“Ceremonial Mediation in Urban Contexts in the Early Modern Period”
Dr Giovanna Guidicini (Glasgow School of Art, Architecture & Urban Studies)
My paper discusses the construction of temporary urban identities through the staging of triumphant entries and civic performances in Europe in the early modern period. In particular I will address the role of the hosting city during these events as three-dimensional mediating tool used by both monarchs and local authorities to demonstrate power, challenge boundaries, and visually display offers of dialogue and compromise.
During these events, the entering procession led the monarch through a carefully selected series of buildings and urban spaces such as gateways, market squares, buildings of government, private palaces, and local antiquities, portraying the city’s past, its present situation, and its expectations for the future. This edited and improved image of urban identity was enhanced by the presence of cheering, well-dressed crowds embodying political stability and wealth, and by the construction of temporary structures built of timber and painted canvas such as arches, fountains, or facades decorated with paintings and sculptures, and enlivened by actors and performers. Here the monarch and the civic community performed their roles in front of a local audience and, thanks to records, pamphlets, and ambassadors’ reports, an international one.
I argue that the perception of the city’s identity as both physical location and social construct was intentionally altered during the event, to display an image of ideal city fitting the organisers’ political agenda. The ideal city constructed for the ruler becomes the stage, and at times the battlefield, for negotiating the ruler and the city’s expectations of each other in times of change--a coronation, a funeral, a marriage alliance with a foreign power. The rulers’ response to the spectacle through speeches, ceremonial acceptance of gifts, and their interaction with the crowd and the architectural surroundings represented their own participation in this ceremony of mediation.
I will look at and compare different case studies, particularly Paris, Edinburgh, and Florence as geographically distant examples of different kinds of relationship between city and monarch. I will also look at different uses of urban space for male and female monarchs, and I will consider events of royal, civic, and religious character to discuss the different kinds of power that found form and expression during triumphal entries in the early modern city.
“Curating Care, Mediating Realities: Reflections on WochenKlausur’s Participatory Economics”
Kirsten Lloyd (Edinburgh College of Art, History of Art)
In 2013, the Austrian collective WochenKlausur attempted to set up a worker’s cooperative in Drumchapel, a deprived area of Glasgow marked by high levels of unemployment and significant health issues stemming in part from lack of access to fresh fruit and vegetables. Entitled Participatory Economics this artwork is exemplary of contemporary art’s current orientation around care relations. Like many other initiatives of its kind, the project involved artists engaging with material social realities to produce durational encounters which were then documented via the lens and the written word.
Through an insider’s analysis, this paper seeks to reframe current debates on social practice around the (hitherto neglected) 'ethics of care’ together with theories of social reproduction. What forms do care relations take in the encounters produced through the contemporary artwork? In the emotional economies of the 21st century, what are the implications for artistic labour? How can such 'care-full' interventions be effectively mediated by curators who are at once thoroughly embedded yet have a responsibility to the discipline of art history?
“Ancient Dance in Modern Dancers: An Overview”
Sophie Bocksberger (University of Oxford, Classics)
Throughout Antiquity, dance has been a constituent part of many important and respected art forms which are still greatly appreciated today. However, given the intrinsic difficulty to record and capture movement because of its transience and elusiveness, we know very little today about its practice--let alone the form it took--in the ancient world. Consequently, dance is too often neglected in scholarly research, which means that we are missing out on a whole dimension of some of the literary works we study. This situation is also due in part to the disjuncture one encounters between sensory perception and verbal articulation, which makes any attempt to translate a non-verbal phenomenon (movement, emotion, etc.) into words particularly arduous.
By paying little attention to dance when we conceive of performing art in Greek and in Roman culture, we are neglecting one of the central features that formed the aesthetic experience of spectating choral poetry or drama, for instance: dance was an integral part of the experience of watching a play by Sophocles, or the performance of a victory ode by Pindar. Unfortunately, the few studies that endeavour to engage with dance are usually too specific (attempts at reconstructing) or over-simplified (the ritual aspect of dance).
In this workshop, I wish to discuss how I have approached these difficulties, when I created a research project focusing on Ancient Roman pantomime with two colleagues (Dr Helen Slaney and Dr Caroline Potter) at Oxford. I intend to present the original methodology we have developed which has enabled us to study this lost art form from a different perspective and thus to acquire new results. Particular emphasis is going to be put on the inter-disciplinary aspect of our research, in this paper, especially on how crucial the input of the dancers has been to the shaping of a better understanding of Roman pantomime. As a matter of fact, having the chance to work with performers enabled us to consider a whole range of expressions that only the body can convey, and whose access is only made possible through praxis. In addition to this, we have also benefited from collaborations with scholars from several disciplines (anthropology, music, history of dance), who all have greatly contributed to our project. Finally, I am going to present an outline of the new project I am going to start working on next year: Expressions of Dance. The aim of this three-year project is to produce a book that draws the contours of what defined ‘dance’ in Archaic and Classical Greece.
