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[1]
From: Sofia Zoitou
Subject: Matter, Materiality and Pilgrimage in Pre-Modern Times Production, Staging and Reception

CIHA202400192

- Vesna Scepanovic, Univeristy Of Fribourg - Fribourg (Switzerland);
vesna.scepanovicunifr.ch;
- Sofia Zoitou, Univeristy Of Fribourg - Fribourg (Switzerland),
sofia.zoitouunifr.ch;
- Ivan Foletti, Masaryk University - Brno (Czech Republic),
folettiphil.muni.cz;

This 180-minute paper session aims to explore the materiality of objects and places in pilgrimage sites from various cultures and religions during pre-modern times. The aim is to evaluate the converging and diverging features of materials such as gold, silver, bronze, glass, wood, bone, skin, hair, nails, precious stones, pigments, stone, soil, wax, printed matter, water and other liquids, plants, leather, fabric that were used, formed, experienced, perceived and variously appropriated by pilgrims as well as by the local actors and devotees. Pilgrims habitually travelled in well-established routes dotted with sacred sites and shrines, occasionally with overlapping stops, allowing for comparative perceptions of material properties. Their movement adopted ritual attributes that extended to the symbolization of natural and artificial objects, whose materials became incorporated in a symbolic perception of space. Organic and inorganic relics and their containers, painted panels, frescoes, liquids, tombs, buildings, natural elements were encountered by the pilgrims, and their attributes, whether material or immaterial, animated their experience. The staging strategies employed in specific visual and spatial sceneries to ensure the objects’ cultic success, prompted further interactions among pilgrims, objects, and places. At the same time, the afterlives of pilgrimage objects and sites raise questions about their staging and reception in the present day.

To promote a comprehensive exploration of the subject from a transregional and transreligious perspective, we invite submissions that centre on – but are not restricted to – the following questions:
- In what ways do pilgrims’ experiences, practices, and expectations shape the production and materiality of objects and places, and how is this recorded/experienced by pilgrims?
- How are specific media, materials and techniques established and connected to the objects in question?
- How do materials connect to and are altered by pilgrims (e.g. the effects of the visual, tactile, and more generally sensorial interactions with objects, such as touching, kissing, lighting, incorporating etc.)?
- How does pilgrims’ movement impact their perception of objects, buildings, and landscapes?
- In pilgrimage sites, specific objects/spots acquire symbolisms. Is this translated in their material context and by which processes?
- How do natural objects, e.g. mountains, plants, rocks etc., become incorporated in a symbolic perception of space and how is their materiality expressed, experienced and valued?
- How are staging devices employed in cultic settings and what materials and techniques are typically used in their construction?
- How have museums and collections curated and displayed pilgrimage objects and artifacts?
- What are the challenges and opportunities in representing the materiality of pilgrimage practice in a museum context, considering the ethical implications of the extraction, trade, and ownership of pilgrimage objects and materials?

We welcome proposals (350-500 words) from professionals, independent researchers, doctoral students, junior researchers, senior researchers in art history or related disciplines, from all over the world. The deadline for submissions is 15 September. Please submit your contribution via the following link: https://www.cihalyon2024.fr/en/call-for-papers

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[2]
From: Christian Berger
Subject: Matter Thinks / La matière pense

Organizers: Christian Berger (Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz) & Larisa Dryansky (Sorbonne Université, Paris)

[French version below]

In his essay for the exhibition catalogue As Painting (2001), the art historian Stephen Melville introduced the notion of “a particular strand of materialism” emerging in France in the postwar period. Fusing Marxism with other traditions of thought, namely structuralism and phenomenology, this model, according to Melville, revolved around the proposition that “matter thinks.” This panel takes Melville’s phrase as a point of departure, arguing that it allows to undo established and problematic binaries between mind and matter, materiality and immateriality, without reducing one to the other.
What does it mean for matter to think? How is this expressed in the arts? In what way is this notion of thinking matter reactivated by the digital and can it be related to the contemporary trend towards “smart materials” in science and industry? Conversely, what does it mean to consider thought as a material for artmaking, or to conceive of more traditional forms of artmaking, such as painting, as a “theoretical” activity?
Over the past two decades, the so-called “new materialisms” have familiarized the idea of matter as animated, “vibrant,” and endowed with agency. While this panel embraces the new materialist championing of matter and materials as well as the ensuing relativization of the human subject’s preeminence over all other animate and inanimate entities, we argue that the concept of a “thinking” matter could serve to reassert the importance of matter without fetishizing it and in such a way as to also allow for the ideal. In so doing, we draw inspiration from the philosopher Elizabeth Grosz’s study of the limits of materialism, The Incorporeal (2018), in which she envisions “a new new materialism in which ideality has a respected place.”
In fact, long before the advent of the new materialisms, artists started to reexamine and destabilize the dualism between mind and matter. Two prominent examples in modern and contemporary art would be the French artist Jean Dubuffet, whose Paysages du mental (1950–52) represent the inner workings of the painter’s mind by using the thickest materials, or the US-American artist Robert Smithson, who described his work as “a quiet catastrophe of mind and matter.” Undoubtedly, there can be found several instances of how this discussion has played out in different cultural, geographic, and historical contexts.
In order to explore these issues in a wider transcultural and transhistorical framework, we welcome papers related to all periods and cultural settings, with a particular interest in approaches devoted to contexts other than North America and Western Europe. In particular, we seek papers that address the political and ethical consideration of these debates, for instance regarding the political ambiguity of privileging brute materiality over mind. While the emphasis recently, and rightly so, has been on reversing the traditional primacy of thought over matter, this panel is interested in how art seeks to explore and problematize the articulation of thought and matter.

