08.45-09.00: Registration Welcome and Opening (09.00-09.15)
09.00-09.15: Welcome by Veronika Bernard (IMAGES project director), Steve Merrell and Övgü Tüzün (Conference organizing committee members)
Session (1): General Aspects of the Topic (09.15-09.55)
Chair: Veronika Bernard
09.15-09.55: Keti Shehu (University of Tirana/ Albania)/ Ambra Pittoni (Artist and Choreographer, Turin/ Italy): Responsibility and Economy of Images
Session (2): Images of (Cultural) Values in the Arts (09.55-11.25)
Chair: Övgü Tüzün
09.55-10.25: Sibel Almelek İşman (Dokuz Eylül University, Izmir/ Turkey): Vanitas: Moral Values in European Art
10.25-10.55: Jutta Teuwsen (University of Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf/ Germany): Contemporary Japanese Arts: Representations of Cultural Values in the Illustrations of Nature
10.55-11.25: Cinla Şeker (Dokus Eylül University, Izmir/ Turkey): Anatolian Folk Music Albums Cover Images at the Beginning of the Third Millenium
Session (3): Images of (Cultural) Values in Film (11.25-12.35)
Chair: Övgü Tüzün
11.25-11.55: Ömer Alkin (Heinrich Heine University, Düsseldorf/ Germany): Images of Cultural Values in Turkish-German Migration Cinema
11.55-12.35: Valentin Nussbaum (National Taiwan Normal University, Taipei/ Taiwan/ R.O.C.): “For your Eyes Only?” – James Bond and Sherlock Holmes enter the Museum
12.35-13.35: Lunch Break
Session (4): Images of (Cultural) Values in Popular Culture (13.35-15.35)
Chair: Steve Merrell
13.35-14.05: Simonetta Milli Konewko (University of Wisconsin Milwaukee, USA): Images of work in Collodi's Pinocchio
14.05-14.35: Selma Mokrani (University of Annaba, Annaba/ Algeria): “The Gift of the Stranger”: Elkader from Cultural Utopia to Heterotopia
14.35-15.05: Benmansour Radia epse Benyelles (University of Tlemcen, Tlemcen/ Algeria): Proverbs in the Algerian culture: The image of an oral tradition Reflecting Popular values
15.05-15.35: Roberta Matkovic (University Juraj Dobrila of Pula, Pula/ Croatia)/ Tanja Habrle (University Juraj Dobrila of Pula, Pula/ Croatia): The Figure of Mother in Italian Cultural Image
15.35-15.45: Break
Session (5): Images of (Cultural) Values in Public Space (15.45-18.15)
Chair: Steve Merrell
15.45-16.15: Nerma Cridge (Architectural Association London, London/ UK): Images of Culture in Public Space
16.15-16.45: Adriana De Angelis (Universitá Frederico II, Naples/ Italy): Skycrapers: globalized, and strong images of culture and art
16.45-17.15: Srđan Atanasovski (Institute of Musicology SASA, Belgrade/ Serbia): Ruptures in White Noise: Images, Spaces and Sounds of Saint Sava Temple in Belgrade
17.15-17.45: Ivana Sidzimovska (Bauhaus University Weimar, Weimar/ Germany): Notes on Skopje. Skopje 2014: Hegemonic and speculative urban narratives
17.45-18.15: Veronika Bernard (University of Innsbruck, Innsbruck/ Austria: Walking from Taksim to Istiklal Caddesi No 166 – A (Diachronic) Reading of Cultural Images
Session (6): The Ethnic and Images of (Cultural) Values (09.00-10.40)
Chair: Srđan Atanasovski
09.00-09.30: Itzea Goicolea-Amiano (European University Institute, Florence/ Italy): Ambivalent Images of Otherness(es) in the War and the Spanish Occupation of Tetuan (1859-1862)
09.30-10.10: Borja Franco Llopis (Univesity of Valencia, Valencia/ Spain)/ Rubén Gregori Bou (University of Valencia, Valencia/ Spain): The “other” or the “others”? Symmetric and asymmetric representations of Jewish and Muslims in art and literature in Iberia (15-17th)
10.10-10.40: Miloud Barkaoui (Badji Mokhtar-Annaba University, Annaba/ Algeria): Of Maghrebi Immigration, Duality of Image, and Conflicting Cultural Values in France: the Case of Quartier Belsunce in Marseilles
10.40-10.50: Break
Session (7): Images of (Cultural) Values in Literature (10.50-12.50)
Chair: Ömer Alkin
10.50-11.20: Mirjana Marinkovic (University of Belgrade, Belgrade/ Serbia): Images of Cultural Values in the novel A Strangeness in My Mind by Orhan Pamuk
11.20-11.50: Neval Berber (European Academy, Bolzano/ Italy): Challenging the Turk-stereotype in All the Year Round. Some considerations on the representation of Turkey and the Turks in George Walter Thornbury
11.50-12.20: Gönül Bakay (Bahçeşehir University, Istanbul/ Turkey): Representations of “the Primitive” in Things Fall Apart and Death and the King’s Horseman
12.20-12.50: Hatice Övgü Tüzün (Bahçeşehir University, Istanbul/ Turkey): Images of Cultural Values in V.S.Naipaul’s fiction
12.50-13.00: Closing Remarks by Organizers
14.30-16.30: optional sightseeing programme
This conference is supported by the Vice-Rectorate for Research of the University of Innsbruck.
