cymbala vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.116 http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu editorial notes: exhibition complex: displaying people, identity, and culture amy cymbala this issue of contemporaneity features two selected papers and the keynote address from the symposium exhibition complex: displaying people, identity, and culture held october 18-20, 2012 at the carnegie museum of art, pittsburgh, pennsylvania. the symposium was organized by graduate students from the department of the history of art and architecture at the university of pittsburgh in collaboration with the carnegie museum of art, whose exhibition, inventing the modern world: decorative arts at the world's fairs, 1851-1939, inspired the symposium’s topic. the symposium aimed to analyze modes of display, types of artistic production, and the structures that constitute ephemeral exhibition spaces. the papers presented covered a range of periods and topics, from world’s fairs to contemporary chinese monuments, but all argued that these ephemeral exhibitions continue to impact us long after the display has ended. a special thanks to all our presenters, our authors diane greenwold, and winnie tsang, and especially our distinguished keynote speaker dr. saloni mathur, associate professor of art history at ucla, for all their contributions to our symposium and journal. more information on the graduate symposium, including paper abstracts, can be found by visiting http://haagradsymposium.pitt.edu/welcome.html. contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.116 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-noncommercial-no derivative works 3.0 united states license. this journal is operated by the university library system of the university of pittsburgh as part of its d-scribe digital publishing program, and is co-sponsored by the university of pittsburgh press. 119-360-4-le vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.119 http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu artist statement rial and terror gelare khoshgozaran abstract artist statement to for the work rial and terror (2011), 16’:27” video, sound, color, included in contemporaneity vol. 3, no. 1. about the author gelare khoshgozaran is an artist, a translator and writer living in los angeles, ca. she has contributed to multiple persian and english publications, including parkett, the enemy reader, ajam media collective, wild gender and zannegaar journal of women studies. she is the translator of oxford university press's critical theory: a very short introduction to persian. in 2013 gelare exhibited her work in encyclonospace iranica at access gallery, vancouver and a bomb, with ribbon around it at queens museum, new york. gelare received her undergraduate degree in photography from the university of arts, tehran and her mfa from the university of southern california. she was the winner of the 2011 neely macomber travel award and artgenève’s meta young art critic award 2012. contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.119 my practice examines the ways of knowledge production in relation to the fluidity and mutability of images and sounds in our digitized, globalized condition. through production, (re)distribution, translation and interpretation, how do images get presented, perceived, marketed and consumed by the individual and societies at large? how is culture “formed” or imagined through our individual intake and collective experience of images, sounds, spaces and practices? and how can artistic practice alongside scholarly research be an entry point to approach the hybridity of culture and the complexity of our contemporary existence, are amongst some of the main questions that i investigate in my videos, performances and writings as an artist and an independent scholar. throughout the two years of my master of fine arts program, i was exploring the idea of a cultural “lag” in my practice of art making and research as i was experiencing a lag in my thinking, speaking, learning and art making as a cultural producer having just emigrated to the u.s. as a result, rial and terror was a short film that, through the usage of found archival material—pre-revolutionary iranian tv commercials of u.s. products, iranian 1960s psychedelic rock music, pirated tapes of the 1980s american music videos illegally distributed in post-revolutionary iran, home video footage, etc.—created an anachronistic video collage. by way of spoonerism in the title, rial and terror,1 and the anachronism in the structure of this piece, i was inclined to create a shifted narrative of a generation born and raised in the contemporary iran, post-1979 islamic revolution, during the iran-iraq war and currently living in diaspora, with regards to the notion of “fun” as it was presented to us through american popular culture in a country with a complicated history of former alliance and tight economic ties and current conflict with the u.s imperialism. america was the “fun factory” of the world, the same story told to us in different ways: once through the blurry pictures in the nostalgic memories of our parents who had spent their youth during the highly westernized pre-revolutionary iran under shah’s regime, another time through the pirated mixed video tapes that were smuggled into and distributed in the islamic iran as contraband and finally “discovered” through a living experience in the u.s. and culling the (non)archives of the internet. 1 rial (code irr) is the currency of iran and as of 2013 remains the world’s least valued currency unit. artist statement rial and terror gelare khoshgozaran 1 6 2 a r t i s t s t a t e m e n t : r i a l a n d t e r r o r contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.119 new articles in this journal are licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 united states license. this journal is operated by the university library system of the university of pittsburgh as part of its d-scribe digital publishing program, and is co-sponsored by the university of pittsburgh press. contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.107 http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu review from ornament to object: genealogies of architectural modernism by alina payne olaf recktenwald abstract a review of alina payne’s from ornament to object: genealogies of architectural modernism, published in 2012 by yale university press. about the author olaf recktenwald is a doctoral researcher at mcgill university http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 1, no 1 (2011) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/year.id sandwiched between the “battle cry”1 of adolf loos’ essay “ornament and crime” and questions of equipment in le corbusier’s le modulor,2 author alina payne’s account of the circumstances surrounding the rejection of ornament in the modernist era provides a new approach to the topic by suggesting that everyday objects have continued the elucidation of architecture for which ornament had once provided. the reflection upon and about architecture did not disappear with the advent of modernism, for payne, but rather was transferred to the objects associated with that architectural world. attached ornaments gradually transformed themselves into detached objects in a progression here studied from gottfried semper to modernist times. although bracketed between two twentieth-century writings, the book remains a decidedly nineteenth-century exploration. semper stands at the foreground of this layout, where his interest in understanding objects through the realm of aesthetics receives much attention. her concern lies in semper’s connection between the materials of daily objects and those of architectural ornament, a relation that allows for the transference of an architectural theory to an object theory. the aftermath and response to semper’s views are analyzed in turn as both a beginning and an end. while she views his work der stil as having reconstructed much of a traditional understanding of the architectural treatise, she also views his writing, which drew from varied disciplines, as being absorbed and replaced by the specialized literature of the end of his century. following the outcome of this fragmentation of discourse, she turns to art historians indebted to semper’s writings and to his desire for a method that could form the base of a doctrine of style and of a mechanism for invention. the foremost contribution of those historians, for payne, remains the attention given to the smaller elements related to architecture, be they kleinarchitektur, ornaments, parts of ornaments, details, clothes, or art objects. how and in what format this theory became known to architects forms the author’s subsequent inquiry. while classrooms and public lecture halls figure prominently, other formats of dissemination such as the professional press, with its journals, reviews, and essays are also considered. the central conversation among the art historians discussed at this point 1 alina payne, from ornament to object: genealogies of architectural modernism (new haven: yale university press, 2012), 1. 2 payne, from ornament…, 267. review from ornament to object: genealogies of architectural modernism olaf recktenwald http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 2 1 0 r e v i e w contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 1, no 1 (2011) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/year.id remains that of style. payne here views this topic positively as an important link in how those historians were to reach out to architects. the reception of this evolving theory among canonical twentieth-century architects occupies the final chapters of her study. hermann muthesius and adolf loos are contrasted and yet ultimately reunited in their dual insistence upon objects of daily use as vehicles of change. examples of le corbusier’s oeuvre sum up her argument, where she stresses how object and architecture become one in his work. while at the outset readers might preconceive a deep divide between nineteenth-century ornament theory and that of modernism, payne squarely emphasizes the continuities. her prime contribution rests on arguing for this persistence. overall, though, several questions remain for this reviewer. in chapter three, the author speaks about the attention given to the concept of “detail” at the turn of the twentieth century. this would appear to be a notion of some importance in linking any shifting conception of ornament with modernist times. payne notes how interest in detail partook of the new “clue” mentality and, broader yet, of nineteenth century sachkultur. moving from archaeology, anthropology, psychology, and philology to art history and then indirectly to architecture, the scrutinizing of the detail was born of a “methodological turn.”3 this turn was the result, for the author, of a blending, tilling, or exchanging of cultural definitions among disciplines and of the tools used to perceive those meanings. the ensuing instrumentality of the detail is remarked upon: “once the detail became the critical working instrument for an academic discipline it moved into the foreground of consciousness for any number of issues and generated a whole new angle from which to evaluate and chart development, change, and innovation.”4 overall this concept could have received more than a partial paragraph’s worth of discussion. what relation exists between the discarding of embedded ornament and this novel interest in the detail? is one a surrogate in the absence of the other? in her previous essay “reclining bodies: figural ornament in renaissance architecture,” payne remarked how in leon battista alberti’s era, the isolation of ornament as a self-sufficient entity became more pronounced in the wake of greater scholarship on and translations of vitruvius.5 how does this notion of a growing categorical independence relate to the author’s current thesis, given that the objects she refers to here are in general physically detached from the architecture? should one speak of a progressive self-sufficiency of ornament? in de architectura, vitruvius could be seen to be setting the stage for an understanding of ornament as its own architectural category.6 in book iv, chapter ii, he accounts for the orders by describing their origins and prescribing their proper use. ornamentum comes to be understood as a likeness where, for example, triglyphs stand for beam ends and dentils for rafter ends. for alberti, who relied on cicero’s work as did vitruvius, a greater sense of ornament’s detachment from the built order arises. one could continue this story of independence. if the physical separation of the modern object-as-ornament is noteworthy, this story might have enhanced the argument. the sense of the complex latin words ornare / ornamentum / ornatus varied greatly in antiquity. as brian vickers has rightly pointed out, the word ornatus is inevitably translated 3 payne, from ornament…, 114. 4 payne, from ornament…,113-114. 5 alina payne, “reclining bodies: figural ornament in renaissance architecture,” in sixteenth-century italian art, ed. michael cole (malden, ma: blackwell publishing, 2006), chap. 12. 6 vitruvius, on architecture, trans. and ed. frank granger (london: w. heinemann, 1931), vol. 1. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 2 1 1 o l a f r e c k t e nw a l d contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 1, no 1 (2011) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/year.id into english as “ornament.”7 along with that modern word come the unfortunate connotations of something attached, embellished, or even meaningless, which latter term the oxford english dictionary once used to define rococo ornament. these connotations, i would add, have been handed down to us from a largely nineteenth-century understanding of the term. ornamentum, as walter ong has discovered, retained strong military metaphors in antiquity and signified “equipment or accoutrements.”8 yet one must not discount the fact that a sense of detachment did already exist in these terms in classical times. ornawords could already have a slight nonessential character to them. what could be clarified further in this contemporary text is in what sense of the word ornament the author sees the modern object. if “objects are architecture’s rhetorical devices, just as ornament once was”9 (20), in what manner was the rhetorical capacity of prior ornament to aptly and emotionally engage an audience resuscitated through everyday objects? this very weighty statement in the introduction of the book demands attention. ornament, acknowledging its origins in speech, once served the appropriateness of the oration. it was a virtue the expression of which could not be fully grasped. ornament-as-speech did not present an autonomous whole which was neatly crafted and self-referential. instead, that ornament demanded that we engage with that which it presented rather than with itself. however, the emotional link between ornament and participant gets weakened when we turn to objects of daily use. everyday objects are both physically detached and independent of setting. as one moves a teacup from one house to another, it would seem a tall order for the object to produce a sympathetic reaction between the new beholder and the previous dwelling. the author does note how the modern object, unlike architectural ornament, is potentially mobile. yet as one moves an object from one setting to another this act would appear to change the rhetorical qualities of that object. a chair, moved from one sitting room to another, would surely tell a different story based upon its new surroundings. the displaced object could not serve the “fitting togetherness” (aptum) of the speech, as ornatus once did. aristotle suggests in rhetoric that not only does the audience have emotions, but that the speaker also emotes. the orator calls upon the apt level of emotion so as to be in harmony with the subject-matter. similarly in ornamentation, a grave topic would require a serious level of embellishment whereas a simple topic should be treated parsimoniously. vitruvius would have concurred. ornamentation, for the roman author, was a respect for convention or principles – a fitting, suited, or appropriate form of respect. a building dedicated to the moon received her light aptly. a building honoring mars acknowledged his vigor through its lack of embellishments. facing the heavens, venus, or bacchus, a temple acknowledged the particulars of the conversation it would engage in and could be said to welcome its guest through its ornamental manners. how the appropriateness of emotion and respect is handled by the daily object is a topic that warrants discussion. ultimately, the mobility of common objects undermines their ability to speak in the same manner as ornament once did. 7 brian vickers, in defence of rhetoric (oxford: clarendon press, 1988), 314. 8 walter j ong, ramus, method, and the decay of dialogue (cambridge, ma: harvard university press, 1958), 277. 9 payne, from ornament…, 20. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 2 1 2 r e v i e w contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 1, no 1 (2011) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/year.id this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-noncommercial-no derivative works 3.0 united states license. this journal is operated by the university library system of the university of pittsburgh as part of its d-scribe digital publishing program, and is co-sponsored by the university of pittsburgh press. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/ http://www.pitt.edu/ http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/ http://www.upress.pitt.edu/upressindex.aspx http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/ 111-341-6-le vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.111 http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vision and desire in postcolonial australia a conversation with alison ravenscroft kira randolph abstract alison ravenscroft, author of the postcolonial eye: white australian desire and the visual field of race, discusses her book with kira randolph. about the authors alison ravenscroft is associate professor in english at la trobe university, melbourne, where she is head of the department of arts & critical enquiry. her research interests include australian (neo)colonial culture, including its reach into the intimacy of everyday life. this interest is currently taking her into areas of difference and embodiment, and the different powers of bodies to feel, see and sense “country”—the term australian aboriginal men and women use to refer to a living, sensate world. she is also working with a team of indigenous researchers to produce the centre for indigenous story: word, image, sound, a unique virtual centre for indigenous knowledge, supported by la trobe university. the website of the centre for indigenous story will be launched in late 2014. originally from the united states, kira randolph is an art history ph.d. candidate at the university of melbourne. her doctoral research explores the american reception of australian aboriginal art and culture during the forties, fifties, and sixties. prior to beginning her ph.d. in 2009, she studied a master of arts in museology at the university of washington. her masters thesis was a comparative analysis of aboriginal art exhibitions within australia to those in france and the united states. in addition to her research, kira has taught classes in australian, new media, and indigenous art. contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.111 alison ravenscroft’s the postcolonial eye: white australian desire and the visual field of race (surrey: ashgate, 2012) makes a significant contribution to the fields of indigenous studies, literature, and art history through its interdisciplinary exploration into depictions of contemporary australian race in the arts since world war ii. narrated from the personal, each chapter of this book features a literary or visual scene in order to delve into ideas surrounding the interpretation, representation, and understanding of “an other” across the cultural divides between settler and indigenous australia. this “an” other is a notable distinction made by ravenscroft—rather than the historically prevalent “the other”—and her positioning is telling of her relation to radical difference. in her words “the postcolonial eye is my own;” 1 she is an active participant in both the seeing and blindness of which she speaks. the book comprises four parts, “part i: ‘there is and can be no brute vision’” takes its point of departure from a 1938 board for anthropological research collection black and white photograph of two girls, which is discussed in relation to w.g. sebald and post-war german literature. the four chapters in “part ii: when the other disappears from my line of sight” collectively consider alexis wright’s first two novels: plains of promise (1997) and carpentaria (2006),2 as well as the notion of the sacred in the academic text uncanny australia: sacredness and identity in a postcolonial nation (1994) by ken gelder and jane jacobs.3 the first two chapters of “part iii: the image of my own desire” are about autobiographical writing with reference to auntie rita (1994)4 by rita huggins and jackie huggins, with the final chapter about the photography of agnes semple from the 1920s and 1 alison ravenscroft, the postcolonial eye: white australian desire and the visual field of race (surrey: ashgate, 2012), 3. 2 alexis wright, plains of promise (brisbane: university of queensland press, 1998); alexis wright, carpentaria (artarmon: giramondo, 2006). 3 kenneth gelder and jane jacobs, uncanny australia: sacredness and identity in a postcolonial nation (carlton: melbourne university press, 1994). 4 rita huggins and jackie huggins, auntie rita (canberra: aboriginal studies press, 1994). vision and desire in postcolonial australia alison ravenscroft in conversation kira randolph 1 8 1 k i r a r a n d o l p h contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.111 1930s in the cherbourg aboriginal reserve, queensland. “part iv: whiteness and its veils” turns to kim scott’s benang (1999), an exploration of the author’s nyoongar and english heritage, and considers it in relation to the reader’s eye and notions of perversion.5 as is evident from the contents, this is a rich and complicated book that presents many important questions; far more than can possibly be answered. however, these gaps are necessarily indicative of current discourse and ravenscroft acknowledges that reading and writing about race in postcolonial australia is wrought with anxieties. in her discussion of benang ravenscroft concludes: “the text is often illegible. its objects are indiscernible, one’s eye passes over them in the attempt to bring some other part of the scene into focus.”6 but her book does a great deal to illuminate and investigate the ways that indigenous representation has been unknowable to white readership and the stitches that have been joined in an attempt to understand. the following interview provides some of the flavor of alison ravenscroft’s the postcolonial eye: white australian desire and the visual field of race. kira randolph: what inspired the postcolonial eye: white australian desire and the visual field of race? alison ravenscroft: the postcolonial eye was inspired by indigenous literary and visual arts, which proffer visions of the world so very different to my own. non-indigenous readers and viewers can find that the meanings we have always attributed to the world—to country, say, or to body, to flesh and feeling—are unsettled and denaturalized in our encounters with indigenous arts. this is as terrifying as it is exhilarating, though: to feel the ground of one’s own knowledge shift, and with it one’s own subjectivity too. kr: chapter one opens with a photograph of two young girls from 1938; we find out that their names are edna walker and doreen barber. out of the many thousands of photographs that you could have chosen, what was it about this one? ar: i first saw this particular image in the memoir is that you, ruthie? by ruth hegarty in which she recalls the conditions under which young aboriginal children lived in the dormitory system on aboriginal reserves and missions in the 1930s and 1940s.7 the image is typical of the series of which it is a part: the board for anthropological research collection of photographs and other data on indigenous men, women and children produced by norman tindale and joseph birdsell in the 1930s. but this image takes on very different meanings than the ones tindale and birdsell might have intended when it is held next to indigenous men’s and women’s representations of themselves and their worlds; when read, for instance, in the context of hegarty’s memories of the girls, of their courage and their fineness of feeling. such an image morphs again when viewed, say, next to indigenous novelist alexis wright’s plains of promise which tells another story about young aboriginal girls in the dormitories than the one tindale or birdsell imagined. wright’s vision puts indigenous law in the picture. in wright’s novel, a young dormitory girl with a shaved head and shabby dress is a carrier of the law and therefore a carrier of vital relationships between people, and 5 kim scott, benang (south fremantle: fremantle arts centre press, 1999). 6 ravenscroft, the postcolonial eye, 159. 7 ruth hegarty, is that you, ruthie? (st lucia, qld: university of queensland press, 1999). 1 8 2 v i s i o n a n d d e s i r e i n p o s t c o l o n i a l a u s t r a l i a contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.111 between people and country. this young girl has the power to bring water flooding into the great dry lakes. in plains of promise this girl’s power and the power of the law are not given to us in the form of the fantastic, the magical, or as dream but as matters of fact. in writing the postcolonial eye, i was interested in questions of the visual field and what is visible or not, depending on one’s subjective position. so, whereas in tindale’s and birdsell’s eyes it seems that a young girl from cherbourg aboriginal settlement can be reduced to an object of their anthropometrics, in the eyes of an indigenous viewer the same girl might be a very powerful figure, one through whom the law works, the law of the country itself. i was interested in how non-indigenous readers/viewers might approach this difference, allowing its effects rather than closing it over. kr: one of the book's interests regards gaps in representation and the stitches made by non-indigenous australian readers to cover these spaces; explain what you mean by this. ar: i approach reading as a visual practice: reading always involves a scene. so, if the visual is understood to be partial, subjective and shaped along the lines of our desires, then the scene one can see in reading must be partial, too, and similarly structured by desire. my questions then became concerned with what these desires are that structure our ways of seeing, reading, and imagining each other in neocolonial contexts. the postcolonial eye makes a claim: that structuring white australian vision of others is a powerful belief that we can know all, and see all there is to see, if only we are careful and canny enough. i am interested in what is lost to us because of such a belief in our capacity to see and know others. i am interested in the generative possibilities of a critical approach to literary and other arts that works with the moments that a text refuses to speak rather than against these. kr: as an art history student, a fascinating part of the book was your reflection on being in a room with an artwork by the late anmatyerr painter emily kame kngwarreye and feeling overpowered by its beauty. historically there have been many calls for critical engagement with aboriginal australian art, most recently by john carty.8 to what do you attribute this dearth in criticism? ar: might western critical engagement with indigenous art stall before the question of difference; not only differences in aesthetics but differences in the objects of knowledge? it is easy to think that indigenous arts are merely figuring the same world as the western one, except in different aesthetic forms. if that were true, the challenge would simply be to develop a vocabulary through which to speak of these different aesthetics. but what to do once it is recognized that it is a different world that is being figured in this art—different ways of being human, different concepts of matter, of land, embodiment and so on? aesthetics, then, is not empty of meaning. the forms that indigenous arts take turn out to be figuring different objects of knowledge and perhaps also different ideas about what knowledge is, and what are its limits. aboriginal art has often been approached either as figuring naïve and unsophisticated creation stories or as maps of country—pictograms. more recently, and seemingly more promisingly, aboriginal art has been approached as abstract art. it seems to me that each of these approaches, though, fails to foreground the urgent question of indigenous knowledges 8 john carty, “the limits of criticism,” artlink 33 no.2 (2013): 54-59. 1 8 3 k i r a r a n d o l p h contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.111 and their differences from western ones. indigenous art always confronts me with a visual field into which i am ambiguously drawn and repelled, perhaps because of this sense that i am on the edge of another world altogether than the one i assume. kr: you have written in many different forms. given unlimited time and resources, what would your next book be about and what style would it take? ar: i’ve started to write on questions of form itself. white australian men and women still tend to favor realist and naturalistic forms in our efforts to write of ourselves and our times but there are other forms of writing that have more suggestive, generative powers. in this regard, we could take a lead from the indigenous arts where playfulness, juxtaposition and contradiction, and also silence, are used to accomplish great political, ethical writing. this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-noncommercial-no derivative works 3.0 united states license. this journal is operated by the university library system of the university of pittsburgh as part of its d-scribe digital publishing program, and is co-sponsored by the university of pittsburgh press. contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture vol 1 (2011) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2011.35 http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu review anachronic renaissance by alexander nagel and christopher wood keith moxey abstract a review of alexander nagel and christopher wood’s book anachronic renaissance, published in 2010 by zone books. about the author keith moxey is barbara novak professor and chair of art history at barnard college. