Workshop – Using GIS in art history: the example of the Decentralized Modernities Platform [MoDe(s)]
By Noa Buffavand
31 March 2023, 14.30 – 16.00
2e congrès Rotondes des jeunes chercheurs et chercheuses en Histoire de l’art et archéologie
Galerie Colbert, Institut national d’histoire de l’arte – INHA
The purpose of this workshop is to share my experience with the Decentralized Modernities research platform and to propose an example of methodology, based on digital humanities, for the de-canonization of the notion of “center/peripheries” and for the conception of a horizontal history of art (Piotr Piotrowski, “Du tournant spatial ou une histoire horizontale de l’art”). Firstly, this workshop will introduce the MoDe(s) Database and Palladio Digital Humanities, a data visualization platform developed by Stanford University. The use of these platforms will be accompanied by comments and practical explanations on how they work and how to use them (in particular the different features of Palladio). The aim is then to demonstrate their use in various research cases, by presenting the GIS articles on the MoDe(s) plataforme, produced using these tools. Once these demonstrations are finished, there will be a discussion with the participants of the workshop. We can then discuss the strengths and limitations of these platforms and methods, the usefulness of such tools in one’s own research and, more broadly, the notions of “center/peripheries”, “cultural transfer”, “transnational” and/or “canon”, thus joining the theme of the conference En finir avec le canon? Formation, continuity, rupture of references in art history and archaeology.
Noa Buffacand is graduated with a double degree in Art History – Modern Letters from the University of Grenoble Alpes. Currently, Master’s student at the University of Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne. Her first master’s thesis focused on the engaged discourses produced and disseminated in France by the Taller de Gráfica Popular, a collective graphic workshop in Mexico City (1937-1960), through the constitution of a collection now preserved at the Bibliothèque Kandinsky – Centre Pompidou (Paris). Currently in Master2, she is working on the transnational network of graphic art workshops inspired by the Taller de Gráfica Popular during the Cold War (1947-1989).
In the spring of 2019, she participated as an editorial intern in the Corr-Proust project, aiming at the digital edition of Marcel Proust’s correspondence. Her internship with MoDe(s) for the summer of 2021 was focused on a Puerto Rican art magazine from the early 1970s, Revista de arte/The art review.
