35th CIHA World Congress – Motion: Migrations
São Paulo, Brazil, 13th - 18th September 2020

Comité International d’Histoire de l’Art – CIHA
Comitê Brasileiro de História da Arte – CBHA

CALL FOR PAPERS

Notice: After discussing how to move forward, the organization committee decided to propose an extension of the call for papers for another month (until November 30th) for sessions with 21 or fewer candidates, in order to guarantee a margin of choice in the selection process. This is the case of 10 sessions: 3, 5, 6, 8, 9, 11, 12, 14, 15, 16.


The CIHA Brazil Committee invites proposals for participation in nine Sessions, six Emerging Scholars Seminars, and a Special Session that will constitute the 35th CIHA World Congress – Motion: Migrations.

A – Sessions, Emerging Scholars Seminars, and Special Session
The Sessions (item G), Emerging Scholars Seminars (item H), and Special Session (item I) are detailed below.

B – Participants
The organization committee will oversee the selection of participations assuring to promote the inclusion of scholars from all parts of the world, not privileging any specific geographical or cultural region.
Each person will be able to present a paper in only one of the Sessions or the Emerging Scholars Seminars.
There will be a fee for participation in the Congress.

C – To apply
To apply for the Sessions and Special Session, please provide: 1 – a PDF file of the Applicant Form (model at the end of this document) with the following information:
- Name of Session;
- Name of applicant;
- Institutional affiliation (if any);
- Title (up to 20 words);
- Abstract (350 - 450 words in length);
- Short biographical note (no more than 100 words).
To apply for the Emerging Scholars Seminars, please provide: 1 – a cover letter indicating the applicant’s current career stage; and 2 – a PDF file of the Applicant Form (model at the end of this document) with the following information:
- Name of Emerging Scholar Seminar;
- Name of applicant
- Institutional affiliation (if any);
- Title (up to 20 words);
- Abstract (350 - 450 words in length);
- Short biographical note (up to 100 words).

D – Grant funds
Scholars, emerging scholars, and Ph.D. candidates living and working in low GDP countries worldwide (Latin America, Central and Eastern Europe, Africa, Asia and Southeast Asia, the Caucasus and the Middle East) may qualify for travel support if they are accepted for a Session or an Emerging Scholar Seminar. After being selected, applicants will be informed how to apply for financial support. Travel support is made possible by a grant from the Getty Foundation.

E – Address for submissions
All documents must be sent as one PDF file to cihasaopaulo2020gmail.com

F – Timeline
- August 1st to 31st October 2019: application for the Sessions or the Emerging Scholars Seminars;
- December 15th 2019: publication of the selected applications for the Sessions and the Emerging Scholars Seminars;
- January 30th 2020: publication of approved applications for Getty grant.
- February 2020: publication of the Congress complete program and beginning of enrolment for general public.

G – Sessions
1 – Artisanal Knowledge as a Transcultural Category
Chairs:
Claire Farago, University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder
Jens Baumgarten, Universidade Federal de São Paulo, São Paulo

What can an approach to global art history focused on processes of making offer the discipline as a whole from a methodological perspective? This session takes up the challenge of developing transcultural categories by focusing on migrating technologies, materials, and craftsmanship. What can a focus on the kinds of knowledge and skill involved in material production demonstrate about the complex intersection and fluid boundaries of cultural encounters? The work of this session situates the central art historical question of artistic processes of creativity - the language of which derives historically from European concepts of art - into a framework that does not privilege European ideas about art. Conceiving artistic production in terms of artisanal epistemologies goes well beyond the existing compass of the discipline and makes it possible to de-familiarize European conceptions of art and technology, to think its history anew in a global context. A number of fields are moving beyond the inherited dichotomy between nature and culture, to think in other terms besides the “obsolete language of innate universals and acquired traits,” to cite social anthropologist Tim Ingold’s call for a “sociobiological synthesis.” If the biological and the social are “twisted from multiple strands themselves twisted from multiple fibers,” to cite Ingold, can it help us conceive the material history of cultural production in transcultural terms without imposing European preconceptions of how the social and biological are distributed?

Framing historical inquiry transculturally in terms of skilled ways of knowing and making asks about various connectivities among things, peoples, and ideas from all time periods and geographical locations. It also considers how gaps and discontinuities of historical understanding are to be negotiated. We invite papers on a wide range of topics that address material processes of knowledge production while strategically sidestepping binomial categories of European origin such as art versus artifact that downgrade or exclude many historically and aesthetically significant kinds of objects and practices from consideration. We encourage proposals on artmaking practices independent of European institutions. We seek papers on practices in any media across any geographical or temporal range as a way to rethink technologies of making without falling back on the global/local binary. We invite proposals on the dynamic practices of indigenous groups and on the practices of diaspora communities. The connection between hand and mind, mano e ingegno, is at the core of the Renaissance theoretical legacy. Can this core provide a basis for renewal of the discipline without falling into the traps of Eurocentrism? The aim of this session is to develop a non-totalizing transcultural approach to historically documented relationships that rethink how specific technologies of making are interrelated in economic, philosophical, social, and political terms.

A few examples of possible topics:
- writings from non-European contexts that privilege practices of making
- local and/or global interconnections of artisanal practices (painting, calligraphy, metalworking, textile production, featherworking, ceramics, lacquerware, imitation lacquerware, etc.)
- studies of art academies beyond western Europe such as Brazil, Colombia, Finland, Russia, Japan, Mexico, or the transcontinental workshops of the Jesuits
- practices of diaspora communities, such as those formed by enslaved Africans and their descendants in the Americas
- contemporary practices of indigenous communities, such as Australian artists supplying the international art market
- Japanese artists who emulated Chinese art forms during the Muromachi Period in the framework of collecting practices
- Mughal painters who translated European models and, vice versa, European artists who imitated Mughal models
- the international flow of silver affecting mining technologies, coinage, and traditions of silversmithing in various parts of the world

2 – Border as Method: Art Historical Interventions
Chairs:
Saloni Mathur, University of California, Los Angeles
Elisa Martinez, Universidade de Brasília, Brasília

Borders are crucial to the paradigm of migration: they are simultaneously sites of cultural contact and encounter, and barriers to movement and human mobility. Central to this is the paradoxical fact that increased migration in the world today is everywhere met by a proliferation of physical walls, security fences, borders and barricades whose goal is to prohibit and restrict human mobility and connection. But borders do not merely thwart migration, they are also themselves constantly changing horizons in motion, rather than permanent fixtures in geo-political space. This session invites a critical investigation of the constitutive role of the border within the field of migratory relationships, and the forms and functions that borders take, past and present.

