Art Histories and Aesthetic Practices, Fellows' Projects

with Mathias Fuba Alubafi, Haytham Bahoora, Martina Becker, Maria José de Abreu, Anna McSweeney, Niharika Dinkar, Sugata Ray, Romuald Tzibozo, Li Zhang

and Ines Konczak, Priyani Roy Choudhury, Ching-Ling Wang, Magdalena Wroblevska, fellows of Connecting Art Histories in the Museum (CAHIM), a collaboration between the State Museums Berlin and the KHI in Florence.

The presentation is part of the workshop 'Aesthetic Practices and the description of Space. Macro, Micro, Meso' (July 6-8, 2014 - Kunsthistorisches Institut Florenz - Max-Planck-Institut).

'Art Histories and Aesthetic Practices. Kunstgeschichte und ästhetische Praktiken' is a research and fellowship program which questions and transcends traditional disciplinary boundaries in a transcultural, global horizon. By creating a space of dialogue for scholars from all continents, it discusses the potential and contours of a plural art history.

The concept of "aesthetic practices", introduced by the program, is an invitation to study artifacts with their biographies as well as processes of transfer and transformation in a transcultural, postcolonial and global perspective. This includes the dynamics of the production and perception of things, images and architectures from the time of their creation to their subsequent apprehensions up to the present, also including their display, storage, oppression, reworking or destruction. With the study of "aesthetic practices", the program engages with sociological, historical, scientific, geographical, technical, religious, legal, economic, linguistic and philological questions or dimensions. It allows us? to understand artifacts as actors or participants in specific social and cultural dynamics.

'Art Histories and Aesthetic Practices' is structured along four thematic lines: 1. Materiality and Techniques; 2. Mobility, Transfer and Translation; 3. Narratives and Display; 4. Site and Space. It thus aims to overcome the dichotomy of formal versus contextual approaches towards artifacts or constellations of objects. It promotes the concept of an art-historical ecology and embraces museum studies. Art Histories has no chronological or geographical constraints. Its scholarly environment is designed to enable and encourage both fellows and the wider community to experiment and refine transregional approaches to the history of visual cultures and aesthetic practices.

The program invites scholars from Islamic, Asian, African, European, Latin American and Pacific art histories to join the program while also addressing neighboring disciplines such as archaeology and other fields dealing with the history of visual cultures. 'Art Histories and Aesthetic Practices' analyses the connectivity of larger historical spaces and investigates artistic phenomena in a comparative approach, experimenting with new methodologies and forms of collaborative research, like the close cooperation with.

'Art Histories and Aesthetic Practices' is an initiative of the KHI in Florence - Max-Planck-Institute, and is directed by Hannah Baader and Gerhard Wolf. It is designed as means of intensive collaboration between art historical and research institutions dealing with transcultural questions: primarily with the Berlin State Museums, the Freie University of Berlin, the Humboldt University, Heidelberg University's Cluster of Excellence "Asia and Europe in a Global Context" and the associated program "Connecting Art Histories in the Museum" (KHI Florence - MPI/Staatliche Museen zu Berlin). The program is funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research as a project at the Forum Transregionale Studien in Berlin.