Event Details
Attendees Conference 2024 at Ulster University Belfast Campus Library (Photo: Project archive) |
Conference and Workshop: | Slow Memory – Capstone Conference Porto 2025 |
Description: | From 2021 to 2025, the COST Action “Slow Memory: Transformative Practices for Times of Uneven and Accelerating Change” has brought together over 300 scholars and stakeholders, from over 40 countries, many disciplines and career stages. It has considered how to capture and respond to environmental, economic, and social change through the novel concept of “slow memory”. Its goal has been to trigger a new discovery phase in memory studies by providing a platform for networked, transnational, multidisciplinary research and policy-making that moves beyond the focus on conflict and eventfulness in commemoration. The action has discussed and shared ideas in many in-person and online meetings, training schools, workshops and writing retreats, producing working papers, a podcast, a virtual exhibition and dozens of scholarly publications. Along the way, they have practiced a “slow” form of meeting, resisting the pressures of sped-up academia and engaging with different places and communities, taking walks and visiting sites that helped us develop an understanding at different tempos. The conference is a culmination of these discussions, practices and communing.
On the final day of the conference Conflict Textiles curator Roberta Bacic will give a plenary session introducing the organisation’s mission and core focuses. The plenary aims to navigate the Conflict Textiles web archive, which documents over 400 textiles, produced across the globe in response to conflict and human rights violations. Five of our textiles will be presented in the flesh for attendees to experience the impact of stitched testimonies.
Later in the day, Helen Maguire will lead a workshop where participants will produce a collaborative textile artwork inspired by the Conflict Textiles collection. Through this we will take time to discuss and meditate on the role of textiles in processing of personal and collective traumas, and their lasting impact as a form of testimony without words |
Commissioned by: | Jenny Wüstenberg & Chris Reynolds, professors at Nottingham Trent University |
Date(s): | 2nd July 2025 - 5th July 2025 |
Venue: | Faculdade de Letras da Universidade do Porto ESAD Porto |
Curator: | Roberta Bacic |
Facilitator: | Alice Semedo and Isabel Machado Alexandre |
Outcome: | A collective textile outcome will be produced by workshop attendees. |
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