Envisioning Human Rights. How to claim the Common (Good)
International Conference

Organized by the Minerva Research Group "The Nomos of Images. Manifestation and Iconology of Law" in collaboration with the European University Institute, Florence


The claim for universal human rights is not restricted to proclamations of international conventions. On the contrary, the history of human rights has been intertwined with the history of images on many levels. Recently, questions regarding photography and the emergence of human rights after WWII have strongly shaped academic debates. New forms of mass communication that emerged during the 1940s fostered a closer alignment between the usage of photography and political debates concerning the implementation and acceptance of human rights, and led to ethical debates about the limits of representation, which continue to this day.

How did and do images continue to stimulate discourses about human rights and their acceptance? What is their contribution in shaping, implementing and legitimizing fundamental human rights or in initiating movements? How do they negotiate the subject positions of victims and agents, function as evidences of rights violations or as visual remembrances of such? Alternatively, how can images violate human rights or manifest inequalities themselves when neglecting the dignity of individuals or groups?

Moreover, as in recent history, digitization strongly shapes the life of society, different visual languages and visual media developed. While photography for a long time promised to function as evidence attesting to the violation of rights, the acceptance of the evidentiary status of photography in times of digital photography and image progressing has been fundamentally questioned. It is also within these transformations of visuality that the power of the visual in light of human rights debates will be discussed.


PROGRAM

Florence, Palazzo Grifoni

09:45
Welcome

10:00
Carolin Behrmann & Lia Börsch (KHI)
The Ambivalence of Human Rights and the Question of Visuality

10:30
Katrine Bregengaard (Columbia University)
Visualizing Universalism: a Story of Unesco’s Travelling Human Rights Exhibition, 1949 – Today
Chair: Lia Börsch (KHI)

11:15 Coffee break

11:30
Thomas Keenan (Bard College)
How to Make a Refugee
Chair: Neha Jain (EUI)


Florence, Villa Salviati

13:00
The Historical Archives of the European Union and Questions of Human Rights

Lunch (for speakers only)

14:00
Visit to the EUI Archives and Archival Fonds with Dieter Schlenker (EUI) (by reservation)


Florence, Palazzo Grifoni

15:30
Hannah Feldman (Northwestern University)
Were We to Live in a Visible Commons
Chair: Costanza Caraffa (KHI)

16:15
Tony Cokes (Brown University)
Non-visibility

17:00 Coffee break

17:15
Ariella Azoulay (Brown University)
Errata – Imperial Rights
Chair: Carolin Behrmann (KHI)

19:00 Dinner (by reservation)

20:00 Final Discussion


VENUES
Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz
Max-Planck-Institut
Palazzo Grifoni Budini Gattai
Via dei Servi 51
50122 Florence / Italy

Historical Archives of the European Union
Villa Salviati
Via Bolognese 156
50139 Florence / Italy


CONTACT
Carolin Behrmann
carolin.behrmannkhi.fi.it

Lia Börsch
lia.boerschkhi.fi.it


FURHTER INFORMATION
Web: http://www.khi.fi.it
Newsletter: http://www.khi.fi.it/newsletter
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