International Walter Benjamin Society

International Walter Benjamin Society Conference

The Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv University, 2015

Organizers: Eli Friedländer, Yoav Rinon, Ilit Ferber, Vivian Liska

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Final Program Conference

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Bus Schedule

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conference program

Sunday, December 13 (Tel Aviv)

09.30-10:00               greetings Gilman Building, Drachlis Hall (Room 496)

10:00-12:00               2 parallel sessions

Benjamin’s Cities (Chairs: Richard I. Cohen and Bernd Witte)

Gilman Building, Drachlis Hall (Room 496)

1. Karol Sauerland (University of Warsaw), “Moskau als mehrfach unbewältigter Raum”
2. Edward Waysband (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem), “’Wo viel Raum ist, da ist viel Zeit': The ‘Asiatic’ Chronotope in Thomas Mann’s Magic Mountain and Walter Benjamin’s Moscow Diary”
3. Brian Britt (Virginia Tech), “Cosmic, Literary Jerusalem”

Space and Time (Chairs: Andrew Benjamin and Sigrid Weigel)

Gilman Building, Yerushalmi Hall (Room 449)

1. Maria Teresa Costa (Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz, Max-Planck-Institut), “Benjamin ‘s Spaces of Thought – Space as Epistemo-critical Category”
2. Damiano Roberi (University of Turin), “The uncertainty of the Sphinx: Nature as Threshold in Benjamin’s reflections”
3. Yoav Beirach (Tel Aviv University), “Color Out of Space: some thoughts about reality before spatiality in Benjamin”
4. Ole W. Fischer (University of Utah), “Architecture in the Age of Its Digital Reproducibility? – Walter Benjamin, Immersion and the Digital Image”

12.00-13.00                lunch break

13.00-15.00                2 parallel sessions

History of a Place – Biography of an Individual (Chairs: Yoav Rinon and Ilit Ferber)

Gilman Building, Drachlis Hall (Room 496)

1. Thomas Regehly (Philosophisches Kolloquium: Kritische Theorie Frankfurt), “…But I have been there! – Living in a postcard or the power of the imaginary space of time”
2. Friederike Heimann (Freelance literary critic and author, Hamburg), “Kolonien des Blumeshof: Zu Walter Benjamins und Gertrud Kolmars raumzeitlichen Gedächtnisbildern einer kindheitsbeherrschenden Epoche”
3. Michael Paninski (University of Vienna), “From terra nullius to persona nullius – Investigations on sovereignty without a sovereign: Benjamin/Brecht”

Dream Locales – Dream Spaces – Dream Configurations (Chairs: Galili Shahar and Itta Shedletzky)

Gilman Building, Yerushalmi Hall (Room 449)

1. Regina Karl (Yale University), “Thresholds: Dream and Awakening in Sigmund Freud and Walter Benjamin”
2. Ben Morgan (Worcester College, Oxford), “Situating Visceral Interaction: The Spatiality of Human Communication in Benjamin’s Essays of the 1930s and Recent Developmental Psychology and Cognitive Neuroscience”
3. Roy Brand (Bezalel Academy of Art and Design), “Experiment in the Technique of Awakening”

15.00-15.30                coffee break

15.30-17.30                2 parallel sessions

Jewish Spaces – Judaism and Spatiality (Chairs: Vivian Liska and Amnon Raz-Krakotzkin)

Gilman Building, Drachlis Hall (Room 496)

1. Orr Scharf (The Open University of Israel), “Time as Space and Space as Time: Walter Benjamin’s Urban Reflections as a Form of Secular Mysticism”
2. Lina Barouch (I-Core Da’at Hamakom / Franz Rosenzweig Minerva Research Center & DLA Marbach), “Walter Benjamin and Gershom Scholem: Space and its Overcoming”
3. Danielle Cohen-Levinas, (Paris-Sorbonne University), “ Language and Revelation: Franz Rosenzweig and Walter Benjamin”
4. Eric Kligerman (University of Florida), “From Kant’s Starry Skies to Kafka’s Odradek: Walter Benjamin and The Quantum of History”

Dwelling and Thresholds (Chairs: Steven Aschheim and Joseph Mali)

Gilman Building, Yerushalmi Hall (Room 449)

1. Robert Krause (University of Freiburg), “On the Verge. Arcades and Passages between work, leisure and idleness”
2. Antonio Roselli (University of Paderborn), “’Und indem sie sich kundgeben, kontrollieren sie sich.’ Class consciousness as an effect of spacial dispositifs”
3. Thomas Wegmann (University of Innsbruck), “Stairways, Hallways, and Corridors. About Distance and Distinction in Interstices”

