Hauntings and Traces: A Digital Symposium

Refract invites viewers to a digital symposium addressing topics such as memory, technology and site-specificity, genealogy and familial relationships, and interventions in the interdisciplinary field of visual studies. Recordings from the Feb 23–26 symposium are now available for on-demand viewing.

Refract is an online journal founded and operated by graduate students and dedicated to conversations about visual culture, non-canonical methodologies, and divergent histories. The symposium coincides with Refract's recent publication of "Volume 3: Hauntings and Tracings." 

Volume 3: Hauntings and Tracings investigates the power dynamics of (in)visibility through “haunting” and the “trace.” A form of way-making, the trace offers itself as an object, subject, and action, as both a remnant and a becoming. Haunting similarly defies legibility in that it occupies a discomforting space between something/somebody and nothing/nobody–not simply a vestige of previous realities but an active force that unsettles life-and-death worlds.

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FREE and open to the public
Available here on demand through Nov 30, 2021
Videos include sign language interpretation and closed captioning