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/� contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 1 (2011) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2011.35 anachronic renaissance registers new thinking about art history’s conceptions of both the idea of “art” as well as its notions of “history.” nagel and wood follow the lead, if not the path, proposed by art historians such as georges didi-huberman and mieke bal, among others, who have celebrated the idea of “anachronism” in their writings to suggest that the privileged artifacts we identify with the term “art” possess the capacity to escape the temporal circumstances of their creation in order to create meaning in very different moments and places — they belong, in other words, as much to the present as to the past.1 whereas didihuberman and bal argue that it is our phenomenological response to images that is responsible for their capacity to move us, nagel and wood adopt a historical approach that offers us an anthropology, rather than a philosophy, of the image. while acknowledging the continuing nature of the response provoked by artifacts and works of art, a study of the nature of that response in the present is not part of their project. in a strategy that will be of interest to anyone concerned with the study of “contemporaneity,” — the ongoing debate about the nature of the moment which we presently occupy and the way it affects our attitudes to history2 their principal accomplishment, a theoretical model that proves an extraordinarily flexible and subtle tool for art historical interpretation, lies in the imaginative elaboration of the concepts “substitutional” and “performative,” derived ultimately from hans belting’s magisterial book, likeness and presence. — they locate themselves in time by eliding the question of their own position within it. 3 for nagel and wood, the binary opposition of the concepts substitution and performance draws attention to art’s capacity to both escape and belong to time. where the principle of substitution allowed the time of an image to become inconsequential, its value bearing no relation to its temporal location, performance, with its insistence on the importance of authorial agency, only makes sense within a chronological structure. an if belting frames an account of the history of european art in terms of cult images (whose power lies in their capacity to make present the divine), that are replaced in the course of time by works of “art” (whose fascination derives from their indexical relationship to the exceptional personal gifts of their creators), nagel and wood articulate the mechanisms by means of which these transactions are enacted and analyze the development from one model to another. 1 georges didi-huberman, fra angelico: dissemblance and figuration, trans. jane-marie todd (chicago: university of chicago press, 1995); confronting images: questioning the ends of a certain history of art, trans. john goodman (university park: pennsylvania state university press, 2005;1st ed. paris, 1990); “history and the image. has the epistemological transformation taken place?” in the art historian: national traditions and institutional practices, ed. michael zimmermann (williamstown: clark art institute, 2003), pp. 128-143, and mieke bal, quoting caravaggio: contemporary art, preposterous history (chicago: university of chicago press, 1999). 2 see terry smith, “introduction: the contemporaneity question,” antinomies of art and culture, ed. terry smith, okwui enwezor, and nancy condee (durham: duke university press, 2008), pp. 1-19; and what is contemporary art? (chicago: university of chicago press, 2009). 3 hans belting, likeness and presence, trans. edmund jephcott (chicago: university of chicago press, 1994). review anachronic renaissance by alexander nagel and christopher wood keith moxey http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/� 1 5 4 r e v i e w contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 1 (2011) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2011.35 advantage of their scheme is that, while adopting belting’s development thesis, namely that one system gives way to the other, they argue that the two approaches to artistic production often overlap and co-exist. this theoretical structure is particularly appropriate to the historical moment, the late middle ages and renaissance, that is the focus of their book. it allows the authors to address both canonical and non-canonical works produced during this period with equal efficacy since their concepts cover both what we might now describe as artifacts as well as works of art. numerous short chapters illuminate the histories of painting, mosaic, sculpture, architecture, as well as manuscript illuminations, flooring patterns, woodcuts, and fashion. “what is substitution?” (chapter 3) — illustrates what they mean by this term: “to perceive an artifact in substitutional terms was to understand it as belonging to more than one historical moment simultaneously. the artifact was connected to its unknowable point of origin by an unreconstructible chain of replicas (30)”. using carpaccio’s st. augustine in his study as their example, a work that represents the saint’s mystical experience of the distant death of st. jerome, they note the presence of elements in the work that could not possibly belong to the time of the event depicted. the artist paints a renaissance statuette of a nude venus and a fifteenth-century venetian sculpture thought to reflect an ancient author’s account of christ’s appearance in the saint’s study. these images could not have been part of st. augustine’s possessions, yet they are included because of their “substitutional” value, their power to suggest the numinous presence of the divine in a scene of mystical import. their inclusion, however, also permits carpaccio to call attention to the status of his work as “performance,” to his unique artistic qualities. the work both conflates time, refusing to honor the distance separating its production from that of the artifacts it includes, while marking it with the creative imagination of a particular author. some of the most valuable chapters analyze the role of the introduction of byzantine icons to western europe at the end of the middle ages. often described in terms of the nebulous idea of “influence,” nagel and wood find a richer and more satisfying way of articulating the fascination held by icons for a late medieval italian audience. italian artists regarded the byzantine style of the icons as a mark of their antiquity even though they were actually roughly contemporaneous. their alleged age was reverenced not so much as part of a “revival of antiquity,” as for the fact that they were closer to the models on which the substitutional chain of cult images was based. they bore the aura of miraculous images, the images made through divine intervention (“images made without hands”), or those painted by st luke, held to be the holiest in christendom. the restoration record of such icons is used to illustrate apparently contradictory motives. on the one hand, icons were restored because their old-fashioned appearance interfered with their substitutional power, their potential to effectively transmit the divine; on the other, they were more frequently left unaltered because modernization might affect, dissipate, or otherwise interfere with their potency. in other words, a tension was perceived between their role as active agents in the transmission of numinous experience and their status as relics. the power ascribed them was thus capable of taking different forms and being handled variously. nagel and wood argue that while restoration of icons is to be associated with their substitutional value, their treatment as relics coincides with the rising awareness of the chronological “anchoring” of artistic creation. the increasing importance ascribed the authorial function of the artist promoted a desire to affirm a prestigious historical distance. some of the most creative applications of the “substitution/performance” opposition are found in nagel and wood’s treatment of architecture. the various recreations of the constantinian monuments at the holy sepulchre that occur in western medieval architecture have long been recognized and usually understood in terms of the concept “iconography,” with the citations these buildings represent interpreted as meaning-making devices. nagel and wood persuasively argue that far from being mere quotations, these reconstructions are to be understood as re-creations of holy structures that possess all the mystical power attributed the originals. such edifices participated in the transmission of christian truth by http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/� 1 5 5 k e i t h mo x e y contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 1 (2011) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2011.35 re-instantiating the locations associated with christ’s death and resurrection. the power ascribed to reiterated buildings is also illustrated by the history of the holy house of loreto. the house in which the virgin lived in nazareth, and the place in which she received the annunciation, was alleged to have flown from the holy land, alighting first in croatia and then in loreto on the adriatic coast of italy. this legend is not recorded until the fifteenth century, and the cult reached its apogee after pope paul ii built a basilica over it in 1469 and julius ii had it sheathed in marble by bramante, sansovino, and sangallo between 1507 and 1538. the fifteenth century, the historical moment when the substitutional and the performative models may be said to intersect, saw an outburst of spiritual visuality. did the intensity of clashing systems of time, one which claimed that cult images overcame and consumed time, and the other that chronology mattered and historical distance was to be recognized if the artistic imagination of the individual artist was to be appreciated, produce a heightened sense of the power of the image/work of art? the book also addresses a vast array of issues of interest to renaissance scholars that are frankly too numerous to be mentioned here. for example, the birth of the “copy,” the move from a replica that possesses the qualities of a sacred image and thus functions as a substitute in a process of transmission, to a replica that duplicates the qualities of what is recognized as belonging to a different moment in time, and is thus considered a forgery of another’s hand. in a system of substitution the copy operates to demonstrate as well as to enact the power of the original (which may or may not be fictive). the notion of authorship, however, breaks this chain and one image cannot operate in the same way as another. forgery makes an appearance when the filter placed on artistic creation by the individual personality must be taken into consideration: “what is an art forgery if not a substitution cruelly unmasked as a mere performance? (50)” the book closes with an account of the triumph of painting as the medium of the age of “art.” raphael’s paintings in the stanza della segnatura “tear the substitutional web and create instant fictions, vast semicircular lunettes opening out onto alternative worlds at once credible and incredible (351).” painting is now understood as text and artistic creation becomes an exercise in intertextuality: “citation secures the presence of the past in the present by an authorial decision, rather than by direct work-to-work transmission (357).” this analysis of the animating principles of late medieval and renaissance is both persuasive and compelling. in contrasting the substitutional with the performative so dramatically, however, the authors unwittingly play into the hands of a historiographic tradition that has impoverished our model of “art” by reductively emphasizing its dependence on language. the privileged objects of the post-renaissance age of “art” carry a poetry and a presence that seems rather to exploit the long shadow of the substitutional past in a way that eludes definition in terms of a textual metaphor. nagel and wood offer the reader a series of often brilliant interpretations of the art of the renaissance based upon a profound understanding of the theological and artistic assumptions that underlie its visual culture. in doing so they enrich our appreciation of wellknown monuments and afford future generations of scholars valuable theoretical instruments with which to approach the past. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/� 1 5 6 r e v i e w contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 1 (2011) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2011.35 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-noncommercial-no derivative works 3.0 united states license. this journal is operated by the university library system of the university of pittsburgh as part of its d-scribe digital publishing program, 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can be opened with acrobat and adobe reader 5.0 and later.) >> /namespace [ (adobe) (common) (1.0) ] /othernamespaces [ << /asreaderspreads false /cropimagestoframes true /errorcontrol /warnandcontinue /flattenerignorespreadoverrides false /includeguidesgrids false /includenonprinting false /includeslug false /namespace [ (adobe) (indesign) (4.0) ] /omitplacedbitmaps false /omitplacedeps false /omitplacedpdf false /simulateoverprint /legacy >> << /addbleedmarks false /addcolorbars false /addcropmarks false /addpageinfo false /addregmarks false /convertcolors /converttocmyk /destinationprofilename () /destinationprofileselector /documentcmyk /downsample16bitimages true /flattenerpreset << /presetselector /mediumresolution >> /formelements false /generatestructure false /includebookmarks false /includehyperlinks false /includeinteractive false /includelayers false /includeprofiles false /multimediahandling /useobjectsettings /namespace [ (adobe) (creativesuite) (2.0) ] /pdfxoutputintentprofileselector /documentcmyk /preserveediting true /untaggedcmykhandling /leaveuntagged /untaggedrgbhandling /usedocumentprofile /usedocumentbleed false >> ] >> setdistillerparams << /hwresolution [2400 2400] /pagesize [612.000 792.000] >> setpagedevice microsoft word 190-200 thought and things females in art 7-27.docx vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.156 http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu thoughts & things 02 �� � december 7, 2014 madeline eschenburg abstract the following is an interview with five women working in the beijing contemporary art world. this interview along with other beijing artist profiles and exhibition reviews can be viewed on the open ground blog (http://www.opengroundblog.com). about the author madeline eschenburg is a phd student in the history of art and architecture department of university of pittsburgh. her research centers around contemporary chinese art with a special focus on the relationship between urban-based artists and rural china. she has published in yishu: journal of contemporary chinese art, contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture, and art slant. she is currently living in beijing conducting dissertation research with the support of a fulbright fellowship. contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.156 one of the issues i have been considering lately is the position of women in the contemporary chinese art world. while there have definitely been some incredibly influential and powerful female artists, curators, and intellectuals over the last thirty years, the highest official governmentally sponsored positions in the current chinese art world are primarily occupied by males. although it seems like there are more female chinese artists being exhibited than ever before, there are still clearly some structural inequalities that must be addressed. the western concept of feminism was first introduced to china at the end of the qing dynasty and was used as part of the discourse of modernization, symbolizing new, modern ideas of citizenship, gender, and nation. from that time forward, different terms have been applied to this concept, simultaneously emphasizing various female qualities to be celebrated and revealing the ideological and symbolic weight of the female gender in the process of anti-colonialism, revolution, and nation-building. in the post-mao period, with the ever-visible role of globalization and marketization, the status of women, explorations of female identity, and the concept of �feminism� continue to undergo changes. in the context of the art world, this can be explored through subject matter, medium, and technologies chosen by female artists as well as international and domestic job opportunities afforded to women in the field. in this “thoughts and things,” i have chosen five women currently working in the beijing contemporary art world to answer questions about their experiences and opinions related to this topic. xing danwen (đ�©) is a beijing-based artist of international repute. hua er (ø-) is owner and curator of see + gallery in the 798 art district of beijing. lihui dong (ú�ą) has a phd in chinese art from tsinghua university and is currently finishing her second phd in modern chinese art at the university of pittsburgh, antonie angerer is the co-owner of hutong-gallery i: project space and formerly worked at see space gallery in 798, and emma karasz is in charge of the residency program at the red gate gallery. i have chosen women from a variety of professional and cultural backgrounds within the field in an attempt to gain a wider-ranging understanding of the multiple perspectives on this complex issue. xing danwen|đ�© 1. explain your professional relationship to the contemporary chinese art world. ǎ�ƿċ���q�y��ƪ«ý��0ìĥ my relationship with contemporary art in china is pretty simple. my role is an artist. my job is creation. art is my voice and language. i want my art to express my ideas and point of view, to speak for me. �ć�y��ƪĸý0ì²åǣƈyý��ýā ù²ƪĸl��ýv&²d&��ý&r²�ý ^ĝqnjă��y¹&rºĉõµ>ǯ�ý�é qßéġ¶�ǎnj� thoughts & things 02 �� � december 7, 2014 madeline eschenburg 1 9 2 t h o u g h t s & t h i n g s 0 2 � � � contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.156 2. could you describe your experience as a female professional in china? according to your experience, has your gender influenced your ability to work effectively within the field? ǎ�£ċ�[�y��d�ɵ�ýɠȓĥ¿¡�ýǩ�ɠȓġ�ý�gî�ýv&õ;·è·�sĥ this problem actually can be looked at from many perspectives. first, i think making art is very individualistic, so in terms of making art, i try as much as possible to remove outside negative influences and repetition. i try to make original artworks and have an original art language. second, female artists often have a feeling of being overlooked. the primary roles in the art world—curators, critics, and organizers—are mostly men. women rarely have these roles. the art world overlooks the ratio of men and women. most people don’t really want to exclude female artists, they just don’t realize the reality of the gender imbalance, and therefore, they don’t make moves to actively change the situation. i am generally the only woman in conferences or group shows, leading viewers to ask,�why are you the only female?� that question hits the nail on the head. it makes me realize the truth of being �the only one� or a �minority.� third, according to my observations, when facing a bottleneck, or gender obligations, it is easier for women to retreat, abandon the original plan, or sacrifice themselves. this is the reason that it appears that female artists are scarce or disappearing. they lack persistence and courage in perusing their ideal careers. it seems to be a gender-specific weakness. fourth, an artist’s work is often very solitary and private. especially when i’m travelling to shoot photographs, i have realized that there is an advantage to being a woman. a friendly and honest woman will not be a disturbance to other people. it’s often easier to win over the support and help of a passerby. it’s easier to establish goodwill and amicability. therefore, it’s easier to take photographs, especially about sensitive topics, or take candid shots. ãnj�5 �lý ā�ßǩ ǿȏ�è�ġ�ƻ�ƪĸd&ýè�ä²ě{ ��ýġ��[d&«ĝ� tiõ¢ę`ùý�ø�sqė_�ġlj¢,6bd�&rqóđýƪĸnjă�è�ġƪĸùė&�dƪĸ l{{·ÿ�úý�ʒ�ƪĸùý āāùģêu��džǂlqƪĸǝɛñġbē7²×�ĥd�·āùý �r�ƪĸù�ú�d�āùýü7å�ǁa�3���¢ªd�ƪĸlġh²è·öʒ�dž8ǩä×då (�~ýýţéġxãè· p,6���āýüp��öws{{²“ u�ýd�” ][jĸǂ«ė�ï uėġÿƴ�eǿ“ ���h·'� d�” ĥ�9�ǽƴûý¤ǿġ�ƽ��ţ“ u�” �ñ“ r¨” ý �é� è�ġs�ƴo%!ġĝîõȍ��g"oġd�µm±ča�¦��şðö�ġǩ�ď��d� ƪĸl9år�êcýţăġîô���í�ª ��q=�þ:ġ"�²�gñì�ý� �ì�èwġ ƪĸlv&ĩ��ĕ�yóqãnġñg²��óö­ü�ěĩġ��ţ&��$d�ġµ2·<ą��� dv»éýd�ġğ.�!î¬�.ö}č�ġ��µm±ǘ�ć�ý¥ qz<ġµm±�çȅ�ă> ýv�qdeġ�ò)��ěġñg²î���§��ý ȏ�ǥć�ý��ò4� 3. do you think that the status of and opportunities available to women in the contemporary art world in china have improved or become worse over the last ten years? in what ways? [�yċ@�ýǥæ�ġ�ʒ�d�ý\$�¼!¤ğ��ĥf¾¤ğýnjġþţ[t�«ĝĥ there are more female artists from the generation born in the�70s or�80s. the opportunities now are clearer, the world is more open, not like my generation. but the gender ratio is still not equal. in fact, in the art world, women mostly have organizational jobs or are dealers; there are very few female curators or critics. in this arena, men hold leading roles and women play supporting roles. �@q/@��6öý��dƪĸl"�a����ţ[ý¼!µë´ġ ùµ�¦ġć�ý�����ł ġ#²�gå(ǧ�~ý�éȁ�ġµa[ƪĸùv&ýd�ġa¨²,ǝɛv&qƪĸr'zġa�rd �êu��ñdžǂl��jćġ ā�²×öġdöa�ĕā� 4. what does the word�feminism�mean to you, if anything, in the context of contemporary china/contemporary chinese art? or, is there another word that would better describe your hopes for the future of gender relations in this field? 1 9 3 m a d e l i n e e s c h e n b u r g contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.156 [���yģ���yƪĸó³�ġî�½ƿġ“ d� "” ǩ lj·����ĥǧ²·è·� g`ýµ kčýlj½þĉ�îp½×d0ìýy¹ĥ for me, once d� " (feminism) or d�ƪĸ (female art) is highlighted or mentioned, it means it is a problem. i don’t like it when people pay attention to these words. in fact, i classify female artists as�minorities.�i think in the art world, the most important thing is to decide to raise people’s understanding about this topic. to actively pay attention to the ratio of men and women in exhibitions, in publishing, and academic activities. just talking about it is meaningless. the most important thing in this unhealthy situation is to do things to actively make change. i’m not saying we need to lower our standards for female art. actually, there are a lot of good female artists and works that have not received deserved attention or interest. îĉľǎ ę_“d� "”�“d�ƪĸ”s�pಠǿȏ�ĉó��ņǩ,�ljƞëǘ0ůvœ �ǩé ȁ��ďºƪĸìíɖ�“r¨ç®”��ƻ�¥ƪĸūıǹʋůīƣƣʒ¦ęȓ09îǩ�njȏůƻdž � péĥ+~ô�_ŝ��äĸœp ėƶũºōš � ðö{ǐőijă" ǹʋůī�ǩžƭy�ƨm� ,éȁů*� ��²ǎ�ňĉ9ãnjȁcîºûƪĸìe�ǖǻůʋŏ �éȁ�ijó´¼ůºûƪĸì� xe�őijôhãijůǹƶ�vœ� antonie angerer 1. explain your professional relationship to the contemporary chinese art world.� � ǎÿƿǫ�,ÿ��¡î7ƪ«ů��vƌ� i cofounded i: project space, a non-commercial art space with artist-in-residence program in the hutong area. before that, i used to work in different commercial galleries in 798 and researched on contemporary chinese art. it is very important to us, my partner anna eschbach and i, to offer a platform for art forms, artists, and art professionals that might have no space inside the market-driven art world in china and abroad. ��¸d�ą[[>�ýôl?dl(ȇůfƪ ĸç�ȑŭƺa�¥#iĉ¥u/ů798 ƪĸv ij,��ūçöe ǧijÿƀ�¡î7ƪĸůɠȓ�ĉ ýk �ġ anna eschbach, q�ĕƻ���, ¥¡z³ú¨őijɓǿůƪĸïê ƪĸì�ƪĸ��ęh��ß�īw`ǹʋů� 2. could you describe your experience as a female professional in china? according to your experience, has your gender influenced your ability to work effectively within the field? ǎÿėǫÿ¥�¡5*ºûɵ�ůɠȓ�łēÿůǩ,ɠȓ ÿůûgîÿůöeƣkijőijð�� 1 9 4 t h o u g h t s & t h i n g s 0 2 � � � contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.156 this question is very hard to answer for me, since i am not chinese and often not confronted with social restriction that my chinese colleagues have to deal with. i do think that since the chinese art world is, just like other professional fields in china, very much structured by the guanxi principle,1 female protagonists are left outside of certain art circles. therefore a kind of solidarity under female colleagues is definitely there. i personally have not experienced that my femininity has influenced my work here very much. ��ĉ�ī�¡0 &őijdzhoó´�¡��ºûċdzhůƕ!�ǹůż!ę9ēǩłů*ā ċ85ĉ ůƹåľǎǩ�ǿȏóȅ�ƅ�ĉƻ����¡ƪĸ£ ǝgů���ł ŧ �0ì” ýbcǝĉů º û�èʊŀ,ƪĸ£ĕģ��ƞ ĉ9�8ųh��ºûů ɣ�5ĉ�0ƹåų �è·ď8ǥ��ĉ īº0�ƣ=dzhůöeȃźǩłů*ā� 3. do you think that the status of and opportunities available to women in the contemporary art world in china have improved or become worse over the last ten years? in what ways? [�yċ@�ýǥž� ÿʒôº0ů¦b�ĺ=ęȓ(��½ŀęȓůnj ưţ¥�,ĥȉ� i think, according to politically promoted programs like the�leftover women�(sheng nü), which put women under social pressure to get married before a certain age, there is a much more conservative trend in china. there are many female art professionals and artists, but it is a shame, because they are often defined through their male partner. in a way, i actually feel like female art in china also often has the female body or the traditional role of women in china as a topic. this might again be fault of the necessity of trying to categorize art. instead of having an exhibition of female art once in a while, i think that it is necessary to offer them more space to develop independent art projects in general. �ƻ� ǯǥġäėpů�,ȉű ō½o jº ——d�8�k�ȕŧ+ż=}kƞɣâ ĉ9�8ų h�žójæůǚr�ijó´ºûƪĸ��0¯�ƪĸì aī¸�ā ��»9þþŧ»9ůũûěńè "�ĉƻ��¡ůºûƪĸþþ8ºûïdċ>ɩůºû¦b��ȏ�ǩ�ǿȏůłķ�ƣľƣ+lj¢ïƪ ĸ`ɖůöʋû�üůľǎ ųî+nðůºûƪĸôƶ ĉƻ�ijöʋƕºûƪĸìęhį´ɓǿľ�ô »9�0ůƪĸȉű�� 4. what does the word�feminism�mean to you, if anything, in the context of contemporary china/contemporary chinese art? or is there another word that would better describe your hopes for the future of gender relations in this field? [���yģ���yƪĸơĭ� îÿľƿ “d� "”ǩ�ljij1!ăú�ǧīijőij���³ůį� ǭůljľưǣÿî(ïľũºvƌůüĵ� of course women’s rights and the creation of possibilities for women are very important to me. in the context of contemporary art in china, we want to especially give young female artists, curators, or critics the chance to exhibit or work in our space. the word “feminism” is nowadays, in certain milieus, branded as being against something. for me, creating new opportunities for women is more important than looking back at the times when we didn’t have rights. it is not about demonizing men, but fighting for more rights and equal opportunities for women. �íġd�ļf�į´ůĺ=îĉľǎīóǹʋů�¥�¡ƪĸ£ůnj®ǹȉ ĉ9ʋ�ºûƪĸì ŝg īȇàůºûƪĸì ɔô0ċdžǂìęhdeƪĸċɲöeůĺ=�“d� "”[·ý�ß½ġ·eîů 1 guanxi, or � , is a chinese word meaning “relationship.” it refers here to professional relationships formed through networking. 1 9 5 m a d e l i n e e s c h e n b u r g contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.156 ă"�îĉľǎ �ºûęhį´ůĺ=ō�ȋºûőijļfů|�įǹʋ�ǩá�īʋ¿ȕtũ0 ƞī �(ƕº0)�į´ůļf�įßƅůĺ=� dong lihui|ú�ą 1. explain your professional relationship to the contemporary chinese art world. ǎÿƿǫ�,ÿ��¡î7ƪ«ů��vƌ� my major is art history, and contemporary chinese art is one of my fields of interest. �ý��īƪĸ� �¡î7ƪĸīĉůwǜ# �� 2. could you describe your experience as a female professional in china? according to your experience, has your gender influenced your ability to work effectively within the field? ǎÿėǫÿ¥�¡5*ºûɵ�ůɠȓ�łēÿ ůǩ,ɠȓ ÿůûgîÿůöeƣkijőijð �� as a female, i naturally pay more attention to gender issues within my research field. as a young mother, i have to spend more time on my family and kids, rather than develop my own social network. &���ºû ĉ·ř¦įvœĉÿƀȍ­��ºûijvůǿȏ�e�� měāîȋìæůºû ĉöȋ đ_į´öe#³ůĩǿġ¥ìæ�åãǟ� ƞ�ī�ôĉƣøůij�£� 3. do you think that the status of and opportunities available to women in the contemporary art world in china have improved or become worse over the last ten years? in what ways? [�yċ@�ýǥž�ġ�ʒôº0ů¦b�ĺ=ęȓ(�? f¾¤ğýnj ưţ¥�,ĥȉ� yes. we can see more female artists, faculty, and curators in the contemporary art world. we can see more and more independent and single women in china. ²ý��9�8ųhî7ƪĸūůį´ºƪĸì�äɲ�ɔô0�ĉ9�8ųhşƃºû�şǟºû¥�y �ą½ąa�� 4. what does the word�feminism�mean to you, if anything, in the context of contemporary china/contemporary chinese art? or, is there another word that would better describe your hopes for the future of gender relations in this field? [���yģ���yƪĸơĭ� îÿľƿ “d� "”ǩ�ljij1!ăú�ǧīijőij���³ůį� ǭůljľưǣÿî(ïľũºvƌůüĵ�� i feel it means women artists do their work independently, intelligently, and confidently. i cannot figure out another word. �ƻ�ǩ�ljůăúīºûƪĸìşƃ�pŗįąů�ƣkůdee��ĉă�_�³ůlj(� 1 9 6 t h o u g h t s & t h i n g s 0 2 � � � contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.156 emma karasz 1. explain your professional relationship to the contemporary chinese art world. ǎÿƿǫ�,ÿ��¡î7ƪ«ů��vƌ� i am the program director of red gate residency, an international artists residency in beijing. �[ red gate gallery ȑŭƺaîǃƺȉűů ɠť� 2. could you describe your experience as a female professional in china? according to your experience, has your gender influenced your ability to work effectively within the field? ǎÿėǫÿ¥�¡5*ºûɵ�ůɠȓ�łēÿůǩ,ɠȓ ÿůûgîÿůöeƣkijőijð�� for the most part, no, it has not influenced my ability to work. i will admit that i never thought about this much until a previous artist-in-residence at red gate made a comment about my role that totally altered my way of thinking about the job, and the kind of image i must project to avoid getting boxed into a gendered conception of what i do. the comment needs some context: earlier this year, i was on a panel at a museum in beijing with three male artists; we were speaking about the importance of residencies and cultural exchange. i was both the youngest person on stage and the only woman. after the panel, this resident told me that he was very upset that there hadn't been any women artists on stage, and furthermore, that the only woman (myself) was simply “a caretaker.” i was both hurt and outraged. in an attempt to condemn an institution for being sexist and to comment on a larger systemic problem, he was blatantly sexist. as “coordinator” of the program (as i was for the first year working at red gate) and now as director, i manage everything relating to the residency, from applications and finances, to airport pickups, and visits to chinese artists' studios. some people have called this a “babysitting” role. since this resident's comment, i have been very conscious never to be too nurturing, forgiving, “soft”—all arguably instinctual characteristics of mine—for fear that it would cast me off as simply a womanly “caretaker,” as opposed to a capable manager of a international artists residency program. because i am a woman, the complexities of my job were devalued. would this happen if it were a man in the same position? i do not think this experience is unique to china. however, i do think it's worth noting that the idea of “woman as caretaker” is perhaps more socially acceptable in china than the social circle i come from in the us. to give an example, i recently met a chinese painter while he was setting up his exhibition. his wife was helping him with the set-up (as family members often do; other times it is the artist's father, or brother, mother, etc.), and when i asked her what she did, she said "i'm his wife. i help him with his work." i think that perhaps in the art world, particularly in china, if the man in a heterosexual relationship is a successful artist, then it is totally normal and non-taboo for his spouse to devote her life to his work. i am not sure if the same would be true if the woman were the artist. �÷½ǎ ĉůûgîĉůöeƣkőijð��ĉčƻĉƃ�ńăhǩ�ǿȏī8i red gate ýƪĸìę hĉůºûůƹʃůĩl�6ƽĉçrğ�ĉîǩ�öeůųő ǧijƽĉăhĉø!łʋưǣƣøľǵ qʊż=ůũºĵĵċļƚ�ĉʋ4ƒ��ǩ�ƽǂůơĭ�3àe ĉ~n(��¥u/ůƪĸȏƪĸì ů�ƾ�“qǝƽǂ”ġ�ę���`ġĕ²×ƪĸì�ĉ9ǐhƪĸìůȑŭƺa�ģt-ŕůǹʋû�¥ 1 9 7 m a d e l i n e e s c h e n b u r g contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.156 ƥ��ů0ǹ ĉīıàǡů ��ůºû�=ƾ8� ǩ�ƪĸì�ljĉ6īȇþćýů��ƥ��őij ºûůƪĸì �ǎ ƥ��ů���ºû�ĉ��ī�ƈƞù�ĉħąhʊ?ë�ȇþŧŏ�6ǯǥǒǔ ǩ�ijûgŋƶůĺľ 8�džǂ��į¶ůƌɩûůǿȏ třưǣ(6ƣøůûgŋƶ� ��“xǐ0”ýĩl�ĉ¥ red gate è��ġ�cţ¥îɠť ĉƈťċijǝȑŭƺaijvƌů*ā 5 ũǎ�ǔoĥȉhĕĺ�džǿ�¡ƪĸìůöeê ĉƿǒǔ�ijů0ďĉůöeîm“*g”ýāù��o 8ǩ�ƪĸìůdžnjèà ��þ�öʒôǵqưţô¸řȋ0 ¸sí “ǡ” ýñ� --ĕi�ǎīĉ ķƣůŝñ—x�ëùg0=ĝģĉ��ʒôĉ�ī�bºû �ëô�”ġò�²� ·õ;ýyȁȑŭƺ aůɠť� x�ĉīº0 ĉůöeů²ĺûʊǖc�½ŀ��ũ0ij�łůöe fʒô6=dzhǩłůā\��ĉ �ʒôǩī��¥ �yýóñýɠȓ� #²ġ�áéʒô”d�é�ëô�”ýá�[�yâ!ėå�[îyýqziėµf8ņǥ�ō½ǎ ĉı ǧƻdž(��¥]±ôƶůũƪĸì�6ůɯá¥ýq6]±�¥�yǩī��óĭdzůā\�ȃ(ɯá8 ³ ijůĩl&īśś �� ¾¾ľýqƪĸì]±�ĉǿ6ůɯá»m1!öe »ǎ ��²�ýð hġ�z<��” �ƻ��ƣī¥ģƪū ŝgī¥�¡ ½ŀ��°¥�ûvƌ�ũ0ī��ĉmůƪĸ ì 6ů@icãnjçr¹šƣøů�ŧľxqɯtöe ǩīīȇþňþƞ�ō�ǵǀů�ĉ�ŷdz½ŀ ƪĸìīºûůnj »ůā\=ī��ł� 3. do you think that the status of and opportunities available to women in the contemporary art world in china have improved or become worse over the last ten years? in what ways? [�yċ@�ýǥž� ÿʒôº0ů¦b�ĺ=ęȓ(��½ŀęȓůnj ưţ¥�,ĥȉ� it is difficult for me to comment on that because i am relatively new to the chinese contemporary art world and have only been in china for two years. in addition, as a young white woman in china, i have received preferential treatment in countless ways, but this represents a whole other problem, and not one necessarily related to the art world at all. that said, it is perhaps my positive and naive view that the status of women is always changing for the better, especially as we become a more globalized world, and particularly in china, as it plays a key role in that globalization.