The application deadline is 20 October 2021. Please send your application containing a detailed CV, information on publications (if applicable), copies of obtained degrees, a short description of your research project, a writing sample (a chapter of the MA thesis or an article), and the contact details of two professional referees to Prof. Dr. Peter J. Schneemann.

The 5th Swiss Congress for Art History, organized jointly by the Swiss Association of Art Historians (VKKS) and the Institute for Art History of the University of Zurich, will be held in Zurich from 22 to 24 June 2022. Session conveners: Toni Hildebrandt und Peter J. Schneemann (University of Bern); speakers of the session: Natalia Ganahl (University of Vienna / HSE Moscow), Suzannah Henty (University of Melbourne / EHESS, Paris), Veronika Hirth (Karlsruhe Institute of Technology), André Rottmann (Free University Berlin) and Yvonne Volkart (IAeP, Academy of Art and Design, FHNW Basel / ZHdK Zürich).

ARTIST ENCOUNTER #2: What does cultural sustainability mean? How do we collaborate in ways that dehierarchize knowledge and exploit the full potential of transdisciplinary cooperation? And what role does blueberry juice play? Researchers from the Sinergia project meet the artist George Steinmann for a public round table discussion as part of his exhibition „FUTURE NOW“ at the Stadtgalerie in Bern. The event will be recorded and shared on our website, generously supported by the Stanley Johnson Foundation.

Hope – Rethinking with Benjamin, 2021 Conference of the International Walter Benjamin Society organized by the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin in cooperation with the Akademie der Künste, Berlin and the Leibniz-Zentrum für Literatur- und Kulturforschung, Berlin. The conference holds a panel on Architecture, Environment and Natural History organized by Maria Teresa Costa (MPIWG) and Toni Hildebrandt (University of Bern), with talks by Benjamin Fellmann (Warburg-Haus, University of Hamburg), Maria Filomena Molder (Nova University Lisbon), Noa Levin (Centre Marc Bloch, Berlin), Milena Massalongo (University of Mantova), Peter J. Schneemann (University of Bern), Giovanbattista Tusa (Nova University Lisbon), M. Ty (University of Wisconsin, Madison), Gerhard Wolf (KHI, Florence), and a final film screening and artist talk with Chantal Benjamin, Lais Benjamin Campos, Aura Rosenberg and Frances Scholz, moderated by Maria Teresa Costa and Toni Hildebrandt.

Workshop organized by doctoral researchers Alice Gustson, Georgina Sánchez Celaya and Jonathan Sarfin (SNSF Sinergia Mediating the Ecological Imperative) as part of the Nachhaltigkeitstag at the three Bernese universities. Literature, film, and art portray visions of the future(s) and help us re-imagine the world. They also touch the core of ethical decision-making and ask questions of human flourishing (das Erblühen menschlichen Lebens). Through the lens of the Environmental Humanities, a trans-disciplinary approach, we will examine the relevance of cultural productions for discussions of human-nature interaction. Then, we will lead a collaborative poetry-making exercise: participants will compose centos, recycled poems, and imagine new ecological futures firsthand.

Prof. Dr. Peter J. Schneemann will give a lecture at the interdisciplinary colloquium Art & Ecologie. Dialogues Contemporains, a Journée d'études interdisciplinaire, organized by Julien Currat in collaboration of University of Lausanne and the Conférence universitaire de suisse Occidentale (CUSO). Other speakers include Prof. Roberto Barbanti (Université Paris 8, Saint-Denis), Dr. Guillaume Logé (Université Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne), Dr. Federica Martini (École de design et haute école d'art du Valais, Sierre) and Dr. Marie Rebecchi (Aix-Marseille Université).

Two principal investigators of the SNSF Sinergia Mediating the Ecological Imperative are invited to the Ringvorlesung Umwelt denken — Umwelt gestalten Medien, Metabolismen, politische Entwürfe, organized by Institut für Kunst- und Baugeschichte at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT). Krieger will talk about his research on Politische Ikonografie der Megastadt im Anthropozän. Schneemann will give a lecture on Das Haus als Modell. Der ökologische Imperativ und die zeitgenössische Kunst (both lectures in German).

We screen a film from a work in progress by Land artist Hans Baumann and discuss his long-term creative partnership with the Torres Martinez Desert Cahuilla Indian tribe and their collective reflection upon a rapidly disappearing sea in the California desert. The event is supported by the Stanley Johnson Foundation and the first of a series of Artist Encounters (2021-24).

How to think and represent nuclear disaster in its radicality? – Conversation and screening with Brazilian artist/filmmaker Ana Vaz and art historians Maria Stavrinaki (University Panthéon-Sorbonne – Paris 1) and Toni Hildebrandt (University of Bern) at LE BAL, Paris in collaboration with University Panthéon-Sorbonne – Paris 1. The event will be held in French and English.

