Workshop with four lectures by Gabrielle Decamous (Kyushu) on Fukushima and Other Nuclear Disasters in the Arts, Kyoko Iwaki (Antwerp) on Ghostly Realism: Matsubara Shuntarō and Atmospheric Subjects, Maria Stavrinaki (Lausanne) on Bomb, Human Head: Remarks on a Post-atomic Pattern, and Theresa Deichert (Heidelberg) on Representing the Unreal: The Nuclear Uncanny in Masaharu Satō’s Fukushima Trace, and responses by Vega Tescari (Mendrisio) and Lilian Kroth (Fribourg).
Concept & Organization: Toni Hildebrandt, SNSF Sinergia Mediating the Ecological Imperative, Department of Modern and Contemporary Art History, Institute of Art History, and Walter Benjamin Kolleg, University of Bern, supported by the MVUB Grant at University of Bern.
Location: University of Bern, Mittelstrasse 43, room 324.
Gabriele Rippl, PI of the Sinergia subproject Ecological Imaginaries: Eco-Ekphrasis in Twentieth- and Twenty-first Century North American Fiction will give a keynote lecture at the conférence plénière on Ecological Imaginaries: Ekphrasis and the Mediation of the Anthropocene at the International Conference on Collaborations Texte-Image dans le monde anglophone du moyen âge au présent at University of Strasbourg, November 15-16, 2024.
2024 marks the centenary of the Surrealist movement—more specifically of its founding manifesto and attendant journal. The title of the latter, La Révolution surréaliste (1924-29) made plain the movement’s ambition: nothing less than a social and political revolution, a synthesis of unconscious desire and waking reality. Hamstrung by both communist resistance to its "interior model" and by the rise of fascism and a new World War, this sur-reality never came to pass in the terms imagined by its originators. Toni Hildebrand, Coordinator of the SNSF Sinergia Mediating the Ecological Imperative, will give a talk on Expressionlessness: The Anti-fascist Significance of Surrealist Image-Space.
As much as plants have contributed to the making of human worlds, human intervention has also had a deep impact on vegetal ecosystems: the plant-human relationship is one of reciprocal interplay and mutual exchange, with humans existentially depending on plant life – with every breath. Recent studies have highlighted how these organisms, far from being passive receivers at the other end of the life spectrum, are endowed with active forms of sensory perception, can react, can move and have sex. For all these reasons, vegetal life constitutes a privileged field of investigation and knowledge production, both in terms of applied technologies, as well as of theoretical thinking. This new awareness calls for novel paradigms of historical and transhistorical inquiry, focusing on the wide range of interactions between humans and plants across time and space. In particular, there is a need for transdisciplinary and transregional approaches to the interactions of plant and human ecologies that can help to retrace the Anthropocene, and think beyond it. Peter J. Schneemann will give a lecture on The Empty Lot: Of Remediating Brownfields and Resisting Vegetation at the conference Entanglements across Collections, November 4-8, 2024 in Berlin. The conference is organized by the Berlin-based 4A_LAB Academy: Art Histories, Archaeologies, Anthropologies Aesthetics Ecological, concept and organisation by Hannah Baader in collaboration with Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz.
Hubert Zapf, Chair of American Studies, Department of English and American Studies, University of Augsburg, and a long-term project partner of the SNSF Sinergia Mediating the Ecological Imperative in Gabriele Rippl's subproject Ecological Imaginaries: Eco-Ekphrasis in Twentieth- and Twenty-first Century North American Fiction will visit Bern to give a lecture on Cultural Ecology in Decolonial Perspective. The Lecture will take place on September 19, 16:15-17:45 at Unitobler, room F-102.
The Visual Methods Studio of the Concordia Ethnography Lab will explore the intersections between anthropology and filmmaking through the screening of three short audiovisual works by Andrea Bordoli, each of them proposing a formal and conceptual encounter with a specific territory. By considering human-nonhuman entanglements, by tracking flows and transformations of matter, and by imagining speculative scenarios that blur past, present and future tenses, each of these films proposes a filmic encounter to think with and think through some key elements of the contemporary ecological crisis. Andrea Bordoli is a PhD student in the SNSF Sinergia project Mediating the Ecological Imperative.
Michaela Schäuble has been a guest at Ethnographic Imagination Basel – A Podcast Series on Reimagining the World from the Mundane. The podcast promotes ethnography not only as a tool of scholarly research but also as a mode of imagination available to all, a means for pursuing deeper intercultural, contextual understanding and more ethical ways of being in the world. This episode On Trance examines the transformative potential of ecstatic experiences of trance, the state of ecstasy and exuberance associated with mediumship. The discussion centers on forms of possession, and mediumship, which have long fascinated anthropologists and challenged their understanding and representational possibilities.