� chinese women artists are notoriously underrepresented. we have a resident who has come back to the residency several times in the last year because she is writing about women artists in china. the fact that this hasn't already happened is indicative of inequality, but similarly, the fact that it's happening is a sign that there is cause for it now, and that women artists are finally receiving more attention. actually, most of the people i know working in the art world in china are women. often they are not the “artists,” but the people running what goes on behind the scenes. most of the time, men are creating the information and the women are disseminating it. this does not necessarily mean they are less powerful, but it does mean that there are gender roles in place. this must be changed. ��ȅǐǂǩ�ǿȏ��ĉ¥�¡î7ģƪūůĩǿōǣŷ ĉ¥�¡�ij�à�ƞ� &���àǡů ŭ0ºû ĉ�h(ŝgů<ò ǩ�ā\�ī(gůǿȏ ��èǝģƪūijvƌ�ĉůųő�ƣī$ ƴů âſů aīĉʒôºûů¦b�ű¥ęȓ ŝgī��ĉ9ů�ū�ű�hǚľǚ´rţtůð� ŝgī¥�¡ ��¥rţtůǩž �¡ů¦bīȇþǹʋů� �9ƿŷdz �¡ºûƪĸìőijǜµ7ưû�¥ red gate ȑŭƺa�ĉ9ij��ó´ń�ľů~nɲ ��»¥[v+¥�¡ůºƪĸì9�ƥ3ǧőij0[ǩ�ȏű ǩ�*éưĩ�ž�ßƅůā\ aī ţ¥ij��0[ǩ�ȏűưżǩī��ż=ȅŏ ºûƪĸìƒ+�hį´vœ� 1é ĉ¥ƪģūƻdžůbē7�ìīºů��ʀľǎ »9�ī“ƪĸì,�ò²|n�ï��÷½ǎ ũ 0dǰŷdž º0ďǩ�ŷdž>ĝèľ�ǩ��èưż»9őijũ0ůļf aīĉʒôǩ�ā\źéă� ŵ¥ĉ9ůż=ǹ ũºij�èůûgƹʃ�ǩ�ā\ãnjʊğ�� 1 9 8 t h o u g h t s & t h i n g s 0 2 � � � contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.156 4. what does the word�feminism�mean to you, if anything, in the context of contemporary china/contemporary chinese art? or is there another word that would better describe your hopes for the future of gender relations in this field? [���yģ���yƪĸơĭ� îÿľƿ “d� "”ǩ�ljij1!ăú�ǧīijőij���³ůį� ǭůljľưǣÿî(ïľũºvƌůüĵ� i hope for equal representation. as we know, female artists are underrepresented in china. the familiar idol-worship of artists that goes on everywhere is almost entirely allotted to men. it would be very good to see a better gender balance between those making the art and those who run the art institutions. �y¹“~éý�þ�"�9ƿŷdz ¥�¡ºůƪĸìů7ưû� µ�ĉ9óśþůîƪĸìůnot� ʀľǎīîũƪĸìnot�ĉʒôı¼ůģƪūůǝɛ�ƣī¥dǰƪĸ��¥ƈťƪĸĺľ#ǿůũº ōšįßư� hua er|ø 1. explain your professional relationship to the contemporary chinese art world. ǎÿƿǫ�,ÿ��¡î7ƪ«ů��vƌ� in 2008 a friend and i established the see + gallery. this is a gallery only for photography located in the 798 district of beijing. before this, i lived in shenzhen for over ten years. in terms of my relationship with the contemporary chinese art world, i could trace it back to that time, because at the end of the twentieth century, i already had curated a few shows for some painters and photographers. when i opened the gallery in beijing, i decided on the focus of my gallery: photography. because in the contemporary chinese art world photography was a weak field, most of our audiences only knew about european and american photography from the�80s and�90s, so i wanted to help expand that frame, even though the significance of the development of this period is difficult. in terms of the background of this form, from the beginning, i always gave priority to exhibitions of famous foreign photographers. between 2008 and 2011, an internationally renowned critic helped to co-curate an exhibition with close to twenty photographers from america, germany, france, and japan. in 2012, besides continuing the ”big name�series of exhibitions, i also curated the history of photography: stephen white collection, and color photography history collection. these two exhibitions were the first ones in china that spanned 150 years of the history of photography. at that time, we also continued to care about and support the work of chinese photographers, and for the past several years, we have had many exhibitions of chinese photographers and made many recommendations for others to exhibit them, which is a great achievement. until now, see + gallery has become well known within the field. 2008���¸d�ą[>�dl( see+ galleryġǩī�ǿƍɗůěðūç ©ƭ¥u/798ƪĸv�¥ ǩ#iĉi̇¥ŕ§ŧœ(w^à āǎ��¡î7ƪ«ůvƌ &ǁ�8ǫŗhƕ�ĩĵ ��¥��ƌ ķĉùɠ��,î7ūì�ěðìɔaǥ�,ôƶ�¥u/dl see+ĩ ĩź(��èb ƕñī8ðo �����ěð¥�¡î7ƪ«īìrȍ­ &ǁ5¶;îxůƻdž�22ųî+ņƛůs�%wà7 ċ 1 9 9 m a d e l i n e e s c h e n b u r g contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.156 8ĉă�8e�ůɓǿį¶�, òƈ�ň�ĩ&ă�ŵ�ôůʼn:=įƨȅ�ǻ+ǩłůï÷ơĭ ĉ5 èàñǭď(8�ūěð��ʈ�ů¡³ěð¶ûôƶ�� 2008 �ħ2011 �ý5�ǿ ĉ�ĉǵǎů ¡ȁʈ�džǂìơ�ɔô(ǧ20$½öîy��y�éy�°ºéěð¶ûůôƶ�2012��½ę�ɨƙ ¶ûƌbôƶ ĉǧɔô(“the history of photography stephen white collection”ġ�c“color photography history collection”ġǩ��ƿī¥�¡ȑń lǟǚ 150�ěð|�ů¶¬ôƶ��ň� ĩ ĉ9&�űvœ�ğđŵ�¡ķ¤ěðûůde ^àľ ´ń l��³ėƫķ¤ěðûůôƶ � ô(ƨ¼ů�ƙ�ĩƥ3ħ see+ galleryxɠĉ��zijűuŵů��ěðūç� 2. could you describe your experience as a female professional in china? according to your experience, has your gender influenced your ability to work effectively within the field? ǎÿėǫÿ¥�¡5*ºûɵ�ůɠȓĥ¿¡�ýǩ,ɠȓ ÿůûgîÿůöeƣkijőijð�� i don�t define my experience as a female professional experience, because my work has never had clear gender expectations or discrepancies. just speaking from my own experience and luck, in my job right now, women seem to be more attentive than most men in terms of management. ��áköw·��d�ɵ�ů�ǽɠȓ ��ĉċ5*ůöeáőijĩźůûgʋŏċ×é��ī8ĉ� 0ůûàq+eòăġ��ţ¥ůūçöe &ǁ¥ƈťĥȉ=ō�ʀũû´�,əõ 3. do you think that the status of and opportunities available to women in the contemporary art world in china have improved or become worse over the last ten years? in what ways? [�yċ@�ýǥž� ÿʒôº0ů¦b�ĺ=ęȓ(� ½ŀęȓůnj ưţ¥�,ĥȉ� without a doubt, the status and opportunities for women have increased. not only in the household, but also in terms of their role in society, women no longer only reside in subordinate positions; they have actively taken more power, and even freedom of speech. take the art world for example: in the last ten years of the establishment of the structure of the art world, women continue to hold a large proportion of the leadership roles. æ¯ûǿ ½3º0ů¦b�ĺ=ƿijċęȓ��ǂ¥ìæ ǧīż=ƹʃĥȉƿùɠ�22ó+5õ¦ b ēę(į´ů�pļ ťƥnjnjļ�8ƪ«�g ¥ǧ 10 ��çýƪĸĺľǹ ºûmēǽ0ů�ű {ēŵó¶ůōg� 4. what does the word�feminism�mean to you, if anything, in the context of contemporary china/contemporary chinese art? or is there another word that would better describe your hopes for the future of gender relations in this field? [���yģ���yƪĸơĭ� îÿľƿ “d� "”ǩ�ljij1!ăú�ǧīijőij���³ůį� ǭůljľưǣÿî(ïľũºvƌůüĵ� i’m sorry, but i don’t have any special understanding in terms of this question. ��âî+ǩ�ǿȏ ĉőijŝŋů(ƹ� 2 0 0 t h o u g h t s & t h i n g s 0 2 � � � contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.156 new articles in this journal are licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 united states license. this journal is operated by the university library system of the university of pittsburgh as part of its d-scribe digital publishing program, and is co-sponsored by the university of pittsburgh press. kondo vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.80 http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu unfolding the in-between image the emergence of an incipient image at the intersection of still and moving images masaki kondo abstract as digital technology has transformed various aspects of our screen culture over the past few decades, we have been witnessing a disappearing boundary between photographic still images and cinematic moving images. an emerging in-between image has become increasingly prominent in this new image culture, which attempts to negotiate the grey area between stillness and movement. this in-between image, manifest in a variety of formats and media, points to an increasingly solid middle ground between the traditional divisions of still and moving images. this paper builds a conceptual framework for analysing this new type of image and explores both the roots of this emergent category before focusing on its contemporary trajectory as exemplified by the work of adad hannah, hiroshi sugimoto, jeff wall, and james nares. about the author masaki kondo is a phd student in cinema and media studies at york university. his current research examines the emergence of the in-between image in screen media through the concept of affect. contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.80 as digital technology has permeated every aspect of society in the past few decades, the use of film to capture photographs and shoot footage has nearly vanished. the near-extinction of film as a recording medium has opened up new questions regarding the essence of photographic and cinematic images; at the same time, we are now seeing new potential in image-based art forms cultivated by on-going technological developments. a disappearing boundary between photographic still images and cinematic moving images in digital form has led to the emergence of an in-between image that defies either of these binary classifications. while this emerging category does not break completely from traditional forms of still and moving images, its merging of these two types of images invites us to re-evaulate the status of photographic and cinematic art works today. this emergent in-between image is not, however, a mere product of new technological possibilities. tableaux vivants, for example, are among the most prominent antecedents that predate the inception of photography and cinema, and they still play a significant role in the emergence of the in-between image today. by negotiating the traditional boundaries of photography, cinema, and even tableaux vivants, contemporary image-based media arts demonstrate the potential to reveal the nature of a previously unexplored temporality. despite their shared recording medium of film, photographic and cinematic images have historically provoked very different responses from their audience. this has led many theorists to define an array of aesthetic differences between these two types of images. the work of two such theorists, peter wollen and christian metz, provide a critical foundation for understanding the nature of the in-between image. from this foundation i will examine the nature of the in-between image through a comparative analysis of the work of hiroshi sugimoto, jeff wall, adad hannah, and james nares. through these works i will shed new light on the fundamental essence of this emerging image and consider our changing relationship with images in contemporary society. before examining the in-between image directly, i must clarify a crucial difference in the way we engage with still and moving images. our engagement with the still image unfolds through the image’s intrinsic quality of intensity: it captures and contracts an instant of duration in the past while it releases and expands the potency of this duration through an unfixed length of viewing time in the present. the combination of the instant moment captured in the past and the unfixed duration of expanding in the present may initially seem paradoxical. this flow from the former to the latter, however, coincides with the duration of our experience of the still image and the intensity of this flow reverberates the contracted duration of the past in our perception of the image. we may consider this intensity in similar terms to what roland barthes calls punctum. barthes describes punctum as the “element which rises from the scene, shoots out of it like an arrow, and pierces,” or “that accident which pricks” and leaves an emotional scar.1 as this scar stays with us until its effect vanishes, the photographic image’s intensity holds our attention and curiosity in the still image as long as we continue to experience the force derived from the contracted duration of the past in the present. the paradoxical 1 roland barthes, camera lucida: reflections on photography, trans. richard howard (new york: hill and wang, 2010), 26-7. unfolding the in-between image the emergence of an incipient image at the intersection of still and moving images masaki kondo 5 2 u n f o l d i n g t h e i n b e t w e e n i m a g e contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.80 temporality of the still image thus underscores the photographic image’s intensity as the crucial factor of its aesthetics. the film theorist peter wollen eloquently describes these temporal characteristics of the still image. in “fire and ice” (1984), wollen maintains that the still image lacks tense and indicates only the aspect of the event, action, or situation depicted in it. wollen explains the difference between tense and aspect as follows: “while ‘tense’ locates an event in time in relation to the present moment of speech, ‘aspect’ represents its internal temporal structure.”2 by foregrounding aspect over tense, the still image represents the inertial state of what it depicts, or an inceptive instance of duration, independent from our inclination to rely on narrative. in contrast to the still image’s intensity, the moving image derives its aesthetic momentum through its extensivity: it constantly evolves through image sequences over a fixed duration of its appearance and disappearance. if we pause the moving image at any given moment, we recognize the aspect of the moving image at that moment when such an image becomes a still image. the moving image is, however, imbricating this aspect in its temporal continuity and extending the intensity of some aspect in order to inscribe tense in it. in this sense, the still and moving images reside in a reciprocal relationship. the still image at a given moment contracts the captured moment into potential and its intensity expands through an unfixed duration of viewing; the moving image extends the moment’s potential, some of which amplifies during a fixed duration of viewing. this characterization of the still and the moving image echoes film theorist christian metz’s distinction between photography and film as outlined in his essay “photography and fetish” (1985). here metz concludes in opaque freudian terms: “film is more capable of playing on fetishism, photography more capable of itself becoming a fetish.”3 david campany, a london-based writer, artist, and curator, clarifies and reaffirms metz’s characterization of this relation between these two image-based art forms. he explains that the fixed materiality of a photograph allows it to become a fetish and “stand in for the absent subject or moment” while the intangible projection of film orchestrates “the viewer’s desire through the fullness of its unfolding” in the form of voyeurism.4 since the moment of capture always takes place in the past, our fetishized obsession with any of the still image’s elements does not return anything but a further longing for contact. the more we see the object of our obsession, the longer we want to hold such a view both with our eyes and our imagination. this obsession with the still image validates the effect of the image’s intensity and promotes a desirably indefinite duration of viewing. in contrast to the still image’s fixity, the moving image’s fluidity can more effectively engender a sense of voyeurism, which metz recognizes as the effect of “the constant and teasing displacement of the cutting line which separates the seen from the unseen.”5 film as a moving image comes into existence only during the duration of our viewing since we perceive its movement, static or dynamic, through an intermittent succession of still images. the moving image’s virtuality, or lack of physicality, uncovers the immanence of such movement within itself. the moving image as an ephemeral phenomenon urges us not to miss anything presented on and through the screen by extending our expectations to something unforeseen in the virtual unfolding of the moving image at the present moment. 2 peter wollen, “fire and ice,” in the photography reader, ed. liz wells (london: routledge, 2003), 77. 3 christian metz, “photography and fetish,” october 34 (autumn 1985): 90. 4 david campany, photography and cinema (london: reaktion books, 2008), 11. 5 metz, “photography and fetish,” 88. 5 3 m a s a k i k o n d o contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.80 although the intensity of photographic images pertains to the past and the extensivity of cinematic images to the present, the objects themselves are missing from both types of images. the objects depicted in the still image exist in the past but they cannot exist in the present as they did at the moment of capture. the objects that emerge in the moving image maintain their existence only in the duration of its virtual continuity from the past through the present to the future but not at any single moment in this temporal continuity. we can recognize this reciprocality of still and moving images—of their intensive and extensive durations or of their objects of fetish and voyeurism—in hiroshi sugimoto’s movie theaters (1975-2001) photography series. here, sugimoto created long-exposure photographs of movie theatres by setting up his camera at the back of their screen rooms and recording the theatrical space in single frames for the duration of an entire screening. as campany points out, this series leads us to recognize and contemplate not only photography’s and film’s physical, or architectural, conditions but also their medium-specific attributes, such as “speed, light, exposure, projection, duration and motion.”6 sugimoto’s photograph union city drive, union city (1993) from this series emphasizes these conditions. at first sight, the existence of the white screen at the centre dominates the image, but its starkly luminescent rectangular shape makes a sharp contrast to the overall darkness in the rest of the space. several white lines streaking across the sky mark the image as a long-exposure photograph, yet the white surface of the screen provides few clues as to what has transpired. the screen must have been projecting back something, and indeed an entire movie passed in front of the sugimoto’s camera. this completely overexposed section visually reveals the reciprocality of the still and moving images. art historians hilde van gelder and helen westgeest explain that “sugimoto’s photographs make viewers aware that a photo camera can create an experience of time that cannot be experienced through the human eye.”7 the moving image’s disappearance reinforces both the still image’s capacity to intensify what happened in the past and the moving image’s dependence on temporal duration for its existence. if the overexposed screen in union city drive, union city represent the experience of film’s temporal duration, we can recognize sugimoto’s photograph as a critical attempt to dialectically engaging with aesthetic issues deriving from differences between film and photography through their co-existence on the same surface. while van gelder and westgeest characterize the brightly overexposed film screen in this photograph as “an object for meditation,” other photographers and artists, such as adad hannah, have attempted not just to meditate on but also to mediate the boundary between the still and moving images.8 in his artist statement for two mirrors (2008), which he shot at madrid’s museo del prado, hannah reveals the crucial role of video-recorded tableaux vivants in his way of negotiating and creating the emerging domain of the in-between image: i have been making real-time video-recorded tableaux vivants for the last seven years in an ongoing body of work called stills. by creating videos that mimic the appearance of a photograph, i can stretch out the privileged moment of photography and expose it in a way that compels viewers to interrogate the boundaries and characteristics that distinguish photography from video or film. while a photograph is the index of a specific moment when the shutter opened for a fraction of second, with the before and after 6 campany, photography and cinema, 12. 7 hilde van gelder and helen westgeest, photography theory in historical perspective: case studies from contemporary art (chichester, west sussex: wiley-blackwell, 2011), 82. 8 ibid., 81. 5 4 u n f o l d i n g t h e i n b e t w e e n i m a g e contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.80 firmly implied, in each of these videos time itself becomes a crucial element, the live image negating the imagined before and after, insisting on the live/lived present. it is within this uneasy space between movement and stillness, the recorded and the live, that i hope to open up a space for viewers to take an active role in the generation of meaning—a meaning that is formed relationally between viewer and artwork.9 as hannah attempts to stretch out the essence of photography, or the still image’s intensity, toward the domain of video, his use of tableaux vivants reveal the domain of the in-between image as the “uneasy space between movement and stillness, the recorded and the live.”10 sugimoto’s union city drive, union city foregrounds an aesthetic difference between film and photography but his practice remains in the traditional domain of photography. in contrast, hannah engages with the grey area in the reciprocality between the still and moving images. through this critical engagement, he attempts to establish the in-between image through a hegelian sense of sublation, or the process wherein opposing or contradictory elements lose their independence from one another and become “mere ‘moments’ of a unity,” while preserving the essence of the indeterminate state at the transcendental level.11 furthermore, the integration of tableaux vivants, which became a mode of popular entertainment in the nineteenth century, adds another twist in the pursuit of the in-between image in hannah’s work. hannah’s creative endeavour negotiates the space between movement and stillness, which also proved essential for earlier tableaux vivants. art historian steven jacobs traces the emergence of tabealux vivants as an artistic practice back to the eighteenth-century french philosopher and art critic denis diderot’s writings on theatre. diderot recognized tableaux vivants as dramaturgy that could supersede coup de théâtre, or a sudden turn of event in a play.12 jacob explains that this use of tableaux vivants in theatre achieved the representation of “fixed moments that halt the narrative development of the story and introduce stasis into the movement of the play.”13 identifying a similar attitude toward tableaux vivants in modernist cinema of the 1960s, jacobs argues that modernist cinema’s emphasis on the nature of temporality—particularly stillness and slowness—echoes the reviving fascination for tableaux vivants at that time.”14 we can observe this preference for slowness as a way of resisting speed as the symbol of modernization in the 1960s avant-garde films, such as andy warhol’s empire (1964) and michael snow’s wavelength (1967). like jacobs, brigitte peucker, a scholar of german literature and film studies, traces the root of tableaux vivants within art back to diderot, but she regards them as an early mode of hybridity in art: “tableau vivant is a meeting point of several modes of representation, constituting a palimpsest or textual overlay simultaneously evocative of painting, drama, and 9 adad hannah, artist’s statement for “two mirrors,” pierre-françois ouellette art contemporain, accessed may 5, 2013, http://www.pfoac.com/fairs/loop08_en.htm. 10 ibid. 11 stephen houlgate, “hegel logic,” in the cambridge companion to hegel and nineteenth-century philosophy, ed. frederick c. beiser (cambridge: cambridge university press, 2008), 130. 12 steven jacobs, framing pictures: film and the visual arts (edinburgh: edinburgh university press, 2011), 88. 13 ibid. 14 ibid., 93. 5 5 m a s a k i k o n d o contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.80 sculpture.”15 these aspects of heterogeneity and intermediality in tableaux vivants are an indication of forthcoming post-modernism and must have attracted hannah to this art form. in the context of modernist art, the accentuated existence of hybridity can result in art forms’ self-reflexivity to their medium specificity. jacobs, however, asserts that tableaux vivants and cinema “were difficult to reconcile with a modernist aesthetic of self-investigation based on the idea of the essence and purity of a specific medium” due to the nature of their hybridity and heterogeneity.16 along with direct engagements with stillness and movement, tableaux vivants now have the potential to supersede modernist aesthetics through their hybridity. in the milieu of the emergence of tableaux vivants within the visual art of the 1960s onward, we cannot overlook the significance of jeff wall’s work, which opened up a new field of image-based art and is in many respects a forerunner of hannah’s work. in “jeff wall, wittgenstein, and the everyday” (2007), art historian and critic michael fried maintains, one of the most important developments in the so-called visual arts of the past twenty-five years has been the emergence of large-scale, tableau-sized photographs that . . . aspire to what might loosely be called the rhetorical or beholder-addressing significance of paintings while at the same time declaring their artifactual identity as photographs.17 although painterly subjects still played a significant role in photography at the time, the superior status of painting within modern art started losing its position in the late 1960s.18 this shift away from the established domain of fine art led to the emergence of minimalism, pop art, and conceptual art. art historian michael newman considers the post-1960s years between 1975 and 1980, which corresponds to fried’s framework, as “the period during which various photographic practices emerged out of the functional and documentary uses of photography in conceptual art.”19 in this context, newman identifies wall’s critical contribution to the formation of the post-conceptual, post-modernist art beyond the domain of duchampian readymade at that time: the appropriation art of the late 1970s involved a re-engagement with pop via the deadpan repetition of minimalism . . . by contrast wall, when he draws on a preceding work, does not rephotograph or copy it, but rather reconstructs it, using the original not as the source for a reproduction, but rather as a model.20 15 brigitte peucker, “filmic tableau vivant: vermeer, intermediality, and the real,” in rites of realism: essays on corporeal cinema, ed. ivone margulies (durham: duke university press, 2003), 295. 16 jacobs, framing pictures: film and the visual arts, 94. 17 michael fried, “jeff wall, wittgenstein, and the everyday,” critical inquiry 33, no. 3 (spring 2007): 495-497, http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/513524. 18 jean-françois chevrier, “the adventures of the picture form in the history of photography,” in the last picture show: artists using photography 1960–1982, ed. douglas fogle (minneapolis: walker art center, 2003), 114. 19 michael newman, “towards the reinvigoration of the ‘western tableau’: some notes on jeff wall and duchamp,” oxford art journal 30, no. 1 (march 2007): 85, doi: 10.1093/oxartj/kcl035. 20 ibid., 86. 5 6 u n f o l d i n g t h e i n b e t w e e n i m a g e contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.80 through this rigorous reconstruction of the pre-existing work of art, wall attempted to move beyond the framework imposed by conceptualism. wall maintains that the failure of photo-conceptualism of the 1960s and 1970s “revolutionized our concept of the picture and created the conditions for the restoration of that concept as a central category of contemporary art by around 1974.”21 although he has exhibited a stronger attitude toward the opportunity to revolutionize the concept of picture, or the historical context of image representation and depiction in western culture, wall shares with hannah a curiosity to explore the vagueness of the emerging field of visual art in their respective eras. wall endeavoured to open up the domain of pictorial possibilities and has established his cinematic style in photographic tableaux. jacobs particularly emphasizes the constructed factor of wall’s work as cinematic. he explains: “wall’s works are cinematic in the way they deal with lighting, aspect ratio, mise-en-scène, and so forth. presented as large-format transparencies on light boxes, adding to their cinematic effect, wall’s photographs are unmistakably constructed.”22 furthermore, the accessibility of digital technology and computer software has extended the scope of the constructed-ness in wall’s image work beyond pro-filmic reality and pre-shooting control. wall’s oft-cited a sudden gust of wind (after hokusai) (1993) is a digital assemblage of dozens of images, and its production process involved a magnitude of film production techniques to control all of the aspects of mise-en-scène from actors to props and lighting to wind. this seamlessly assembled image captures the moment when the wind scatters sheets of paper. campany, however, contends that wall’s improbably perfected image does not conform to our sense of photographic realism: wind animates wall’s picture at a level more conceptual than actual. it captures an idea, not a sudden gust. moreover, there is an improbable perfection in wall’s picture. the bleak setting on the dirt ground cannot quite anchor its realism. it is as if photographic arrestedness, so in thrall to the decisive moment as a “slice of life,” demands imperfection somewhere. perhaps wall’s perfectionism is its own deliberate undoing, allowing the viewer an entry point.23 the sense of idealistic perfection felt in this work, nevertheless, embodies what wall has been working on since the mid-1970s in order to revolutionize our sense of photographic image. being aware of the constructed-ness in this photographic tableau, we are struck by the oddity of wind as part of this tableau vivant. as sugimoto’s union city drive, union city reveals the still image’s inability to capture the movement existing within the duration of the moving image, wind physically, aesthetically, and conceptually escapes the image. the conceptualized existence of wind in wall’s photographic tableau, therefore, underpins the still image’s capacity to contract the movement of wind and to evoke our obsession with the streak of scattered sheets of paper as the trace of the wind. furthermore, this conceptualized wind highlights the proclivity of wall’s photographic tableau to represent something beyond (photographic) realism through its perfectly captured moment that in reality consists of dozens of images and moments. 21 jeff wall, “‘marks of indifference’: aspects of photography in, or as, conceptual art,” in the last picture show: artists using photography, 1960-1982, ed. dogulas fogle (minneapolis: walker art centre, 2003), 44. 22 jacobs, framing pictures: film and the visual arts, 142. 23 campany, photography and cinema, 51. 