Handling matters: How Format and Scale Constitute Meaning in the Arts
Online workshop, May, 13 2021, 9.30 am – 2.30 pm Pacific Time

In art history, the term handling mainly refers to storing, shipping or archiving artworks. However, the actual handling also affects the way we perceive art objects haptically, helping us discern their format, scale, and content. Handling, format, and scale interact and constitute an intertwined meaning beyond discursive matter: Format refers to standardized and institutionalized production processes and is often related to normative expectations of the art piece. Scale depends on distributed spatial resources, thus, it is closely linked to processes of appropriating economic and political power. Handling focuses on perception as a durational process beyond the visual. The guiding question of this workshop is: How do handling, format and scale relate, alter or challenge iconic, narrative and/or political webs of meaning? Through different media from different times, the workshop will trace the meaning-making interplay of handling, format, and scale.

Program

9.30
Veronica Peselmann, University of Southern California/University of Bielefeld: “Welcome and Introduction”

10.00 – 11.30
- Anne Royston, Rochester Institute of Technology: “Among the Threads in Jen Bervin’s Silk Poems”
- Zanna Gilbert, Getty Research Institute: “The Inside is the Outside: The Ontology of the Object in South American Art & Poetry”
- Jana Dambrogio, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Daniel Starza Smith, Kings College London: Letterlocking: Communication Security Without Envelopes”

Chair: Lisa Pon, University of Southern California

11.30 – 12.30 BREAK

12.30 – 2.00 pm

- Natalia Lauricella, University of Southern California: “Crafting the Limited Edition Print in Fin-de-Siècle France”
- Amy Knight Powell, University of Southern California: “Boxes and Strings”
- Brittany Webb, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts: “Taking Space: Contemporary Women Artists and the Politics of Scale”
Chair: Michaela Rife, University of Michigan

2.00 Closing Remarks and Discussion

Register via zoom here. https://usc.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJ0oceCrpjosGdW9gavcQ-lfPNqyYXQxT_jW
For more information, contact Veronica Peselmann: vp_811usc.edu

The workshop is organized by Veronica Peselmann. Sponsored by the Volkswagen Foundation and the USC Dana and David Dornsife College of Letters, Arts, and Sciences, Department of Art History. Co-Sponsored by Max Kade Institute for German-Austrian-Swiss Studies.