Thinking Colour is an interdisciplinary symposium bringing together academics, curators and artists to consider the philosophical relations between colour and thinking. Engaging with questions of colour in ways that exceed the discussion of specific cases and linguistic manifestations, it approaches colour through visual analysis, visual theory, critical thought, and comparative or transhistorical reflection. It asks questions such as: how do images think in/through colour? What is colour’s affective power? How does colour relate to specific materialities? How can colour have agency? Is colour a device for – or even a form of – thinking? How can colour function in relation to thinking in artistic practice/research?

The day will consist of several talks delivered by invited international academics who are leading in this field. We are honoured to host Eric Alliez (Kingston University), David Batchelor (Royal College of Art), Laure Blanc-Benon (University Paris-Sorbonne), Natasha Eaton (University College London), Liz Watkins (University of Leeds), Paul Smith (University of Warwick), among other speakers. For a full programme, please visit: https://www.academia.edu/. The symposium is co-funded by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities (TORCH), and is held in association with Oxford Comparative Criticism and Translation (OCCT). 

The symposium is co-funded by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities (TORCH), and is held in association with Oxford Comparative Criticism and Translation (OCCT). 

9.00–9.30am | Registration, Danson Room, Trinity College Oxford

9.30–11am | Panel 1

• Paul Smith (University of Warwick):  'Between': Wittgenstein, Grammar, and Colour Space
• Natasha Eaton (University College London): Dirty Whites: Meta-colour and South Asia
• Responses from::  Justin Coombes (University of Oxford) and Susanne Komossa (Delft University of Technology)

11.20–12.50pm | Panel 2

• David Batchelor: The Chromatic Ecology of Munchkinland
• Eric Alliez (Kingston University): The Postconceptual Color: Daniel Buren
• Responses from:: Judith Mottram (Royal College of Art) and Hanneke Grootenboer (University of Oxford)

1.50–3.20pm| Panel 3

• Laure Blanc-Benon (University Paris-Sorbonne):  What if colour photography had been invented first?
• Liz Watkins (University of Leeds): 'It suffices that colour lacerate': cosmetic memories in narrative cinema
• Responses from: Regina Lee Blaszczyk (University of Leeds) and  Clara Masnatta (ICI Berlin Institute of Cultural Inquiry)

3.40–5.00pm:  Round Table
Chair: Pandora Syperek (Paul Mellon Centre)

• Tessa Laird (University of Melbourne):  Dying and Not-Dying, in Living Colour
• Claudia Tobin (Royal Drawing School): Virginia Woolf, Vanessa Bell, and the 'Violent Rapture of Colour'
• Sophie Knezic (University of Melbourne): Flesh of the World: Colour's Ontological Imperative
• Rey Conquer (University of Oxford): Knowing Colour, or, How Does a Colour Know When a Poem Is Finished?
• Elodie Ripoll (Universität Koblenz-Landau / EHESS, Paris): Visual, Symbolic, Poetic: the Three Elementary Functions of Colour Words

Open discussion and closing remarks.