We invite participants to engage in a rethinking of the border -- away from something that is pre-given, fixed or immutable, and towards a conception of the border itself as a social process, and as a horizon that is continually shaped and re-shaped in a variety of cultural practices and visual forms. We propose a vision of the border as a process through which social identities and categories of subject and citizen are shaped; as thresholds that both fuse and divide; as performances, practices, discourses, and symbols; as active sites of negotiation and contestation. Far from neutral, borders are often imbued with affect, passion and emotion; they evoke memory and longing, not to mention fear, intimidation and violence. They galvanize tensions between fortification and permeation, erasure and re-inscription, enemy and friend. As old walls come down, earlier relations become re-defined; and as new walls are built (or new shouts to build walls are made), different social conditions are galvanized and gain force. We seek papers that emphasize the idea of “border making” and posit the border as an intricate social process, a dynamic historical or lived experience that is not reducible to the alienating forces of bureaucracy, or to the abstractions of the map or the state. In this panel, borders might also be productive places for building exchanges, and for shaping reciprocal interests.

We welcome contributions from all subfields of the discipline invested in cross-disciplinary dialogue and a critical questioning. For example: how can art history and the visual arts actively resist the kind of stasis, closure, and historical inevitability that is the unwelcome legacy of geopolitical borders at work? What are the challenges of the border for art historical thinking that foregrounds migration, mobility and cross-cultural exchange? What kinds of methods of analysis and modes of understanding are necessary to confront the indeterminate, yet proliferating, forces of borders? What kinds of spatial, temporal and historiographic dilemmas do borders introduce to the concept of migration? And how can or should the discipline of art history embrace and define the border as method?

3 – Ecologies of Migration. Engaged Perspectives
Chairs:
Thierry Dufrêne, Université Paris Nanterre, Nanterre
Peter J. Schneemann, Universität Bern, Berna
Vera Beatriz Siqueira, Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro

Ecology and migration are indisputably the dominant discourses today. The phenomena that they refer to are challenging the disciplines of the humanities in their self-understanding. It is evident, of course, that climate change and environmental catastrophe constitute, both historically and now, a major cause for migratory movement. We propose organising a panel that will think through the interdependency of migration and ecology. In bringing these discourses together, we also aim at an exploration of the complexity and cultural potential that they imply.

We claim that art production per se, and artists explicitly, reflect on migration as a process that might be discussed in relation to a wide sense of ecology as a relational model, but also in terms of a specific response to the environment. Our panel is informed by contemporary experiments in art and curating that engage with migration, yet also includes a strong historical perspective.

We discuss human mobility as a paradigm that cannot be thought through without considering geographical setting. Given that it is not only humans that move, but also inanimate objects like stones, non-human life forms such as animals and abstract phenomena such as knowledge, migratory processes are deeply rooted in and interacting with environmental processes, linking migration to geology, flora and fauna, and the non-human world in general. Systems of acclimatization and transfers of materials might be looked at in a way that surpasses the nature/culture divide.

Our panel invites a wide range of contributions that exploit a variety of perspectives and time frames in their exploration of the interplay between migration and ecology.
Aspects that could be included:
- New models for understanding the interdependencies between migration and ecology (Shinichi Nakazawa, Art Anthropology, 2006 and the concept of “symmetrical anthropology”; Ecofeminism; Queer Ecology).
- Artistic and curatorial strategies that reflect on migration in terms of an interpretation of the world in flux (Pierre Restany, Sepp Baendereck and Frans Kracjberg, Manifeste du Rio Negro ou du Naturalisme intégral, 1978; Allan Sekula; documenta’s “platforms”, etc.)
- Migration and material culture (Arjun Appadurai, ed., The Social Life of Things, 1986; Gabriela Siracusano’s studies on pigments).
- Attempts to describe how artworks incorporate, on the material as well as on the semantic level, the ecology of global migration (Bruno Latour, Facing Gaïa, 2017).
- Ecologies of knowledge transfers and adaptations in the modes of artistic nomadism and the cultural techniques of memory, imagination and appropriation (cf. Dreaming paintings produced by Australian Aboriginal communities).
- Deconstructions of established concepts of site as homogenous, authentic and pure settings.
- The reality and the imagination of the transit spaces of migration (stops, camps, assembly places, borders) that constitute an iconography of “precarious life” (Judith Butler, Precarious Life, 2004).

By asking such questions, contributors might suggest new categories and paradigms. What happens, for instance, to the old notion of “cultural heritage”? What are the implications of including an environmental dimension into this concept? Could we propose a “multi-sensual heritage”, as new approaches in Social Anthropology suggest, including smells and sounds? (Tim Ingold, Being Alive: Essays on Movement, Knowledge and Description, 2011; Christopher Tilley and Kate Cameron-Daum, An Anthropology of Landscape, 2017; Emily Eliza Scott and Kirsten Swenson, Critical Landscapes. Art, Space, Politics, 2015).
Panelists might look at how this “eco-heritage” relates to and how is it transformed by the multiplicity of sites (departure, transfer, arrival) and of “artificial” localization (memory, imagination, re-creation), in terms of a cultural reference system. (Mary Louise Pratt, “Contact Zones”; Lucy Lippard, Lure of the Local. Sense of Place in a Multicentered Society, 1997; Homi Bhabha, “Third Space” in The Location of Culture, 1994).

