Mapping Spectral Traces: October 12th – October 15th 2010

Tuesday, October 12, 2010

How might we listen to and recognize stories, remnants, and submerged ways of knowing as unresolved
remainders of memory? What might mappings that are sensitive to past injustices look, sound, and feel like?
Might there be approaches to environment that treat ground as home and resting place, as thresholds
through which the living can make contact with those who have gone before?

Mapping Spectral Traces is an international and interdisciplinary Virginia Tech Visiting Artist and
Humanities Symposium that considers how difficult pasts can be researched, documented, represented, and
animated in responsible and ethical ways.

Mapping Spectral Traces will initiate the development of an international network between partner
institutions that seek to promote respectful ways of knowing, acknowledging, representing, and mapping
spectral traces through various media, creative and community-based projects, and publications. The
various media used in this symposium include digital photography, printmaking, painting, performance,
installation, video, sculpture, and collaborative qualitative research. Creative practices that empower
communities and various publics to care for and represent their pasts will be particularly relevant for K-12
educators and professionals working in the arts, urban design and policy at the neighborhood scale.

Mapping Spectral Traces:
October 12th – October 15th 2010

Day 1, Oct 12/Tuesday, 4-6pm: Armory Gallery: Symposium and exhibition launch.

Day 2, Oct 13/Wednesday, 8:45-11:30am: Odd Fellows Hall: Poster & Workshop presentations; 5:30-7pm: Hillcrest Dining Hall, Keynote Lecture.

Day 3, Oct 14/Thursday, 9am-12:30pm: Experiential Gallery, Kent Square: Workshop presentations; 5-7pm: Exhibition launch.

Day 4, Oct 15/Friday, 9:30am-2pm: Hotel Dumas, Henry Street, Roanoke: Excursion and Forum; 2:30-4pm: Workshop presentations.
 

Please visit us on the web for more details:
www.research.spia.vt.edu/events/spectral-traces

Click here to download the posters:
www.sova.vt.edu/files/MSTFinalPoster.pdf

Sponsors: Virginia Tech’s: School of Visual Arts Visiting Artists Series; College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences;
College of Architecture and Urban Affairs; Center for the Arts; Institute for Society, Culture and Environment;
School of Public and International Affairs; Armory Gallery; Experiential Gallery; Alliance for Social, Political,
Ethical, and Cultural Thought; Vice President’s Office of Outreach and International Affairs; Women and Minority
Artists and Scholars Lecture Series; Urban Affairs and Planning; Institute for Policy and Governance; Department of
Landscape Architecture; and University Honors. Additional sponsors include: the PLaCE Research Centre,
University of the West of England, Bristol; Land2; University of Leeds, School of Design; University of Dundee,
Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design; the University of Minnesota; Town of Blacksburg Museums; and
the Christiansburg Institute.