Session 15 – Pensive Images 5

Maria Barnas & Ilse van Rijn
Ekphrastic Encounters

The poems initiating his literary career assembled in After Nature, already reveal Sebald’s proclivity towards what has been defined as ‘the verbal representation of visual representation’ (Heffernan). In his later writings as well, in the portrait of Max Ferber in The Emigrants most significantly, Sebald puts to work and tests ekphrasis as a literary mode. The earlier mentioned definition of ekphrasis showing the ‘quintessential struggle for mastery between image and word,’ alternative understandings have been brought to the fore as well, challenging notions of subject agency and reversing relations between viewer and viewed (Mitchell), thus paving the way for more recent attempts at a displacement of the ‘struggle for mastery’ trope by anti-hegemonic projects that refuse colonization and incorporation (Harrow) and/or subvert gendered power relationships implicit in intermedial studies (Gronstad).
Taking Sebald’s writings as a focal point for further discussion, this workshop brings together artists, art students and scholars interested in what has been termed ‘new ekphrastic poetics.’ It suggests that other prepositions used to describe the relationships between image and text allow for varied approaches to art works and their ‘differential’ forms (Perloff). Acknowledging that knowledge is available ‘through different channels and by different means,’ we want to experiment with the possibilities of writing poetry in response to, with or towards an art work, thinking through the consequences of such (textual) strategies.
If an artwork can ‘speak’ to us, can a response in writing (poetry) lead to a conversation?
In what sort of works can ‘writing back’ to an artwork result? And how can they be shared? Academic questions and concerns of poetry join students’ experiments and artistic research.

Maria Barnas (NL, 1973) works in the field of poetry and visual art. Both her written and visual work are fuelled by a troubled relationship with language: a love of language as material and an awareness of language’s inherent power mechanisms. Her visual work is represented by Annet Gelink Gallery, Amsterdam. Her written work is published by Van Oorschot.
In recent work, language plays a crucial role in object (sculpture) development. Barnas attempts to give form to the ineffable and has developed objects for alternative communication. Barnas has written many poems in response to artworks by artists such as Amalia Pica, Carlos Amorales and Helen Verhoeven.

Ilse van Rijn (NL, 1975) teaches at the department of Modern and Contemporary Art, University of Amsterdam. She is part of the Word & Image Research Group (ASCA). Her research situates itself at the crossroads of literature and visual art, giving papers on the subject (MaHKU 2018, 2019); IAWIS, 2017; ARRG / ASCA 2018) and publishing on it in Metropolis M and in artists’ publications. Her two book projects include a rewrite of her PhD research, The Artists’ Text as Work of Art (Brill) and a publication on artists’ writings & feminist strategies (Valiz).

Maria Barnas and Ilse van Rijn are programme directors and tutors of Approaching Language, a master programme researching the materiality of language at Sandberg Instituut, Amsterdam.