5 7 m a s a k i k o n d o contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.80 impeccably assembled still images like this, exhibiting hyper-realism and obvious constructed-ness, indicate the emergence of a post-photographic image since the 1970s, and establishes wall, along with his contemporaries like cindy sherman, as the progenitors of this new category in visual art. this post-photographic image has become more natural through the proliferation of digital photography. despite its digital constructed-ness, we tend to treat digital photography as equivalent to traditional film photography. the pervasiveness of screen images in daily life along with the digital image’s malleability has made us not only familiar with but even indifferent to these digitally constructed images. in the crisis of modernism, wall brought photography and tableaux vivants together in order to establish the domain of the post-photographic image, but what are contemporary artists of the twenty-first century doing in order to build upon wall’s achievement? we can find one answer in hannah’s approach of bringing photographic tableaux and the moving image together to expose the constructed-ness of contemporary images and re-evaluate the power of unconstructed images. several of hannah’s works combine still and moving images of highly constructed and stylized situations, such as the raft of the medusa (100 mile house) (2009), a vulgar picture (2010), and daydreams of the drunken scholar (2012). unlike wall’s approach to photographic tableaux, hannah creates tableaux vivants more directly by taking straight photographs of posed models in staged settings. in addition to the photographs, hannah records the tableaux vivants in video and foregrounds the unconstructed aspect in the still images. this approach allows hannah to produce the sense of authenticity in his works through its naturalistic depiction of scenes. the less constructed but more staged setting of these works highlight the theatrical reality of the depicted scenes in stark contrast to wall’s hyper-realistic images. in order to explore this unstructured aspect in hannah’s images, i will focus on his the russians series. this series evolved from his encounter with ordinary people on a trip to st. petersburg and its vicinities and it relies on contingent conditions of mise-en-scène more than his other series. moreover, hannah’s use of non-professional models on location foregrounds the nature of unconstructed, uncontrolled situations and dialectically engages with the plasticity of digitally manipulated and constructed images. these production conditions of the russians not only lend them the authenticity of documentary photography but also echoes the rawness observed in the actuality film from early cinema and in the italian neorealism movement of the late 1940s and the early 1950s. girl on a balcony, a video from this series, shows a young woman with a ponytail standing on a balcony with her hands resting on the railing. from the given view, the balcony seems to be on a high floor. despite her attempt to remain still, her hair waves in breeze; the upper body moves up and down as she breathes; she blinks frequently; the shade inside the balcony gradually shifts; and the trees in the background sway. if we see this situation as unfold in a tableau vivant or in reality, we may not pay particular attention to these subtle movements but rather focus on the entirety of the situation. seeing them within this moving image on a static screen, however, our sensitivity to movement heightens and we start to perceive the vitality contained in even such ordinary scenes. the curatorial statement accompanying the exhibition of this series explains: “somewhat less controlled than his previous videos, hannah’s subjects pulse with life even as they try to remain still.”24 indeed, the high-definition video of this tableau vivant by amateur models intensifies our sense, and even desire, to feel the pulsation 24 curatorial statement for adad hannah’s the russians, pierre-françois ouellette art contemporain, september 10, 2011 – october 22, 2011, accessed may 6, 2013, http://www.pfoac.com/exhibitions/ah_2011_en.html. 5 8 u n f o l d i n g t h e i n b e t w e e n i m a g e contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.80 that the young woman generates, experiences, and coexists with through the duration captured in the video. with this enhanced sense of the pulsation of vitality and energy, we can relive the duration experienced by the young woman and captured in the video. the vital pulsation revealed in girl on a balcony becomes more obvious in the video of russian woman at home and the corresponding still image of old woman looking out window. in both of these images, we see the same elderly woman sitting in a domestic interior. the room has a persian rug on one wall and a yellow and green checkered blanket in front of it. the woman is sitting on a couch covered by the blanket. in the still image, the camera is facing straight into the rug-covered wall and is sharply focusing on the elderly woman, who is on the right side of the frame. while the vivid colours of the blanket and rug contrast with the tranquil colours of the woman’s shirt and skirt, we may pay particular attention to her complexion and imagine the life that she has lived. we may also notice the stuffed animals sitting on top of the couch and against the rug-covered wall. their existence may lead us to believe that she lives with her grandchildren or that they visit her often. here, we are experiencing the extending and unfolding of the image’s intensity in the unfixed duration of our viewing: a narrative begins to emerge as our imagination works through the image’s given context. while we likely go through a similar interpretative process with the video russian woman at home, we attend to every moment of the duration captured in this work. here the camera angle shifts to one corner of the room with the rug-covered wall seen in the still image on the left side and the elderly woman is slightly off centre of the frame. like in girl on a balcony, we notice the woman’s subtle body movements: posture changes, blinking, and the rise and fall of her chest as she breathes. the more body movements we become aware of, the more we focus on each moment of this imaginarily shared duration with the elderly woman, sensing the pulsation of her body. while watching the duration of her attempt to remain still as a tableau vivant, our sensation starts to synchronize with such duration, leading us to perceive the vital pulsation emerging from it. this condition eventually urges us to immerse ourselves in the shared duration so that we can join her in the same temporal dimension. hannah’s the russians series foregrounds our sensitivity to this vital pulsation through an intensified situation of individuals who are trying to remain as still as possible; this sensation of vital pulsation seems to be emerging from a heightened tension in the momentum between the still and the moving. this tension between stillness and movement in this series triggers our desire to reside in the duration captured in them through their relatively uncontrolled natural settings. hannah achieves all these elements by maintaining the static relationship with the depicted space of the in-between image. new-york-based artist james nares, however, shows a different way of approaching the in-between image in street (2011). instead of observing models who attempt to remain still as in hannah’s works, this video work by nares moves around the streets of new york city with a high-speed camera. in a public lecture on street at the wadsworth atheneum, nares explained that his strong interest in the actuality film inspired this work.25 in this sense, nares engages with the rawness of quotidian reality through the moving image from the very beginning, but street achieves a stillness within movement through slow motion. in this work, he used a phantom flex high-speed camera, which can capture up to 1,455 frames per second at its highest resolution and up to 10,750 frames per second at its lowest resolution.26 nares 25 james nares, “free lecture: james nares,” lecture, wadsworth atheneum, hartford, ct, september 28, 2012, video clip, 53:05, https://vimeo.com/51223150. 26 “the phantom flex camera digital high-speed camera,” vision research, accessed may 7, 2013, http://www.visionresearch.com/products/high-speed-cameras/phantom-flex/. 5 9 m a s a k i k o n d o contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.80 recorded sixteen hours of footage of pedestrians in the streets of manhattan by using a camera installed on a van that was moving at the speed of thirty to forty miles per hour, but the final sixty-one minute video clip uses only two-and-half minutes of actual time.27 what particularly attracted nares to the use of the phantom flex camera was its capacity to record for only six seconds at the frame rate that he was using. agreeing that this limitation of recording capacity led to his heightened sense to street contingency, he states, it’s really like a collection of still photographs. but a still photograph that’s just been nudged into motion, and so you see the photo, but you also see what just preceded it and what just came after it, and there’s a little narrative there very often.28 while hannah exploits his professional and amateur models’ attempted stillness in relation to stillness in photography in the russians, nares plays with the very verge of the moment when movement emerges from stillness in the streets. some pedestrians notice the camera on the van and make acknowledging gestures toward it, but the majority of passers-by do not notice it. in the film, their actions unfold in a smooth and seemingly exaggerated manner. as eadweard muybridge’s the horse in motion (1878) reveals the locomotion of a galloping horse, nares’ street expands the duration of time inhabited by his subjects to foreground the unfolding moment of pedestrians’ gestures in duration. because of its depth of field and ability to maintain sharp focus while in motion, this high-definition video gives us a sense of three-dimensionality, which enhances the perceived vitality of the pedestrians. in nares’s video, we are seeing familiar gestures of pedestrians—crossing an intersection, standing in a street, talking on a phone, or waiting for a traffic signal to change. these familiar gestures, however, appear unusual and novel in street as we perceive the moment when the intensity of these stilled gestural movements come into force. by sensing pedestrians’ pulsation through their exaggerated gestures, we are experiencing the in-between image at the threshold of incipient movements from stillness in this video work. both hannah’s and nares’s videos strategically underscore the vital pulsation of life through the grey area existing between the still and moving images by creating in-between images. by making use of tableaux vivants, hannah’s the russians series stimulates our sensitivity and susceptivity to subtle gestures and movements within the attempted stillness of ordinary people in his moving image works. subtle gestures and movements in nares’s street, on the other hand, arise from the constant emergence of such gestural movements in an unfamiliar way through our curious observation of pedestrians in slow motion. despite the different approaches these artists used to capture the tension between stillness and movement in the in-between image, they both guide our attention to the vital pulsation of people depicted in videos. by unfolding the emerging field of the in-between image, both artists encourage us to immerse ourselves in the present moment of viewing the videos, perceiving the energy of people, and occupying the duration of their existence in their surroundings with them. this focus on vital pulsation and shared temporality is unsurprisingly a common theme in contemporary art beyond the domain of the in-between image. as image-based media have shifted from the analogue to the digital, the digital saturation of contemporary society has immersed us in a life full of digital images. as we continue examining how new technologies are 27 nares, “free lecture.” 28 james nares, “james nares’ street, with a soundtrack by thurston moore, runs at the wadsworth atheneum,” interview by michael hamad, ct.com, june 26, 2012, http://www.ct.com/entertainment/art/wtxx-james-nares-street-with-a-soundtrack-by-thurston-moore-run s-at-the-wadsworth-atheneum-20120626,0,3593912.story. 6 0 u n f o l d i n g t h e i n b e t w e e n i m a g e contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.80 reshaping our understanding and perception of image-based media arts, including photography and cinema, the existence of the in-between image in this digital age offers a different way of engaging with such images. as wall attempted to “revolutionize” the modernist aesthetics of image representation and depiction in western culture from the 1970s onward, the in-between image, exemplified by hannah’s and nares’s works, may disclose our contemporary desire to break away from the image’s constructed nature—whether it is mechanical, electronic, or digital—and to immerse ourselves in the experience of each moment in the duration of the present time. in this sense, the sensitivity to vital pulsation and shared duration in the in-between image is disclosing a contemporary desire to return to our experience as the foundation for an understanding and theoretical contemplation of images. being on the verge of incipient movement and even incipient stillness, a further exploration of the in-between image may yet reveal new perspectives into the nature of our engagement with images in contemporary society. 6 1 m a s a k i k o n d o contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.80 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-noncommercial-no derivative works 3.0 united states license. this journal is operated by the university library system of the university of pittsburgh as part of its d-scribe digital publishing program, and is co-sponsored by the university of pittsburgh press. 113-340-6-le vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.113 http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu artificial hells a conversation with claire bishop madeline eschenburg abstract claire bishop answers questions about some of the arguments put forth in her recent book artificial hells: participatory art and the politics of spectatorship. about the author claire bishop has been a professor of contemporary art in the history of art department at cuny graduate center, new york since 2008. she has previously taught at warwick university and the royal college of art. she is editor of the volumnes participation (2006) and installation art: a critical history (2005). in 2008 she co-curated the exhibition double agent with mark sladen. her 2004 essay “antagonism and relational aesthetics,” published in october was a pivotal initiation of the critique of relational aesthetics. madeline eschenburg is a ph.d. student at the university of pittsburgh. her primary research focus is the history of collaborative art in china in the last three decades and its historical precedence. she is a co-editor-in-chief of the journal contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture. assistance in preparing these interview questions provided by henry skerrit, robert bailey, meredith north, ben ogrodnik, and colleen o’reilly contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.113 artificial hells: participatory art and the politics of spectatorship (london: verso, 2012) by claire bishop is an insightful exploration of the history of participatory and socially engaged art and its current manifestations. more than merely descriptive, bishop takes to task the major theorists of this topic (particularly grant kester and nicolas bourriaud) for their general failure to critique participatory art along artistic and aesthetic terms, in favor of assessing its ethical efficacy. for bishop, this lack of criticality is a direct descendent of the silence of art critics in regards to community art, particularly visible in britain in the 1970s. due to biases of sponsoring organizations, art that was created in collaboration with and often for the benefit of marginalized groups of nonartists did not receive continued support based on standards of artistic quality. rather, it was evaluated based on ethical criterion. drawing from rancière’s notion of aesthesis (“an autonomous regime of experience that is not reducible to logic, reason or morality”), bishop argues that not taking into account the aesthetic elements of these projects is tantamount to maintaining, rather than rupturing the status quo that these projects claim to challenge.1 the autonomous state of aesthesis allows for freedom of interpretation and response on the part of the viewer, which for bishop, via rancière, is always in itself political and open-ended. earlier this year, bishop kindly took time to answer a few questions about artificial hells for contemporaneity. the questions follow the thematic sequence of production, temporality, the western/non-western binary, the usa, and her critical engagement with rancière. 1 claire bishop, artificial hells: participatory art and the politics of spectatorship (london, new york: verso, 2012), 18. title box subtitle box authorship box artificial hells a conversation with claire bishop madeline eschenburg 1 7 6 a r t i f i c i a l h e l l s : a c o n v e r s a t i o n w i t h c l a i r e b i s h o p contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.113 madeline eschenburg: you frame the politics of participatory art largely in terms of spectatorship, as is of course appropriate, but is there a specific politics of production in play in such work? a related question would be: what relationship does the production of artistic participation have to its subsequent reception? claire bishop: obviously production (and an ethics of production) has been central to the discourse on socially engaged art to date. but this is precisely the framework i’ve been trying to break with—or at least, to drag back to a consideration of aesthetics and its relationship to politics. to do this i’ve been asking questions that don’t deal solely with process and instead address what the viewer sees, experiences and understands when looking at social practice. if an artists’ process (production) isn’t visible in the work, or legible to the viewer, then does it matter? does the recipe affect the meaning of the work? or are we paying too much attention to process at the expense of considering a project’s larger cultural meaning? in my view there is no point celebrating an “ethical” working process as a goal in itself. the overall meaning of the work has to be more complex than a mere celebration of how a work was implemented. me: as the focus of our journal is contemporaneity—the complexities of how the multiplicity of ways of being in time find visual form—i wonder if you could speak briefly to the question of temporality? the focus of artificial hells is clearly on the political, but you allude to questions of temporality on several occasions. i was wondering if you could speak to how you see the relationship between time and the politics of spectatorship, particularly as the temporal nature (either ongoing or ephemeral) of these participatory events is frequently cited as a key part of their political charges. does persistence beyond the initial time of the event guarantee any kind of effectiveness? cb: i guess the chapter that brings up questions of temporality most obviously is the one dealing with exhibitions in the early nineties, which focuses on the curatorial struggle to reconcile the expanded time-frame of participatory/socially-engaged projects with the conventional temporality of the exhibition, where work is presented in a more or less “final” mode. this struggle leads to a flurry of experimentation with “performative” exhibitions, which attempt to make the time of the exhibition and the catalogue adequate to the expanded temporal production of the art project. participatory art in general has always prioritized experiential immediacy, and its more activist variants have rarely considered how and why one might also consider the transmission of these works to a secondary audience; demonstrable impact in the here and now is invariably seen as more important. i think my position has been fairly clear that in the more interesting projects, there is always some kind of “take home” experience for the secondary viewer (i.e. those of us who weren’t there, who look at projects after they have ended). this is not a question of making nice ”documentation” for the work (there is a common perception that i am someone who always insists upon documentation) but rather, enabling adequate modes of communication—be this video, exhibition, narrative, text anthologies or re-performance—that allow subsequent viewers to experience and engage with the ideas that these projects put forward. efficacity is a perennially thorny issue, and one that we have to address carefully. debates around efficacy tend to refer to demonstrable outcomes, rather than being understood as part of a work’s aesthetic conception. but my point of view is that there is no guaranteed recipe for a good work of art, and duration ultimately has very little to do with efficacy. a short sharp intervention can have more aesthetic and political potency than years of collaborative fieldwork. 1 7 7 m a d e l i n e e s c h e n b u r g contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.113 me: your focus in this book is primarily on western examples of participatory art. in keeping with the theme of our journal, contemporaneity, we must acknowledge that western participatory art can only be truly explained within or against the other contexts in which participatory art emerges. this is particularly relevant when discussing a cross-cultural phenomenon such as performance art, fluxus, and certain kinds of conceptualism. how might non-western participatory art be integrated into your chosen artistic and theoretical purview? cb: i find it interesting that you read the book as western-centric; i thought i was making a point of excluding the us and including examples from eastern europe, russia and south america that have been overlooked in western art histories. that said, i did research some examples from asia—such as chiang mai social installation in thailand, or the long march foundation in beijing—but rapidly concluded that it made no sense to include practices that spring from entirely different artistic traditions. as i state in the introduction, my focus is on the legacy of the historic avant-garde, and its dispersal (via the 1960s neo-avantgarde) into eastern europe and south america. from an academic perspective, i already feel i am breaking certain rules by not having the language skills to do original research in russia, slovakia, czech republic and argentina, let alone adding asian countries into the mix! i am also skeptical of “the world is my oyster” approach, in which authors attempt to gain an omniscient overview of practice globally. i prefer to be led by compelling problems in particular contexts, trying to understand them in depth, rather than giving everywhere a dutiful glance. if the results are a little random then so be it. the point is not a global survey but to demonstrate the different uses and political resonances of participatory art in different ideological contexts—with the goal of viewing the practices of our own day in a more critical light. me: you advance the idea that participatory art emerges in moments of political upheaval (1917, 1968, etc). you are pointed in not referring to the united states. but it seems that your conclusion could, with some consideration, be applied to the us, not so much directly at the service of the government, but certainly at the service of the broader ideology of neo-liberalism that dominates us political discourse. i wonder if you could speak to the differences in these regards between europe and the us as you see it? cb: the instigation for the book was the particular political context of northern europe in the 2000s, pre-crash, in which neoliberal cultural funding policies began to use art as a way to reinforce social inclusion agendas that were simultaneously being undermined by the privatization of education and healthcare. among the privileged genres in this panorama of public funding were participatory art and theatre. given that the us has barely any public funding to speak of (institutions rely upon private foundations and philanthropy more than they do upon the nea, especially after the controversies of the late 1980s), participatory art has a different relationship to the political. here in the us, social practice has evolved as a compensatory sphere for what are perceived to be endemic social injustices; it has a very clear artistic lineage going back to new genre public art, which incidentally emerged around the same time as the nea controversies. where federal agencies have no interest in stepping in, artists mobilize their cultural capital and ingenuity to bring about small scale, localized ameliorations. the difference between the us and europe is that in europe, governments will support this work if it produces enough media attention (see for example the cultural olympiad in the uk, leading up to the 2012 olympics). that said, with the recent turn to the right in europe we are facing a situation more comparable to that in the us: conservative governments no longer want to recognize the creative industries as an economic generator, and in an age of austerity, culture is perceived as a luxury for the rich rather than as a basic right. many european countries don’t have tax breaks for culture and lack a tradition of philanthropy, so the situation will probably get worse before it gets better. 1 7 8 a r t i f i c i a l h e l l s : a c o n v e r s a t i o n w i t h c l a i r e b i s h o p contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.113 me: you find rancière’s work quite theoretically productive, particularly used in conjunction with lacan. could you speak to your particular interpretation of rancière; what did he provide you that no one else could, and what did you think were the limits of his thinking for your purposes? cb: yes rancière hit me with a force of revelation when i read his essay “the emancipated spectator” around 2005. it expressed so much of what i wanted to say, and so clearly. i then devoured pretty much everything he wrote from the 1970s onwards. if i encounter limitations with his work, it lies in the difference in our roles: i am a critic/historian and he is a philosopher. he doesn’t need—or have—to give artistic judgments. this means that rancière is not a great deal of help if one wants to find a formula by which to defend or support a certain aesthetic position. his “politics of aesthetics” leaves one without a critical safety net: each individual instance must be considered in the context of the dominant forms of power in its own time and place. as a result, there can be no privileged medium. so at a certain point, as a critic, one necessarily has to leave rancière— because he provides you with a map but no direction. however, this does mean that a certain freedom ensues, critically and historically. some art historians (like hal foster) have expressed skepticism towards this approach and consider rancière’s writing to signal the end of criticality, but i disagree. rancière knows that critical paradigms are context-specific, and thus allow us to decide what does or doesn’t constitute a critical practice (if indeed criticality is what is called for) at any given historical moment. this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-noncommercial-no derivative works 3.0 united states license. this journal is operated by the university library system of the university of pittsburgh as part of its d-scribe digital publishing program, and is co-sponsored by the university of pittsburgh press. document12 vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.112 http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu contemporary art world currents in transition beyond globalization terry smith and saloni mathur abstract an edited transcript of a colloquium between terry smith, mellon professor of contemporary art history and theory at the university of pittsburgh, and saloni mathur, associate professor of the history of art, university of california, los angeles, held at the department of the history of art and architecture, university of pittsburgh, on october 17, 2012. about the author terry smith, faha, ciha, is andrew w. mellon professor of contemporary art history and theory in the department of the history of art and architecture at the university of pittsburgh, and distinguished visiting professor, national institute for experimental arts, college of fine arts, university of new south wales. in 2010 he was named australia council visual arts laureate by the australian government, and won the mather award for art criticism conferred by the college art association (usa). his most recent book is thinking contemporary curating (new york: independent curators international, 2012). saloni mathur, who received her ph.d. in cultural anthropology from the new school for social research in new york in 1998, brings both art historical and anthropological perspectives to her teaching and research. her areas of interest include the visual cultures of modern south asia and its diasporas, colonial studies and postcolonial criticism, the history of anthropological ideas, museum studies in a global frame, and modern and contemporary south asian art. she is author of india by design: colonial history and cultural display (2007), editor of the migrant’s time: rethinking art history and diaspora (2011), and coeditor (with kavita singh) of no touching, no spitting, no praying: modalities of the museum in south asia (forthcoming). contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.112 terry smith: let me introduce our discussion by taking as a starting point “global art and the museum,” a five-year, worldwide research and exhibition project, conducted by hans belting, andrea buddensieg and peter weibel, all from the center for art and media (zkm), karlsruhe. its goals were articulated in these terms: the project represents a first attempt at documenting the contested boundaries of today’s art world; its aim is to spark a debate on how the globalization process changes the art scene and to undertake a critical review of the development 20 years after its onset. in many countries contemporary art has become an economic project that includes huge cultural districts, museums and art fairs. it’s also become sociopolitical endeavor powered by—often diverging—ideologies of identity, self-determination and overall social change. spectacular has been the rise of a new type of art museum, the museum of contemporary art, which promotes contemporary art without borders and without history. collectors’ and corporate museums are another result. the art market now covers 50 different countries whereas, with the new geography of auction houses, the art trade operates on a global scale. art museums, by contrast, operate within a national or urban framework in which they encounter the most diverse audiences. art collecting has become en vogue on an unprecedented scale, but it lacks a common notion of art. contemporary art also invades former ethnographic museums, but the novelty of the situation defies any safe categories.1 the project culminates in a book, the global contemporary: the rise of new art worlds after 1989, published early in 2013.2 it opens with a wonderful interview with edouard glissant. conducted by manthia diawara for a film of the philosopher’s life, it was made just before he died. while most of the book consists of essays by the curators and artists who participated in the exhibition the global contemporary: artworlds after 1989 that was held at zkm in 2011, it is introduced by a set of overview essays. hans belting writes on “global art versus world art, a challenge for art history,” parul dave mukherji asks “how global can art history be today?” and john clark, my former colleague from the university of sydney, profiles “art history and its futures: the asian case.” i also contributed an essay to this section of the book, entitled “contemporary art: world currents in transition beyond globalization.” its key ideas are embodied in the title of today’s discussion. let me quickly summarize them before inviting professor mathur to respond to them. there is no doubt that contemporary artistic practice has been shaped above all by the forces of globalization that, from the 1980s until recently, predominated within international economic exchange, drove much of world politics, and disseminated spectacle as the theatre of individual and collective imagination in the lives of people all over the world. acknowledging the broad outlines of the obvious connections between art and social change, 1 see “gam—global art and the museum,” zkm | center for art and media karlsruhe, accessed may 22, 2014, http://www.globalartmuseum.de/site/about_us 2 hans belting, andrea buddensieg and peter weibel eds., the global contemporary: the rise of new art worlds after 1989 (cambridge, mass.: mit press for zkm, karlsruhe, 2013). contemporary art world currents in transition beyond globalization terry smith and saloni mathur 1 6 5 t e r r y s m i t h a n d s a l o n i m a t h u r contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.112 a number of art critics, historians, curators, and theorists, along with certain students of visual culture, have pursued an interesting set of more specific questions. did globalized art values spread from the modern cultural centers along with the inroads of multinational capital, intergovernmental agencies, and new technologies? or did the globalization of contemporary art take hold in art