University of Helsinki
Conference 26, March 2009 at the University of Southern Denmark
CALL FOR PAPERS
This one-day session makes up the international part of an interdisciplinary conference on Danish architect, designer, poet, cultural critic, film maker etc. Poul Henningsen (1894-1967), a.k.a PH. The conference marks the conclusion of a research project on Poul Henningsen´s role in the process of cultural modernisation, and his attitude to heritage and the function of tradition in that process. The research project is being generously supported by The Danish Research Council for the Humanities, and is being hosted by the University of Southern Denmark at Kolding (Jutland).
PH is probably best known internationally for his innovative lighting system, which was introduced, or rather anticipated, in six award-winning models at the Paris international exposition in 1925. Subsequently, and up to the breakdown of the financial markets at the end of the decade, varieties of the ’PH Lamp’ were shown at a number of exhibitions (e.g. Stuttgart and Leipzig (1927), Barcelona (1929)) and mercantile fairs and shows all over Europe, and its popularity was ensured. Prominent and influential architects, including Walter Gropius, Mies van der Rohe, Hannes Meyer and Alvar Aalto used various models of the lamp in their interiors, both in the late twenties, and in later years. However, economic recession and the world war forced the producer to reduce the range of lamp designs to a few basic models, which survived until the early 1960s, when, after the introduction in 1958 of the ’PH 5’, the most popular and widely distributed model in the series of ’PH Lamps’, glass, the traditional material for lamp shades, was replaced by metal. In the context of the present craze for ’Danish Design’ from its classic periods, the production of several of the old models has been resumed, as is the case with others of PH’s designs (his compact piano in steel, plexiglass and leather, and his furniture in tubular steel). Along with lamp models for the mass market, PH made a large number of site-specific adaptations of the basic principles of his system, and some of these models were later redesigned and introduced to the mass market.
During his lifetime he continuously experimented with light and colour, while remaining a persistent theorist in relation to issues of modern lighting, i.e. lighting in the electric era – the era of the incandescent light bulb. His lamp system was genuinely ’functionalistic’ in every sense of that word, but in spite of the ’modernist’ appearance, the innovative construction and technoid features of the unadorned lamp with its geometric shapes, in his early writings PH ardently disassociated himself from the main representatives of the Modern or Modernist Movement (The Bauhaus, The Soviet Constructivists, De Stijl, L’Esprit Nouveau). He did not consider himself a modernist, since to him, that label was synonymous with formalism. On one occasion he contrasted his three-shade suspended lamp to both ’Modernism’ and what he called ’Traditionism’ in lamp design while he described his own lamp as ’Realism’ with reference to the ’rational’ solution to the problem of the glow lamp that his design materialized. The rational problem solving characterising PH’s design strategy and the visual features of the lamp may account for the inclusion of one of his table lamps in the 2006 V&A exhibition, Modernism: Designing a New World 1914-1939 among the lamps that in one way or another refer to the Metal Workshop at Bauhaus. One may speculate as to whether PH would have approved this inclusion. In retrospect, however, it is historically sound to let the ’PH Lamp’ represent design modernism, irrespective of the declarations of independency by its inventor/creator.
In fact, from the beginning of the 1930s his attitude to Modernism became more supportive as a response to the emerging cultural conservatism at home and abroad, and he positioned himself (and was positioned) as one of the key figures in an intellectual or culturalist opposition that was later labelled ’culture radicalism’, representing a position which, in the cultural debates and struggles of today’s Denmark, is still vehemently attacked by rightwing intellectuals and politicians as the major force in the modernisation of culture and its institutions.
The conference invites submissions for the international one-day session to be held in either Kolding or Odense. We encourage papers and presentations of research from a variety of fields, including: design, art and architectural history, cultural studies, material culture studies, anthropology, history, and other academic fields. Among topics of priority are:
1) The design history of modern lighting; lighting appliances as a modernist scheme; modern and postmodern illuminations of public and private space; illumination and the home – utility, comfort, ambience.
2) Lighting as a possible paradigmatic case of the history of modern design; the modern interpretation of the function-form relation as technically and artistically problematic; comparative studies in local or national adaptations or modifications of mainstream Modernism in lighting design; what is modern/modernist lighting, anyhow?
3) The role of design in cultural modernisation; heritage, tradition and custom as a challenge to modernisation – limitation, obstacle, resource; the role of cultural criticism in relation to cultural change; cultural modernisation as emancipation or repression.
Papers should preferably consider the status of Poul Henningsen in relation to the specific cases or arguments, but papers that focus on more general aspects of the topics suggested are also welcome.
In relation to the conference, and within the context of the research project, two exhibitions focussing on Poul Henningsen’s works and ideas are to be organized simultaneously in Kolding (Trapholt Art Museum) and Odense (the ´Brandts’ Exhibition Hall ) respectively, and a cabaret based on Henningsen´s many popular song texts from revues, films and cabarets will be set up. Also to be shown is a reconstruction of Henningsen´s avant-gardistic, jazzy and, at the time, much disputed documentary, Denmark (1936), which he directed and produced for the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs. It will be arranged for participants of the international session to attend these events.
Publication of papers presented to the conference is planned (one volume in English and one in Danish). Provisional timetable: deadline for submission of one-page abstracts is October 15, 2008. Notification of acceptance by November, 1. Deadline for written version of papers, March 1, 2009. Deadline for final version of manuscript, May 15 2009. Conference from Wednesday to Friday, 25-27 March; the international session will take place on Thursday, 26 March.
Please send preliminary proposals, abstracts and all queries to Jorn Guldberg, Head og Research Project, University of Southern Denmark, Department of Literature, Culture and Media, Engstien 1, DK-6000 Kolding. E-mail: guldberg@litcul.sdu.dk. Tel: + 4565503478 (office) or +4586525285 (home).