Deadline for applications: September 15, 2023
Applicants should submit their proposal via the following link:
https://livebyglevents.key4register.com/key4register/AbstractList.aspx?e=148
More information: https://www.cihalyon2024.fr/images/pdf/Modalites_appel_a_communications_VFINALE.pdf

Corresponding authors:
larisa.dryanskysorbonne-universite.fr (Larisa Dryansky)
christian.bergeruni-mainz.de (Christian Berger)

[Sujet de la session en français]

Dans sa contribution au catalogue de l’exposition As Painting (2001), l’historien de l’art Stephen Melville évoque l’émergence dans la France d’après-guerre d’une «approche singulière du matérialisme ». Associant le marxisme avec des courants de pensée comme le structuralisme et la phénoménologie, ce modèle, selon l’auteur, s’appuie sur l’idée que « la matière pense ». S’inspirant de cette formule, notre session se demande comment interroger les oppositions binaires entre la matière et l’esprit, la matérialité et l’immatériel, sans pour autant annuler toute différenciation.
En quel sens, donc, peut-on dire de la matière qu’elle pense ? Comment cette problématique se manifeste-t-elle en art ? De quelle manière cette idée d’une matière pensante est-elle réactivée par le digital et peut-on la relier à l’essor actuel des matériaux dits « intelligents » ? Réciproquement, en quoi la pensée peut-elle servir de matériau artistique et que veut dire considérer des pratiques plus traditionnelles telle la peinture comme des activités « théoriques » ?
Les « nouveaux matérialismes » nous ont désormais accoutumés à l’idée que la matière est animée, pleine de vie et dotée d’une agentivité. Toutefois, si ces approches ont conduit, de façon salutaire, à revaloriser le statut de la matière et des matériaux ainsi qu’à remettre en question la domination du sujet humain sur toutes les autres entités, tant animées qu’inanimées, elles ne sont pas exemptes d’une certaine fétichisation de la matérialité. C’est cet écueil que le concept d’une matière « pensante » permettrait peut-être d’éviter. À cet égard, une autre source d’inspiration est la philosophe Elizabeth Grosz qui, dans son étude des limites du matérialisme, The Incorporeal (2018), appelle à « un nouveau nouveau matérialisme dans lequel l’idéalité a aussi toute sa place ».
De fait, bien avant les « nouveaux matérialismes », les artistes se sont déjà attachés à repenser le dualisme de l’esprit et de la matière. Dans l’art contemporain, on citera Jean Dubuffet, dont les Paysages du mental (1950–1952) représentent les « mouvements de l’esprit » à travers les « concrétions de la matière », et celui de Robert Smithson, lequel a décrit son œuvre comme « une catastrophe silencieuse de l’esprit et de la matière ». Sans doute, pourrait-on trouver de nombreux exemples de la façon dont cette problématique a pu être abordée dans différents contextes culturels, géographiques et historiques.
Afin d’envisager ces questions plus largement dans un cadre transculturel et transhistorique, nous sollicitons des communications portant sur toutes les périodes et sur toutes les aires culturelles, notamment hors de l’Amérique du Nord et de l’Europe de l’Ouest. En particulier, nous encourageons des propositions qui envisagent la matière pensante dans ses aspects politiques et éthiques. On se demandera, par exemple, quelles sont les implications idéologiques de positions privilégiant la matérialité brute au détriment de l’esprit. Si l’on insiste beaucoup aujourd’hui, et ce avec raison, pour renverser le primat traditionnel de la pensée sur la matière, il s’agit, avec cette session, de se pencher sur la manière dont l’art problématise l’articulation de la pensée avec la matière.

Date limite de dépôt : 15 septembre 2023
Les propositions sont à soumettre via le lien suivant :
https://livebyglevents.key4register.com/key4register/AbstractList.aspx?e=148
Plus d'information: https://www.cihalyon2024.fr/images/pdf/Modalites_appel_a_communications_VFINALE.pdf