CFP: And the Word Became Garden: Conception and Image in the History of the Landscape Culture

Autumn School and International Scientific Conference

And the Word Became Garden:

Conception and Image in the History of the Landscape Culture

“And the Word Became Garden” conference programme committee invites researchers to send in applications for autumn school as part of the conference. Deadline for applications is 10th September 2016.

1. Organizers

National Research University “Higher School of Economics” (Poletayev Institute for Theoretical and Historical Studies in the Humanities; School of Philology)

Russian State University for the Humanities

2. Purpose and format

The project aims at fostering the interdisciplinary cooperation, searching the common ground for scholars, whose interests are connected with such topical but not sufficiently studied research fields, as the art of gardening and world landscape culture in the context of different disciplines and areas of culture. The participation of the specialists in various disciplines and cultural practices – history of art and architecture, literary studies, humanities and natural sciences, cinema studies, land-art, history of everyday life, historical reconstruction – is most welcome and much appreciated. The nucleus of the project team is constituted by the research and student community, emerged around the scientific/didactic project “Gardens and Time” (www.gardenhistory.ru, headed from the 2008 onwards by prof. Boris M. Sokolov).

Format – three-days autumn school (morning sessions – lectures by the leading foreign and Russian specialists, afternoon sessions – research papers).

The conference will take place in the year of the 300th birthday of Lancelot (“Capability”) Brown, a prominent English master of the landscape park style, and this figure will be omnipresent in the papers and future publications.

The conference includes a Youth section (for undergraduate, MA and PhD students).

3. Thematic profiles

3.1) From the text to the garden

History of the landscape theories and projects, practical embodiment of the theoretical principles, utopia and ideal in the real landscape object.

3.2) From the garden to the text

Literary and editorial history of the descriptions of gardens, natural and artificial landscapes; role of the sample and ideal in the landscape performance; poetics of the garden inscriptions and writings on gardening.

3.3) “Gardens of my soul always patterned...”

In the Nicolai Gumilev's poem the garden becomes a metaphor of an ideal space, symbolic landscape, underlying the spiritual evolution of the protagonist. The section will be dedicated to the history of perception of the landscape as a medium and a means of the self-understanding of the man: to the semantics of the landscape images and particularly of the garden images; to the use of these images for depicting psychological states and symbolical representation of philosophical concepts.

3.4) “All nature was a garden...”

This line from the first treatise on the garden history, written by Horace Walpole in the 1770-s, was dedicated to the originator of the English landscape design, William Kent (“He leaped the fence, and saw that all nature was a garden”). The session will focus on the process of opening of the garden towards the big world of nature, its interrelations with the park and wild nature, creation of the landscape parks and areas in the Modern Time, in the industrial and post-industrial epochs.

3.5) “Capabilities of places”

August 30, 2016 is the 300th anniversary of Lancelot Brown's (1716-1783) birth. He was an outstanding English landscape architect, nicknamed “Capability” for his theory of the “capability” of a given place for being a landscape scene, endowed with higher aesthetic value. He carried out more than 150 park projects, and is reasonably considered as the founding-father of the “landscape England”. The session will be dedicated to the history of the “English” park design – in England and in other countries, from the Enlightenment onwards. Of particular interest are the intercultural interrelations and the creative outcomes.

4.Main speakers:

Boris M. Sokolov (Professor at the Department for the History of Art, Russian State University for the Humanities)

Iris Lauterbach (Honorarprofessorin an der Technischen Universität München)

Massimo Venturi Ferriolo (Professore ordinario di Estetica, Dipartimento di Architettura e Pianificazione, Facoltà di Architettura e Società, Politecnico di Milano)

Giulio Iacoli (Professore, Dipartimento di Lettere, Arti, Storia e Società, Università degli Studi di Parma)

Ada Vittorina Segre (Architecture and Town Planning Department, Technion Israel Institute of Technology)

Yuta Arbatska (Main Landscape Architect at Alupka Palace-Museum, Crimea)

Mikhail V. Efimov (Deputy Director for Scientific Issues at Monrepos Park, Vyborg)

Julia A. Moshnik (Scientific Secretary for Vyborg Castle Museum, Vyborg)

5. Place and date

05.10, Wednesday – HSE (2 sessions: 10.00-14.00 and 15.00-18.00)

06.10, Thursday – RSUH (2 sessions: 10.00-14.00 and 15.00-18.00)

07.10, Friday–The Museum of Ceramics and the 18th Century Kuskovo Estate (a session and an excursion guided by О.А. Drobnitch, an author of the park reconstruction project)

08.10, Saturday – landscape tour and cultural program for the conference speakers

5. Organizational issues

Submission and consideration of the applications: till 10.09.2016

Successful applicants will be notified: till 26.09.2016

The contributions will be published in the collective volume by the Poletayev Institute for Theoretical and Historical Studies in the Humanities, National Research University “Higher School of Economics”

Submission of the contributions for the publication: 15.01.2017

The Organizational Committee reserves the right to consider and select the applications and materials for publication. All applications must be sent to the Organising Committee at the following email: [email protected] or [email protected].

Project supervisors (with contacts):

Boris M. Sokolov (professor at the Department for the history of art, Russian State University for the Humanities, author of the project “Gardens and Time” –www.gardenhistory.ru)

Julia V. Ivanova (Poletayev Institute for Theoretical and Historical Studies in the Humanities, HSE) : [email protected] ,

+7 916 656 34 05 (Moscow telephone number)

Organising Committee provides NO financial support to participants.

Further information and application form: http://www.gardenhistory.ru/page.php?pageid=443