The 34th International Panorama Council Conference in Lisbon
29/10/2024
From July 16th to 19th, 2025, Lisbon will host the 34th edition of the International Panorama Council (IPC) Conference, entitled “The World at a Glance. Panoramas and Peep Technologies.” Organized by the Early Visual Media Lab of CICANT and taking place in the auditoriums of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, this upcoming conference promises to foster rich discussions on historical and contemporary immersive media.
With a primary focus on the synergies between panoramas and other immersive media, both past and present, the conference will examine the visual and experiential connections across centuries of immersive technologies. The conference will also feature a session closely aligned with the Curiositas project, during which participants will visit the accompanying exhibition at the Cinemateca Portuguesa, set to open in late May.
To enrich the conference experience, several excursions are planned, including:
- a visit to the Fort of Almada, the vantage point from which H. A. Barker captured his Panorama View of Lisbon;
- a boat tour along the Tagus River, featuring the viewpoint for Barker’s View of Lisbon from the River Tagus;
- an exploration of the panoramic tile panel at the National Tile Museum;
- and a visit to the camera obscura at Lisbon’s Castle of St. George, offering a panoramic projection of the city.
CONGO VR researchers present at the 33rd International Panorama Council Conference
10/10/2024
Four members of the CONGO VR project (FilmEU RIT) took part in the 33rd International Panorama Council Conference, held from October 2-6, 2024, at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL) in Lausanne, Switzerland.
Presentations from the team included:
The Afterlife of the Panorama du Congo (1913): Decolonial curation of imperial panoramas by Victor Flores, Lusófona University, Lisbon, Portugal, and Leen Engelen, LUCA School of Arts / KU Leuven, Belgium.
Congo VR: A panoptical dissidence by Ana David Mendes, Lusófona University, Lisbon, Portugal.
Illustrating a New Memory: Panorama key and virtual tour for the exhibition “Panorama of Congo” by Chiara Masiero Sgrinzatto, independent artist, Venice, Italy.
The Panorama of Congo discussed at Dossier África
09/10/2024
On 6th June, Victor Flores (Lusófona) participated in Dossier África, a weekly debate on the history of Portuguese-speaking countries moderated by Ângela Coutinho, to talk about the exhibition “Panorama of the Congo: Unravelling the past with virtual reality”.
You can see it in: https: https://youtu.be/IHkz83PPlDk
The Panorama of Congo discussed with Matthew Stanard
24/09/2024
On June 5th, as part of the exhibition Panorama of the Congo: Unrolling the Past with Virtual Reality, the National Museum of Natural History and Science hosted a conference titled “Colonial Propaganda: How to Present it and What to Question?” by Matthew G. Stanard, a historian and specialist in colonial propaganda from Berry College (Georgia, USA). The presentation was followed by a debate with Linda King and Victor Flores, curators of the exhibition.
You can see it in: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FHUko8ZLhls&t=21s&ab_channel=EarlyVisualMediaLab
The Panorama of Congo presented at the Ipres 2024 conference
18/09/2024
On Thursday 19 September the digitization of the Panorama of Congo will be presented at the Ipress 2024 Conference in Ghent, Belgium. The International Conference on Digital Preservation showcases research, applications and best practices in the field of digitization of archives and heritage collections. Congo VR team member Tomas Vandecasteele will present ‘Scaling up: Photographing the ‘Panorama of Congo’, a paper prepared by Tomas Vandecasteele (LUCA), Rodrigo Peixoto (Lusofona) and Leen Engelen (LUCA). The conference is hybrid and sessions can be attended online.
Revisiting Media Heritage from the Colonial Era: the Panorama of Congo presented at the Arts and Media Archaeology Summer School
18/08/2024
On 30 August 2024, Leen Engelen (LUCA School of Arts / FILM EU) will give talk on working with colonial media heritage at the second Arts and Media Archaeology Summer School in Antwerp, Belgium. In this talk, the responsibilities that come with bringing media heritage from the colonial era back in the public space/debate are discussed. The presentation is based on the experiences of the research team working on the Panorama of Congo that explored how the panorama – that has been in storage for almost 90 years – can be recreated in VR while critically addressing and contradicting its original imperial narratives. Next to proper historical contextualization, further decolonizing efforts are needed. In the case of the Panorama of Congo, the application of artistic research methodologies in and beyond virtual reality were key means to this end.
The program and the abstract can be found here.
Digital Preservation for the Arts, Social Sciences & Humanities Conference 2024, University of Limerick, Ireland, June 27, 2024
30/06/2024
DPASSH is an international biennial conference responding to questions relating to digital preservation within the arts and social sciences. The two-day conference sought to address the complexities of long-term digital preservation in the social and cultural realms, drawing participants from academia, libraries, museums, galleries, funding bodies and policy making.
