Fakes, forgeries and counterfeits are omnipresent as works of art, branded products, biographies, satellite pictures, documents, news, research results, testimonies. They are mimetic practices of unique cultural, economical and political relevance. They alter reality, make history and perform cultural work. As their impact contrasts with their negative connotation, why are they still first and foremost considered as fraud, as deceit, as the shadow of a creative act?

The conference aims to engage an interdisciplinary dialogue on the potential impacts of fakes, involving literature, performance and media studies as well as art history and musicology, with their diverging media and multiple concepts of the original. These practices should be understood as productive mimetic processes and not as morally and legally problematic phenomena. If the so-called original is mimetically constituted, as in the case of art forgery, then faking becomes a phenomenon in the second degree. May that be the fundamental reason for them being discredited?

Venue: Center for Avanced Studies, München

Program

Thursday, 29 October 2015

9.30 Welcome (Christopher Balme, Simone Niehoff)
9.45 OPENING LECTURE Six Degrees of Separation: The Foax as More (Henry Keazor, Heidelberg)
11.00 Coffee

PLAYING WITH FORGERIES
Chair: Katharina Krčal
11.30 The Bacchus’ Six Toes. Defects and Imperfections in Daniel Hopfner’s Copies after Mantegna’s Engravings: a Dissident Translation (Anna-Sophie Pellé, Tours)
12.00 The Artist and the Mountebank: Forgery and the Dynamics of Illusion in the 17th-Century Arts (Jacqueline Hylkema, Leiden)
12.30 Aping the Master: Voltaire Pastiches in 19th-Century France (Manuel Mühlbacher, Munich)
13.00 Lunch at CAS

TRANSFERS OF FORGED OBJECTS
Chair: Bavand Behpoor
14.00 Keynote: fracture and facture: cultural histories of the inauthentic and the collecting of Islamic art (Margaret Graves, Bloomington)
14.45 Keynote: With the Vatican’s Blessing: Marketing Strategies of the Mansur Collection (Sylvia Schoske, Munich)
15.30 Coffee
16.00 Shape Shifters of Transculturation: Giovanni Bastianini’s Forgeries as Embodiment of an Aesthetic Patriotism (Tina Öcal, Heidelberg)
16.30 Keynote: Stefano Bardini: From Fabrication to Masterwork. Documented Strategies for Fabulously Faking (Lynn Catterson, New York)

19.00 EVENING LECTURE
Fälschung – die Kunst der Täuschung (Friedrich Teja Bach, Vienna)

Friday, 30 October

METADISCUSSIONS: FORGERY AS MOTIF
Chair: Manuel Mühlbacher
9.30 Keynote: Fake Supreme: Gaddis, Kierkegaard, and the Art of Recognition (Klaus Benesch, Munich)
10.15 Coffee

10.45 Reevaluating Fraudulence and Imitation: (Re-)Reading Practices in Gottfried Keller’s ‘Die mißbrauchten Liebesbriefe’ (Jessica Resvick, Chicago)
11.15 Reflections on Plagiarism in Borges’ Works Based on the Case ‘El Aleph Engordado’ from Pablo Katschadjain (Florencia Sannders, Munich)
11.45 Reading Painted Faces: The Woman’s Face in the Context of Renaissance Notions on Originality and Deceit in Shakespeare’s ‘Lucrece’ (Thomas Erthel, Munich)
12.15 Lunch at CAS

FAKED LITERARY TRADITIONS
Chair: Annalisa Fischer
13.15 Keynote The Forger as Expert: Autograph Forgeries around 1900 (Anne-Kathrin Reulecke, Graz)
14.15 ‘I have chosen to write notes on imaginary books’: On the ‘Forgery’ of Pretexts (Laura Kohlrausch, Munich)
14.45 Coffee

15.15 Faked Translations: James Macpherson’s Poems of Ossian (Yola Schmitz, Munich)
15.45 Keynote: ‘… charge the Creator with forming objects whose sole purpose was to deceive us’: Preceding Originals (Brigitte Rath, Berlin)

VERNISSAGE: FAKE FOR GLORY
Location: Galerie Royal
19.00 Introduction (Henry Keazor)

Saturday, 31 October

FAKED RELIGIOUS TRADITIONS
Chair: Antonio Chemotti
9.30 Keynote: Orthopraxie vs. Orthodoxie: Zum Fiktionscharakter von Ritualen in der griechisch-römischen Antike (Susanne Gödde, Munich)
10.15 Coffee

10.45 ‘Warhafftige Contrafactur’: The Antichrist as Imitator of Jesus Christ (Anika Höppner, Weimar)
11.15 Creating a Cult, Faking Relics: the Case of St. Dominic of Soriano (Laura Fenelli, Florence)
11.45 Buddha Images as Local Deities in Tamil Speaking South India: Alteration, Misappropriation and Distorted History (Manuvelraj Ponnudarai, New Delhi)
12.15 Lunch at Café Reitschule

THE PERIPHERY OF FAKES
Chair: Gawan Fagard
14.00 Avatars and A.I. The Practice of Counterfeiting Identities in Digital Art (Daniel Becker, Munich)
14.30 Keynote: Mindere Mimesis: Gegenwärtige Formen der Nachstellung (Maria Muhle, Munich)
15.15 Coffee

15.45 Keynote: Fictions, Fakes and Authenticities: Art Projects from Africa and Beyond (Tobias Wendl, Berlin)
16.30 Forging as Subversive Mimetic Practice: Hoaxes and Impostures from ‘Dreadnought Hoax’ to Center for Political Beauty (Simone Niehoff, Munich)
17.00 Wrap up (Henry Keazor)