Date/Time
Date(s) - 17 Feb 2017
6:30 PM - 8:30 PM
Location
Bettman Lecture Hall, 612 Schermerhorn, Columbia University
Category(ies) No Categories
Please join us next Friday, February 17, for our third and final talk in this year’s Robert Branner Forum for Medieval Art:
Hagia Sophia: A Space In-between Heaven and Earth
Bissera Pentcheva (Stanford University)
Friday, February 17 6:30 p.m.
612 Schermerhorn Hall, Columbia University
Drawing on art and architectural history, liturgy, musicology, acoustics, and digital technology this study explores the Byzantine paradigm of animation as manifested in Hagia Sophia, arguing that it emerges in the visual and sonic mirroring, in the chiastic structure of the psalmody, and in the prosody of the sung poetry. Together these elements orchestrate a multi-sensory experience that has the potential to destabilize the divide between real and oneiric, placing the faithful in a space in between terrestrial and celestial. The use of digital technology to imprint the acoustics of the Great Church on modern performance of Byzantine chant invites a reflection on how our studies in the humanities can transcend the limits of text-based encounter with the past and enter instead the realm of experience and aesthetics.
Bissera Pentcheva teaches medieval art at Stanford University. Her research focuses on animation, phenomenology, aesthetics, and acoustics. Her articles have appeared in the Art Bulletin, Gesta, and Dumbarton Oaks Papers. Her three books include: Icons and Power: The Mother of God in Byzantium, Penn State Press 2006; The Sensual Icon: Space Ritual and The Senses in Byzantium, Penn State Press 2010; and Hagia Sophia: Sound, Space, and Spirit in Byzantium, Penn State Press in 2017. She has just completed an edited volume on art, music, acoustics, and the use of digital technology: Pentcheva, ed., Aural Architecture: Music, Acoustics and Ritual in Byzantium, Ashgate/Routledge 2017.
The event is free and open to the public. Reception to follow. We look forward to seeing many of you there!