Symposium: Objects. Between Absorption and Isolation.

Organized by Anna-Maria Meister, Anna Luise Schubert and the Lise Meitner Group "Coded Objects".

Objects might emerge from muddled contexts into crisp discreteness in a material, sensorial, epistemological and ontological negotiation—one with fuzzy edges and cracking seams. Taking this process as a question of figure and ground into three dimensions, during this symposium, we want to ask: when do objects come into being, and when are they recognized as such? How do they behave, get used, or get culturally coded and re-inscribed and how can they be perceived? What throws them into relief, what helps to see, grasp or make them? By investigating objecthood as a process of formation from (material, cultural, political or aesthetic) backgrounds as well as their potential decay, or dispersal, we want to carve out terms and concepts to describe and discuss objects anew.

Concepts like subjectivity and objectivity have long received critical attention, and the categories of their constitutive counterparts—subject and object—are no longer seen as sole agents operating in and on the world. Similarly, the understanding of the environment has been expanded to encompass 'vibrant matter' as integral part of networks between humans, objects, matter and non-human beings. At the same time, the perception of objects is still shaped by modern dichotomies. These divergences show that the question of objects and of their becoming is intrinsically linked to how (and whether) we know objects at all: attempts to map them onto reality on the one hand and the interpretations of their rendered presence on the other constantly undo and reconfigure each other.

Where the fields of art history and architecture history have artefacts at their disciplinary center, we want to expand that focus by adding the assumption of formal intent or consequence to other objects, as well as adding and testing methods from other fields. New materialism can help to understand objects as access to communities and practices around them; feminist and queer studies afford objects formerly excluded from canonical constructions other narratives or histories; post-colonial studies or anthropology help identifying the reinscription, projection or appropriation of forms and objects; media studies can assist in tracing aggregational processes and material translations between matter and objecthood (and reverse).

This Symposium is organized by the Lise Meitner Group “Coded Objects” (led by Anna-Maria Meister) at the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz – Max-Planck-Institut. "Coded Objects" as method of refraction questions any assumptions of "neutral" technology or immaterial bureaucracy. Instead, the Lise Meitner Group examines how processes form values through objects—and how objects inform processes in societies.

This event will be hybrid and take place in person at Palazzo Grifoni.

__

PROGRAM

Thursday, 17 October
3:00 pm — 4:00 pm – Introduction
Anna-Maria Meister, KHI and Karlsruhe Institute of Technology

4:00 – 7:00 pm
Magical Objects
Chair: Neilabh Sina, KHI

Ida Colangelo and Kathrin Borgers, University of Cologne
Between Material Evidence and Forgotten Curiosity: An Unusual Relic in the Gräfrath Monastery

Sandrine Welte, Università Ca’ Foscari di Venezia
Objects in Motion - Late Antique Magical Artefacts as Liminal Spaces and Mobile Ritual Sites

Cristóbal Amunátegui, UCLA
Machines of State and Machines Chance: The Case of the Totalizator in Nineteenth-Century

Coffee Break

6:00 pm – Response: Laurent Stalder, ETH Zurich
& Discussion

Break

7:30 – 9:00 pm
Practices of Attention: D. Graham Burnett

-------

Friday, 18 October
9:00 am — 12:00 pm
Resistance, Replication & Resilience
Chair: Anna Luise Schubert, KHI

Marie Meyerding, Technische Universität Dresden
Environmental Feminist Art Fabricating Freedom: Textiles, Censorship and Environmental Art in the GDR

Taavi Hallimäe, Estonian Academy of Arts
Hitting the Slopes of Capitalism: The Case Study of the Ski Boots from the Soviet Estonian Factory Salvo in Late 80s

Malcolm Noble, University of Nottingham
Leaky and Absorbent Books: Material Paratexts and Contemporary Queer Print Culture

Coffee Break

11:00 am – Response: Rebecca Carrai, KHI
& Discussion

Lunch Break

01:30 pm — 4:30 pm
Emerging Formations
Chair: Karina Pawlow, KHI

Galaad Van Daele, ETH Zurich
Expressive Rocks and Geoarchitectural Histories: Lessons from the Grotto

Tamar Zinguer, The University of Oklahoma
The Grain: From Figure to Ground

Saskia Abrahms-Kavunenko, Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies
Anthropocene Ouroboros: Shimmying Plastics and the Contamination of Time

Coffee Break

3:30 pm – Response: Clemens Finkelstein, Princeton University
& Discussion

Break

5:00 pm – 7:00pm
Stabilizing Boundaries
Chair: Oliver Aas, Cornell University and KHI

Sarah Hearne, University of Colorado Denver
Stabilizing the Eroding Image: The 20th c., Project of Permanence in the Mesa Verde Cliff Dwellings

Ayala Levin, UCLA
The Fence and the Billboard: The Object of Land at the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture in Ibadan, Nigeria, 1965-68

Coffee Break

6:00 pm – Response: Alina Payne, I Tatti – The Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies
& Discussion

---------

Saturday, 19 October
9:30 am — 12:30pm
Extending Subjects
Chair: Larissa Maria Müller, KHI

Jocelyn Beausire, Princeton University
“Will it Change the Baby?”: Sonic Respatialization and the Politics of Domestic Surveillance with the Advent of Infant Monitoring Systems

Ignacio G. Galán, Columbia GSAPP
Furnishings Like Us: Object Identifications in Fascist Italy

Elisa Palomino, Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History
Spirit and Skin: The Role of Fish Skin Objects in Arctic Indigenous Cosmologies

Coffee Break

11:30 am – Response: Virginia Marano, KHI
& Discussion

Lunch Break

02:00 pm — 5:00pm
Overwriting Attributes
Chair: Lunarita Sterpetti, KHI

Pratiti Ketoki, University of Minnesota, and Ipsa S. University of Wisconsin
Problematising the Object Turn: Partition Histories and Politics of Remembering

Rachel Lee, TU Delft and Sarita Sundar Bangalore
A Chair by Any Other Name? Rewriting the Colonial Script

Will Davis, Università della Svizzera italiana
Bamboo Messages and Legacies of a Cryptic Letter

Coffee Break

4:00 pm – Response: Ariella Minden, Bibliotheca Hertziana — Max-Planck-Institut für Kunstgeschichte
& Discussion

5:00 pm – Closing Remarks

VENUE
Palazzo Grifoni Budini Gattai
Via dei Servi 51
50122 Firenze, Italia

To participate online please register in advance via Zoom:
https://eu02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/u5AtcOCtrDojGN1AtVNzNvKDdKQFWGmFY_Ge#/registration
After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.

--
Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz – Max-Planck-Institut
Via Giuseppe Giusti 44
50121 Firenze, Italia
+39 055 24911-1
infokhi.fi.it

www.khi.fi.it
khi.fi.it/newsletter
instagram.com/khiflorenz
facebook.com/khiflorenz
x.com/khiflorenz
@khiflorenz #khiflorenz