Prof. Dr. Peter J. Schneemann will give the keynote lecture Farbwerte. Verhandlungen einer engagierten Kunstgeschichte at the conference "Alle meine Farben", University of Regensburg, jointly organized by Prof. Dr. Oliver Jehle (Karlsruher Institut für Technologie) and Dr. Gerald Dagit (University of Regensburg). The conference takes place at the Kulturraum Vor der Grieb.
Toni Hildebrandt will give a lecture, Allegories of Iconicity: Pasolini and Warhol's Marylin under Mushroom Clouds at the Research Group «Aesthetics & Critique» at University of Fribourg, organized by the department of aesthetics and philosophy of art, Emmanuel Alloa and Lillian Kroth. The lecture takes place at Miséricorde 04, Avenue de l'Europe 20, 1700 Fribourg, MIS04 – Room 4120, 10-12 a.m.
Peter J. Schneemann will give the introductory lecture at the conference Vermittlung heute. Museumsvermittlung zwischen Inklusion, Partizipation und Teilhabe [all lectures in German], organized by Deutsche Kongress at the Historisches Museum Frankfurt am Main. Lectures by Annabelle Hornung (Museum für Kommunikation Nürnberg), Eda Göknar (İstanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts), Mona Jas (Kunsthochschule Berlin Weißensee), Anja Zenner (Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin), Barbara Welzel (University Dortmund), Wencke Maderbacher (Moesgaard Museum), and Stephanie Sonntag (Wallraf-Richartz-Museum & Fondation Corboud).
The workshop Divine Agency brings debates about more-than-human agency in anthropology and beyond into conversation with reflections in the anthropology of religion about the ethico-onto-epistemology of the divine. The workshop brings international renowned anthropologists of religion together to reflect upon questions such as: How do people in different fields of study conceptualize transcendent influence on (more-than) human co-habitation? How does an acting divinity “become real” for people? How can emic conceptualizations of divine agency be studied ethnographically? Which conclusions can be drawn for the conceptualization of agency and the divine through exploring the compound word of divine agency? In how far is divine agency comparable to human agency or the agency of things? What are political and ethical underpinnings of divine agencies? By pondering about these and related questions, new directions in conceptualizing divine agency are anticipated. With lectures by Michaela Schäuble, Valentina Napolitano, Agnieszka Halemba, Anna-Lena Wolf, and Maya Mayblin.
The artist Akira Takayama has conceived the tour-performance Tokyo Heterotopia as a device to lead the audience to a "heterotopia," a place in Tokyo where traces of memories of former Asian students, immigrants, and refugees still remain. Through a sightseeing app (in collaboration with Tokyo Metro) visitors can listen to readings of “stories that could have been there” spun by poets and novelists. During the past 10 years, projects have also been developed in cities such as Taipei, Abu Dhabi, Riga, Beirut, Athens, and Frankfurt.
After a keynote lecture by Toni Hildebrandt, Eiji Hato (Urban Engineer, Professor, Graduate School of Engineering, The University of Tokyo), Akira Takayama (Director, Artist, Professor of the Graduate School of Film and New Media, Tokyo University of the Arts), and Chiaki Soma (Art Producer, Associate Professor of Global Art Practice, Graduate School of Fine Arts, Tokyo University of the Arts) will discuss the future possibilities of this project as an example of a sustainable art project that crosses theory and practice.
Koichiro Kokubun, Professor of Philosophy at University of Tokyo, and Toni Hildebrandt will give two lectures and discuss the concept of voice in relation to Kokubun's book on the Japanese middle voice and Giorgio Agamben's recent book La voce umana [The human voice]. The event is jointly organized by University of Tokyo and the East Asian Academy for New Liberal Arts.
Peter J. Schneemann will give a lecture, The Temptation of Sustainability in Culture, at the Journées d’études transversales du HAR on Patrimonialisation de l’éphémère at Université Paris Nanterre (Salle des conférences du Bâtiment Max Weber, 200 avenue de la République, 92000 Nanterre)
Amitav Ghosh, author of both novels and nonfiction histories focused on colonialism, cosmopolitism and climate change, is holding this year's Anthropology Talks. We invite all those interested to the public event on Monday, 6th, at 19:30pm, "Imagining Worlds Reading and conversation with Amitav Ghosh" Bühnen Bern (please reserve a free ticket from Bühnen Bern). The workshop on the 7th is reserved for students and researchers, see the details for the registration. The event is a collaboration between the Institute of Social Anthropology, Bühnen Bern and ICS – Interdisciplinary Cultural Studies at Walter Benjamin Kolleg.