The logistic partner of this conference is Manzara Istanbul
Conference organizing procedures supervised by Conference Design - Veronika Bernard
SUPA Business Salon by Manzara Istanbul, Istanbul, 02 - 03 September 2015
Ömer Alkın: Images of Cultural Values in Turkish-German Migration Cinema
When inner and external migration started in Turkey in the 1950s Turkish films from the 1960s to the ‘80s showed the clashes of Anatolian conservative cultures of Turkish villagers with the modern city and modern European culture – often in a typical melodramatic framing (Tamer 1978). This framing presented the process of modernisation as a loss by highlighting the binarism between modern and pre-modern values: nature vs. technique, honour vs. sexual freedom, family vs. (economic) self-fulfilment (e. g. in the “Bride-Wedding-Diet”-trilogy of Ömer Lütfi Akad). As Turkish migrants came to Germany after the recruitment treaty in October 1961, German directors and later even Turkish and Turkish-German directors realised films which showed a European perspective on the issue of migration (Burns 2006, Göktürk 2000, Ezli 2009): experiences of the confrontation of a pre-modern emigrant culture and a modern German migrant culture were at the heart of films like Sanders-Brahm’s Shirin’s Wedding (1976) and Saless’s Dar Ghorbat (1975). However, since the 1990s, the representation of Turkish migrants in Germany has shifted from victimized pre-modern and archaic Turkish emigrants to hybrid and transcultural subjectivities which are able to move confidently within a globalised and modern German society (Burns 2007, Hake & Mennel 2012). The presentation analyses the relation of these diverse images of cultural values in Turkish, German and Turkish-German migration cinema from a visual culture studies perspective (Schade & Wenk 2011).
Sibel Almelek İşman: Vanitas – Moral Values in European Art
Vanitas is a type of still life picture depicting a collection of objects symbolizing the brevity of life and transience of all earthly pleasures and achievements. Books and writing materials, rare and precious objects, terrestrial and celestial globes, scientific and musical instruments, pipes, snuffed candles, timepieces, flowers and above all skulls can be seen as symbols of vanity. Often the artists included appropriate captions or texts on their pictures. The favorite was the admonition from Ecclesiates I: "Vanity of vanities; all is Vanity". Northern Renaissance artists Hans Holbein the Younger and Jan Gossaert used symbols of vanitas in their paintings. Vanitas was especially popular in Dutch art of the 17th century. As a result of Holland's conversion to Calvinism, these visual feasts became vehicles for teaching moral lessons. They preach the virtue of temperance, frugality, and hard work by warning the viewer to contemplate the inevitability of death. At this time vanitas elements were often found in portraits and figure paintings as well as in pure still lives. Contemporary English artist Damien Hirst (born 1965), exhibited a Memento Mori (Latin: Remember that you have to die) titled For the Love of God (2007) which is a human skull recreated in platinum and adorned with diamonds.
Srđan Atanasovski: Ruptures in White Noise – Images, Spaces and Sounds of Saint Sava Temple in Belgrade
In this paper I wish to explore how the image (and the object) of Saint Sava Temple in Belgrade is promulgated through public discourses as the vehicle of the hegemonic religious nationalism in Serbia, how this image structures and influences the daily life of citizens through affecting their sonic and movement practices, but also how various human and non-human agencies destabilize this hegemonic discourse acting in social space. The project of erecting Saint Sava Temple in Belgrade, initially planned to represent the largest Orthodox church in the world, was resuscitated in 1985, marking the demise of communist ideology in Serbia, but it was only after October 2000 that the imagery of the temple was fully developed. Post-Milošević Serbia has generally been marked by the post-secular processes, clear rise and institualization of religious nationalism, through which the visual and narrative tropes of (Serbian) Orthodox Christianity have been blended with tropes of banal nationalism. Beside the imposing domed reinforced-concrete structure which has stood at the Vračar plateau since 1989, the whole plateau around the temple was redesigned and restructured to accommodate the temple as its central element, the façade of the temple was marbled and heavily lit during the night, and, finally, the bells in form of carillon were put to use, becoming the most prominent sound event in the soundscape of the city. Concurrently, the image of the temple has become an unavoidable part of various representations Belgrade and its skyline, ranging from media usage, touristic industry, official trademarks, to postage stamps. Basing the paper on ethnography of the public space, in order to investigate how religious nationalism as the dominant cultural paradigm enforces itself, I will investigate how both the images of the temple and the lived reality of the Vračar plateau actively structure the daily exigencies of the Belgrade’s citizens by investigating their practices of mobility, motility and sound. In my investigation I use the concepts of “production of space” and “monumentality” formulated by Henri Lefebvre and I also discuss the agency of the (human) carnal body and the non-human bodies which partake in articulating the moment of temple’s monumentality, taking into account the contemporary non-human turn. The question which I pose is whether these various agencies can destabilize the (representational) image of power in the lived urban space.
