Symposium in Honor of Giuliana Bruno: With Keynotes by Isaac Julien and Emanuele Coccia

Scholars and artists working at the forefront of visual culture and design come together for this symposium inspired by Giuliana Bruno’s career researching the intersections of the visual arts, architecture, environment, and media. Bruno is the Emmet Blakeney Gleason Professor of Visual and Environmental Studies, Faculty of Arts and Sciences, and a GSD Faculty Affiliate.

KEYNOTE SPEAKERS

Giuliana Bruno is Emmet Blakeney Gleason Professor of Visual and Environmental Studies, Faculty of Arts and Sciences and a GSD Faculty Affiliate. She is internationally known for her research on intersections of the visual arts, architecture, the environment and media. Bruno has published eight award-winning books and two hundred essays, translated in fifteen languages. Her books include Atmospheres of Projection: Environmentality in Art and Screen Media; Surface: Matters of Aesthetics, Materiality, and Media; Streetwalking on a Ruined Map, winner of the Society for Cinema and Media Studies book award; Public Intimacy: Architecture and the Visual Arts; and Atlas of Emotion: Journeys in Art, Architecture and Film, winner of the Kraszna-Krausz prize for best moving image book and named by the Guardian among its Books of the Year. Forthcoming is her co-authored book Isaac Julien. Lina Bo Bardi—A Marvellous Entanglement. She has been honored with a Doctorate honoris causa.

Isaac Julien is a critically acclaimed British artist and filmmaker, who has exhibited his work internationally in museums and art biennials for over four decades. At the University of California Santa Cruz, he is Distinguished Professor of the Arts. His most recent multiscreen installations include Lina Bo Bardi – A Marvellous Entanglement; Lessons of the Hour – Frederick Douglass; and Once Again… Statues Never Die. In 2023, Tate Britain, London, organized the career-length retrospective Isaac Julien: What Freedom Is to Me, which has since traveled to the Bonnefanten Museum, Maastricht, and the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen (K21), Düsseldorf. In 2017, the Royal Academy of Arts, London, awarded Julien its Charles Wollaston Award. He received the 2022 Kaiserring Goslar Award for distinguished achievement by an international contemporary artist.

Emanuele Coccia is a renowned philosopher, who writes and curates exhibitions on the arts, the environment, design, and fashion. He teaches at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) in Paris, and has been a visiting professor at the universities of Tokyo, Buenos Aires, Columbia and Harvard. Coccia is the author of La Vie sensible, The Life of Plants, Métamorphoses, and Philosophie de la maison. He recently participated in the making of animated videos, such as Quercus (2020, with Formafantasma), Heaven in Matter (2021, with Faye Formisano) and The Portal of Mysteries (2022, with Dotdotdot). In 2019 he took part in the Trees exhibition held at the Cartier Foundation for Contemporary Art in Paris, and has edited the catalogue for the 23rd Triennale di Milano on art and design, Unknown Unknowns: An Introduction to Mysteries. He is working alongside Alessandro Michele, Creative Director of Gucci, on a publication on the relationships between fashion and philosophy.

PROGRAM

Thursday, November 21

Harvard GSD, Piper Auditorium
48 Quincy Street, Cambridge, MA 02138

Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts
24 Quincy Street, Cambridge, MA 02138

Panels at the Harvard Graduate School of Design

Panel 1: Elements of Media Matter
1:00 p.m. — 2:30 p.m.
Moderated by Samira Daneshvar, Pre-Doctoral Fellow, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science

• On Bare Metal, Zach Furste, Lecturer in New Media and Digital Culture, University of Amsterdam
• For Whom the Air Waves, Olivia Naoise Crough, PhD candidate, Harvard University
• The Shape of Time, Xavier Nueno, Post-Doctoral Researcher, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL)

Panel 2: Sensing Place, Thinking Space
3:00 p.m. — 4:30 p.m.
Moderated by Emilio Vavarella, Assistant Professor of Media and Film Studies, Skidmore College

• Classroom Lessons, Dan D’Amore, Post-Doctoral Researcher, Filmuniversität Babelsberg
• Landscape Portraits, Becca Voelcker, Lecturer in Fine Art Critical Studies, Goldsmiths, University of London
• Predation: More (and Less) than Human Bodies, Martín Cobas Sosa, Professor of Architectural History and Design, Facultad de Arquitectura, Diseño y Urbanismo, Universidad de la República, Uruguay
• Atmospheric Thinking and Sentipensar, Yazmín M. Crespo Claudio, Assistant Professor of Architecture, Affiliate Faculty, Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Reception
4:30 p.m. — 5:30 p.m.
 

Keynote Event at the Carpenter Center
6:00 p.m. — 8:00 p.m.

Introduction

• Sarah Whiting, Dean and Josep Lluís Sert Professor of Architecture, GSD.

Keynotes

• Isaac Julien, Artist, Filmmaker, Distinguished Professor of the Arts, University of California Santa Cruz
• Emanuele Coccia, Philosopher, Author, Curator, Associate Professor at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS)

Discussion
Moderated by Ewa Lajer-Burcharth, William Dorr Boardman Professor of Fine Arts, HAA

• Giuliana Bruno
• Isaac Julien
• Emanuele Coccia

Registration for this event is closed and no longer accepting RSVPs.

This event is co-presented by the Department of Art, Film, and Visual Studies, Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, Harvard Graduate School of Design, and the Department of History of Art and Architecture. 

Harvard University welcomes individuals with disabilities to participate in its programs and activities. 

If you would like to request accommodations or have questions about the physical access provided, please contact the Public Programs Office at (617) 496-2414 or [email protected] in advance of your participation or visit. Requests for American Sign Language interpreters and/or CART providers should be made at least two weeks in advance. Please note that the University will make every effort to secure services, but that services are subject to availability.

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