Veranstaltungen

Out of the myriad image complexes that constitute the visual-scape of Kolkata’s Durga Pujas, this lecture will focus on the temporary edifices housing the goddess that are locally termed pandals. Laying out a conceptual framework for this form of ephemeral festival architecture and the functions it performs, the essay weaves together the exhibitionary worlds of the festival with its range of skills and styles of making. It considers the ways in which these Puja pandals produce an imaginary festival topography that sprouts out of the city’s inhabited spaces and rests thickly within its built fabric, blurring the boundaries between the real and the fabricated. It also delves into the local art of pandal making and the assemblage of labour, expertise, material and design by decorator firms and pavilion designers.

The Contested Use of Siva as Icon and Subject: Using the format of a lecture/demonstration, we offer a glimpse into the dancing forms of Śiva, especially Śiva Naṭarāja, whose position in Hindu mythology and Western understandings gained popularity through the writings of Ananda Coomaraswamy (1918) and Heinrich Zimmer (1946) in the early 20th century. The allure and power of the famous Naṭarāja icon, deeply implicated and foregrounded as the Lord of Dance in the nationalist revival of Indian dance in this period, remains until this day. We illustrate how Śiva began to take centre stage in the dance form of Bhāratanāṭyam both in choreographies and in his presence onstage in sculptural form, providing a virile, hypermasculine ideal especially for male dancers. We show examples from Indian dancer Ram Gopal (1912-2003) as well as Rukmini Devi Arundale’s (1904-1986) new revivalist choreography on Śiva, titled Natanam Adinar (Tamiḻ: naṭaṉaṁ āṭiṉār).

This lecture will reflect on two distinct moments in the speaker’s curatorial practice where technology was and is a tool in breaking barriers across territories for public engagement with arts, heritage and culture. One, when a 3D map of an exhibition curated in Delhi, of Indian and Pakistani origin artists, was used as a teaching tool to expand the notion of ‘ownership’ of history. Second, a global collaboration of technologists and designers to create Augmented Reality filters for a guerilla tour about looted artefacts in a well known museum. Both experiences were moments where information disseminated through technology, and, using technology allowed for space of advocacy of complicated intangible histories through tangible objects. The lecture is a crystallisation of these learnings which the advantage of retrospect and reflection and a possible way-forward playbook on how these learnings can actionalise advocacy and change through the public, if circumstances and intent align.

The dry-zone water-harvesting and management system in Sri Lanka is one of the oldest historically recorded systems in the world. A substantial number of ancient sources mention the management and governance structure of this system suggesting it was initiated in the 4th century BCE and abandoned in the middle of the 13th century CE. In the 19th century CE, it was reused under the British colonial government. Over the centuries,large-scale irrigation works were important to expand and develop the Dry Zone hydraulic civilization throughout the northern lowland plains and to enhance the livelihoods of the people by ensuring water availability throughout the year. After nearly five centuries of abandonment, the water management and governance systems in the Rajarata kingdom were reutilized under the British colonial regime.

"Höre nie auf zu malen, höre nie auf, was du tun willst“, lautet die Botschaft des Films. Er blickt in das Leben der talentierten Naima, die alles fantasievoll bemalt, was ihr unter die Finger kommt. Als ihr Vater, ein Rikscha-Fahrer, schwer erkrank, steht die Familie vor dem finanziellen Ruin. Naima würde gerne Rikscha fahren, aber die anstrengende Arbeit ist nur Männern vorbehalten. Mutig und entschlossen sieht sie nur einen Ausweg: Mit abgeschnittenen Haaren und Jungenkleidung wird sie schließlich ein erfolgreicher Rikscha- Fahrer. Besonders ihr selbst bemaltes Gefährt ist sehr beliebt. Allerdings neiden andere Rikscha-Fahrer ihr diesen Erfolg, und ihr Geheimnis droht, entdeckt zu werden. – Eine Besonderheit des Films sind die farbenfrohen Bilder, die in einigen Szenen animiert werden. Im Anschluss an die Filmvorführung findet eine interaktive Panel Diskussion statt.

Scholarship on religion and visual culture often posits that the birth of modern museums and art historical approaches brought to a secularization and aestheticization of religious art. This might also explain why many scholars of art have explored the intellectual and artistic networks created in the early 20 th century between Japan and India and centering on the encounter between the Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore and the Japanese art historian Okakura Kakuzō, but they have not considered the importance of Buddhism in this transnational flow of visual culture. This presentation will trace recent scholarship on modern Buddhism that is shedding light on the role of Buddhist priests and intellectuals in the circulation of visual culture between Japan and South Asia, and will focus on the work of one specific Japanese artist, Nousu Kōsetsu, and on the way his art has been redeployed in modern spaces of Buddhist religious practice in a transnational context.

