Art History

Objective: To assess the disciplinary preferences of mothers of profoundly deaf children and normally hearing children in a test of the hypothesized link between child disabilities and punitive parenting. Method: Disciplinary preferences of mothers seeking a cochlear implant for their profoundly deaf child (n = 57), mothers not seeking an implant for their deaf child (n = 22), and mothers of normally hearing children (n = 27) were assessed using an analog task in which subjects select discipline in response to slide images of children engaging in normative or frankly deviant behaviors that are potentially irritating. Results: Results indicated that mothers of children with profound hearing impairments were more likely to select physical discipline in response to depicted child transgressions and more likely to escalate to physical discipline when the depicted child was described as persisting in the transgression. Additionally, escalation was more probable in response to scenes depicting children engaged in dangerous and destructive acts than in rule-violating acts. Conclusions: Findings were consistent with the hypothesized link between childhood disabilities and child maltreatment as well as the hypothesis that children with disabilities associated with communication problems could be at risk of physical abuse.

Contemporary visual artists from Turkey, who have left their ‘home’ for various reasons, such as migration or education, have emerged as a distinctive voice on the contem- porary European art scene. What makes these artists pertinent for an analysis of new forms of identity and citizenship mak- ing, and the negotiation of belonging and mobility in contem- porary Europe is that their art presents the sheer diversity of artistic approaches that address, incorporate, and fold cultural interaction as well as confrontation with the identitary and cultural ‘container’ that is Western Europe. This paper will focus on three cases, Nevin Aladağ, Anny and Sibel Öztürk, and Nilbar Güreş, querying whether and how their artistic gaze can provide critical insight into the diverse possibilities of relations between Turkey and Western Europe. Using their works as laboratories or ‘snap shots’ of identity negotiations, this paper will query how mobility and transnational encoun- ters shape artistic production, and how, in turn, such transna- tional and intercultural works can shed new light on the mak- ing of contemporary European identities ‘beyond borders’ that integrates Turkey through art.

This article explores mobility and migration from Turkey to Europe and its role in the making of trans-and international (artistic) identities. It specifically investigates the articulation and dynamics of hyphenated European-Turkish identities, and new forms of European and diasporic citizenship through the work and biographies of contemporary visual artists originally from Turkey who have left their 'home' for various reasons (migration, education, or artist residencies). What makes these artists particularly pertinent for an investigation of new forms of identity, citizenship-making, and belonging in contemporary Europe is that their art cannot exist without either Europe or Turkey. By concentrating on their art, this paper focuses on a new way of thinking about the immigration experience and the politics of belonging through an investigation of how these artistic trajectories are mapped in a transnational context through a number of different cities including Amsterdam, Berlin, Frankfurt, and Istanbul.

People shape spaces; spaces shape people in return. This article focuses on artistic experiments with cartography from transnational contemporary visual artists. They use diverse engagements in mapping to (re)present the city, across Istanbul to Amsterdam, as they look to cartography for their work’s formal and thematic substance.

The artists in focus deal with topics including but not limited to colonial pasts, mobilities, gender politics, and mapmaking’s entanglement with the processes of global modernities. They help us think in novel ways of structure and agency since each articulation (a political act) is a re-thinking and re-formulation of the cartographic discourse. The diversity of the artistic approaches ranges from using their bodies in their interventions—a bodily performance—that in turn leads to a tactile map of the city, to presenting imagined geographies, overlapping temporalities. These polychromous cartographies offer an alternative grasp of cartography where maps do not represent a preexisting measurable reality, but rather manifest and unfold rich fantastic geographies and cultural imaginaries.

This article focuses on the video art of Nilbar Güreş titled Stranger (Yabancı, 2004-2006) and considers it for the first time as an embodied and gendered map of Vienna. Through the moving images, the work underlines the personal and collective characteristics of Güreş’s social encounters in public space, namely the street and public transport. Traversing the borders between cultures, identities, and languages, she questions the eye of the beholder—whether a pedestrian on the street or the viewer encountering the work of art. The moving body on view in public space helps unfold topics such as migration, otherness, and identity politics in Europe.

