About

'I lost a few goddesses while moving south to north,
and also some gods while moving east to west.  
I let several stars go out for good, they cannot be traced.  
An island or two sank on me, they're lost at sea.  
I'm not even sure exactly where I left my claws,  
who's got my fur coat, who's living in my shell.  
My siblings died the day I left for dry land  
and only one small bone recalls that anniversary in me.  
I've shed my skin, squandered vertebrae and legs,  
taken leave of my senses time and again.  
I've long since closed my third eye to all that,  
washed my fins of it and shrugged my branches.  

Gone, lost, scattered to the four winds. It still surprises me  
how little now remains, one first person sing, temporarily  
declined in human form, just now making such a fuss  
about a blue umbrella left yesterday on a bus.' 

Wisława Szymborska A Speech at the Lost-And-Found (1972) 
(from Wisława Szymborska Poems New and Collected (1998) trans. Stanisław Barańczak and Clare Cavanagh, Harcourt Brace International)​

The International Symposium ​
​The lost-and-found: revising art stories in search of potential changes ​is a series of three events in three locations: 
​Lisbon, Warsaw, Riga.

The first event was hosted by
the Art History Institute at the Universidade NOVA de Lisboa, Portugal, 
December 6-7, 2023.

The second event was hosted by
 the Art History Institute at the University of Wroclaw & Polish Institute of Wirld Art Studies in Warsaw, Poland,
March 21-23, 2024.

The third event takes place
in Riga, Latvia
June 6-7, 2024
​Funded by the Ministry of Culture, Republic of Latvia, project Cultural and creative ecosystem of Latvia as a resource for resilience and sustainability / CERS, project No. VPP-MM-LKRVA-2023/1-0001

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Losing things, or realising their lack, usually causes a feeling of deep disorientation, distress,
helplessness or anger. These feelings are felt across the loss of objects, identities, ideas, sense,
language, bonds, and power. Similar emotions are revealed through the verses of A Speech at the
Lost-And-Found (1972) by 1996 Literature Nobel Lauriat, Wisława Szymborska. The Polish poet
grieves for the loss of community with/in the world. When disrupted and confused worldly
relationships accompany (mis)understandings of works of art as treasures, carefully evaluated and
classified by experts but isolated from everyday life. Perhaps this moment of loss and confusion
offers us a chance to uncover a new art-storical paradigm that focuses on building intra-relational
ecologies founded on care, attentiveness and respect. We are hopeful that losing that to which we
have become accustomed may allow us attend to abandoned possibilities and missed chances, and
enable us to unlearn hierarchical and violent ways of building knowledge, including art as a vehicle of
sustaining power structures. 
 
In this symposium, we propose to critically engage with the noticeable shift in understanding the
paradigm of art. This departs from ‘interpreting’ and ‘decoding’, towards a physical, affective and
material experiencing within diverse contexts and communities.  

Objects approached from a new contemporary perspective may be revealed as lost, but at the same
time, also (re)found, allowing for the negotiation potentials of their uses, understandings and
performativity. Attending to relations and things that were once discarded as unworthy enables us to
unlearn, and re-define existing concepts of identity relationships (gender, class, ethnic, spiritual,
familial) and unearth forgotten rituals, languages and stories (her-stories, it-stories, their-stories). We
question the circumstances and contexts, and the presence and performativity of objects (considered
as having artistic qualities) within spaces to reveal neglected, disregarded, ignored or lost
potentials.   
 
Szymborska’s poem encourages us to leave the itineraries to which we have become accustomed
and to distance ourselves from a priori discourses - technocratic thinking and bureaucratic controls -
that have maintained accepted patterns of power and control. We are not interested in ‘speak back’
narratives, instead everything that has been found or recovered has been subjected to
transformations, hybridisations, mutations and disintegration. 
  
Imagined as a series of three events in three locations in order to emphasise the importance of local
socio-cultural and political contexts, we consider the practical and beneficial role of art objects and
the space(s) they create for and towards their users.  The arts’ ability to provoke curiosity, wonder,
joy and pleasure activates attentiveness, respect and gratitude. We explore the diverse and varied
existences of art objects, their manifestations and status, and interrogate the space of art and the
materiality it offers with regard to its potential to foster and support empathy, responsibility and
response-ability towards others and care for and about a better communal life.   
 
The discussions and dialogues during the events are intended to be attentive to the connections and
relations constituted through and alongside art but also of those marginalised and/or peripheral
subjects, including the non-human. 
Each location navigates the constellation of issues explored through interventions that challenge
traditional conference or symposium formats.
Within the above framework concerning a paradigm shift, in Lisbon we focus on artistic, curatorial,
institutional, academic practices and artistic research that engage with art objects, art works,
collectives and exhibitions that respond to the following thematic constellations based on
Szymborska’s poem:  
 
1st thematic constellation: STARS and GODDESSES
● Alternative ways of thinking and building knowledge (including, but
not limited to assemblage and/ or tentacular thinking; practices of unlearning
and undoing; epistemologies of ignorance, creative unknowing, building
knowledges anew; non-anthroponormative languages and non-human
approaches; decentering his-storical framings towards her-stories, it-stories,
their-stories and other-stories; 
● The role of spirituality and faiths in the context of decolonisation and
endogenic concepts of progression (change); 
● The role of materiality and corporeality in imagining new
methodologies.

2nd thematic constellation: SIBLINGS
● Alliances, affiliations and relations with and between humans,
non-humans and other-than-humans; objects and spaces (actual, historical and
virtual/digital); and the potential to challenge outdated and
outworn stories and meanings, post-secural approaches;
● Innovative and latent environments for art circulation,
reception and participation by audiences, for example,
women's collectives, artist cooperatives, self-organisation, nunneries;
● The role of the arts in fostering potential (new) audiences,
ancestral connections, alternative understanding of the commons,
and enabling relations between humans, animals, plants and the passed away.

​3rd thematic constellation: CLAWS, FUR and SHELL
● The role of materiality in creating, performing and using (safe,
​ hospitable and shared) refugia;
● The agency of matter in building inclusive and holistic relations;
● The ability of matter to act sensorially, affectively,
the safe revealing of vulnerability;
● Textures and textiles, weaving communities and enabling novel and
alternative ways of seeing and imagining in sensitive responses to
current urgencies and crises.
​  

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Organization:

​Partners:

         IHA is funded by national funds through FCT – Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, I.P., under the projects UIDB/00417/2020 and UIDP/00417/2020.