What relationships and dynamics can be established between travel, heritage, and literary narratives, involving objects, places, and, of course, human figures? What happens when we consider narratives that originate, in some way, from a real journey experienced by someone who confronts their own cultural identity through their experience of another culture? Taking the travel narrative itself as an object, what processes does it integrate and trigger regarding the construction of identity and otherness, in dialogue with a circulating collective memory? These and other questions will be our starting point for reflecting on the role of the travel experience and its documentation as an important part of (re)defining identities.

The conference series "On the Art and Poetics of Objects" invites five speakers (in individual sessions spaced over time) to present reflections on themes surrounding the importance of objects in their utilitarian, symbolic, and material dimensions.