producing centers around the world in ways distinctive to each of them? in considering these questions, should we include within the overall conception of “globalization” actions and attitudes such as anti-globalist resistance, defiant localism, critical cosmopolitanism, and evasive tangentiality? should we see such reactions as in dialectical opposition to top-down globalization, as in continuity with previous countercurrents, or as emergent modes of living? can these developments be periodized? since 2001, a number of unanticipated world-scale changes, notably the increasing disjunction between the leading economies—each with different models of economic organization, all prioritizing national objectives, and none seeking to universalize their model—has broken the hegemonic grip of globalization as a world phenomenon. in 2008 it seemed shaky indeed. do we need other ideas to guide our thinking on these world-picturing levels? perhaps we can no longer so conveniently substitute “globalization” for “modernity” and/or “postmodernity” when it comes to naming the overarching framework of present and future possibility? saloni mathur: i should begin by situating myself as quite seriously under-qualified to be commenting on terry’s essay. as someone whose research is largely based in a specific social and historical context—modern and contemporary south asian art, particularly india and pakistan—i do not really feel that i have a strong command of the big-picture frameworks of our times that terry describes so memorably in his essay as “world picturing.” for that kind of project i confess that i generally turn to more ambitious thinkers, like terry smith, whose ideas represent several decades of engagement, and whose efforts at “world picturing” have often articulated what i sense to be strongly the case. namely, that the art emerging from former colonial or post-colonial societies does indeed speak to some of the larger complexities and conditions of crisis in our times. in this sense, along with other thinkers like partha mitter or geeta kapur, one of our larger debts is to the way in which terry has, over the years, fundamentally redefined the very concept and category of contemporary art. to give you a concrete example, when i arrived at ucla twelve years ago, contemporary art was part of a two-sequence course in our curriculum. one sequence covered the period from 1945-1980, and rendered contemporary art as from “1980 to now.” my former colleague al boime taught modern art, primarily as nineteenth century french painting. so, in the year 2000 in los angeles, modern and contemporary art was distinguished against other temporal categories or periods like medieval art, renaissance art, and defined as well against non-western geography. thus we also had indian art, african art, chinese art, and so on. there was literally no room for the work that i and several of my colleagues were doing, namely studying the art of contemporary india, china, africa, african america, etcetera. significantly, it seems to me that this is no longer the case. while we have not totally resolved the issues, we have certainly dismantled that structure, and begun to rethink a new one. we no longer seem to be making the case for contemporary art’s inclusion of non-western sites. the essay by terry struck me as reflecting a place that’s firmly on the other side of this rather radical revision and redefinition. terry begins his essay by painting a disturbing picture of the relationship between art and social change. for me, that pairing—art and social change—conjures an image of art that protests, or the art of resistance; art that fights or argues for revolutionary social change. but he is not referring to that familiar picture. he refers to a less pretty picture; his is an account of the changes apparent in the cozy connectedness between much contemporary art and neoliberal capital, the absurd market excesses in recent years, art’s relationship to the very rich, to the phenomenon of the global mega-museums, and to blockbuster exhibitions: in short, art’s capitulation to globalized spectacle. this leads terry to ask a number of probing questions that seem to lay down the gauntlet for the task at hand in his essay. he 1 6 6 c o n t e m p o r a r y a r t : w o r l d c u r r e n t s i n t r a n s i t i o n b e y o n d g l o b a l i z a t i o n contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.112 summarized them in his introductory remarks a moment ago. to me, these are the key ones: did this transformation to contemporary art happen differently in different parts of the world? can these developments be periodized or not? does globalization continue to remain the prevalent phase that we are in today? his bold answer to the last question is that globalization is no longer hegemonic. what is needed, he argues, is “an account that locates the forces of globalization as one set among others.” this presents a new challenge to the job of world picturing. the rest of terry’s essay is an outline of such an account. he emphasizes a decisive shift from modern to contemporary art, and insists that this be understood through the lens of the local, that is, through the processes specific to different regions and different societies around the world. the modern, he argues, has made way for the contemporary differently, in different parts of the world. the resultant historical picture is not, however, intended to produce, for terry, an object like “global art” or “world art.” he rejects these terms, as do i, because of the way such categories tend to require a synthesis, a resolution, or a kind of coherence that is impossible to conceive today. the global turn towards the south has not occurred without consequence for art itself. the western bias of the category “contemporary art” has not remained intact. terry argues, instead, that certain coexisting histories, within the broader movement from the modern to the contemporary, should be interpolated into our contemporaneity. “contemporaneity” is a term that, for terry, unlocks the present constellation, by showing that it is made up of various simultaneous currents that have characterized art made since 1989. this leads to my first question, one of clarification, really. help us to understand these currents, the forces, if you like, that drive them. you identify three key currents that constitute contemporaneity. one is modernist/retro sensationalists/spectacular; number two is transnational transitionality; while number three seems to me to be more elusive, it’s the current that has no name, as it were, but seems connected to new information technologies, to the digital age, to new media and so on. ts: in my mind, the currents are not simply stylistic modes within contemporary art, they are actual changes in the nature of contemporary thought; they are markers of seismic shifts in human thinking as it moves to grapple with the shifts, at all levels and in all spheres, from modern into contemporary conditions. to summarize them briefly as i see them: even after the end of modernity, in the afterlife of capitalist hegemony, we still have major continuations of the dialectical modes of thinking that were so important during the enlightenment. thus my term “remodernism,” that works for many spheres, despite their enormous inner variety. if we take western philosophy as our example for the moment, we can see that current modes range from highly formal analytics, through extreme, experience-based subjectivity, to deconstruction turned formulaic. not a pretty picture, and dangerously reductive when it comes to world picturing. alongside it, antagonistically, a related but fundamentally quite distinct kind of thinking has emerged since the 1950s from second world, third world, fourth world circumstances, including indigenous situations. as dipesh chakrabarty reminds us in provincializing europe, this has been directly tied to western thinking, in a kind of post-colonial feedback loop.3 but the incommensurability inherent in the relationship is increasingly precipitating examples of another kind of thought: glissant’s idea of the relation, for example, or archille mbembe on the postcolony, walter mignolo on the decolonial, or gayatri spivak on the planetary. 3 dipesh chakrabarty, provincializing europe: postcolonial thought and historical difference (princeton: princeton university press, 2000). 1 6 7 t e r r y s m i t h a n d s a l o n i m a t h u r contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.112 looking at these two perspectives from an imaginary distance, we can readily see that the relationship between them is itself dialectical in form: antagonistic as well as dependent—indeed, it’s a playing out of the master/slave, slave/master relationship. moving even further out and taking them as playing out across time, these competing forces seem to show less and less sign of resolving their differences into a synthesis (however partial, volatile and temporary) that favors one side or the other. yet if you read the incessant public media and political policy chatter about, say, the position of the us in the changing world today, you can see the persistence of this kind desire. of course, it is a thirst for power, and for a continuation of dominance, even now, when we are well past its use-by date. a third kind of thought is, i believe, emerging in network culture, for instance, in much social media, but also in small-scale, cooperative efforts to evolve a planetary consciousness. certainly, it exists, a lot of the time, as a mere supplement to the first two currents, as spectacle or fantasy, among much else. it has major sources in western scientific thinking, especially informatics, in human-machine interaction, in intuitive spiritualism, and in climate change science. it is also, doubtless, an outcome of globalization as a set of economic, political and cultural protocols devised, during the 1990s, to orchestrate the first-second current conflict in favor of the first. but recent geopolitical disarray, and accelerating alertness to the impacts of climate change, is leading many people, including artists, to seek a different mode of thought. they acknowledge differences, intuiting them to be antinomies that will never be resolved but which can be lived with, especially when reworked into affiliations aimed at building connectivities between different kinds of difference everywhere in the world. sm: let me go on to a related question: how do these currents as they manifest themselves in art resonate with other attempts to understand certain trends in contemporary art? i’m thinking of attempts like hal foster’s notion of the archival impulse, or nicolas bourriaud’s concept of “relational aesthetics,” for instance. ts: in contemporary art: world currents i try to lay out more detail what i mean by that third current in art today. unlike the remodernists, the retro-sensationalists and spectacle artists in the first current, those active in the third are not so committed to the project of the history of art unfolding through time by accretion, via tradition and variation, or through contestation and absorption.4 nor do they share much of the priority for artists in the second current: to communicate critical, postcolonial, transnational ways of seeing both locality and the wider world-picture to a self-important, blinkered, western-dominated international artworld. younger artists are not so interested in these post-cold war battles. their instinct is that globalist thinking is in thrall to top-down power, as is concern about the future of museums and other artworld structures. they are much more interested in creative settings and community situations which can shift and change ways of living among their cohort so as to become more closely attuned to what’s happening to the planet. i deliberately don’t give a name to this tendency because that would cut against its multiplicitous character: it’s simply too diverse. hal foster is certainly right to identify an “archival impulse” in much recent art. allan sekula had written brilliantly about “the body and the archive” at an earlier point, as did others, such as douglas crimp. philosophers such as michel foucault and jacques derrida hugely enriched our understanding of the archival. it does not surprise me that it has arisen 4 terry smith, contemporary art: world currents (london: laurence king; upper saddle river, nj: pearson/prentice hall, 2011 and 2012). 1 6 8 c o n t e m p o r a r y a r t : w o r l d c u r r e n t s i n t r a n s i t i o n b e y o n d g l o b a l i z a t i o n contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.112 so strongly in contemporary conditions: our contemporaneity is saturated with all kinds of pasts: historical, artistic, religious, utopian. they fill the present with their urgings for recurrence, they rush in to close the yawning gap left by the twilight of the master narratives, and their unrealized projects still seem to desire realization so strongly that they would snuff out other futures. derrida reminds us that the present is constantly splitting between incipience and slippage into the archival. deleuze pictures time as crystalline, with the present as constantly in formation out of various pasts. it is no wonder that installations evoking actual or imaginary archives are so common these days: they are ideal format for enabling us to imagine being with time (con tempus), that is to say, with many times at the same time. “relational aesthetics” was an influential term for what a group of artists, particularly in europe, were doing in the 1990s, but it doesn’t amount to anything larger than that. in fact, it was a rather poor descriptor. the artists so named do not share an “aesthetic”: they did not have a particularly distinct sense of beauty, or set of pleasures; nor did their work look similar. yes, they related well to each other, for a time, and, yes, their work was about how, in certain situations, people relate to each other, and about the world relates to them. but everyone knew that “relational” was a non-political, or soft, way to say “social” or “engaged.” “critical” is, actually, the key word; but even that gets devalued through formulaic usage these days. sm: claire bishop was of course a leading critic of relational aesthetics along these lines. i like the title of her new book, artificial hells, which implies that one person’s relational aesthetic is another person’s artificial and participatory hell.5 ts: too true. although for her, the big issue remains: how might even the most effective socially engaged work count aesthetically? from my point of view, such questions cannot be answered, effectively, in the abstract, or by the application of a general set of criteria to particular cases. they are answered differently within each current, or outside them, according to the instance. for example, either/or dichotomies such as “aesthetics” versus “social engagement” are simply inappropriate to creativity within the third current. sm: could you say more about the relationship of the three art currents to institutional formats of display, and especially the role of the emergent current number three, which, you provocatively argue, will “increasingly set the terms of what will count in the future”? ts: certainly, the various kinds of exhibitionary formats have different valiances within each of the three currents and between them. there have been important traveling exhibitions, shown in major museums, that have surveyed the contemporary art of, say, central and eastern europe, before and after 1989, of russian art from the late soviet times, of african art in recent decades, of under-appreciated avant-gardes in latin america, as well as a host of shows that revisit feminist interventions from the 1960s until now. there have been pathbreaking iterations of key recurrent mega-exhibitions, such as okwui enwezor’s documenta 11 in 2002. indeed, we could add to these the whole phenomenon of biennials in general, as they were revived in the 1970s and 1980s (sydney and havana), and then boomed in the 1990s. i would argue that all of these shows have been crucial to negotiating connections between the artists, curators, critics and others who shaped the second current and those active in the first current, especially those with a critical openness to the world outside of euroamerica. it is precisely this negotiation that has done most to maintain a critical spirit in contemporary art. biennials have been subversive, as carlos basualdo, 5 claire bishop, artificial hells: participatory art and the politics of spectatorship (london: verso, 2012). 1 6 9 t e r r y s m i t h a n d s a l o n i m a t h u r contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.112 okwui, and many others have said (and shown in their curating). they remain so, potentially at least, in many parts of the world. at the same time, of course, the biennial impulse is constantly being institutionalized, brought back into more orthodox exhibitionary structures. but that’s to be expected: it is the breathing-in-and-out of what is basically an infrastructural system. i talk about this at some length in thinking contemporary curating, as does paul o’neill in his book curating cultures and the culture(s) of curating.6 sm: i see, so biennials might be seen as tidal jetties of a sort that can interrupt the flows between currents one and two. moving to the second section of terry’s essay, which is entitled “the planet to override the global” (citing gayatri chakravorty spivak), we see how his category, contemporaneity, comes to mark more than just the conditions of provocation and possibility. here, terry expresses a concern for a larger collective fate of a genuinely catastrophic kind. we are reminded by him of the fragility of our ecosystems, the seemingly irreconcilable forces of secularism versus religious extremism, and we are invited to imagine the “impossible figure of planetarity.” it is not surprising that terry’s call here is not just to artists but also to all “workers in the realm of the imagination,” drawing upon a language of “work” that evokes such post-marxist thinkers as raymond williams, fredric jameson, along with gayatri spivak. they are thinkers who are/were also strongly committed to providing big picture frameworks: flexible, contingent, dialectical ones—approaches that would encompass positive action, as terry has put it. while he may not inherit from these marxist revisionists some of the tools or language of political economy, the spirit of utopianism definitely resonates, as does the drive to imagine that which cannot be imagined. this, then, leads to my question: if contemporaneity and planetarity is a vocabulary relevant to “thoughts of this kind”—perhaps we can call them utopian—then what is your relationship to the tradition of leftist cultural criticism? does your framework represent a break from it, or an intellectual dissatisfaction with parts of it, or a continued commitment to some of its more specific goals? i’m reminded of a student’s response to an essay by geeta kapur, a major marxist thinker in the indian context. the student asked: why is kapur so obsessed with politics? this strikes me as symptomatic of a generation that seems to reject let’s say the polemics of any form of marxist thinking, that don’t seem to connect to such frameworks. so, i guess my question is about the way in which you depart from this tradition but also retain, or reintroduce, the question of the political. how do we do that for the present? ts: i am glad that saloni identifies so clearly my relationship to the kind of critical marxism represented by figures such as raymond williams, fredric jameson, gayatri spivak, and geeta kapur. these are people i admire enormously, from whom i have learned an enormous amount, and whom, with the exception of williams, i’ve been fortunate to know. a deeper background is my being taught by bernard smith in australia and meyer schapiro in new york. they offered a direct link to the great generation of marxist art historians and writers on art of the 1930s: max raphael, frederick antal, francis klingender, and others. later, i got to walter benjamin, even later to ernst bloch. i see myself absolutely as starting from within this framework, as does t.j. clark, for example, among too few others. where i differ from these illustrious models and colleagues is that i’ve always, since i was very young, had a much more relativist position, one that sees historical forces as, at once, enormously powerful and determinative, yet also contingent, chancy and adventitious 6 terry smith, thinking contemporary curating (new york: independent curators international (ici), 2012); paul o’neill, the culture of curating and the curating of culture(s) (cambridge, mass.: mit press, 2012). 1 7 0 c o n t e m p o r a r y a r t : w o r l d c u r r e n t s i n t r a n s i t i o n b e y o n d g l o b a l i z a t i o n contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.112 in how that power comes into effect. being an australian in the 1960s and 1970s meant learning this lesson well. experiencing class hierarchies, yet also their porosity, in my own life; hating the dependent provincialism of my own culture, yet coming to see that specific kinds of provincialism prevailed everywhere as, in effect, an iniquitous world system, especially in the arts, where it could be exposed, attacked, and to some degree overcome; disturbed by my society’s repression of indigenous culture yet excited by that culture’s flowering, again especially in the visual arts. these are just some of the formative experiences that were quite specific during those years to people such as myself in settler colonial contexts. being in new york in the early 1970s as a member of the art & language group meant immersion as an artist in an avant-gardism so extreme that it counts, still, as the last avantgarde moment, perhaps the first anti-avant-garde one. we had, right there, all the contradictions of, on the one hand, commitment to the pure anarchism that art enables, and, at the same time, to a negative capability, to an adornian claim for art’s autonomy-bynecessity. in the mid-1970s, we carried this spirit into our direct engagement with publicsphere politics. going to england in the later 1970s meant the center for contemporary cultural studies, in birmingham, during stuart hall’s last year there. that was as close as i could get to the spirit of raymond williams, to the practices of cultural analytics that he initiated, and were being so brilliantly followed by hall and others. so, there has always been, for me, this commitment to radical social transformation and to a highly relativistic questioning of every kind of totality, every claim for historical inevitability, no matter how earnestly one might wish it into being. these antinomies have always been—if i can say, paradoxically—foundational. they continue to be. this may sound odd to some, but i do not believe myself at all unique in this regard. what jameson came to call “cognitive mapping,” and the political necessity of such mapping, is the starting point for putting these values to work. the first job of a marxist intellectual is to map the world’s forces and flows accurately and realistically. the second is to map the range of thought that’s out there, the kinds of thinking that prevail at all levels, and in all sectors, of a society at a given time. the gap between these two maps reveals ideology at work, and the inequality, the injustices, the rigged games that prevail in reality. showing this to the people is the third task: putting it out there, in sharp contrast to the mystifications to which they are, most of time, subject. if we apply my mix of marxist pragmatics and deconstructive relativism to utopianism itself, we can see that it is a project that arose and failed in europe, especially in the middle of the twentieth century, and that the weaker forms in which it exists in this country may, these days, be heard as echoes in the inspired rhetoric of president obama. utopianism is a project that is constantly always doomed to fail. however, it’s a better project than conformity to spectacle capital, to globalization, to neo-con neocolonialism, any kind of fundamentalism, and so on and so forth. from a methodological perspective, you could see my efforts to locate contemporary art culture within what i call the core conditions of contemporaneity as an approach that is organized around an old-fashioned marxist mapping of relations between base and superstructure, of course, complicated in a raymond williams manner by recognition that the superstructure is not always determined by the base, that its elements can sometimes transform the base (marxism itself was an example of that); and deconstructed in a derridian way. taking all this together highlights another key difference from my colleagues, including many whose focus is modern and contemporary art. they continue to assume that modernity remains the overriding concept for our times, however distorted and febrile it may have become. even jameson’s reading of postmodernism as the cultural logic of late capital remains tied to determinative frameworks, however jangled and distorted they have become. david harvey’s account of “the post-modern condition” remains the best description of all the 1 7 1 t e r r y s m i t h a n d s a l o n i m a t h u r contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.112 forces in play, largely because it is the most open-ended. to me, the mismatches between, if you like, super structural understandings of the world’s working, including these neo-marxist postmodern ones, and the actual world as it is happening around us today have become too great to be sustained. sm: the final section of terry’s paper turns to the space of art’s encounter with its audiences, to the conditions of curating, of exhibitions, and of display. terry states that there is no single exhibition that has met the goals of contemporaneity as he has set them out. no exhibition has made visible all three currents as it were, including the exhibition “the global contemporary: art after 1989.” perhaps no exhibition could do so because it would be akin, he writes, to “mapping the world with a map that would be indistinguishable from the world itself.” i thought very hard about this conundrum and the way that terry has put it, and was left only with the elusive nature of the task, which was, perhaps, precisely the point. this leads to my last set of questions, which concern terry’s vision for the role of curating, and of curatorial ambition, that which exhibitions should aspire to be even if they cannot quite hit the mark. it seems to me that terry has gone a long way in his writing to shift the terms of the discussion about curating from issues of identity representation, inclusion and exclusion, regional coverage, and so on—values that seem to cling to the exhibitions of the 1980s and 1990s, like moma’s primitivism show (1983), magiciens de la terre (1989), and documenta 11 (2002). but these exhibitions were shown at the art institutions of europe and america. what about the radical deterritorialization of display, the decentering of world art, which has occurred via the biennial phenomenon all over the world? related to this is the recent rise of the global mega-museum in the arab world. does its arrival simply mean that the guggenheim model of export spectacle is in play? or does this change also have promise or potential in relationship to, for instance, the arab spring, or other radical changes within these societies? in india, as a further example, biennial exhibitions (like the recent one in kochi, 2012) are opening up a field of great potential and promise, which is unique to the region in some sense. how might this be reckoned with your suggestion—one that many others seem to share—that the era of the biennial is firmly behind us? finally, you talk about the current move away from the global survey format toward retrospective exhibitions. i agree that this is a very exciting direction. in fact, i have been involved in a major retrospective of zarina, an indian artist who lived in los angeles and new york since the 1970s, which opened at the hammer museum in la last month.7 it’s a 40-year retrospective of her work, and i believe it is the first career retrospective of an indian artist in europe or north america. it will travel to the guggenheim later this year, and then to the chicago art institute. one can imagine all manner of doctoral level projects emerging out of this kind of deep archival foray. this seems like a strong and energizing call to art history itself. ts: jorge-luis borges tells a wonderful story of the king commanding his mapmaker to produce a map that would be so totally encompassing, and also so internally detailed, that would capture the extent and the detail of the world. the result is a map that blankets the actual world, extinguishing life within it. this is, of course, a parody of the self-defeating hubris underlying all aspiration toward complete knowledge. my outline of the three currents within contemporary art, of the tendencies in contemporary thought, and the elements of 7 allegra presenti ed., zarina: paper like skin (munich: delmonico books/prestel for the hammer museum, university of california, los angles, 2012). 