Veranstaltung: Leuphana in der Denkerei: "Interiors and Interiority"

6.–8.12.2012, Berlin, Denkerei

The conference conveys central aspekts of modern imagery in their historical developement. Image theory is combined with cultural analysis.

The conference will address forms of the visualization of interiority in modernity; their defining image is the depiction of the domestic interior. Such representations are effects as well as producers of historically specific ideas about interiority, as one—perhaps even the crucial—modern practice constituting the subject. Ideas of interiority have played a central role in writings going back to the Church Fathers; but only the eighteenth century sees the production of a wide variety of architectonic and pictorial articulations that simultaneously also transform a practice that initially operated on a religious basis into one of self-observation and subjectivation. A space increasingly serves as the material manifestation of interiority: the domestic interior as the privileged place of being-with-oneself—even as that place is always pervaded and indeed determined by what is outside it. As Walter Benjamin has shown, ideas about domestic life and processes of interiorization are the characteristic traits of bourgeois culture in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Since the twentieth century, by contrast, the relationship between space and self has been defined by conceptual or deconstructive attacks on such ideas and practices of interiority—attacks that have found particularly pointed expression in depictions of the domestic interior. Seen in this perspective, the latter is of interest not only to a theory of culture, but also to studies in representation. Pictures of domestic interiors model social and familial relations as well as the interplay between the private and public spheres; at the same time, opening up the private interior and allowing beholders to look in also means negotiating the modalities of access to the picture in modernity.

Conception and Organization:
Prof. Dr. Beate Söntgen (Leuphana Universität Lüneburg), in coop. with
Prof. Dr. Ewa Lajer-Burcharth (Harvard University, Radcliffe Institute, Cambridge)

Program:

Thu. 6th, December 2012

Opening and Introduction
14 h: Beate Söntgen (Leuphana Universität Lüneburg) / Ewa Lajer-Burcharth (Harvard University, Cambridge)

Section: Conceptualizing Interiority (moderation: Beate Söntgen)
14.30 h: Brigid Doherty (Princeton University): “‘Armlos wie Inneres.’ Interior, Surface, and Metaphor in Rilke’s Rodin Lecture”
15.15 h: Bettine Menke (Universität Erfurt): “Interiors: The Exteriority of Inwardness”

Section: Visualizing Interiority (moderation: Beate Söntgen)
16.30 h: Catherine Girard (Harvard University, Cambridge): “Violence and Interiority: Stags at Louis XV's Versailles”
17.15 h: Anne Hemkendreis (Leuphana Universität Lüneburg): “The Alienation of Inwardness: Female Figures at a Threshold in the Paintings of Vilhelm Hammershøi”
18.15 h: Susan Sidlauskas (Rutgers. The State University of New Jersey, New Brunswick): “House Inside Out—Cézanne's Perforated Wall”

Fri. 7th, December 2012

Section: Interiority and Consumer Culture (moderation: Robin Schuldenfrei)
10 h: Holger Kuhn (Leuphana Universität Lüneburg): “From the Household of the Soul to the Economy of Money (Around 1500)”
10.45 h: Charlotte Klonk (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin): “Africa Interiorised: Displaying Non-European Artefacts in the Late 1920s and Early 1930s”
12 h: Katrin Grögel (Leuphana Universität Lüneburg): “Andrea Zittel's ‘Small Liberties’: Situating Interiors in Contemporary Media Culture”

Section: Building Interiors/Interiority Furnished (moderation: Ewa Lajer-Burcharth)
14.30 h: Katie Scott (The Courtauld Institute of Art, London): “Rococo Interiors: An Inside Story”
15.15 h: Mimi Hellman (Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs): “Staging Retreat: Designs for Bathing in the Eighteenth Century”
16.30 h: Etienne Jollet (Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne): “Interiors in the Exterior: Eighteenth-Century Grottoes und the Intimacy of Nature”
17.15 h: Johannes Grave (Universität Bielefeld): “Living with Pictures. Goethe's Interiors”

Panel Discussion
18.15 h: Wilfried Kuehn (Architekturbüro Kuehn Malvezzi, Berlin/Mailand) / Andreas Beyer (Deutsches Forum für Kunstgeschichte, Paris): “Contemplation or Communication? The Museum's Interior”

Sat. 8th, December 2012

Section: Interiority on the Move (moderation: Katrin Grögel)
9.30 h: Annette Urban (Ruhr-Universität Bochum): “Wild Walls, Revolving Sets, Built Cuts: Staged Interiors in Contemporary Photography and Film Installation”
10.15 h: Peter Schneemann (Universität Bern): “Anagrammatic Spaces. Moving Interiors in Contemporary Art”
11.30 h: Stefanie Diekmann (Universität Hildesheim): “Scenes from the Backstage: Theatrical Interiors and Interiority”
12.15 h: Gertrud Koch (Freie Universität Berlin): “Inside/Outside: The Two Sides of the Wall and the Filmic View”

Contact: Eva Frey, Fon 04131.677-1990, frey@leuphana.de

With kind support of: Aloys F. Dornbracht GmbH & Co. KG, www.dornbracht.com