Image – Object – Performance: Mediality and Communication in Early Modern Contact Zones of Latin America and Asia

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Image – Object – Performance: Mediality and Communication in Early Modern Contact Zones of Latin America and Asia

Veranstalter
Emmy-Noether-Forschergruppe "Text, Bild, Performanz: Wandel und Ambivalenz kultureller Ordnungen in kolonialen Kontaktzonen"
Veranstaltungsort
Universität Hamburg
Ort
Hamburg
Land
Deutschland
Vom - Bis
30.05.2011 - 01.06.2011
Deadline
10.05.2011
Website
http://text-bild-performanz.de/
Von
Eberhard Crailsheim

Even before our postmodern age of multimedia, processes of human communication have been determined through the use of and the connection between different kinds of media. Unfortunately, our own view of the past, which is focused on classical writing systems and written sources, constricts our senses and leads us to apply Eurocentric models of communication to non-European contexts. In our historical analysis, we are not used to consider the multiplicity and complexity of medial communication structures, which are organizing human coexistence and the production of meaning globally. In order to observe the historical dimensions of these communication structures, a change of perspective is necessary.

Therefore, the analysis of historical communication processes or trans-cultural phenomena of the past, should not be limited to written sources, but pay particular attention to other medial forms of expression. This includes visual media and objects of the daily life or ritual use as well as architectures or performative expressions, where the act itself produces meaning.

The aim of the workshop is to discuss the possibilities and problems of an inclusion of visuality, materiality and performance from different methodological and thematic perspectives and as categories of historical and/or anthropological analysis. The presentations from disciplines like History, Visual Studies, Literature and Archaeology focus on case studies of Early Modern Latin American (Bolivia, Brazil, Mexico, Peru) and Asian (Philippines, India) contact zones. As a result of the contact between different cultural systems, these spaces of communication are particularly suited to visualize differences in medial structures as well as in systems of perception and representation. On the other hand, theses zones are characterized by intercultural dynamics which lead to specific transformations of the involved communication systems and their media.

One example of such a contact zone is the differences between Catholic and indigenous understandings of images or materializations of sacredness within Latin America, which have continuously been affecting processes of change and negotiation of religious systems. Another example is the meaning of materiality for the configuration of communities of communication. That means to consider objects of daily use as well as materializations of political, social or religious imaginations and orders, for example in textiles, ceramics, ritual objects, relics, sanctuaries or architectures, as markers of belonging to certain spaces of communication. But they can also be analyzed regarding their involvement in performative practice which marks another field of communication. In this approach, the category of performance is of particular interest because it is the performative act, where images and objects produce and receive collective meanings.
Thus, the workshop aims to examine and to compare not only single phenomena or levels of communication and their medial expressions, but also to discuss inter-medial dimensions of the production of cultural, religious or political meanings.

Programm

Monday, May 30 (State and University Library Carl von Ossietzky, lecture room)
13:30 – 14:00 pm Opening Remarks (Astrid Windus, Eberhard Crailsheim)

Panel I: Performative Production of Meaning
Chair: Horst Pietschmann (Universität Hamburg)

2:00 – 2:45 pm Antje Flüchter (Universität Heidelberg): Exchanging a Globe for a Dress? Presents and Intercultural Communication in Early Modern India

2:45 – 3:30 pm Eberhard Crailsheim (Universität Hamburg): Performative Acts in the Construction of Authority in the Philippines

3:30 pm Coffee break

4:00 – 4:45 pm Claudia Brosseder (Universität Heidelberg): Corpus Christi from an Indigenous Perspective. Indigenous Christianity in 17th Century Peru

4:45 – 5:30 pm Otto Danwerth (Max Planck Institute for European Legal History, Frankfurt): Struggles about Dead Bodies and Meanings. The Treatment of Indigenous Funerals in Early Colonial Peru

Public evening lecture (Main building, Edmund-Siemers-Allee 1, lecture hall ESA-B)
6:00 – 8:00 pm Reinhard Wendt (Fernuniversität Hagen): Communication and Performance: The „Fiesta“ as a Medium for the Construction of Colonial Authority and Indigenous Identity in Early Modern Philippines

8:00 pm Reception (buffet)

Tuesday, May 31

Panel II: Visuality and Visual Systems
Chair: Andrea Nicklisch

9:00 – 9:45 am Jens Baumgarten (Universidade Federal do São Paulo): The Production of Baroque Religiousness in Brazil

9:45 – 10:30 am Regalado Trota Jose (University of Santo Tomas, Manila): Islamic Designs on Catholic Church Bells? Questions in the Philippine Setting

10:30 – 11:00 Coffee break

11:00 – 11:45 am Maria Dolores Elizalde Pérez-Grueso (Center of Human and Social Sciences, CSIC, Madrid): China-Spain-Philippines: Images and Representations

11:45 am – 12:30 pm Margit Kern (Freie Universität Berlin): The Mass of Saint Gregory. A Feather Mosaic from 1539

12:30 – 1:30 pm Lunch (individual)

1:30 – 3:00 pm PhD students from the junior research group „Cultures in Dialogue in the Andean World“ (Universität Heidelberg) present their own projects
Chair: Peter Kröfges

3:00 – 3:30 pm Coffee break

Panel III: Communication and Materiality
Chair: Eberhard Crailsheim

3:30 – 4:15 pm Peter Conrad Kröfges (Universidad Autónoma de San Luis Potosí): Material and Immaterial Manifestations of Cultural Contact in the Huaxteca of the 16th Century

4:15 – 5:00 pm Astrid Windus (Universität Hamburg): The Creation of a Saint: Intermediality as a Factor of Trans-Cultural Knowledge Production (Provincia de Charcas, 17th - 18th Century)

5:00 – 6:30 pm PhD students from the junior research group „Text, Image, Performance: Change and Ambivalence of Cultural Orders in Colonial Contact Zones” (Universität Hamburg) present their own projects
Chair: Jens Baumgarten

7:00 pm Dinner

Wednesday, June 1

Panel IV: Intermediality
Chair: Imke Rath

9:00 – 9:45 am Julia Hegewald (Universität Bonn): The Concept of Re-Use as a Means of Communication and Exchange between Cultures

9:45 – 10:30 am Andrés Eichmann (Universidad Nuestra Señora de La Paz, Universidad de Navarra): Music and Sonority: Auditive Transmissions of Meaning in Catholic Ritual

10:30 – 11:15 am Ulrich Mücke (Universität Hamburg): One Text, Many Narratives. The Comentarios Reales by Inca Garcilaso de la Vega

11:15 am Coffee break

11:45 am – 1:15 pm PhD students from the junior research group „Cultural Transfer as a Factor of State Building“ (Cluster of Excellence "Asia and Europe in a Global Context…“, Universität Heidelberg) present their own projects
Chair: Ulrich Mücke

1:15 – 1:45 pm Final discussion, information on publication

Kontakt

Dr. Astrid Windus und Dr. Eberhard Crailsheim

Universität Hamburg,
Historisches Seminar,
Von-Melle-Park 6, 1104
20146 Hamburg

http://text-bild-performanz.de/