Conference "Transcultural Imaginations of the Sacred"

organized by the DFG-Forschergruppe 'Transcultural Negotiations in the Ambits of Art. Comparative Perspectives on Historical Contexts and Contemporary Constellations'

 

Project  A 1 (Prof. Dr. Klaus Krüger)

The Charisma of the foreign: The Aesthetics of Religious Exchange in the late Medieval and Early Modern World

Project A 2 (Prof. Dr. Margit Kern)

Processes of Glocalization in the Art of the Missions in Latin America

 

At least initially, we impute clear constructions of identity to religious symbols and assume that they distinguish self and other from one another explicitly. But perceptions of alterity too play a vital role in sacral forms of representation. This conference, therefore, is devoted first to the question: What is the function of the characteristic traits of alterity in the sacral context? Utilized in a semantics of the extraordinary, of the exceptional, which characterizes the sacral, were markers of foreignness; perceptions of difference were capable of endowing with expression the remoteness of the sacral from the profane world of experience. Perceptions of foreignness in the form of the vessels of reliquaries, for example, may also have served as evidence of authenticity, since unfamiliar forms may have been regarded as certifying a distant origin, the Holy Land for example.

Secondly, the conference raises the question: How are various concepts of the sacred synthesized in translation situations, for instance in the context of missionary activity? How did an artifact arrive at sacral potency in various cultures, and under which conditions did semantic displacement occur? Developed in the context of transcultural communication, as well as in the context of communication between various social groups, were new concepts and interpretive models of sacrality which undermined or inverted the hegemonic and often restrictive forms of discourse being propagated. To be investigated in considerable detail are such processes of negotiation and their fundamental hegemonial structures, as well as the question of the translation competency and objectives of the participating actors.

The exploration of this complex of questions will follow two thematic guidelines: since the boundaries which construct difference necessarily define an internal order, special attention will be paid to the category of space – in particular since space can also be conceptualized figuratively as a framework for processes of negotiation. A very special relevance is attributed to the question of how geographic locations of exchange and communication may be charged with ideological conceptions of space and elevated, along with the question of which hegemonial structures they shape. A second focus will be on the processes of aestheticization of the foreign to which these objects were submitted – processes involving not just alien forms, but unknown or unfamiliar materials and techniques as well. Also necessary if we are to arrive at an improved understanding of processes of artistic adaptation and translation are attempts to grasp the role of materiality and mediality in the scenarization of alterity within sacral contexts.

 

Program (PDF-Version)

 

Thursday October 11, 2012

 

09:30 Gregor Stemmrich (Director FOR 1703, Freie Universität Berlin)

Welcoming address

 

Panel 1 Concepts of Sacred Space in Contexts of Cultural Translation

(Chair Klaus Krüger, Freie Universität Berlin / FOR 1703)

 

09:45 Margit Kern (Universität Hamburg / FOR 1703)

Transcultural Imaginations of the Sacred. Changing Perceptions of Alterity in Processes of Cultural Negotiation

 

10:30 Amy Neff (University of Tennessee, Knoxville)

The Holy Man’s Cave: Franciscan Permeations of Time, Space, and Identity, ca. 1300

 

11:15 Coffee

 

11:45 Alessandra Malquori (Università degli Studi di Firenze)

Borrowing Figurative Patterns: The Meaning of the “Dormition of the Hermit” in 15th-Century Florentine Paintings

 

12:30 Christine Ungruh (Freie Universität Berlin / FOR 1703)

A Thebaid Magnified: The St. Anthony Cycle in S. Agostino, Montalcino

 

13:15 Lunch Break

 

(Chair Margit Kern, Universität Hamburg / FOR 1703)

 

14:45 Julia Kloss-Weber (Freie Universität Berlin / FOR 1703)

“Americana Thebaida“. A Glocal Topology

 

15:30 Guillermo Wilde (Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas / Universidad Nacional de San Martín, Buenos Aires)

The Construction of Space in the Jesuit Missions of Paraguay: Indigenous Agency and Cultural Transactions

 

16:15 Coffee

 

16:45 Ira Oppermann (Freie Universität Berlin / FOR 1703)

Black Madonnas in South America: Glocalization Processes in the Jesuit Reductions

 

17:30 Gabriela Siracusano (Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas / Universidad Nacional de San Martín, Buenos Aires)

Sacred Pigments: the Case of Our Lady of Copacabana

 

Friday October 12, 2012

 

Panel 2 Constructing Identities by Cultural Negotiation

(Chair Margit Kern, Universität Hamburg / FOR 1703)

 

10:00 Felipe Pereda (Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore)

Nicodemus’ Return in Baroque Spain

 

10:45 Jens Baumgarten (Universidade Federal de São Paulo)

Conflict and Negotiation in Transcultural Processes in Colonial Brazil, or: Has the Holy Spirit a Face?

 

11:30 Coffee

 

12:00 Tristan Weddigen (Universität Zürich)

Neobaroque Modern: Oscar Niemeyer and the Construction of Brazilian Identity

 

12:45 Lunch-Break

 

(Chair Vera Beyer, Freie Universität Berlin)

 

14:15 Rachel Milstein (The Hebrew University, Jerusalem)

Between Alterity and Inclusion: the Evolution of Islamic Visual Vocabulary

 

15:00 Amy Landau (Walters Art Museum, Baltimore)

Jesuit Iconography for New Julfa’s Apostolic Churches: Controversy and Assimilation

 

15:45 Coffee

 

16:15 Ebba Koch (Universität Wien / Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften)

The Allegorical Transformation of Christ and Mary into Shah Jahan

 

17:00 Alberto Saviello (Freie Universität Berlin / FOR 1703)

Translating Sacrality: Adaptations of the Iconography of “Tobias and the Angel” in Mughal Painting

 

17.45 Closing Remarks