It’s a Match!
Pietro Bianchi and Karina Pawlow on (Im)material Objects

Rather than lectures, this event series is a staged conversation, clash or celebration of two people with two distinct positions. Sometimes a blind date, sometimes a fierce competition, sometimes a surprising counterpart, or the perfect fit, in these matches the two speakers will first each present their perspective on a given theme or project, to then discuss divergences or conflations with the audience. From fiery disagreements to harmonious affirmations, the conversation series organized by the Lise Meitner Group “Coded Objects” aims to refract perspectives on historical narratives as well as reconstruct creative processes. In the third session, theorist Pietro Bianchi and art historian Karina Pawlow, who recently joined the Lise Meitner Group, will discuss (im)material objects in their respective research.

Pietro Bianchi will reflect on what is a commodity and how it differs from any empirical object we have before our eyes. In what he termed the fetish-character of a commodity, Marx contrasts the “immediate” and concrete nature of a commodity or object—perceived exactly as it appears to us in its sensible features—with its complex social and economic mediations, which remain invisible and absent from its immediate presentation. As is evident from Eisenstein’s 1928 notes on his unrealized film project on Das Kapital—recently analyzed in Alexander Kluge’s nine-hour-long film essay News from Ideological Antiquity—the Marxian notion of commodity fetishism addresses a compelling relationship between visibility and invisibility (and between immediacy and mediation). From Eisenstein’s and Kluge’s reflections, we can deduce that if material objects, as we perceive them, are in their concreteness—or through their concreteness—an erasure of their social dimension, it is because, in the visual realm—which Bianchi argues is the realm of commodity fetishism—we can see only what is immediately in front of our eyes. Bianchi’s presentation will reflect on what remains inaccessible to our vision, which is what Fredric Jameson in another context called “cognitive mapping”: the invisible (yet socially crucial) coexistence of different spaces—finance, production, distribution, and others—that shape our world but remain repressed in our visual and discursive representations.

In her presentation, Karina Pawlow brings us closer to her doctoral research, Patently Clever People, by looking at three rare 16th-century glass plaques featuring relief portraits of Doge Andrea Gritti that showcase a groundbreaking technique patented by Filippo Catanei in 1517. Pawlow retraces the early modern, creative process lying behind such innovation, which enabled the creation of glass ornamenti with a hollow interior and flat exterior, crafted from “glass as hard as marble.” Exemplifying Murano's technical ingenuity, these pieces highlight Venice's patronage of glassmaking and, as Pawlow argues, allow us to grasp the early value placed on intellectual property. Simultaneously, the Gritti busts navigate patrician efforts to limit the doge’s individual authority, circumventing restrictions on solo doge portraits in currency. Derived from medals, these technically novel glass casts exemplify pioneering examples of how to commodify power, showcasing Gritti not only as a symbol of the Serenissima, but also as an influential statesman. Likely displayed in elite private collections, such objects of (im)material values appealed to social and intellectual ambitions while subtly reinforcing Gritti’s legacy.