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Art, Space and Mobility in the Early Ages of Globalization: The Mediterranean, Central Asia and the Indian Subcontinent (MeCAIS) 400-1650

 Gerhard Wolf, Hannah Baader, Avinoam Shalem
Sponsored by The Getty Foundation, Los Angeles

The rise of art history as an academic discipline coincides with the formation of the nation-states (and their museums), whereas today art history reconsiders its agenda according to the challenge of globalization. Nonetheless, even today in many countries art history primarily concentrates on proper cultural and artistic heritage, and this is certainly true for a conspicuous number of countries the Project is concerned with. Given that the modern states in most cases do not correspond to historically circumscribed units, their artistic heritage is defined either through the monuments situated within the borders of a country - often belonging to rather heterogenous traditions, or by claiming extraterritorial monuments (and even transferred objects) as part of one's own tradition.

The ASM Project has three principal goals:
1) The study of premodern artistic and cultural interactions in areas of the Mediterranean, Middle East, Central Asia, and the Indian Subcontinent (MeCAIS)
2) The installation of a Fellowship programme for up to six doctoral or postdoctoral students and the creation of a research network in the MeCAIS area.
3) A contribution to the transnational debate on "global art history" and the methodological discussions within cultural theories in general.

The Project combines research on the MeCAIS region with research in collaboration with Scholars from that region, suggesting a dialogue which will go far beyond traditional area studies. This is already guaranteed by the dimension of the region in question, which embraces three continents: Europe, North Africa and Asia (from Gibraltar via the Near East up to the Indian Subcontinent), including a side glance to Latin America. The Project combines "field work" with theoretical concerns and will continuously refine its basic questions throughout the research process. Under such premises, the region offers itself as a huge laboratory for all major concerns of art history to be discussed in a wide chronological range, with a focus on the period from circa 400 to circa 1650. This period is characterized by continuous migrations in all directions; various forms of nomadism and settlements; intense cultural, artistic and scientific exchange; the building of cities; the installation of new transport ways and techniques on land and sea; the rise and spread of religions, the formation and dissolution of empires; interactions between and networks of regional authorities; monarchical representation and the invention of traditions. In fact, a huge long-distance network among cultures and kingdoms seems to have been established in the region long before the modern age of globalization. Intercultural experiences involved land and water routes. The sea, be it the Mediterranean or Arabian, formed a liquid space of interactions, and what at first glance seemed to be a means of separation became a medium for cultural amalgamation. On land, the uneven surface and sinuousrivers provided the setting for trade routes and roads, transporting people, animals, knowledge, ideas, materials, objects and seeds etc.

Some of the major thematic fields in the Project are: the Mediterranean basin providing a space of interaction for different religions, port cities and empires; the Mongolian ruling space in Central Asia stretching between China and the Balkans and the kingdoms of their followers (from Tamerlan to the Moghuls in India); the Ottoman empire establishing itself in the 14th/15th centuries which threatened Europe but also functioned as a "Middle Kingdom", negotiating for centuries between the East and West; and, in the 16th century, the European powers exploring and colonizing the Arabian Sea and the Indian Ocean as well as the Americas. The Project will study this extremely rich and variegated field focusing on six Thematic Axes:


The Interrelation of Historical Geographies and the Formation of Topographies
The geopolitical studies of the 19th and early 20th centuries contaminated the research on "Kulturraum" with its ideological shortcomings, if not explicit fascist orientation, and thus were abandoned after World War II. Today the historical sciences try to reformulate the concept of cultural and political space on new methodological grounds. The ASM Project participates in this debate, questioning the historical concepts of geographical spaces between the Mediterranean and the Indian Subcontinent, i.e. the interplay between land and sea, as a vibrant world of connected and divided spaces, from Late Antiquity to the early modern age, up to the breaking of the Columns of Heracles at Gibraltar, which opens the Mediterranean Sea to the Atlantic space, integrating traditional maritime and economic history into a new approach to political and imaginary geographies, while strongly considering the visual sources and monuments.


Power and Religion: Space
The Project will analyse the division, fusion or interaction of political and religious centres within a city, a territory or a state; the formation of capitals, the role and structure of sacred landscapes and pilgrimage sites. It will consider the building of sacred spaces and the role of rituals as well as burial practices, focusing on the position of images within religious and political representations. In addition, questions concerning the overlapping, combining and interacting in the constitution of these spaces will be addressed, discussing topics such as frontiers, thresholds, visual demarcations, including their premodern concepts and perceptions.