The Kunsthalle Bielelfeld is organizing the Symposium Climate box versus climate crisis around Fit for the future: the climate-neutral museum. Climate, art business, cultural tourism – how can it continue? How do museums become climate neutral? How can sustainability in the exhibition industry be implemented and lived in the future in construction, in operational processes, in the understanding of the exhibition industry itself? With contributions by Britta Haßelmann MdB, Jacob Sylvester Bilabel (Head of the Sustainability in Culture and Media Network), Bernd Kniess (HafenCity University Hamburg), Peter Gorschlüter (Director of the Museum Folkwang in Essen), Elke Krasny (Academy of Fine Arts Vienna), Frances Morris (Director Emerita at the Tate Modern), Peter J. Schneemann (Director of the Department of Modern and Contemporary Art History at the University of Bern and Dean of the Faculty of Philosophy and History), Stefan Simon (Director of the Rathgen Research Laboratory of the National Museums in Berlin), Ralph Zinnikus (Ministry of Culture and Science of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia), and Christina Végh (Director of the Kunsthalle Bielefeld).
In a datafied society, living with and through big data technologies raises many issues: How are bodies and biographies (not) being taken into account in the process of standardization, and what space is left for failing bodies and lives unfolding otherwise? How do individuals, institutions, and societies navigate sense-making amidst often conflicting forms of knowledge? What can practices of implementation, circumvention, and adaptation of diverse technologies tell us about the ways in which people and societies craft their futures? Scholars studying the role of sensors, Big Data, and AI technologies in the fields of health, policing, and ecology will gather in Bern, Switzerland to discuss these questions and the broader implications of datafication, in a dynamic, collaborative environment.
Peter J. Schneemann will give a lecture Analysieren, Abbilden, Zeigen, Handeln. Kulturtechniken im Angesicht der Krise (in German), as part of the exhibition 1.5 Degrees – Interdependencies between Life, the Cosmos, and Technology at Kunsthalle Mannheim.
AS IF – The Model between Science and Art, A symposium, October 7, 2023, 2 p.m, at the Württembergischen Kunstverein Stuttgart, with Michael Resch (HLRS, University of Stuttgart), Sandra Boeschenstein (artist), Carsten Gliese (artist), Toni Hildebrandt (University of Bern), Pia Linz (artist), Gudrun Thäter (KIT Karlsruhe), Harry Walter (artist), in cooperation with the High Performance Computing Center of the University of Stuttgart and the Württembergischer Kunstverein Stuttgart, with support from the city of Stuttgart.
Vodun is a globalized spiritual practice and knowledge system which originated in West Africa; Haitian Vodou is one of its many diasporic adjustments, formed in the contexts of the Black Atlantic. For different reasons, Vodun’s and Vodou’s practices and imageries have been of interest to ethnographers, artists, and art historians – in the West and in the Global South. Images, through misrepresentation and demonization in research, museum display, photobooks, journalism, literature, and film, have deeply affected how practices of Vodun and Vodou are perceived. New academic and artistic approaches to Vodun and Vodou are challenging historic and contemporary views, methods and media. They also pointedly challenge the researcher’s and artist’s positionality.
This conference's point of departure is remediations—understood as different forms of mediations and media formats that comment upon and refashion each other. Our conference aims to foster dialogue on plural perspectives on ecologies, enable diverse encounters, and discuss multiple engagements—synergies that thus jointly circumscribe the complex and contested term of the "ecological imperative".
With lectures by Valentina Bonifacio (University Ca' Forscari, Venice), Sria Chatterjee (Director of the Mellon Center for Studies in British Art, London), Gabriele Dürbeck (University of Vechta), Diego Mantoan (University of Palermo), Timo Müller (University Konstanz), Susan Schuppli (Goldsmiths University of London), and a lecture performance of the Mesocosmos collective (PhD researchers Andrea Bordoli, Georgina Sánchez Celaya, Jonathan Sarfin, and Magali Wagner with Hannes Zulauf, Grace Denis, Paulina Quintero, and Aldir Polymeris).
Full Program here.
Metamorphosen der Gegenwart is an Open Air Film Programme at the Botanical Garden of the University of Bern (BOGA). We will screen and discuss documentary and experimental films (Andrea Bordoli, Ursula Biemann, Ben Rivers, Ana Vaz) inside the BOGA. The programme, curated by Toni Hildebrandt, Peter J. Schneemann, and Magali Wagner (from the SNSF Sinergia Project Mediating the Ecological Imperative) in collaboration with Flavia Castelberg (from BOGA), is a response to the BOGA project Chronoversum – Pflanzen im Wandel der Zeit).
Evening on Sustainability of culture as part of the Forum für Universität und Gesellschaft dedicated to challenges in culture. With three lectures by Dr. h.c. George Steinmann (artist), Dr. Nicolette Kretz (auawirleben Theaterfestival Bern), Prof. Dr. Peter J. Schneemann (University of Bern), moderated by Dagmar Walser (Radio SRF).
