As part of the Multiple Media focus of MIARD and to deepen the discourse on media, we are pleased to introduce a series of annual lectures by Dr. Ephraim Joris.

Lecture I: Representation of Space on March 12, 6pm
We will look at space as defined by the empiricist; as the distance between two points. We will also look at Ernst Gombrich telling us how representations of space have always been an impossibility for the presence of space needs to be imagined. As such, we will measure various representational relationships between illusion and reality from classical antiquity to the dawn of the second French republic with Gustave Courbet’s ‘A Bural at Ornans’ to mark a shift to speculative realism.

Lecture II: A Note on Abstraction on April 16, 6pm
26 years in-between talking about abstraction in art and architecture; we will look at Robin Evans, Pier Vittorio Aureli and Neil Levine as they contemplate the origin of abstraction in architecture. With Jean-Luc Nancy we will pause at the concept of collage; as “the opening of form” as a method of drawing in which the performance of its birth is kept alive.

Lecture III:  Matter of/or Fact; from Medium specificity to Intermediality on May 22, 4pm
We will look at the medium of representation as discussed by Rosalind Krauss and Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht reminding us that, what is “present” to us, is “in front of us, in reach of and tangible for our bodies. The art of representation is rooted in substance yet reaches for that what is not substance. In the words of George Steiner; “The task of the aesthetic is to quicken into presence the continuum between temporality and eternity, between matter and spirit, between man and ‘the other’” [Steiner, G. (1989). Real presences: Is there anything in what we say? London, UK: Faber. P 227]

location: Cinema Screening Room, Blaak Building (BL.02.7)