Gönül Bakay: Representations of “the Primitive” in Things Fall Apart and Death and the King’s Horseman
The meanings attributed to the term “primitive” have changed considerably over the years. While the term originially entailed the idea of being backward, uncivilized and ignorant, it has more recently been also associated with being authentic, unspoiled, or undiscovered. In their novels, postcolonial writers Chinua Achebe and Wole Soyinka critically examine the uncomprehending view of the West towards so-called “primitive” cultures. In Things Fall Apart, when Okonkwo – a respected warrior of the Umufoia clan - commits suicide, the white District Commissioner is at a loss to understand the cultural significance of Okonkwo’s gesture. He simply thinks that he could cite the events in his book titled The Pacification of the Primitive Tribes of the Lower Niger. In Death and the King’s Horseman, on the other hand, the district Officer and his wife, Mr and Mrs Pilkins, can not comprehend the tribal customs that require the king’s horseman to commit suicide after the King’s death. They can not understand how Olunde - Elesin’s son - who had been educated in Europe, can not resist tribal customs and returns to his hometown to bury his father. When Jane Pilkins expresses her approach to ritual suicide, Olunde observes: “You forget that I have now spent four years among your people. I discovered that you have no respect for what you do not understand” (192) adding that “Your greatest art is the art of survival. But at least have the humility to let others survive in their own way”. He also observes that ritual suicide is not worse than mass suicide caused by generals sending young men to war. Drawing on the acculturation theories of John Berry, this paper aims to examine representations of “the primitive” in Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart and Wole Soyinka’s Death and the King’s Horseman.
Miloud Barkaoui: Of Maghrebi Immigration, Duality of Image, and Conflicting Cultural Values in France: the Case of Quartier Belsunce in Marseilles
My proposed paper explores the notion of duality of image and conflicting cultural values in relation to the question of Maghrebi immigration in France. It probes, on the one hand, the potential immigrant-free cultural geography projected by an ever-growing vocal political rhetoric which is not restricted to the xenophobic Far Right, and, on the other, the communal diasporic cultural/identity space delineated by the Maghrebi community as a reaction to its “marginalized” status. The advocates of an imagined immigrant-free cultural model create an electoral, ideologically-demarcated image to voice their idiom of panic and exclusion. The immigrant community, in turn, creates an actual “space-within-space” to articulate its identity/image distinctiveness, using the topography of the city to affirm its own cultural values and separate zone autonome. The paper draws from the first-hand field-work research recently conducted by the author in the city of Marseilles notably in the famous neighbourhood of quartier Belsunce which epitomises the parallel culture not only in France but also across Western Europe. The dominant “authoritarian,” fear-laden, and prohibitive political discourses on immigration and its surrogates (identity, nationhood, and citizenship) articulated especially in times of elections, disclose strategies of annihilation and displacement in order to occupy the cultural space in the general race for power and leadership. Power relations in society ultimately degenerate into a clash of images with imperatives of definition and demarcation of rival identities and cultural values where societal discipline is substituted by destabilizing communal allegiances.
Benmansour Radia epse Benyelles: Proverbs in the Algerian Culture – The Image of an Oral Tradition Reflecting Popular Values
Proverbs are short well-known sayings that state a general use or give advice. They represent spontaneous manifestations in the Algerian dialect. Their use has particularly been controlled by the old generation. A study of these expressions evokes, especially, the existence of a great cognitive ability, the easiness in using the language and a competence in communication. Also worth noting is that from the cultural standpoint, proverbs have always conveyed significant cultural values usually reflecting a high degree of wisdom on the part of the user In this context, the proposed article examines the importance of proverbs in the Algerian discourse and stresses on preserving the cultural patrimony. It is neither only a simple oral tradition nor a part of the folklore of a society; this cross-cultural activity is a spiritual means of education since it incites society to establish the universal morals of human values. A sample of proverbs will be dealt with to show the moral values of the proverbs.