Gabriele Rippl will give a keynote lecture on Ecocritical Perspectives and Ecological Imaginaires: Intermediality and the Mediation of the Anthropocene in the context of the XIII Congresso Internacional IAWIS/AIERTI, Belo Horizonte, Brasil 2023 SEDIMENTAÇÃO – por uma arqueologia da palavra e da imagem
The Workshop Cultivating the Idea of Biodiversity: The Arts and their Languages for an Ecologist Engagement in the Public Space will take place at University of Palermo from June 6–7, 2023, with participants Gianluca Sarà (NBFC, Palermo), Emily Brady (Texas University), Endre Szécsényi, (ELTE Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest), Sabrina Lo Brutto (NBFC, Palermo), Carolina Fernández-Castrillo (Universidad Carlos III Madrid), Giuseppe Venturella (NBFC, Palermo), Laura Pitingaro (artist, Italy), and Sasha Vinci (artist, Italy). Peter J. Schneemann (University of Bern) will give a lecture entitled The empty lot: Of remediating brownfields and resisting vegetation.
Every film image is geological. As a technical medium derived from the metals and minerals extracted from the earth, every moving image is materially embedded in the world it records. It is also temporally linked to the almost inconceivably vast deep time of the planet’s formation. What would it mean to make films in response to this situation? In this screening and expanded discussion Sasha Litvintseva will discuss her process of developing such a film practice as a way of tackling the perceptual and aesthetic difficulties presented by ongoing ecological crises. The event will include the screening of two films made as part of this broader research project, Salarium (2017), which looks at the sinkholes appearing on the Dead Sea shore, and Asbestos (2016), which traces the interaction of toxicity and invisibility in the the history of the use of this mineral.
Hannah Baader, the Permanent Senior Research Fellow at the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz, Max-Planck-Institute, and leader of the Research Group Transregional Art Histories. Spaces, Actors, Ecologies will give a lecture Caspar David Friedrich, Der Watzmann, 1825/1937: Doppelte Ökologien, jointly organized with Zentrum Paul Klee Bern. The lecture will take place at Zentrum Paul Klee on May 25, 17:30 in the context of the exhibition Alles wächst [Everything grows].
The Workshop will take place at University of Bern (Hauptgebäude, Kuppelraum) on May 26, 9-12:30. The lecture is public, but please register for the workshop at info@ecological-imperative.ch
This project highlights the transformation of edible matter, commencing with a listening session and an artist lecture exploring listening as a precursor to response-ability, examining Haraway's suggestion of cultivating collective knowing and doing. A suggestion to sow seeds, alongside the provision of them, will engage the participants in small-scale cultivation, to be later implemented in the series' final session, in which participants will explore the possibilities and politics of cooking together, germinating a collective dinner that spans across various contexts. The talk will be in English and will take place via zoom.
This event is part of our series of Artist Encounters and is supported by the Stanley Johnson Foundation.
Number of Participants - 15 to 20
Registration until April 15th via magali.wagner@unibe.ch
Peter J. Schneemann will give a keynote lecture The Garden as Sanctuary, the Brownfield as Compromised Site: Imaginaries of Purity and Contamination in Contemporary Ecological Concepts at the Annual conference of the Swiss Association of Art Historians (VKKS | ASHHA | ASSSA) in cooperation with the Comité International d'Histoire de l'Art (CIHA) and the Division of Art History, University of Geneva.
Screening of the film and conversation between director Chase Joynt and social anthropologist Michaela Schäuble.
Toni Hildebrandt will give a lecture jointly hosted by the Tokyo Art collective Kohonya/Honkbooks and Tokyo Geidai, the Tokyo University of the Arts. The lecture, Allegories of Iconicity: Pasolini’s Marilyn Monroes and Mushroom Clouds, will be followed by a discussion with artist Akira Takayama (University of the Arts Tokyo).
In the winter semester 2022, students of social anthropology at the University of Bern—under the guidance of Prof. Michaela Schäuble and inspired by the Feral Atlas (Tsing, Deger, Keleman Saxena & Zhou)—researched and wrote their own contributions on the more-than-human Anthropocene. The focus was on cological worlds created on the ground in Switzerland when non-human beings collide with human infrastructure projects. The field reports of undergraduate students show how wild ecologies have developed and spread beyond human control. Our alternative Feral Atlas points—based on local ethnographic observations—to urgent ecological challenges of our time.
Andrea Bordoli's latest short film Di Visi Di Pietra Memorie (Memories of Stone Faces) has been selected to be part of Cinéma du Réel International Film Festival, running in Paris from March 24th to April 2nd 2023. The film will be shown on Sunday March 26th at the festival venue in the Centre Pompidou
Jonathan Sarfin, Georgina Sanchez Celaya and Magali Wagner will each give a presentation at the transdisciplinary conference Environmental Emergencies Across Media hosted by the Linnaeus University Centre for Intermedial and Multimodal Studies and Kalmar Art Museum, Sweden.
