Warsaw, Poland, June 10 – 12, 2015
Registration deadline: 1 juin 2015

The project stems from the theory of ‘agency of things’ created in the last decade of the twentieth century. The theory marks the departure from the ‘linguistic turn’ and resultant postmodern concepts, towards the search of functional agency of things and other entities shaping human environment. This approach, hitherto, has been applied solely to purely theoretical studies or in relation to works of modern and contemporary art.

Consequently, the project aims to fill this scientific lacuna and apply the theory of ‘agency of things’ to the artworks created between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries.

Abstracts available here

Programme :

Wednesday, 10 June 2015
venue: University of Warsaw, Room TBC

18:00 keynote lecture: Andrew Morrall (The Bard Graduate Centre, New York) – The Power of Nature and the Agency of Art in the Works of Jan Vermeyen and Nikolas Pfaff

Thursday, 11 June 2015
venue: National Museum of Warsaw, Room TBC

9:00 Welcome and Opening Remarks

9:30–11:00 First Session

Sarah M. Guérin (University of Montréal) – Presentation/Representation. The Agency of Materials in the Scenic Reliquaries, circa 1300
Barbara Baert (KU Leuven) – Agency of things and the Enclosed Gardens. A case-study on Mixed Media, Remnant Art, récyclage and gender in the Low Countries (16th onwards)
Stefano Martinelli (University of Pisa) – The Cloisters Leather Casket. A Fine Example of Late Fourteenth ­Century Flemish Craftsmanship

11:15–12:45 Second Session

Kathryn Rudy (University of St Andrews) – Touching Skin. How Medieval Users Rubbed, Kissed, Inscribed, Splashed, Begrimed, and Pricked their Manuscripts
Elina Gertsman (Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland) – Phantoms of Emptiness: the Agency of (No)thing
Mercedes López-Mayán (University of Santiago de Compostela) – Art, Liturgy and Power in the 15th century: the ‘Manuscript Chapel’ of Alfonso Carrillo, Archbishop of Toledo
13:00 Lunch (provided)

14:00–15:30 Third Session

Wim François (KU Leuven) – The Bible between Material Book and Immaterial Word
Karen Eileen Overbey (Tufts University) – Manual Medicine
Jack Hartnell (The Courtauld Institute of Art) – Dexterity, Memory, and Cutting-Edge Agency in Decorated Surgical Saws

15:45–16:45 Fourth Session

Peter Dent (University of Bristol) – Agency, Beauty and Late-Medieval Sculpture
Christopher J. Nygren (University of Pittsburgh) – “Let them fall down and worship thing.” Lorenzo Valla’s Renaissance Thing Theory

17:00 keynote lecture: Miri Rubin (Queen Mary University of London) – Why Matter Matters

Friday, 12 June 2015
venue: National Museum of Warsaw, Room TBC

9:00 keynote lecture: Jacqueline Jung (The Yale University) – The Boots of St. Hedwig: Thoughts on the Limits of the Agency of Things

10:00–11:00 Fifth Session

Rosa M. Rodriguez Porto (University of York) – Knighted by the Apostle Himself: Political Fabrication and Chivalric Artifact in Compostela, 1332
Robert Maniura (Birkbeck, University of London) – Miraculous Images

11:15–12:45 Sixth Session

Krystyna Greub-Frącz (Independent Scholar, Cologne) – The Choir Screen as Agent: A Reinterpretation of the Ghent Altarpiece
Emily N. Savage (University of St Andrews) – The Choir-stall as Interactive Agent
Jessica Barker (The Courtauld Institute of Art and Henry Moore Foundation) – Revealing and Concealing: Visibility as a Strategy of Power at the Royal Mausolea of Batalha and Westminster Abbey
13:00 Lunch (provided)

14:00–15:30 Seventh Session

Leah Clark (The Open University) – Collecting, Exchange, and the Agency of Things in the Renaissance Court
Vera-Simone Schulz (Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz Max-Planck-Institut) – Infiltrating artifacts. The agency of things in 14th- and 15th-century Florence
Evelyn Korsch (University of Erfurt) – The multilayered agency of luxury textiles. A diplomatic gift presented to the Republic of Venice in 1603

15:45–16:45 Eighth Session

Jaya Remond (Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin) – Marketing Dürer: Prints as agents of self-promotion
Alexander Lee (University of Oxford) – Michelangelo, Tommaso de’Cavalieri, and the Agency of the Gift Giving

17:00 Closing Remarks

Source : Agency of things