“Horror, Pity, and the Visual in Ancient Greek Aesthetics”
Professor Douglas Cairns (University of Edinburgh, Classics)
As well as being the name of the physical symptom of shivering, shuddering, or goosebumps, the Greek word phrikē names an emotion that is particularly associated with automatic responses to sudden visual or auditory stimuli. This makes it especially at home in a number of specialised (ritual and other) scenarios, and helps explain its recurrent role in the ancient Greek aesthetics and literary theory, a role that illustrates the importance of the visual and the physical in ancient theories of audiences’ emotional responses to the portrayal of suffering in both dramatic performance and non-dramatic narrative.
“Extended Emotion”
Dr J. Adam Carter, Dr Emma Gordon, & Dr Orestis Palermos (University of Edinburgh, Philosophy)
Recent thinking within philosophy of mind about the ways cognition can extend (e.g. Clark 2011; Clark & Chalmers 1998; Wilson 2000, 2004; Menary 2006) has yet to be integrated with philosophical theories of emotion, which give cognition a central role. We carve out new ground at the intersection of these areas, and in doing so, defend what we call the extended emotion thesis: i.e., the claim that some emotions can extend beyond skin and skull to parts of the external world.
"Gruesome Evidence and Judicial Anger"
Dr Lauren Ware (University of Edinburgh, Philosophy and Law)
United States and Commonwealth trial courts routinely admit gruesome evidence in the form of photographs, videos, and verbal accounts. In this paper, I examine how the process by which such gruesome evidence influences judicial decision-making may be mediated by emotion: specifically, the emotion of anger.
I begin by assessing the two views that dominate the discourse with regard to the relationship between law and emotion. First, we have the view that emotions are “flawed decisional heuristics” or “predictable cognitive missteps” and as such should be silenced in the courtroom. Second, we have the view that legal decision-making is enriched and refined by emotions. The problem is that the current debate between these two views lacks a theoretical framework with which to approach serious analysis of the emotions in responding to concrete legal problems. I argue that a broadly virtue-ethical theory of emotion holds out the most promising prospect for this work. To do this, I focus on the eliciting conditions of anger—in this case, gruesome visual evidence in criminal trials. Next, I assess the empirical data regarding the ways in which anger in particular affects information processing strategies and information recall. I then confront the argument offered by Martha Nussbaum (2015) regarding anger as involving identification of a down-ranking as part of its cognitive content. Problems with Nussbaum’s understanding of judicial anger can be resolved by adjusting her utilitarian theory of emotion to accord with my virtue-ethical one.
Dr Giovanna Guidicini (Glasgow School of Art, Architecture & Urban Studies)
My paper discusses the construction of temporary urban identities through the staging of triumphant entries and civic performances in Europe in the early modern period. In particular I will address the role of the hosting city during these events as three-dimensional mediating tool used by both monarchs and local authorities to demonstrate power, challenge boundaries, and visually display offers of dialogue and compromise.
During these events, the entering procession led the monarch through a carefully selected series of buildings and urban spaces such as gateways, market squares, buildings of government, private palaces, and local antiquities, portraying the city’s past, its present situation, and its expectations for the future. This edited and improved image of urban identity was enhanced by the presence of cheering, well-dressed crowds embodying political stability and wealth, and by the construction of temporary structures built of timber and painted canvas such as arches, fountains, or facades decorated with paintings and sculptures, and enlivened by actors and performers. Here the monarch and the civic community performed their roles in front of a local audience and, thanks to records, pamphlets, and ambassadors’ reports, an international one.
I argue that the perception of the city’s identity as both physical location and social construct was intentionally altered during the event, to display an image of ideal city fitting the organisers’ political agenda. The ideal city constructed for the ruler becomes the stage, and at times the battlefield, for negotiating the ruler and the city’s expectations of each other in times of change--a coronation, a funeral, a marriage alliance with a foreign power. The rulers’ response to the spectacle through speeches, ceremonial acceptance of gifts, and their interaction with the crowd and the architectural surroundings represented their own participation in this ceremony of mediation.
I will look at and compare different case studies, particularly Paris, Edinburgh, and Florence as geographically distant examples of different kinds of relationship between city and monarch. I will also look at different uses of urban space for male and female monarchs, and I will consider events of royal, civic, and religious character to discuss the different kinds of power that found form and expression during triumphal entries in the early modern city.
“Curating Care, Mediating Realities: Reflections on WochenKlausur’s Participatory Economics”
Kirsten Lloyd (Edinburgh College of Art, History of Art)
In 2013, the Austrian collective WochenKlausur attempted to set up a worker’s cooperative in Drumchapel, a deprived area of Glasgow marked by high levels of unemployment and significant health issues stemming in part from lack of access to fresh fruit and vegetables. Entitled Participatory Economics this artwork is exemplary of contemporary art’s current orientation around care relations. Like many other initiatives of its kind, the project involved artists engaging with material social realities to produce durational encounters which were then documented via the lens and the written word.