This article explores mobility and migration from Turkey to Europe and its role in the making of transand international (artistic) identities. It specifically investigates the articulation and dynamics of hyphenated European-Turkish identities, and new forms of European and diasporic citizenship through the work and biographies of contemporary visual artists originally from Turkey who have left their ‘home’ for various reasons (migration, education, or artist residencies). What makes these artists particularly pertinent for an investigation of new forms of identity, citizenship-making, and belonging in contemporary Europe is that their art cannot exist without either Europe or Turkey. By concentrating on their art, this paper focuses on a new way of thinking about the immigration experience and the politics of belonging through an investigation of how these artistic trajectories are mapped in a transnational context through a number of different cities including Amsterdam, Berlin, F...

Contemporary visual artists from Turkey, who have left their 'home' for various reasons, such as migration or education, have emerged as a distinctive voice on the contemporary European art scene. What makes these artists pertinent for an analysis of new forms of identity and citizenship making, and the negotiation of belonging and mobility in contemporary Europe is that their art presents the sheer diversity of artistic approaches that address, incorporate, and fold cultural interaction as well as confrontation with the identitary and cultural 'container' that is Western Europe. This paper will focus on three cases, Nevin Aladağ, Anny and Sibel Öztürk, and Nilbar Güreş, querying whether and how their artistic gaze can provide critical insight into the diverse possibilities of relations between Turkey and Western Europe. Using their works as laboratories or 'snap shots' of identity negotiations, this paper will query how mobility and transnational encounters shape artistic production, and how, in turn, such transnational and intercultural works can shed new light on the making of contemporary European identities 'beyond borders' that integrates Turkey through art.

In a sonic environment, it’s difficult to determine
where “interiority” ends and “exteriority” begins.
Take the human voice, for example: where does
the internal resonance of the body stop, and the
echo and reverberation of the exterior environment
start? The bones of the face? The tip of a hair? The
room you are sitting in? Or the valley that room
was built in? Given this situation of indeterminate
thresholds, we can call sonic experiences “porous”
since they ecologically link internal and external
realms, both materially and conceptually. When
Frances Dyson discusses the gravitas of the
people’s microphone, she points out that “it
may be helpful to make a temporary distinction
between the metaphors of echo and resonance:
whereas echo always introduces the environment
(ecology), resonance can be an internal operation
that also flows, logically almost, into culture.”
The power of the people’s mic comes from its
facilitation of an interplay between the internal
and external through its combining of echo and
resonance to permeate urban spaces.

This is the first paper to discuss the Geromat III teaching machine developed at
the Berlin Institute for Cybernetics in relationship to the Geromat III prototypes developed
at Ulm School of Design in the 1960s. The Geromat III was an electro-mechanical teaching
machine that could train up to three students at three separate multimedia consoles.
The system required all learners to answer correctly in order to progress through the
instructional program; if not, the students were required to speak to each other in order to
reach agreement. The paper analyzes archival material and first-hand accounts with the
Geromat III, as well as the social context of federal funding for research into computing
and education in West Germany of the 1960s, in order to understand how this teaching
machine, an early form of computer-aided instruction (CAI), came to be. The Geromat III,
though utilized on a small scale, found an audience of enthusiastic supporters on the
other side of the country, with artist-designers at the Ulm School of Design who created
prototypes for consoles to be used with the system. While hands-on knowledge about the
system was unavailable to the console designers, an ideological affinity between the Ulm
School of Design and the Berlin Institute for Cybernetics bridged any technical gaps in
knowledge; the resulting design prototypes, one for mass-production and one for DIY
(do-it-yourself) construction, point to speculative futures for the system.

Considering the incredible detail put into the Parthenon frieze, one would expect its imagery to be far more visible to its visitors. Instead, as brought up by countless researchers in the past, these marbles are not only at a height and furthermore a sharp angle which would restrict their visibility, but they are also in a position which leaves them obstructed and in shadow. However, perhaps these details were never meant to be seen by mortal viewers, but were really meant as a gift to the gods. In this case, one may expect that the figures would be completely invisible to the human eye, but I propose that they are meant to be just visible enough so that a mortal viewer is not only aware of their presence but is also aware of the limits which restrict them as mortals. While mortals would face many limitations in the viewing of the Parthenon frieze, the gods would have none of these, and the position of the frieze as well as its great detail at the same time makes this relationship possible.