Michaela Schäuble and Darcy Alexandra will host a panel on Thinking with Water, Critters, and Landscapes: Multimodal Engagements at the RAI Film Festival Conference of the Royal Anthropological Institute in Bristol, UK.
ARTIST ENCOUNTER – How does it feel to live in an increasingly toxic world? Where does the geological sphere end and where does the organic-human begin?
Katrin Hornek will give us an insight into her artistic practice, where she explores the sensual dimension of the human experience as all-encompassing force of "nature". Using excerpts from her film and sound works, we will explore the metabolic entanglements of human bodies and different Earth systems.
The talk will be in English and will take place via zoom. Follow this link to join.
This event is part of our series of Artist Encounters and is supported by the Stanley Johnson Foundation.
A new film "Deep Horizon – George Steinmann sieht das Unsichtbare" about our project partner in the field of artistic research, the visual artist and musician George Steinmann, will premiere at Kino Rex Bern. A film by Markus Baumann. Trailer
The Sinergia team welcomed our critical friends and project partners, Gerhard Wolf (Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz), Hannah Baader (Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz), Hubert Zapf (University of Augsburg), Darcy Alexandra (University of Bern), and Franz Krause (University of Cologne), to the Villa Mettlen for a day-long workshop. The PhD students, who took over the organization of this event, picked up on an element that is increasingly important to institutions and artists: The metabolic dimension of the ecological imperative that shapes our everyday way of living. How do we prepare which food, how do we appreciate the knowledge of processing, preparation, cleaning up, and disposing of our waste? Metabolism was also the conceptual frame for the workshop. The Sinergia team presented the results of the first two years of the project. The PhD students, in particular, benefitted from the exchange and were inspired to deepen their commitment to interdisciplinarity.
Roundtable on the Ecological Imperative with our project partners Franz Krause (Lead of Emmy-Noether Research group, Global South Studies Center, University of Cologne), Gerhard Wolf (Director of the Max-Planck-Institut, Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz), Hubert Zapf (Professor and Chair of American Literature, University of Augsburg), as well as Gabriele Rippl and Michaela Schäuble from the Sinergia team. Peter J. Schneemann will introduce the panel and Magali Wagner will moderate the public discussion at Kornhausform Bern. The event will be held in German and is a cooperation with Kornhausforum Bern.
Toni Hildebrandt will give the Fall Public Lecture on the Anthropocene at the faculty of Italian Culture and Society at the University of St. Gallen. The lecture will examine three responses from the arts to the Fukushima disaster in 2011 and the ongoing Post-Fukushima situation. Filmmaker Ana Vaz, artist and theatre director Akira Takayama, and Ikebana master Atsunobu Katagiri react to the catastrophe with works that decentralize the human, paying attention to flowers, fireworks, gardens, insects and farm animals. In these tales of survival, the human is marginalized or temporary/spatially subtracted, to re-enter the world with a new ethical consciousness and awareness.
Register online and join the lecture on site on Tuesday, December 6, 12:15 - 1:45 pm CET
at Tellstrasse 2, room 58-424.
The entire ecosphere – the oceans, the air, our food, the soil, even the Antarctic – contains residues, particles and chemicals derived from our consumer culture. The extraction of raw materials leaves behind destroyed landscapes and toxic spoil. Waste is everywhere. On December, 2nd, the Sinergia team will discuss the exhibition "Territories of Waste. On the Return of the Repressed" at Museum Tinguely, Basel, together with curator Dr. Sandra Beate Reimann.
The conference After Nature – Nach der Natur – Aprés Nature—5th conference of the research group Aesthetics & Critique, coordinated by Emmanuel Alloa—is going to take place on 26 November 2022 at Kunsthalle Friart Fribourg, with lectures by Sabeth Buchmann (Academy of Fine Arts Vienna), Howard Caygill (Kingston University London), Toni Hildebrandt (University of Bern), Federico Luisetti (University of St. Gallen), Pietro Montani (Sapienza University of Rome), Pauline Nadrigny (Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne University), and a book presentation with artist Nora Kapfer.
Special program of the Internationale Kurzfilmtage Winterthur 2022 with films by Mina Achermann, Magdalena Froger, Nicolas Chapoulier & Pauline Julier, Ben Rivers, and Ana Vaz, curated by Toni Hildebrandt. A postapocalyptic imagination runs counter to the idea of a linear evolution that concludes with the end of the world. What remains in a time that has started to end? These short cinematic scenarios present alternative worlds that challenge the notion of an end of all things. Vegetative, animalistic, and marginalized lifeforms become the protagonists of a different, postapocalyptic experience of time in the Anthropocene. After the screening, Toni Hildebrandt and filmmaker Pauline Julier will discuss the issues raised in the programme.