Through an insider’s analysis, this paper seeks to reframe current debates on social practice around the (hitherto neglected) 'ethics of care’ together with theories of social reproduction. What forms do care relations take in the encounters produced through the contemporary artwork? In the emotional economies of the 21st century, what are the implications for artistic labour? How can such 'care-full' interventions be effectively mediated by curators who are at once thoroughly embedded yet have a responsibility to the discipline of art history?
“Ancient Dance in Modern Dancers: An Overview”
Sophie Bocksberger (University of Oxford, Classics)
Throughout Antiquity, dance has been a constituent part of many important and respected art forms which are still greatly appreciated today. However, given the intrinsic difficulty to record and capture movement because of its transience and elusiveness, we know very little today about its practice--let alone the form it took--in the ancient world. Consequently, dance is too often neglected in scholarly research, which means that we are missing out on a whole dimension of some of the literary works we study. This situation is also due in part to the disjuncture one encounters between sensory perception and verbal articulation, which makes any attempt to translate a non-verbal phenomenon (movement, emotion, etc.) into words particularly arduous.
By paying little attention to dance when we conceive of performing art in Greek and in Roman culture, we are neglecting one of the central features that formed the aesthetic experience of spectating choral poetry or drama, for instance: dance was an integral part of the experience of watching a play by Sophocles, or the performance of a victory ode by Pindar. Unfortunately, the few studies that endeavour to engage with dance are usually too specific (attempts at reconstructing) or over-simplified (the ritual aspect of dance).
In this workshop, I wish to discuss how I have approached these difficulties, when I created a research project focusing on Ancient Roman pantomime with two colleagues (Dr Helen Slaney and Dr Caroline Potter) at Oxford. I intend to present the original methodology we have developed which has enabled us to study this lost art form from a different perspective and thus to acquire new results. Particular emphasis is going to be put on the inter-disciplinary aspect of our research, in this paper, especially on how crucial the input of the dancers has been to the shaping of a better understanding of Roman pantomime. As a matter of fact, having the chance to work with performers enabled us to consider a whole range of expressions that only the body can convey, and whose access is only made possible through praxis. In addition to this, we have also benefited from collaborations with scholars from several disciplines (anthropology, music, history of dance), who all have greatly contributed to our project. Finally, I am going to present an outline of the new project I am going to start working on next year: Expressions of Dance. The aim of this three-year project is to produce a book that draws the contours of what defined ‘dance’ in Archaic and Classical Greece.
“Horror, Pity, and the Visual in Ancient Greek Aesthetics”
Professor Douglas Cairns (University of Edinburgh, Classics)
As well as being the name of the physical symptom of shivering, shuddering, or goosebumps, the Greek word phrikē names an emotion that is particularly associated with automatic responses to sudden visual or auditory stimuli. This makes it especially at home in a number of specialised (ritual and other) scenarios, and helps explain its recurrent role in the ancient Greek aesthetics and literary theory, a role that illustrates the importance of the visual and the physical in ancient theories of audiences’ emotional responses to the portrayal of suffering in both dramatic performance and non-dramatic narrative.
“Extended Emotion”
Dr J. Adam Carter, Dr Emma Gordon, & Dr Orestis Palermos (University of Edinburgh, Philosophy)
Recent thinking within philosophy of mind about the ways cognition can extend (e.g. Clark 2011; Clark & Chalmers 1998; Wilson 2000, 2004; Menary 2006) has yet to be integrated with philosophical theories of emotion, which give cognition a central role. We carve out new ground at the intersection of these areas, and in doing so, defend what we call the extended emotion thesis: i.e., the claim that some emotions can extend beyond skin and skull to parts of the external world.
"Gruesome Evidence and Judicial Anger"
Dr Lauren Ware (University of Edinburgh, Philosophy and Law)
United States and Commonwealth trial courts routinely admit gruesome evidence in the form of photographs, videos, and verbal accounts. In this paper, I examine how the process by which such gruesome evidence influences judicial decision-making may be mediated by emotion: specifically, the emotion of anger.
I begin by assessing the two views that dominate the discourse with regard to the relationship between law and emotion. First, we have the view that emotions are “flawed decisional heuristics” or “predictable cognitive missteps” and as such should be silenced in the courtroom. Second, we have the view that legal decision-making is enriched and refined by emotions. The problem is that the current debate between these two views lacks a theoretical framework with which to approach serious analysis of the emotions in responding to concrete legal problems. I argue that a broadly virtue-ethical theory of emotion holds out the most promising prospect for this work. To do this, I focus on the eliciting conditions of anger—in this case, gruesome visual evidence in criminal trials. Next, I assess the empirical data regarding the ways in which anger in particular affects information processing strategies and information recall. I then confront the argument offered by Martha Nussbaum (2015) regarding anger as involving identification of a down-ranking as part of its cognitive content. Problems with Nussbaum’s understanding of judicial anger can be resolved by adjusting her utilitarian theory of emotion to accord with my virtue-ethical one.