The call for papers for the Reactivating Archives in Contemporary Art international conference, taking place at NOVA FCSH, Av. de Berna, Lisbon, Portugal, on October 2^nd and 3^rd, 2025, is open. Until March 31^st, researchers and cultural practitioners are invited to submit academic papers and creative contributions (i.e., visual essays, interactive workshops) for presentation at the two-day, in-person conference, supported by the Leverhulme Trust and FCT – Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia.

Organised by IHA – NOVA FCSH / IN2PAST researchers Amanda Tavares and Tainan Barbosa, the conference aims to explore the articulation of archives in contemporary art and it will also include a cultural programme to foster debates around the role of archives in building the present and the future.

CALL FOR PAPERS

Since the late 1990s, the archive has paradoxically become both a buzzword and an integral part of the vocabularies of academia and contemporary art (Callahan, 2022). Scholars, art critics, artists and museums have increasingly addressed the production, articulation, curation and destruction of archival material to discuss matters of presence and visibility, which can also be situated in a wider problematization of the relationship between art and documentation (Groys, 2008). Debates on the archive as a structure, a technology and an institution have also taken centre stage: through its processes of montage, deconstruction and ‘reassemblage’, archival-based art has challenged ‘official’ histories and exposed the power relations that permeate our visual repertoires.

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Read the full call and submission guidelines here.