Linda King’s paper The Panorama du Congo: digitising cultural heritage and decolonising the museum, outlined the processes and public impact of this ambitious project, examining how an interdisciplinary and international team of cultural historians, educators, photographers, artists, designers, videographers, film makers, virtual reality and sound specialists, explored discourses of colonial history, the decolonisation of museums and the digitisation of cultural heritage. These findings, and how they were made accessible to the public through the exhibition Panorama of Congo: Unrolling the Past with Virtual Reality at the National Museum of Natural History and Science, Lisbon (Feb-Jun 2024), was also discussed: https://dpassh.org/
AMPS (Architecture Media Politics Society), London Heritages Conference, University of Greenwich, June 25-27, 2025
29/06/2024
Using the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Maritime Greenwich as a point of departure, this conference will explore critical questions for the heritage sector today from various disciplinary perspectives including art and architectural history, cultural studies, digital heritage, social history or landscape and urban planning.
Linda King presented her paper The Panorama du Congo: problematising colonial propaganda through the digitisation of cultural heritage, will analyse the Congo-VR project and Panorama of Congo: Unrolling the Past with Virtual Reality exhibition and open analysis to critiques of decolonisation and colonial legacies: https://amps-research.com/conference/london-heritages/
IADT Annual Teaching and Research Showcase, IADT, June 13th
13/06/2024
This event comprised two days of talks and a week-long exhibition of posters that showcase the recent research of IADT staff.
Linda King’s paper Congo-VR: FilmEU and public-facing research, addressed the Congo-VR project within the context of the FilmEU RIT initiative and IADT’s role in the consortium. She addressed issues of how research arising from the academy can create public impact and engagement and explored how the discourses of colonial history, the decolonisation of museums and the digitisation of cultural heritage that the Congo-VR project raises, have specific links to Ireland’s own history of colonisation.
FilmEU RIT presentation at AIM 2024
2024/05/30
On 29 May 2024, Érica Faleiro Rodrigues from Lusófona University in Lisbon, Portugal, alongside Diego Barajas Riaño from Tallinn University in Estonia, presented their collaborative paper, “Filming the Congo Panorama – Materialities of practice-led research,” at the Association of Moving Image Researchers (AIM) conference held in Porto, Portugal. Their research, conducted under the auspices of the FilmEU RIT, drew on their experience from December 2022, when they filmed the historic 1913 Congo Panorama in Belgium. This large canvas, crafted by artists Alfred Bastien and Paul Mathieu, depicts scenes from the Belgian Congo and has been preserved in military facilities for many decades.
The project, part of the FilmEU RIT initiative Congo VR, required meticulous planning and the utilisation of military equipment due to its complex logistics. Faleiro Rodrigues, a film director, and Barajas Riaño, a cinematographer, authored the paper which explores the intricate balance between aesthetic and technical elements in cinema, alongside a decolonising perspective on the depicted content. Their work notably contributes to the preservation and deeper understanding of colonial heritage, embodying the FilmEU Alliance’s commitment to advancing artistic research in European higher education
Exhibition: The Panorama of Congo – Unrolling the Past with Virtual Reality
2024/02/24
Throughout their history, Panoramas have been serving imperialist propaganda. The Panorama of Congo was one such case. Commissioned to the Belgian painters Alfred Bastien and Paul Mathieu for the Ghent International Exhibition in 1913. The painting, which was circular and measured 115 meters in length and 14 meters in height, aimed to generate interest in the Belgian colony amongst young people. By portraying the Congo as an African Eden, it was meant to erase the atrocities that had been committed against the Congolese people in the so-called ‘Congo Free State’ (1885-1908), which was the private property of King Leopold II. For all its controversy, the Panorama du Congo was forgotten in museum storages for almost a century.
Panorama of the Congo. Unravelling the past with virtual reality.
Temporary exhibition
25 February – 16 June 2024
Allosaurus Room | Museum of Natural History Lisboa
More info on museus.ulisboa.pt
This exhibition is the outcome of a research project (CONGO VR – FilmEU RIT) that photographed and unrolled the Panorama of Congo to reinterpret it in Virtual Reality through its violent historical context and interventions by artists from the Congolese diaspora such as Kongo Astronauts (Eléonore Hellio & Michel Ekeba), Deogracias Kihalu, Lukah Katangila, Hadassa Ngamba and Castélie Yalombo. The painting is part of the collection of the War Heritage Institute. The exhibition seeks to bring the Panorama of Congo into the debates on decolonization and decolonial thinking, raising questions related to colonial heritage, memory and identity.
The research project Congo VR – Decolonising the Panorama of Congo: A Virtual Heritage Artistic Research is one of the projects funded by FILMEU RIT – Research | Innovation | Transformation project, European Union GRANT NUMBER: 101035820 H2020-IBA-SwafS-Support-2-2020.