17:30-18:00               coffee break

18:00-19:00               “Dear Walter – Dear Gerhard Walter Benjamin on the Stage: Remarks on the Dramaturgy of ‘Passport’ (With video-excerpts from the performance directed by Yael Cramksy)” – Freddie Rokem, Tel Aviv University Gilman Building, Drachlis Hall (Room 496)

Monday, December 14 (Tel Aviv)

09:00-11:00               2 parallel sessions

Spatial Figures of Thinking (Chairs: Birgit Erdle and Eli Friedlander)

Gilman Building, Drachlis Hall (Room 496)

1. Annegret Pelz (University of Vienna), “Denkbild Weimar. Philologische Erneuerung im Zeichen der Tischszene”
2. Natalie Chamat (Free University of Berlin), “Thinking Space in Writing and Reading Languages: Die Aufgabe des Übersetzers / Einbahnstraße”
3. Sonia Goldblum (University of Haute-Alsace), “Letters between places and spaces. Benjamin’s other ‘language arcades’”

The Political Dimension of Space (Chairs: Annabel Herzog and Moshe Zuckermann)

Recanati Building Room 405

1. Milena Massalongo (University of Verona), “When Time and Space become technically reproducible: Benjamin’s Moves against the Aestheticization of Thinking”
2. Andreas Greiert (Independent Historian), “Topicality or Actualization. Benjamin’s Space of Experience and the Scholarship’s Spaces of Discourse”
3. Wolfram Malte Fues (University of Basel), “Der auratische Raum”

11:00-11:30                coffee break

11:30-13:30                2 parallel sessions

Benjamin’s Cities (Chairs: Richard I. Cohen and Bernd Witte)

Gilman Building, Drachlis Hall (Room 496)

1. Naama Dar Amir (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem), “London Fairs and the Flâneur”
2. Yossi Brill (Tel Aviv University / University of Munich), “From the Campo Santo in Milan to the Corsican Holy Field: Stone and Space in Benjamin’s Thinking”
3. Patricia A. Gwozdz (University of Potsdam), “Absorbing Time through the Porosity of Space. Reading Benjamin with Borges”

Space and Time (Chairs: Andrew Benjamin and Sigrid Weigel)

Recanati Building Room 405

1. Eran Dorfman (Tel Aviv University), “Space, Time and Repetition: Regaining the Aura of the Habitual”
2. Nitzan Lebovic (Lehigh University), “A Time for Benjamin, the last European”
3. Jörg Kreienbrock (Northwestern University), “Benjamin’s ‘Conversation above the Corso': The Time and Place of Carnival”

13:30-14:30              lunch break

14:30-16:00             Doctoral students meeting Gilman building, Drachlis hall (room 496) Book presentation

16.15-17:45             Keynote lecture: Georges Didi-Huberman (École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris), “Aperçus en sens multiples” [Glimpses in Multiple-Ways Street] (In French withsimultaneous English translation) Gilman building, Berger Hall (room 223)

19:00-20:00             Visit to the Walter Benjamin exhibition. Guides: Ursula Marx, Noam Segal, Nadine Werner, Raphael Zagury-Orly

Tuesday, December 15 (Jerusalem)

08:00                         buses leave from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem

10:00-12:00              2 parallel sessions

History of a Place – Biography of an Individual (Chairs: Yoav Rinon and Ilit Ferber) The Mandel Building: room 530

1. Yael Almog (Zentrum für Literatur- und Kulturforschung Berlin), “City Life: Walter Benjamin’s World of Things”
2. Dafna Shetreet ( Tel Aviv University), “Dialectics of collapse and conservation in Walter Benjamin’s autobiographical writings: Berlin Childhood around 1900”
3. Sabine Schiller-Lerg (University of Applied Sciences, Münster), “An der Peripherie der Kultur. Walter Benjamins Amerika”

Dream Locales – Dream Spaces – Dream Configurations (Chairs: Galili Shahar and Itta Shedletzky) The Mandel Building: Auditorium

1. Caroline Sauter (Zentrum für Literatur- und Kulturforschung Berlin), “Paysage fantomatique: Benjamin’s Dreams”
2. Nikos Tzanakis Papadakis (Freie Universität, Berlin),“Der Ort des Unterdrückten und seine Zeit”
3. Lena Stölzl (University of Vienna), “Image, dialectics and the topographies of awakening”

12:00-13:00               lunch break

13:00-15.00               2 parallel sessions

Jewish Spaces – Judaism and Spatiality (Chairs: Vivian Liska and Amnon Raz-Krakotzkin) The Mandel Building: room 530

