This workshop aims at a transdisciplinary engagement with the nomenclatures of nature and history in contemporary art from Turkey. Drawing on perspectives from history, literary studies, and art history, it explores the concept of the bestiary and the construction of human and non-human nature within the global context of its sacred reference spaces.

Recent research on neo-Ottomanism has frequently highlighted the renewed role of Islam, which invokes not only specific forms of sacred teleology but also the power of popular imagination and historical imagery. The evocation of lifelike revenants within the historical spaces of the Topkapı Palace and the Panorama Museum in Istanbul with renewed interest in manuscript painting and its re-enactment suggest that strategies of anachronistic representations are oriented toward ambiguous thresholds between the sacred and the profane. These animated, linear models of imperial continuity remain bound to patriarchal event-history and its costumed visions.

Organized within the DFG research group 2600 Ambiguity and Distinction. Historical-Cultural Dynamics, the workshop invites scholars and artists to explore comparable theoretical, aesthetic, artistic, and literary strategies that challenge or dissolve binary distinctions. A particular focus lies on the intersection of knowledge production, historical narrative, and religious politics.

Please click here for the complete abstract of the workshop and here for the german version.