"It is true, the spoken word enlightens both the spirit and the soul. Indeed, the HENDRICK’S Master Distiller can often be heard talking at length to her ‘two little sweeties’ – the delightful and peculiarly small copper pot stills from which the most unusual gin flows."
CONGRESS FOR CURIOUS PEOPLES - LONDON EDITION

11am - 5:30 pm Saturday 8th September 2012
 
A one day symposium featuring a host of scholars, writers, and practitioners exploring in panels, illustrated lectures and discussion the intersections explored by the exhibition “Ecstatic Raptures and Immaculate Corpses: Visions of Death Made Beautiful." Themes discussed will include enchantment and enlightenment, or the sublimation of the magical into the rational world; the secret life of objects, or the non-rational allure of objects and the psychology of collecting; and beautiful death and incorruptible bodies, or the shared drive to immortalize the human body and aestheticize death in both medicine and Catholicism.
 
11-12:      
Introduction by Moderator Joanna Ebenstein
Keynote panel: Enchantment and Enlightenment (20 minute presentations followed by moderated discussion)
Moderated by Joanna Ebenstein
        •        David L. Martin, Curious Visions of Modernity: Enchantment, Modernity and the Sacred
        •        Simon Werrett, Fireworks: Pyrotechnic Arts and Sciences in European History
 
12-1: Lunch
 
1-2:30 The Secret Life of Objects: The Allure of Objects and the Psychology of Collecting (20 minute presentations followed by moderated discussion)
Moderated by Ross MacFarlane,  Wellcome Library
         
        •        Ross MacFarlane, Wellcome Library
        •        Petra Lange-Berndt, Cultures of Preservation. The Afterlife of Specimens between Art and Science since the Eighteenth Century
        •        Kate Forde, Wellcome Collection
 
2:30-3:00 break
 
3:00-5:30 Beautiful Death and Incorruptible Bodies: Eternal Life and aestheticized death in medicine and Catholicism
(15 minute presentations followed by moderated discussion)
Moderated by John Troyer, Center for Death and Society, University of Bath   
 
        •        Eleanor Crook, Wax artist
        •        John Troyer, Center for Death and Society, University of Bath   
        •        Gemma Angel, PhD Student ad UCL History of Art
        •        Anna Maerker, Model Experts: Wax Anatomies and Enlightenment in Florence and Vienna, 1775–1815
        •        Simon Chaplin, Wellcome Library  
        •        Sigrid Sarda, Wax artist
        •         William Edwards , The Gordon Museum

The Last Tuesday Society is honoured to house this exhibition and lecture series cultivated in collaboration with Joanna Ebenstein of the rightfully venerated 'Morbid Anatomy' Library, Museum & Blog.

Talks at 11 Mare Street - please click here to buy tickets