CSMC Newsletter

‘Beyond Visualising Language’ is an academic conference and art exhibition at the same time – and above all, it is a forum for conversations about the art of writing and writing as a form of art. On 11 May, eight lectures will shed light on calligraphic writing in different traditions. On 12 May, six artists – Dagmara Kraus, Philip Loersch, Davit Maisuradze, Axel Malik, Timo Nasseri, and Mirko Reisser (DAIM) – will present selected works on site and, in conversation with researchers and the audience, explore the relationship between language, writing, meaning, and aesthetics. 

How has writing shaped human societies and cultures and how have these, in turn, adapted writing to their needs? From 18-27 July, a comprehensive summer school gives students the chance to explore central questions of our Cluster under the guidance of leading experts. The course is open to students from the humanities, the natural sciences, and computer sciences with an interest in research on written artefacts, as well as to doctoral and postdoctoral researchers. To give everyone the opportunity to attend, accommodation in Hamburg is included for all participants. In addition, they can apply for a fee waiver and financial support for their travel costs. The deadline for applications is 15 April.

A new Working Group at CSMC focuses on the multifaceted manuscript cultures of ethnic minorities in Southeast and Central Asia. ‘Asian Highland Manuscripts: Manuscript-Making Beyond the State’ aims to develop a methodological framework for the study of manuscripts manufactured by ethnic or religious minorities, such as Tibetan, Naxi, Bai, Yao, Lanten, Hmong, Tai, and various other ethnic groups. It was officially launched on 25 March 2023 during a workshop on ‘The Body of the Spoken Word: The Interconnection of Ritual, Text and Manuscript in Bon and Naxi Traditions’.

Learning how to write is not only important for children’s cognitive development but, as a key cultural technique, also for intercultural understanding and exchange. Based on these ideas, CSMC has recently launched a new teaching programme for primary schools: ‘Mit Griffel, Pinsel oder Federkiel: Schrift und Schreiben(lernen) in den Kulturen der Welt’ (‘With Stylus, Brush, or Quill: Writing in the Cultures of the World’) started in March 2023. The first out of four sessions took place at Brehmweg primary school in Hamburg, where Szilvia Jáka-Sövegjártó introduced the kids to cuneiform clay tablets. The upcoming sessions, all led by a CSMC researcher, will deal with Chinese, Hebrew, and Arabic writing, respectively.

Sometimes, research on written artefacts is like a detective story: with modern methods, writing that had been erased or faded for centuries can be made legible again.  In cooperation with Schülerforschungszentrum Hamburg (SFZ), we are currently offering a four-week course in which pupils in grades 8 to 10 can try to unravel the secrets of lost writings themselves. Sessions take place at SFZ and in the artefact laboratory at CSMC.

The art historian receives the prize for her PhD dissertation ‘Seeing Script? The Visual Aesthetics of Early Humanist Manuscripts’, in which she examines the works of the great Renaissance humanists Poggio Bracciolini and Niccolò Niccoli. The prize is awarded annually in recognition of outstanding art historical studies dedicated to the history of Italian art or architecture from late antiquity to the present day. Philippa Sissis did her PhD at the Graduate School of CSMC, where she defended her dissertation in July 2020. After a postdoc at Universität Kassel, she re-joined CSMC in 2023.

For his research in the field of ‘redirected walking’ – that is, walking in virtual reality – Frank Steinicke has received the IEEE VGTC VR Technical Achievement Award at the international IEEE VR Conference. At CSMC, he is involved in the research projects on ‘Immersive City Scripts: Inscriptions and the Construction of Social Spaces in Miletus (Asia Minor)’ and 'The Interior of the Church in Lucklum: A Compendium on Eraly Modern European Emblematics’.

Since 2020, Universität Hamburg und Kyoto University maintain a strategic partnership. During her recent stay in Hamburg, Mika Yokoyama, who is the Vice-President for International Affairs at Kyoto University, also visited CSMC, where she met Kaja Harter-Uibopuu, co-spokesperson of the Cluster, as well as the Japanologists Eike Großmann and Steffen Döll. To conclude her visit, Sebastian Bosch gave her a tour of the CSMC artefact laboratory. 

In her blog ‘Mesopotamian Bulletins’, Cécile Michel reflects on the significance of Mesopotamian culture for the present and addresses the manifold dangers facing its preservation today. The blog vividly links historical backgrounds with observations on current social developments in the region where the written artefacts she does research on have originated. Since 2022, we have been publishing selected contributions from the French blog in English translation for the first time. Recently, another batch of 24 previously untranslated texts has been made available.

Wherever people commemorate their dead, they use written artefacts. What do funerary inscriptions look like in different cultures, who do they target, and what do they reveal not only about the deceased but also about the societies in which they lived? From 30 March to 1 April, the international workshop ‘Inscribing Funerary Spaces’ explored these and related questions. In our interview, co-organiser Kaja Harter-Uibopuu explains why funerary written artefacts are so intriguing. 

In February and March, Agnieszka Helman-Ważny and Volker Grabowsky travelled through Southeast Asia to preserve the knowledge of a fading manuscript culture. After visiting a traditional papermaking factory in Laos, they crossed the border into northern Thailand. In our blog, they have shared some impressions from their journey. You can also watch the trailer of their upcoming documentary ‘Fading Tradition: Making Palm-Leaf Manuscripts in Northern Thailand’.