VIULECTURES 1|14

Wednesday, 21 May 2014

5 pm, room 1G

Funding Cultural Heritage. The Archeological Site of Selinunte, Sicily 

Guest Speaker: Clemente Marconi, New York University
Discussant: Amnon Bar Or, Tel Aviv University

Clemente Marconi is an expert in the archaeology of Sicily. Prof. Marconi is the Director of New York University’s Institute of Fine Arts (IFA) excavations on the Akropolis of Selinunte. He is also involved in the IFA investigations of the Sanctuary of the Great Gods at Samothrace. Prof. Marconi’s books, articles, and reviews are dedicated to the Art and Architecture of the Greek world in the archaic and classical periods. Arguing for a closer interaction between the study of ancient art and disciplines such as semiotics, anthropology and hermeneutics, Marconi explores the connection between architecture, the visual arts, and other media (such as rituals, or texts), investigating their form, meaning and social function.

Amnon Bar Or is Head of the program on Built Heritage Conservation Studies in the Azrieli School of Architecture, Tel Aviv University, where he is also Lecturer and Tutor in the affiliated Conservation Studio. He is founder of an independent architects’ studio specializing in the planning of preservation and restoration of historic sites, acting throughout Israel. In his recent publication A Time for Conservation, he questions how we should cope with the memory of a place and how we assimilate the past in the contemporary environment, using his own professional experience in Israel. Prof. Bar Or is teaching two courses during the Spring 2014 semester of the VIU Globalization Program: Cultural Conservation in the Holy Land and Between East and West: Modern Architecture in Mandatory Palestine and Israel.

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Wednesday, 16 April 2014

5 pm, room 1G

The World is Rooted in Air: Atmosphere, Lawscape, Spatial Justice

Air brings together but also sets apart bodies by facilitating a division between inside and outside, inclusion and exclusion, continuum and rupture. Taking inspiration in Tomas Saraceno’s glasshouse installations, this talk looks into the way air (and other elements) are partitioned in ‘glasshouses’ of atmospheric affect. Partitioning comes from material boundaries (walls, pavements, apertures) but also immaterial, legal and political delimitations, such as private property, urban commons, public access areas and so on. Atmospheres (especially urban) tend to be tightly regulated in order to avoid uncontrolled and unpredictable revolts, thus pushing bodies in specific, pre-fabricated directions. Building on my previous work on the lawscape, namely the tautology between law and space, and with the help of Wagner's leitmotifs, the writings of Sloterdijk, Irigaray, Deleuze, Negarestani and Serres, as well as posthumanism, gender studies, ecology, new material and vitalist ontologies, and critical legal theory, the talk aims at reconceptualising current understandings of atmospheres within a context of an embodied, conflictual and fully contextualised spatial justice.

This guest lecture is part of Giovanna Marconi’s course on Globalization, Ethics, Welfare and Human Rights.

  Andreas Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos is Professor of Law & Theory at the University
 of Westminster, London, and Director of The Westminster Law & Theory Centre.
 He has read Law in Thessaloniki, Greece, as well as in other European cities.
 He completed his LLM at King's College, London, and his PhD at Birkbeck College,
 London. His research interests are radically interdisciplinary and include critical
 legal theory, autopoiesis, philosophy, ecophilosophy, object-oriented ontology,
 theology, psychoanalysis, phenomenology, geography, art, and their critical
 instances of confluence. He has published in the above areas. He has permanent
 professorial affiliations with The Copenhagen Business School, Centre for Politics
 and Philosophy and the Dept. of Architecture and Urban Planning, IUAV, Venice.

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Wednesday, 2 April 2014

5 pm, room 9A

Actors of Global Governance

VIU invites two expert guests to speak to students about their experience working in international organizations that play a role in global governance. This guest lecture is part of Cristina Dallara’s course on Global Governance for Peace and Security, Cooperation and Development, which focuses on the concept of Global Governance and its relevance for peace, security, development and international cooperation. The course explores how practices of Global Governance function in different fields of the contemporary societies and how these practice could be relevant to solve and manage global current challenges and threats.

 Ambassador Alessandro Merola joined the Italian diplomatic service in 1972.
 He has served as Deputy Permanent Representative to the European Union
 (2002-2004) and Deputy Secretary General of the Italian Ministry for Foreign Affairs
 (2004-2006), where he had served as Sous Sherpa to the G7/G8 earlier in his career.
 He was Ambassador of Italy in Serbia from 2006 to 2009.  

 Alberto D'Alessandro is Director of the Venice office of the Council of Europe,
 the only COE bureau in Italy. D'Alessandro has previously worked at the United
 Nations Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute and the Italian
 Ministry for Culture.

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