RETHINKING THEOSOPHY IN ITS EARLY 20TH CENTURY CULTURAL CONTEXT

Location: Teijin Auditorium, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam
Time: September 26, 2013, 8 – 9:30 pm
Language: English
Entrance: Entrance price to the Stedelijk Museum + additional charge €2,50
Reservations: It is necessary to make a reservation. Send an e-mail to reservations@stedelijk.nl, stating your full name, e-mail address, telephone number, and the date of the program you want to attend.

As part of the conference “Enchanted Modernities: Theosophy and the arts in the modern world,” organized by the University of Amsterdam from September 25 to 27, 2013, the Stedelijk Museum will host the conference’s central keynote lecture, entitled “Rethinking Theosophy in its Early 20th-Century Cultural Context,” by Professor Linda Dalrymple Henderson. The lecture will focus on the deep interest of modern artists in new scientific discoveries at the turn of the 20th century, mediated through theosophical and esoteric discourses.

The keynote presentation will be followed by a roundtable session with contemporary artists Christine Ödlund and Fredrik Söderberg that will further enunciate the discussion of theosophy and the notion of the spiritual in modern and contemporary art. The roundtable conversation is moderated by conference organizers Marco Pasi (University  of Amsterdam) and Sarah Turner (University of York).

MORE INFORMATION ABOUT THE SPEAKERS

Linda Dalrymple Henderson (professor, College of Fine Arts, University of Texas, Austin) is an acknowledged specialist in the relationship of modern art to fields such as geometry, science and technology, and mystical and occult philosophies. She is the author of The Fourth Dimension and Non-Euclidean Geometry in Modern Art (Princeton University Press, 1983; new ed., MIT Press, 2012), and Duchamp in Context: Science and Technology in the Large Glass and Related Works (Princeton, 1998).

Christine Ödlund lives and works in Stockholm. She graduated from Electro Acoustic Music (EAM course), EMS, Stockholm in 2004, from the Royal College of Art, Stockholm in 1996, and Konstfack, Stockholm in 1995. In 2013, she has participated in In the stream at Lunds Konsthall; freq_out 9, Sonic Acts Festival, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam; and Art and Music – Search for New Synesthesia, Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo. In August 2013, her public artwork Lindarnas anatomi was unveiled in Kista Gårds Park outside Stockholm and later this year her work Atlantis No. 2/2012 will be installed in Statoil Oslo Offices, Fornebu, Oslo. As a sound artist, she has released Astral Bells (24-min single CD), Federation of Swedish Art Associations, 2013.

Fredrik Söderberg lives and works in Stockholm. He studied at Konstfack University College of Arts between 1995-2000 and the Royal Institute of Art, Stockholm in 2002. His latest solo presentations include At the Feet of the Guru, at the Galleri Riis Stockholm (2012) and at the National Historical Museum in Stockholm in 2011. Upcoming events include a major solo show in Galleri Riis in Oslo (October 2013).

– See more at: http://www.stedelijk.nl/en/calendar/forum/rethinking-theosophy-in-its-early-20th-century-cultural-context#sthash.m9RYLTDD.itL4RQb2.dpuf