Neval Berber: Challenging the Turk-stereotype in All the Year Round. Some Considerations on the Representation of Turkey and the Turks in George Walter Thornbury
Western collective imaginaries represented the Turk not only as terrible, savage, “unspeakable”, but also as “sex-crazed”, “harem-driven” and debauched. In the last few decades, scholars coming from anthropological, historical and cultural areas of study, influenced by poststructuralist theories and studies on discourse analysis, have frequently confirmed the persistence of this stereotype in the history of Western popular thought. Regardless of the discipline, many scholars agree that the Turk-stereotype, in which the Turk possesses qualities which European or Western civilized persons do not have, persisted for hundreds of years, reaching its peak in the sixteenth century, when the Ottoman Empire achieved its greatest geographical extent. In nineteenth-century Britain, the validity of this stereotypical representation was attacked and the Turk-caricature was weakened, albeit not completely. In a series of articles from 1860, published in the weekly magazine edited by Charles Dickens All the Year Round, George Walter Thornbury set out to reverse this trend. Observing architectonic beauties, artistic richness and daily lives of ordinary people in slightest detail, which he could observe on the streets of Constantinople, his viewpoint on Turkey and the Turks had artistic and anthropological character, showing the Turkish reality in a light which was little known to the other journalists writing from and about Turkey in late 1850s and early 1860s. Even though it is not possible to talk about a real and proper travel guide, the attention given to the detail, prevalently descriptive character of these articles and the exoticism of their language had for sure among their objectives also that to recall the attention of the newly-born English tourist audience. This journalist introduced so the English to a new discursive form on Turkey, which stimulated them to discover the Turks and Turkey from the point of view of their still unexplored culture and aesthetics. This paper, investigating this new approach to Turkey and the Turks rising in early 1860s on the pages of All the Year Round, intends to show how the propensity to observe Turkey and the Turks from an artistic and anthropological perspective and by the way of a new discourse, succeeded to partly displace the main Turk-stereotype, changing the meaning of the main image of the Turks, which became more complex, more difficult to capture and analyze. It will also show how this journal edited by Charles Dickens replaced the previous debates on Ottoman politics or international relations between England and Turkey with new new discussions regarding cultural and artistic values, succeeding in maintaining vivid the interest in this geographical region, yet shifting the focus from the typically Orientalist topoi representing the Turks, which nonetheless persist, to the topics of aesthetic and anthropological interest.
Veronika Bernard: Walking from Taksim to Istiklal Caddesi No 166 – A (Diachronic) Reading of Cultural Images
This paper aims at testing both concepts of describing (nation) cultures by cultural dimensions and concepts of describing acculturation mechanisms on the example of daily life in Istanbul’s central Istiklal caddesi (Independence Street).
Nerma Cridge; Images of Culture in Public Space
This paper seeks to uncover several contradictions in images in public spaces in the globalized European city. People inhabiting public spaces tend to belong to a number of different groups. Most are tourists, visitors for a short time. Many are protestors only there to highlight the issue they feel passionate about and never to return. Homeless and other marginalised people form another transient group. They all share in common, in most cases, the absence of a personal connections to the actual area itself. They may occupy such urban spaces for hours, sometimes days on end; despite their only link to them being due to the political and cultural issues. The most commonly absent group are the local people: those who actually live in the vicinity. In many cases, they avoid areas where tourists and large gatherings happen; in some ways, banished from their own surroundings. On few occasions, such as in the wake of local political protests, such places become inhabited by those who actually live in the city, although again, probably many came from other parts of the countries and gravitate towards the urban centres. Issue connected to this, although not in a straightforward way, relates to the images of human suffering depicting natural catastrophes and war disaster. Our responses to such images range from initial shock to indifference and eventually even anaesthesia - the feeling of numbness. We have seen so many and they are so ubiquitous that we actually don’t see such pictures anymore. On inspection, when the comments from readers are allowed, such images cause most commentators, even in the left-leaning papers, to say help, on the condition for them to stay away and/or go back to their own countries. One of the questions at stake here is then to whom do public squares and sculptures belong to? Who are these events for, ranging from trivial such as a recent ‘pillow fight’ in Trafalgar Square to extremely serious, such as, anti-austerity or anti-war protests? The term ‘common’ has an extremely high currency in the discourse - common ground, community, common urban space… Inserting in the global urban scale makes it highly charged – public spaces reject its own local community whilst welcoming all others. Is there really ‘a crisis of the common’ as many have claimed, or is it in fact ‘business as usual’? Examples in question will range from refugees being housed in hotels, and squatters occupying palaces, to guerrilla tactics by architects and designers, which, in fact can be self-defeating, as they become used to increase prices of the properties in the area. Also relevant are cases where empty/abandoned public spaces become appropriated and temporarily belong to those who use them, through legally grey ‘diagonal ownership’, initiating private property owners in allowing public access.