Online conference organised by the Department of Asian and Islamic Art History, University of Bonn, Germany and the Centre for Research in Arts and Creative Exchange (CRACE), University of Roehampton, UK: Join us for two days of exciting presentations on ‘Emerging Trends in Research on Classical Indian Dance’ and related topics. The keynote address ‘Interweaving Questions of Past and Future: Ram Gopal, Innovative Bharatanatyam Pioneer and Modernist’ will be delivered by Professor Ann R David. There will be a special contribution on ‘The Importance of Museum Archives for the Study of Indian Dance’ by Dr Johannes Beltz and a special lecture on ‘Interlinking Indian Dance with Architecture, Sculpture and Literature’ by Professor Choodamani Nandagopal.

A Reimagining of Sikkim’s Sacred Landscapes: Narratives of Conflict and Controversy: Using the Buddhist sacred landscapes of Sikkim as a case study, this lecture examines the relationship between conflict and controversy in narratives concerning the conversion and establishment of sacred sites. Drawing primarily on ethnographic research embedded in the daily lives of Lhopo Buddhists, the presentation explores the belief narratives surrounding the transformation of the sacred landscape, driven by both natural and man-made disasters. It aims to demonstrate how local communities negotiate their beliefs and rituals, adapting to changes by creating new sacred spaces. In this process, the materiality of religious practices—embodied in altars, shrines, and ritual objects—plays a central role in transforming the landscape. By establishing new physical manifestations of their faith, these communities reshape their environment into a conflicted site of religious and cultural significance.

The lecture takes a historical view to the question of urban development and morphology as related to the questions of modification nature. Cities by their very nature modify the natural condition in order to create conducive living environment. However this alteration of natural condition is not a constant phenomenon and has been undergoing a shift in recent past. This lecture will highlight case studies of South Asian historical cities to establish the pattern of natural modifications and its result in the formation of cities.

Nächste Woche finden am Mittwoch (02.10.24) die Einführungsveranstaltungen für die neuen Studierenden unserer Abteilung statt: - 14.00 Uhr s.t. Bachelor-Einführungsveranstaltung - 15.00 Uhr s.t. Master-Einführungsveranstaltung Beide Informationsveranstaltungen finden im Seminarraum der Abteilung für Asiatische und Islamische Kunstgeschichte im Erdgeschoss der Adenauerallee 10 statt (gegenüber der Universitätsbibliothek).

The Labyrinth City of Loulan (Loulan micheng), now kept in the Museum of East Asian Art, Cologne, was created in 1992 by pioneer Modernist Chinese calligrapher Gu Gan (1942–2020). Featuring pictographic variations of ancient Chinese oracle-bone and seal scripts, it exemplifies the Modernist renewal of calligraphic arts in Post-Mao China. Relying on the long-standing premise of ink-drawn brush strokes as unique, cosmographic “mind paintings”, the work expresses an artistic mindset shaped by and shaping the creative generation of Gu’s time. Its composition is, decipherable as a diagrammatic, indeed cartographic spatial design, whose intricate labyrinth of written and painted ‘signposts’ emerges like a visualized mind map of sorts: allowing us to navigate across some of the tangled historical and geographical, epigraphical and archaeological terrains of Chinese art. The presentation so maps out Gu’s work as a “Modernist Metaverse” themed on the ruined ancient Silk Road city of Loulan.

Public lecture by PD Dr. Isabella Schwaderer: At the beginning of the 20th century, two relatively young arts developed in parallel and cross-fertilised each other - photography and expressive dance. In Germany in particular, photography was a welcome means for dancers to achieve a broad impact beyond the stage. A particular interest in art forms understood as "primordial" led to an exchange with with non-European dancers, whose art was perceived as superior because of its ancient tradition. From the 1920s, South Asian artists were increasingly present on European stages and in the studios of star photographers. An analysis of images of Indian dancers from the Weimar Republic to the Nazi era explores the origins of stereotypes and the interaction of dance movements and poses in front of the camera. This reveals a broad commercialisation of the media of dance, photography and film, but also how artists visually interacted and collaborated.