1 7 2 c o n t e m p o r a r y a r t : w o r l d c u r r e n t s i n t r a n s i t i o n b e y o n d g l o b a l i z a t i o n contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.112 contemporary world-being are observations aimed at wedging pluralism on the one hand, and particularism on the other. they are not prescriptions, much less proscriptions. if an artist hearing these ideas were to announce, “oh, i know what to do, i’ll join the third current and create contemporaneity.” another might say “i’m going to be a retrosensationalist, that looks like the most fun,” while yet another might think, “anachronism or not, i’d rather be a great modernist.” similarly, i am not advocating that curators set out saying “i’m going to curate contemporaneity right now, in my next exhibition.” look, these are terms that operate at a different level from the particularity of making a work of art and curating an exhibition. they are terms aimed at delineating ways of world mapping, of big-scale picturing, at profiling connectivities, at describing the structures of thought that are in play, and at pinpointing the nature of the things as they are. artworks are made within this context, but very few set out to display it from a position that is presumptively outside of it, above it, at some elevated observation point. certain exhibitions have ambitions approaching this level of generality, but not as an illustration of it. rather, they might be orchestrated so as to register the impacts of the world in the most vivid ways possible. not, of course, every impact, but a particular set, across a specified range. documenta 13 was, i believe, an exhibition of that kind. i devote a chapter of the thinking contemporary curating book to the ways in which certain exhibitions at various galleries around the world, and, indeed, the burgeoning biennial circuit even more so, has been the infrastructural carrier of the second current i identify in contemporary art. many curators have devoted themselves to recovering the histories of art groups, movements, tendencies, and of key individuals, whose work has been repressed or ignored during the twentieth century, especially art from central and eastern europe, russia during the soviet time, abstract painters from iran, and so on. a number of shows have literally rewritten our understanding of feminist art and art by women, almost everywhere in the world now. so that’s one kind of re-curating. at the same time, curators have only recently become strongly aware of the lack of their own history, the history of curating as related to but distinct from the history of exhibitions at various museums, and from accounts of changes in the display of permanent collections. one way of bringing these together is to repeat famous exhibitions from the past. for example, at the wattis institute in san francisco, jens hoffmann has curated an exhibition that literally re-exhibits a very famous exhibition staged in 1969 by harald szeeman: when attitudes become form—live in your head—works, concepts, processes, situation, information. alongside this, he will show new work by 50 artists, currently practicing and consciously indebted to artists in the original show. this is another, perhaps more literal kind of re-curating. what’s going to come out of it? who knows, but we’ll see. nancy condee: it occurs to me that among the ways that new, interesting curatorial work is unsettling is that it seems to move from the staging of the pictorial in conventional ways to which we are accustomed, towards a certain kind of performed art that puts exhibitions more in league with concerts, the ballet, the opera, and so forth. by transforming the curator into a kind of artist, the needle shifts so that curating becomes a kind of framing, an installing, a staging, if i could use a performative term. is that implicit in your idea of recuration? ts: yes, absolutely. many curators—jens hoffmann, explicitly—now talk about the dramaturgy of an exhibition. designing exhibitions has become a lot more consciously theatrical, and overtly, noticeably so. yet there remains an odd sense that one is attending a performance or play without actors. unless it is entirely cinematic, the materials in an installation rarely take on the role of characters; it is, often, an empty set that one is moving through. the goal, obviously, is for us to become the actors, to move from being passive spectators to active participants. sm: your query and terry’s comment remind me of two recent exhibitions. tino sehgal at the guggenheim and the tate modern, where he turned the giant atriums of these 1 7 3 t e r r y s m i t h a n d s a l o n i m a t h u r contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.112 museums into spaces of encounter between actors and spectators. in contrast, carsten höller created a giant slide at the new museum, one that infuriated the critic david joselit, who asked the excellent question: “why are we taking our shoes off and lining up to go down this slide? what is the point?” it is just pure spectacle. between these two exhibitions, it seems to me, lies a vast continuum extending from entertainment and spectacle at one end, to something far more interesting and critical at the other. ts: exactly. this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-noncommercial-no derivative works 3.0 united states license. this journal is operated by the university library system of the university of pittsburgh as part of its d-scribe digital publishing program, and is co-sponsored by the university of pittsburgh press. contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture vol 1 (2011) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2011.22 http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu cinema as archeology the acousmêtre and the multiple layering of temporality and spatiality hye jean chung abstract michel chion’s concept of the “acousmêtre” is useful when exploring the spectator’s cinematic experience in regard to the juxtaposition of sound and image, as the acousmatic presence troubles the false sense of unity that is created by the synchronization of sound and image by its invocation of off-screen space through sound. the acousmêtre neither prioritizes sound nor image but calls attention to the disjunction between them. also, the acousmêtre leaves the source of the sound open to imagination and interpretation. thus the presence of the acousmêtre destabilizes the seemingly unified, contained realm of the film by expanding the temporal and spatial boundaries of the diegesis. in this essay i explore how the power of this ghostly voice of the acousmêtre is manifested in cinema, and the significance of its power to the spectators in their relationship to the film, by asking questions regarding the function and effect of the disembodied voice and spectral presence of the acousmêtre, the scope of the acousmêtre’s power, and what can be created from the disequilibrium that is provoked by this power. i explore possible answers by analyzing the use of the acousmatic voice in y tu mama tambien (dir. alfonso cuaron, 2001) and calendar (dir. atom egoyan, 1993). about the author hye jean chung is a ph.d. candidate in the department of film and media studies at the university of california, santa barbara. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/� contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 1 (2011) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2011.22 sound theorists have often noted the spectator’s unease and disorientation at hearing a disembodied voice in film, arguing that classical narrative film uses the synchronization of sound and image to provide a false sense of unity. rick altman points out that this practice of synchronization can lead us to believe that the sound track is largely redundant when the image shows us the source of the sound. altman observes that film spectators are “so disconcerted by a sourceless sound that we would rather attribute the sound to a dummy or a shadow than face the mystery of its sourcelessness.”1 by comparing the sound track to a ventriloquist, altman successfully promotes a new model for conceptualizing the relationship between sound and image in the cinema. that is to say, “the dummy/image is actually created in order to disguise the source of the sound”2 although altman’s suggestion that the image, rather than the sound, is redundant is provocative by inverting the usual hierarchy of image over sound and complicating the temporal trajectory of film history that transitions from silent to sound cinema, i would consider the relationship between them as a more equivalent and simultaneous, albeit not always synchronized, union and suggest that neither sound nor image precedes the other in significance or order of creation. within this context, i find michel chion’s concept of the acousmêtre more useful to explore the spectator’s cinematic experience in regard to the juxtaposition of sound and image. the acousmatic presence troubles the false myth of unity that is created by the synchronization of sound and image by its invocation of off-screen space through sound, thereby destabilizing the ideological assumption of unity within the film’s diegesis. the acousmêtre neither prioritizes sound nor image, but calls attention to the disjunction between them, whereas the cinematic ventriloquist often succeeds in perpetuating the illusion of unity by matching the voice to a visible image. the acousmêtre leaves the source of the sound open to imagination and interpretation, instead of anchoring it to a dummy/image as in the case of the ventriloquist. by invoking spectral presences that are invisible but present, the acousmêtre expands the temporal and spatial boundaries of the diegesis and suggests alternative stories and invisible historical subjects that exist within the seemingly unified, contained realm of the film. and not the opposite, as is commonly believed. in this essay i examine the manifested power and significance of this ghostly voice of the acousmêtre in cinema. i begin by considering the function of the disembodied voice and spectral presence of the acousmêtre, the scope of the acousmêtre’s power, and what is created from the disequilibrium provoked by this power. i explore possible answers by studying the use of the acousmatic voice in y tu mamá también (dir. alfonso cuarón, 2001) and calendar (dir. atom egoyan, 1993). both films were produced in north america but outside the hegemony of hollywood; y tu mamá también is mexican and calendar canadian. an analysis of the films’ similarities and differences illuminates the varying extent of power wielded by the acousmêtre in each narrative. in y tu mamá también, the acousmêtre is steadfastly extra-diegetic, which imbues it with a great amount of narrative power, whereas 1 rick altman, “moving lips: cinema as ventriloquism,” yale french studies 60 (1980), 76. 2 ibid., 67. cinema as archeology the acousmêtre and the multiple layering of temporality and spatiality hye jean chung http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/� 1 0 7 h y e j e a n c hu ng contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 1 (2011) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2011.22 in calendar the acousmêtre loses this power when it enters the diegesis as characters. also, in contrast to the acousmatic voiceover in y tu mamá también, the acousmêtre in calendar is dependent upon various media for its very existence. michel chion asserts that the acousmêtre’s powers – ubiquity, panopticism, omniscience, and omnipotence – derive from the fact that the acousmatic presence is a voice that is heard but “not-yet-seen,” and therefore situated in a unique, paradoxical position: either “at once inside and outside” or “neither inside nor outside.”3 chion writes that the acousmêtre “must, even if only slightly, have one foot in the image, in the space of the film; he must haunt the borderlands that are neither the interior of the filmic stage nor the proscenium,” thereby bringing about “disequilibrium and tension.”4 this liminal status bestows the acousmêtre with the ability to transcend the temporal and spatial boundaries of the diegesis, thus breaking the illusion of unity and integrity usually upheld by the synchronization of sound and image. since disembodied voices are often associated with ghosts, it is not a great leap of logic to connect the uncanny effect of the acousmêtre and the spectral qualities of the cinematic medium that projects an image of something that is not there. both gesture toward an asynchronous relationship between the bodily source and the machinic mediation – whether in the form of recording or representation. literary scholar andrew gibson associates this acousmatic presence with the ghostly figure, asserting that the acousmatic voice is a feature distinctive to cinema that best reflects its proper condition – spectrality.5 the acousmêtre plays a crucial role in film as it expands the scope of the cinematic narrative by performing an archaeological task that reveals the multiplicity of temporal and spatial layers, or “sheets” to use a deleuzian term. this idea of a spectral presence well encapsulates the haunting quality of the acousmatic voice that hovers somewhere between presence and absence, among different planes of existence, as the ghost – being neither alive nor dead in the strictest sense – floats in the non-space, or simultaneously in multiple spaces, between the world of the living and that of the dead. rather than the uncanny nature of the specter, however, i focus on its liminal state that enables the seemingly impossible co-existence of past and present in multiple spatiotemporal realms. 6 the acousmêtre foregrounds the disjunction of sound and image in cinema, thereby opening a liminal space in the filmic text that evokes the simultaneous existence of other temporal and spatial planes.7 3 michel chion, the voice in cinema, trans. claudia gorbman (new york: columbia university press, 1999), 23-4. this expansion of time and space is especially significant in the narrative structure of the two films, y tu mamá también and calendar, as it reinforces the story that focuses on the central characters embarking on a journey that affects them profoundly on both physical and psychological levels. due to the presence of the acousmatic voice, the journey across space also becomes one that traverses through time. the co-existence of multiple temporalities and spatialities enabled by the acousmatic voice suggests the spectral presence of alternative stories and 4 ibid., 24. 5 andrew gibson, “‘and the wind wheezing through that organ once in a while’: voice, narrative, film,” new literary history 32:3 (summer 2001), 652. 6 gilles deleuze, cinema 2: the time-image, trans. hugh tomlinson and robert galeta (minneapolis: university of minnesota press, 1995), 99. 7 music and noise can also be acousmatic in both mainstream and experimental films, as in steven spielberg’s schindler’s list (1993) or jean-luc godard’s two or three things i know about her (1967) and band of outsiders (1964). http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/� 1 0 8 c i n e m a a s a r c he o l o g y contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 1 (2011) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2011.22 subaltern bodies. this multiplicity is significant in each film, as it defies and destabilizes the idea of a unified narrative – whether of individual bodies or a national body – by presenting the co-existence of plural historical agents and [multi]national identities: namely, mexican and spanish in y tu mamá también and canadian and armenian in calendar. laura marks describes cinema as an “act of archaeology” that combines “elements from different strata,” thereby producing results that are “contradictory and partial.”8 the idea of film comprising different strata, or layers, allows the spectator to glimpse alternatives to the visual and sound “images” that are presented within the text. marks specifically discusses “intercultural” cinema that exist in the interstitial space between cultures, but her ideas can be applied to a broader range of films that contain interstitial elements. marks invokes deleuze, who was in turn inspired by foucault, who writes, “if we want to grasp an event we must not show it, we must not pass along the event, but plunge into it, go through all the geological layers that are its internal history.”9 deleuze further expounds on the notion of temporal layers when he talks about the “the coexistence of all the sheets of past” in his discussion on the time-image.10 he explores the multiplicity of temporal and spatial sheets in the cinematic time-image, writing that “there is a present of the future, a present of the present and a present of the past, all implicated in the event, rolled up in the event, and thus simultaneous and inexplicable.”11 in other words, we can observe “a simultaneity of presents in different worlds” in certain films.12 using the notion of archaeology to think about temporality and spatiality in film is particularly germane, as a darkened theater is an indeterminate, cavernous environment where the specificities of time and space seemingly cease to exist. it seems natural that the film projected on the screen would further corroborate the illusion of temporal and spatial transcendence. one possible drawback to the use of archaeology as metaphor for cinema, however, is that it implies that the different strata are stacked separately, instead of coexisting on a single plane. hence the notion of spectrality is particularly useful, as the ghost is not only an entity that defies the idea of time as a unidirectional linear flow, but also one that can occupy different realms of time, space and existence. ghosts are more powerful than deleuze’s radioactive fossils 13 this idea of multiple sheets of time and space is enabled in cinema through the acousmatic voice, whose spectral presence and subversive power is based upon the by refusing to be buried in geographical layers. rather than lie docilely until they are found, they assert their presence to stimulate memories or provoke action. their uncanny and inexplicable presence demands notice, prompting one to move beyond a melancholic nostalgia for, or mourning of, the past. their presence already acknowledges that the past is irrevocable or irrecoverable but still holds a lingering hope for reparation or redemption. 8 laura u. marks, the skin of the film: intercultural cinema, embodiment, and the senses (durham, nc: duke university press, 2000), 28. 9 deleuze, cinema 2, 254-55. 10 ibid., 99. 11 ibid., 100. 12 ibid., 103. 13 ibid., 113. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/� 1 0 9 h y e j e a n c hu ng contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 1 (2011) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2011.22 asynchronization of image and sound.14 deleuze himself hints at the subversive power of the acousmatic voice when he observes that the difference between what we see and what we hear imposes an interstice between what he calls the “sound image” and the “visual image,” which can be both temporal and spatial.15 marks also notes the disjunction between image and sound by borrowing the term “incompossible” images, also used by deleuze, to describe “visual and sound images that butt into each other but cannot be reconciled in a single discourse.”16 describing the mysterious, ungraspable, and spectral nature of sound in cinema, film theorist mary ann doane writes: through the deconstructive method that uses the disjunction between visual and sound images to accentuate gaps and absences, the myth of unity is revealed and destabilized when sound and image do not correspond, but rather contradict each other. here this contradiction is not necessarily negative, but rather a productive force. this allows for the imagination and recognition of other spaces, thus lessening the authority of what is represented in the frame of the film and underscoring its limited scope of visibility. sound is the bearer of a meaning which is communicable and valid but unanalysable [sic]. its realm is that of mystery – but mystery sanctioned by an ideology which acknowledges that all knowledge is not subsumed by the ideology of the visible, allows a leakage, an excess which is contained and constrained by that other pole of the opposition which splits knowledge and emotion, intuition, feeling.17 notwithstanding the stress on synchronizing sound and image in classical narrative film to sustain the ideological and psychological need for the illusion of unity, instances of leakage and excess abound in films where sound deviates and expands from the realm of the visible, in particular in the case of voice-over narration, acousmatic or otherwise. often deployed to communicate an internal monologue, it is also used to signify a temporal disjunction when it accompanies a flashback. notable examples include double indemnity (dir. billy wilder, 1944), which is narrated by a fatally wounded man; sunset blvd (dir. billy wilder, 1950), narrated by a dead man; and american beauty (dir. sam mendes, 1999), narrated by a dying man. the flashback images in these films are synchronized with the sound, as they visualize the words uttered by the unseen narrator. the presence of the narrator who describes past events from the vantage point of the present, however, continuously keeps the spectator aware of the temporal, and often spatial, disjunction between what is seen and heard. this disjunction is usually accentuated through the visual differentiation between the narrator’s appearance in the past and in the present – for instance, the narrator’s still, lifeless body floating in the pool in sunset blvd and his live, animated body in the flashback sequences. 14 more frequently multiple layers of time are manifested purely visually. examples include run lola run (dir. tom tykwer, 1998), where a rapid succession of images reveals glimpses into the future; wild strawberries (dir. ingmar bergman, 1957), where past and present merge in the protagonist’s flashback dreams; and cuarón’s children of men (2006), which is set in the near future, but references recognizable images of the immediate present, such as photographs and news clips of the iraqi war and abu ghraib. see david bordwell, “film futures,” substance 31:1 (2002), 88-104. 15 deleuze, cinema 2, 180-1. 16 marks, the skin of the film , 30. 17 mary ann doane, “ideology and the practice of sound editing and mixing,” the cinematic apparatus, ed. teresa de lauretis et al. (new york: st. martin’s press, 1980), 49. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/� 1 1 0 c i n e m a a s a r c he o l o g y contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 1 (2011) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2011.22 the mystery doane mentions is intensified in the case of the acousmatic presence, as it inherently implies a speaking human subject as the source of the noise but withholds the corporeality of the subject, thus refusing to anchor the sound to a material body. in y tu mamá también, the voice-over narrator is an example of “the commentator-acousmêtre,” or “he who never shows himself but who has no personal stake in the image.”18 the presence of this narrator is never explained to the spectator; we never see him, nor fully understand who he is or what kind of connection he has to the characters. this mysterious being raises all sorts of questions: what is his relation to the narrative; how does he acquire all of this information; how does his voice establish its authority; what effect does his narration have; how does it interact with the onscreen images; and finally, why should we trust his narration? this pervasive presence possesses at least three of the four powers of the acousmêtre – ubiquity, panopticism, and omniscience.19 at certain intervals, this unseen and unknown narrator interjects—in a dry, detached, and knowing manner reminiscent of voice-of-god narrations in documentary films – to provide tangential knowledge not offered by the onscreen images or by the diegetic conversations, such as background information on the characters or their unspoken thoughts at a given moment in time. here the sound and the image in the film form a complementary, rather than redundant, relationship. this additional knowledge not only deepens the spectator’s understanding of the characters beyond the personas constructed by their words and actions, but it also broadens the scope of our experience beyond the events that transpire onscreen – both temporally and spatially. the temporal layers are multiplied in the film through the acousmatic narrator, for instance, when he reveals private acts and painful memories of the main characters tenoch (diego luna) and julio (gael garcia bernal) from the past, or when he informs us at the end that the two friends will never meet again. in one scene, the acousmatic voice-over narrates the thoughts of the woman protagonist luisa (maribel verdú), whose body is infected by cancer, on death: “luisa thought that even in their absence, persons continued to be present, and she wondered how long she would remain alive in the memory of others when she no longer existed.” in another scene, the narrator describes the future of a fisherman’s family: “at the end of the year, chuy and his family will have to leave their home to make way for the construction of an exclusive hotel to be built on the nature preserve of san bernabe…. chuy will attempt to give boat tours but a collective of acapulco boatmen, supported by the local tourism board, will block him. two years later, he’ll end up as a janitor at the hotel. he will never fish again.” during these interstitial scenes, the past and the future are overlapped onto the present, thus amplifying the poignancy of the onscreen images. the interjection of the acousmatic voice thus dissolves the demarcation between past, present, and future. the film implies that different temporalities always coexist on parallel planes or layers, instead of progressing in one direction in a chronological trajectory. again, this power is conferred upon the acousmêtre through his spectral and liminal status in the film. likewise, the spatial realm is diversified by the allusion to characters that are not present at that point in the film, such as when the acousmatic voice says that tenoch is thinking of his nanny back in mexico city as he passes her hometown during his trip. at this moment, the spectator is made aware of three places at once – the car in which tenoch is sitting, his nanny’s birthplace seen outside the car in the distance, and his house in mexico city where his nanny currently resides. furthermore, the layers of time and space are closely 18 chion, voice in cinema, 21. 19 we see no marked evidence of omnipotence in this film. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/� 1 1 1 h y e j e a n c hu ng contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 1 (2011) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2011.22 intermingled when the narrator describes in detail an accident that occurred on a certain spot on the road several years before. here the voice of the acousmêtre not only invokes the past, but also transports the spectator to the past; his vivid description of white feathers, broken cages, bleeding chickens, and two dead bodies lying on the road visualize this scene, creating overlapping images of visible calm and spectral chaos. this movement across time and space is closely associated with the physical and psychological journey taken by the characters. the voice-over narration expands the temporality and spatiality beyond the diegetic space visually presented in the film, as the acousmatic narrator talks about events that happened in the past or will occur in the future and alludes to places not shown onscreen. there is no looming threat of deacousmatization in this film, as the spectator knows that the narrator will not suddenly materialize in the diegetic space.20 at times, this acousmatic narrator also sticks “one foot in the image.” as an acousmatic presence his voice haunts the non-space of the film. although the narrator does not appear visually, his voice actively interacts with the diegesis. his non-diegetic narration abruptly interrupts the diegetic conversations of the characters; following a brief moment of silence, he interjects his own voice and speaks over the dialogue, thereby expanding the story from the aural and visual information provided within the frame of the film. 21 the presence of an extra-diegetic, ghostly entity materializes in moments when the camera dissociates its gaze from the characters and the events in the narrative, and wanders around to capture images that seem insignificant or gratuitous, indicating the existence of other realms besides the one prioritized in the film’s diegesis. paradoxically, this movement of the camera can be described as simultaneously embodied and disembodied. the self-conscious willfulness of the camera to detach itself from the main narrative suggests an embodied presence, while the floating, seemingly aimless nature of its gaze suggests a disembodied entity. this movement makes one wonder – whose gaze, and whose hand is guiding the camera? together with the acousmatic voice, this disembodied presence provides a reflexive awareness of the mediated nature of the story, and a reminder of the multiple invisible others that haunt the fringes of, or hover beyond, the frame. by doing so, it makes tangible invisible historical events and marginal subjects. this task becomes political if one considers the film a national allegory of contemporary mexican society, as does maría josefina saldaña-portillo, who sees the two mexican teenage boys as representing class differences in post-nafta mexico – tenoch as the wealthy, elite political class and julio as the aspiring working class – and the spanish woman luisa as “an ideal of imperial whiteness.”22 in this context, the invisible others whose presence is alluded to by the acousmêtre are the subaltern, indigenous people – peasants, fishermen, etc. – who are left out, or written out, of the official discourse of the “new, neoliberal mexico.”23 20 stranger than fiction (dir. marc forster, 2006) playfully depicts this power of the unseen narrator. in the film, the authorial figure materializes as a character that coexists in the same fictional realm of the film as the character she is writing about in her book. the author thus lacks the omnipotence of the acousmêtre; her “authority” is threatened to the degree that she is confronted by her own creation and ultimately influenced to change the ending of her novel. 21 chion, voice in cinema, 24. 22 maría josefina saldaña-portillo, “in the shadow of nafta: y tu mamá también revisits the national allegory of mexican sovereignty,” american quarterly 57:3 (september 2005), 761. 23 ibid., 762. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/� 1 1 2 c i n e m a a s a r c he o l o g y contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 1 (2011) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2011.22 in one scene, tenoch and julio are in a car discussing possible reasons for the congested traffic that surrounds them. after a brief pause, the camera moves out of the car to show the cityscape from a high angle, thereby revealing the cause to the audience: a corpse lying in the middle of the road. the acousmêtre explains that the dead man is a bricklayer named marcelino escutia, who was hit by a bus while crossing the street. such visual and aural digressions of this ghostly entity acknowledge the presence of those whose stories are not directly told in the narrative – subaltern subjects who are less privileged socially and economically, such as marcelino escutia, tenoch’s nanny, or the village people whom tenoch, julio and luisa pass or encounter during their road trip. these interstitial moments briefly put the main narrative trajectory on hold and present peripheral stories related to the main characters and to random people who have no apparent relation to, or effect on, the trio. as suggested in the traffic jam sequence, however, seemingly disparate incidents are connected within a larger structure of historical events, the knowledge of which is communicated to the spectator through the acousmatic voice of the narrator who can see the different sheets of time and space. this all-seeing, all-knowing voice induces a sense of a fate that all is predestined – already written and already known. through the omniscient power of the acousmêtre, reminiscent of a god-like figure, the spectator comes to accept the authority of his words. after all, “the greatest acousmêtre is god,”24 the acousmatic voiceover underscores the fact that this is a constructed tale told by a narrating presence. rather than deepening the divide between spectators and characters, however, it substantiates the latter as authentic, albeit fictional, beings with pasts and futures that extend beyond the scope of what is presented in the film. by transcending the limitations of temporality and spatiality, the acousmêtre in y tu mamá también enjoys both narrative and authorial power; he can zoom in to relate the stories of the characters and zoom out to tell the broader geopolitical history of mexico as a nation. whose undeniable and immutable power is ensured by the fact that no human being can ever see his image. as such, it is crucial that the acousmêtre is never made human, that is to say visible, in the frame. he must remain outside the diegetic space so as to retain his authority as panoptic narrator who can see all the layers of incompossible images. in comparison, the acousmatic narrators in calendar enjoy a very limited scope of power. although their story is also one of national, or multi-national, identities, it is told on a more personal level. in calendar, a photographer (played by the director atom egoyan) and his wife (played by his real-life wife arsinee khanjian), who are armenian but raised elsewhere, travel around the armenian countryside with the help of a local guide (ashot adamian) and take photographs of ancient churches to make a calendar. as in y tu mamá también, calendar also centers on a triangulated love story among the three main characters. each character has a different level of connection with armenian national identity and consciousness.25 the photographer and his wife/translator both take on the role of “the already visualized acousmêtre” at various points in the film. in contrast to y tu mamá también’s potent acousmatic narrator who never appears in the film’s diegesis, here the acousmatic characters of the three, the photographer is the most detached from armenian culture and history, and the guide the most embedded. the woman, as bilingual translator, is situated somewhere between the two men and the two cultures they represent. after the trip, the photographer returns home, but his wife remains in armenia with the guide. 24 chion, voice in cinema, 27. 25 atom egoyan, “an essay on calendar,” still moving: between cinema and photography, ed. karen beckman et al. (durham and london: duke university press, 2008), 96. