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TrAIN/University of the Arts London - The Afterlives of Monuments Conference – 29&30 April 2010

This two day conference, including an evening lecture event on Thursday 29 April, brings together leading scholars from within and outside South Asia to create an international forum to debate the status and survivals of key markers in the colonial and post- colonial histories and spaces of South Asia. Speakers consider the ‘afterlives’ of monuments, variously addressing 3 key questions relevant globally as well as locally: what makes a monument, under what conditions does it endure and for whom? They address how monuments have been reinvented and transformed for a succession of presents, for changing audiences and diverse communities. As one identifies, ‘the memorial can only survive through reinvention’.

Architecture, sculpture, popular culture – monuments are multi-dimensional and multi-media, and speakers are from anthropology, art history, media studies, architecture, the museum world, and contemporary artistic practice. The period considered is from 1850s to the present. South Asian examples and settings are contextualised with a comparator of Ottoman monuments to explore the links between the afterlives of monuments and the aftermaths of empires. The conference aims to engage transnational, cross-cultural histories and interdisciplinary approaches, to scrutinise the vast diversity of monuments (and conceptions of monuments) in South Asia in the past and the present, and to test whether and to what extent South Asian examples demand not only a challenge to western paradigms but the creation of new conceptual models and theories.

Speakers include Tapati Guha Thakurta, Zeynep Çelik, Gayatri Sinha, Raminder Kaur-Kahlon, Clare Harris and Adam Hardy.

The conference will take place at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design in London. For a full list of speakers, more information, ticket prices or to reserve seats, please contact e.broer@chelsea.arts.ac.uk

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