Iconology meets Anthropology - an International conference hosted by the
Iconology Research Group, 7 March 2008, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven

Aby Warburg might be regarded as the initiator of the relation between
iconology and anthropology at a moment in time when both fields had barely
been established as disciplines. Today, as we have entered what might be
called the millennium of images, iconology is taking on new areas of
research and is in the process of being redefined as a discipline that
could encompass the study of image making, image meaning, image
perception and image distribution in the scientific, political and
cultural domains of the visual world; and to make the field even wider,
also beyond the visual, because as W.T.J. Mitchell and others before him
have pointed out, there is no pure visuality and therefore no visual
culture, because images are perceived with a much wider array of senses
than sight only. It may be because of this universal approach that
iconology has a certain kinship with anthropology; a discipline that Bruno
Latour described as the only one that can study how a certain culture
?does? science and critical theory, religion and politics, without
excluding any possible outcome a priori. An important binding element and
point of departure for a discussion of the current relation between the
two is certainly the body. Hans Belting has recently proposed a new
approach to iconology, which he calls Bild-Anthropologie. Here, he
foregrounds the perceiving and performing body as a prerequisite to
understand, project, produce and remember images. Herman Roodenburg in
turn has shown how images were imprinted onto the body and transformed
into physical reality. Paul Vandenbroeck explored and unveiled the place
of the body and the image in the matrixial systems, a world that goes even
beyond the classical notions of the bodily and the visual medium, and
introduces epistemologies of ?abstract?, of ?chaos?.

If can iconology today gain from an anthropological approach and what
exactly is the role of the body in this cooperation? The Iconology
Research Group has invited international speakers and young scholars to
discuss these questions, to revisit the original and recent relations of
the fields and to present examples of a fruitful collaboration between
iconology and anthropology from current research projects.

PROGRAM

9:30 Introduction and welcome by Barbara Baert (IRG/Leuven) and Ann-Sophie
Lehmann
(IRG/Utrecht)

Session 1 | Why Anthropology?

10:00 Herman Roodenburg (Amsterdam-Leuven)
Iconology, visual studies and sensuous anthropology. Some recent developments

11:00 Paul Vandenbroeck (Leuven)
Matrix marmorea

Session 2 | Aby Warburg today

12:15 Barbara Wittmann (Berlin)
Indian rituals and children?s drawings. Reflections on Aby Warburg?s
anthropology

Session 3 | Iconology meets Anthropology in current projects

15:00 Jan Van der Stock (Leuven)
Rogier van der Weyden and Leuven
15:45 Bert Watteeuw (Leuven)
Anthropology of the portrait. practices of portraiture in seventeenth century
Flanders
16:30 Liesbet Kusters (Leuven)
From ?Noli me tangere? to ?Haemorrhoissa?
17:15 Coffee break

Session 4 | Iconology meets Anthropology in the arts
17:30 Jeroen Laureyns (Gent)
?Bild-Anthropologie? and contemporary art . Art critical reflexions
reaching for the hand of Hans Belting
18:15 Wim Lambrecht (Gent)
About soundseeing and emotioned audibility

When
March 7, 2008
Where
Justus Lipsiuslokaal Erasmushuis
8th floor
Blijde-Inkomststraat 21
3000 Leuven
Please register by e-mail
annelies.vogelsarts.kuleuven.be

the event is supported by The Van der Weyden Chair - Paul & Dora Janssen
(K.U.Leuven)

------------------------------------------------------------
Ann-Sophie Lehmann | Assistant Professor | Media and Culture Studies
Faculty of Humanities | Utrecht University | Janskerkhof 13 | 3512
BL Utrecht | Ann-Sophie.Lehmannlet.uu.nl |
www.let.uu.nl~Ann-Sophie.Lehmann/personal/