Tagung

Annual Conference 2015: Revealing/Concealing: (in)visibility in premodern societies

November 19-20, 2015
Schaulager

Anmeldung

This year’s eikones annual conference is dedicated to the concepts of revealing and concealing in pre-modern societies. The eikones annual conference 2015 invites to examine the various strategies of revealing and concealing in pre-modern societies, and to analyse pagan and Christian iconic practices critically through comparison. Methodologically, the conference will have an anthropological, comparativist bent, in order to explore the dyad of revealing and concealing through its terminological history and to define it more precisely in its historical and individual conditions. The focus on the pre-modern period means considering strategies of visualization beyond a modern conception of art; but in precisely this way the conference intends to make a contribution to a nuanced understanding of the term “image” in the sphere of its use as well as its historical processes of transformation. An investigation into processes of revealing and concealing aimed at a deeper understanding of image processes in ancient cultures should be aware of an inherent difficulty in dealing with these questions, i.e. the precise domain of image itself. What is and what is not an „image“ should not be solely determined by implicitly modern presumptions. Instead, a certain experimental aspect in presenting this matter is welcome, through the analysis of which we would learn to see the relevance of possibly remote phenomena for what might later be considered an „image“ or an image-related process. Furthermore the conference’s approach comprises explicitly a wide range of different cultures and societies by considering the phenomenal realm of revealing and concealing as specific to various forms of image practices as well as to the development of certain figures of thoughts in the pre-modern period apart from a Eurocentric epochal term. In this respect the conference aims to broaden the interdisciplinary exchange of different academic disciplines like Sinology, Egyptology, Art History, Ancient, Medieval and Byzantine Studies, Archaeology and others by identifying distinct historical, cultural and social phenomena of coming or bringing into manifestation and of enshrouding, both in their emerging conceptual as well as procedural/ritual aspect.

Program

Thursday, November 19, 2015

Moderation: Gerald Wildgruber
09.00 – 09.30Welcome: Ralph Ubl
Introduction: Barbara Schellewald
09.30 – 10.30Adrian Staehli
Verhüllte Götter - oder: wie lässt sich darstellen,
was man nicht sehen soll?
10.30 – 11.30Nikolaus Dietrich
Die Aphrodite von Knidos, das Problem der
Götterdarstellung und die Nacktheit in der
griechisch-römischen Kunst
11.30 – 12.30Velizar Sadovski
Ritual encryption, decryption
and hermeneutics of the Universe in the religious
poetryand pragmatics of Ancient India and
Iran – taxonomical lists, evocative images,
magic invocations
12.30 – 14.00Lunch

Moderation: Sophie Schweinfurth
14.00 – 15.00Ruth Webb
Speaking bodies, visible voices – modes of
making visible in Imperial culture
15.00 – 16.00Nicoletta Isar
Revealing/Concealing: Adumbration in
the Byzantine Chôra
16.00 – 16.30Break
16.30 – 17.30Stephan Grotz
Bild sein. Metaphysische Implikationen des
Verbergens und Enthüllens bei Meister Eckhart
17.30 – 18.15Break
Moderation: Antonio Loprieno
18.15John Baines
Visibility, place, and movement: ancient
Egyptian images and their contexts

Apéro riche at the Schaulager


Friday, November 20, 2015

Moderation: Andréas Stauder

10.30 – 11.30Wolfgang Behr
Discourses on ineffability of language,
concealment of representation and
formlessness of ambodiment in early Daoist
and Confucian thought
11.30 – 12.30Cléo M. Carastro
Au creux des images. Présentifications de
l'invisible en Grèce ancienne
12.30 – 14.00Lunch
Moderation: Barbara Schellewald
14.00 – 15.00Hanna Wimmer
Verbergen und Enthüllen als exegetische
Methode und als mediale Strategie in der
«Goldenen Biblia pauperum» British Library,
Kings MS 5
15.00 – 16.00Finbarr Barry Flood
«God's own wonder»: Marble and the Natural
Image in Mosques and Modernism
16.00 – 16.30Break
16.30 – 17.30Carlos Fraenkel
Rushdie on Ibn Rushd: What would he
tweet? Images, imagination, and the difference
between the medieval and the modern
Enlightenment
17.30 – 18.15Break
Moderation: Annick Payne
18.15Glenn Most
The Annunciation to Mary between
Text and Image
Apéro at Rheinsprung 11


Konzept: Barbara Schellewald, Sophie Schweinfurth, Gerald Wildgruber

Schaulager