Adriana De Angelis: Skycrapers – Globalized, and Strong Images of Culture and Art
In 1939 New York announced its global preeminence via World's Fair “The world of tomorrow”; through Expo 2010 “Better city, better life”, Shanghai strongly stated its will to become the next great world city. As already done by New York in the ‘30s, when the capacity of the United States to overcome the Great Depression and become the leader of the world was emblematically represented by the building of “canyons” getting higher and higher, skycrapers are the image choosed by Shanghai to make its intentions clear. It was in between the two World Wars that skycrapers became the symbol of a new world on both sides of the Atlantic and the competition over the supremacy in tallest buildings started. In those years, in front of New York skyline artist Joseph Stella wrote: “[…] crushed by the mountainous black impenetrability of the skyscrapers […] I felt deeply moved as if in the presence of a new divinity “. While in Moscow Iofan’s Soviet Palace - a tall construction with a statue of Lenin on the top – was designed to be higher than the Empire State Building, in Toronto, willing to become similar to New York, to signify the importance acquired after the shift of power from Montreal after Wall Street crack, a 34-storey tower was built: the Bank of Commerce, the tallest building in the British Commwealth until 1962. In the past, Antiquity with its columns was regarded as the only medium capable of giving dignity and status to buildings; since 1920s/30s - and in the future world that Shanghai would like to rule - this fundamental role has been played by skycrapers. How should we consider this globalized and strong image? In 1927, Fritz Lang used skycrapers to depict a totally negative reality in Metropolis; in the work of Du Zhenjun, an artist born in Shanghai in 1961, this icon of modernity is considered both as a Babel tower, significant of the chaotic contemporary society, and as a scale, seen as a departure point for creation. Where is the truth?
Itzea Goicolea-Amiano: Ambivalent Images of Otherness(es) in the War and the Spanish Occupation of Tetouan (1859-1862)
The Spanish War on Tetouan (1859-1860) and the subsequent two-year occupation is widely considered to have constituted a landmark in Morocco’s increasing loss of independence during the precolonial period. The present paper is part of my PhD, entitled Imagined Modernity and Embodied Otherness(es) in Hispano-Moroccan Colonization. The presentation will deal with different printed and manuscript Moroccan sources in Arabic, and will by presenting different excerpts thereof argue for the ambivalent nature of the constructions of both Spanish and internal Otherness(es). The Spanish Other, mostly defined according to the religiously-embedded notion of “Christian” or “infidel”, embodied for some mid nineteenth-century Moroccans the Modern Other towards which fascination arose. Contrarily, other authors deconstructed Spaniards’ modern superiority claims and set forth an image of “barbaric occupier”. Moreover, Al-Andalus constituted an ineludible reference of the past in order to counter Moroccans’ present military defeat; while images of Reconquista or “the fall of Al-Andalus” (suqut Al-Andalus) reinforced Moroccans’ tragic conception of “the fall of Tetouan” in 1860. Through the mirror of the Spanish Other, Moroccanness arises as a complex puzzle in which internal Other and Self definitions were likewise worked out. Gender, class, ethnic and religious anxieties, as well as conceptions of individual and collective struggle in nascent national or widespread religious terms thus crystallized in definitions of who was, acted as, represented or engaged in “patriotism”, “martyrdom”, “treachery”, or “corruption”.
Tanja Habrle/ Roberta Matkovic: The Figure of Mother in Italian Cultural Image
The image of mother is an integral and inseparable part of Italian cultural picture. It has highly defined characteristics, which represent the image of Italy in the world but contemporarily are the same in national view of mother and in the everyday life. She is tender, always present, good willing, defined often as chioccia (brooding hen). But when children groves up she does not change, which can have impacts that daughters in love not always welcome. Her devotion in some cases can lead to theatrical sacrifice but even this is a part of folklore. The reality reflects itself in literature, and the second one can offer more facts and details to analyse and to think about. How much an image presented to other and presumed to be lived effectively can influence personal choices and behaviour, in positive or in negative way? How much of this image is really a part of everyday life? Is a mother a “saint” a priori? We can find answers to these questions through pages written by Italian female authors as Elsa Morante, Dacia Maraini and Francesca Sanvitale.
