and Creative Practices

Showing Making. International conference on the Representation of
Image Making and Creative Practices in Ritual, Art, Media, and Science

June 18 & 19: Filmmuseum, Amsterdam

organized by the Dept. of Media and Culture Studies (Utrecht
University), the Visual Culture Group (Huizinga Institute, University
of Amsterdam), and the Meertens Institute (Royal Dutch Academy,
Amsterdam)

If making is thinking, as Richard Sennett has recently argued in his
book ‘The Craftsman’, studying making can enable us to understand
visual artifacts, such as paintings, films, computer animation, and
scientific images. These images are the results of skilled procedures
and complex interaction between makers, materials, tools and
technologies, which generate and shape meaning. Mainly based on tacit
knowledge though, procedures and interactions tend to evade textual
description and are, although enclosed in the finished product,
usually not recorded. How do we get our hands and minds at these
material procedures if we want to study the meaning of making?
This conference focuses on visual genres specifically dedicated to
the representation of image making; ranging from St. Luke painting
the Virgin Mary to early documentaries and YouTube videos. While
these depictions contain information about the social,
anthropological, technological, material and aesthetic dimensions of
image production, they also invest creation with magical qualities
and mystify the actions of image-makers. As mediated constructs, they
display ideal aspects of creative processes and tend to omit failure
or routine, as art works they foreground self-referentiality as
critical strategy. Taking these aspects into consideration showing
making can be turned into a theoretical tool to study making as
intellectual and meaningful practice, pushing past general
considerations of materiality in visual studies today.

Renowned scholars from anthropology, art history, film studies,
religion studies, and history of science have been invited to study
the epistemic and performative elements of showing making and will
present a framework in which the visualizations of image making and
creative practices can be theorized.

The Filmmuseum presents an accompanying program featuring early films
of artists and craftsman at work in different historical and
geographical settings

Information & Registration at: http://www.filmmuseum.nl/showingmaking
For additional questions please contact Ann-Sophie Lehmann, Dept.
Media & Culture Studies, Utrecht: a.s.lehmannuu.nl

Program: June 18th
Opening lecture
Showing Making: Materials, Movements, Lines
Tim Ingold, University of Aberdeen

Session I: Showing Painting
Chair: Rachel Esner, University of Amsterdam

Showing Thinking: Visualizing Invention in the Painter’s Studio
H. Perry Chapman, University of Delaware

The Journey of Two Drawing Skills
Paul van de Akker, Free University, Amsterdam

Discourses of Making in the Mixed Media Production of Andrea del
Verrocchio
Christina Neilson, Oberlin College

Newton Opticks, Colour Systems and the Notation of the Painting Process
Annik Pietsch, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin

Session II: Scientific Images in the Making
Chair: Paul Ziche, Utrecht University

Making Images of Nature
Pamela H. Smith, Columbia University

The Tourism of Labor: The Photography of Exhibit-Making in the
American Museum of Natural History, 1900-1940
Victoria Cain, University of Southern California

Drawing Spiral Nebula
Omar W. Nasim, Max Planck Institutes for Art History (Florence) and
History of Science (Berlin)

Between the Road to Somewhere and the View from Nowhere: How Objects
of Representation and Representations of Objects Inform Each Other
Lissa Roberts, Technical University Twente

June 19th
Session III: Image Making Rituals
Chair: Herman Roodenburg, Meertens Institute/Free University, Amsterdam

TBA
Donald Swearer, Harvard Divinity School

Making the Royal Image in Present Day Thailand
Irene Stengs, Meertens Institute

Image and Ownership of the Lantern Festival of Saint Louis, Senegal
Ferdinand de Jong, University of East Anglia & Judith Quax,
Independent Photographer

Screening Myths: Visualizing the Occult in the Waiãpi ‘Fiction’
Andre Bakker, Free University Amsterdam

Session IV: The Making of the Making-of
Chair: Martina Roepke, Utrecht University

Filming Creation: The Making of the Moment of the Making of
John Wyver, Illuminations Media/University of Westminster

How the Moving Image can Reveal the Interaction between Ceramicist
and Material
Leah Mc Laughlin, Cardiff School of Art and Design

Are We Allowed to Tell? Showing Film Making in Early Cinema
Frank Kessler, Utrecht University

Les Yeux ne Veulent Pas en Tout Temps se Fermer …
André Wendler, Bauhaus-University Weimar

SHOWING MAKING. IMAGE MAKING AND CREATIVE PRACTICES IN ART, FILM,
RITUAL, AND SCIENCE
Filmmuseum, Amsterdam, 18&19 June, program & registration:
FILMMUSEUM.NL/SHOWINGMAKING

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Ann-Sophie Lehmann | Assistant Professor | Media and Culture Studies
| Faculty of Humanities | Utrecht University | Janskerkhof 13 | 3512
BL Utrecht | 0031.(0)30.2537867| A.S.Lehmannuu.nl |
www.let.uu.nl~Ann-Sophie.Lehmann/personal/ | mcwutrecht.org |
iconologyresearchgroup.org | impactofoil.org |