WORKSHOP
Diasporic Imaginaries. Multiple Senses of Belonging

Migration in art and art history is primarily defined by the movement in both space and time of artists, curators, and critics, and their works, ideas, and memories. It has engendered geographically dispersed artistic communities bound by shared diasporic experiences and has generated splintered temporalities of artistic relationalities that negotiate between pastness, nowness, and futurity. The increasing diasporization of art and culture is a far-reaching and profound shift resulting from global migration and its rapidly changing nature. As a global transnational process, migration has produced global diasporas, including ethnic, cultural, religious, and national diasporas, which fuel the dissemination of “diasporic imaginaries.” Along with transcending the limiting classical notions of diaspora as anchored in the Jewish tradition, it has diversified in scope on every level, extended its definitions, and repositioned itself at the intersection of (trans)migration, transnational, and postcolonial studies. Postcolonial and anthropological theories of transversality, transculturation, and translation have contributed to rethinking the diaspora in terms of hybridity and redefining it as a concept, structure, and social practice of translational migratory culture oscillating between integrity and discontinuity.

Reconsidering diasporic communities as “imagined communities” (Anderson 1991) established the notion of the “diasporic imaginary” (Mishra 1996), making it possible to reinterpret the imaginary as the creation of a shared diasporic space of dreams, fantasies, and visions. Most powerfully — and often even violently — the “diasporic imaginary” emerges at the intersection of global transnationalization and (re-)nationalization. As a migration-based force, the diasporic imaginary is generated and informed by a multiplicity of temporalities, localities, traditions, identities, and subjectivities. The conference intends to approach the diverse plurality of “diasporic imaginaries” in the arts, art communities, and art histories from the viewpoint of “multiple belonging.”

Research Group Art Production and Art Theory
in the Age of Global Migration

Concept
Lena Bader, Birgit Mersmann, Mona Schieren

PROGRAM

Thursday, 4th April 2019

14h00 Welcome
Lena Bader, Birgit Mersmann, Mona Schieren

14h15 Quick Round of Introductions

Session I, Chair: Burcu Dogramaci

14h30 Diasporic Imaginaries and the Re-narration of Local and National Belonging
Anne Ring Petersen

15h15 Diasporic Aesthetics and Migratory Imagery in Chinese-Australian Art
Birgit Mersmann

16h00 Diasporic Imaginaries of Fashion, Identity and Decolonization in La Revue du Monde Noir (Paris 1930/31)
Elke Gaugele

16h45 Coffee break

Session II, Chair: Birgit Mersmann

17h00 “Diasporic Modernity” – Who Writes Iranian Art History?
Katrin Nahidi

17h45 Aesthetics of an Iranian Diaspora. The Artist Parastou Forouhar
Cathrine Bublatzky

18h30 Break

18h45 Special Guest Lecture
Moderation: Mona Schieren

From Clara Law to Heague Yang: Attempts to Represent
(or Imagine) the Migrant Experience through Moving Image
Yung Ma

20h15 Cocktail dînatoire

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Friday, 5th April 2019

Session III, Chair: Anne Ring Petersen

9h00 The Venice Biennale for the Armenian Diaspora. Victimising the National Imaginary
Ekaterina Vinogradova

9h45 Creating Jewish and Israeli Art: Can the Diaspora Take Part in the National Art Canon?
Noa Avron Barak

10h30 Coffee break

Session IV, Chair: Mona Schieren

10h45 Weaving Together: Narratives of Home, Exile and Belonging
Maria Photiou

11h30 Trans-Atlantic Black Portraits: Diasporic Imaginaries between Brazil and Germany
Mônica Cardim

12h15 Lunch break

Session V, Chair: Lena Bader

13h15 From Harlem via Paris to Dakar. Loïs Mailou Jones’ Diasporic Imaginaries
Annabel Ruckdeschel

14h00 Exile Modernism: The Photographic Work of Maya Deren and Alexander Hammid
Andrew Witt

15h00 End of the workshop

15h30 Internal AG Meeting

Vortrags- und Diskussionssprache ist Englisch.
Die Teilnahme an dem Workshop ist kostenfrei.
// Les discussions et interventions auront lieu en anglais.
La participation à l’atelier est gratuite.