CALL FOR ICMA SPONSORED SESSION PROPOSALS:
5TH Forum Medieval Art, Bern, Switzerland, 18th-21st September 2019
The International Center of Medieval Art (ICMA) seeks proposals for sessions to be held under the organization’s sponsorship in 2019 at the 5th Forum Medieval Art, which will take place in Bern. Intended as an open colloquium occurring biennially at rotating sites and organized by the Deutsche Verein für Kunstwissenschaft e.V, the Forum seeks to bring together research and researchers on different fields, regions and periods and to serve—as its name suggests—as a forum for ideas pertaining to the study of medieval art.
Proposals for ICMA sponsorship should consist of a title, an abstract, and the CV of the organizer(s). The Forum will send out a Call for Papers once the selection of sessions has been made. Session organizers and speakers must be ICMA members. Thanks to a generous grant from the Kress Foundation, funds may be available to defray travel costs of sponsored session speakers. Please direct all session proposals seeking ICMA sponsorship in a single Word doc or PDF with name in the title by 14 May 2018 to the Chair of the Programs Committee: Beth Williamson, University of Bristol. Email: beth.williamson@bristol.ac.uk
5TH FORUM MEDIEVAL ART: PEAKS-PASSAGES-PONTI
The fifth Forum Medieval Art will take place in Bern on 18th-21st September 2019. Bern – looking out to peaks Eiger, Mönch, and Jungfrau, situated at the border to the Romandy, and having a long-standing tradition in bridge-building – embodies certain notions of translations, entanglements, and interactions. The conference will highlight such themes, focusing on forms and means of exchange, infrastructure, political and religious relationships, and the concrete reflections of these connections through objects. Methodological challenges will also be paramount, such as questioning how to write a history of encounters between artists, artworks, materials, and traditions.
Many mountain regions, and especially the Alps, have a long history as sites of transfers and interferences. Today, mountains and glaciers are the locations revealing most rapidly the consequences of climate change. They raise our awareness of similar changes in the past. Mountain regions were and are traversed by several ecological networks, connecting cities, regions, and countries, as well as different cultures, languages, and artistic traditions. Mountains, with their difficult passages and bridges, structured the ways through which materials and people were in touch. Bridges were strategic targets in conduct of war, evidence of applied knowledge, expression of civic representation, and custom points—both blockades and gates to the world.
Peaks in the historiography of Art History mark moments of radical change within artistic developments, the pinnacles of artistic careers, and high moments in the encounters of different traditions. Since the unfinished project of Walter Benjamin, who obtained his PhD in Bern, the passage has also been introduced as a figure of thought in historiography. The passage describes historical layers as spatial constellations, in which works of art, everyday culture, religious ideas, definitions of periods and theories of history encounter.
Organizers must submit all session proposals to the Forum by 1 June 2018 at mail@mittelalterkongress.de
Further information will soon be available at www.mittelalterkongress.de