Simonetta Milli Konewko: Images of Work in Collodi’s Pinocchio
Work has long been considered by philosophers and sociologists to be an integral part of self-representation, culture, and identity. It has been demonstrated repeatedly that work has essential functions and not only for economic reasons. In fact, the lack of it is found to be itself a cause of discouragement and sadness. The present study examines images of work in Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi. It focuses on working imagery and occupational customs of the region of Tuscany. Utilizing the emotion of shame, Collodi’s fiction reveals the importance of work, perceived as an honorable component of the ideal citizen. Collodi’s representations of work suggest significant concerns regarding society and the history of the new Italy, thus regarding Collodi’s position within well-known Italian authors.
Borja Franco Llopis/ Rubén Gregori Bou: The “Other” or the “Others”? Symmetric and Asymmetric Representations of Jewish and Muslims in Art and Literature in Iberia (15th - 17th century)
In the last twenty years, the studies in anthropology and history of art are focused in the creation of stereotypes of the different races and religions that were living in Europe. These traditional works tried to “build” a theoretically representation of the “otherness” linking the visual images with the “literary” construction of these figures. However, these relations not always are true. For example, Late Medieval Iberian art and literature “showed” the same figure of the Jewish people, animalizing and making fun of them. Curiously, in the Early Modern Period, after the expulsion of the Hebrew population, it didn’t happen related with Muslims. Literary sources criticized these infidels, taking into account not only the internal coexistence problems but also the possible alliance with the Ottoman Empire; and images omitted these political and cultural issues. The critical image of the Muslims didn’t appear in the Iberian Altarpieces until after their expulsion (1609), when Spanish Monarchy should justify this fact, or they were represented in a “positive” way. In our conference will analyze this asymmetric situation comparing Medieval and Early Modern representations and their links with literary sources remarking on the idea that literary image of the “other” is not always the same that the “visual” one in this territory.
Mirjana Marinkovic: Images of Cultural Values in the Novel A Strangeness in My Mind by Orhan Pamuk
Orhan Pamuk, the Turkish Nobel Prize winner and one of the most distinguished writers of our time, is an author that synthesizes both images and thoughts in a way that could be described as an encounter of imaginary and seen. Almost everything that he writes about starts from the picture in his mind. Since he had a potential to be a painter, Pamuk usually sees the world with the eyes of a painter. That`s why colors and images have a significant role in his work. For example, when he depicts Istanbul, he uses colors of black, grey and white trying to provoke feelings of defeat and loss. When he speaks about mysteries of a human sole he evokes black. When he writes about love and passion he sees red etc. In his last novel published at the end of 2014. Pamuk often discusses cultural values such as respect of a tradition and nation, love and devotion, honor and honesty, family ties and loyalty. Since he gives a wide panorama of Istanbul life within the last fourteen years, he touches a lot of economical, political and cultural issues – from migrations from Anatolia to Istanbul and making “gecekondu” (overnight made house), street selling, traditional drinks such as “boza” and “yogurt” to “Ataturk” High School, army and social institutions like marriage or dervish convent. All of these issues are presented as images producing certain ideas and feelings. The paper will be concentrated on the images of cultural values in Pamuk`s newest novel, especially on the images of tradition and modernity reflecting changes in Istanbul life, its customs and conventions. Pamuk is in love with Istanbul`s streets and architecture. And his hero Mevlut also seeks for these visions and images that make him happy and secured.
Selma Mokrani: "The Gift of the Stranger": Elkader from Cultural Utopia to Heterotopia
Elkader, Iowa, was named in 1844 by Timothy Davis, a settler-lawyer, after the Algerian revolutionary leader Emir Abd-el-Kader. Davis was a fervent admirer of Abd-el-Kader's resistance to French colonialism (1832 - 1847). His place-naming initiative has superimposed a utopian space onto the local geography by introducing a remote model of anti-colonial resistance into the American public sphere, interestingly representing a symbolic component of the process of "Americanization" and westward expansion. Being anchored in the reputation of the Emir as both a revolutionary figure and a culture icon of religious tolerance, this toponym has acted as an agent of acclimatization of and familiarization with what is threateningly alien. It has also acted as a mediator of intersections and reciprocations of national histories and destinies. As a case of positive deterritorialization, the naming contributed not only to the globalization of the Emir’s staunch resistance, but also to the creation of a solid, ongoing intercultural Sisterhood network between Elkader and Mascara, the Emir's birth place. Yet, the post-9/11 terror cartography has almost unsettled the fixity of Abd-el-Kader as a historical referent and a space scripter of an American city-text. For different audiences, the space of interculture started to be redefined in terms of what Michel de Certeau calls a “strange toponomy” with a “suspended meaning.” In this paper I examine the logic behind such near-capitulation to the exclusionary logic of contestation and emblematic decommemoration by examining the shift of Elkader from Utopia to Heterotopia/ Thirdspace.
