AAH 39h Annual conference and bookfair.

11-13.IV.2013, 

Reading, University of Reading.

Call for papers (until 12.XI.2012) 

Session 7

Medieval remediations: aesthetic, ideology, and praxis.

Organized by S. Drimmer, British Library. 

In their book Remediation: Understanding New Media, Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin define remediation as ‘the formal logic by which new media fashion prior media forms’. Far from a modern construct, however, the authors show that remediation has been an intermittent logic of artistic production from the Middle Ages to the present day. Remediation offers a particularly apt framework for thinking about artistic production in the Middle Ages, and one which eschews the dialectic between originality and reproduction that emerged in later periods. This session seeks papers that approach medieval art through the lens of remediation, as well as papers that pursue the avenues of inquiry opened up by conceptual intersections between pre- and post-print methodologies of visual expression. How did medieval artists invoke one medium while working in another? What were the motivations behind and the implications of hypermediacy, or, drawing attention to the medium itself? How did the structures or design of one medium come to be cited in another?

Potential topics to be explored include, but are not limited to, architectural reliquaries and canon tables, skeuomorphic objects, incunables that retain or allude to features of manuscripts, as well as wall paintings and sculpture that emulate textiles. Historians of medieval art have been at the forefront of deploying new technology in both research and the classroom. The aim of this session is to further this momentum by forging links between theories inspired by new media and the media of the medieval past.

Session 32

Museums & exhibitions session. Curating the book: exhibiting books, archives and manuscripts.

Organized by L.Bloom, Stanley & Audrey Burton Gallery, University of Leeds;  B.Thomas, University of Kent.

This session explores issues of display and engagement with books, folios, sketchbooks, archives and manuscripts in a gallery and museum context.

Printed books, sketchbooks, folios of prints, archival materials and manuscripts are being included in gallery and museum displays with ever-greater frequency. Indeed, the contributions of the Tate Archive to gallery displays have been so popular that, in 2013, the Archives will gain its own dedicated display space for its materials. Parallel to this, there has been renewed interest in ‘the book’ and book design among contemporary artists; similar issues of display thus face contemporary art curators as well as historic art curators.

The display of such materials in a museum context can problematise theories of the autonomous art object. A challenge is posed to would-be-curators of the book and similar objects: how to provide access and engagement with these objects, intended for active – and often intimate-scale – viewing and handling, while at the same time preserving their oftentimes delicate condition in a traditional display context? Facsimiles and digitised versions of such material offer opportunities for more active engagement with these objects, if not with the ‘originals’, but what constitutes the ‘authenticity’ of these types of objects? Does the digitisation and reproduction of such objects for display purposes detract from the original objects, or can they enhance engagement with the originals themselves? Does the fact that these objects are even reproduced in other formats contribute to the ‘aura’ and profile of the original objects themselves?

The Museums & Exhibitions Group represents a wide range of practitioners, including art historians, curators and artists, and invites a similarly wide range of responses in considering the exhibition of these materials – from all eras and cultures – in the gallery/museum space.

Info

Source: APILIST