AFTER HOPE SYMPOSIUM - Hope Revisited panel discussion
Asian Art Museum
San Francisco, USA | 5 November 2021
Moderated by Tiffany Chung, with speakers Ammar Azzouz (London-based Syrian architect/analyst/writer) and Valerie Plesch (Virginia-based photo journalist/documentary photographer).
Abstract
How do we remember the hope for a ruined city and a collapsed country after it has been shattered? How do we trace the streets that we once roamed on beneath heaps of rubble? What do we do when ongoing mass destruction and displacement fade away in global public consciousness together with hope? Is hope a point of convergence between individual and collective memories? How can gestures of remembrance work through and call for accountability of historical atrocities and injustices? Can remembrance lead to a course of action for better futures? Hope Revisited panel seeks to reflect on these pertinent questions and discuss different approaches in revisiting hope, aiming to shift from present pasts to present futures, to borrow the terms coined by Andreas Huyssen.[1]
[1] Huyssen, Andreas. “Present Pasts: Media, Politics, Amnesia.” Present Pasts: Urban Palimpsests and the Politics of Memory, Stanford: Stanford University Press (2003), 11-29