彼得•施内曼(Peter J. Schneemann)，伯尔尼大学艺术史研究所教授，现当代艺术史系主任，研究方向包括美国艺术史、话语分析、艺术观察范式、生态学、艺术教育、档案、艺术展览和博物馆学等。

蒂里•迪弗勒内(Thierry Dufrêne)，为巴黎南泰尔大学当代艺术史教授，曾于2004年至2016年担任国际艺术史学会委员会科学秘书。曾出版《绝美的人偶，妮基•桑法勒与当代艺术家的人偶创作》《莫雷尔的发明：图像机器》等，策划展览“萨尔瓦多•达利个展”“莫雷尔的发明”等。

CIHA Journal of Art History (国际艺术史学会学刊)旨在为世界各地艺术史研究学者创造一个展示自己学术成果的平台，以此促进国际艺术史研究与艺术史教育的交流与发展。本期主编彼得•施内曼(Peter J. Schneemann)和蒂里•迪弗勒内(Thierry Dufrêne)选取由中国、加拿大、芬兰、南非等国家的学者完成的多篇论文，展示不同文化背景的学者如何理解、阐释“对话”这一概念。来自不同文化背景的作者们，从中西传统艺术到现代艺术等多个主题，展示“对话”原则赋予艺术与艺术史研究的创造力与生命力。

In addition to this, “African art” carries a particular epistemic burden because of the ways in which it has historically been constructed as “art.” Valentine Yves Mudimbe argued that the term emerges from a Western epistemic project of order and categorisation, rather than a cross-cultural engagement with aesthetics, histories, and epistemologies. Mudimbe argues, “(w)hat is called African art covers a wide range of objects introduced into a historicising perspective of European values since the eighteenth century.” Consequently, he wonders whether “understood in their initial form and significance, [these objects] would not have created a radical ‘mise en perspective’ of Western culture.” The radical epistemological potential of African art, which has been systematically evacuated by dominant knowledge economies, lies in the fact that recognising ancient traditions of art and visual culture in Africa (and the ontological and epistemological consequences that follow from them) challenges the false premise that African history begins only after the colonial encounter and challenges racial hierarchies and racialised justifications of colonialism. If a “mise en perspective” of Western culture were catalysed, it may enable an expansion of the very notion of art, possibly one detached from the idea of a commodity and detached from the idea of “an original.”

At present however, not only is historical art from Africa measured in relation to the idea of originality, it also is framed through authentication processes (or performances) which often rely on fabricated notions of “mysticism,” “tradition,” “tribe” and “magic.” Current debates on the restitution of art from Africa, have critiqued these fabricated notions as having a carceral character. Appiah describes this double bind in the construction of African art: “[a]n ideology of disinterested aesthetic value (the baptism of Negro art as Aesthetic) meshes with the international commodification of African expressive culture, a commodification that requires (by the logic of the space clearing gesture) the manufacture of Otherness.”9 The requirement to validate authenticity through professional expertise is beneficial to those occupying seats of power in this discursive field (art dealers, curators, scholars), as the system enables the validation of certain kinds of knowledge about objects over others.

Introduction    Peter J. Schneemann/Thierry Dufrêne

The Third Abstraction: The Possibility and Impossibility of Dialogue    LaoZhu

Comparative Epistemology as Art-Historical Practice    Jennifer Purtle

Seriality: Artistic Articulations of Engagement    Sophia Olivia Sanan

Dialogue with Non-Humans in Contemporary Art and the Expansion of Posthuman Subjectivity    Jing Yang

Always More-than-human    Katve-Kaisa Kontturi/Murat M. Türkmen/Jenni Vauhkonen/Suvi Vepsä

Contributor Biographies