Experimental Archives Conference
Kingston Upon Thames, UK
Organization: Kingston University, Uk
Kingston School of Art, Kingston University, September 11th and 12th September, 2025
For more than a decade now researchers and practitioners of all kinds have been turning to the Archive itself as a source of investigation, asking questions like what sort of a space is it? How can it be redefined? How has its meaning, role and purpose changed? How can power within the archive be decentred and destabilised? Can we now speak of ‘post-digital’ archives focused on sensorial, tactile and direct contacts? Archives can be transitory and fragmentary or even imaginary entities, carried around by artists or writers or creators in suitcases or bags or on phones, as well as accumulated collections of working materials that require an archival ‘space’. In the contemporary moment, the status of archives now needs to be investigated and reinvented.
We take the term “Experimental archives” in its broadest sense, whether this be using the archive for experimental research and creative practice, investigating experimental subjects and archival practices, or experimenting with the term “archive” itself. Following on from the success of last year’s internal one day “Experimental Archives Symposium”, this year The Visual and Material Culture Research Centre in Kingston School of Art, KSA, Kingston University (UK) will be holding a two day interdisciplinary conference (11th-12th September 2025) and we invite researchers and practitioners engaged with archives from across the UK and across the globe to present their ongoing archive based work and projects (or archive based papers emerging from these projects) as 15 minute presentations in any format.
We particularly invite emerging and early career researchers to submit their work, as well as researchers working within such fields as media and cultural studies, fine arts, media archaeology and psychogeographical studies, film history and film making, theatre, comics, adaptations and author studies, and of course archive studies itself (although we are certainly not limited to these categories and encourage work from across a range of disciplines).
Please note we will have room for a very limited number of pre-recorded papers if you are unable to attend in person.
Please send abstracts of 100-250 words to both Stephen.Barber@Kingston.ac.uk and M.Melia@Kingston.ac.uk July 15th at the latest
Visual and Material Culture Research Centre/Directors: Prof. Fran Lloyd and Prof. Stephen Barber
Matthew John Melia
