spectral turn saw the spectre as a conceptual signifier of the “invisible visible” or not-fully-realised presence that claims space (Derrida: 1996; Peeren, Pilar Blanco: 2013). The spectre can signify a form of traumatic presence that continues to haunt individuals and societies that have not confronted their troubled pasts. For example, Nicholas Abraham's term “phantom” is linked to the transgenerational transmission of shame and guilt. In a broader sense, legacies of violence can persist in affected societies, manifesting in various forms and carrying the threat of re-emergence. In postcolonial contexts, the haunting legacies may include traumas resulting from centuries of racial othering or the delayed consequences of environmental violence. 

Art plays a crucial role in addressing colonial legacies by offering a space for reflection, reconnection, and resistance. Contemporary artists explore the potentialities of their media – indexical, performative, or time-based while touching upon traces and resonances of past and ongoing violence. Museums and institutions face the challenge of dealing with ruptures and continuity within postcolonial structures. 

In this three-day event, we bring together artists, activists, curators, and early-career researchers. 

Key questions include: 

What role does art play in addressing difficult pasts? 

How do artists use their media to make the invisible visible and actualize traces of trauma? 

What kinds of temporalities do they create when engaging with haunting legacies? 

In what ways can museums challenge and transform postcolonial legacies? 

How do artistic and curatorial methods address the absence in archives and reimagine the archive and archival practices? 

How can engaging with postcolonial hauntologies help us build cross-border solidarities?

 Programme

Day 1 University of Amsterdam

Day 2 Concordia University

Day 3 Online (Zoom)

Organisers

Assel Kadyrkhanova is a visual artist and researcher; currently a postdoctoral fellow at the Amsterdam School of Cultural Analysis, University of Amsterdam. Her practice-led research looks at art as a medium of memory, focussing on post-Soviet postcolonial Central Asia.

Mehmet Berkay Sülek is a PhD Candidate in Art History at the University of Amsterdam, specialising in Contemporary Art History and Historiography.

Alexandra Tsay is a curator and researcher interested in global turn in art histories, with a focus on contemporary art in post-independent Central Asia. Currently, she is a PhD student in art history at Concordia University.

The Amsterdam event is supported by the Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis and the Netherlands Institute for Cultural Analysis. It is realised as part of the ARRG (Artistic Research Research Group), coordinated by Colin Sterling, Florian Göttke, Assel Kadyrkhanova, Julia Stoll and Alexandra Chisholm. 

The Concordia event is supported by Montreal’s Interuniversity PhD Program in Art History, Concordia University Research Chair in Critical Curatorial Studies and Decolonizing Art Institutions and the Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies in Society and Culture.