Form and Format 1880–1940

The workshop aims at exploring different historical and medial situations where the relations between format/formatting and form are reflected on in specific artistic/design practices. In doing so, we want concepts of form and format to be developed within the specific context.Thus, we refrain from working with a single notion of form or format. That being said, we do think of format – in the broadest sense – as the properties of the picture carrier/writing surface, which specify a medium (for example, its size, orientation, and flatness). We consider form, in turn, as the emphatic form of the artwork/artifact, that is, where format and subject achieve a singular unity. The historical focus is roughly on 1880–1940, a period that covers the
mechanization of paper production along with the accelerated rise of mass media (e.g. the newspaper, photographic prints) and a push to standardize paper formats internationally. The workshop is adamantly interdisciplinary in nature, examining architecture, photography, sculpture, literature, graphic design, painting/drawing and film, so as to see different effects of mass production and, possibly, standardized formats, and how they participate in different artistic/design processes.The two poles that structure the workshop are the limiting as well as the productive potential of formats. On the one hand, we are interested abiding within the limits of a given format are productive for artistic/design processes. On the other hand, we also want to consider how artistic practices make the norms a standardized format sets or the limits it embodies perceptible precisely because it infringes upon given norms. To put it differently: How are the norms materialized in formats transgressed in practice, and how does that transgression reflect on the limitations set by a specific format? Closely related is the production of idiosyncratic formats as part of the artistic/design process (think of Paul Klee, for example), which could be understood as another manner of reflectively transgressing the limits of a format.

Program

Freitag, 23. Oktober 2015
13.15 – 13.30	Malika Maskarinec (Universität Basel): Begrüssung
13.30 – 15.00	Petra McGillen (Dartmouth College): The Compiler's Moment: Fontane and the Industrialization of Print
Kaffeepause
15.15 – 16.45	Annie Bouneuf (School of the Art Institute of Chicago): Klee's Angelus Novus and Its Interleaf
16.45 – 18.15	Johanna Függer-Vagts (Universität Basel): Format and 'Bildgrenzform' in Paul Klee
Samstag, 24. Oktober 2015
09.30 – 11.00	Fabian Grütter (ETH Zürich): 'For the smooth Cooperation of Humans and Objects'. Introducing Standard Paper Sizes in Interwar Switzerland
11.00 – 12.30	Nader Vossoughian (New York Institute of Technology): Standardization Takes Command: From Papierformate to the Oktameterstein
Mittagspause
13.30 – 15.00	Megan R. Luke (University of Southern California): Animating 'Der neue Haushalt': Domestic Labor and Efficiency in the Films of Ella Bergmann-Michel and Hans Richter

 

 

Konzept: Johanna Függer-Vagts, Fabian Grütter, Malika Maskarinec

Referierende: Johanna Függer-Vagts, Fabian Grütter, Malika Maskarinec, Annie Bourneuf, Megan Luke, Petra McGillen, Nader Vossoughian

eikones NFS Bildkritik, Rheinsprung 11, CH - 4051 Basel