The Sinergia team welcomes the writer Alexandra Kleeman (New York) to Bern for a discussion about her new novel Something New Under the Sun (Hogarth, 2021), organized jointly by the subproject Ecological Imaginaries: Eco-Ekphrasis in Twentieth- and Twenty-First North American Fiction and the Collegium Generale of the University of Bern as part of the latter's Literarische Lesungen series on Climate Fiction. The discussion will take place at University of Bern, Hauptgebäude 4, Hörsaal 220.
Toni Hildebrandt will give a lecture at University of Tokyo on The aporia of cinders and the aporetic structure of Hiroshima, mon amour, jointly hosted by the Institute of Art History, the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, and the University of Tokyo Center for Philosophy. The lecture will be followed by a panel discussion with art historian Prof. Dr. Hiromi Matsui and philosopher Prof. Dr. Koichiro Kokubun (both University of Tokyo).
Prof. Dr. Peter J. Schneemann, cPI of the SNSF Sinergia Mediating the Ecological Imperative will be one of the invited keynotes at the series Das Grüne Museum – Nachhaltigkeit und Risiko – Die ökologische Transformation in Museen und Depots [The Green Museum - Sustainability and Risk - The Ecological Transformation in Museums and Depots] taking place in a series of events in Dresden (29.9.), Frankfurt am Main (11.10.) and Munich (20.10.2022), organized by the Deutsche Kongress. The language of all lectures and discussions is German.
The exhibition STRATUM at the MUCA, UNAM, Mexico City by Luis Carrera-Maul curated by Prof. Dr. Peter Krieger will take place from the 30 of July until the 29 of October. It is also possible to see the development of the landscape-installation created in the museum's online inner space. In addition, a colloquium will be held in the MUCA auditorium on September 21 at 10:00 (GMT-5) on the concept of geo-aesthetics.
Peter J. Schneemann and Michaela Schäuble from the SNSF Sinergia Mediating the Ecological Imperative will give lectures at the International Conference Toward a Sustainable Attitude: Aesthetics, the Arts, and the Environment at Ca' Foscari University of Venice (Aula Magna Ca’ Dolfin). Toward a Sustainable Attitude is organized by Diego Mantoan (Ca' Foscari University of Venice) in collaboration between Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, New York University Tandon and the University of Bern. Scientific committee: Roberta Dreon, Ca’ Foscari University of Venice; Carolina Fernandez Castrillo, Universidad Carlos III Madrid; Diego Mantoan, Ca’ Foscari University of Venice; Peter Schneemann, Universität Bern, and Jonathan Soffer, NYU Tandon.
From 4th to 7th October, the XLVI International Colloquium on Art History Sources for Art histories in Latin America Resurgences and New Interpretations organized by the Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas, UNAM will take place online. Our subproject Political Geo-Aesthetics of the Anthropocene: The Production and Distribution of Paradigmatic Visual Formulae Representing Human Impacts on Earth will participate in two lectures. Prof. Dr. Krieger will present a conference entitled Fuentes de la tierra: el análisis estético e histórico de los volcanes on the political iconography of volcanos and PhD student Georgina Sánchez Celaya will talk about Instagram as a source for art history in her talk El pasillo infinito de la imagen pobre. “Instagram como Fuente para la historia del arte. Estudio de caso: "Ríos de gente". The conferences will be available on the official channels of the Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas and it will be possible to follow the discussion online via YouTube.
Andrea Bordoli's latest short film Per Voi Oggi la Luce del Sole non Splenderà will make its international premiere at the Grands Rencontres des Arts Médiatiques en Gaspésie (1-4.09.2022, Percé, Québec). It will also be screened at Arquiteturas Film Festival in Porto (27.9–1.10.2022), and will be part of the short films competition at the Vancouver International Film Festival in Vancouver, Canada (27.09 – 09.10.2022).
The Sinergia team welcomes Prof. Dr. Jørgen Bruhn (Linnaeus University) and his team to Bern for the workshop Images, Imagination, Intermediality: Form and Content in Anthropocene Media, organized by the literary studies subproject Ecological Imaginaries: Eco-Ekphrasis in Twentieth- and Twenty-First North American Fiction. In a series of talks followed by discussion, Prof. Bruhn and his team will present their current project, Intermedial Ecocriticism: Transmediating the Anthropocene, which investigates how specific representations of the climate crisis in scientific media changes when transformed into other types of media. Prof. Dr. Gabriele Rippl and members from the Mediating the Ecological Imperative team will present their projects. The two research groups will also discuss several key methodological and theoretical texts. If you are interested in participating, please send an email to Jonathan.sarfin@unibe.ch.
