Streets, Routes, Methods I: Reflections on Paths, Spaces and Temporalities
International Conference

A cooperation of the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz – Max Planck Institute and eikones - NCCR Iconic Criticism, University of Basel
Organized by Hannah Baader, Adam Jasper, Stefan Neuner, Gerald Wildgruber and Gerhard Wolf


Paths can be serpentine, straight and anything in between; they might traverse barely accessible mountains, like the Inca Trail, or be straight, like desire lines. Paths come before roads, survive into the time of roads, or reappear in response to them. Paths tend to be overgrown, to disappear—in the desert sand—to be overbuilt or abandoned. They have their temporalities, seasons and spatialities, between proximity and distance. Paths are therefore not purely spatial affairs. Paths have a genuine temporal dimension beyond the duration of a traveler’s journey. Paths can be seen as chronotopoi, with literary, pictorial and cinematographic histories. Paths must be trodden in order to survive, exemplifying the Heraclitian formula μεταβάλλον ἀναπαύεται ('it is in changing that things find repose'). The temporal dimension of paths ultimately allows us to overcome the sterile dichotomy between real and imagined paths (metaphors, allegories, models). They have a rich life in the world of metaphors, intrinsic to the notion of met-hodos, based on the Greek word for way, or path. This allies paths to language and, more specifically, writing, whose elements are also repetitions, tracks that are 'inked in'. It is the remembered, the described, and thereby the reusable and transferable path. Paths within language can become ritual tools for the creation of new ones.

Beyond the above mentioned approaches to paths, the conference will explore their relationship to the environment, in line with the eco-art historical project at the KHI. How do paths, trails and routes shape or even create landscape? What is the interplay of geomorphology, flora and fauna, animal and human agency? Paths introduce directionalities, itineraries and nets into the environment, they are linked to technologies of transport and movement; they offer viewpoints, changing horizons or deep immersion into flora or architecture; experiencing them is a multisensorial endeavor. Under the hodological conditions of global urban environments and post/industrial landscapes, paths run across streets, they can be subversive, democratic or pragmatic. They can be reinstalled as nostalgic evocations of a lost or overcome past, of rural or pastoral life, or serve mass tourism as well as new ecological approaches.


With contributions by Himanshu Burte, Gérard Chouin, Nuno Grancho, Fabian Horn, Maia Mania, J. Dorand Matory, Marco Musillo, João Carlos Nara Jr., Catalina Ospina, Francesco Pellizzi, Bas Princen, Antonieta Reis Leite, Lutz Robbers, Joseph Rykwert, Velizar Sadovski, Martin Thiering, Pathmini Ukwattage, Philip Ursprung und John Xaviers


PROGRAM

Friday, 5 May 2017

09:30
Hannah Baader (Florence/Berlin) and Stefan Neuner (Basel)
Welcome and Introduction

10:15
Philip Ursprung (Zurich)
Volcano Walks: Following the Explorer Franz Junghuhn on the Island of Java

11:00
Bas Princen (Rotterdam)
(Central) Perspectives

11:45 Break

12:00
Catalina Ospina (Chicago)
At a Crossroads: the Emergence of Mopa Mopa Images in the Colonial Andes

12:45
Marco Musillo (Florence)
The Ecology of Silent Descriptions: Semantic and Symbolical Paths towards the King of Trees

13:30 Lunch Break


15:00
Himanshu Burte (Mumbai)
Path, Place, and Network: The Politics of Roads in Mumbai

15:45
John Xaviers (Noira, Uttar Pradesh)
Mattancherry Jew Street

16:30 Break

17:00
Maia Mania (Tbilisi)
"Le chemin des anes, le chemin des hommes …"

17:45
Lutz Robbers (Oldenburg)
Paths and Lines: Negotiations in Architectural Image Practices

18:30 Break

18:45
Presentation of Works by Bas Princen

19:15
Joseph Rykwert (London) and Francesco Pellizzi (New York)
A Conversation


Saturday, 6 May 2017

09:15
Fabian Horn (Munich)
The Conceptualization "Life is a Journey" in Early Greek Poetry and Thought

10:00
Velizar Sadovski (Vienna)
The Roads of Indo-Iranian Ritual: Multidimensional Sacred Space and Topology of Transcendence

10:45 Break

11:15
Gérard Chouin (Williamsburg, VA)
(Im)Materiality, Diachrony, and Spatiality: Preliminary Thoughts about Three Dimensions of Long-Distance 'Trade' Routes in Medieval to Early Modern West Africa

12:00
João Carlos Nara Jr. (Rio de Janeiro)
African Diaspora in Guanabara Bay: Slave Paths, Maritime Routes and Trade Streets in the Rio de Janeiro of 18th Century

12:45
J. Lorand Matory (Durham, NC)
At the Crossroads: Afro-Atlantic and Central European Ethics of Intersectionality

13:30 Lunch Break


15:00
Martin Thiering (Berlin/Rome)
Implicit and Tacit Knowledge in Flavio Biondo's Historiographical and Geographical "Italia Illustrata"

15:45
Antonieta Reis Leite (Coimbra)
Paths, Spaces and Temporalities on the Azores Islands Settlement (Sixteen Century). Methods to the Creation of a New Landscape.

16:30
Nuno Grancho (Coimbra)
Representation of Urban Spaces and Temporalities in the Colonial City of Diu

17:15
Gerhard Wolf (Florence)
Concluding Remarks & Final Discussion


CONTACT
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