On May 14 2025, Professor Roberta Maierhofer (University of Graz) will join us for a guest lecture. The lecture will be held at the KU Eichstätt in the Interim building, Room 201, from 4 to 6 pm. In case you want to join us digitally, kindly subscribe to the newsletter or email us at gk-practicingplace@ku.de.
You can find the abstract of her talk below.
“Faces, Places, and Moments of Connections: Visages Villages (2017) by Agnès Varda and JR as Intergenerational Representations of Time and Place”
Whereas Varda’s documentary The Beaches of Agnès (2007) focuses on memory as “sand in my hand,” her collaborative work with the muralist JR Visages Villages (2017) emphasizes passing moments as visually representing life-affirming connections between people from different backgrounds and places at different stages of their lives. Agnès Varda, a prominent figure in French New Wave cinema, who made her first feature-length film La Pointe Courte in 1955, plays in her own cinematic life-story “the role of a little old lady.” In Visages Villages (2017), however, the intergenerational collaboration allows for a stronger acknowledgement of similarities and differences over the life-course, and captures identities as spatial stories in the here and now. The message that “each face tells a story” is also present in the translation of the film title into English (Faces Places) and German (Augenblicke: Gesichter einer Reise). Whereas the English term emphasizes the spatial aspect of the film, the German title focuses on capturing passing moments by traveling in time. In both instances, the message of the film, “to meet new faces and photograph them” in order not to forget, is countered by the emphasis on the value of momentary encounters in different places captured through art. In my presentation, I will discuss Visages Villages (2017) as providing an imaginative reflection of beauty as dynamic and performative, determined by our limited time and situated in momentary places. In addition, it carries a subtle and unobtrusive political message: the necessity of establishing intergenerational connections as mutual and supportive relationships at all times, and in all places.
Roberta Maierhofer is a professor of American Studies and director of the Center for Inter-American Studies (C.IAS) at the University of Graz, Austria. From 1999 to 2011, she held a series of Vice-Rector positions for International Relations (1999-2003), International Relations and Affirmative Action for Women (2003-2007), and International Relations and Interdisciplinary Cooperation (2007-2011). Her expertise in regional and interregional collaboration has been fundamental to her leadership role at the Center for Inter-American Studies, which she has directed since February 2007. Since 2004, she has been directing the Graz International Summer School Seggau, which was established as an interdisciplinary and intercultural platform in the fields of European and Inter-American Studies. Recently, she has been appointed Co-Director of the newly founded Graz School of Interdisciplinary Transnational Studies (2025). Her research focuses on (Inter)-American Literature and Cultural Studies, Gender Studies, Transatlantic Cooperation in Education, Interculturality, Narrative Didactics, as well as Age/Aging Studies. In her publication Salty Old Women: Gender, Age, and Identity in American Culture, she developed a theoretical approach to gender and aging (anocriticism), and from 1990 on, was one of the first to define her work within the field of cultural/ narrative gerontology.
