Material Memories - Presentation

Curious about what happens when artists and scientists come together? On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of Maastricht University (UM) and the 65th anniversary of the Hustinx Foundation, two artists have been selected for a residency. During the PAS Festival, they will show part of their work and discuss their research during the residency at UM.

Maastricht University was established in response to a crisis happening elsewhere: the closure of the coal mines in Heerlen, Kerkrade, and Hoensbroek. The university was supposedly founded as compensation for that mine closure. In Material Memories, Alessio Fausto explored this story during his residency, not as a fixed fact, but as a question: how does an institution preserve its origin story fifty years later, when that story itself turns out to be unstable?

Alessio’s presentation at PAS touches on the question of how institutions keep their founding story or let it shift. He moves between archival material, absence, and decay: what has been preserved of UM’s origins, and what hasn’t?