"The Art of New Alternatives? Nation-Building and the Creation of a ‘New Community’ in Contemporary Sri Lankan Art”

9-11 March 2022

TU Dresden

With its long pre-colonial Sinhalese and Tamil history in addition to its unique legacy of successive colonisation by the Portuguese, the Dutch and the British, Sri Lanka can be seen as an exemplary test case for postcolonial societies and nations but also for theories and models of hybridity, syncretism, multiculturalism, community and nation-building; a model case for dealing with difference and diversity, religions and ethnicities, traditions and histories as well as ideologies and political doctrines in a highly traditional and stratified society against the backdrop of a convoluted past.

This conference sets out to ask for new, different and more creative solutions of what multiethnic and multireligious life in Sri Lanka might look like; to ask for concepts of community and nation-building, of negotiation, hybridity and ›unity-in-difference‹ which transcend political rivalries, ethnic and religious rifts as well as economic dependencies; and to offer alternatives to the present (and historical) deadlock.

For these reasons, the conference adopts a strong cultural studies perspective which includes questions stemming from sociology, social anthropology/ethnography, postcolonial theory and the philosophy of community. By understanding culture “as a terrain of struggle wherein the political fabrication of territories and the articulation of collective life are contested and negotiated” (B. Korf), the conceptual frame of the conference seeks to transcend the narrow limits of the political and sociological sphere through a strong focus on Sri Lanka’s rich contemporary art scene, i.e. on literature, theatre, and performing and visual arts, where a considerable amount of new and alternative knowledge/savoir littéraire (R. Barthes) has come into being since the end of the civil war, none of which has been critically explored yet.

Further information and registration: Newsbeitrag: Einladung Internationale Konferenz _ Horlacher

Information about the reading with video screening "Art and the Trauma of War" on March 10, 2022 at 7:30 pm hybrid in Klemperer Hall can be found here: Reading "Art and the Trauma of War"