Periodic Reporting for period 1 - CARMEN (Communal Art - Reconceptualising Metrical Epigraphy Network)
Okres sprawozdawczy: 2020-10-01 do 2022-09-30
Widespread notions of hierarchies of art and aesthetic standards are one of the last bastions of the exclusive and colonial view on human abilities that CARMEN seeks to attack: art production of the Ancient world. Poems and their musical counterparts, songs, are profoundly democratic by nature – in ancient and modern cultures alike. Our CARMEN research projects are part of an academic and societal discourse about the forms of expression, practices, relevance, and esteem of popular culture. The immediate impact of and the tensions arising from judgements about popular culture are particularly evident in modern cultural politics and funding of the arts. Focusing on the artistic folklore of the Roman Empire, the results of CARMEN will contribute to the scientific basis for an inclusive, decolonised discourse on art and aesthetics. It will foster the discussion of notions of quality, beauty, and evaluation criteria independent of the social class of authors and artists.
Apart from this exciting and socially relevant task of CARMEN and the individual ESR projects, an essential goal is to train eleven excellent young people for the Europe of tomorrow. For this purpose, they receive permanent support in three areas: they acquire and develop 1) specific research qualification, as each ESR is responsible for one project and the dissemination of its results, 2) academia-related qualification, as the network structure, interdisciplinary cooperation and the variety of meth¬odological approaches convey strong academic competences beyond the field of the project, and 3) transferable skills including support in individual career plan¬ning. Moreover, all ESRs benefited from two-month internships outside academia where they came to know perspectives for their personal future other than university.
Our well-designed dissemination and communication activities outside the narrower scientific environment, however, have fallen by the wayside. Only a few outreach activities were possible, and we intend to do more in this regard in 2023/2024. A podcasted poetry slam is planned for April and a presentation of the CARMEN project and interim results of the ESRs is envisaged for an exhibition in late summer 2023.
In fact, individual "nuggets" of information have already come to light during the intensive study of the material, but these aspects still need to be contextualised by the doctoral students. However, we highly recommend reading our newsletters, which are incredibly stimulating and reflect the team's fun of working together, its scientific curiosity, and its European-international sense of community.
As the framework is in place and the CARMEN approach is on everyone's mind, there is no doubt that our ITN CARMEN will contribute to unearthing the very roots of European cultural heritage and will help to establish a contem¬porary, non-elitist, tolerant European view on our culture, both ancient and modern.