Contributions that bring into play interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary approaches are greatly encouraged. The format of for proposals would comprise case studies on artistic works that engage with these questions, as well as methodological reflections, analyses of the canonical narrative of migrations (Bible, Frontier, Long Walk etc.) as well as the micro-narratives around the territories “intermédiaires” (Marc Augé, Non-Lieux. Introduction à une anthropologie de la surmodernité, 1992; Gilles Clement, Manifeste du Tiers Paysage, 2004). How do artists contribute to the reflection on the formation of new sites and how do they explore the ecologies of passage and arrival? Which typologies of the ephemeral, the transitive and the provisional might be detected?

We strongly think that the integration of the artistic dimension dealing with the ecology of migration might contribute to the development of modes of hospitality, overcoming the one- dimensional stereotypes of identity and “authentic place” versus “contamination”. At the same time, we want to liberate ecological discourse from its ideologically charged idea of preservation and the misconception of nature as a stable, ideal equilibrium.

4 – Forced migrations and their impact on art and visual culture
Chairs:
María de Lourdes Ghidoli, Universidad de Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires
Arthur Valle, Universidade Federal Rural do Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro

This session seeks to imbricate the forced migratory processes and their effects on art and visual culture in a historical and contemporary key. The reasons why people leave their places of origin are varied. However, migrations due to causes beyond individual wishes involve a greater uprooting and the need to fit in the place of arrival, often uncertain. Forced displacements have occurred throughout history and geography, caused on the one hand by wars, conquests of territories, environmental changes or political, religious or economic conflicts and, on the other, by human trafficking, historical -as in the case of African Slave Trade- and contemporary. However, there is a fundamental difference between both forced migrations. In the first case, the pursuit to safeguard life (one's own, the family's or the group of belonging) is linked to the will of those who are compelled to migrate. In the second case, people are literally forced to move after the previous act of their physical capture, dehumanizing them and converting them into objects of exchange.
Disciplines such as history, anthropology, sociology, economics, literary studies, among others, have dealt with the subject. However, visual productions (in different media and techniques) related to forced migration is a less frequent topic in the field of art history. However, they are a very rich source for the field of visual arts not only in terms of the representations linked to the phenomenon but also in terms of the artistic production of the displaced themselves.

Therefore, we propose three sub-themes.
1) African Slave Trade. Slavery is a long-standing institution, which has varied over time. However, we consider that the transatlantic slave trade, that is, the forced displacement of people of African descent to be enslaved in the Americas between the 16th and 19th century has had especial relevance due to the persistent aftermath it has left in the societies that were involved. In this sub-theme we also incorporate the African slave trade to the Asian continent between the 9th and 19th centuries.
2) Forced migrations and refugees: unlike the previous sub-theme, which covers a specific temporal range, this has been unfolded over time and geographies. As noted above, this kind of forced migration may be due to armed conflicts (internal wars, invasions by foreign powers), famine, environmental changes (natural or human-induced disasters).
3) Human Trafficking. This subtheme seeks to include contemporary trafficking of people, whether captured to be prostituted (especially women and children) or for economic purposes (to work in subhuman conditions, close to slavery).

The first sub-theme has left a very extensive visual repertoire produced in its historical context but also later artistic expressions –even up to the present- that reflect upon and/or denounce an institution that is sometimes not very visible. The other two are associated, above all, with contemporary artistic practices (although not exclusively).

Based on these sub-themes, we pose a series of questions, most of which can be applied in the three cases: Is there a frequency or a reiteration of topics on the subject? How do these displaced people acquire visibility? Do dominant ideologies underlie visual representations? How do prejudices and discrimination play in the execution, circulation and reception of works? How does empathy play out in that cultural circuit? How are the dominant ideologies interwoven with the artistic expressions of displaced artists? Is it possible to glimpse the imprint of their places of origin in the works of these artists? And of their places of arrival? How do they deal with both contexts in their creations? Needless to say, all forced migration implies a traumatic experience, of extreme violence either because of leaving the place of origin, a potential violence in the place of arrival, with a high probability of dying in the migratory journey. Then, how do art deal with traumatic experiences of displacement? In what way do the visual arts stage this violence and trauma? How do objects relate to the process of forced migrations? How do they exert their agency?

We invite scholars from all over the world to present papers that deal with case studies and theoretical-methodological aspects that involve concepts closely related to the topic: diaspora, cultural identity, memory, border, body, emotions, blackness-whiteness, racism, xenophobia, Eurocentrism, trauma, among others.

Finally, we propose to reflect upon and discuss the possibilities of understanding the diverse processes of forced migrations from artistic practices and discourses belonging to a specific cultural, artistic, historical context of creation, circulation and reception, but which, at the same time, can be inserted in the long term.

5 – Migration, Climate, Surveillance – What does Media Arts Complexity want?
Chairs:
Giselle Beiguelman, Universidade de São Paulo, São Paulo
Oliver Grau, Danube University, Austria
Nara Cristina Santos, Universidade Federal de Santa Maria, Santa Maria

MediaArtHistories is an interdisciplinary field of research that explores the current developments as well as the history and genealogy of new media art, digital art, and electronic art. (GRAU 2007, DOMINGUES 2009) (1, 2). On the one hand, media art histories address the contemporary interplay of art, technology, and science. (WILSON 2010, HENDERSON 1983) (3,4) It aims to reveal the historical relationships and aspects of the ‘afterlife’ (Aby Warburg) in new media art by means of a historical comparative approach. This strand of research encompasses questions of the history of media and perception, of so-called archetypes, as well as those of iconography and the history of ideas. Moreover, one of the main agendas of media art histories is to point out the role of digital technologies for contemporary, post-industrial societies and to counteract the marginalization of according art practices and art objects as pointed out in the Liverpool Declaration: ″Digital technology has fundamentally changed the way art is made. Over the last fifty years, media art has become a significant part of our networked information society. Although there are well-attended international festivals, collaborative research projects, exhibitions and database documentation resources, media art research is still marginal in universities, museums and archives. It remains largely under-resourced in our core cultural institutions (5a) Hence, scholars stress that the technological advances in current media cultures are best understood on the backdrop of an extensive media and art history. Contributions to this field are widespread and include researchers who have disciplinary focuses such as the history of science (Lorraine Daston), art history and image science (Oliver Grau, Barbara Stafford, Jonathan Crary), media studies and media archaeology (Friedrich Kittler, Erkki Huhtamo, Siegfried Zielinski), sound studies (Douglas Kahn), film studies (Sean Cubitt, Jorge La Ferla), media art aesthetics (Christiane Paul, Giselle Beiguelman, Lev Manovich), archives (Grau, Beiguelman) (5b).

