MURAT ZULEIKA

Progetto Fare "SIDME - Sensory Impairment and Disability in Medieval Europe: Inclusive Approaches for Studying the Experience of Art" - This five-year multidisciplinary project (SIDME) aims to generate an innovative interpretive framework and novel inclusive analytical strategies to investigate paradigms of the experience of art lived by individuals with sensory and physical disabilities in medieval Europe. To achieve this ambitious goal, SIDME will develop a fresh combined approach, incorporating methods and tools derived from different disciplines, including Disability Studies, Sensory Studies, and Material Culture Studies. (07/12/2022 - 06/12/2027)20221207

ERC StG "SenSArt - The Sensuous Appeal of the Holy. Sensory Agency of Sacred Art and Somatised Spiritual Experiences in Medieval Europe (12th-15th century)" - Art moves the eyes. But is sight the only sense we use to experience it? This is a crucial question for Western culture, dominated today by the hegemony of vision. By challenging the current ocularcentric paradigm, and assimilating notions on the cultural values of sensation, the ERC funded SenSArt project provides an examination of medieval sacred art from the unconventional lens of its sensory agency. Between the 12th and the 15th century Europe underwent an extraordinary artistic evolution and an impressive cultural revitalization, which sparked a reassessment of the role of sensory perception in systems of knowledge and spiritual enlightenment. SenSArt explores and compares different social environments in six selected regions, pursuing three objectives: 1) it analyses quantitatively and qualitatively the perceptual schemes that oriented the reception of sacred art, scrutinizing how art solicited its beholders through multiple sensory inputs; 2) it develops and investigates the notion of ‘sensory agency’ of art, establishing sacred art as a primary actor capable of exerting, through sensorial stimulation or deprivation, a social agency on its audience; 3) it provides an overall phenomenology of experiences on a European scale, by comparing the diverse patterns that different social groups lived on a local, regional and supranational scale. (01/09/2021 - 31/08/2026)20210901