How do cultures define what lies beyond the horizon? In a globally networked world, what relevance comes to the changing horizon? One of the fundamental questions will be whether modern understandings of representation can be understood as a result of the dynamic at the borderline of the horizon? Does the act of setting into motion and transgressing create cultural stabilities? Taking a closer look at horizons and their shifts allows us to understand how people have and continue to apprehend the relationship between the visible world and the invisible dimension of the cosmos. This conference on horizons will examine the historical meanings and functions of horizons in visual and intellectual cultures from antiquity to the modern.

In each area, new regions are conquered, new experiments are broadening the knowledge of invisible worlds, and new forms of networks are (re-)configuring the lived environment. The horizon is, in other words, not a fixed constant, but rather subject to constant shifts the visible world and imaginary reality meet, constituting always something new. Depending on place, time, knowledge, and culture, such borders have been drawn differently, opened up or redefined. Though often interpreted as a fixed border, the line of the horizon also always changes. At the same time, the horizon marks the transition to the realm of the imaginary or the world of the transcendental. It is the line that dictates our spatial understandings and defines our view of the discernable world. The horizon divides the earth from the sky.

Horizon definition in art