Spaces of Vision – Topographies of Knowledge. Early Modern Anatomical Theatres between Art, Nature and Science

• Applicant: Dr.-Ing. Christine Beese
• Subject Area: Art History
• Term: since 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 513527639

The project investigates the role of anatomical theatres as built spaces in the formation of a scientific sphere and in the implementation of epistemological paradigm shifts in the early modern period. Within the framework of a diachronic entangled history, twenty European and Latin American anatomical theatres will be detached from a story of progress in the history of architecture and medicine and newly related to each other against the background of shifting epistemes. The narrative of "central" and "peripheral" places of science is juxtaposed with a narrative that emphasises the local impact potential of the buildings and understands their material presence as a decisive factor in the formation and implementation of "science". Against the backdrop of imperial, colonial, racist and patriarchal claims to power and the exercise of power, the study illuminates the role of anatomical theatres in the enforcement of specific images of man and society as well as a European concept of science as a universal model of world explanation and order. The chosen diachronic approach takes into account historical depth dimensions in the form of reflections and resonances. It thus brings to light a simultaneity of the non-simultaneous that questions common "progress" narratives of an expulsion of the miraculous, a reification of the corpse, an increasing exclusion of sensual experience or the enforcement of publicity in science. By understanding the spaces not as a purely functional structure, but as the result of creative and constructive decisions against the background of a differentiating theory of art and architecture, the significance of craftsmanship for the modern production of knowledge will be demonstrated and at the same time modernist discourses of functionality and neutrality will be historicised.

• DFG Programme: Independent Junior Research Groups