The term new media art itself is of great importance to the field (6). The focus of new media art lies in the cultural, political, and social implications as well as the aesthetic possibilities – more or less its ‘media-specificity’ – of digital media. Furthermore, the field of new media art is increasingly influenced by new technologies that surmount a traditional understanding of (art) media. The list of genres that are commonly subsumed under the label of new media art illustrates its broad scope and includes, among others, virtual art (7), Software Art, Internet Art, Glitch Art, Telematic Art, Bio Art / Genetic Art (8), Interactive Art (9), computer animation and graphics, Urban Media Art (10), Mobile Art (11), Hacktivism and Tactical Media. These latter two ‘genres’ in particular have a strong focus on the interplay of art and (political) activism (12). Recently, with the development with Artificial Intelligence, there is also an emerging trend exploring its aesthetics.

The diversity of fields makes clear that digital art with its histories is a complex system, which is not only complicated but has rapidly-accelerating complexity. With the Algorithmic, Computational and even Post-digital turn over recent decades, the digital image is becoming contextual, ephemeral, immersive, interactive and processual, made as it is out of many technologies.

This session addresses the role Media Art plays in today’s sociopolitical issues such as migration, climate, virtual finance, and surveillance society. We welcome going beyond state-of-the-art analytic methods in the humanities, combining for example qualitative close-gaze (of critical visual analysis) and the quantitative distant-reading (from computer-assisted data analysis/empirical research). A main session outcome is added value for the humanities with “a socio-political iconography of the present”, and discussion of a new “way of seeing”, of “thinking with pictures”, and asking “what do complex images want?” in the Digital Age.

Therefore, this session welcomes as well proposals for adequate research infrastructures following the Liverpool Declaration, which was signed by scholars and artists based at institutions all over the globe to develop systematic strategies to fulfill the task that digital culture and its research demands in the 21st Century (http://www.mediaarthistory.org/declaration).

This session focuses on an evaluation of the status of the meta-discipline MediaArtHistories today. Immersed in both contemporary and historiographical aspects of the digital world, we explore the most immediate socio-cultural questions of our time: from migration and media (r)evolutions, to climate, virtualization of finance and surveillance. And we do so through a fractal lens of inter- and trans-disciplinarity, bridging art history, media studies, neuroscience, psychology, sociology, and beyond.

We welcome papers across disciplines, territories and times preferably in the following themes:
- MediaArtHistories historiographies and futures of an ever-emerging field;
- Media Art & Politics (migration, surveillance, climate, etc.);
- Comparative studies on “medium” across different times;
- Institutional histories of Media Art;
- Archiving, collecting, preserving and representing Media Art;
- Digitization of historic collections: Their managing and control. Repatriation of cultural objects in a digital form?;
- Methodologies and research tools for MediaArtHistories with a focus on Digital Humanities;
- International and local histories and practices of media art. How are media arts used in different parts of the world (high tech/low tech..);
- (Post-)Colonial experiences and non-Western histories of media art, science and technology;
- Paradigm shift Digital vs. Post-Digital Theory;
- Media Art aesthetics of memory (dataviz, defunct media, glitch etc.).

6 – Missions as Contact Zones: Migrating Artists, Material Objects, and Aesthetic Practices in a Global World
Chairs:
Carmen Fernández-Salvador, Universidad San Francisco de Quito, Quito
Cristina Cruz González, Oklahoma State University, Stillwater
Leticia Squeff, Universidade Federal de São Paulo, São Paulo

Missions and missionaries played a key role in the migration of art objects, materials and technologies, and were also central to the circulation of formal conventions and styles between (and within) the Americas, Asia, Africa, and Europe. Because of this, missions are key in understanding colonial, imperial and global art history.

Missions are not just recipients of foreign visual traditions. In colonial Spanish America, for example, many of them were also important production and distribution centers, permitting the development of exchange networks that complicated center-periphery relations. Among the Guaraní, converts were skilled in the arts of painting, sculpture, and retable making, while in Chiloé, indigenous workshops also produced wooden retablos and sculptures for local churches. Missions were also highly innovative spaces, allowing for interpretation of artistic traditions from Europe and Asia, and experimentation with both local and imported materials and techniques. In Mainas, builders sought to reproduce the appearance of European churches, using palm trees and bricks painted with local pigments to mimic the color and texture of marble and jasper. Objects manufactured by indigenous artisans were also highly valued by collectors in major urban centers. Thus, featherwork ornaments manufactured in the missions of the Brazilian Amazon decorated churches in Belem and Para.

Great attention has been given to Christian missionary art in different parts of the world. However, Islamic missions in Africa and in Asia were also responsible for the dissemination of architectural forms and of calligraphy across a vast geographic space. Likewise, in present times, art continues to play a significant role in missionary work, demonstrating its adaptability to local conditions. This is the case of the recent portraits of Christ employed by members of the Church of the Latter Day Saints, which have been transformed to suit the concerns of believers in Latin America and in Africa.

