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Silvia Forni

curator
Royal Ontario Museum
Participates in 1 Session
Silvia Forni Ph.D. is Curator of Anthropology in the ROM’s Department of World Cultures. She is the curator of the African collection, and responsible for the permanent and rotating display of African artworks in the Shreyas and Mina Ajmera Gallery of Africa, the Americas and the Asia Pacific. Together with Dominique Fonatiane and Julie Crooks she is leading the ROM’s Of Africa, a three year multiplatform project aimed at rethinking historical and contemporary representations of Africa and its diaspora within the museum. She is also Associate Professor of anthropology at the University of Toronto where she teaches Anthropology of Material Culture, Ethnography of Africa and Anthropology of Art. She has published essays in several journals including African Arts and Critical Interventions and contributed chapters to the edited volumes African Art and Agency in the Workshop (2013) and African Art, interviews, Narratives (2013). She recently edited the volume Africa In the Market with Christopher B. Steiner (ROM Publications). Currently she is working with Doran Ross working on the exhibition and book project Art, Honor and Ridicule: Asafo Flags from Southern Ghana.

Sessions in which Silvia Forni participates

Saturday 4 June, 2016

Time Zone: (GMT-05:00) Eastern Time (US & Canada)

Sessions in which Silvia Forni attends

Friday 3 June, 2016

Time Zone: (GMT-05:00) Eastern Time (US & Canada)
17:00
17:00 - 19:30 | 2 hours 30 minutes
Festive Event

Welcome addresses and cocktail, followed by the Concordia Signature Event "The Garden of the Grey Nuns". As the opening ceremony and cocktail take place in the former Grey Nuns' Motherhouse, recycled into campus residence and reading rooms by Concordia University,  delegates will also have the possibility to discover the video Three Grey Nuns (3 minutes, by Ron Rudin and Phil Lichti. Three Grey Nuns recount their memories of communal life in the Grey Nun’s Motherhouse.  Built...

19:30
19:30 - 21:00 | 1 hour 30 minutes
Research-Creation Installation or PerformancePublic event

Working with archival documents and the current-day morphology of the Grey Nuns' site, Dr Cynthia Hammond, Dr Shauna Janssen, in collaboration with Dr Jill Didur, will curate a series of installations and performances that speak directly to the rich heritage of a specific urban landscape: the gardens of the Grey Nuns' Motherhouse, now part of the Concordia University downtown campus. Visitors will have the opportunity to explore the lost working gardens of the Grey Nuns. As with other such...

Saturday 4 June, 2016

Time Zone: (GMT-05:00) Eastern Time (US & Canada)
9:00
9:00 - 10:00 | 1 hour
Public event
Simultaneous translation - Traduction simultanée

What if we changed our views on heritage? And if heritage has already changed? While, on the global scene, states maintain their leading role in the mobilization of social and territorial histories, on the local scale, regions, neighbourhoods and parishes have changed. Citizens and communities too: they latch on to heritage to express an unprecedented range of belongings that no law seems to be able to take measures to contain, often to the discontent of...

13:30
13:30 - 17:00 | 3 hours 30 minutes
Changes in Heritage (New Manifestations)Notions of HeritageMuseums
17:00
17:00 - 18:00 | 1 hour
Festive Event

This festive event will offer delegates a taste of one of the iconic dishes of Montreal, the smoked meat sandwich, imported by Jewish immigration from Eastern Europe in the early 20th century. In particular, the tasting will allow a discovery of the products of the renowned international institution Schwartz's, the Hebrew Delicatessen for which Montrealers and tourists alike are willing to wait in long line-ups. During the tasting, “Chez Schwartz,” a documentary produced by Garry B...

18:30
18:30 - 20:00 | 1 hour 30 minutes
Public event
Simultaneous translation - Traduction simultanée

Most of what we experience as heritage emerges into conscious recognition through a complex mixture of political and ideological filters, including nationalism.  In these processes, through a variety of devices (museums, scholarly research, consumer reproduction, etc.), dualistic classifications articulate a powerful hierarchy of value and significance.  In particular, the tangible-intangible pair, given legitimacy by such international bodies as UNESCO, reproduces a selective ordering of cul...

Sunday 5 June, 2016

Time Zone: (GMT-05:00) Eastern Time (US & Canada)
11:00
11:00 - 12:30 | 1 hour 30 minutes
Heritage as an Agent of Change (Epistemologies, Ontologies, Teaching)Heritage Changes the Social OrderTourism
Heritage as an agent of changeEpistemologiesOntologiesTeaching

With regard to the main question of the 3rd ACHS Biennial Conference, "What does heritage change?" the convenors of this session propose ethnographic evidence of contradictory spheres of value by showing how encounters between official rhetorics of heritage and borderline/illegal ethics and objects produce social change. In particular, they explore, through an inclusive approach, the social and political constructions of heritage by questioning the aesthetic dichotomies of beauty/ugliness, pr...