*An inquiry into virtual art / institutions and communities*

Submission form: https://forms.gle/Y9SKgiKg6u2Wzm1L6

The global pandemic has laid bare the technological crossroads where cultural institutions find themselves in the early 21st century. By promoting a superabundance of ‘content’ and multiplying the transversality of connections, digital networks have increasingly undermined the authority of museums as sites for memory preservation, collection stewardship, and discourse reproduction. All the while, new media systems keep promising to expand the museal apparatus and radically transform the ways in which art institutions can perform their mandates and operate within society.

Has the modern project of the museum finally come to its terms? Can future forms of socio-cultural institutionality be found among online databases, simulated environments, social media communities, smart contracts, and other computer platforms?

These questions invite us to reclaim notions of virtuality from the technopositivist buzz and revisit the long history of relationships between museums and media. In the spirit of critical and social museology – and particularly interested in non-Western perspectives –, the Museums Without Walls conference seeks to open a space for the discussion and exercise of new configurations for art and cultural institutions.

We are looking for proposals of papers, talks, workshops, publications, exhibitions, websites, movies, and other artforms.

The Museums Without Walls conference takes place at Queen’s University, Ontario, between August 15-17. The conference will intersect with the Summer Institute: The Curatorial, organized by the Agnes Etherington Art Centre and Queen’s Screen Cultures and Curatorial Studies program. A number of online activities will precede and follow the event. For more information, visit museusemparedes.com/en or email museusemparedes@gmail.com.