ARTCHAE #1: Inside and Outside the Circuit is an international conference dedicated to the PRIN PNRR project ARTCHAE: Rediscovering video and installation art as an archaeology of telepresence conducted by the University of Milan (PI: Barbara Grespi) and Ca’ Foscari University Venice (Scientific Coordinator: Miriam De Rosa). The contemporary forms of digital presence can be critically reconsidered by starting from the first experiments in the field of video art, electronic arts and computer art. Building on this idea, the conference will present hypotheses of a female archaeology of the digital between cinema and media studies, art-based research, sound studies and archival research, with a particular focus on the collections that supported the project. Discussions will focus on circuits of connection against surveillance paradigms, manual genealogies of digital technologies, horror films and jazz music.
March 14, 2025
ARTCHAE #1: Inside and Outside the Circuit
curated by Rossana Galimi, Barbara Grespi, Maria Teresa Soldani
Sala Napoleonica, via Sant’Antonio 12, Università degli Studi di Milano
9:15–9:30 Welcome Address
9:30–11:00 Keynote Address
Wanda Strauven (Yale University/Columbia University) – “She Is Shrouded”: On Veils, Screens, and Feminist Textile/Textural Practices
Discussant: Barbara Grespi (Università degli Studi di Milano)
Chair: Giancarlo Grossi (Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore)
11:00–11:15 Coffee Break
11:15–12:45 Panel 1: Moving Images and the Politics of Visibility
11:15–11:35 Marta Bianchi, Marta Cereda (Co-directors of Careof) – The Video Archive of Careof: Birth and Evolutionary Trajectories
Introduced by the Milan Research Unit (Maria Teresa Soldani)
11:35–11:55 Rossana Galimi (Università degli Studi di Milano/University of Warwick) – Between Surveillance and Self-Surveillance: the (Gendered) Horrors of the Closed Circuit
11:55–12:15 Deborah Toschi (Università degli Studi dell’Insubria) – CCTV and Female Performance in Surveillance Art
12:15–12:45 Q&A
12:45–14:30 Lunch Break
14:30–16:00 Keynote Address
Matana Roberts (Artist) – Resonating Histories [online]
Discussant: Maurizio Corbella (Università degli Studi di Milano)
Chair: Maria Teresa Soldani (Università degli Studi di Milano)
16:00–16:15 Coffee Break
16:15–17:45 Panel 2: Sound Archaeologies of Electronic Media
16:15–16:35 Maria Grazia Mattei (Founder and President of MEET | Digital Culture Center) – “The Roots of the New” Archive
Introduced by the Milan and Venice Research Units (Miriam De Rosa, Barbara Grespi)
16:35–16:55 Maria Teresa Soldani (Università degli Studi di Milano) – Imaginaries of Waves, Drones, and Noises in the Electronic Age
16:55–17:15 Simone Dotto (Università degli Studi di Udine) – Resounding as (Re)Presencing Radio, Wireless Imagination and the Rhetorics and Poetics of Tele-presence
17:15–17:45 Q&A
17:45–18:00 Closing Remarks
PRIN 2022 PNRR project
ARTCHAE. Rediscovering video and installation art as an archaeology of telepresence
Research Team (University of Milan)
P. I. Prof. Barbara Grespi (barbara.grespi@unimi.it)
Dr. Maria Teresa Soldani (mariateresa.soldani@unimi.it)
Rossana Galimi, PhD Candidate (rossana.galimi@unimi.it)
Research Team (Ca’ Foscari University of Venice)
Scientific Referent Prof. Miriam De Rosa (miriam.derosa@unive.it)
Lorenzo Lazzari (lorenzo.lazzari@unive.it)
Miriam Rejas Del Pino (956632@stud.unive.it)
Abstract
The research project ARTCHAE is based on the idea that video, computer, and installation arts can shed light on contemporary forms of telepresence. To this end, it will reconsider the experimental work developed within the area of electronic arts between the Sixties and the Eighties, focusing especially on CCTV video-installations, experimental television, and single-channel works. Since the beginning, these artforms have experimented with the mediated contact between people through various forms of telepresence that have been able to cross both physical and cultural boundaries. Among these telepresence forms, only a few have penetrated the media system and been decisively revived in the post-pandemic era, with the triumph of tele-conferencing and tele-meeting. These art works are particularly significant in light of the relevance gained by these processes of ‘transmission of the self’: nowadays, digital media increasingly attempt to produce a sense of presence, be it via video call services, desktop-based videoconferencing softwares, or live media forms such as virtual worlds taking place in VR and AR. Mapping out and fully understanding the potentialities of such forms of mediation is fundamental, since they now constitute the most common and spread mode of remote interaction. Therefore, they do call for an in-depth and systematic reflection. Moreover, the project also aims at questioning the dominant male-centered discourses on the artistic research on the tele-transmission of the Self. In fact, many overlooked experiments based on the relationship between the screen and the mirror, the monitoring of the Self-image, the circulation of images of bodies and faces as constructed and dolled up have been developed by female artists, whose stories and works can be productively re-examined in a logic of an inclusive society and a democratic rewriting of media and art history. Thus, the project means to investigate mostly the experiments of female pioneers of video and computer arts that used the closed-circuit – at the basis of the mediation of telepresence – not so much to reinforce forms of control and surveillance, as to question the nature of relationships at a distance mediated by images and sounds. The analyses of these seminal works will nuance our understanding of what telepresence could entail in contemporary, mediated lives.
The project is conducted in collaboration with the following media arts archives:
MEET | Digital Culture Center (https://www.meetcenter.it/en/about/)
Careof (https://careof.org/en/chi-siamo/chi-siamo)
FilmMaker Festival (https://www.filmmakerfest.com/ChiSiamo)
Invideo (https://www.mostrainvideo.com/p.aspx?t=general&mid=4&l=en)
Ondavideo (https://www.ondavideo.it)