Deadline for proposals (papers abstracts): May 15, 2010

Date and location :
1st component : Nov.18 ? Nov. 19, 2010. Capc/Musée, Bordeaux
2nd component : May12 ? May 13, 2011. INHA, Paris

Organizers
Sabine Forero-Mendoza, laboratoire de recherches LAPRIL/ARTES, Université
de Michel de Montaigne - Bordeaux 3, Bertrand Prévost, Université de Michel de Montaigne - Bordeaux 3, in collaboration with Anne Lafont, Institut national d'histoire de l'art (INHA) and Giovanni Careri, Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS)


Scientific review committee
Giovanni Careri (EHESS, Paris), Claudia Cieri-Via (Université La Sapienza, Rome), Michel Espagne (ENS, Paris), Sabine Forero (Université de Bordeaux 3), Claude Imbert (ENS, Paris), Anne Lafont (INHA, Paris), François-René Martin (ENSBA, Paris), Bertrand Prévost (Université de Bordeaux), François Quiviger (Warburg Institute, Londres), Carlo Severi(EHESS - CNRS), Sigrid Weigel (Zentrum für Literatur- und Kulturforschung, Berlin).


Theme
For the last ten years years, Aby Warburg's work experience an obvious new interest. France is involved in this tendency even if the writings and intuitions of the Hamburg's Art History expert have been unknown for a long period of time. This is the reason why until now no major event has been programmed in France to reevaluate the proposals of the "Critical Iconology" creator. This conference would like to palliate this absence, looking widely to the multiple faces of a polymorphous work and fixing the state of the Research on his own accomplishments. If there is a place to talk about a "Warburg's Survivance", is precisely to outlook in one gesture, the former originality and the actual fecundity of a thought including the re-definition of the images, the art history frame and also the invention of new motifs and figures. Following the idea of his interpretative method, which supposes a movement into the time and the space, this conference, held jointly by the University Michel de Montaigne/Bordeaux3, the Institut National d'histoire de l'art and the Ecole des hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, will show up in two different periods as well as in two different places:
the City of Bordeaux during the fall 2010 and the city of Paris during the spring 2011.

These two encounters will follow the schema:
FIRST COMPONENT : ABY WARBURG "A LA LETTRE"
Aby Warburg's work that aspires to found a new Science of Art crossing different disciplines (Anthropology, Psychology, Philosophy, Philology) can be evaluated by itself. The first component of the conference will deal literally with the writings concentrating on the study of the genesis and sources as well as the clarification of notions and theory subjects not enough analyzed nowadays. " A la lettre": this expression is not only a simple rhetorical formula, given that the establishment of the warburgian corpus is not an  accomplished fact. We know that the published papers are only a small part comparing to the notebook works that concretize conceptual constructions and rich inventions.
This first session will offer the opportunity to make an inventory of publications, translations and comments of the writings. It will be possible to reconsider the interpretation of " Formulas de pathos" (Pathosformeln) and of the  "Survivance" (Nachleben), only to mention two of the most remarkable aspects of his work. On the other hand, we expect to know more about the models so-called energetic and dynamic that nourished the Warburg's thoughts. The journey to New Mexico and the Snake rite file, the mental illness and its epistemological "sublimation", the Mnemosyne-Atlas, on its details and as a whole, even the Hamburg's KWB Library, projected as a piece of art. All these matters should be discussed looking forward to apprehend as close as possible a definitively plural work.


SECOND COMPONENT : WARBURGIAN MOTIFS
This second part will try to measure the extraordinary heuristic value held by Warburg's thinking. What echo do his purposes have beyond his writings? What about its future and, in a more pragmatic way, how to use his intuitions? As a matter of fact, the Science of imagesintroduced by Warburg reaches -no less important- the invention of new objects and motifs. It is convenient to look to the pieces that Warburg himself has created (the Greyness, the Nymph...), but, expanding his way of seeing things, we can also propose other subjects. In this case, we will apply to Warburg's work the same treatment he used with images, suggesting hybridizations, transformations and displacements, cuttings and fixtures. The relationship between Warburg's thinking and the Cinema is still being questioned. We can also open a window on the interpretative perspectives that his method suggests on Photography and Computing. What about its use in Anthropology and the Studies of nonwestern cultures? Far from all disciplinary tendencies, we will ask about the impact of a very original Interpretation of images and a new approach of the History of culture.


Proposals should be a maximum of 300 words long and should include the
following:
- Family name and first name of authors (s)
- Short resume and selected bibliography
- Titles(s), function(s) and home institution(s)
- Contact information (mailing address, telephone number, e-mail)
- Paper title and main arguments

Languages : proposals may be in French or English, communications in
French, English, German or Italian.

Please send your proposals by email (in a Word attachment) to: