The Institute of Greece, Rome, and the Classical Tradition (IGRCT) at Bristol is delighted to announce a two-day international conference on Media and Classics. The aim of the conference is to reconsider what role media have (new and old, material and spiritual, perceptible and imperceptible) in the formation and reproduction of Greco-Roman arts,
and, more broadly, in what might be called the transmission of ‘classical’ culture. The processes of production and reception of the arts of Greece and Rome are still commonly perceived in ways that remain at once too narrow and too broad: on the one hand they are
dominated by the agency of long-dead artists or ever-changing audiences; on the other hand they are dominated by abstract ideas – the continuities of the Classical Tradition, the discontinuities of Reception, the cosiness of ‘conversing’ with the past, or the rather
nebulous qualities of textuality and visuality. Revisiting Martin Heidegger’s provocative claim that ‘the more questioningly we ponder the essence of technology, the more mysterious the essence of art becomes’, this conference focuses attention on the cultural history of the material conditions and technical and technological practices that
give shape to artistic creativity and make possible its transmission as ‘classical’ and as ‘culture.’
This event is free and open to the public. Please register to attend
on Eventbrite: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e
Programme
Saturday 26th November
9.30-10.15 Pantelis Michelakis (University of Bristol), Introduction:
Classics, Media Histories, Media Theories
10.15-11.00 Till A. Heilmann (University of Bonn), The Allure of the
Ancients: on Kittler and the Greek Alphabet
11.00-11.30 Coffee break
11.30-12.15 Frank Haase (University of Basel), Metaphysics as Media Philosophy
12.15-13.00 Duncan Kennedy (University of Bristol), The Mathematical
Diagram: Between Historicity and Metaphysics
13.00-14.00 Lunch break
14.00-14.45 Ulrich Meurer (University of Bochum), The Shards of Zadar:
On the Rationale of (Meta-) Media Archaeology
14.45-15.30 Verity Jane Platt (Cornell University), Lost Wax: Fugitive
Media and the technê of Transmission
15.30-16.00 Coffee break
16.00-16.45 Ika Willis (University of Wollongong), Saxa Loquuntur:
Stone, Voice, and the Roman Telephone
16.45-17.30 Genevieve Liveley (University of Bristol), White Noise:
Transmitting and Receiving Roman Elegy
Sunday 27th November
9.00-9.45 Maria Oikonomou (University of Vienna), Manteia, Mediality, Migration
9.45-10.30 Ellen O’Gorman (University of Bristol), The Classical Text
and the Chance Encounter
10.30-11.00 Coffee break
11.00-11.45 Shane Butler (Johns Hopkins University), The Mask of Dante
11.45-12.30 Wolfgang Hagen (Leuphana University Lüneburg), Ethos,
Pathos, PowerPoint: On the Epistemology and (Silicon Valley-) Rhetoric
of Digital Presentations