25th Annual Interdisciplinary German Studies Conference
February 24th and 25th, 2017, University of California, Berkeley
Synaesthetics: Sound, Image, and Materialism
Christoph Cox (Hampshire College)
The “sonic turn” in the arts, humanities, and social sciences has prompted a reconsideration of the relationship between sound and image in media today. Semiotic issues of representation and signification have given way to materialist considerations of affect, force, and intensity. Along these materialist lines, the neurological condition of synaesthesia has become a prominent figure for thinking the conjunction of the visual and the auditory. While affirming materialist analysis, I argue that the aesthetic discourse of synaesthesia is predominantly conservative and recuperative, ultimately supporting the dominance of the visual and resisting the incursion of sound into the space of the gallery and museum. Exploring the tendencies toward audio-visual synthesis and separation in the history of the artist film, I show how contemporary filmmakers and video artists such as Julian Rosefeldt, Mathias Poledna, and the Sensory Ethnography Lab propose counter strategies that reject the fantasy of sensual fusion and, instead, affirm a productive difference and tension between the visual and the auditory.
Christoph Cox is Professor of Philosophy at Hampshire College. He is the author of Sonic Flux: Sound, Art, and Metaphysics (forthcoming) and Nietzsche: Naturalism and Interpretation (California, 1999) and co-editor of Realism Materialism Art (Sternberg, 2015) and Audio Culture: Readings in Modern Music (Continuum, 2004). The recipient of an Arts Writers Grant from Creative Capital/Warhol Foundation, Cox is editor-at-large at Cabinet magazine. His writing has appeared in October, Artforum, Journal of the History of Philosophy, The Wire, Journal of Visual Culture, Organised Sound, The Review of Metaphysics, and elsewhere. He has curated exhibitions at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, The Kitchen, CONTEXT Art Miami, New Langton Arts, G Fine Art Gallery and other venues.
The World in and out of Sync: Looking back at the long 18th century
Helge Jordheim (University of Oslo, University of Trondheim)
Taking his cue from present discussions on synchronization, non-synchronicity, and "desynchronized societies" (Rosa), Jordheim will look back at 18th century practices for dealing with multiple times, both in writing and through visual media, in order to explore how diagrams, concepts and narratives work to bring times and temporalities together and/or to keep them apart. .
Helge Jordheim is Professor of Cultural History at the University of Oslo and Professor of German at the University of Trondheim. For the academic year 2015-2016 he was Visiting Professor at the Department of English, NYU. He wrote his PhD in German literature on politics and genre in the 18th century (published with Niemeyer, 2007). Since then he has been working on a wide number of topics in 18th century studies, including mirrors for princes, medical history, and political satire. Other fields of research are conceptual history, where he has explored concepts like empire, world, cosmopolitanism, and crisis, and the theory and history of the human sciences. For the last years his main interest has been in questions of multiple times and the work of synchronization, which he has discussed in articles in History & Theory and other leading journals. Currently he is working on a book on temporal multiplicity, genre, and diagrammatics in the long 18th century. Latest book: Civilizing Emotions (with Pernau et al.)
