Online Only Poster Session: Online Only Room 1
The Malonga Casquelourd Center for the Arts and Arts Hospitality in Oakland, California View Digital Media
Poster Session Selena Chau
The 1927 Oakland Women's City Club has endured for over 90 years. Tracing its cultural and performing arts history considers its use within the local context of population and economic fluxes, and questions the future sustainability of arts organizations. This building was not built exclusively for the arts but was reimagined in the 1980s as a city-owed arts center that housed the Oakland Ensemble Theatre: the city's first and only professional black theater company. Now called the Malonga Casquelourd Center for the Arts, its new identity as an arts center persists owing to the advocacy of community performing arts groups who used the building. Currently, city financial support and grants helps prevent the displacement of its current residents, the Malonga Arts Collective. Hospitality, belonging, and gathering are themes that are reflected in the changing views and uses of this Oakland, California building. The city of Oakland promotes its vibrant arts community as a way to welcome new business and residents, while arts groups with a sense of belonging in this building and city must continuously find ways to work and live in their city.
Space as Kant’s a Priori Categories in Wilhelm Worringer’s Methodology : Influence on the German Expressionists
Poster Session Roksana Gumerova
In his 1908 book “Abstraction and Empathy: A Contribution to the Psychology of Style”, Wilhelm Robert Worringer sets out his methodology. According to Worringer, all art is divided into two types: figurative, the creation of which is preceded by the impulse to empathy, and non-figurative, the aesthetic prerequisite of which is the will to abstraction. The book is often associated with German Expressionism. However, the prevailing scholarly consensus on the influence of Worringer on German Expressionism remains contentious. While Ursula Helg, Thomas Röske, Richard Hamann, Ulrich Weisstein contend for the substantiated influence of Worringer on German Expressionism, David Morgan, Michael Jennings demure, asserting that attributing Worringer to the primary ideologues of German Expressionism is misguided. In order to answer the question of whether Worringer could have been an influence on German Expressionism, it is necessary to turn to the conceptual origins of the will to abstraction. The will to abstraction is preceded, according to Worringer, by an immense spiritual fear of space, and one of the conceptual origins of the formation of the will to abstraction is the understanding of space as an a priori category of contemplation set out in the teachings of Kant. Another conceptual source of the will to abstraction is fear as understood by Kierkegaard. Consideration of the conceptual origins leads to the conclusion that German Expressionism, based mainly on Nietzsche, Schopenhauer and Bergson, and Worringer's methodology have different foundations.
