SYMPOSIUM

At the threshold of the 20th century, a renewed interest emerged in the moving body as asite for the production and transformation of knowledge. This manifested across disciplinaryboundaries in scientific and aesthetic fields – from movement arts to medicine, psychology,and the scientific optimization of physical capabilities in labor studies.

Embedded within relational paradigms that conceptualize the body as an integral componentof complex relationships between organism and environment, corporeal practices functionas figurations through which circulating forces and hidden energies materialize andtransform. These shape not only artistic practices but also scientific epistemological modelsthat attribute a central epistemic function to the moving body in the exploration of previouslyconcealed knowledge repositories.

The symposium explores these figurations within an interdisciplinary resonance chamber. The presentations address the dual function of bodily movement as both spatial andepistemic transgression. The focus centers on scientific and artistic practices that conceive the body as a medium for visualizing and mobilizing latent energies, thereby renderingpermeable the boundaries between subjective experience and objective knowledge, between material and immaterial dimensions of reality.

This symposium represents a collaborative endeavor between the DFG research project »Energy: Key Concept of the Soviet Avant-garde« (Berlin), DFG-Centre for Advanced Studies »Imaginaria of Force« (Hamburg), the SNF doctoral project »Ecologies of the Body: MovementCultures and Life Sciences in the Early 20th Century« (Zurich), and the doctoral program »Epistemologies of Aesthetic Practices« (Zurich).

Programme

Venue: Gorch-Fock-Wall 3, 20354 Hamburg, Conference room

Thursday, 15 May 2025

2:30–3:00 pm	Werner Boschmann, Alexander Kamber: Welcome
3:00–4:00 pm	Margarete Vöhringer (Göttingen): The Foundation of Scientific Ophthalmology or – How to Make Vision Visible in the 19th Century
4:00–5:00 pm	Sophie Witt (Hamburg): Hysterische Zeichen, bewegte Körper: Psychosomatik und Theateravantgarden um 1900
5:30–6:30 pm	Sabine Huschka (Berlin): Tanzende Körper als Kraftfelder: Das Energetische als ästhetische Dispositionen
6:30–7:30 pm	Irina Sirotkina (Durham): Modern Dance as Energy Embodied: European and Early Soviet Cases

Friday, 16 May 2025

10:00–11:00 am	Sofia Michel (Göttingen): Depends on How to Cut and Glue: 1920’s Movement Photography and the Science of Art
11:00 am –12:00 pm	Katharina Tchelidze (Lüneburg): „Diktatur des Bildes“ – Irakli Gamrekeli und die Bühnenkünste
1:00–2:00 pm	Irina Sirotkina (Durham): Interactive Workshop. The Embodied Experience of Impulse. A Workshop in Musical Movement (f. 1914)
2:00–3:00 pm	Mats Wercholand (Weimar): Körper, Experiment, Wissenschaft: Gertrud Grunows Harmonisierungslehre im Kontext krisenhafter Raumwahrnehmung