Kalamkari Performance mit Madhavi: Kalamkaris sind mit Naturfarben handgemalte Stoffbilder aus Südindien (vorwiegend aus Tamil Nadu und Andhra Pradesh). Madhavi bringt eine Auswahl ihrer schönsten Exponate aus ihrer über viele Jahre in Indien zusammengetragenen Kalamkari Sammlung mit. Nach einer Einführung in die Hintergründe der Kalamkaris werden die dargestellten Gottheiten des Hindu Pantheons durch Madhavis beeindruckenden Tanz im klassisch südindischen Tanzstil Bharata Natyam lebendig. Geschichtenerzähler, die mit gemalten Stoffbilderrollen von Dorf zu Dorf ziehen gibt es in Indien seit dem 2.Jhd vor Christus. Durch Erzählung, Gebärden und Tanz in moderner Form knüpft Madhavi auf diese Weise an alte Erzähltraditionen indischer Barden an.

Public lecture by Prof. Dr. Julia A. B. Hegewald: The Jaina religion originates in East India in about the sixth century BCE. It reached the South Indian State of Karnataka in about the second century CE. From the fifth century CE onwards, Jainism appears to have risen steadily to a position of supremacy in the region. The hegemony of the Jainas and their control of all areas of life throughout Karnataka was especially pronounced from the eighth to eleventh centuries CE. However, from the twelfth century, the influence diminished rapidly and the Jaina community ended up in a position of severe asymmetrical dependency. This presentation will focus on the reasons for the initial rise and the subsequent irreversible decline of the Jainas in the State. Causes are to be found in religious, social, political and economic areas.

Im kommenden Sommersemester veranstaltet die Abteilung für Asiatische und Islamische Kunstgeschichte vom 21. bis 25. Mai 2024 die Exkursion "Asien in London entdecken". Der geplante Schwerpunkt der Exkursion liegt auf Kunst und Architektur mit Asienbezug. Am Mittwoch, den 14. Februar 2024, bieten wir um 11.00 Uhr eine Informationsveranstaltung im Seminarraum der AIK (Adenauerallee 10, EG.) an. Themen der Veranstaltung sind der Exkursionsablauf, Kosten und Finanzierung, Anrechnung, sowie Teilnahmevoraussetzungen.

"The Vienna World's Fair of 1873 and the Beginnings of Chinese Art History": Public lecture by Prof. Dr. Lukas Nickel: The World’s Fair in Vienna of 1873 was the largest and most ambitious of the early World’s Fairs. The organisers went out of their way to include states that had been underrepresented in London and Paris. China was among the countries that had their first formal presentation at the international exhibition. The Chinese pavilion became the most comprehensive show products of Chinese nature, industry and art until then. As it came at a time when museums across Europe began establishing East Asian collections, it arguably shaped the European understanding of Chinese material culture of the late 19th century. During the talk we will trace the process of how the show came into being, characterise its displays, and discuss the impact it had on the field of art history both in Europe and in China.

Public lecture by Dr. des. Sandra J. Schlage: "Travelling Images: Some Observations on Angkor Sculptures and the Cultural Exchange between South- and Southeast Asia.": Visiting the ancient temples of the Angkor Empire in Cambodia is a unique experience for anyone familiar with (South-)Indian art. Although, many mytho-logical scenes and deities of the Hindu/Buddhist pantheon can be easily identified, they display individual traits and decorative designs which are unique to Khmer art. What can these sculptures tell us about the cultural exchange between India and Mainland Southeast Asia? What can we find out about the creative process of the artists? I am going to share my thoughts about these questions based on an analysis of my favourite motifs, (re-)discovered during our Cambodia excursion in summer 2023.

Art Nouveau’s style and ideology were developed as an answer to the need for a new approach to art and design at the end of the nineteenth century. At the backbone of this development was Japanese art (and Japonisme), which provided a major inspiration to the art and design world of the time. However, the popularity and global development of the movement in its turn provided a new impetus to the art and design worlds of its land of origin, which was struggling with similar problems. In Japan, Art Nouveau encouraged artists to transcend art and design genres, and to re-evaluate traditional crafts and designs, activities that can be said to be the starting point of modern Japanese craft design. This lecture will provide an introduction to Japanese Art Nouveau. It will introduce some representative artists, and will focus on the development of the movement in the medium kimono in specific.

