AWG Outreach + Material Witness

Friday, 07 June 2019
at the Art Workers’ Guild
4 pm to 8 pm

The Guild is hosting the closing event for this years Material Witness - an interdisciplinary training programme for the interrogation of physical objects in the digital age.

The prevalence of digital images both online and in exhibition and museum spaces has resulted in the dematerialised object becoming increasingly ubiquitous. Interest in physical artefacts has intensified as a result, both within the academy and across the public sphere. Material Witness acknowledges the centrality of objects across the humanities and offers innovative and cutting-edge training to emerging scholars in a broad range of theoretical and practical methods for interpreting physical objects. A central theme of Material Witness is the mutually enriching relationship between the digital artefact and the ‘real thing’. Material Witness will provide training for PhD students in techniques and methods for examining the material world. It aims to encourage researchers who come from different disciplines and backgrounds and who study diverse time periods, pre-modern and modern, to share ideas about the relationships between materials and meaning. The programme also promotes collaboration across (and beyond) the spectrum of humanities disciplines through the study of materiality.

The programme takes the form of day-long events that take place during the Spring and Summer terms, with the concluding event at the Art Workers’ Guild designed to showcase skills learnt during the programme. The evening will include key-note speakers followed by presentations from members of the Art Workers’ Guild on their individual crafts.