Online discussion “Between the Past and the Past: What Describes the Notion of Historiographic Turn in Art”

The discussion will involve:● Oksana Dovgopolova, PhD in Philosophy, member of Memory Studies Association, curator of Past / Future / Art;● Nikita Kadan, artist, member of R.E.P. group, co-founder of the curator and activist group Hudrada;● Lada Nakonechna, artist, member of R.E.P. group, co-founder of the curator and activist group Hudrada and Method Foundation;● Borys Filonenko, art critic, editor at IST Publishing.
The discussion participants will gather within the Nikita Kadan’s exhibition “Stone Hits Stone” space at the PinchukArtCentre. This is symbolic, as the artist’s practice is developed through question addressed to the past, and therefore the term “historiographic turn” is used by both the artist himself and his critics.
Work with historical materials, own archiving and archive exploration, drawing one’s relationships with a certain subject of the past has been an important trend in art of the recent years. This is easy to observe, but not so easy to deconstruct and interpret. There are several terms describing different sides of the process in the studies related to these trends. Those are, for example, Hal Foster’s “archival impulse” analysis and the “historiographic turn” criticism of Dieter Roelstraete who was the first to use that word combination in his article “The Way of the Shovel”.
A number of researchers have turned to these notions within the Ukrainian theoretical space, triggering both a series of non-critical borrowings and serious attempts to draw demarcation lines. Borys Filonenko’s article on definition of the “historiographic turn” has been published in the Past / Future / Art glossary – a basic vocabulary helping to navigate through major terms within memory studies. However, the notion is still in Brownian movement, and therefore, a need for a professional talk to clarify its meaning has arisen.
Past / Future / Art is a cultural memory platform implementing educational and research projects as well as a public programme of activities in order to involve the general public into working through the past.
The project has been existing since 2019, and it has organised a number of professional interdisciplinary discussions, including the forum “(Non)Exclusion Zone” on the 35th anniversary of the Chornobyl disaster and the public programme of the art project on unity #брюдершафт (#bruderschaft). The platform has launched the glossary – a vocabulary of notions and terms used in working through the past and collective memory. The project curators are Oksana Dovgopolova and Kateryna Semenyuk.
Past / Future / Art is implemented in partnership with forumZFD in Ukraine.
Official site: https://www.pastfutureart.orgFacebook-page: https://www.facebook.com/past.future.artTelegram-channel: https://t.me/mmmystetstvo