forschungsbericht november 2008 – juli 2012 - Kunsthistorisches ...

ABTEILUNGS- UND INSTITUTSÜBERGREIFENDE PROJEKTE | 61
Art, Space and Mobility in the Early Ages of Globalization: The Mediterranean,
Central Asia and the Indian Subcontinent 400–1650
Hannah Baader
Avinoam Shalem
Gerhard Wolf
Coordinator
Ashley Jones
(10/2009–09/2010)
Mirela Ljevaković
(seit 10/2010)
Sponsored by
The Getty Foundation,
Los Angeles
Marrakech, Almoravid Qubbat
Barudiyin, 1120
The project »Art, Space and Mobility« (ASM) was started in 2009 and is planned as a fouryear
program. It experiments with new forms of research in art history under the challenge
of globalization. It rethinks the agenda of a discipline institutionalized in the 19 th century
in the horizon of the nation-state which today still builds the predominant frame of its academic
structures. The ongoing discussion on »global art history« barely takes these frames
into consideration and is rather performed within them. ASM contributes to this discussion
by questioning the models and implications under which the methodological and thematic
rethinking of art history is taking place. It combines a search for and ›testing‹ of new approaches
with particular attention to the design of the project itself, working on the ›deep‹
structure of the field as such. It does so by engaging not only with different academic fields
within the larger frame of art history, but also highly different academic cultures.
In particular, ASM aims at a discussion of or step beyond postcolonial approaches which
have strongly inspired cultural studies over the last two decades. ASM is concerned with
the terminological and methodological implications of these approaches, but tries to give
a different response. It does so by studying pre-modern ›world orders‹, concentrating on
the historical dynamics and interactions in the transregional area formed by the Mediterranean,
the Middle East, Central Asia, and the Indian Subcontinent from the 4 th to the 16 th
centuries. It questions the role of art, artefacts and the visual dimension of cultures within
these processes, characterized by various levels of mobility. This implies and fosters new
ways of collaboration between Asian, Islamic, Byzantine
and Western art histories.
ASM strongly involves young researchers from the areas
it studies and creates the space for a dialogue among
scholars with rather different training and backgrounds.
It has created a conspicuous number of fellowships with
doctoral and postdoctoral students working partly at
their home institutions and partly at the KHI. Within the
last three years, ASM has established an international
network, organizing lectures, seminars, and conferences
or workshops in Florence (The ASM International Workshop,
2011 and the Timurid »kitabkhana« Workshop, 2012),
Berlin and East Anatolia as well as summer schools in Pisa
(Pisa and the Mediterranean, 2009), Tunisia (Interactions in
the Mediterranean Basin: The Case of Late Classical, Aghlabid and Fatimid Tunisia, 2010), Spain/
Morocco (Crossing the Strait of Gibraltar: Art Histories Between Morocco and Al-Andalus, 2011)
and Uzbekistan (Building Empires, Shifting Powers at the Crossroads of Central Asia, 2012), in
which about 100 junior scholars (university scholars as well as museum collaborators) and
more than twenty experts have participated.
The research agenda of ASM is constructed along six thematic axes which serve as an orientation
for the projects of the fellows and guidelines for the general discussions of the group:
• The Interrelation of Historical Geographies and the Formation of Topographies
• Power and Religion: Space
• Borderlines between Nature and Culture
• Visual Culture and Systems of Knowledge
• Transforming Artistic Languages and Techniques
• Historiographies and Narratives: 4 th –17 th and 19 th –21 st Centuries
While considering the historical connectivity of broad geographical areas, ASM especially
looks for interzones, hubs or nods of intense cultural or religious overlappings, interactions
or confrontations. An example is a workshop held in North-Eastern Anatolia in autumn
2010. It explored the parallel formulation or invention of traditions by Armenian, Georgian
and Seljuk rulers from the 10 th to the 12 th centuries, their interactions with Persia and Byzantium