Diagrams

As visual representations of thinking, diagrams are ubiquitous across human cultures, and remain fascinatingly effective in contemporary theory. By a reduction to a two-dimensional graphic vocabulary of lines and dots, diagrams enable us to grasp the movement and possibility of complex processes like games, weather formation, machine-learning training, and so on. The potential of spatialized images for scientific knowledge is far more than instrumental, as Gilles Châtelet beautifully captured in Figuring Space: ‘A diagram can transfix a gesture, bring it to rest, long before it curls up into a sign, which is why modern geometers and cosmologists like diagrams with their peremptory power of evocation. They capture gestures mid-flight; for those capable of attention, they are the moments where being is glimpsed smiling.’

The symposium Diagrams Between Gestures and Spaces is dedicated to exploring the material appearance and internal mechanism of diagrams. The first part will consist of close-reading exercises. Participants will look at and discuss single diagrams from various disciplines, found in literature or self-made by the participants, in order to account for their formal strategies, possible variations and conceptual consequences. The second part will delve into a theoretical exploration on the defining features and possibilities of diagrammatic thought and history. By drawing from key figures and formal aspects of diagrams, it will delineate the formal and explanatory potential of diagrams, in their multiple implementations as conceptual instruments and vehicles for explanation. The third part will consider diagrams in the context of art history and visual studies. It will explore historical and contemporary examples of how image-making has shaped different conceptual systems and material cultures. Drawing from architecture, design theory, and media studies, the symposium will articulate a formal enquiry into the nature of diagrams.

Charles Alunni
Eric de Bruyn
Sietske Fransen
Paul Heinicker
Francesco La Mantia
Alessandro Sarti
Anne-Françoise Schmid

Filippo Bosco and Yuri Di Liberto

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Image credit: Hans Kayser, Construction of the Scale Octagon, Lehrbuch der Harmonik, Occident Verlag, 1950