Thinking about the mission as a contact zone, this session is particularly interested in the mission as a spiritual, architectural, and geographical space that allowed for complex artistic relationships. We are interested in the spread of diverse artistic traditions in a missionary context, but also on interpretations and adaptations of imported aesthetic practices as well as on local artistic production. Proposals that offer compelling case studies or emphasize unexplored geographies and circuits of exchange are encouraged, as are papers that theorize the study of art-and-mission and engage with the historiography and recent scholarship on the subject.

7 – Moving bodies. The transformative power of body “art”
Chairs:
Margit Kern, Universität Hamburg, Hamburg
Marco Pasqualini, Universidade Federal de Uberlândia, Uberlândia

The body is a place where narratives of singularity and collectivity are told and reinforced by creative acts. Body design produces a specific category of images because these “artefacts” are always more than an artefact. They oscillate between nature and culture, between the presence of the body itself and the simultaneous representation of preceding images of bodies which served as a model. The main thesis of the panel is that aesthetic practices in this area which were seen as art forms beyond the traditional canon should play a more prominent role in art history.

Among others two political implications of body images shall receive special attention: First: the body as a place where constructions of identity are visualized. Here especially the possibility to create “imagined communities” (Anderson 1983) and to move the body in the imagination due to a creative intervention – to transform it into a traveling “concept” while it remains motionless – shall be analyzed. Second: In migration processes the status of the body between nature and culture gains a problematic political dimension. Claims of authenticity are often reinforced by arguments referring to the body as a given. Especially in this context attention for aesthetic interventions creating a “second nature” and the rhetoric of the nature-culture-dichotomy are of interest.

But the panel shall not only discuss how transcultural negotiations in specific historical periods and regions dealing with race, class and gender use the body as instrument but also how the transformation of the body into a liminal entity between the profane and the sacred or between the sphere of human being and animal can be analyzed. In this context body transformations by means of armor, masks and disguise etc. shall play a role. These are often seen as foremost non-European phenomena but a more thorough look at European art production shows that these creations also played a major role there before the modern period and they were prominent tasks for artists with a high prestige. They were only marginalized and driven out of the “canon” by art history as a discipline when art of the body was seen in a primitivistic perspective.

A recent interest in the body in art history has brought new or rather neglected topics into the foreground: fashion, hairstyle, tattooing, body paint etc. culminating in phenomena of medical body modelling and “bio art”. As these phenomena were traditionally also treated by anthropology the panel should discuss the question how a fruitful trans- and interdisciplinary dialogue can be developed for the future and which terms can be used here, in order to clarify what art history can contribute in this field and how the different methodological preconditions of the disciplines might help to develop a transcultural “Bildanthropologie” (“anthropology of images”) (Belting 2001). This dialogue also aims at the extension of art historical categories like “portrait” etc. and should give us the chance to foster the development of new terms for art forms dealing with the body in order to break up the hitherto questioned but still mostly unaltered “Western” monopoly in art-historical terminology.

The body has always been a specific form of “Bilderfahrzeug” (“image vehicle” - Warburg) as it oscillates between the body as phenomenon of presence and the body as site of representation. On the one hand we deal with the presence of an individual human being but on the other hand we are also dealing with forms of representation, creations of the self depending on creative predecessors in giving the body a specific shape and appearance. The body as moving and highly transformative image “holder” and image “producer” shall be discussed in three main aspects:
- Different contexts of body transformations shall be addressed by the panel – transcultural negotiations in specific historical periods and regions dealing with race, class and gender using the body as a medium; body images as expression of “imagined communities” (Anderson); images of the body in the perspective of human-animal-studies; transformations of the body in religious contexts using the body as medium;
- Different forms of body “art”, e.g. garment, fashion, hairstyle, tattooing, body paint, armor, masks, disguise, phenomena of medical body modelling and “bio art” etc., shall be examined in their specific relationship to the body;
- Terms for body images in different visual cultures shall be examined in order to create a transcultural anthropology of the image (“Bildanthropologie” – Belting).

8 – Questions of Restitution: Repair, Negotiations and Discussions on Expropriated Objects
Chairs:
Peju Layiwola, University of Lagos, Lagos
Paulo Knauss, Universidade Federal Fluminense, Niterói, and Museu Histórico Nacional, Rio de Janeiro

Restitution often involves questions of identity, memory and patrimony placed in relation to the “other”. The loss of cultural patrimony, plundered from one country and taken to another, has brought about heated debates across the globe. Central to these discussions are issues about decolonizing the museums and the formulation of ethical standards for collecting objects. Further to this, is the adoption of legal frameworks and culturally sensitive models in handling cultural objects. Therefore, this session will focus on the large range of ideas and practices surrounding the restitution of works of art as well as human remains, often violently taken from their original sites to other locations during periods of authoritarian regimes, wars, or colonial occupations. At the crux of the restitution debate is President Emmanuel Macron’s recent declaration at Ouagadougou to restitute African art works in French collections to Africa. A follow up to this declaration is the Sarr-Savoy report which recommended that artefacts which were taken away without consent should be returned. The report has generated several responses and reactions as well as negotiations and initiatives towards loaning works to several African countries, from Post Nazi -Germany, to Greece, Egypt, Australia, New Zealand, Nigeria, Cambodia, Namibia, Tanzanian, art and bones seem to have moved places to sites of debate and contestation.
This session seeks to develop a wide debate on central aspects of the theory and practice of restitution across the world through the analysis of specific examples: What is the relationship between restitution and power? How legitimate is the claim for restitution? What models and formats exist that can be applied in forging new relationships through restitution? Where lies the power of decision? In what ways can national laws be circumvented or changed? How plausible is the concept of a shared ownership of objects? What does this concept mean? How can loans, instead of restitution, contribute to identity formation in view of the roles of myth and mythology in identity formation? Which role can technology play in this process? What is the relevance of provenance research to this debate? Does it hamper or aid the restitution process?

