Objects in Distress

The online seminar “Objects in Distress”, convened by Dr Artun Ozguner (UCA) approaches the following topics in three separate sessions: Objects of displacement (June 6); Objects yearning for peace (June 13); Misunderstood objects (June 20).

“Objects have had their share from the political turmoil and conflict that trouble human lives, they have equally been distressed. Political turmoil and conflict place objects in strict binary narratives, dichotomies of gender, race, religion, politics, or hard-boiled nationalisms. The repressed, oppressed, restricted and distressed object reflects our own troubled world.” (CfP)

The virtual seminar series seeks to explore such changes in our approach to objects today or in the past. These attitudes vary from restrictions on uses and interpretations of objects/images to how individuals and communities use them to construct their identities or to reminisce in times of turmoil.

Each session consists of 4x10-mins presentations followed by 20 mins discussion, reaching out to object histories from India, Greece, Italy, France, Fiji, Mexico, Germany, Morocco, to Turkey, UK, USA, Philippines, South Africa, and Japan!

6 JUNE
Session 1: 16.00-17.00 BST - Objects of displacement

Alejandro Gonzalez Milea - Dangerous drawings and the debate about the future on the Mexico-United States border: Contests over urban-architectural designs in the 1930s

Anna Derriks - TruckBloc & Co: Aesthetic sublimation of hostile vehicle mitigation barriers

Andrea Sosa Fontaine - 158 centimetres

Iskander Guetta - A House and a hole

Session 2: 19.00-20.00 BST - Deprived objects

Elena Radoi - The Object of Absence: Anthropogenic Gaps in Fresco Wall Paintings

Hella Wiedmer-Newman - Memorial Fetish Objects: The Case of Sarajevo’s War Childhood Museum

Durre Shehwar Ali - Lotacracy: Unveiling the Political Odyssey of Electoral Symbols in Pakistan

Guglielmo Rossi - The Claimants Union

13 JUNE
Session 1: 16.00-17.00 BST - Objects yearning for peace

Lucy Razzall - ‘Piles of empty boxes’: Bureaucracy, Infrastructure, and Design in the Great War

Henrica Langh - Distressed Garments: Clothes as silent witnesses of troubled worlds

Eilidh Duffy - Transcending the Imperial: the shifting codes of the M-65

Sweety Taur - From Screen to Reality: Depictions of Conflict in Indian Media through Objects

Session 2: 19.00-20.00 BST - Un-gendering objects

Bengisu Köse - Stiletto, or breaking the non-transitivity of objects

Rocio Naval - Vibrant piña textiles: revealing relationality and queer entanglement

Fabiola Adamo - Beyond Constriction: Empowered Femininity within Chitè’s Lingerie Designs

Helena Bosch Vidal - Objects for desires in pandemic times

20 JUNE
Session 1: 16.00-17.00 BST - Misunderstood objects

Kavita Peterson - I-cula - Feeding into the Cannibal Myth

Zenia Malmer - Confronting Chinoiserie through the lens of Anti-Asian Hate: An Experimental Case Study

Anne Hollmuller - Art, Loot, Artifact, Art: Reactivating the Treasures of Béhanzin

Marguerite Van Der Merwe & Jacques Lange - Settlers, slaves, culture, politics, and reconciliation: the role of the koeksister as a signifier of identity

Nupur Doshi - Transgressions in Objecthood: Art, Conflict, and Shifting Realities

Session 2: 19.00-20.00 BST - Revelatory objects

Althea Ruoppo - Germany’s Refugee Crisis as Global Public Emergency: Civic Transnationalism in Isa Genzken’s Schauspieler II, 8 (2014)

Aya Yamamoto - Editorial Design of ‘World Proletarian Theatres Overview’ (1932) by Koreya Senda

Inês Jorge - Reinventing diplomatic ties in post-Brexit Britain: The Kingdom of Heaven (2017) installation at Manchester Cathedral

All three seminars, supported by the Design History Society, are free and held online. Everyone is invited to attend.

Register under the following link!