080020 VO Life and Death in Art and Cultural Heritage (2023W)

Life and death are at the beginning and the end of our known existence. Much artistic production touches upon these two events, and their interconnection, or even their temporary overlaps. In this lecture, we will explore questions related to life, death, and everything that blurs this dichotomy. How is a violent event, such as a genocide, memorialized in the public space? What should we do with life-casts, taken through direct contact with humans and non-humans, keeping their imprint for the future generations? The practice of divination and thaumaturgy were also at the heart of the history of art, such as, for instance, the paintings by Hilma af Klint. Moreover, we can also think about how works of art can be understood to have lives and deaths themselves, whether due to decay, reactivation, or de- and re-materialization which we might also consider life after death or even the reincarnation of artworks. Finally, current debates about the restitution of colonial collection and human remains are considering things that are challenging the frontier between dead and alive, active and passive, object and subject. In this lecture series, we will focus both on particular case-studies and broader theoretical questions about life and death in relation to art and cultural heritage.