Dwelling on the everyday: architecture, ghosts, ellipses

We are particularly interested in the ways in which the past resonates in places of dwelling, how it leaves its mark on places and how people leave their mark on their dwellings. What traces are left and how are they celebrated, fetishized, banished or ignored? What do the places inhabited reveal about those who inhabited them? How are these connections assumed or traced or made by visitors or scholars or those who come later? What role does temporality play in these relations?  How might the power of a place to conjure up the apparently vivid presence of its past be traced or accounted for? How is it triggered, enhanced, or suppressed? What role does such haunting have in academic writing, or in autobiographical or biographical pursuits? In what ways is it useful to seek such connections – or is it they which, in some way, rather seek one out? 

Current scholarship on artist-homes and most museum presentations tend to collapse house into the artist’s biography and / or the artist’s work. These workshops explore approaches which avoid reducing the artist and their work simply to what is projected onto (what remains of) their home and vice versa. 

We want the event to be lively, informal and engaged, with everyone feeling free to speak. To those ends we are limiting numbers in the audience to 30. All participants are expected to attend both parts of the workshop (8 and 29 July).   If you sign up and then cannot join, please be sure to cancel your registration early to allow someone else to take the valuable place.

See the full programme and register here.