Valentin Nussbaum: “For your Eyes Only?” – James Bond and Sherlock Holmes enter the Museum
Recent franchises of the adventures of James Bond (Skyfall, Sam Mendes, 2012) and Sherlock Holmes (Sherlock Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat, 2010, 2012, and 2014) have distinguished themselves from previous cinematographic versions through their self-reflexive character. This happens principally through the way the authors make their main protagonists visit museums. If the presence of James Bond and Sherlock Holmes in the museum is a logic way to insert the figures of the spy and the detective in a biotope in harmony with their inherent scopophilia, the connotation of the museum as recipient of and display space for objects of high cultural value gives the opportunity to the filmmakers to question the phenomenon of patrimonialization, to which the two heroes have been exposed after decades of successive serialisations and adaptations. In brief, the inscription of these fictive figures in the museum signals the filmmakers' ambition to question the image and cultural value of their heroes, by problematizing for example their antiquated dimension and/or their Britishness. In Sam Mendes's movie, the London National Gallery's cymas become for example the projection screens of the bondian hero doomed to ask himself whether he hasn't become a museum object, an obsolete figure whose utility and actuality has become controversial, ready for retirement, like the fate reserved to the mythic Fighting Temeraire he is contemplating in William Turner's painting. In the premises of "The Blind Banker" – second episode of the first season of Sherlock –valuable ancient Chinese teapots displayed in the National Antiquities Museum are not merely considered as relics of a bygone era, but still possess their usage value by playing actively their part in the traditional ceremonies organized by the museum for its visitor. The double value and status given to the collection pieces can be seen as a metaphor of the sherlockian character whose re-actualization has permitted both to challenge its iconic character and reassert its cultural value. We will see that Skyfall and Sherlock in their exercises of introspection are questioning and constructing both literally and figuratively the cultural and mythical value of the heroes they represent, by confronting them and their image with the galleries of canonical motifs and stereotypes that have shaped for several decades the imaginary of the spy and the detective. The visit to the museum shows the process of legitimization that consecrates Bond and Holmes no less than symbols and cultural objects of a certain Britishness.
Ambra Pittoni/ Keti Shehu: Responsibility and Economy of Images
The poet Rainer Maria Rilke said that the “depth of time” was revealed more in human gestures than in archaeological remains or in fossilized organisms. The gesture is a “fossil of movement”: it is at the same time, the very mark of the fleeting present and of desire in which our future is formed. (Atlas-how to carry the world on one's back, G.Didi Hubermann). From the Lascaux drawings to the sacred icons, from the allegorie of Cesare Ripa to the analysis of the political nature of the images of Didi-Hubermann, through the pathosformel of Aby Warburg and the polyphonic structure of the images as described by Gombrich; the image becomes a medium but also a container of gestures and symbols in all their metamorphoses. Through the exquisite and antique relation, established between gesture and image, the latters become the means to convey the power of memories, the survival of emotions, thus knowledge itself. The materiality of images shapes our reality thus both individual and collective imagination comes alive in front of our eyes. This study is structured as a dialogue between different methodological approaches to the same subject; on one hand the academic approach which is based on the analysis of the sources, the iconological and iconographic study of the images and on the translation of the gesture depicted on them; on the other side there is the artistic approach that incorporates and assimilates the gesture and compose the image. From the birth of digital technologies the proliferation of images, both stationary and in motion, has undergone exponential growth upsetting the economy both in quantitative and qualitative terms. How and how much images affect people? How does the artistic practice becomes responsible for the production of images today, and what are the gestures that create them? This responsibility might turn into a kind scruple, of artistic practices that deliberately avoid the direct representation through the use of gesture and a reconfiguration of the time when this act exists by entering the realm of imagination, perhaps new and unique place where you can rediscover the sacred and the value of the images.
Cinla Seker: Anatolian Folk Music Album Cover Images at the Beginning of Third Millenium
The aim of this research is to determine the Anatolian folk music album cover images formally and contextually at the beginning of third millennium. As a graphic design product album covers reflecting audial expression visually and should be consistent as features. Anatolian folk music like every music genre has its roots in regional culture. In this research it is determined that there is a formal and contextual relation in Anatolian folk music album cover’s images.