Pauline Julier is an artist and filmmaker. She explores the links that humans create with their environment through stories, rituals, knowledge and images. Her films and installations are composed of elements of diverse origins (documentary, theoretical, fictional) to restitute the complexity of our relationship to the world. Her films were presented in festivals, art centres and institutions around the world. She was awarded the Swiss Federal Art Price at Art Basel in 2010 and 2021. She has presented a solo exhibition at the Centre Culturel Suisse in Paris in 2017, and she took part in Bruno Latour's exhibition Critical Zone at the ZKM. On 27th September, her new film WAY BEYOND will be shown at Kino Rex Bern, followed by a conversation between Pauline Julier and Toni Hildebrandt.
Prof. Dr. Peter J. Schneemann, cPI of the SNSF Sinergia Mediating the Ecological Imperative, will give the opening lecture (in German) at the conference Ökotopien und Dystopien in Kunstgeschichte, Kultur und Film [Ecotopias and dystopias in art history, culture and film] at the Institute of Art History at the University of Regensburg.
The Summer School 2022 on The Ecological Imperative. Past and Contemporary Perspectives and Practices, in collaboration with the GSAH TransHumanities, will take place at the Hotel Schloss Wartegg, Bodensee. Keynote Speakers: Prof. Dr. Macarena Gòmez-Barris (Professor and Chairperson of Social Science and Cultural Studies at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York), Prof. Dr. Caroline A. Jones (Professor in the History, Theory, and Criticism section, Department of Architecture, MIT), Prof. Dr. Hubert Zapf (Professor and Chair of American Literature at the University of Augsburg, Germany). Project Team: Dr. Eva Bader, Dr. Toni Hildebrandt, Prof. Dr. Urte Krass; Prof, Dr. Gabriele Rippl, Prof. Dr. Michaela Schäuble, Prof. Dr. Peter J. Schneemann, and Dr. Michael Toggweiler.
Wo gibt es Raum für selbstgefährdende Forschungsprozesse, innere Reisen, bei denen wir nichts von dem finden, wonach wir suchen, nur etwas von uns, von dem wir nicht wussten, dass es existiert. Sind Sanatorien, Psychiatrien und Künstlerhäuser nicht auch Häuser der Gastfreundschaft, offen für unvordenkliche Empfindungen und Prozesse, die in uns geschehen, die aber nicht wir sind? Das Kolloquium versteht sich als eine Einladung an die verschiedensten Sprachen und Sprechformen, sich ins Vernehmen zu setzen und zusammen in See zu stechen.
Mit Emmanuel Alloa, Alexander Kluge, Elke aus dem Moore, Rüdiger Safranski, Sigrid Weigel, Gerhard Wolf u.a., konzipiert von Toni Hildebrandt, Friederike Kretzen, Cornelia Schwab und Luke Wilkins für die Fundaziun Nairs in Scuol (Engadin).
Alle Vorträge und Gespräche werden live auf dem youtube-Kanal der Fundaziun Nairs übertragen.
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), 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).
Confirmed Participants: Nina Amstutz, Amanda Boetzkes, Mark Cheetham, Sria Chatterjee, Maura Coughlin, Heather Davis, TJ Demos, Jaimey Hamilton Faris, Emily Gephart, Dehlia Hannah, Catherina Karkov, Gregory Levine, De-nin D. Lee, CC McKee, Yvette Mutumba, Astrida Neimanis, James Nisbet, Sugata Ray, Bernd Scherer, Peter J. Schneemann, Vera-Simone Schulz, Jeannine Tang, Greg M. Thomas, Tihomir Topuzovski, Organisers: Olga Smith (University of Vienna), Andrew Patrizio (University of Edinburgh).
The Sinergia team welcomes Prof. Dr. Eva Horn (University of Vienna) to Bern for the workshop Mediating the Ecological Imperative: Interdisciplinary Exchanges, organized by the literary studies subproject Ecological Imaginaries: Eco-Ekphrasis in Twentieth- and Twenty-First North American Fiction. In a series of talks followed by discussion rounds, Prof. Dr. Horn will discuss her current project, Air: A Cultural Theory of Climate, which investigates climate as a cultural phenomenon, Prof. Dr. Gabriele Rippl and Jonathan Sarfin will present their work on eco-ekphrasis and intermediality in contemporary anglophone fiction, and Prof. Dr. Peter J. Schneemann and Dr. Toni Hildebrandt will introduce the art history sub-project Formations of the Ethical Imperative: From Postmodernity to Relational Aesthetics and the Contemporary Period, 1960–2019.
