Venus as Muse – Figurations of the Creative
Conference – 18.-20.01.2012

Internationales Kolleg Morphomata
Center for Advanced Studies
University of Cologne
Albertus-Magnus-Platz
50923 Cologne, Germany

In cooperation with
Zentrum für Medienwissenschaften
University of Cologne

»How is Venus born from the sea, how is time born from the noisy heaven? How are forms born from the formless?« asks French philosopher Michel Serres in Genesis, where he relates questions about the genesis of forms from a universal chaos to the figure of Aphrodite|Venus and the creation myth of her birth from the sea. Although Aphrodite|Venus has been worshipped, predominantly, as a beautiful goddess of love, she has also embodied different forms of creativity, such as divine, natural, sexual, and artistic. Accordingly, she does not only incorporate concepts of beauty and love, but figures as a goddess of creativity, sexuality, and fertility and has often been venerated as a muse.
The conference seeks to address concrete cultural figurations of Aphrodite|Venus and the different conceptualizations of creativity these figurations both manifest and transform. These conceptualizations are contoured by way of cultural comparisons with non-Western figurations of creativity – with »Sisters of Venus« (Joe J. Heydecker).
A special focus lies on different media of representation, such as literature, film, and the visual arts.

Program:
Wednesday, January 18, 2012
Tagungsraum Seminargebäude

Chair: Jürgen Hammerstaedt
19.30 Elizabeth Asmis (Chicago) Opening Lecture. Venus and the Passion for Renewal in Lucretius’ Poem ›On the Nature of Things‹
Reception

Thursday, January 19, 2012
Tagungsraum Seminargebäude

Chair: Stefan Grohé
09.00 Günter Blamberger (Cologne) Welcome Address
Sebastian Goth (Cologne) Introduction

Visual Arts
09.45 Peter Seiler (Berlin) Venus in der italienischen Kunsttheorie der frühen Neuzeit
10.30 Coffee Break
10.45 Ekkehard Mai (Cologne) Manet – Cabanel – Cézanne. Die mehrfache Fruchtbarkeit der Venus
11.30 Jennifer Shaw (Rohnert Park, CA) The Figure of Venus. Rhetoric of the Ideal from Cabanel to Claude Cahun
12.15 Lunch Break

Literature
Chair: Anja Lemke
13.30 Tom Conley (Harvard) Rimbaud’s Venus Backwards
14.15 Colin Gardner (Santa Barbara) Samuel Beckett’s ›Peephole‹ Venus. Re-Sexualization, The Oral Mother, and the Masochist Contract in ›Eh Joe‹, ›Ghost Trio‹ and ›...but the clouds...‹
15.00 Coffee Break
15.15 Hanjo Berressem (Cologne) The Transit of Venus
16.00 Rudolf Drux (Cologne) »Gefährtin beim Schreiben der Verse«. Über die poetologische Bedeutung der »hochgebenedeiten Göttin« Venus bei Heinrich Heine

Friday, January 20, 2012
Internationales Kolleg Morphomata
Film|media|Theory
Chair: Peter W. Marx
09.00 Laurence Rickels (Karlsruhe) Venus Barbata
09.45 Barbara Vinken (Munich) Venus à rebours
10.30 Coffee Break
10.45 Elisabeth Bronfen (Zurich) Cleopatra’s Venus
11.30 Patricia MacCormack (Cambridge|Chelmsford) Venusian Queer Ecosophy
12.15 Lunch Break

Sisters of Venus
Chair: Jan Söffner
13.30 Juliette Harrisson (Birmingham) Isis and Venus in Egypt and Beyond
14.15 Wilhelm Heizmann (Munich) Freyja, Venus des Nordens
15.00 Coffee Break
15.15 Tao Jian (Berlin) Nüwa – die chinesische Schwester der Venus
16.00 Almut-Barbara Renger (Berlin) »The Tao of Venus: From Aphrodite to Kuan Yin«. Venus und ihre Schwestern in Esoterikkulturen seit Helena Blavatsky

Concept: Günter Blamberger, Sebastian Goth, Hanjo Berressem

Contact: Sebastian Goth (sebastian.gothuni-koeln.de)

Venue: Tagungsraum Seminargebäude, University of Cologne|January 18-19
Internationales Kolleg Morphomata, Center for Advanced Studies, Weyertal 59 (Back Building), 3rd Floor|January 20