A project developed within CU-CNRS Tandem Program supported by Charles University, CNRS and CEFRES
Project principal investigators:
Anne FORNEROD (CNRS, University of Strasbourg / CEFRES)
Barbora SPALOVÁ (ISS FSV / CEFRES)
ANNOTATION
This project aims to investigate the agency of both the presence and absence of religious buildings in Europe. Since over two decades now, the question of the future of religious heritage and the repurposing of buildings mobilises many academic studies, covering various disciplinary approaches and geographical areas, whether at the regional or national level. Even a rapid review of the immeasurable academic literature in this field reveals however that it generally tends to a sector-based approach and consequently segmented approach, whether by type of religious building, by geographical area, or by historical period (middle age, contemporary architecture…).
The starting hypothesis of the present research consists in considering that churches and monasteries in Europe are agentive phenomena. They are not only monuments worthy of conservation, but actively enter into spatial, emotional, political, economic, symbolic, and social relationships with their surroundings and are established by these relationships, just as they help to reestablish their surroundings again and again. In short, we ask: what does the presence or absence of churches and monasteries “do”? A key premise is that presence goes beyond material existence: buildings that no longer exist may continue to exert influence through memory, symbolism, or spatial orientation. Absence can be as agentive as presence.
The aim of this Tandem programme is to explore this hypothesis by comparing the Czech and French contexts.
Hence, the work of the CNRS and the CU researcher will take two closely related directions. On the one hand, they will identify the relevant points of comparison that have resonance in their respective disciplines (e.g., how the issue of spoliations and restitutions of property echoes in two different contexts and times). On the other, and above all, they will work on the selection of comparable case studies, in Czechia and in France. In this regard, this will enable them to test the methodology, which mainly draws on combining the case study qualitative method with legal research, including empirical legal research.
The discussion will be open up to In this respect to colleagues from other disciplines, in order to understand the agency of religious buildings on multiple levels: as an effect of architectural materiality, but also as being shaped by economic, legal, political, and spatial dynamics.
© Stanislav Tryputen