forschungsbericht november 2008 – juli 2012 - Kunsthistorisches ...

76 | FORSCHUNGEN DES WISSENSCHAFTLICHEN NACHWUCHSES
Urban legislation, literature, and private diaries
offer profound insights into the ways in which
the city was not simply the backdrop to the urban
drama of the Renaissance, but an active protagonist
in the formation of social identities. One of
the most fascinating discoveries of this approach
is the role of sound in the production of historical
meaning. Republican Florence (13 th –16 th century)
developed an acoustic regime of civic communication
coordinated between bell towers through ringing their bells. This regime sought to
forge a vertically integrated politically body politic with a horizontally integrated system of
acoustic communities. As a result, it is as important to understand the aesthetic and communicative
orchestration of the sonic environment as it is to understand the design of the
city as a spatial phenomenon.
Virtual aerial view of the Florentine
cathedral and baptistery
»All things must pass«: The Aging Artwork
Hanna Baro | MaxNetAging
The process of aging not only affects living organisms, but also material objects: some artworks
are created to last for centuries, while others reflect time and temporality in their
material manifestations. In turn, some works have a very short ›life-span‹ and are meant to
›die‹, such as Jean Tinguely's Homage to New York (1960); a work that famously self-destructed
during a performance in MoMA's sculpture garden in New York. Half a century after
Tinguely's Homage to New York, in a time when popular media is torn between representations
of enduring war and terrorism and a cult of longevity and eternal youth, contemporary
artists are engaging intensely with notions of aging, transience, and mortality. Taking
Tinguely's work as a point-of-departure, this dissertation will analyze contemporary artists'
use of similar modi operandi to illustrate the broader implications of ephemeral or ›aging‹
artworks. One example of this is Urs Fischer's replica of Giambologna's Rape of the Sabine
Women that was on display during the 54 th Venice Biennale in 2011. Comprised of a 1:1 scale
wax model, which doubled as a candle, the work slowly melted down during the course of
the event; thus reflecting the inevitability of the passage of time and the temporary nature
of ›life‹. This research offers insight into how contemporary artists strategically employ
concepts of fragility within their made objects, thus invoking not only the transience of
materiality, but more importantly, the metaphysical discourse deterioration and decay provokes
in contemporary art and society.
Urs Fischer, Untitled, 2011, wax, pigments,
wicks, steel, 147 x 147 x 630
cm (Reproduction of Giambologna,
The Rape of the Sabine Women)
The Oriental Weapons Collection of Museo Stibbert and the Geographical Attribution
of those Weapons Stamped with the Ottoman Arsenal Mark or damgha
Filiz Çakır Phillip | Connecting Art Histories in the Museum
The 19 th century became the founding time of high-quality traditional European private
collections, like the Wallace Collection in London (1850) and the Stibbert Collection in Florence
(1860). Publications on Stibbert's weapons collection are only available to a smaller
extent, especially on objects of Islamic Oriental origin. There can merely be drawn on single
contributions on selected Ottoman and Mamluk weapons. However, these provide no detailed
information on the stock of more than 500 objects inventoried under the designation
›Islamic‹. It is known that about one third of these objects bear the Ottoman arsenal mark,
also known as damgha. Previous researches reveal that parts of collections considered to
be absolute Ottoman, due to their marking with the damgha, actually can be ascribed to an
Iranian origin. This study aims to identify weapons of Iranian origin and the share of them
bearing the damgha, which long was considered as guarantee of authenticity, in order to
reattribute them geographically. The results will be integrated into the doctoral thesis on
Iranian arms and armour of Berlin collections, to serve as objects of comparison.