CALL FOR PAPERS – HyMEx 2021 Hybrid Museum Experience Symposium

CALL FOR PAPERS

HyMEx
Hybrid Museum Experience Symposium
Ludwig Museum – Museum of Contemporary Art

May 6-7, 2021 // Budapest (Hungary)
hymex2021.ludwigmuseum.hu

HyMEx – GENERAL INFORMATION

Ludwig Museum – Museum of Contemporary Art (Budapest) organizes on May 6-7, 2021 the HyMEx // Hybrid Museum Experience Symposium: Ludwig Museum aims to bring together leading researchers, scholars in digital and experimental museology, collection care, curatorial practice, art mediation, as well as researchers from a broad spectrum of disciplines to exchange views on challenging situations and latest innovations in the field of hybrid museum experiences, with a focus on contemporary art.

The two-day symposium (planned for the moment as a hybrid event) comes to life within an international, collaborative, practice-based research project, Beyond Matter, that takes cultural heritage and contemporary art to the verge of virtual reality and reflects on the virtual condition with a specific emphasis on its spatial aspects in art production, curating, and mediation via numerous activities and formats, such as the HyMEx Symposium. Beyond Matter takes place from 2019 to 2023; it was initiated and being led by ZKM | Karlsruhe, and includes seven partners (Centre Pompidou Paris, Tallinna Kunstihoone, Aalto University, Tirana Art Lab, Weiss AG and Ludwig Museum).

The aim of HyMEx is to provide a wide platform for thought-provoking ideas concerning a topic that is essential in the everyday life of most art museums.

HyMEx – Concept

Museums as defined geographical spaces have been settled institutions since their inception. They provide a physical and theoretical location allowing assemblies and functioning as a platform for encounters between people, so as to exchange ideas and to produce knowledge.

Museums indicate, but also contribute to social change. However, in the first quarter of the 21st century, the palpable boundaries of museums seem to be blurred: Where does the museum begin since its physical demarcation lines have lost their almighty substance and since the museum experience does not begin at the entrance, nor stops at the exit?

Museums have the tendency to expand onto digital platforms and create additional content regardless of the location of the audience. The digital world increasingly dominates a museum’s reality and even before that, the audience’s reality. It intertwines the physical with the virtual, blurs the edges of sensing the dimensions that called the institution of the museum to life, such as the linearity of time. Under such circumstances, the museum shall transmogrify into a hybrid entity that may embrace at once a geographical location, various digital platforms, manifold ways of mediation, immersive knowledge production, participation and exchange.
It is one way to describe the hybrid museum experience, however the roles museums may hold within a wide spectrum of societies and the concept of the museum space approached from a perspective where virtual has a meaning beyond computer-generated technology anticipate an approach where the question is less about the technological side of the hybrid experience than the participatory side.

The symposium aims to seek interpretations of the hybrid museum experience within the contemporary art scene in the light of spatial and societal aspects, to elucidate the possibility of the deterritorialization of the museum space, or to understand the ways of constructing participative solutions through which the museum may be an active mediator towards the audience. Also, how to get hold of the ecosystems of museum experiences, or allow an insight into what immersive technologies may hold beyond the visual, personal experience per se? And as for stepping outside of its own confines: Can the hybrid museum experience help contemporary art gain more responsible functions in a societal context, further than cultural mediation?

HyMEx attempts to find pluridisciplinary perspectives that remain relevant and constitute a credible source of reference towards the artist, the artwork, the exhibition, the visitor and the museum expert.

HyMEx – Topics of interest

• Knowledge Production under Virtual Condition

• Economy of Museum Experiences

• Crises and the Hybrid Museum

• Participatory Involvement

• Deterritorialization and the Hybrid Museum

• Cognitive Processes around the Hybrid Formula

• Interface and its Dissolution

Guide for Applicants

Deadline: Monday February 22, 2021 – Midnight CET
Submission: Please fill out the application form on
hymex2021.ludwigmuseum.hu
Submission and presentation language: English

Eligibility Conditions
The Selection Committee is encouraging in the first place young emerging professionals from the museum field and beyond to apply – however there is no age limit for the application.
According to the mission of Ludwig Museum to focus on the Central and Eastern European region, applicants should be originated from (place of birth), residing on long-term in and / or having the nationality of one of the following East-Central European and South-East European countries, completed with the Baltic States: Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Moldova, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Montenegro, Albania, North Macedonia, Kosovo, Ukraine, Belarus, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania.

Format of the presentation
The Ludwig Museum is awaiting applications for stand-alone paper format.
The presentation at the Symposium will be of 20 minutes length, with visuals (details will be communicated to the selected applicants later on) and in fluent English.

Application procedure
The application form on the following link has to be filled out before February 22, 2021, midnight CET: hymex2021.ludwigmuseum.hu No application uploaded after will be accepted. The length of the abstract should not exceed 2000 characters (spaces included). A short biography of 1500 characters (spaces included) maximum should accompany the abstract, briefing the Selection Committee on the professional background and research field of the applicant. One applicant can submit only one application. We only welcome individual applications. We will not be able to accept applications through mail or post (a confirmation email will be sent to you after submitting your application).

Costs
The Symposium will take place in Budapest (venue in the Auditorium located within the Palace of Arts / Müpa including the Ludwig Museum) and we are working on adapting the Symposium’s structure to the possibilities shaped by the global pandemic situation. Hence we would offer a hybrid participation: in fortunate conditions, the Symposium will remain partly physical and partly streamed online, otherwise, we will be prepared to become fully online. The ability to travel remains a question until the last moment, hence we are prepared for both possibilities. For selected speakers, a support for participation is allocated – however all information below needs to be specified later on, before the actual purchase of tickets according to the new changes / developments.
In case of participating in the Symposium with a physical presence, the Museum would cover the travel expenses up until 150 euros within Europe. As for the accommodation, the organizers would be able to offer up to 2 nights for one person at a partner hotel of the Museum. In case of no possibility to travel, a one occasion per diem of 100 euros would be granted for the presentation online.

Selection
The Selection Committee will choose up to five (5) applications to integrate them in the panels of the Symposium based on the pertinence of the application and the complexity of its approach.

Notice of acceptance: by March 12, 2021

For inquiries, please contact us: [email protected]
Please do not hesitate to write in case we might be of guidance.

Looking forward to meeting you or e-meeting you at the HyMEx Symposium,
HyMEx Selection Committee