Anticipation and Belatedness

A conference at the Universität der Künste Berlin, in cooperation with the University of Oxford. With contributions by Heike-Karin Föll, Anthony Gardner, Dorothea Hilzinger, Eva Kernbauer, Aurea Klarskov, Karen Leeder, Stefan Neuner, André Rottmann, Luke O’Sullivan, Dörte Schmidt, Helen Small and Barbara Wittmann

The conference examines artistic processes and forms that deliberately challenge continuous time or break with chronology. This can mean, for example, that writers, musicians or artists repeat themselves, take up supposedly obsolete (media) techniques, work in outdated genres or simply ignore the current developments of an artistic field. The articulation and evocation of the experience of no longer being a contemporary of one’s own epoch has often been described as a typical feature of late works and theorized as such. But the phenomenon can also be found where the course of history is undermined or ignored, because artists or writers are not part of a literature and art market or knowingly do not want to participate in its dynamics. Equally it applies to works that, for political reasons such as dissidence, did not take part in the historical development of an ‚official literature‘ or ’state-sponsored art‘.

Literary and art criticism along with musicology tend to assume (explicitly or implicitly) the linear development of an artistic or literary oeuvre in line with historical experience. However, when studying the work of a writer, an artist or a composer, it is often precisely those phenomena that run counter to such development that catch one’s attention: phenomena of prolepsis and deliberate anticipation, of return and repetition, of regression, belatedness and of withdrawal from the present. The presentations will investigate the conditions that provoke such forms of belatedness and anticipation, as well as the way philology, music and art history deal with these complex temporal phenomena.

The event is part of a collaborative project between two working groups of Humanities scholars from the University of Oxford and the UdK Berlin (curated and organized by Karen Leeder and Barbara Wittmann). It is financed by the seed funding Oxford x UdK. Partnership in Arts and Humanities from both universities, as well as a grant from the Faculty of Fine Arts at the UdK.

Venue: Universität der Künste / Hardenbergstrasse 33 / 10623 Berlin / Room 110

Program

Friday, 18 October 2024

14.00-14.15	Karen Leeder (University of Oxford) & Barbara Wittmann (UdK Berlin): Welcome Address and Introduction
14.15-15.15	Stefan Neuner (UdK Berlin): Polytemporality in Carpaccio
15.15-16.15	Luke O’Sullivan (University of Oxford): ‘Quelque transposition de chronologie’: Writing out of Time in Montaigne’s ‘Essais’
Coffee Break
16.30-17.30	Dorothea Hilzinger (UdK Berlin): Pluritemporality in Symphonies – Musical Modernisms Reconsidered
17.30-18.30	Helen Small (University of Oxford): Nietzsche’s Cynicism – In and Out of Time
Appetizers and Drinks
19.00-19.30	Obsolescence and Late Style in Contemporary Art and Theory Heike-Karin Föll (UdK) in conversation with André Rottmann (Europa-Universität Viadrina Frankfurt/Oder)

 Saturday, 19 October 2024

10.00-11.00 Uhr	Aurea Klarskov (UdK Berlin): A Clock Seen in Profile: On Time in the Works of Marcel Duchamp
11.00-12.00	Barbara Wittmann (UdK Berlin): ‘Late Early Works’: Time and Fiction in the Works of Kazimir Malevič
Lunch Break
13:15-14:15	Dörte Schmidt (UdK Berlin): Temporality and Displacement: Chamber Music Diasporas after WW II
14:15-15:15	Karen Leeder (University of Oxford): Anachronism and the Haunting of the Berlin Republic
Coffee Break
15:45-16:45	Eva Kernbauer (Universität für angewandte Kunst Wien): Artistic Temporality and the Presence of Anachronism
16:30-17:30	Anthony Gardner (Ruskin School of Art, Oxford): On Belatedness and Latency: Two Case Studies
Coffee break
18.15-19.00	Concluding Session