Dates: 5-7 June 2007
Conveners:
Conveners: Dr Caroline Turner, HRC, ANU. E: caroline.turner@anu.edu.au
Professor Iain McCalman, HRC, ANU. E: iain.mccalman@anu.edu.au
Dr Paul Pickering, HRC, ANU. E: paul.pickering@anu.edu.au
This conference is part of a
series of conferences and workshops related to the HRC research
theme of ‘Historical Re-enactment and Public Memory’.
In his well-known lectures on
history R.G. Collingwood argued that the task of the historian
was to ‘re-enact the past’ in their mind. It is now
possible to ‘re-enact’ the past in ways that go well
beyond anything that Collingwood might have imagined.
Jonathan Lamb has argued that
over the last decade developments in aesthetics and technology
have produced a remarkable shift in the modes of presenting history.
‘Re-enactment’ is a capacious term that encompasses
many longstanding practices and a huge variety of different ways
of seeking an affective relationship with the past. Lamb has identified
four broad types of ‘re-enactment’ -- pageant, theatre,
house and realist -- and there are undoubtedly many other possible
definitions.
Is historical re-enactment a
valid and valuable tool for understanding history or for contemporary
social and political commentary? Does historical re-enactment,
as opposed to historical narrative, provide an opportunity to
narrow the distance between past and present and experience the
‘reality’ of the past?
This conference will explore the ways that visual
artists, writers, and filmmakers engage with the past. Are artists
who draw on the past for their subject seeking to inspire, to
educate or to transform? Is it about reaffirming culture or instantiating
identity? In what ways might ‘re-enactment’
as a concept work in the creative arts? Does the concept of re-enactment
in art, as opposed to historical narrative, provide an opportunity
to narrow the distance between past and present and experience
the ‘reality’ of the past? And how does it relate
to what Jonathan Mane-Wheoki has alluded to as the aspiration
of many Indigenous artists to ‘become’ their ancestors
through the artistic process?
Speakers include: Jonathan Lamb,
Ruth Phillips, Toby Haggith, and Salima Hashmi
Select Bibliography
V. Agnew, ‘Introduction: What is Reenactment?’
Criticism, vol. 46, no. 3, 2004, pp. 327-339.
A. Cook, ‘The Use and Abuse of Historical Re-enactment’,
Criticism, vol. 46, no. 3, 2004, pp. 487-96.
S. Gapps, ‘Authenticity Matters: Historical Re-enactment
and Australian Attitudes to the Past’, Australian Cultural
History, no. 22, 2003, pp. 105-116.
T. Hunt, ‘Reality, Identity and Empathy: The Changing Face
of Social History Television’, Journal of Social History,
Spring 2006, pp. 843-858.
For registration enquiries: Leena Messina, E:
leena.messina@anu.edu.au