Ivana Sidzimovska: Notes on Skopje. Skopje 2014 – Hegemonic and Speculative Urban Narratives
The PhD project with the working title "Notes on Skopje. Skopje 2014: Hegemonic and speculative narratives" deals with the ongoing government-funded reconstruction of the Macedonian capital, dubbed "Skopje 2014". The urban revamp involves erection of numerous government and cultural buildings (in an exclusively "neo-classical" style), figurative monuments and equestrian statues of national heroes (over forty), bridges and monumental objects (i.e. a Triumphal Arc), reconstruction of facades (in "baroque" style) and other miscellaneous objects, in an attempt to support and provide material illustration of long and continuous Macedonian national narrative, praising ancestry to the ancient hero, Alexander the Great. Since “Skopje 2014” was announced an immense critique is opposing the renewal plan. Among others, critics deem the capital has been turned into a Theme park or Disneyland, hosting anachronistic and badly adopted counterfeits of European architectural styles and symbols. The PhD project relates the renewal plan to neoliberal symbolic urban reconstructions, post-communist identity formation and cultural memory issues. Furthermore, embracing discourses of criticism offered in political and cultural debates and in light of subjective urban experiences the PhD project argues "Skopje 2014" imposes authoritarian urban narrative. In reference to this, the PhD research focuses on elicitation and collection of inhabitants' stories of Skopje. Besides observation and documentation of the environment, the research methodology involves qualitative interviews with citizens, concerned with understanding subjective narratives and experiences related to Skopje's central space and the influence “Skopje 2014” has on restructuring citizens' narratives of the city. Some preliminary findings allow for the following conclusions: Citizens see no meaning at all in what “Skopje 2014” offers as content, but creating and imposing new invented historic and national narrative. As many of the new buildings resembled renown objects - symbols of European Metropolises, “Skopje 2014” was seen as nothing more than a cheap copy of a foreign history, providing a fake look and a coulisse for tourist photographs. They described the central space as a provincial tourist area, where people from other Macedonian cities and foreigners were more common to be found than Skopjeans. Furthermore, because of the megalomanic proportions, dominant expression and overwhelming number of new monuments and buildings, citizens feel they are being compressed as the space in the centre of the city was shrinking. In addition, citizens are suspicious about the aesthetic quality behind the works, which they consider very unprofessional and indeed shameful and thus find the space rejective. Therefore also, a statement that was repeated in every interview is that citizens avoid using Skopje's central area for they couldn't identify with the new and imposed symbolic and move freely in Skopje's central space.
Jutta Teuwsen: Contemporary Japanese Arts: Representations of Cultural Values in the Illustrations of Nature
Traditionally, the intense relationship to nature is one of the deepest-rooted cultural values in Japan. In contemporary Japanese arts, the motif of nature is popular especially with the young generation of artists: TEAMLAB (http://www.team-lab.net/wp-content/uploads/Infinity_of_flowers.jpg) let’s the recipients experience an even over-accentuated impression of nature by throwing them into his highly illuminated installations of seas of flowers. He achieves that the audience completely immerses in those intense representations of nature. KUDO Makiko (http://www.saatchigallery.com/imgs/artists/kudo_makiko/20120228045701_floating_island_makiko_kudo.jpg ) illustrates in her paintings the Japanese girls as one with nature. Incorporating flora and fauna likewise, she creates the perfect ideal of what a human being should be in relation to nature: An equal part of it. CHIHO Aoshima (http://farm1.static.flickr.com/226/464261343_d64e4a3af8.jpg) shows in her large-scale digital productions a concept of living nature in which the difference between the animate and inanimate world blur - analogous to the core aspect of Japan’s national religion Shintoism. Every aspect of the universe and nature inspires her – no matter if it is a human being or a tiny insect (Compare Vartanian, I. 2005. “Drop Dead Cute”. San Francisco: Chronicle Books LLC). Finally, KATO Fumihiro (http://www.multiculturalart.com/images/artwork/fumihiro/fumihiro13.jpg) illustrates in his art eternal symbols for Japanese culture and values: Koi carps, mount Fuji and the rising sun. The paper aims to find out about the similarities between the representations of nature by contemporary Japanese artists regarding the illustration of cultural values. Besides the obvious candidate Shintoism, my attention concentrates on the need for harmony, which Japanese use to claim for themselves and the widespread idea of an intact nature as the symbol for an intact life. Hative Övgü Tüzün V.S.Naipaul’s fiction has been marked by an enduring interest in examining the significance of cultural identity and politics, particularly in the postcolonial context.Born in Trinidad to Indian parents, Naipaul grew up in a multicultural environment that allowed hım to observe interactions between various culturally and ethnically circumscribed communities that were struggling in the throes of social and political turmoil. The trials and tribulations that have fundamentally shaped West Indian societies are memorably depicted in political novels such as Guerillas (1975) and The Mimic Men (1967) where Naipaul critically examines the clash of cultural values in relation to the plight of the postcolonial subject who desperately tries to find his place in the world.
Conference organizing procedures supervised by Conference Design - Veronika Bernard
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