videoarcheology - sofia - nov. 13-17

[Claudia Westermann]

VIDEOARCHAEOLOGY 2001
ARCHAEOLOGY OF DESIRE
Sofia, 13 – 17 November 2001
http://va.cult.bg/

	   In our contemporary world, questions of self-identity stand out as 
necessary components of our
              socio-psychological, physical, and virtual modes of being. We 
often find ourselves performing
              archaeologies of our own persona, trying to uncover from 
oblivion fragments and principles of
              personal and collective existence, to sense them, and 
finally, to assimilate them as indivisible
              parts of ourselves. Paradoxically, in the desire to 
conceptualize our own selves within the
              matrix of the global, we depend more and more often on the 
primary sensuality of the body, its
              semantics and projections. After all, what cannot be 
explained can be felt.

              The emergence of the discourse of sexuality within the public 
sphere over the course of the
              twentieth century has drastically reconfigured power 
relationships both at the level of the body
              politics and the interpersonal. The field of “the sexual” has 
come to serve as a locus for
              divergent energies, which in the process of their unfolding, 
continue to shed new light on
              human existence.

              Videoarchaeology 2001 does not aim to confine its 
“archaeological” research to gender
              theory. In various ways, psychoanalysis, philosophy and 
sociology have already claimed the
              right to theorize gender relations and sexuality. In 2001, 
video-archaeologists will present their
              explorations of the hidden and evident strata of sexuality. 
“The obscure object[s] of desire” will
              become subjects of video and multimedia interpretation. We 
will interpret visually the sensation
              of the body—its manifestations and frustrations, its 
fantasies and fears, its delight and pain,
              and will gamble with borders of the forbidden and the 
allowed. Of course the boundary remains
              an inevitable element of gender discourse, but proves to 
always fluctuate in different cultural
              environments. How is it played out within another framework: 
the one of global social relations?

              How could a global society manage to globalize the intimate 
and the subconscious and create
              new sensibilities?

curators: boris kostadinov/bg and zhivka valiavicharska/bg/us
guest curators: ilina koralova/bg, arthur fournier/us, walter seidl/at, 
iliyana nedkova/bg/uk/