Academy of Traces

09.04.2024

The Academy of Traces

The Académie des Traces is a training course for young researchers, young museum professionals and independent curators, designed to help them better understand the major societal challenge represented by colonial collections held by museums in the West, which are inextricably linked to a plurality of memories that are always sensitive and often painful. The Académie des Traces proposes to discuss the various areas of museum work related to colonial collections: provenance research, questions of restitution, exhibition, artistic creation and mediation, as well as the politics of collection and archive genesis. The aim is not only to understand how museums work, but also to question and challenge the complex, multi-dimensional way in which colonial collections are handled, and, thanks to the knowledge acquired, to develop new ways of handling them, thereby helping to change them and build the practices of tomorrow. This study day is dedicated to de/colonial heritage in museums, in close collaboration with the Art History Department of the Académie de France in Rome and the Museo delle Civiltà. The aim of this one-day event is to build on the work carried out by the Académie des Traces in Berlin, by opening it up to new perspectives in conjunction with Italy. The workshop will focus on four themes: restituting/repatriating, representing/exhibiting, acquiring/appropriating, imagining/performing.

Program

Program Tuesday April 9
→ Ticketing
→ It will be possible to follow the event on zoom: LINK
→ Booking allows free access to all the day’s meetings 9:30-11:00: MEETING, RESTITUTING / RAPATRIER
Traces Academy presentation:
Sam Stourdzé, Director, Académie de France à Rome
Francesca Alberti, Director of the Art History Department, Académie de France à Rome
Julie Sissia and Margareta von Oswald
Moderation: Damiana Otoiu and Franck Ogou

Francesca Alberti
Aliénor Brittmann: The restitution of cultural property in Italy: crossed legal-historical perspectives (FR)

Marian Nur Goni: ‘Do ut des’, empathy? The case of Italy in the first debate on the restitution of collections seized in a colonial context (FR)

Beatrice Falcucci: The Italian empire’s collections during the Republican era (ENG)

Francesco Lattanzi: Land of exile, land of return. Stories and interpretations of the repatriation of Ataï Kanaky New Caledonia (FR)

11:30 a.m. – 12:30 p.m.: RENCONTRE, REPRÉSENTER / EXPOSER
Moderated by Margareta von Oswald and Honoré Tchatchouang

Nicola Lo Calzo: The political legacy of Benoit le Maure, between (under)representation and reappropriation (FR)

Giovanna Leone: The CONCILIARE project: CONfidetly changing colonial heritage (FR)

Chiara Ianeselli: Beyond Words: Labels and the Power of Shaping of Narratives (ENG)

Antonia Schmidt: Own history: Confronting and transforming the colonial legacy through a regional perspective in museums in Italy and Germany (FR)

2pm-3pm: MEETING, ACQUIRE/APPROPRIATE
Moderator: Franck Pacéré

Richard Bertin Tsogang Fossi: An amulet for a giraffe, between Rome and Berlin (FR)

Sofia Bollo: The new ICOM Italy Working Group on Provenance and Decolonization (ENG)

Elisabeth Anstett: From relic to waste, and back again. About “corpses in the closet” and the storage of human remains (FR)

3:30-5pm: MEETING, IMAGINE / PERFORM
Moderated by Anna Seiderer and Espéra Donouvossi

Christine Bluard, Prisca Tankwey and Paulvi Ngimbi: Performance as critical space-time in a former colonial museum (FR)

Patrick Mudekereza Bulonza: Artistic creation as a tool for cultural mediation and resocialization (FR)

Farah Dramani Issifou: Restitute African Film Archives (ENG)

17:30-18:30: MEETING WITH PENSIONER SÉVERINE BALLON

Séverine Ballon: composer and cellist, resident at the Académie de France in Rome (FR)
Program Wednesday April 10
→ Box office
→ In French without subtitles 6 p.m.: PRESENTATION OF THE BENIN PAVILION AT THE BIENNIAL VENICE 2024

Yassine Lassissi: Director of Visual Arts, Agence de développement des arts et de la culture (ADAC), representing the organizing committee of the Benin pavilion at the Venice Biennale.

Frank Ogou: Director, Ecole du Patrimoine Africain

8:30pm-11pm: PROJECTIONS: Archives on the move : What do colonial archives represent? Conceived and presented by Anna Seiderer (Université Paris 8)
This program presents a series of films based on reassembled, diverted, displaced and performed colonial archives. It explores the experimental nature of colonial archives through the gestures that animate them and renew the address of these images from the past.

Et les chiens se taisaient (1978), Sarah Maldoror, 13min

The Master is Drowning (2012), Penny Siopis, 10min

Whisper Gatherer (2023), Anathi Conjwa, 4min

Gogo (2023), Dikeledi Modubu, 4min

Oltremare (Fascist Colonies) (2017), Loredana Bianconi, 83min
Program Thursday April 11
(Reserved for members of the Academy of Traces) → Museo delle Civiltà
→ Reserved for members of the Academy of Traces 10am-12.30pm: MEETING WITH THE MANAGERS OF THE MUSEO DELLE CIVILTÀ COLLECTIONS

Gaia Delpino: in charge of the Africa and ex-colonial museum collections

Rosa Anna di Lella: ex-colonial museum collections manager

Francesca Manuela Anzelmo: Americas collections

Vito Lattanzi: Oceania collections

10am-12.30pm: DISCUSSION WITH PENSIONERS FROM THE ACADÉMIE DE FRANCE IN ROME

Laure Cadot: heritage conservator-restorer, resident 2023-2024

Hamedine Kane: artist and director, 2023-2024 resident

Residents Laure Cadot and Hamedine Kane propose a discussion on the appropriation of the image through the example of ethnographic busts, Western objects fashioned from the effigies of the indigenous populations of colonial empires, and the carriers of an often racist anthropological discourse. How can we approach these particular artifacts today from different points of view, from research to creation, to help establish a dialogue and new narratives around these collections?

3pm-4pm: EUR QUARTER TOUR (ROME)

Stefano Chiodi: professor at Roma Tre University