Archival Fever in the Exhibition: Critical Intertextualities, Politics and Display Practices from the Cold War to Global Contemporaneity
December 4-5, 2025
Les Abattoirs / Bibliothèque d’Études Méridionales
This symposium proposes to examine the intrinsic relationship between exhibitions and archives from a multiplicity of analytical perspectives. Firstly, it seeks to reflect on both as interdependent structures engaged in an ongoing dialogue, entities that not only shape the exhibitions history but also transform one another over time. Simultaneously, the symposium aims to explore the multiple layers (artistic, cultural, social, historical, political and economic) that constitute an exhibition and wants to investigate how these layers intertwine and become visible through archival documentation. In the same vein, it seeks to investigate how the study of exhibitions through and alongside archives not only enriches their understanding but also triggers a continuous mobilization of meanings, capable of fostering critical processes of (de)construction and historiographical (re)writing. Finally, this symposium invites to consider how exhibitions not only display archives but also reactivate and even re-signify them as well as project them toward novel forms of memory, history and future, while at the same time the display is a central element in this operation.
Poster ProgramAuditorium Les Abattoirs
11.30-11.45 Welcome and Introduction: Paula Barreiro López (Université Toulouse II Jean Jaurès) and Anita Orzes (Université Toulouse II Jean Jaurès)
11.45-13.15 Archive Troubles : Rethinking documenta
Chair: Paula Barreiro López (Université Toulouse II Jean Jaurès)
Vinicius Spricigo (Universidade Federal de São Paulo), Archive documenta / translate the archive : a research on misunderstandings
Felix Vogel (University of Kassel / documenta Institute), Why we need to “study boring things”: A report from the archive of documenta
13.15-14.45 Lunch
14.45-16.30 L’archive en action : pratiques curatoriales et expérimentations exposées
Chair: Julie Martin (Université Toulouse II Jean Jaurès)
Pierre Ruault (Université Rennes 2), Le Total Konst de Pontus Hultén (1958-1959) : archéologie archivistique d’une exposition collaborative européenne inachevée
Jean-Marc Avrilla (Université Bordeaux-Montaigne), Sculpture/Nature, une exposition fantôme du capc, un manifeste pour un autre récit historiographique
Irene Calvi (Università di Bologna), The Archive as Agent: redefining fashion exhibition research practices
17.30-20.30 Seminar at La Lanterne (for speakers only)
Nathalie Boulouch (Université Rennes 2), L’exposition saisie par les archives visuelles
Bibliothèque d’Études Méridionales
9.30-11.00 The Archive on Stage: Exhibiting Histories, Performing Knowledge
Chair: Nathalie Boulouch (Université Rennes 2)
Olga Fernández López (Universidad Autónoma de Madrid), Staging the Exhibition : Archives and Spectatorship
Elitza Dulguerova (Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne), « A space for something else » : from the archive to the exhibition, back and forth
11.00–11.15 Break
11.15-13.00 Archives en mouvement : réseaux transnationaux et mémoires partagées dans l’espace de l’exposition
Chair: Evelyne Toussaint (Université Toulouse II Jean Jaurès)
Noa Buffavand (Université Toulouse II – Jean Jaurès), Le Taller de Gráfica Popular de Mexico s’expose en Europe (1947-1957) : un réseau informel et des archives dispersées
Julia Hancart (Université Paris Nanterre), Exposer la photographie depuis l’Afrique. Une histoire de collectifs, entre archives écrites et mémoires orales
Youri Hammache-Sigour (Université Paris Nanterre/ Università di Roma La Sapienza), Faire (re-)vivre l’esprit du Panaf : réflexion sur la pratique archivistique de quelques artistes et de leur rôle dans la transmission mémorielle du Premier Festival culturel Panafricain d’Alger de 1969
13.00-14.30 Lunch
14.30 – 16.15 Défis critiques et historiographiques : artistes, display et archive
Chair: Anita Orzes (Université Toulouse II Jean Jaurès)
Thomas Laval (Université de Lille), Activer l’archive dormante : le display comme outil critique et écosocial chez Maria Thereza Alves
Anaïs Clara (Université Toulouse II Jean Jaurès), La fiction comme trame : tisser l’histoire et les futurs, construire des mémoires partagées. L’archive dans l’oeuvre de Jacqueline Hoàng Nguyễn
Ginevra Ludovici (IMT School for Advanced Studies Lucca), A Difficult Heritage: Family Archives and Colonial Memory in Laura Fiorio’s Work
16.15 – 16.30 Closing remarks
Organization
This symposium is organized within the framework of the project Esthétiques tricontinentales et leurs échos dans l’Europe du Sud (Institut Universitaire de France), the international research platform Decentralized Modernities and the Atelier “Images du Commun” of the Laboratoire FRAMESPA of the Université Toulouse II – Jean Jaurès, with the support of artistic residency center La Lanterne and the Master Recherche Histoire de l’Art Moderne et Contemporain du Département d’Histoie de l’Art et Archéologie.
Direction: Paula Barreiro López (Université Toulouse II – Jean Jaurès) and Anita Orzes (Université Toulouse II – Jean Jaurès)
Coordination: Noa Buffavand (Université Toulouse II – Jean Jaurès)
Image: View of the exhibition Le muse inquiete. La Biennale di Venezia di fronte alla storia , 2020.