This thesis attempts a complete object biography of a fifth-century sarcophagus reliquary currently held by the Menil Collection in Houston. This thesis proposes that the Menil reliquary is a container with acute agency in its original context that continues into its modern museum context. This stone container has openings on its lid and front face, a pattern of carved birds and crosses, and is shaped like a Roman sarcophagus. The relics contained by this reliquary are completely concealed. This makes an analysis of their container even more vital, as the Menil reliquary carries the signifiers for the material inside. Without reliquaries surrounding them, relics would be unrecognizable fragments. Reliquaries define relics. Due to its iconographic program and complete circulation system for liquids, the Menil sarcophagus reliquary was displayed visibly in a late-antique pilgrimage church. A common belief in Late Antiquity was that sacred power could be transferred via touch. Liquids poured into the tops of sarcophagus reliquaries touched the relics, sources of sacred power, inside. When they exited the second opening in the reliquary, these substances had also become sacred material. Audiences of these reliquaries could then interact directly with the sacred power they desired by touching, tasting, and otherwise experiencing these sanctified fluids. Reliquaries with this ability, including the Menil reliquary, transformed and provided a means of contacting otherwise-inaccessible sacred presences. The Menil sarcophagus reliquary was a visible object that communicated the above abilities to its late-antique audience through its various physical features. The Menil reliquary continues to be a tangible point of recognition of and access to invisible, distant worlds in its modern location. As a museum object, the Menil sarcophagus reliquary has become a relic like those it once contained, while the institution of the Menil Collection acts a reliquary. This object has an ongoing vitality and, in both its late-antique and modern contexts, makes tangible the otherwise unattainable.

The Goldene Kammer (Golden Chamber) of St. Ursula’s Basilica in Cologne, Germany is both a storage room and an artistic display of human remains. These remains are the physical proof of the myth of St. Ursula and her Eleven Thousand Virgins, who are said to have defended Cologne from invaders and become martyrs in the process. While much has been said about the Goldene Kammer and its vigorous medieval cult, I intend to consider this space in the larger context of charnel houses and ossuaries. I will begin by examining the development of charnel houses and ossuaries, first generally, and then within Western Europe and Germany. The remainder of this paper will endeavor to fill two major gaps in the scholarship on the Goldene Kammer, and will be divided into two sections. The first concerns the Goldene Kammer’s initial development. While the presence of a Goldene Kammer resembling that which remains to us today can only be dated with certainty to 1525, I propose that the presence of an ossuary may have existed on the site of St. Ursula’s as early as 1300. The second point in the Goldene Kammer’s biography that I intend to expand upon is the 1643 renovation that resulted in the Goldene Kammer’s current design. I agree that, as has been suggested, the patrons of this 1643 renovation intended to insert themselves into the narrative of St. Ursula via their patronage. I will also propose that, in addition to placing themselves into proximity with the Virgins, their choice to direct their patronage at an ossuary resulted from a contemporary interest in defining the distinctly-Catholic identity of Cologne following the 30 Years’ War. I hope to demonstrate that at both moments, the Goldene Kammer’s role as an ossuary was pivotal to its development.

The Arian Baptistry of Ravenna is an unusual building. It is one of the oldest surviving structures in Ravenna, dating to the reign of Theodoric the Great (493-526 CE). Its dome mosaic, the only significant portion of the decorative program that still survives, deviates in unexpected ways from standard baptistries of the same period, including its local Orthodox counterpart. The dome’s mosaics have been the subject of lively scholarly debate for the last several decades. Most of this discussion, however, only considers the mosaic in comparison to the nearby Orthodox Baptistry, and claims that the Arian version is either a poorly-planned “copy” of the earlier program, or that the liturgical practices of Arianism encouraged the distinction of their ritual from that of the Orthodox (via the distinction of the visual program experienced in the process). While the Arian Baptistry is too fragmentary and the Arian faith too poorly documented to examine it independently of any other structure, I intend to apply some of the work that has been done on Ravenna’s Orthodox Baptistry of Neon to the Arian structure. I will propose that it was Theodoric’s intentions for Ravenna, and his desire to seize the power of the local bishop, that motivated the program of the Arian Baptistry.