5-7 November 2015
Venue: Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW), John-Foster-Dulles-Allee 10, 10557 Berlin

With a keynote by Arjun Appadurai (New York University),
5 November 2015, 19.00:
“Indian Popular Cinema in the Making of a Decolonized Modernity”

Taking the years between 1905 and 1965 as the temporal
frame, this conference seeks to rethink Global Modernisms
from a transregional perspective. Current conceptualizations
of avantgardism and formal Innovation often
related to places like Paris, New York, Weimar or Moscow
continue to inform Global Modernisms’ intellectual field.

Global Modernisms are often presented as a symptom for
new Westernism that masquerades as the universal. This
conference seeks a more constitutive conceptual vision.
Understanding Global Modernisms as clusters of artistic,
intellectual, technological, institutional, socio-cultural,
and political arrangements, the conference focuses on this
field as an effect of contiguities and infrastructures. We
approach contiguities as global and local zones of intellectual
and artistic proximity and difference, and infrastructures
as combinations of physical, political, social
and intellectual formations.

Program

Thursday, November 5
Venue: Theatersaal

19.00 Welcome
Bernd M. Scherer (Haus der Kulturen der Welt)
Hans van Ess (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München/Max Weber Stiftung – Deutsche Geisteswissenschaftliche Institute im Ausland)
Barbara Mittler (Universität Heidelberg/ Forum Transregionale Studien)

Keynote
Arjun Appadurai (New York University)
Indian Popular Cinema in the Making of a Decolonized Modernity

Friday, November 6
Venue: Conference Room K1

9.30 Welcome and Introduction
Hannah Baader (Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz, MPI/Art Histories and Aesthetic Practices)
Atreyee Gupta (Art Histories and Aesthetic Practices Fellow 2015-2016)

10.00 Dhruv Raina (Jawaharlal Nehru University)
The Castle of Crossed Conversations during the Inter war years: The Encounter between Scientific Internationalism and Modernism

10.45 Ming Tiampo (Carleton University, Ottawa)
infra/structure/paris

Chair: Barbara Wittmann (Humboldt Universität zu Berlin)

break

11.45 Thomas Kirchner (Deutsches Forum für Kunstgeschichte, Paris)
Competing Modernisms. The Case of Berlin after 1945

12.30 Elena Shtromberg (University of Utah, Salt Lake City)
A Systems Perspective of Brazilian Art

Chair: Kerstin Schankweiler (Freie Universität Berlin)

break

14.30 Patrick Flores (University of the Philippines and the Vargas Museum, Manila)
"Asiatic Complications" and the Implications of Irredenta

15.15 Nancy Adajania (Cultural Theorist and Independent Curator, Mumbai)
The Funambular Modernists: Experiments with Precarious Infrastructure (1950s-1980s)

Chair: Zaal Andronikashvili (Zentrum für Literatur- und Kulturforschung Berlin)

break

16.30 Nada Shabout (University of North Texas, Denton)
Proclaiming the Modern Moment through Cultural Arabism

17.15 Harsha Ram (University of California, Berkeley)
The Scale of Global Modernisms: Imperial, Regional, National, Local

Chair: Saleem Al-Bahooly (University of California, Berkeley/Affiliated EUME Fellow 2015-2016)

18.00 Project Presentation “Curating After Year Zero”
with Annett Busch and Anselm Franke (Haus der Kulturen der Welt)

19.00 Roundtable Discussion
"Curating Global Modernisms in the 21st Century"
Catherine David (Musée National d’Art Moderne/CCI, Centre Pompidou, Paris)
Clémentine Deliss (Independent Curator / Fellow at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin 2015-2016)
Patrick Flores (University of the Philippines and the Vargas Museum, Manila)
Anselm Franke (Haus der Kulturen der Welt)
Nicola Müllerschön (KfW Stiftung, Berlin)
Stefan Weber (Museum für Islamische Kunst, Berlin)
Moderated by Atreyee Gupta and Hannah Baader

Saturday, November 7
Venue: Conference room K1

10.00 Rakhee Balaram (Art Histories and Aesthetic Practices Fellow 2015-2016/University at Albany)
Black Madonna of Modernism: Situating Amrita Sher-Gil’s Two Girls

10.45 Merel van Tilburg (Deutsches Forum für Kunstgeschichte, Paris)
From “aesthetic colonialism” to a creolized aesthetic: Negotiating Universalism, Francité and Negritude in Senegalese and French Modernist Tapestries

Chair: Monica Juneja (Universität Heidelberg)

break

11.45 Romuald Tchibozo (University of Abomey-Calavi, Cotonou, Benin/Art Histories and Aesthetic Practices Fellow 2014-2015)
Global Modernism, a study of the concept in African intricate and plural contexts

12.30 Combiz Moussavi-Aghdam (Art University in Tehran/Art Histories and Aesthetic Practices Fellow 2014-2015)
Modern trends in Pre-Revolutionary Iranian Art and the Question of Alternative Modernism

Chair: Sérgio Costa (Freie Universität Berlin)

break

13.30 Final Discussion
moderated by Hannah Baader, Patrick Flores and Atreyee Gupta

The conference is free and open to the public. Please register via initiativestrafo-berlin.de

“Global Modernisms: Contiguities, Infrastructures and Aesthetic Practices“ is the Annual Conference of the Forum Transregionale Studien and the Max Weber Stiftung - Deutsche Geisteswissenschaftliche Institute im Ausland in cooperation with the Haus der Kulturen der Welt. It is convened by the research program Art Histories and Aesthetic Practices. Funded by the Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung (BMBF).

Concept:
Atreyee Gupta, Art Histories and Aesthetic Practices Fellow 2015-2016
Hannah Baader, Art Histories and Aesthetic Practices/
Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz, Max-Planck-Institut
Patrick Flores, University of the Philippines and the Vargas
Museum, Manila