In Kooperation mit der ANDHERI HILFE e.V. und der Bonner Filmfair: Filmvorführung und Diskussion mit Maja Meiners (Regisseurin), Dr. Heike Kluve (ANDHERI HILFE) und Dr. des. Sandra J. Schlage (AIK, Uni Bonn): "BREAKING BARRIERS: The Casteless Collective": The Casteless Collective is a protest music band from Chennai, South India, playing an exciting mix of folk music and Gaana art coming from North Chennai’s slum area, combined with modern musical styles of rap and rock. The songs are dealing with diverse social issues pertaining to people from underprivileged and marginalised backgrounds, as represented by the band members themselves. The film shows the young band’s powerful attempt to break cultural stigmas and joins their journey towards an Indian future of casteless mentality and reality. Im Anschluss an die Filmvorführung (Englisch) findet eine interaktive Panel Diskussi-on (Deutsch/Englisch) statt.

Publich lecture by Dorothée Kreuzer: The spate of recent publications on late 15th century Timurid book art opens up critical space for reconsidering the conventional text-image relationship approach. A close reading of the sumptuous three double page opening sequence of the Cairo Bustan reveals the illumination program of the manuscript not only as meta-commentary to Sa’di’s text but emerges as literally pre- and pro-scriptive: showing what precedes words and a guidance to how to read the following text. Taking my cue from the unpublished double-page spread placed between the famous frontispiece and the gateway to the written text or incipit, the issue of beauty appears as the non-trivial steppingstone en route to the ineffable. Very much like the Platonic agalma as launch pad to the higher good, the intricate montage of the figures of goose and phoenix draws the reader’s attention to processes of understanding.

Workshop: South India between the 4th and the 6th century CE: We wish to apprehend this period in a comparative perspective, in order to put into context the specific situation of the Tamil-speaking South, as opposed to Central and North India, as well as Sri Lanka. Our approach will be multidisciplinary, combining history, art history, epigraphy, numismatics and archaeology. Possibility to attend the conferences online through pre-registration. Send your request by 19 October 2023 (9 am) at ariane.desaxce@dainst.de

Songs of Love and War from Classical Tamil Poetry (2 BCE - 2 CE) through Bharatanatyam: The Sangam anthology contains poems of love and war which dates back to over two millennia. The literature is lesser known due to the linguistic complexity of the poetry. The body of literature brings out the inextricable link of the external landscape which has a direct connection to the internal emotional states. In today’s world, where people are slotted based on several stereotypes of gender, religion and language, Sangam poetry comes as a breath of fresh air since it observes human nature instead of ordering them. Since Bharatanatyam is a versatile language to communicate, the sheer humanness of the poems makes the poetry from over two millennia to have a message which is alive and relevant in today’s context. The aim is to promote the body of literature as not only the pride of Tamils but a treasured contribution of India to world literature, dance and theatre.

The robbing of temple statues of Koh Ker, the tenth century Angkorian Capital in Cambodia, is a unique crime story, whose investigation is still ongoing. The collaborative work of archaeologists, lawyers and government officials of various countries have revealed an entanglement of art collectors, experts and museums leading to the discovery and return of numerous statues so far. Not being part of this investigtation, the opportunity to attend the arrival of some statues personally in Phnom Penh in 2021 nevertheless inspired me, to design a seminar for the summer semester of 2022 at the University of Bamberg on the debate of disputed objects in Western museums, in which the participants created physical and digital evidence boards on the objects’ history, the people and institutions involved, debating also their legal status. This talk will be an update of my presentation on the Koh Ker statues.

Wir besuchen gemeinsam die Ausstellung „Ambedkar. Blick von Außen“ von Frank Rogge, Olivier Graine und Niteen Gupte, die im Rahmen der Indientage der Deutsch-Indischen Gesellschaft e.V. Köln stattfindet. Die drei Künstler aus Köln positionieren sich mit ihren eigenen künstlerischen Mitteln zu B. R. Ambedkar, der am meisten portraitierten historischen Persönlichkeit im heutigen Indien. B. R. Ambedkar (1891-1956) übte enormen politischen Einfluss als Vorsitzender des indischen Verfassungskomitees aus. Er wurde der erste Justizminister des neugegründeten indischen Staates. Besonders bedeutsam ist seine Rolle als Anführer der ehemals Unberührbaren und seine Beiträge zu der Dalit-Bewegung. Teil des Ausstellungsbesuchs ist ein Gespräch mit den Künstlern. Wenn Sie an dieser Exkursion teilnehmen möchten, melden Sie sich bitte bei Sandra J. Schlage (Schlage@uni-bonn.de). Mehr informationen zur Ausstellung: www.digkoeln.de

"Typological-Stylistic Observations on Early Gandhāran Buddha Images in Stone, c. 1st–3rd Centuries". Online lecture by Dr. Corinna Wessels-Mevissen: I shall present my recently developed model of gradually evolving typological stages of the Buddha image, during late pre-Kushan and Kushan rule, in the region referred to as “Gandhāra”. Particularly, the question of the origin and date of the earliest anthropomorphic representation of the historic Buddha (lived ca. fifth-fourth centuries BCE) has been explored for a long time. However, the extremely intricate factual situation has not allowed to arrive at a widely accepted result yet. I shall explain my arguments for a particular typological-stylistic order of succession, almost exclusively based on features observed on the head portions. One of my new suggestions concerns the possible choice of traits pertaining to the Kushan rulers and their immediate predecessors themselves for designing the Gandhāran Buddha image.