One of the main characteristics of the contemporary discussion on restitution of art works is the location of its epicenter in European and North American institutions, understandably so, since the artefacts are located there. This session adopts a more inclusive structure by inviting students, scholars, academics, museum professionals, artists from diverse regions and backgrounds, as well as people from local communities.

9 – Transcending Borders: Reshaping Cultures through Ideas and Images
Chairs:
Anupa Pande, National Museum Institute, New Delhi
Savita Kumari, National Museum Institute, New Delhi
Rosana Pereira de Freitas, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro

Migration has been a constant factor in the development of human civilization. It was motivated by a broad spectrum of reasons ranging from material benefits, political and religious aspirations, environmental exigencies and so on. In addition to the mobility of people, migration implied the mobility of ideas, beliefs and faiths, which were concretized into tactile forms encompassing works of art and architecture. Existing societies were reshaped through the processes of appropriation, assimilation and adaptation in which tangible and intangible cultural and political constructs were imbibed in order to forge a civilizational matrix. This in turn produced a melange of cultures and ethnicities, which can still be seen all over the world.

In ancient times, the spread of Hinduism and Buddhism along the trade routes throughout Asia brought about fundamental changes in the existing cultures of this region. The virtue of non-violence, concept of charity and universal compassion are emphasized upon in Buddhism. Buddhist jatakas, which propound these values, such as Vishvantara and Shibi Jataka are depicted in the art of Miran, Dunhuang, Ajanta, Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Thailand, Vietnam and right across to Borobudur in Indonesia. Similarly, the spread of Hinduism in various parts of Asia contributed in the creation of marvelous edifices such as Angkor Wat in Cambodia.

The migration of Jews and Zoroastrians across the world due to religious persecution and political aggression in their homeland led to the development of new ideas. These communities, while maintaining their distinct identity, blended with the local communities and enriched the art and culture of the regions they settled in and also contributed to their economic development. The contribution of Judaism in the formation of a nation, Israel, and its relationship with the Jewish community across the world is an interesting area of study with respect to migration of religion.

The dialectical process of migration, which involves conflict, synthesis and resolution, is best illustrated by expansion of Islam across Asia, Europe and Africa. Though the expansion of Islamic religion was because of ardent religious zeal and blatant political aspirations that favored iconoclasm, the mingling of Islamic and non-Islamic concepts ultimately paved the way for the emergence of new modes of artistic expression in Asia, Europe and Africa. For example, under the Islamic rule sophisticated cultures emerged as is evident in the refined art and architectural tradition at Cordoba mosque in Spain, mosques in Cairo, Egypt and Taj Mahal in India to mention a few.

From the sixteenth to the twentieth century, intercontinental migration became more widespread due to European colonial expansion for commercial gains. This facilitated the spread of Christianity across the colonies in the world and had a profound impact on ways of seeing and believing. Colonialism also led to the mass migration of African people to the Americas as a part of the Atlantic slave trade in the Portuguese, Dutch, British, Spanish and French colonies. Notwithstanding the dire consequences of slavery and the slave trade, one of the outcomes was the unique admixture of native American, African and European belief systems leading to a distinct cultural formation.

The entire concept of migration is pertinent in current times and needs to be re-examined. We observe an interesting paradox wherein on the one hand, the world is becoming increasingly connected through the means of information and communications technology. On the other hand, political boundaries are becoming tighter. So, with what perspective might we view migration? The dialectics pertaining to migration tend to define it two diametrically opposed ways. First, as a process of infringement of privileges and resources of the host community by the migrant community. The other, as a process of embracing a larger concept for the development of civilization as is attested historically by the efflorescence of world religion, art and culture.

While mass migrations at times tend to disrupt existing social fabrics, they also facilitate the creation of new intersections between ideas, images and aesthetic modes of expression. This panel would therefore like to view migration in the light of the ideas promulgated by new faiths and beliefs and their resultant manifestations in art and architecture across the world.

H – Emerging Scholars Seminars
10 – Migration of Ideas. Artistic Theories on the Move
Chairs:
Joseph Imorde, Universitaet Siegen, Siegen
Patricia Delcanale Meneses, Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Campinas

Not only people and objects migrate, ideas are on the move as well. Theories roam, spread, and disseminate into new and unknown fields of discourse. Artistic theories that evolved under specific political, social, and cultural conditions can get wider attention and gain impact under very diverse political circumstances and in different cultural atmospheres.

For instance, David Graeber has argued, that there never was a West at all and that the idea of democracy, a supposed staple of “Western civilization”, was neither invented nor inherited from ancient Greece, but rather emerged from the “spaces in between” where different societies (involuntarily) came into contact.

Such observations can be applied to the history of art and – to be more general – to the history of visual and material culture. There are many examples that the migration of artistic theories caused unpredictable reactions: new artistic paradigms could be embraced or fiercely resisted (e. g. Romanticism), novel practices be seen as inspiring or refused as subversive and dangerous (e. g. Pop Art). Artistic theories were an important factor in transforming cultural terrain in very different ways, and they helped to shape social and political spheres in earlier centuries.

In our contemporary world, art seems to emerge “between cultures.” Migrating ideas dispersed into “uncertain terrains” (Inge Boer) create discussions and spark conflicts that often challenge the conditions of present-day societies.

The session will explore the place and the impact of the migration of artistic theories throughout history and in a global context. It will examine the repercussions that entail the dissemination of artistic ideas in discussing questions regarding
- the circulation of artistic treatises within a global network;
- the appropriation and rewriting of artistic theories produced in different geographical zones;
- the valuation and devaluation of artistic paradigms;
- the creation and popularization of artistic canons;
among other aspects of the geographical and chronological transit of artistic theories.

