The 2024 Lars Elleström Guest Lecture – Miriam Vieira
This week IMS hosts the 2024 Lars Elleström Guest Lecture given by Miriam Vieira.
"Recalculating the route: [still] in the search for a systemic approach of architecture’s presence in contemporary narratives."
Miriam Vieira is a professor at Universidade Federal de São João del Rei, Brazil. Her research interests are Comparative Literature and Intermedial Studies, with a focus on ekphrasis, adaptation, and the relations between literature and architecture.
Miriam de Paiva Vieira:
The aim of this seminar is to briefly present the achieved results of my ongoing research in order to discuss further possibilities of a systemic approach to the studies on intermediality in a sustainable context of the study of transformation between different media, with emphasis on interactions between Literature, Multimodal Narratives and Architecture.
The point of departure has been the promotion of a greater integration of comparative studies among different forms of communication and artistic expression, based on the proposal of architectural ekphrasis interpretive model and delimitation of the modes of architecture (Vieira) likely to be transmediated (Elleström) by the means of words. At first, the proposal was to investigate narratives in which (a) the presence of the architect is essential; (b) the focus is rather on unplanned architecture, that is, self-built environments (c) architecture appears in the form of diagrammatic representations, such as photographs and maps. For the first point, the notion of “home” (Bachelard) was integrated, as for the second, “Environmental racism” (Chaves) has played an important role. The third one craved for the integration of a multimodal approach to the intermedial one as they are indeed “stronger together” (Schirrmacher & Jensen). Besides, along the way, I have felt the need to include literary scholars from the Global South (Domingos, Ludmer, Miranda, Souza, among others). Thus, the detours on the initial plan demands some sort of recalculation at this point.
Photo: 'Aurora - Connecting Senses’, Cristina Pop-Tiron & Signe Kjær Jensen