Since the 1990s, re-enactment has emerged as a key issue in the field of artistic production, in theoretical discourse, and in the socio-political sphere. Current re-enactments question the ability of the present to unpack, embody, and disentangle the past. Thus, to re-enact is to experience the past by reactivating either a particular cultural heritage or unexplored utopias. To re-enact means not to restore but to challenge the past – to not merely repeat it, but to interpret and translate it – in the present and for the present – or for the future.  History thereby enters a special temporal dimension, that of a possible and perpetual becoming, opening a space for invention and renewal.

The symposium investigates the issue of re-enactment through a discussion at once conceptual and practical. How, and to what extent, does recent history engage in a creative dialogue with a more distant past supposedly reactualized through re-enactment? This process of creative repetition branches out into at least three directions: (1) the return/survival of the past understood as generating meaning and values for both present and potential future/s, in terms of what one could call a symbolic archaeology; (2) an epistemological-axiological challenge to the traditional dichotomy between true and false, original and copy; and (3) a performative bodily practice that physically re-stages events.

Methodologically, the notion of re-enactment will be approached from three directions: the archive, the arts, and curatorial practice.

In English
Organized by

Cristina Baldacci, Clio Nicastro, and Arianna Sforzini

The event, like all events at the ICI Berlin, is open to the public, free of charge. The audience is presumed to consent to a possible recording on the part of the ICI Berlin. If you would like to attend the event yet might require assistance, please contact Event Management.

Unfortunately the whole panel III had to be cancelled.

KV over and over again