International Conference
Judgement Practices in the Artistic Field

Organized by Jun.-Prof. Stephanie Marchal (Ruhr-Universität Bochum/Leuphana Universität Lüneburg), Prof. Dr. Beate Söntgen (Leuphana Universität Lüneburg) and Hubert Locher (Deutsches Dokumentationszentrum für Kunstgeschichte Bildarchiv Foto Marburg)

Conference language: English and German

Someone who ventures to pass judgement challenges, takes a stance and opens discursive spaces. In the process of judging, what is judged and the person judging are constituted. The goal of our conference is to submit the practices of judging that determine the artistic field to a systematic study. Four panels consisting of people active in various areas of the artistic field mark the range of our inquiry:
The first panel shall inquire into “PRACTICES OF SELECTION” (Panel I) and focus on the art establishment to examine selection as the principal paradigm of the modern era. The necessity of making a selection from a mass of items that are (often) only viewed briefly, most often making the selection quickly, is common to the Parisian Salons in the nineteenth century and the contemporary art scene (documenta, art academies and so on). Up to now, there has been hardly any study of the pattern of such selection processes and the conditionalities, interests and criteria on which they are based. There are various attempts and approaches intended to rationalize it or to make it intersubjectively understandable and to communicate it; these shall be explored under the rubric “PATTERNS OF JUSTIFICATION” (Panel II) not least in order to (initially) identify any non-discursively generated patterns of selection. One guiding question is whether these patterns can be detected in a diachronic and/or synchronic perspective in the field of art criticism and/or art studies. A central concern of the conference is to detect rhetorical patterns and manners of argumentation and to contextualize and analyse practices of judgement with a view to their historicity and their (social, institutional, ideological, media-based, etc.) setting comparatively and self-reflectively. This inquiry leads to reflection on whether and to what extent “STYLES OF JUDGING” (Panel III) can be identified. Is the location in terms of history, media and institution at which a judgement is made constitutive for the development of specific forms of judgement and the manner in which they emerge and are presented, and if so, to what extent? And finally, the manner in which judgements take effect shall be studied under the rubric “FORMATION OF TASTE” (Panel IV). What judgement has what effect, why and where? To what extent are judgements oriented on addressees and what is their range?

The aim of the 4 panels in this sequence is to understand judgement processes in the field of art – with respect to their genesis, strategies of justification, forms, and manner of taking effect – and to examine them with a view to their paradigmatic potential for practices of judgement.
The conference also takes a stand on the currently omnipresent notion of a “crisis of art criticism”. According to the commonly accepted view, description and interpretation have gained the upper hand over judgement; this a questionable proposition inasmuch as up to now there has been no far-reaching analysis of the various forms of judgement and judging including their implicit and masked modes of appearance.

We are looking forward to contributions from visual culture studies, art history and subject-related disciplines (especially from graduate and postgraduate students).
Please send your abstracts (up to 400 words) and a short CV (up to 150 words) by July 30, 2017 to: elisabeth.heymerleuphana.de and Stephanie.Marchalruhr-uni-bochum.de