Public lecture by Nathalie Neumann M.A.: Felix Ganz (1869-1944) was a successful businessman from Mainz and managing director of Ludwig Ganz AG, which imported and manufactured oriental carpets and textile products for furniture and home décor. He was also an art collector with an important collection of art objects from the Middle East and East Asia. In 1934, Ludwig Ganz AG was ‘aryanized’. In 1942 he and his second wife Erna were deported to Theresienstadt, where they survived for two years, and were murdered in the Auschwitz concentration camp in October 1944. His art collection disappeared with only have a rough description of the items from restitution claims. In 2019 some objects belonging to Felix were discovered in the Landesmuseum in Mainz. Adam Ganz is the great-grandson of Felix Ganz. In autumn 2018 he and Nathalie Neumann successfully applied to the German Lostart Foundation (DZK Magdeburg) to research the fate of the collection in conjunction with the University of Mainz.

Im Rahmen des BA-Seminars „Kunst?! Architektur, Skulptur, Malerei und mehr aus Tamiḻ Nāṭu“ veranstaltet die Abteilung für Asiatische und Islamische Kunstge-schichte eine Tagesexkursion zur großen Tamil-Sonderausstellung im Lindenmu-seum Stuttgart. Wir haben vor Ort auch eine 90-minütige Kuratorenführung mit Herrn Dr. Noack gebucht. Mehr Informationen zu der Ausstellung finden Sie im Internet: https://www.lindenmuseum.de/sehen/ausstellungen/von-liebe-und-krieg Wenn Sie an dieser Exkursion teilnehmen möchten, melden Sie sich bitte bei Sandra J. Schlage (Schlage@uni-bonn.de). Sie erhalten in der zweiten Woche des Sommersemesters eine verbindliche Antwort, da wir vorher nicht die Teilneh-merzahl des BA-Kurses kennen.

Slavery in Northern Mozambique, trade dynamics and past interactions in India Ocean: Ilha de Moçambique, 900 AD to 1800: Mozambique’s coast is marked by different cultural horizons that span from hunter-gatherers to the establishment of Bantu farmers and later proceeded by Swahili trade settlements that were interconnected within the Indian Ocean Trade Network. New perspectives from archaeological (terrestrial and maritime), historical and anthropological research are bringing to light a complex body of knowledge about slavery in this section of southern East Africa, which has been based chiefly on Portuguese sources (customs, colonial administration archives, etc.). This exclusion of indigenous and Swahili sources has left gaps relevant to the understanding of this process. It is then critical to look at different sources to better comprehend the complex past slave trade activities and their impacts on Mozambique.

Onlie workshop by Prof. Dr. Julia A. B. Hegewald: Following the lecture on Tuesday, we will together aim at finding explanations for the striking approach, which builders of Jaina temples took during the period starting from the fifteenth century onwards, which strongly expressed Islamic design principles and regularly followed Muslim planning rules. Despite this general acceptation of Islamic approaches in art and architecture, the Jainas appear to have been especially open towards adopting Islamic ideas in their temple constructions. We will examine these and other possible explanations and it is likely that it was not simply a single but in most cases a series of reasons which might have led to the creation of this intriguing hybrid style of architecture.

Online Lecture by Prof. Dr. Julia A. B. Hegewald: “Islamic Aesthetics for Jaina Temples in Crisis: Dependency, Destruction and Creative Adaptation for Survival”: The arrival of Islam in the Indian subcontinent drastically changed the political, religious and cultural landscape. While historic accounts and inscriptions portray a situation of crisis for indigenous religious groups and destroyed statues and temples are still visible today, the available architecture also displays a surprisingly creative response to this threat. Despite at times violent persecutions of the Jainas, the stylistic influence Islamic art has had on Jaina religious buildings is startling. This presentation draws attention to this fascinating phenomenon and considers a series of possible reasons for this hybrid style.