Borderlines between Nature and Culture
This part of the Project is concerned with premodern concepts of nature and environments, in particular the self-definitions of human interactions with nature on various grounds (political theories and practices, acculturation of nature by means of agriculture and mythological narratives etc.). This includes the politics of cosmology, the notions of material and materiality, the role of animals within cultural systems and the dynamics of bodies between nature and society. These discussions will throw light on the use of natural sites, the processes and representations of cultivation, the interplay between the wilderness and the savage in contrast to cultivated and civilized spaces - like gardens, courts and urban spaces. Emphasis will be placed on the various forms of representing the borderlines of nature and culture in the arts.


Visual Culture and Systems of Knowledge
A major aspect is the interrelation between art and science; this opens the Project up to a dialogue between art historians and science historians. It could include the study of medical or astronomical illustrations, technical treatises and herbal books, but also consider the position of art within and in relation to dynamic systems of knowledge and belief.


Transforming Artistic Languages and Techniques
This apparently more traditional art historical approach is a fundamental aspect of the Project, which gains new ground by being studied in the context of the other categories. Given that the style-analytical approach is widely diffused in the scientific communities of the countries involved, it allows the horizon to open up on a comparative level and the implications of formal analyses as well as the languages of art history in a comparative perspective to be questioned (for example providing a forum for the discussion of the problem of hybridity). This is counterbalanced by the awareness of the technical and material aspects of all kinds of artefacts (including architecture), and the dynamics (and politics) of the conservation of monuments.


Historiographies and Narratives: IVth-XVIIth and XIXth-XXIth Centuries
An essential regulatory dimension of the Project is to show the implications of the construction of historical narratives and methodologies between the discourse of nation states and globality as two extremes, especially in a postcolonial context. For example, in the now autonomous former Soviet Republics, the implementation of a national narrative rewrites the history of Central Asia. Monuments often serve the construction of history. This category includes a close look at national museums (India, Turkey, Armenia, Georgia and Croatia etc., or international collections such as in the Emirates), the history and display of collections, and contact with the museums and curators of the region.


The Fellows
The Project will create up to six (doctoral/postdoctoral) fellowships, that are intended for Young Scholars of Art history, Islamic Art, Byzantine Art, Archeology and in exceptional cases of related fields like Anthropogy, History, Philology and Religion studies. Fellows gain the possibility to persue research projects of their choice within the framework and in relation to the program of "Art Space and Mobility". The Fellows will work primarily at their home institutions, but will participate three times a year in Workshops, in Summer Schools and Conferences. In such way they have the possibility to be in continuous scientific exchange with the Project Members, Senior Scholars, guests and Experts of the Advisory Board.
Thus, they will develop their own research in interaction with the development of the Project as a whole. Fellowships are for one year, a second year will be possible after the presentation of the results obtained in the first year. The working language is English.
The Fellows will be selected by the Principal Investigators and an International Advisory Board. A call for applications will be internationally made on relevant internet sites and by means of the network of the partner institutions. An application consists of a CV, a research project and referees. The selection will be made by a committee built of members of the Advisory Board and the Principal Investigators (in a meeting or votes by e-mail).

Senior visiting Scholar Fellowship
Senior Scholars will be hosted for three months in Florence as guests of the MPG.

Advisory Board
To be announced.

Cooperation Partners
The Project can count on the collaboration of partners from the Mediterranean, Europe, the Middle East, Central Asia and India.


  

Project collaborators
Gerhard Wolf
Hannah Baader
Avinoam Shalem
Galia Halpern
Mirela Ljevakovic
Emanuele Lugli
Maria Vakondiou

Further information
Summer School 2012 "Building Empires, Shifting Powers: Making Centers at the Crossroads of Central Asia"

Workshop "Timurid 'kitabkhana'" (Firenze, 10 - 11 February 2012)

Summer School 2011 "Crossing the Strait of Gibraltar: Art Histories Between Morocco and Al-Andalus"

Artikel "Frühe Globalisierungen der Kunst" (Max Planck Forschung 4|2010)

Summer School 2010 "Interactions in the Mediterranean Basin: The Case of Late Classical, Aghlabid and Fatimid Tunisia (Tunis/Mahdiyya/Qayrawan)"

International Workshop "Art, Space and Mobility" (Firenze, 8 - 10 September 2011)
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