The Gesture in the
Cultural Heritage of Europe
project description
Colloquium
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Lectures
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International City Projects / The Gesture in the Cultural Heritage of Europe - Ljubljana / programme
LECTURES
25th June
11 am - 3.40 pm
venue: Prešernova dvorana ZRC SAZU, Novi trg 4
Muzeum Ljubljana invited two guest lecturers Aneta Serafimova and Renata Salecl to link up the presentations and the Live Exhibition.
Renata Salecl
12.30 pm - 1.30 pm
ROOM AND ROAD
A dance performance faces questions of support one receives
from the symbolic space in which one moves; how does one internalize this
space?; or better yet, how does one struggle against it? The dancer finds
herself in an unusual room where the walls appear alive and moving in
accordance to their own laws. The structure in which the dancer moves
has a life of its own. However, the walls which seem to be following their
own logic constantly fall back into their original state. And how does
the dancer react to this life of the space? First it looks as if the dancer
and her movements simply copy the movement of the space. The dancer's
body is in apparent synchrony with the space. But from the instant in
which the dancer falls into a kind of a trance, we can observe the much
more complex nature of the connection between the dancer and the space.
It looks as if the dancer forms her own rather psychotic space which cares
less and less for the symbolic framework in which she is placed. The dancer
starts functioning as her own world, which is limited by her own movements,
uncontrolled by her surroundings and almost hermetically sheltered from
external forces. Yet although the dancer forms her own world, her communication
with the outside symbolic space never fully stops. Symbolic space and
the dancer start functioning like two different worlds which seem to be
following their own crazy logic and do not care about each other. However,
no matter how much they try to keep apart, one cannot exist without the
other.
Renata Salecl
Senior Researcher at Institute of Criminology, Faculty of Law, Ljubljana
and Centennial Professor at London School of Economics. Books: The Spoils
of Freedom (Routledge 94), (Per)versions of Love and Hate (Verso 98),
On Anxiety (Routledge 04)
Aneta Serafimova
3 pm - 3.40 pm
BLESSING AND MOTHERHOOD OR BETWEEN THE SIGNUM AND THE SYMPTOM:
The Confrontation of the Divine and the Human in Byzantine Painting
The blessing is the emblem of Christian art. The gesture
of blessing in Byzantine iconography reaches the peak of its eloquence
in the visualization of Christ's public ministry. By following Christ's
blessing in the scenes of his healing of the sick, we reach the conclusion
that the blessing loses its universality/impersonality and becomes actual
speech: Rise! (John, 5:3); Arise! (Luke, 7:14); Hear! (Luke, 8:13); !
Go wash! (John, 9:7); Be thou clean! (Matthew, 8:3). The gesture of blessing
in these scenes becomes God's signum in which there is no emotion and
there must be none. A counterpoint to these gestures/scenes is the Holy
Mother of God who gives birth to her son, nurses him, laments him and
buries him. She is a mother, a human being, a mortal. Is motherhood reflected
in this image? To what extent does Byzantium allow the inclusion of pure
human emotion, i.e. motherhood? Our presentation of the illustrations
focuses on the analysis of the kinetic code (gesture) of motherhood. The
scenes belong to different styles and periods. Their analysis leads to
the conclusion that the concept of motherhood is placed at the level of
an emotional symptom whose expression follows a controlled line which
is, in general, immanent to Byzantine painterly non-spontaneity. The approach
to the concepts of blessing and motherhood reveals the positioning of
the divine vs. the human in Byzantine.
Aneta Serafimova, Ph.D.
Associate Professor at the Institute of Art History and Archaeology, Faculty
of Philosophy, Skopje, Macedonia. Teaching: The History of Byzantine Art.
The field of interest: Byzantine iconography and iconology. Books: The
Middle Ages in: Cultural Heritage, Skopje 1995; Mediaeval Painting in
Macedonia (9th-18th C.), Skopje 2000; Painterly Higths: Byzantine Master-Pieces
in Macedonia, CD, Skopje 2003; The Monastery of Kuceviste (nb. Skopje),
Skopje 2005.