Simposio
Objects. Between Absorption and Isolation
Organized by Anna-Maria Meister, Anna Luise Schubert and the Lise Meitner Group "Coded Objects"
Graphic design: Lena Weber. Artwork and photo: Kendall Ross aka “I’d Knit That”
Objects might emerge from muddled contexts into crisp discreteness in a material, sensorial, epistemological and ontological negotiation—one with fuzzy edges and cracking seams. Taking this process as a question of figure and ground into three dimensions, during this symposium, we want to ask: when do objects come into being, and when are they recognized as such? How do they behave, get used, or get culturally coded and re-inscribed and how can they be perceived? What throws them into relief, what helps to see, grasp or make them? By investigating objecthood as a process of formation from (material, cultural, political or aesthetic) backgrounds as well as their potential decay, or dispersal, we want to carve out terms and concepts to describe and discuss objects anew.
Concepts like subjectivity and objectivity have long received critical attention, and the categories of their constitutive counterparts—subject and object—are no longer seen as sole agents operating in and on the world. Similarly, the understanding of the environment has been expanded to encompass 'vibrant matter' as integral part of networks between humans, objects, matter and non-human beings. At the same time, the perception of objects is still shaped by modern dichotomies. These divergences show that the question of objects and of their becoming is intrinsically linked to how (and whether) we know objects at all: attempts to map them onto reality on the one hand and the interpretations of their rendered presence on the other constantly undo and reconfigure each other.
Where the fields of art history and architecture history have artefacts at their disciplinary center, we want to expand that focus by adding the assumption of formal intent or consequence to other objects, as well as adding and testing methods from other fields. New materialism can help to understand objects as access to communities and practices around them; feminist and queer studies afford objects formerly excluded from canonical constructions other narratives or histories; post-colonial studies or anthropology help identifying the reinscription, projection or appropriation of forms and objects; media studies can assist in tracing aggregational processes and material translations between matter and objecthood (and reverse).
This Symposium is organized by the Lise Meitner Group “Coded Objects” (led by Anna-Maria Meister) at the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz – Max-Planck-Institut. "Coded Objects" as method of refraction questions any assumptions of "neutral" technology or immaterial bureaucracy. Instead, the Lise Meitner Group examines how processes form values through objects—and how objects inform processes in societies.
This event will be hybrid and take place in person at Palazzo Grifoni. To participate online please register via Zoom.
Photos: Leonardo Bocci
Program
Thursday, 17 October
12:00pm – Guided tour of the KHI Photothek
(meeting point at the entrance of Via Gustavo Modena 13, Firenze)
3:00 — 4:00pm – Introduction
Anna-Maria Meister, KHI and Karlsruhe Institute of Technology
4:00 – 7:00pm
Magical Objects
Chair: Neilabh Sinha, KHI and Leiden University
Ida Colangelo and Kathrin Borgers, University of Cologne
Between Material Evidence and Forgotten Curiosity: An Unusual Relic in the Gräfrath Monastery
Sandrine Welte, Università Ca’ Foscari di Venezia
Objects in Motion - Late Antique Magical Artefacts as Liminal Spaces and Mobile Ritual Sites
Cristóbal Amunátegui, UCLA
Machines of State and Machines Chance: The Case of the Totalizator in Nineteenth-Century
Coffee Break
6:00pm – Response: Laurent Stalder, ETH Zurich
& Discussion
Break
7:30 – 9:00pm
Listening to the Nightingale: An Evening with ESTAR(SER)
D. Graham Burnett, Princeton University, Justin E.H. Smith-Ruiu, Université Paris Cité, and Catherine L. Hansen, University of Tokyo
Friday, 18 October
9:00am — 12:00pm
Resistance, Replication & Resilience
Chair: Anna Luise Schubert, KHI
Marie Meyerding, Dresden University of Technology
Environmental Feminist Art Fabricating Freedom: Textiles, Censorship and Environmental Art in the GDR
Taavi Hallimäe, Estonian Academy of Arts
Hitting the Slopes of Capitalism: The Case Study of the Ski Boots from the Soviet Estonian Factory Salvo in Late 80s
Malcolm Noble, University of Nottingham
Leaky and Absorbent Books: Material Paratexts and Contemporary Queer Print Culture
Coffee Break
11:00am – Response: Rebecca Carrai, KHI
& Discussion
Lunch Break
01:30 — 4:30pm
Emerging Formations
Chair: Karina Pawlow, KHI and University of Cologne
Galaad Van Daele, ETH Zurich
Expressive Rocks and Geoarchitectural Histories: Lessons from the Grotto
Tamar Zinguer, The University of Oklahoma
The Grain: From Figure to Ground
Saskia Abrahms-Kavunenko, Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies
Anthropocene Ouroboros: Shimmying Plastics and the Contamination of Time
Coffee Break
3:30pm – Response: Clemens Finkelstein, Princeton University
& Discussion
Break
5:00 – 7:00pm
Stabilizing Boundaries
Chair: Oliver Aas, KHI and Cornell University
Sarah Hearne, University of Colorado Denver
Stabilizing the Eroding Image: The 20th c., Project of Permanence in the Mesa Verde Cliff Dwellings
Ayala Levin, UCLA
The Fence and the Billboard: The Object of Land at the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture in Ibadan, Nigeria, 1965-68
Coffee Break
6:00pm – Response: Alina Payne, I Tatti – The Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies
& Discussion
8:00pm – Evening Program for Participants
Saturday, 19 October
9:30am — 12:30pm
Extending Subjects
Chair: Larissa Maria Müller, KHI
Jocelyn Beausire, Princeton University
“Will it Change the Baby?”: Sonic Respatialization and the Politics of Domestic Surveillance with the Advent of Infant Monitoring Systems
Ignacio G. Galán, Columbia GSAPP
Furnishings Like Us: Object Identifications in Fascist Italy
Elisa Palomino, Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History
Spirit and Skin: The Role of Fish Skin Objects in Arctic Indigenous Cosmologies
Coffee Break
11:30am – Response: Virginia Marano, KHI
& Discussion
Lunch Break
02:00 — 5:00pm
Overwriting Attributes
Chair: Lunarita Sterpetti, KHI
Pratiti Ketoki, University of Minnesota, and Ipsa S., University of Wisconsin
Problematising the Object Turn: Partition Histories and Politics of Remembering
Rachel Lee, TU Delft, and Sarita Sundar, Bangalore
A Chair by Any Other Name? Rewriting the Colonial Script
Will Davis, Università della Svizzera italiana
Bamboo Messages and Legacies of a Cryptic Letter
Coffee Break
4:00pm – Response: Ariella Minden, Bibliotheca Hertziana — Max-Planck-Institut für Kunstgeschichte
& Discussion
5:00pm – Closing Remarks
Accompagnying Artist: Kendall Ross aka “I’d Knit That”
Scarica
17 – 19 ottobre 2024
This event will be hybrid and take place in person at Palazzo Grifoni Budini Gattai. There is no need to formally register to participate in person.
Ulteriori informazioni
Avviso
Questo evento viene documentato fotograficamente e/o attraverso riprese video. Qualora non dovesse essere d’accordo con l’utilizzo di immagini in cui potrebbe essere riconoscibile, da parte del Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz a scopo di documentazione degli eventi e di pubbliche relazioni (p.e. social media) la preghiamo gentilmente di comunicarcelo.