1. Idit Alphandary (Tel Aviv University), “The Time and Places of Forgiveness, Justice, and Historical Responsibility.”
2. Agata Bielik-Robson (University of Nottingham), “Benjamin’s Swamps: The Space of the Antinomian”
3. Fabrizio Desideri (University of Florence), “Intermittency: the differential of the time and the integral of the space. The intensive spatiality of the Monad, the Apokatastasis and the Messianic  World in Benjamin’s latest thinking”
4. Valentin Mertes (University of Vienna), “Apokatastasis als Verfahren”

Dwelling and Thresholds (Chairs: Steven Aschheim and Joseph Mali) The Mandel Building: Auditorium

1. Yogev Zusman (Independent Scholar), “On Benjamin’s Porous Monadology: Polyspatiality, Entropy and the ‘Spark of Contingency’”
2. Tim Altenhof (Yale School of Architecture), “Aura and Interpenetration in Sigfried Giedion and Walter Benjamin”
3. Tobias Ebbrecht-Hartmann (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem), “Inhabiting the Inter-Space: Walter Benjamin’s Porous Places as Room-for-Play”
4. Isabel v. Wilcke (Leuphana University Lüneburg), “Aura – place of dwelling to another world/ Aura-Schwellenort zu einer anderen Welt ”

15:00-15:30               coffee break

15:30-16:30               panel: Benjamin in Israel (Chair: Vivian Liska): Moshe Idel (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem), Amnon Raz-Krakotzkin (Ben-Gurion University of the Negev and the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute), Yoav Rinon (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem)

16.30-16.45               coffee break

16.45-18.15               keynote lecture: Eva Geulen (Zentrum für Literatur- und Kulturforschung Berlin/Goethe Universität, Frankfurt), “Borders and Limits in Walter Benjamin” The Mandel Building: Auditorium

18:15-18:45               buses to the Israel Museum

18:45-20:00               a guided tour at the museum, including Paul Klee’s  Angelus Novus

20:00                          buffet at the museum

21:00                          buses back to Tel Aviv

Wednesday, December 16 (Jerusalem)

08:00                         buses leave from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem

10:00-12:00              2 parallel sessions

Spatial figures of thinking (Chairs: Birgit Erdle and Eli Friedlander) The Mandel Building: Auditorium

1. Sarah Scheibenberger (Leipzig University), “’Einsicht in die Fügung’. Benjamins Hölderlin-Aufsatz im Lichte einer Lektüre von Aristoteles”
2. Stefano Marchesoni (University of Trento), “Aporias of Spatial Discontinuity. Walter Benjamin and Aristotle’s Physics”
3. Roy Amir (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem), “Ursprung, Umweg, and the (im)purity of time and space: Hermann Cohen and Walter Benjamin”

The Political Dimension of Space (Chairs: Ilit Ferber and Vivian Liska) The Mandel Building: room 530

1. Adam Lipszyc (Polish Academy of Science), “The Space of Exception”
2. Ariel Handel (Ben Gurion University / Tel Aviv University), “The right to get lost: the politics of wandering in the Occupied Territories”
3. Christian Schulte (University of Vienna), “’Das gelobte Land der Sabotage’ – Der Gestus der Deterritorialisierung bei W. Benjamin”

12:00-13:00               society meeting: The Mandel Building: Auditorium

13:00-14:00               lunch break

14:00-16:00               2 parallel sessions

Benjamin’s Cities (Chairs: Richard I. Cohen and Bernd Witte) The Mandel Building: room 530

1. Marcio Seligmann Silva (State University of Campinas, Brazil), “From Porosity to Transparency: Interpenetration of Time and Space in Walter Benjamin’s City philosophy”
2. Daniel Weidner (Zentrum für Literatur- und Kulturforschung Berlin / Humboldt University, Berlin), “ Theatre of History and Space of Memory. The Poetics of the Panorama in Brod, Broch, and Benjamin”
3. Henrik Reeh (University of Copenhagen), “Spatialized Time and Historic Cityscapes: Walter Benjamin and Léon Daudet’s Paris vécu (Lived Paris)”

Spatial figures of thinking (Chairs: Birgit Erdle and Eli Friedlander) The Mandel Building: Auditorium

1. Noam Melamed (Tel Aviv University), “The Life of the Educator”
2. Ori Rotlevy (Tel Aviv University), “The Detour as a Spatio-Temporal Figure for Schooling the Mind”
3. Clemens-Carl Härle (University of Siena), “Raumzeitfiguren bei Benjamin”

16:00 -16:30           coffee break

16:30-18:00            keynote lecture: Michael W. Jennings (Princeton University), “Toward the Apokatastatic Will: Media, Theology, and Politics in Walter Benjamin’s Late Work” The Mandel Building: Auditorium

18:00                      concluding remarks; dinner/buffet

19.30                      buses back to Tel Aviv