Lecture and workshop Mare nostrum. Ökologische und politische Denkbilder des Meeres (in German) by Dr. Pablo Schneider (Berlin/Munich). The lecture will focus on ecological observations and political reflections in the context of a visually based understanding of the sea, moderated by Peter Krieger (UNAM, Mexico City) as part of the Sinergia subproject Political Geo-Aesthetics of the Anthropocene. The evening lecture will take place on May 19 at 18.15 at University of Bern / Hauptgebäude, Hochschulstrasse 4, room 201. The workshop will take place on May 20 from 9.00-13.00 at the Institute of Art History, Mittelstrasse 43, room 216.
Lecture by Toni Hildebrandt at the Centre at the Foundation Petrović Njegoš and the Centre for Contemporary Art of Montenegro in Podgorica, founded in 1995, by integrating two cultural institutions: the Republic Cultural Centre and the Gallery of Art of Non-Aligned Countries "Josip Broz Tito". In the context of the space, and its current exhibition by Irena Lagator Pejović, the lecture will discuss the aporia of a time in-between utopia and dystopia, of a past that haunts the present, and a present that is always open to a "some-thing" that is yet to arrive, but which needs an "other", allegorical space to unfold in front of our eyes.
Andrea Bordoli's Requerimiento (2020, 8’) is currently part of the digital exhibition To Spawn a Door in the Land of Broken Mirrors, hosted by New Art City, and TERRA AUSTRALIS INCOGNITA (2021, 9’) has been selected for the This is Short platform, and will be screened in the 4 short film festivals.
Prof. Dr. Evi Zemanek (Albert-Ludwigs-University Freiburg) will give an evening lecture on Resilience: Interdisciplinary Perspectives and Potentials for the Environmental Humanities on March 31 at 6:15pm, moderated by Prof. Dr. Gabriele Rippl (University of Bern). The lecture will be followed by a Colloquium for Advanced MA or PhD students on April 1 (9:30am-4pm). Both events will take place at the Walter Benjamin Kolleg at University of Bern (GSAH | Interdisciplinary Cultural Studies) – NEW: Online via Zoom.
Peter Krieger (UNAM, Mexico City) will give a lecture on Aesthetics and Political Iconography of Air Pollution in the Workshop Nature, Art and History – Thematic Workshop on Chinese Ecological Art History at Tsinghua University on Saturday, March, 5, 8:40pm (Chicago time). Access via the QR code on the poster.
Lecture by Peter J. Schneemann in the Ringvorlesung Kunst und Engagement. Von den biologischen Systemen der 1960er-Jahre zu Ökofeminismus und Queer Ecology in der Gegenwartskunst, organized by Ursula Ströbele, at Braunschweig University of Art (HBK)
séance de présentation of the new issue of Plastik – the Journal of the Ecole des arts de la Sorbonne entitled Vers une esthétique des éléments with the editors Maud Maffei, Benjamin Fellmann and Riccardo Venturi, the director of Plastik Christophe Viart, and an intervention by author Toni Hildebrandt at Université Paris 1 Panthéon - Sorbonne.
The exhibition curator Annette Amberg and Prof. Dr. Michaela Schäuble, Director of the Institute for Social Anthropology at the University of Bern, will guide through the exhibition Vídeo nas Aldeias: An Audiovisual Movement by and Among Indigenous Peoples in Brazil at Coalmine, Winterthur. Afterwards there will be a Brasilian dinner and a screening of Corumbiara: They Shoot Indians, Don’t They? (2009) by Vincent Carelli.
Thierry Dufrêne (University Paris 10 Ouest-Nanterre), Peter J. Schneemann (University of Bern), and Vera Beatriz Siqueira (UERJ, Brazil) will chair a session on Ecologies of Migration: Engaged Perspectives at the 35th CIHA World Congress | MOTION: Migrations, São Paulo | January 17-21, 2022, taking place at the Instituto Goethe de São Paulo - Rua Lisboa, 974 - Pinheiros, São Paulo, as well as online.
A late afternoon conversation about Ceylan Öztrük's exhibition Matter of non and her novel The Motive that accompanies the show. The discussion will start at 4pm, but you are invited to come earlier in the afternoon to get familiar with the exhibition, its ideas and the book. Discussion with: Ceylan Öztrük, Toni Hildebrandt, Li Tavor and Nicolas Brulhart.
Requerimiento, a recent film by Andrea Bordoli has been selected in the Ethnogeographic section of the program of Istanbul International Experimental Film Festival (12-21.11.2021).
Shortly afterwards, the film will be shown in the Filmic experiments in ethnography section of the Athens Ethnographic Film Festival – ETHNOFEST (25.11-05.12.2021).
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.
Conference Hope – Rethinking with Benjamin organized by the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin in cooperation with the Akademie der Künste 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, 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), a discussion between Emanuele Coccia (EHESS Paris) and architect Daniel Libeskind, and a final film screening 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