Three films by Andrea Bordoli (The Depth Beneath, The Height Above, 2019, STABULUM, 2021 and Terra Australis Incognita, 2021) were selected for Mimesis Documentary Festival, Boulder, Pasaules Film Festival in Riga, Lithuania, and Cortocircuito International Film Festival, Santiago de Compostela, Spain. STABULUM is also part of Persistenze, a group exhibition that will open Saturday the 18th September at La Rada, Locarno. Andrea Bordoli is a filmmaker and doctoral student in Social Anthropology in our subproject Indigenous Futurisms: Counter-publics in the Slipstream.

Transdisciplinary Dialogue on the global and regional effects of the Anthropocene as part of the exhibition in the Kunsthalle It is not the End of the World. Artists, Writers and Speakers: Frédérique Ait-Touati (literary studies/history of science, Science Po, Paris / ZKM Karlsruhe), Romana Ganzoni (writer), Michael Hagner (history of science, ETH Zurich), Stefan Haupt (filmmaker), Toni Hildebrandt (art history, University of Bern), Pauline Julier (filmmaker, artist), Thomas Kneubühler (artist), Diana Rojas (performer), Sabine Rusterholz Petko (curator), Rasa Smite (artist), Peter J. Schneemann (art history, University of Bern), Christian Schüle (philosopher, sociologist, theologist, essayist), George Steinmann (visual artist, musician, researcher), Riikka Taurianinen (artist), Yvonne Volkart (art and media studies, FHNW Basel).

De León's talk will conclude the exhibition Confronting Hostile Terrains (19.08.21-11.09.21) that examines the political causes and existential consequences of lethal border politics and aims to humanize the often-anonymous victims of border regimes and asylum systems. Confronting Hostile Terrains will center the participatory exhibit Hostile Terrain 94 from the Undocumented Migration Project directed by Jason De León. Two more interventions that explore migration and internal bordering complete the exhibition. These include Wasser from artist Sarah Hildebrand and Living in Direct Provision directed by anthropologist Darcy Alexandra.

Qiao Hu has been awarded a scholarship by the China Scholarship Council (CSC) to pursue her PhD research at the University of Bern. Her research project Mapping the Smellscape of Altermodern: Olfactory Art and Multidimensional Art History will explore how olfactory art brings into play the concept of relational aesthetics in order to reflect on the smellscape in altermodern, in which viewers' positions are replaced by participants and relations. Her dissertation project is part of the subproject Formations of the Ethical Imperative: From Postmodernity to Relational Aesthetics and the Contemporary Period, 1960–2019, under the lead of Prof. Dr. Peter J. Schneemann.

The work of artists is essential for the mediation and communication of ecological interdependencies: in pointing out and criticizing problematic conditions and phenomena as well as in actively intervening in environment-related discourses or even in directly engaging the environment itself. By means of images, materialities or scenarios, the artistic techniques of the present are able to fill gaps between scientific implications and social transformations with creative processes. The artists' agency takes a central role in addressing the comprehensive ecological challenges of our time.

This series is generously sponsored by the Stanley Thomas Johnson Foundation.

Colloque suisse de la revèle en histoire de l'art / Nachwuchskolloquium für Kunstgeschichte in der Schweiz 2021, Department of Art History and Archeology, University of Fribourg

Roundtable with Dr. Toni Hildebrandt (SNSF Mediating the Ecological Imperative), Markus Reymann (Director of the TBA21–Academy, Venice), Mareike  Dittmer (Director of Public Engagement, TBA21–Academy, Venice) and Karin Zindel (Co-Leitung Geschäftsstelle Dossier Nachhaltigkeit, ZHdK), Moderation: Dr. Gabrielle Schaad, Co-Curator Le Foyer – in Process.

Speakers included Darcy Alexandra (Social Anthropology, Bern), Andrea Bordoli (Social Anthropology, Bern), Claus Beisbart (Philosophy, Bern), Alice Gustson (Art History, Bern), Toni Hildebrandt (Art History, Bern), Petra Tjitske Kalshoven (Anthropology, Manchester), Peter Krieger (Art History, Mexico City), Deborah Madsen (American Literature, Geneva), Gabriele Rippl (North American Literature and Culture, Bern), Jonathan Sarfin (North American Literature, Bern), Michaela Schäuble (Social Anthropology, Bern), Peter Schneemann (Art History, Bern), as well as an artist lecture by Minerva Cuervas (Mexico City).

Prof. Dr. Gabriele Rippl will give a Keynote (in German) at the Symposium “Kulturelle Nachhaltigkeit lernen und lehren”, Pädagogische Hochschule Niederösterreich.

With contributions by Hannah Baader, Toni Hildebrandt, Peter Krieger, Ursula Kluwick, Michi Knecht, Virginia Richter, Gabriele Rippl, Michaela Schäuble, Peter J. Schneemann, Ursula Ströbele, Hubert Zapf and a Keynote by Christof Mauch (Director, Rachel Carson Center, LMU Munich).

Tsinghua Arts and Design Institute in Milan with a lecture by Prof. Dr. Peter Krieger on Aesthetics and Ecology – Research Concepts

Interview (German) with cPI Prof. Dr. Peter J. Schneemann, Institute of Art History, University of Bern