The conference’s thematic focus on ‘things’ is intended to underline the transhuman, object-oriented dimensions of mimesis, in line with a research approach that is less interested in psychological explanations than in connections and
feedback loops between heterogeneous materials, cultural codes, and mimetic practices. It nevertheless does not exclude the being-beside-oneself of human actors, yet conceives the latter as agents of mimetic practices on the basis of an overarching conception of things as processual assemblages of materials, digital and analogue objects, human and non-human actors, and cultural technologies and practices that are capable of initiating desire-driven mimetic economies.
The conference subtitle, ‘Mimetic Existences’, is intended to capture the milieu-specific character of media: as forms of milieux, media function as affordances through which people and things come to be beside themselves. On the basis of a milieu-oriented conception of media, the conference will focus on intermedial mimetic processes, including mimicry and processes of fusion, transformation, and embodiment that operate mimetically between heterogeneous media/milieux.
In accordance with the research group’s outlook, the conference themes are intended to highlight such intermedial practices and processes of embodiment and metamorphosis in highly diverse contexts, including digital image media, artistic, literary, and publishing practices, popular science media, and the ethnology and history of political (de-)subjectivation processes and economic media practices.

 

 

 

Conference Programme

 

3rd February 2020

 

14:00  Opening

14:30 SESSION 1
Peter Bexte (Köln) Backbenchers in the Parliament of Things. Or: Re-reading Psalm 118,22

 

Response: Research Project Media and Mimesis

 

15:30 COFFEE

 

16:00 SESSION 2
Christoph Bläsi (Mainz): Automated ´Gatekeeping´ and Automated Text Production: Machines in Publishing and Authoring Processes as well as in Content Discovery

Hannes Bajohr (Basel): The Gestalt of AI: Machine Learning Beyond the Atomism-Holism Divide

 

Response: Research Project Subalterne Mimesis

 

19:00 CONFERENCE DINNER

 

 

4th February 2020

 

10:00 AM: SESSION 3
Rosa Eidelpes (Konstanz): Mimesis redoubled
Erika Balsom (London): Wang Bing’s 15 Hours and the Chimera of Endlessness

 

Response: Research Project Mimetische Existenzweisen

 

12:00 PM: LUNCH

 

13:00 PM: SESSION 4
Michael Suter (Basel): Mimetic Currency and Gradated Sovereignties in Colonialism
Margie Borschke (Sydney): The poetics of circulation

 

Response: Research Project Produktive Imitationen

 

15:00 PM: COFFEE BREAK

 

15:30 PM: SESSION 5

Noam Elcott (New York): Four Stations of the (Wooden) Cross: Symbolic, Real, Imaginary, Trompe l’oeilf the (Wooden) Cross: Symbolic, Real, Imaginary, Trompe l’oeil.
Hendrik Blumentrath (Berlin): Stage Actors

 

Response: Research Project Einbetten, Aufklappen, Anhängen

 

18:00 DINNER

 

19:00 RECEPTION & PARTY

 

5th February 2020

 

10:00 SESSION 6
Mareike Vennen (Berlin): How to Picture a Dinosaur? The Visual Politics of Natural History Objects
Manuel van der Veen (Karlsruhe): Placing things beside themselves – “to see how they hold up” (Georges Braque)

 

Response Research Project Mimesis des Raumbildes

 

12:00 LUNCH

 

13:00 Michael Cuntz (Weimar): „Can you do that again?“ Trajectories of (auto-)mimesis in musico-technological ensembles

 

Response: Research Project Mimesis des Raumbildes

 

14:00 CLOSING REMARKS