April 30 2024
The International Panorama Council (IPC) is an organization dedicated to preserving and promoting panoramas, large 360-degree paintings that provide immersive visual experiences of places or events.
The IPC focuses on conserving historic panoramas from the 19th and early 20th centuries while also supporting research and development in the field. Additionally, the IPC extends its interests to related panoramic media such as moving panoramas, dioramas, and modern forms like photography, film, video, and virtual reality.
Through its activities, the IPC aims to bridge the past, present, and future of panoramas worldwide. The organization operates as a non-governmental, not-for-profit association based in Switzerland.
Newsletter #47
Yadegar Asisi Panorama COAL + ICE Panorama of Congo Corona Variations IPC 2024 conference Innsbruck’s rotunda building 2 4 8 10 12 16
Panorama of Congo
Panorama of Congo: Unrolling the Past with Virtual Reality
The exhibition “Panorama of Congo: Unrolling the Past with Virtual Reality” opened on February 24 at the National Museum of Natural History and Science in Lisbon. This exhibition stems from the research project CONGO VR (FilmEU RIT ) coordinated by Victor Flores (Lusófona University) and Leen Engelen (LUCA School of Arts) and focused on the 1913 Panorama of Congo by Alfred Bastien and Paul Mathieu, currently owned by the War Heritage Institute in Belgium.
The exhibition begins by immersing the visitor in a Congolese forest of shadows that will lead them to an installation with a photographic reproduction of the Panorama of Congo and a disquieting soundscape that questions the propagandistic nature of this image. Secondly, the exhibition offers a reinterpretation of this monumental painting (1610 m2) through two Virtual Reality experiences. The first experience recalls the historical context of this colonial propaganda and the preservation issues of such colonial heritage. The second experience showcases artistic interventions in the Panorama by the Congolese artists Deogracias Kihalu, Castélie Yalombo, Eléonor Hellio and Michel Ekeba (Kongo Astronauts), Hadassa Ngamba and Lukah Katangila. The visit concludes with a screening of a short documentary film by Érica Faleiro Rodrigues on the decolonial issues raised by this research project. The exhibition will be on show in Lisbon until 16 June 2024.
The CONGO VR project has been presented at the IPC Conference from its outset (Luxembourg, 2022; Iowa, 2023) and has benefitted from the valuable expertise and suggestions provided by its members. Such interaction and knowledge transfer will also be the goal of the upcoming FilmEU DOCTUS seminar (Lusófona University, March 21-22) where some Panorama researchers, such as Gabriele Koller, as well as artists such as Yadegar Asisi and Christl Lidl will present their work to the PhD students of eight European high education institutions. This seminar, titled ‘Media Arts: Back & Forth’, also includes a guided tour of the Panorama of Congo exhibition.
April 30 2024
Newsletter #47