11 – Migrations of Media
Chairs:
Byron Ellsworth Hamann, Ohio State University, Ohio
Maria Inez Turazzi, Universidade Federal Fluminense, Niterói

This session will examine the migration of artistic mediums across time and space. Of particular interest will be the use of theories from media archaeology in order to reframe classic art historical concerns related to movement and transfer. What happens when an object created and cared for in one time and place is transferred to an entirely different environment? How are specific artistic media transformed when taken to places (and times) different from the ones in which they originated? What happens when artworks, performances, and/or practitioners from a specific time and place are turned into records (visual and alphabetic descriptions, in various media), which are themselves then transported for consumption to other sites? What happens when an older image is used to make a newer image, in a different time and place or in a different medium? How do these migrations of media relate to other forms of migration? Overall, the session aims to create broad dialogues across space and time, exploring the deep genealogies (both continuous and disjunctive) of practices involving the transfer and transformation of ideas, objects, and images.

12 – Migrations of Objects
Chairs:
Pedro Luengo, Universidad de Sevilla, Sevilla
Angela Brandão, Universidade Federal de São Paulo, São Paulo

This session seeks proposals that focus on the material base of art, and on its real or symbolic transformation within the multiple processes of migration through time and space. Artistic processes create and charge objects with symbolic meaning, but also with political, social and economic significance. Academics have proposed many approaches in the last decades through this perspective. History of Things has become a common field encompassing Art History, Archaeology, Anthropology, History and even Geography. Benefited by such interdisciplinary views, it requires now a redefinition inside our discipline. This session understands the historic-artistic object as three-dimensional artefacts filled with meaning/s from aesthetical tools, being those visual, acoustic, any other sensorial or mixed. From the political rhetoric of a diplomatic gift to the religious meaning of an African cabanas, through Mandarin stones, devotional figures or maps, all were charged with an intention, by the patrons, the artists, the owners or even those who finally wrote about them. Even more recent proposals rejecting the role of art as a communication tool can be analyzed from this point of view. This panel seeks to address this wide problem from specific questions, closely linked with the general aim of the conference and CIHA:

1 – Propose an analytical framework for the migration of objects. Alterable features of objects allow us to analyze them as an inbetweener case. After being exported some changed their meaning or characteristics, such as the Asian fans, screens or silks, devotions such as the Santo Niño in the Philippines, the Virgin of Guadalupe, or the Central Asian Buddhism along China, Korea or Japan, just to cite some examples. Other changed their meaning after a chronological migration, such as the copies of antiquities that can be found both in Asia and Europe, or the current artistic tendency of appropriations.
2 – Define the possibilities of contribution from Art History to the object, compared with other historical current approaches. Is there a clear difference between the concept of artefact and artistic objects nowadays? Is there a conflict between the historical material turn and the social art history? How digital art history can help to obtain sharper responses from the part of our discipline?
3 – Propose a new paradigm to better understand how migration of objects allowed the diffusion of artistic techniques or models. From oil painting to Asian silver filigree through different attempts to obtain porcelain secrets, all show a cultural dialogue in different artistic cases that must be explained from the theoretical framework of the discipline, and not mainly from cultural history.
This panels calls for contributions addressing these issues, looking forward to promoting dialogue among different historiographical traditions.

13 – Migration, Transculturality, and Hybridity: Agents of Transcultural Art and Art History
Chairs:
Alexandra Karentzos, Technische Universität Darmstadt, Darmstadt
Miriam Oesterreich, Technische Universität Darmstadt Darmstadt
Paula Viviane Ramos, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, Porto Alegre

As terms, migration and transculturality have a common origin in the permanent transgression of national and cultural boundaries, together with the instability of the latter, and both take account of the phenomena of cultural contact as well as cultural processes of negotiation. Migration implies the global movement of people. Along with this movement of people, images and aesthetic concepts, things and everyday practices are also part of such migration processes. To this extent, migration in particular does set processes of transculturation in train. Phenomena of cultural as well as artistic adoption and ‘blending’ (mestizaje, creolisation, métissage, hybridity, migration) are dealt with globally and form a particular research area. From the 1920’s onwards, and particularly at a time of increasing nationalistic and racist discourse in Europe, which resulted in global migration streams, theoreticians like Gilberto Freyre, José Vasconcelos and Fernando Ortiz debated such phenomena and reflected on them and developed very early standpoints on a “history of transcultural thought” (Christian Kravagna). These ideas to bring ethnic and cultural fantasies of purity into question also provide a basis for postcolonial theory formation, concepts of cultural hybridity, and decoloniality (Homi K. Bhabha, Edward Said, Stuart Hall, Walter D. Mignolo, Enrique Dussel, Néstor García Canclini).

The session seeks to analyze whether and how such theoretical positions are appropriated and converted in the production of images and art and can be rendered productive for writing art history, or how far standpoints in Postcolonial Studies provide a repertoire for comprehending transculturally interconnected histories of art. We intend to ask in this session, to what extent the migration of people is related to transculturation processes in art. The potential artistic standpoints, which reflect migration and transculturality can range from pre-colonial objects and examples of iconography via art in colonial contexts up to contemporary art. Many artists around the globe reflect on the ability of art to show the social, economic, emotional entanglements of migration and transcultural processes. The question then remains as to how art shifts perspectives on migration und how art can foster a theoretical reframing of transculturality? How can artistic practices as appropriation, bricolage, collage, montage be understood as a form of hybrid aesthetics?

14 – Home and Hospitality
Chairs:
Todd Porterfield, New York University, Nova York
Fernanda Pitta, Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo, São Paulo

House and home have their own aesthetics, iconography, and architecture, which may function as symbols and agents of affinities or of apartness regarding everything from gender and family, to the community and the polis. Home is integral to the discussion of migrations if only because it is where the migrant object, person, or concept once began. Inextricably linked to migration, it is the very thing that both sets migration in motion and motivates its enemies. In ancient Greece, home was ethos itself.

Art historians and curators have long deemed origin and provenance as essential markers and determinants of character, meaning, and value. By what strategies do artistic and art historical practices, indeed art objects, lay claim to belonging to a particular place or culture? Where do people and things belong and why should origins matter? The repatriation of looted objects and the right of return of people from exile and displacement might suppose an integral, historical, and even natural bond. Migration, exile, and displacement often suppose that the migrant has been uprooted, that their presence at home has been unnaturally severed, as if home is otherwise natural and continuous. Home would seem to be on the side of possession, permanence, and immutability, and opposed to the dispossessed and the transient, although some theorists would demure.

