Berlin, Freie Universität, May 19 – 20, 2017
Revisiting the Transcultural Paradigm in Art and Art History
Over the last six years, the Research Unit “Transcultural Negotiations in the Ambits of Art“ has analysed the production of art and its discourses in transcultural contexts brought about by trade, travel, migration, or globalization. The research group served as a framework for projects which share aspects of approach and methodology, but differ in their regional and historical focus.
One of our central concerns was that “transcultural” should not be understood and employed as a descriptive term, as this results in an essentialist view of objects and cultural diversity. We addressed this by focusing on processes of negotiation in situations of contact which include works of art or artefacts as well as agents. As mediators or as the object of negotiations, works of art form part of the negotiation process. The paradigms translation, mobility, and decentering proved particularly fruitful with regard to this process-oriented approach. These models will be discussed with recourse to concrete case studies in the three respective panels of our final conference.
Veranstaltungsort: Freie Universität Berlin, “Holzlaube”, Fabeckstraße 23–25, 14195 Berlin, room 2.2058/2.2059
Programme
– Friday, Mai 19, 2017 –
14:00 Karin Gludovatz, Welcome and Introduction
Panel A: Dynamics of Transcultural Translations
14:30 Christine Ungruh, Advertising Hermitism: Italian Medieval Porches as a Locus of Transcultural Artistic Negotiation
15:15 Alberto Saviello, Box of Relationships: A Sinhalese-European Ivory Casket from the 16th Century
16:00 Coffee Break
16:30 Margit Kern, The Body Image of Mummies as Object of Transcultural Negotiation
17:15 Julia Kloss-Weber, The Transcultural Potential of Images: A Case Study from New Spanish Art of the 16th Century
– Saturday, May 20, 2017 –
9:30 Joachim Rees, Introduction
Panel B: Art Histories of Mobility
9:45 Nora Usanov-Geißler, The Arrival Reconsidered. An Approach to
Differing Interpretations of Japanese nanban by?bu
10:30 Ulrike Boskamp, The Language of Flowers. Mobility, Gender and
Spywork in the American War of Independence
11:15 Coffee Break
11:45 Annette Kranen, Multiple Antiquities. Seventeenth Century
Travellers’ Interpretations of Historic Remains in Ottoman Territories
12:30 Moya Tönnies, Forming a Colonial Heritage Community. British
Concepts for Legitimizing Arab Palestinian Cultural Heritage, 1918
13:15 Lunch
Panel C: Decentering
15:00 Georg Vasold, From the Peripheries to the Peripheries: The Case
of the Austrian Trade Museum
15:15 Ursula Helg, Mangaaka: On the Crosscultural Power of a 19th
Century African (Art) Object – Dynamics of Decentering and Recentering
Aesthetic Narratives
15:30 Melanie Klein, Moments of Decentering. A Case Study from South
Africa
15:45 Tomoko Mamine, Knots and Dots: Scribbling at the Peripheries of Art in the 1950s
16:00 Pauline Bachmann: The Exhibition Apparatus Decentered? – A Case Study with Art Objects from Brazil
16:15 Panel Discussion
18:00 Reception
