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Call for Papers: Reuse Value?

Reuse Value? Practices and Strategies for the Reuse of Material in the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period

Deadline for submissions: 20 August 2024
Organised by: Kathrin Borgers (Institute of Art History at the University of Cologne), Emily Hyatt (Department of the History of Art at Yale University) and Henrike Haug (Institute of Art History at the University of Cologne).

‘I used to be a plastic bottle’: From multi-use shopping bags, to kitchenware, to woven textiles, today it is not unusual for objects made of reused materials to carry declarations that refer explicitly to their origins. This contemporary practice seems to carry a value beyond the practicalities of reuse—by advertising their transformation of an already available, negatively connotated material in an environmentally friendly way, such objects promise relief for the consumer’s ecological anxieties and soothe consumerist guilt. This phenomenon of conspicuous recyling is not, however, unique to the contemporary time, but rather has diverse resonances in the medieval and early modern periods. Under the title ‘Reuse Value’ (Wiederverwendungswert), we invite contributions to this conference that explore various aspects of the reuse of material resources from a historical perspective.

Although the term ‘sustainability’ was coined in the eighteenth century in the context of the forest industry, historical sources such as early modern mining treatises point more broadly to an interest in and awareness of the extraction of exhaustible resources. Furthermore, increasing commercial networks and the continuous rise in population from the medieval period onward have led to a ‘recycling mentality’ whereby materials went through numerous transformations as they exchanged hands and served various purposes.

This conference is interested in historical motives, potentials and strategies for reusing materials, particularly when such objects maintain the memory of the material’s origin. Here, for example, practices of upcycling, transformation, appropriation, destruction or even dissolution come into view, such as when materials – for example in the context of medieval relics – are transferred from sacred to profane or from profane to sacred contexts. Reuse practices also highlight processes of translation and mistranslation of reused materials along transcultural itineraries or temporal trajectories, which constantly require or enable new uses of materials.

In terms of artistic processes, “Wiederverwendungswert” centres the significance of reusing materials, asking if economic advantages were the main consideration of reuse, or if there were other motives, such as special qualities inherent in older, unavailable or no longer manufacturable matter. These questions seem to have played a significant role not only in the secondary use of gemstones and pearls, but also in the production of fabricated materials such as paper, glass and metal alloys. Reuse is central, for example, to the process of making papier-mâché, for which rags and wastepaper are recycled into a modellable material for the creation of sculptures. At the same time, such practices raise the question of how reminiscences of the previous material form were visibly or invisibly transported onward, such as in the physical traces of used textiles or through the content of shredded and pulped written documents.

Material transformations also took place via the collection and reuse of so-called byproducts of the workshop. Practices of using these cast-off materials are recorded in technical literature of the time: for example, a seventeenth-century English glassmaking treatise reports that “sandiver” (suin de verre), a material obtained from purifying glass, was exported from England to France for use as a flux in metalworking. Georgius Agricola’s De re metallica (1556) instructs the reader on the importance of collecting soot from the smelting process, reforming the resulting mass, and selling the material at a profit instead of throwing it away. Similar forms of continued utilisation of supposed ‘waste products’ can likewise be found in the context of bone carving workshops. These examples illustrate the importance of examining pre-modern consciousness of resources and economic-ecological behaviour, while at the same time sharpening our understanding of the other levels of meaning attached to the recycled material. Material reuse thus proves to be a customary craft practice, a variation on the use of spolia in medieval and early modern times and evidence of the need for an in-depth understanding of the characteristics and possibilities of materials.

Our conference explores this broad field and invites contributions addressing the following topics:

1. Sources and contexts of action
– Through which modes and in which places were recycled uses commemorated and communicated (through technical and theological literature, processions and festivals, ways of making or display)?
– Which how-to literature or other sources were available for the practice of reusing incidental/cast-off/by-product materials that result from processes of making?
– Which parties or persons recognised, experienced and remarked upon the reuse or further use of the material (craftspeople carrying out the work, clients or the ‘public’)?

2. Techniques
– In what ways is this transformation legible in the finished object (via traces of the artist’s hand, palimpsestic remnants of past materials, etc.)?
– Which materials were historically suitable for reuse or further utilisation, and which processes of collecting, cleaning, dissolving, melting down, grinding, etc. were favoured for this? 
– How can one read objects made of both hyper-local materials and re-/trans-/up-cycled matter, as well as those made of mixed materials?

3. Concepts of value
– In which way were material upgrades or revaluations reflected not only economically but also in terms of content (through material evocations/fictions/imitations)?
– In which cases were reuses of certain materials associated with a revaluation of content (for example, in the transformation of captured bronzes, or in the conversion of inscribed papers into images, etc.)? 
– Where was the lower value of recycled or reused materials deliberately exhibited or emphasised—and why? 
– How were practices of reusing and transforming materials connected to larger medieval and early modern knowledge systems (ecological systems, natural history, the extraction and (alchemical) manipulation of natural resources, etc.)?

Submission
We are calling for proposals that explore topics within this field in a historical context, with preference to the (global) medieval and early modern periods. We welcome papers from diverse geographic and cultural contexts and particularly look forward to those that engage with under-studied materials and/or invisibilized aspects of artistic and artisanal reuse practices.
Please send short proposals for topics (maximum 400 words) along with a short CV
by 20 August 2024 to Kathrin Borgers


OpenEdition schlägt Ihnen vor, diesen Beitrag wie folgt zu zitieren:
techneredaktion (6. August 2024). Call for Papers: Reuse Value? Dimensionen der techne in den Künsten. Abgerufen am 13. Mai 2025 von https://doi.org/10.58079/12542