Jacques Derrida advocated for unconditional hospitality. When a stranger knocks at the door, we are obliged to host them, no questions asked because, he reasoned, all homes are already based on a prior seizure. Derrida’s universal illegitimacy of at-homeness cuts in multiple ways: it would seem to require welcoming without friction any migrant, art, or art history arriving from somewhere else. At the same time, it would seem to delegitimize the exile’s claim to a homeland, while at the same time unburdening art history’s genealogies that are supposed to guarantee meaning and status. Migration, like empire and hospitality, force the question of who and what is at home here, who belongs here, and to whom does a place and culture belong.

Emerging Scholars in this Seminar will contribute to the broader CIHA’s reflections on the ethics of migration by addressing any relevant aspect of the art and art history about home and hospitality. The papers may be grounded in the broadly theoretical or the precise and robust case study, while drawing from the most diverse periods, geographies, media, and methodological approaches of our disciplines.

15 – In Transit: Addressing World Art Systems
Chairs:
Georgiana Uhlyarik, Art Gallery of Ontario
Valeria Piccoli, Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo, São Paul0

The circumnavigation of the world provoked displacements of large populations and along with them the permanent removal and dislocation of objects from within their original place and cultural context. The field of art history and art museum collections inextricably controlling their presentation, circulation, research and interpretation, are facing urgent and critical ethical questions of accountability, responsibility and self-determination. This seminar will examine the history of museums and their expansion, especially the recent phenomenon of satellite museums, as well as art fairs, biennials, and major international exhibitions as it concerns the idea of migration considered from the point of view of institutions. It evokes the transit of institutional models, such as schools and art academies, whether linked or not to crafts and teaching in workshops. The session also intends to examine the unfolding of the various world art systems in the processes of globalization. Scholars as well as curators and artists, are working to articulate new and better questions, negotiate new truths, formulate and implement new frameworks and theoretical propositions, as a means to broaden the established art historical tradition and re-centre art, artists and their voices.

- How do contemporary artists engage with and offer new perspectives in addressing such emotionally and politically charged issues as cultural, physical, social and artistic dislocation and displacement?
- What are the ethical and scholarly responsibilities of art historians in dealing with the research, interpretation, exhibition and publication of art that continues to be ‘disconnected’ from its context and thus in danger to be limited by a Euro-centric lens?
- What are the new methodological approaches that offer art historians and curators means to navigate respectfully and insightfully across cultures?
This session welcomes papers across art historical fields, disciplines and temporalities that:
- Propose and examine how scholars, curators and artists participate in developing, framing, and facilitating new ways of addressing evolving cultural identities and social realities, reconsider historical precedents and create space for uncomfortable yet generative conversations
- Examine case studies as new frameworks of collaboration that rebalance the local, and center the art and voices of artists often underrepresented
- Disrupt established modes of power within academia, art museums, artistic practice, and pedagogy
- Engage with contemporary, historical and ancient art.

I – Special Session
15 – Voyages between Brazil and Italy: Connecting session between Firenze 2019 and São Paulo 2020, in collaboration with the Italian Scientific Committee
Chairs:
Angelo Cattaneo, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Lisboa
Tamara Quirico, Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro
Giovanna Capitelli, Università degli Studi Roma Tre

Considering the main theme of the 35th World Congress of the Comité International d’Histoire de l’Art (“Motion”), this session was divided into two meetings: the first, to be held in Florence in 2019 (Motion: Transformation) and the second, that will take place in São Paulo in 2020 (Motion: Migrations). This call is now open for the second part of the session in São Paulo.

We invite scholars in various fields to present their ideas on the concepts of “Voyage” and \ or “Migrations” with a focus on the artistic and cultural exchanges as well as migrations between Brazil and Italy. We welcome papers that shall consider the concept of “voyage” and “migration”, with a special emphasis on the relations between Brazil and Italy, from one of their many possible research perspectives.
Potential topics may include (but are not limited to):
- The circulation of objects, concepts, visual recordings and writings;
- Cultural identity, cultural congruity and diversity, ethnic density;
-The journeys of artists, critics or cultural promoters;
- Migrations, ethnicities, power, diversity of cultures;
- Pilgrimage (of artists or objects);
- Periodization and concepts in global Art Histories;
- Processes of visual and cultural translations;
- Trans-cultural writing of Art Histories;
- Voyages and Migrations in Visual, Performing Arts and Museums.

J – Organizers
Comitê Brasileiro de História da Arte – CBHA
Comité International de l'Histoire de l'Art – CIHA

K – Partners
Departamento de História da Arte - UNIFESP
Departamento de Teoria e História da Arte – UERJ
Escola de Belas Artes – UFBA
Museu de Arte Contemporânea da Universidade de São Paulo - MAC USP
Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo
SMU Meadows School of the Arts
Universidade Estadual de Campinas – UNICAMP

L – CIHA Brazil Committee
Claudia Mattos Avolese, Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Campinas
Jens Baumgarten, Universidade Federal de São Paulo, São Paulo
Maria Berbara, Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro
Felipe Chaimovich, Museu de Arte Moderna, and Fundação Armando Álvares Penteado, São Paulo
Roberto Conduru, Southern Methodist University, Dallas
Luiz Alberto Freire, Universidade Federal da Bahia (CBHA sitting President)
Ana Magalhães, Museu de Arte Contemporânea da Universidade de São Paulo, São Paulo
Valeria Piccoli, Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo, São Paulo
 
35th CIHA World Congress – Motion: Migrations
São Paulo, Brazil, 13th - 18th September 2020

Comité International d’Histoire de l’Art – CIHA
Comitê Brasileiro de História da Arte – CBHA

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