Dear all,
Please find details below of the King's German Studies Research Seminar next Wednesday, when Gareth Polmeer (Royal
College of Art) will speak about ‘Hegel, Dialectic and the Experience of Nature’ in the context of
Austrian and German experimental films of trees. All welcome!
Unless stated otherwise, seminars take place in Room 6.01,Virginia Woolf Building, 22 Kingsway, WC2B 6NR
Wednesday 17 February, 2016: 12.30-2pm (Chair: Martin Brady)
Gareth Polmeer, Royal College of Art
‘Impermanence and the Image of Trees: Hegel, Dialectic and the Experience of Nature’
In the preface to the 1807 Phenomenology of Spirit Hegel uses the image of a growing plant to illustrate ‘the whole’ in
which the positive and negative form dialectical, reciprocal ‘moments of an organic unity’. This image encapsulates the ‘immanent movement’ of Hegel’s speculative philosophy, and is reflected in the discussion of the ‘inner necessity’ of the work of art in
his aesthetics. Throughout the preface to the Phenomenology Hegel speaks of ‘self-movement’, ‘transition’, ‘rhythm’, ‘sequence’ and ‘process’.
Connecting these terms for logical sequence to the dialectical structure of the work of art I screen a selection of Austrian and
German experimental films of trees, relating their formal techniques, systematic development and use of scores to themes of image, music, nature and time in Hegel’s philosophy. I discuss the contemporary import of Hegel’s thought to questions of ‘second nature’
and film aesthetics in twentieth century German thought, outlining ways that his philosophy offers critical contemporary perspectives for the relations of reason and the aesthetic, and of how the image ‘points beyond itself’ in the transience of time.
Forthcoming Seminars
Wednesday 2 March, 2016: 4.30-6.00pm,
S-1.27 (first basement Strand Building)
César Domínguez, University of Santiago de Compostela
‘World Literature and the Law’
Wednesday 23 March, 2016: 12.30-2pm
Dora Osborne, Durham University
‘Archive as Memorial/Memorial as Archive in German Memory Culture’
Dr Katya Krylova
Teaching Fellow in German
Department of German
King’s College London
Room 5.10 Virginia Woolf Building
22 Kingsway
London WC2B 6LE
+44 (0)20 7848 2167
Secretary, Women in German Studies (WIGS)