Day 1: Thursday, 28 September 2006

Session 1: Narrating Heritage

Cultural Heritage means that an object from the past is kept in the public domain – but what is kept and which meanings are given are decisions made in the present, not in the past. The starting session considers the topic from a general and theoretical point of view: How is it possible to go from pure conservation to the preservation of (different) stories behind the object? How is it possible to connect the memory of the past to the present? How does the provenance of an object influence its use and its significance for individuals and groups referring to it today? And how do phenomena like globalization and international migration influence our notion of Cultural Heritage?

Session Chair Homi Bhabha, Anne F. Rothenberg Professor of the Humanities, Harvard University
Keynote Lecture 40 min Homi Bhabha
Lecture 20 min Heidemarie Uhl, Collaborator at the Commission for Culture Studies and History of Theatre, Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna
Lecture 20 min Peter Weibel, Director of ZKM (Center for Art and Media) Karlsruhe
Panel Discussion 60 min

Session 2: The Museum as a Site of Narration

The Museums topic ranges from new orientations and functions of museums to contemporary models of participation in museums: What are museums doing to find out about the stories related to their objects and to preserve these? How are these stories presented to the visitor? Which story depicts the museum itself as a place of remembrance? And how do those visiting a museum influence the stories told there? Do objects get animated or die in museums? And is the death of an object and its stories a precondition for its inheritance process into museums or is it the other way round?

Session Chair Claudia Haas, Lord Cultural Resources
Lecture 20 min Ulrike Vedder, Zentrum für Literatur- und Kulturforschung, Berlin
Lecture 20 min Churchill Madikida, Curator and Artist, Constitution Hill, Johannesburg
Lecture 20 min Gail Durbin, Victoria and Albert Museum, Deputy Director of Learning and Interpretation. London
Lecture 20 min HG Merz, Exhibition Architect, Stuttgart
Panel Discussion 60 min

Day 2: Friday, 29 September 2006

Session 3: The City as a Site of Narration

Contributions on Cities will stress the construction of spaces and places: How are relations between places and stories produced? What in cityscape bears what memory for which users? What kinds of stories are connected to what buildings, streets, etc.? What kind of exchanges do exist between these different stories/interpretations? Which groups and cultures are able to contribute to the stories told in cityscapes, and what are their influences? How do historic buildings interact with recent narrations, and what is their significance for today? How are communities displaced and reconstituted in relation to changes in the urban landscape of contemporary cities? What roles do migration processes play in those changes?

Session Chair Robert Temel, Austrian Society for Architecture, Vienna
Lecture 20 min Felipe Hernández, Lecturer in Architectural Design, History and Theory, University of Liverpool
Lecture 20 min Margaret Crawford, Professor of Urban Design and Planning Theory, Harvard Graduate School of Design
Lecture 20 min Rahul Mehrotra, Associate Professor of Architecture, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
Panel Discussion 60 min

Session 4: Continuing Narration

The final session will consist of presentations reporting from the other three sessions, relating them to the experience of the speakers and will aim to produce a conclusion oriented towards future practice in the Cultural Heritage sector. Did the lectures provide a new perspective on cultural heritage today? And did they open up new possibilities for the future?

Session Chair Michael Freund, Webster University, Vienna
Lecture 20 min Monika Sommer-Sieghart, Wien Museum, Vienna
Lecture 20 min Adelheid Pichler, Vienna
Lecture 20 min Elke Krasny, Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna
Panel Discussion 60 min