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/� 1 1 3 h y e j e a n c hu ng contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 1 (2011) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2011.22 are constantly subjected to deacousmatization. therefore they cannot wield as much power as the disembodied acousmêtre; they are neither omniscient nor omnipotent, and when they do enjoy the powers of ubiquity and panopticism it is only to a very limited extent. in the flashback scenes, the photographer becomes the acousmatic voice when he stands behind the camera and talks to his wife. meanwhile, in the present, the wife becomes the acousmatic presence when her voice is heard on the answering machine, or in the video footage of their trip – her recorded voice thus transcends temporal and spatial distance. however, she has no power over her acousmatic voice; it is the photographer who plays, screens or stops the recording of her voice. we hear but never see the photographer in the past in armenia, whereas we hear but never see his wife in the present in canada. the two inhabit different, disconnected sheets of time and place, which further accentuates their alienation from each other, as they cannot cross the temporal and spatial distance that divides them. inhibited by the thickness of temporal and spatial layers, they are able to occupy the same frame only by becoming an acousmatic presence. only their voices – not their images – are allowed to commingle in the same time-space. their negotiation of national identity is expressed by different modes of communication: the photographer via his mastery of visual media, and the wife via her command of language. the alienation between the photographer and his wife is thus intensified by the fact that they communicate via disparate media that cannot be synchronized in the film. while language becomes a tool that allows the wife, fluent in both armenian and english, to fluidly traverse the two national identities, it acts as a barrier for the husband. as translator, the wife becomes the liminal figure who mediates between husband and guide, and between canada and armenia. at first, most of what she says is a translation of her husband’s or the guide’s words. as the film progresses, however, it becomes evident that she increasingly paraphrases their words while translating, and expresses her own thoughts. she also converses more with the guide in armenian than with her husband in english; the further she draws away from her husband, the closer she moves toward her armenian heritage. meanwhile, the photographer lacks this linguistic power, which leads to his alienation. he cannot join in the conversations between his wife and the guide as he cannot speak or understand armenian. he expresses his frustration by repeatedly asking, “what are you talking about?” instead, his relationship to the national spaces of armenia are recorded and relayed via the visual media of photography and video. the photographer mediates his experience of the trip to his ancestral land via his still and video cameras. he is unresponsive when the armenian guide asks him why he does not get closer to the churches that he photographs. he is more interested in capturing the perfect image of the ancient buildings, fussing over the composition and lighting of his pictures, rather than learning their cultural significance as religious edifices and historical landmarks. as photographer and filmmaker, egoyan thus expresses the power of visual images to generate and intensify a diasporic subject’s national identification.26 as if to compensate for his lack of linguistic prowess, the photographer refuses to relinquish his manipulative power over recorded images. throughout the film, he controls all the images in the past and the present, and as filmmaker, also over the whole film. during the trip, he chastises his wife for wasting the batteries of their video camera, and his image is never captured on her camera. it is always his wife who is caught in his viewfinder. in the present, we see the video footage of the armenian trip through his point of view as he watches it on his television screen and sometimes fast-forwards through it. he thus wields 26 ibid., 93. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/� 1 1 4 c i n e m a a s a r c he o l o g y contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 1 (2011) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2011.22 power over his wife’s image and her voice, as he can hear it whenever he replays her message on his machine, or watches the video footage. her image is always several temporal layers removed from the present, as it is mediated through the photographer’s video camera or the filmmaker’s movie camera.27 the conflict between the photographer and his wife – in their personal relationship as a married couple and in their national identification with armenia – is expressed by the constant temporal and spatial disjunctions between sound and image; throughout the film, multiple layers of asynchronized sound images and visual images separate the two. sound images from the past cut into visual images of the present. even when both the visuals and the voices are recordings from the past they do not coincide. sounds from one point in time intrude other moments, for instance, when the voice of the wife leaving a message in the present is played over the video footage of armenia taken in the past. in the video images, the past is overlapped with the present, as the manipulation of the images by the photographer reminds the audience that we are watching this footage with him in the present. in one scene the photographer fast-forwards through the footage, and in another he freezes the frame on his wife’s image, thereby highlighting the asynchronization of the visual and the aural. this dissociation between image and sound disorients the spectator and causes confusion in our perception of temporal and spatial coordinates. this disorientation is intensified by the repetitive nature of the images and by the overlapping layers of visual images; the moving image of his wife and the armenian guide roaming the landscape is captured as a still shot and later commodified as photographs in a calendar – to be looked at for a month, or a year, and then duly discarded. furthermore, her voice is always mediated through the mechanical filter of the answering machine or the video camera. as central motif, the calendar that hangs on the wall in the photographer’s kitchen plays an important role by signaling the passage of time as each page is replaced every month. instead of implying a unidirectional flow of time, however, this calendar becomes the entryway into the shared memories of the armenian trip. each flashback sequence is preceded by a shot of the calendar, the image of the still photograph becoming unfrozen in time by morphing into physical spaces that the characters occupy and traverse. in addition to the flashbacks, multiple temporalities and spaces constantly intermingle throughout the film. different temporalities are expressed through various forms of media: the three types of cameras – still, video, and film – the vcr, and the answering machine. at times the spectator is invited to enter the past along with the characters, but often we simply see video footage from the past, which is visually differentiated from the clear, bright images of the present by their low resolution and bluish tint. the doubling of temporal sheets – the simultaneity of past and present – is further accentuated through the multiple layers of sound. in one sequence, the wife’s voice from the past continues across the sound track as the image track shifts from the past to the present, and immediately we hear another woman’s diegetic voice in the present talking on the phone in a foreign language in concert with the photographer’s extra-diegetic voice reading a letter out loud. the multiple temporalities and spatialities created by the disjuncture between image and sound indicate the geographical and psychological distance between the photographer and his wife. in contrast to y tu mamá también, where the plurality of temporal and spatial strata functions as an empowering, inclusive narrative device, the overwhelming layers of mediation – still photographs, video footage, and film images – in calendar immobilize the characters, thus implying that the distance between the two cannot be bridged. this is 27 the distinction between the two is unclear, as they are ultimately the same person. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/� 1 1 5 h y e j e a n c hu ng contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 1 (2011) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2011.22 accentuated by the rupture between sound and image that is produced by the incongruity of their acousmatic voices and disassociated images. this is best exemplified in the last sequence of the film; the wife describes her strongest memory during their trip to armenia, again relayed as a message left on her husband’s answering machine – the moment when they drive through a huge flock of sheep, which the husband videotapes, while the armenian guide holds her hand. in an echoing voice that underscores the spectral nature of the woman’s disembodied presence, she plaintively asks her husband, “did you know? were you there? are you there?” this sequence encapsulates the film’s stylistic form of temporal and spatial disorientation, which mirrors the sense of alienation created by the conflicting modes of national identification in the narrative. the sense of temporal, spatial and emotional distance between the two characters is expressed through the clear disjunction between image and sound. while hearing the woman’s acousmatic voice describe what happened in the car, we see the video footage, recorded by the photographer, of the flock of sheep outside. her acousmatic voice signals her presence; it floats around the frame, failing to find a body onto which it can anchor itself. this creates a doubly destabilizing effect for the spectator, as the disjointed experience of hearing the woman’s voice without seeing a body is amplified by the absent presence of the silent and invisible man. we do not know the man’s temporal or spatial coordinates in relation to the images we see and the sounds we hear. through its unique ability to be simultaneously present and absent, the disembodied presence of the acousmêtre manages to occupy a “no-place,” the “all-around,” which is inaccessible to those who are anchored to an onscreen body.28 this spectral voice invites the spectator to enter this mysterious realm that is neither inside nor outside the filmic text, and to experience the disintegration of temporal and spatial boundaries. by creating a liminal gap through the disjunction of image and sound, the acousmatic voice in cinema performs the archaeological task of multiplying sheets of time and space. what is the meaning, then, of these multiple layers of mediation? who does this ultimately empower, if at all? the acousmêtre punctures the ideology of the visible through leakage and excess, which indicate the presence of subjects who exist beyond the confining frames of narrative and historical discourse as in y tu mamá también. it can also express the sense of confusion and alienation caused by multiple time-spaces and asynchronicity as in calendar. in any case, the acousmatic voice allows the spectators to see, sense, or glimpse these multiple layers of incompossible images. by doing so, it gestures toward the presence of spectral or subaltern subjects who dwell in the multiple time-spaces that are made invisible or irrelevant by dominant ideologies of limited perspectives, restrictive frameworks, unified narratives, and official histories. 28 chion, voice in cinema, 44. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/� 1 1 6 c i n e m a a s a r c he o l o g y contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 1 (2011) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2011.22 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-noncommercial-no derivative works 3.0 united states license. this journal is operated by the university library system of the university of pittsburgh as part of its d-scribe digital publishing program, and is co-sponsored by the university of pittsburgh press. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/� http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/� http://www.pitt.edu/� http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/� http://www.upress.pitt.edu/upressindex.aspx� http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/� << /ascii85encodepages false /allowtransparency false /autopositionepsfiles true /autorotatepages /none /binding /left /calgrayprofile (dot gain 20%) /calrgbprofile (srgb iec61966-2.1) 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/hrv (za stvaranje adobe pdf dokumenata najpogodnijih za visokokvalitetni ispis prije tiskanja koristite ove postavke. stvoreni pdf dokumenti mogu se otvoriti acrobat i adobe reader 5.0 i kasnijim verzijama.) /hun 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can be opened with acrobat and adobe reader 5.0 and later.) >> /namespace [ (adobe) (common) (1.0) ] /othernamespaces [ << /asreaderspreads false /cropimagestoframes true /errorcontrol /warnandcontinue /flattenerignorespreadoverrides false /includeguidesgrids false /includenonprinting false /includeslug false /namespace [ (adobe) (indesign) (4.0) ] /omitplacedbitmaps false /omitplacedeps false /omitplacedpdf false /simulateoverprint /legacy >> << /addbleedmarks false /addcolorbars false /addcropmarks false /addpageinfo false /addregmarks false /convertcolors /converttocmyk /destinationprofilename () /destinationprofileselector /documentcmyk /downsample16bitimages true /flattenerpreset << /presetselector /mediumresolution >> /formelements false /generatestructure false /includebookmarks false /includehyperlinks false /includeinteractive false /includelayers false /includeprofiles false /multimediahandling /useobjectsettings /namespace [ (adobe) (creativesuite) (2.0) ] /pdfxoutputintentprofileselector /documentcmyk /preserveediting true /untaggedcmykhandling /leaveuntagged /untaggedrgbhandling /usedocumentprofile /usedocumentbleed false >> ] >> setdistillerparams << /hwresolution [2400 2400] /pagesize [612.000 792.000] >> setpagedevice contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture vol 1 (2011) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2011.13 http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu re-composing the digital present timothy barker abstract this paper investigates the temporality that is produced in some recent and historical examples of media art. in exploring works by janet cardiff, dennis del favero, and omer fast, i use the philosophy of michel serres and gilles deleuze to understand the convergence of temporalities that are composed in the digital present, as one moment in time overlays another moment. developing serres' concept of multi-temporality and deleuze's philosophy of time and memory into a means to understand the non-linear time presented in these works, i argue that the different compositional strategies enacted by these artists provide the aesthetic grounding to experience “temporal thickness.” from here i investigate the interactive digital artworks frames by grahame weinbren and can you see me now? by the artist group blast theory. in this investigation, i understand interaction with technology, and the way that it shapes our sensory and processual experience, as a specifically temporal and temporalizing transaction, where human movements in the present are overlayed by technological processes. about the author timothy barker is a post-doctoral fellow at the icinema research centre, university of new south wales, australia. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/� contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 1 (2011) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2011.13 consider a late-model car. it is a disparate aggregate of scientific and technical solutions dating from different periods. one can date it component by component: this part was invented at the turn of the century, another ten years ago, and carnot's cycle is almost two hundred years old. not to mention that the wheel dates back to neolithic times. the ensemble is only contemporary by assemblage. -michel serres, conversations on science, culture, and time in serres' description of the late-model car, we see an image of presentness constituted by a drawing together of, what he terms, the “pleats of time.” in essence this is a multitemporal assemblage, taking form in the present. the object that is the late-model car emerges from an aggregate of solutions from different periods in history. in other words, the aggregate of solutions is a grounding from which the present object – and the present moment that is made up of these objects – becomes. what is important to serres is not the materiality of the late-model car but rather the processes that it embodies, and the way that the object draws together once disparate moments in time into a field of multi-temporality. for serres, the object or the image, whether this be a car, a book, a thought, or a memory, and likewise every moment in time, is always multi-temporal or polychronic. like the latemodel car, it is always made up of an aggregate of solutions, concepts or problems originating from different historical eras. multi-temporal time is a scalar type of time. it has quantity, thick with multiple temporal episodes overlayed in the present, but not a linear direction; it is an archaeological mode of temporality, in which the present moment, the point at which we receive aesthetic information and interact with technology, takes into itself multiple scales of the past. in this paper, i explore several technologically informed video and interactive works from artists such as janet cardiff, dennis del favero, omer fast, grahame weinbren and the artist group blast theory. by investigating the temporality expressed by these works, as they engage with the concept of presentness through digital aesthetics, i provide examples of the way time may be experienced in a similar mode to serres' multi-temporality. in this argument, the notion of convergence is central, a notion that it must be said has received substantial attention in new media circles, though usually in terms of a convergence of space or a convergence of media objects. figures such as lev manovich, henry jenkins, mark nunes, and matthew fuller have previously pointed out the generative overlay of space and media, which occurs between digital and physical systems at every level of society, expanding the networks and ecological systems formed between people, media systems, and cultures.1 1 lev manovich, "the poetics of augmented space," in new media: theories and practices of digitextuality, eds. anne everett and john t. caldwell (new york: routledge, 2003), 75-92; henry jenkins, convergence culture: where old and new media collide (new york: nyu press, 2006); mark nunes, cyberspaces of everyday life (minneapolis: university of minnesota press, 2006); and matthew fuller, media ecologies: materialist energies in art and technoculture (cambridge, massachusetts: mit press, 2005). for these thinkers, there is a flux of information across the processes, components, and practices of various forms of media. against this background, this paper attempts to add to this body of theory by exploring the aesthetic consequences of new media re-composing the digital present timothy barker http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/� 9 0 r e -c o mp o s i ng t h e d i g i t a l p r e s e n t contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 1 (2011) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2011.13 convergence in terms of time. of course, the convergence of time and the convergence of space presuppose one another, and it would be quite naïve to think one without the other. here though, in order to focus on the way that our experience of “presentness” is composed of multiple temporal episodes, i emphasize the role of time, as it is either composed by artists or performed by interacting participants. the convergence of temporalities janet cardiff's her long black hair (2004) demonstrates the overlay of actual time by the temporality expressed through a composition of representational and physical processes. in cardiff's work, participants wear headphones and are lead around new york's central park via a pre-recorded voiceover. occasionally the participants are instructed to stop and inspect a collection of photographs that they have been given. as they hold a photograph up to the scene in front of them, it becomes clear that the participants have been led to the exact spot where the photograph was once taken. using binaural recording techniques that render a 360-degree sound space mirroring the real world, the walks lead participants around pathways, developing a narrative through the voiceover supplied by the woman with long black hair. she makes observations as we move through the park, accompanied by ambient sounds as well as stories about local histories, which seem to surround the listener and interject at certain points throughout the walk. putting on the headphones, participants hear footsteps. these are the footsteps of the narrator, and they are told to try and match their footsteps to hers. later in the work, after instructing participants to turn left along the street, the voiceover tells them that they see peanut sellers, which are not physically present. they also hear dogs barking, getting closer, which again, are not physically present but give the sense that they once were. this aural re-presentation links a contemporary central park to historical and fictitious events re-presented, in the sense of making present again. hence, this work overlays the physical time of the present with the other temporal events narrated through the audio, as we follow the woman's voice through central park, taking the same route that she took at the time of its original recording. through this process of spatio-temporal overlay, her long black hair creates an augmented type of reality, thickened with two levels of temporality, as the space of the past synchronizes contemporaneously with the space traversed in the present. what is at stake in the multi-temporality composed by cardiff is the way histories, both personal and collective, are in constant contact with our experiences of the present moment. the voiceover tells us that "there are always so many layers in front of my eyes," reiterating how layers of the past alter perception and experience in the present. while we navigate through present-day central park in cooperation with our virtual tour guide, we hear stories specific to the location such as comments about the polar bears in central park zoo, vignettes from the different neighbourhoods that take the form of excerpts from documentary interviews, or news stories with the testimony of harry thomas from the 1850s, a refugee from the slave states who walked across america into canada. these are supplemented, furthermore, with quotations from other famous walkers such as charles baudelaire and søren kierkegaard. interspersed throughout this larger narrative of place that ebbs and flows backward and forward in time, are flashbacks from cardiff's own experiences while living in new york. at one point cardiff even shifts from her role as tour guide to answer her cell phone, allowing us to eavesdrop on a short conversation in which she reassures her partner that she is safe in the park at night. another example of such an overlay of temporality is del favero's magnesium light (2009), an installation made up of two video works you and i (2009) and hold me (2009). in this two-channel projection, del favero sets up an installation space where one part of the work is projected onto a large cinematic screen while the second part is shown on a small screen buried inside a plinth. there is one set of headphones in this installation, and enough http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/� 9 1 t i mo t hy b a r k e r contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 1 (2011) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2011.13 figure 1 janet cardiff, her long black hair (2004). permission to reproduce kindly granted by the artist and luhring augustine, new york. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/� 9 2 r e -c o mp o s i ng t h e d i g i t a l p r e s e n t contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 1 (2011) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2011.13 figure 2 dennis del favero, you and i, video still (2009). permission to reproduce kindly granted by the artist. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/� 9 3 t i mo t hy b a r k e r contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 1 (2011) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2011.13 figure 3 dennis del favero, you and i, video still (2009). permission to reproduce kindly granted by the artist. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/� 9 4 r e -c o mp o s i ng t h e d i g i t a l p r e s e n t contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 1 (2011) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2011.13 room for a single person to peer into the rectangular cut-out in the plinth, displaying a small and sunken screen. on the large screen, we at first see hands running over a naked female body, passionate scenes of love-making, a couple undressing, and panning close-ups of both the male and female body, sometimes coupled, sometimes alone, as if landscapes set against a black background. we hear a voiceover, a female voice with an american accent, dominated by pleasure and wielding power, which is reiterated in the movement of her naked body projected onto the screen. the voiceover tells us that the actions we are witnessing are not normal; they are the product of the strangeness of the present, an event in which the only people that matter are the two apparent lovers. it is not until toward the end of the relatively short video piece that we become aware of a narrative of rape that has been unfolding through the cascading series of memory-images. we see images of the male with a sack over his head and, more specifically, as the piece ends, we see the woman, wearing army desert fatigues, running her hands over a prisoner, no longer naked and his head again covered by a sack. it is now clear that throughout the piece, the woman attempts to normalize her actions, justifying them through the language of desire, removing herself from the outside world, and repeating "all that matters are you and me." by creating a heroic fiction amidst the alienating context of the middle east, she attempts to convince herself and her victim that these actions are not as iniquitous as they may seem to an outsider. as we stand over the plinth and look down at the small screen, we see another perspective from the memory-images shown on the large screen. a male body is the subject of this screen, his hands clutching his face, blocking his sight. through headphones we hear the voice of the prisoner, attempting to escape the reality of the memories of abuse by repeating a narrative of the last time he was with his wife. in contrast to the audio of the large screen, which attempts to remove the events from the outside world, the prisoner here tries to connect, through memories, to his life outside of this immediate moment. this is the most pointed difference between the two screens, as on the smaller screen the prisoner struggles to escape the traumatic events of the present by remembering the past, and on the larger screen, the soldier's actions and thoughts are caught only in the present, compartmentalized from her past and future. due to the layout of the installation, it is impossible to see both screens at once. the process of looking at the small screen, hunched over the plinth, prohibits us from seeing the large screen. additionally, the prisoner's voice through the headphones blocks out the audio provided by the female voiceover, which otherwise fills the room. this produces two distinct viewing experiences. on the one hand, there is the public experience provided by the cinematic projection, shared with the other viewers, just as the narrative of abu ghraib was experienced by most of the world's population through broadcast media images, projected onto the world as the cinematic image is projected into the installation space. on the other hand, there is the personal experience of viewing the small screen, the memories that were not distributed via the media, the narrative and affect that were not experienced by a broader audience. in this part of magnesium light, we see the victim's narrative, which, due to the viewing conditions of the space, can only ever be accessed by a few. in del favero's work, which explores traumatic memory – a defining characteristic of his larger oeuvre of video and interactive installations – we experience a singular event of the past through two separate memory-images, as the same event is narrated from two different perspectives. the work is at its most affective when the headphones’ audio pauses, allowing one to hear the sound projected into the room that infiltrates the private audio space usually muffled by the headphones. it reminds one of the memory-images on the large screen overhead, which, for the majority of the viewers, dominate the viewing experience. as the audio heard through the headphones pauses, our aesthetic experience in the present is overlayed by two memories from the past, and we are put into contact with the complex temporality of traumatic memory as an oscillation between turbulent private and public memories of the event. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/� 9 5 t i mo t hy b a r k e r contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 1 (2011) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2011.13 a similar approach to the aesthetic overlay of temporalities is evident in omer fast's the casting (2007). in this work, we begin to understand the concept of memory, similar to del favero's work, as it relates particularly to conflict and trauma. this is a type of memory that is expressed by fast as a complex of relational stories across disparate geographies and scales of historical time. in fast's four-channel installation, two double-sided screens hang from the ceiling of an installation space, each with two channels projected back-to-back. images of actors attempting to remain perfectly still are projected onto the front of these screens, portraying moments of a narrative. these tableaux vivants illustrate two stories from two roads, one in baghdad and the other in bavaria, one relating to the accidental, fatal shooting of an iraqi civilian, the other the journey home after a young man ends a relationship with his self-harming lover. the montage of images consists of american troops pointing their weapons at cars, the aftermath of an exploding roadside bomb, a young redhaired woman arguing with a man in the interior of a car, a domestic scene where a german family stares down an american outsider, and various scenes of american troops driving past iraqi civilians. a narrating voiceover accompanies these images, providing first-person testimony that shifts erratically from a failed love affair in germany to combat in iraq. moving around the screens, we see that the voiceover is supplied by a young american sergeant, projected onto the back of one screen, in an interview with fast, who is projected onto the other. viewing this footage, it is obvious that the integrity of the original interview has not been maintained. fast's and the young sergeant's clothes change from moment to moment, and movements, expressions, and sentences are interrupted midstream. to generate the narrative of the work, fast has spliced and sutured the footage together, treating the original interview recordings as an archived body of data, a bank of words and sentences that are open to his reassembly. from an archive of the sergeant's responses, the two events from different moments in time and geographical locations are edited together, placing these moments in tension and articulating memory-images to create a narrative that was not present in the original dialogue. the casting thus draws together once historically disparate events in the remixed narrative of the work. fast has treated memory and history not as a singular whole, but rather as a collection of data similar to serres' late-model car, capable of being reassembled and reformulated based on a set of organizational structures. in fast's, del favero's, and cardiff's works, we see the aesthetic groundings for my use of a.n. whitehead's concept of temporal thickness,2 as elaborated by deleuze and serres. these works have been chosen because they each explicitly evoke notions of memory and the temporality of the past, and they each grapple with this temporality differently. the concept of temporal thickness, however, could be applied to an understanding of many other time-based works, particularly those in which a viewer takes on a performative role, involving themselves, in the fullest sense of the term, with images of the past. in works such as these, the present becomes temporally thick as it draws into itself multiple layers of the past and provides the conditions for us to relive this pastness aesthetically. according to deleuze, a moment may be thought of as temporally thick when the past is drawn into the present.3 furthermore, following whitehead's earlier process philosophy, we are made acutely aware that every moment has jagged boundaries, always involving itself in our past as well as our future.4 2 a.n. whitehead, process and reality: an essay in cosmology (new york: the free press, 1978), 169. first published 1929. as deleuze states, "the past and the future do not designate instants 3 gilles deleuze, difference and repetition (new york: columbia university press, 1994), 70-71. 