The a.r.t.e.s. forum 2025 will take place on the 10th of July in the Neuer Senatssaal, located in the university’s main building. The theme of the forum will be “Disturbance:s”. “Disturbance” is a complex term, indicating disruptions of different kinds as well as political unrest. We would like to approach the term from different perspectives, with a thematic spectrum ranging from political events and their cultural representation to the construction and negotiation of normality.
Our first panel, Dissonances, will be concerned with dissonances in political and social debates and their representation in culture and the media. The subsequent panel, Disruption, will centre the dynamics of interaction and cultural representations, whose disruption raises fundamental questions about their nature. Our final panel will focus on Disputed Normalities. Every disruption or disturbance is by its very nature preceded by a status quo which is then upset. The talks in this panel will discuss how normality is constructed and negotiated.
Our day will conclude with “Disturbances”, a multimedia exhibition that explores the disruption of normality in both representation and reality. Through painting, photography, video art and short films, the evening event confronts environmental and political disturbances, as well as the distortions of the media itself. Open to the public, it is also an opportunity to chill, connect and mingle with participants of the a.r.t.e.s. forum and the MESH Symposium, in an atmosphere of creative exchange, accompanied by live music.
All talks will be in English.
Programm
Eröffnung/Opening
Universität zu Köln, Hauptgebäude, Neuer Senatssaal
9:45 - 10:00 Begrüßung/Introduction
Panel I: Dissonance
10:00 - 11:00 Hypervisibility, Invisibility, and the Historico-Racial Schema
Hyunjung Lee (Leipzig)
11:00 - 12:00 Making Room for Dissonance in Literary and Cultural Responses to Brexit
Johanna Rostek (Leipzig)
12:00 - 13:00 Mittagspause
Panel II: Disruption
13:00 - 14:00 Interstate Arbitrations and Inter-poleis Relations within the Achaian Koinon
Rebecca Massinelli (Trento)
14:00 - 15:00 Mappings, Suspicious Readings, and Anti-Antisemitism as Dispositif
Johanna Schaffer (Kassel)
15:00 - 15:15 Kaffeepause
Panel III: Disputed Normalities
15:15- 16:15 Three Wasteland Ecologies: Thinking across Disturbance, Contestation, and Regeneration
Sandra Jasper (Nürnberg)
16:15 - 17:15 ‘There is F(r)iction in the Space Between’* On the Intersubjective Making and Unmaking of Normality
Maren Wehrle (Rotterdam)
Abendveranstaltung/Evening Event
Ab 19:30 “Disturbances” - Multimediale Perspektiven auf Störungen (in Kooperation mit MESH)
Veranstaltungsort: Arty Farty Gallery (Vogelsanger Str. 195a, 50825 Köln)
Hypervisibility, Invisibility, and the Historico-Racial Schema - Hyunjung Lee (Leipzig)
This talk investigates the structural and epistemic neglect of anti-Asian racism (AAR) in Europe through a Fanonian lens of subjectivity and the historico-racial schema. Drawing on empirical data from Asian Voices Europe (2024), I argue that AAR operates not only through institutional exclusions but also through socially embedded perceptual frameworks that racialize and misrecognize Asian bodies. The dual condition of hypervisibility and invisibility imposed by the White gaze exemplifies the psychic and social contradictions experienced by the Asian diaspora.
Making Room for Dissonance in Literary and Cultural Responses to Brexit - Johanna Rostek (Leipzig)
Many commentators have argued that the Brexit Referendum of 2016, its result and its aftermath have both revealed and exacerbated deep divisions within British society. Brexit has been seen as a driver of affective polarisation, creating disharmony and discord – i.e. dissonance – between Leavers and Remainers. My paper will present a selection of literary and cultural responses to Brexit, from novels, theatre plays to art projects and films. I will argue that by representing both sides of the Brexit divide, these texts consciously make room for the dissonances that Brexit has revealed. I will moreover discuss and invite a discussion about the opportunities and limits of such representational strategies.
Interstate Arbitrations and Inter-poleis Relations within the Achaian Koinon - Rebecca Massinelli (Trento)
This paper explores the dynamics of interaction between Peloponnesian poleis within the Achaian Koinon, both in their relations with one another and with the central federal authority. Special attention is given to interstate arbitration as a mechanism for conflict resolution, highlighting its role as a form of political and diplomatic engagement among member cities. This talk aims to show how the study of interstate arbitrations as one of the forms of interaction between autonomous poleis that recognize each other as peers (Ma 2003) may perhaps also offer insights into the political aspects of conflicts and interactions within the federal structure of the Achaian Koinon.
Mappings, Suspicious Readings, and Anti-Antisemitism as Dispositif - Johanna Schaffer (Kassel)
I am part of a recently formed, small, and extra-institutional group of loosely connected researchers based in Germany attempting to describe what we've begun to call the anti-antisemitism dispositif. Our first impulse was to map its elements and articulations. Such a mapping could, for example, visually reconstruct Hanno Hauenstein's reporting from September 2024 on an exclusive story by the Springer-owned Bild Zeitung on Hamas sabotaging ceasefire negotiations: a desinformation campaign that can be traced back to Israeli premier Benjamin Netanjahu's office, wrote Hauenstein, while also pointing out that Axel Springer SE owns Israel's largest classified ads online platform Yad2 on which property is offered for sale in the illegally occupied Palestinian territories. Springer, in other words, is making money by promoting the ongoing expropriation, expulsion and destruction of Palestinian people.
But mappings and their theories of networks tend to feed on conspiratorial plot mechanics. Considering how conspirational constructions are a fundamental component of antisemitism as practice of meaning making and how they also define more broadly many elements in our current moment of fascizisation, we might be invested in constructing different forms of representation - reflexive mappings marked by antifascist affordances.
Three Wasteland Ecologies: Thinking across Disturbance, Contestation, and Regeneration - Sandra Jasper (Nürnberg)
‘There is F(r)iction in the Space Between’* On the Intersubjective Making and Unmaking of Normality - Maren Wehrle (Rotterdam)
Often, the term ‘normal’ is used to express what is socially acceptable within a given cultural or social context. While an established social normality presents itself as a timeless and self-evident truth, it grows out of a contingent and fragile state, where norms have not yet been established. In my talk, I understand this state phenomenologically as lived inter-subjective normality and describe it as an interactive and ongoing process of making and (un-)making of normality. I will argue that a sustainable normality needs friction, both, within one’s individual course of experience, between my experience and those of others, and between different (social) normalities. This space between, I will try to show is a source of normative friction, but also the place where one can stop clinging to old fictions, and begin to perceive the world and others anew, do things differently, and tell better stories.