Thu 30 Jan
|Zoom
JOSÉ MAÇÃS DE CARVALHO // Places of the Archive
This webinar examines the archive as both a physical and institutional space, emphasizing its connection to memory and spatial constructs. It explores its relationship with memory and cultural production through theoretical insights and artistic works by the speaker’s own practice. [more info]
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30 Jan 2025, 18:30 – 19:30 WET
Zoom
About this session
OPENING SESSION
PLACES OF THE ARCHIVE
JOSÉ MAÇÃS DE CARVALHO
This webinar explores the archive as both a physical and institutional space, drawing on Jacques Derrida's concept of the archive's ‘archontic dimension’. It examines how archives, beyond their role in preservation, are deeply intertwined with memory and spatial constructs. Through the works of Gerhard Richter, Andy Warhol, and my own artistic practice —including the films Never Tell a Secret (2004), a proto-archival exploration, and Archive e Domicile (2014), which uses the figure of Bartleby to embody the archive’s obsessive and paradoxical nature— this talk reflects on how the physical and symbolic spaces of the archive shape processes of memory, interpretation, and cultural production.
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José Maçãs de Carvalho, artist, curator and professor, born in Anadia, Portugal, in 1960.
After obtaining a first degree in Modern Languages and Literature (Coimbra University, Portugal), he completed a postgraduate course in Management of the Arts (Institute of European Studies in Macau, 1998) in Macau where he taught and lived from 1994 to 1999. He obtained a Phd in Contemporary Art at Colégio das Artes, University of Coimbra, Portugal, in 2014.
He teaches at the University of Coimbra, in the Architecture Department and Colégio das Artes where he is the Supervisor of the Master degree in Curatorship. CEIS20 researcher and Consultant of the Portuguese Network of Contemporary Art for the Ministry of Culture. Since 2020 he is the curator of the Coimbra Contemporary Art Center. He was both curator and participant in the exhibition My own private pictures (Plataforma Revólver, LisbonPhoto Biennial, 2005), which lay at the origin of his nomination for the BES Photo Prize in 2005 (most important prize for photography in Portugal).In 2008 was shortlisted for the Pictet Prix (Suisse Bank Award for Photography). He´s been showing photography since the early 90s and video since the 2000s. In 2016 the book “Archive and Apparatus” was published by Centro de Arte de S. J. da Madeira and in 2017 also the book “Archive and Interval”, by Stolen Books/Colégio das Artes-Universidade de Coimbra and MAAT Museum, with contributions by Pedro Pousada, José Bragança de Miranda, Adelaide Ginga and Ana Rito.
Gallery representation: Carlos Carvalho Gallery, Lisbon.