Description
Adam Lockhart: Reactivating Richard Demarco’s ‘Lost’ Moving Image DocumentsThursday, September 23, 2021, 19:00
online event in English
The Institute of the Present (IP) continues the lecture series in the frame of “Uncensored Act” programme in Timișoara. The lectures in 2021 start a thread dedicated to specific challenges and conditions of research inside artists’ and institutionalised archives, to existing practices and needs of structuring and digitising contents in order for these to become available for wider research. Centred on questions around (art) historical canons, artistic production, on the transfer, reception and circulation of contents, materials and ideas in a given cultural environment and geopolitical reality, the lecture series aim at opening a discussion about the afterlife of histories and the role played by artists in reshaping our understanding of a possible future.
Reactivating Richard Demarco’s ‘Lost’ Moving Image Documents
Cultural exchanges generated by Italo-Scot art impresario and provocateur Richard Demarco within Europe since WWII have been relentless and his love for the arts has been a defining feature of his life. His dialogue with Eastern Europe during the Cold War was extremely important, and exhibitions at his eponymous gallery in Edinburgh, included “Romanian Art Today” in 1971, featuring Paul Neagu and Ovidiu Maitec, or “Atelier 72” of 42 Polish Artists the following year. He also conducted extensive art pilgrimages across Europe known as “Edinburgh Arts,” where he took an international entourage to lesser-known cultural locations across Western and Eastern Europe. Demarco understood the importance of these events and exchanges, taking a stills camera wherever he went, documenting almost everything he came across. Many of these photographs were digitised and are available online at the Demarco Digital Archive (demarco-archive.ac.uk), hosted at the University of Dundee. Further to this, Demarco also commissioned and encouraged people to record these happenings on film and video. Over time, many of these moving image documents may have been forgotten, lost, or recorded on unusual obsolete video formats. This lecture will follow the progress that has been made by researchers at Duncan of Jordanstone Art and Design, University of Dundee to uncover these works, the digitisation process and their re-activation for further research and exhibition.
| Period | 23 Sept 2021 |
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