Performing Archeology: Excavations as a Display Project
Department of Interior Architecture at HEAD – Genève (HES-SO), Geneva
8–9 December 2025
This event seeks to explore the ways in which performative approaches to archaeology open up new spaces for reflection and experimentation, renewing our relationship with existing structures, heritage sites, and historical objects. By engaging with immersive devices, situated narratives, in situ activation protocols, and contemporary technologies of capture and representation (moving images, sound, 3D modeling), such practices generate embodied, critical, and accessible forms of knowledge.
The seminar aims not only to document and preserve, but also to interrogate fundamental questions: How does a site become a space for narratives? How does an artifact acquire agency within contemporary debates? Which voices, memories, and experiences are excluded, and how might they be rendered tangible? Our ambition is to lay the foundations for a comprehensive state-of-the-art review of these performative interventions, considering them as tools for rethinking interior architecture—not merely as a project-based discipline, but as a field capable of reshaping historical narratives and transforming social practices.
The expected outcomes are both theoretical and applied: on the one hand, broadening the scope of heritage studies toward a more critical, post-disciplinary, and sensory approach; on the other, directly informing the teaching methods, research tools, and field practices developed within the framework of the Master’s in Interior Architecture (MAIA) at HEAD – Genève.
The seminar will also provide a forum for presenting ongoing and emerging experiments at the intersection of artistic creation, archaeology, architecture, and design research. Contributions will highlight concrete examples of site activations, critical investigations into representations of the past, and collaborative methodologies for reinterpreting forgotten or contested sites. These results will inform the structuring of a field of expertise within HEAD – Genève, where the tools of archaeology are reimagined as instruments of creative experimentation on memory, materiality, narrative, and spatial imagination.
The symposium Performing Archaeology: excavations as a display project organized by the Department of Interior Architecture at HEAD-Genève explores the performative turn in contemporary archaeological practice, foregrounding the convergence of excavation, scenography, and spatial design. This seminar traces a path from the material traces of antiquity to experimental media, questioning how archaeology can be a dynamic practice of storytelling and sensory engagement. Bringing together researchers, designers, and practitioners, the symposium critically examines how excavation itself becomes a performative act. It interrogates the implications of this shift for memory, identity, and the materiality of heritage in the digital age, with a particular emphasis on the contributions of interior architecture to the theorization and mediation of archaeological space. Over different sessions, the seminar will gather voices from art, design, history, and archaeology to reflect critically on how performative methods transform our understanding of heritage and space.
We invite contributions (in presence or online) that engage with these themes and propose innovative approaches to archaeology as a field of embodied experience. The seminar will take place on 8–9 December 2025, with sessions conducted in English.
Proposals should be submitted no later than 1 November 2025 to roberto.zancan@hesge.ch
Submissions must include:
– Title of the paper
– Abstract (maximum 300 words)
– Author’s name
– Affiliation (if applicable)
– Email address
– Short biographical note (maximum 150 words)
Contributions are welcome in English, French, Italian, and German. The selection process will ensure gender balance and disciplinary diversity.