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Wood: Between Natural Affordance and Cultural Values in Eurasia.

The international conference, organised together by the University of Munich and the University of Cologne, brings together scholars from diverse fields within humanities and science to discuss similarities and differences, continuities and discontinuities in the notions surrounding wood in various cultural contexts within Eurasia. The papers address the relationship between the naturally determined affordances of timber and their cultural coding, relation of wood to other materials, specificities of wood craftsmanship, as well as the economic, theological and political aspects of the wood application.

Programme

Thursday 23.03.2023

12.30 registration
13.00-13.30 Aleksandra Lipińska (Cologne), Ilse Sturkenboom (Munich), Introduction
13.30-15.00 Panel 1: Wood as a natural product
Michael Risse (Munich), Wood as Natural Material
Angelika Rauch (Potsdam), Ageing of Wood - The Patina Conundrum
15.00-16.00 Panel 2: Wood in interaction with other materials
Katherine Werwie (New Haven), Material Meanings of Medieval Europe’s Historiated Wooden Doors
Sarah Nienas (Berlin), The Function and Significance of Wood in Interaction with other Materials. The Case of the Triumphal Crucifix group in Lübeck Cathedral

16.00-17.00 Coffee break with poster session

Poster session:
José Luis Silva (Lisbon), Rui Bordalo (Lisbon), José Pissarra (Porto), Paloma del Palacios (Madrid), Wood identification of art works. What can it tell us?
Katalin Bella (Budapest), The use and significance of wooden chimneys in folk culture in 18th century Hungary

17.00-18.00 Keynote lecture: Ethan Matt Kavaler (Toronto), Naked Wood: the Unpolychromed Altarpieces of the Bormans in the Low Countries

Friday, 24.03.2023

09.30-11.00 Panel 3: Wood and craftsmanship on the move I
Joachim Gierlichs (Berlin), Woodwork of the Timurid Period in Iran and Central Asia
Leung Shu Fung (Hong Kong), Cross-border Timber Trade in The Middle Ages: A study of Agarwood Tribute by Persian Merchants in 824AD
Anissa Foukalne (Den Bosch), 100 years of reutilisation, displacement and replacement of minbars in Morocco

11.00-11.30 Coffee break

11.30-13.00 Panel 4: Wood and craftsmanship on the move II
Bernard O’Kane (Cairo), From the Zarafshan to Bahrain and the Maghrib: Anthropomorphic Wooden Corbels
Anna McSweeney (Dublin), Mariam Rosser-Owen (London), The Carved and Painted Wooden Ceilings of Torrijos Palace

13.00-14.00 Lunch break

14.00-15.30 Visit to the Xylothek, Technical University of Munich (Introduction: Michael Risse)

16.00-17.00 Panel 5: Affordance vs culture
Pinar Gnepp (New York), Wooden Muqarnas Capitals of Anatolia: Affordance of Wooden Construction
Hind Mostafa (Cairo), An object of desire: Wood turning the craft and its craftsmanship
Thomas Moser (Vienna), Wooden Modernity: A Material Discourse in the Decorative Arts around 1900

17.00-17.30 Coffee break

17.30-18.30 Keynote lecture Ann-Sophie Lehmann (Groningen), The Carpenters. Wood as an Art Theoretical Material Through the Ages

Saturday 25.03.2023

9.00-10.30 Panel 6 Sacred Wood
Sílvia Ferreira, Marta Maçarico Raposos (Lisbon), Practices of woodcarving in Portugal between tradition and innovation: ancient forms for new uses
Radoslaw Przedpelski (Dublin), Metabolic Ontology of Wood and Tatar Cosmopoetics
Jon Thumas (Cambridge, MA), Chopping Wood Drawing Water: Buddhism and Wood Fuel in Medieval Japanese Society

10.30-11.00 Coffee break

11.00-12.30 Panel 7 The Politics of Wood
Ebba Koch (Vienna), The Wooden Palace of the Mughal Emperor Humayun
Maria Nitka (Wrocław), Semantics of wood according to Witkiewicz and Slavophilic thought
Dmitry Shlapentokh (Bloomington, IN), Wood and geopolitics in Russian thought

12.30-13.30 Lunch break

13.30-14.30 Panel 8 Economy vs culture
Simona Drăgan (Bucharest), Ruin Comes in Wooden Clothes. Street Pavement and Exploitability of Wood in Premodern Bucharest
Sarah Teasley (Melbourne), From Waste Wood to Commodity: A Socio-Material Exploration of Timber in Early Twentieth Century Japan

14.30-15.00 Final discussion

15.30-17.00 Visit in the Bavarian National Museum

Venue: Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte, Katharina-von-Bora-Straße 10, 80333 Munich, Room 242
Zoom: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84616577749?pwd=SUpIeHVjYTdGNmlGcWJrV3RaVVlLUT09, Meeting-ID: 846 1657 7749, Password: 597554
All times are CET.

Organisers:
Prof. Dr. Aleksandra Lipińska, Institute of Art History, University of Cologne, aleksandra.lipinskauni-koeln.de
Prof. Dr. Ilse Sturkeboom, Institute of Art History, Ludwig-Maximilian-University Munich, ilse.sturkenboomkunstgeschichte.uni-muenchen.de

For the participation on-site please register untill 20.03.2023 at: mandana.bendercampus.lmu.de
Registration for the online participation is not mandatory.