The Art of New Alternatives
Table of contents
Conference Programme
This conference will be held in a hybrid format.
For those who wish to take part in the conference or follow individual panels, either in person or digitally, please register in advance via e-mail: Registration Art Of New Alternatives
The conference programme can be found here and below.
A reader for the conference, including all abstracts, can be downloaded here.
This conference features a public reading/film screening with three award winning authors, journalists and film-makers, Minoli Salgado, Samanth Subramanian and Visakesa Chandrasekaram, who will present excerpts from their work.
A link to the public reading can be found here. We ask those who would like to take part in the public reading to register in advance via e-mail: Registration Public Reading
WEDNESDAY [March, 9th]
| – | WELCOME AND INTRODUCTION |
| 14:30 | Welcome Address Roswitha Böhm (Vice-Rector University Culture) |
| The Background: Inventory and Analysis of the Current Situation in Sri Lanka Holger Seubert (German Ambassador to Sri Lanka and the Maldives) |
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The Art of New Alternatives? Nation-Building and the Creation of a ›New Community‹ in Contemporary Sri Lankan Art Stefan Horlacher (TU Dresden) Birte Heidemann-Malreddy (TU Dresden) |
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PANEL I |
TERRITORY, IDENTITY, COMMUNITY AND TRANSITIONAL JUSTICE IN POST-WAR SRI LANKA |
| 15:15 | Territorial Anxieties: Identity Politics and the Antinomies of Community in Sri Lanka Benedikt Korf (University of Zurich) |
| Making ›Us‹ from ›Them‹: Identity Politics in the Peripheries Thamali Kithsiri (University of Peradeniya) |
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| 17:00 | Affective Justice for an Ineffective Transition? The Arts and Transitional/Transformative Justice in Post-War Sri Lanka Lars Waldorf (University of Essex) |
| 17:00 | Conference Warming |
| 19:30 | Conference Dinner |
THURSDAY [March, 10th]
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MEMORY, ARCHIVE AND COMMUNITY IN |
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| 09:30 | Space and Emotions, Remembering Traumas: The Politics of Post-War Sri Lankan Visual Arts Priyantha Udagedara (University of the Visual and Performing Arts, Colombo) |
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| Traitors and the Art of Self-Censoring Thamotharampillai Shanaathanan (University of Jaffna) |
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Remembering Eelam: Materiality and Memory at the ›Tamils of Lanka: A Timeless Heritage‹ Exhibition (London 2019) Rachel Seoighe (University of Kent, Canterbury) |
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| 11:00 | Coffee Break | |
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PANEL III |
PEACE, CONFLICT AND COMMUNITY IN POST-WAR SRI LANKAN FILM |
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| 11:30 | A Crisis of Nationhood: Post-War Sri Lankan Cinema and the Revisiting of History Neluka Silva (University of Colombo) |
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| Documenting Dissonance: Revisiting Sri Lankan Conflict Narratives through Jude Ratnam’s Demons in Paradise Nilanjana Premaratna (University of Newcastle) |
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| 13:00 | The Bee and the Butterfly: Metamorphosis of the Queer Protagonist in Sri Lankan Cinema and Politics Visakesa Chandrasekaram (University of Colombo) |
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| 13:00 | Lunch Break | |
| PANEL IV | AUTHENTICITY, TRUTH AND WITNESSING IN POST-WAR FICTION AND NON-FICTION | |
| 14:00 | Recording Post-War Sri Lanka: Ethnographic and Narrative Perspectives Samanth Subramanian (Cambridge, UK) |
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| Sri Lankan Witness Literature: Writing Truth and Truthiness Minoli Salgado (Manchester Metropolitan University) |
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| 15:30 | Writing in the Shadow of Authenticity: Sri Lankan Writing in English and Discourses of Authenticity Harshana Rambukwella (Open University of Sri Lanka, Nugegoda) |
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| 15:30 | Coffee Break | |
| PANEL V | ENACTING COMMUNITY IN PUBLIC AND PRIVATE SPACES | |
| 16:00 |
The Enactment of Community in Sri Lankan Artistic Practice: |
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| 17:00 | The Community Will Hate You: War, Violent Families, and the Visceral Queer Diasporic Sri Lankan Tamil Body in A Marriage of a Thousand Lies Shermal Wijewardene (University of Colombo) |
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| 19:30 | PUBLIC READING: Art and the Trauma of War Minoli Salgado | Samanth Subramanian |Visakesa Chandrasekaram at The Saxon State and University Library Dresden |
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FRIDAY [March, 11th]
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CONNECTING (ACROSS) COMMUNITIES IN SRI LANKAN ANGLOPHONE LITERATURE |
| 09:30 | Imagining Peace and Community in Selected Contemporary Sri Lankan Fictional Texts Ruvani Ranasinha (King’s College, London) |
| Diasporic Fractures and Community-Making in Channa Wickremesekera’s Fiction Mahendran Thiruvarangan (University of Jaffna) |
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Car-Sharing and Nation-Building: Noontide Toll and the Postcolonial Chauffeur Wieland Schwanebeck (TU Dresden) |
| 11:00 | Coffee Break |
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PANEL VII |
PEACE, MORALITY AND HOPE(LESSNESS) IN SRI LANKAN ANGLOPHONE LITERATURE |
| 11:30 | Explorations of Complicit Enfoldings and (Radical) Unfoldings in Contemporary Sri Lankan Fiction Cornelia Wächter (TU Dresden) |
| »You must go on. I can’t go on. I’ll go on«: Story of a Brief Marriage and the Point Zero of Signification Stefan Horlacher (TU Dresden) Thilini Meegaswatta (TU Dresden) |
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| 13:15 | The Ontologies of Morality in Anuk Arudpragasam’s A Passage North Neloufer de Mel (University of Colombo) |
| 13:15 | Lunch Break & Farewell |