Organised by Anna Degler, Research Area 2: "Travelling Matters"

Please register with anna.degler@fu-berlin.de by June 2, 2021.

The first part of this workshop took place in October 2019 and was dedicated to the fragment as a multitemporal material object, especially in the context of antiquity reception.

Against that backdrop the second part addresses the fragment as a literal piece of resitance in recent debates and contexts. Encouraged by the rhapsodic thinking of French philosopher Michel Serres (a.o. Serres 1990) the workshop will venture on the fragment as a crumbly stumbling block in the ways of new materialist thinking. What if fragments are regarded as shifters between states of aggregation, neither pure artifacts nor pure matter? And how do these shifters interact with the manifold concepts of the human body?

The operations of melting and cutting which oscillate between soft and hard form the core part of this interrogation. They will challenge not only common definitions of the fragment but shall stimulate a critical examination of the new materialist notion of material flows. The presentations by Hanna Baro and Chang Liu are followed by an open work discussion (with Reader).

Programme

10:00 | Anna Degler: Introduction

10:20 | Hanna Baro (Siegen): Malleable Fragments

10:50 | Discussion

Short Break

11:10 | Chang Liu (Heidelberg): Madonna and Dakou CD in Contemporary Chinese Art

11:40 | Discussion

12:00 | Final Remarks and Lunch Break

13:00 – 14:00 | review/Arbeitsgespräch* (open to all interested participants)

* The last part of the workshop is also dedicated to the discussion of articles by Michel Serres a.o. The Reader is available upon request.