4 a. n. whitehead, the concept of nature (new york: cosimo, 2007), 50-55. first published 1920. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/� 9 6 r e -c o mp o s i ng t h e d i g i t a l p r e s e n t contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 1 (2011) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2011.13 distinct from a supposed present instant, but rather the dimensions of the present itself as far as it is a contraction of instants."5 the notion of temporal thickness, as it involves the concept of a past that infiltrates the present, necessarily involves questions of memory. for deleuze, memory is an actualization of the past in the present; it is a reliving of the past based on the conditions from which we remember. he illustrates this by explaining that marcel proust's combray, a place loaded with childhood memories, exists in à la recherche du temps perdu as a past that is remembered not as it was or even as it could be but as a virtual history, as a "…splendour that was never lived." in fast's work, for example, the present narrative is composed of a remix of the past, as the artist reformulates and restructures the original images and sentences. del favero likewise composes the events of the past as cascading memory-images, tied together and contracted in the present by two disparate narratives of the same event. the past as a contraction of instants within the present is also presented by cardiff, whose work links our experience of walking through central park in the present to the events of the past that we relive through the audio, rendered in 3d and channelled through the headphones. 6 in order to understand deleuze's time and the way in which we can use it to understand the types of works already mentioned, we need to examine his conception of a past as an interiority. as deleuze states, "time is not the interior in us, but just the opposite, the interiority in which we are, in which we move, live and change." the hero of à la recherche is involved in a process of actively synthesizing information from the past along with data gained from the passive synthesis of the present. through this act of remembering the past whilst living the present, the hero recollects a time that was never lived but is nevertheless being relived as uncontrolled memories overwhelm him, triggered by the smell and taste of tea and madeleines, in a temporally thick present. this is, of course, similar to the way the past and the present overlay one another in cardiff's, del favero's and fast's work, as we discover new ways of inhabiting the past in the present. 7 as such, the past cannot be reduced to an image in the brain, although this may be how it actualizes. it instead exists outside of the mind, with reality, within time, as a non-transcendental field that we must enter in order to locate recollection-images, which are the actualization of this past in the present. my notion of a cumulative past is thus based on my reading of deleuze, and in particular, his modulation of henri bergson's time. in the early part of the 20th century, a period dominated by scientific rationalism, bergson theorized the primacy of immediate experience and intuition in understanding time and the nature of reality, positioning it as a flow or duration, rather than a series of causally dependent instants. deleuze uses many of bergson’s famous illustrations of this type of time, and i would like particularly to focus here on the inspiration that deleuze takes from two of bergson's images. firstly, bergson provides deleuze with a picture of time as a tape running between two spools, with the past accumulating on one spool and the present passing between the spools.8 secondly, bergson pictures time as an inverted cone, travelling along a horizontal line.9 5 deleuze, difference and repetition, 71. the point at which the summit of the cone intersects the line is the point at which one experiences an image of the body moving in the present. as we move upward from this present into the wider parts of 6 ibid., 85. 7 gilles deleuze, cinema 2: the time image (london: continuum, 2005), 80. 8 henri bergson, the creative mind (new york: the citadel press, 1992), 164. 9 henri bergson, matter and memory (new york: zone books, 1994), 152. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/� 9 7 t i mo t hy b a r k e r contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 1 (2011) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2011.13 the cone we move into the realm of pure memory. thus, in order for a memory to become actualized in the present, it must descend the cone, moving into the tip and becoming a part of our movement in the present. from these images, deleuze reads in bergson a conception of the past that is outside or beyond the mind, as a plane of immanence, a plane "… in which the whole past is entangled and coexists at different levels of expansion and contraction."10 as deleuze sets out in cinema 2, "bergson's major theses on time are as follows: the past co-exists with the present that it has been; the past is preserved in itself, as past in general (non-chronological); at each moment time splits itself into present and past, present that passes and past which is preserved." it is this that enables us to speak of the being of the past and to grant the past a genuine existence. 11 if we think in terms of aesthetics, we place ourselves amidst the splitting time, located in the passing present, whilst aesthetic images and processes give form to the preserved past. when we think of the intersection of memory and aesthetics, we think of a bodying forth of pastness via aesthetics in the present.12 the overlay of processes: technology and humans in fast's, del favero's, and cardiff's work, aesthetics may express such a concept of the past, drawing it together with the present and entangling memory as the installations embody multiple levels of the past in the present. this facilitates a sensory process that causes us to think, to remember, and to rethink the past. in the above examples, i have explored some aesthetic experiments with time, largely structured by narrative content that deals explicitly with memory and its mediation through technological means. however, experiments in media art not only engage time through their content, but also through the interaction with digital technology. when a “user” comes into contact with the tools and aesthetics of digital technologies, she does not simply “use” these technologies in a disinterested manner. instead the tool reveals itself to be inextricably involved in her experience of the world.13 the technology becomes presupposed in the user's sensory experiences; once engaged, it impacts the way she sees, hears, acts and otherwise communicates in the world. through this process, technology becomes fundamentally temporal as it intervenes in the processes by which we make meaning of the world. it attaches itself to, and affects these processes.14 in order to locate the ever-pervasive convergence of humans and technology as a temporalizing process, we could apply the logic of deleuze and serres to begin to think about the polychronic events and the unique experience of time that are produced via digital interaction. beyond the compositionally-generated scalar time set out above, we might think of temporal aesthetics as preceded by an overlay of human and digital processes, as our experience of time is augmented by the process of digital systems. 10 alia al-saji, "the memory of another past: bergson, deleuze and a new theory of time," continental philosophy review 37, no. 2 (2004), 216. 11 ibid., 216. 12 terry smith, what is contemporary art?, (chicago: university of chicago press, 2009), 196-198. 13 steve shaviro, "the universe of things," object oriented symposium held at georgia institute of technology on april 23, 2010; available at http://www.shaviro.com/othertexts/things.pdf. 14 sean cubitt, digital aesthetics (london: sage, 1998). http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/� 9 8 r e -c o mp o s i ng t h e d i g i t a l p r e s e n t contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 1 (2011) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2011.13 figure 4 grahame weinbren, frames, detail (1999). permission to reproduce kindly granted by the artist. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/� 9 9 t i mo t hy b a r k e r contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 1 (2011) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2011.13 a major work from the history of interactive media art that embodies such a notion is grahame weinbren's frames (1999), which uses a database to archive historical photographs as well as contemporary video performances. in frames, weinbren appropriates dr. hugh welch diamond's photographs of mental asylum patients, taken in the 1840s and 1850s with the recently invented calotype printing technique. diamond and his colleague john connolly undertook these photographic sessions in order to evaluate various mental illnesses based solely upon the patient's visual characteristics.15 in this sense, the two saw themselves inventing a new diagnostic tool for the field via the technique of photography. in weinbren’s work, a participant stands in front of three large projection screens, two of which are seen through gilded picture frames hanging from the ceiling. mounted inside the frames are infrared beams, which enable a computer to register the movement of a user gesturing through them.16 in terms of a temporal aesthetic, we see multiple occasions collected together in the work's database. as source material collected from diverse times, diamond's photographs, the young actor, and the two different voiceovers suggest different temporalities. the original photograph embodies a historical event, which morphs into the presentness of the young actor performing the photograph and the self-reflexive comments of the director, shaping the actor's future movements. the database draws these occasions together in a new relational context, and frames invites us to navigate through this data. the past photograph becomes the present, initially composed by the external influence of the director and then later by the interactive movements of a user. we can see here that the database is more than a system associated with the capture and organization of information. instead it is culturally and temporally significant, as it archives past occasions so that they may be reactualized and re-contextualized in the present. standing in front of the screens, the participant sees one of diamond's 19th century calotypes. if the participant points at the projection, gesturing through the frame in just the right way, she triggers a voiceover taken from an original text that provides the psychiatric description of the patient. motioning further through the frame, the participant triggers a video of an actor preparing to imitate the poses of the 19th century patient. making another movement triggers another voiceover, this time a director giving instructions to the actor. the temporality of interaction is also central to the aesthetics of this work as, in order to transform the mental patient into the contemporary actor, the participant must regulate her gestures through the frame to a precise temporal rhythm. if she moves too rapidly or too slowly, the images cascade erratically, and the pastness of the photograph does not become the presentness of the actor. rather the past repeats, unable to progress. the resulting image is a dark staircase – leading the viewer nowhere – perhaps a metaphor for the psychological make-up of the patient. if the participant manages to find the “rhythm” of the piece however, she transforms the image of the mental patient into the moving image of the actor, who now shifts to the center screen and either looks out of a window/mirror or interacts with another fully formed actor in this space.17 15 grahame weinbren, frames, http://www.grahameweinbren.net/frames/framesiccprop/framesprop.html, unpaginated. if the participant successfully moves in the correct tempo, if she is able to tap into the work’s “rhythm,” she may transform the historical past of the photograph into the present of the actors. however, if she is unable to 16 ibid., unpaginated. 17 grahame weinbren, "ocean, database, recut" in database aesthetics: art in the age of information overflow, ed. victoria vesna (minneapolis: university of minnesota press, 2007), 79. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/� 1 0 0 r e -c o mp o s i ng t h e d i g i t a l p r e s e n t contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 1 (2011) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2011.13 find this temporal “rhythm,” then the work becomes a repetition of the past and fails to link with the present. the process of interaction in frames amounts to a continuation of the past with the present. as a photograph transforms into the image of an actor, a past occasion is shaped into a present one; the present grasps information from the past. in this process, we can understand the past accumulating in deleuze's non-transcendental field as, following bergson's image, the tape runs into the spool. this is a field in which the past resides in order to pass information to the present. as the participant gestures through the gilded frames, she triggers past occasions, drawing them forth from an extensive continuum, in this case a database, and activating them in the interacting present. these past occasions direct the present; they provide the conditioning for the present’s becoming by providing the images and audio that the user re-assembles in the present. both the database of interactive art and the recollection-image of the cinema – famously theorized by deleuze in cinema 2 – provide an aesthetic means to relive the past.18 frames is centered, ultimately, on the relationship between a photographer and his subject, and it is specifically concerned with the ways that technological mediations may in fact produce the subject. diamond's photographs, for instance, were meant to capture a particular truth about his subject, gaining an insight into the asylum patient's “inner” character. however, his photographs reveal themselves as quite posed. it appears that diamond himself had instructed the participants to sit, fold their arms, look at the camera – manipulating his subject and thus manipulating the photograph and his findings. the interactivity of frames mirrors this process, with the participant having the power to “shape” the image by gesturing through the frame, by testing out different movements and by finding the correct manner in which to interact with the images. of course by the term “relive” i do not want to imply a simple repetition of the past in an image. rather, following the deleuzian rendering of memory cited earlier in this paper, i refer to an actual re-experiencing of these events in the present, in the sense that they are lived again, lived differently, via the archive's preservation of pastness in the present or the cinematic image's actualization of a memory-image. the difference, however, between cinema's and the database's images of the past is that the former re-presents the past in a static way, enabling a viewer to re-think or re-experience the past in a new cinematic time and context. in contrast, interactive art does not just facilitate a re-thinking of the past but rather an actual re-formulation of the past in a dynamic way. it is not so much a past that is seen but rather a pastness that is relived, as physically triggered by the user's actions and capable of being re-organized in the present by the user’s agency over the collection of images. the past is not just re-thought here in terms of a cinematic time and space, but in terms of an interacting time and space, shared by both the artistic content and the participant. the user seeks simultaneously to perform and to understand the work in the present. as such, the past is brought into contact with the present as the user is responsible for performing the aesthetics of the work. she re-shapes the past by the act of re-shaping the image of the mental patient, putting the still images of photography from one historical period in relation to the moving video images from a different period. the user thus composes a presentness that takes form as an aggregate of multi-temporal images. in a whiteheadian sense, process here gives form and substance to the aesthetic content of the work. indeed, the content of the work is shaped by a number of processes: the practice of diamond posing his subjects in what seem to be painfully unnatural guises; the process of early photography and the long exposure times that made it necessary for 18 deleuze, cinema 2: the time image, 95. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/� 1 0 1 t i mo t hy b a r k e r contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 1 (2011) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2011.13 subjects to hold their pose; the manner in which the 20th century actors are guided by the director's voice; and the final process of audience interaction with a database. diamond's original photographs are not of a subject per se, but rather of a subject affected by the processes and conventions of photography. likewise, the aesthetic experience of frames does not take form as we receive a set of images in a cinematic sense, but rather as we actively synthesize a set of images affected by the temporality of the database and the “rhythm” of interaction. we can say that the technological mediations at play here are multitemporal in the same sense as serres' late-model car. the technological operations of the camera, for instance, with its aggregate of parts and inventions such as the lens, the aperture, the discovery of the chemical processes when exposing silver iodide to light, and later the ability of film to reproduce the moving image and its further digitization in the form of video, all date from different historical eras and are all drawn together in the present as pleats of time. it is this overlay of multi-temporal processes that constitutes frames in the present. a further example illustrating the relationship between aesthetics, technology, and time is blast theory's paradigmatic work can you see me now? (2001). blast theory here, as with weinbren's frames, explores the temporal processes that emerge as digital systems intervene in our sensory and physical experiences in the world. using locative and networked media, the performance of a human body is supplemented by technology. can you see me now? takes place in the form of a game that occurs both in the physical setting of the city streets in sheffield, england and over the internet in a digitally-generated city. in essence, the blast theory performers play a game of catch with online players, as the real life movements of performers on the street are “transcoded” into actions performed in the digital city. furthermore, actions performed by the online players are translated into the physical world as the blast theory performers move around the city, trying to “catch” the online players. each performer dons a hand-held computer connected to a global positioning system (gps) tracker, which transmits her location through a wireless network to the online players and also shows her the online players’ positions in the digital city.19 the experience was perhaps most successful when online players realized that their actions in the online world could affect events in the physical world, for example that the simple act of crossing a virtual line could cause someone to dodge real traffic… one of the most interesting features of the design in this regard is that the online players and runners inhabit separate ‘worlds’ or environments that are connected together virtually to create what we might call an adjacent reality. the online players can listen to the walkie-talkie conversation of the runners. digital and physical processes overlay one another here, as a user moves a character on a computer screen and subsequently interacts with a physical runner on the streets. the artists describe this process, stating: 20 whilst on the surface this work may appear to be a simple game, it should be viewed in a more complex fashion, in terms of human-technology supplementation, and the manner in which it may direct or constrict a participant's behavior in certain ways. in other words, the technology reveals itself to both significantly empower and restrict the performative ability of the human participants. the performers' physical movements through the city streets are connected to the technology of their hand-held computers, the wireless network, the gps, 19 steve benford, et al., "can you see me now?," acm transactions on computer-human interaction 13, no. 1 (2006), 100-133. 20 ibid., 108. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/� 1 0 2 r e -c o mp o s i ng t h e d i g i t a l p r e s e n t contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 1 (2011) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2011.13 the internet, and the various online players' computers, all of which empower the runners in the contest of the game. for instance, the hand-held computers tell them where to move in order to catch the online players. however, they are also restricted by this technology. they are unable to move outside of the wi-fi network without losing contact with the virtual city and are limited to locations where gps is available. in some instances, online users would hide behind buildings in known gps blackspots, where the runners were unable to find them.21 can you see me now? signifies a process of relationships between technology and the human body. in this process, the human body is directed by the rules and limitations of the digital, as it requires us to act in certain ways, whether this be interaction via a mobile phone network, the internet, or any other model of interaction. these conditions are presupposed in the way we act in the present. the runners in this sense are localized or territorialized by the technology, as it conditions the way they behave. 22 the networked environment here, following nunes, both defines and delimits everyday life, as it straddles both informational and physical contexts, with each including and impinging upon the other.23 the users must work within the constraints of the locative media; they must remain in the networked area, or work within the software's rules, which restrict the processes that they are able to initiate. we see in this work what manovich describes as "cellspace," a type of convergent space that exists when an invisible layer of information space, and what we traditionally think of as physical space, augment one another.24 in this type of space, synchronised in time, "data flows from the space and into the space,"25 this paper has provided various illustrations of time and physical processes overlayed, doubled, and thickened via either compositional techniques, such as multi-channel cinematic installations, or via the interactivity of digital systems. in all of these works, we are provided with an opportunity to engage with a temporality beyond a linear sequence of encounters. in this manner, each piece is implicitly processual, as the act of engaging with the work involves some level of physical action, whether this be in the form of walking through central park, moving around an installation, or interacting with a database via gestures. as such, the works are performed in the present, and through this performance flow multiple levels of time. the doubling of temporality is actualized in magnesium light, for example, as the viewer shifts her gaze from a large-scale cinematic screen to a smaller, more private screen. likewise, the past is brought into the present in cardiff's work as we navigate the present directed, literally in this case, by events that occurred in the past. in each work, the digital medium is not merely a means of representing the world. rather it is a mode of re as the digital layer either extracts data from the physical world or enhances it with new data. presentness in such a mediated environment as the one in can you see me now? or, more generally, in the many contemporary forms of network culture, becomes a condition in which each movement made in the present links to different movements in other locations. temporality is thick here as the present moment not only involves what is presentationally immediate to our senses – what is here and now – but also as it includes the ever-expanding network and a unison of connected yet geographically dispersed movements in the present. 21 ibid., 114. 22 adrian mackenzie, transductions: bodies and machines at speed (london and new york: continuum, 2002), 7. 23 mark nunes, cyberspaces of everyday life, xi. 24 lev manovich, "the poetics of augmented space," 76. 25 ibid., 76. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/� 1 0 3 t i mo t hy b a r k e r contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 1 (2011) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2011.13 composing the present, of providing a means to rethink the present, to understand it as thick with multiple temporalities. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/� 1 0 4 r e -c o mp o s i ng t h e d i g i t a l p r e s e n t contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 1 (2011) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2011.13 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-noncommercial-no derivative works 3.0 united states license. this journal is operated by the university library system of the university of pittsburgh as part of its d-scribe digital publishing program, and is co-sponsored by the university of pittsburgh press.. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/� http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/� http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/� http://www.pitt.edu/� http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/� http://www.upress.pitt.edu/upressindex.aspx� the convergence of temporalities the overlay of processes: technology and humans << /ascii85encodepages false /allowtransparency false /autopositionepsfiles true 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/pdfxoutputintentprofileselector /documentcmyk /preserveediting true /untaggedcmykhandling /leaveuntagged /untaggedrgbhandling /usedocumentprofile /usedocumentbleed false >> ] >> setdistillerparams << /hwresolution [2400 2400] /pagesize [612.000 792.000] >> setpagedevice microsoft word 168-176 discussion between ellen and madeline 7-27.docx vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.154 http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu thoughts & things 01 ���� madeline eschenburg and ellen larson abstract the following is a month-long email exchange in which the editors of open ground blog outlined their thoughts and goals for the website. about the authors madeline eschenburg is a phd student in the history of art and architecture department of university of pittsburgh. her research centers around contemporary chinese art with a special focus on the relationship between urban-based artists and rural china. she has published in yishu: journal of contemporary chinese art, contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture, and art slant. she is currently living in beijing conducting dissertation research with the support of a fulbright fellowship. ellen larson is based in beijing where she is completing her master's degree in modern chinese history at minzu university of china. ellen’s curatorial record includes a retrospective exhibition of xu bing’s work, “xu bing: the art of rewriting china" at the university of wisconsin-stevens point. english to mandarin chinese translation by liyi chen, intern at contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture. contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.154 september 27 madeline, for our very first “thoughts & things” feature, i think it makes sense to discuss a bit about who we are, our personal goals for the blog, collaborative goals, questions for one another, etc. through this exchange, i hope to introduce (and by extension) further develop our own understanding of open ground, its topics, connections to other areas of study, and growing relevance within the field of contemporary chinese art. while our backgrounds may be slightly different, we both share in this unique experience, living and studying in beijing. not only does this experience allow us to better understand chinese language, history and culture, but it also gives us greater authority on chinese art and its contemporary condition. my own experiences over the past year at minzu university of china (muc) have focused on the history of modern china. while many have questioned why i have chosen to study history rather than specifically "art history," i argue that there is a deeply rooted connection between both specializations. one cannot exist without the other, especially within the temporal framework of the twentieth century. for example, would socio-political movements such as the great leap forward and of course, the great proletariat cultural revolution, have left the same mark on culture without the use of socialist-realist propaganda imagery? as i reflect on questions like this one, i believe that a deeper understanding of china's modern social, political, and theoretical climate allows for more thoughtful reflection on contemporary issues. this research approach shapes the way i think about open ground. for me, open ground strives for topical inclusivity, connecting our own experiences and expertise to other areas of study, both geographically and temporally. i want open ground to function as a platform for artists, curators, scholars and connoisseurs to come together, engaging in discussion and debate. i hope to create connections across time and space, encouraging those with disparate backgrounds to participate in open dialogue, to challenge one another, and to foster greater understanding of china and its contemporary climate. this brings me to my first few questions for you. how do your own experiences relate to your own goals for open ground? recalling our initial conversations here in beijing, our collaboration on open ground began after we both expressed similar interests in creating an online presence dedicated to chinese contemporary art. of course, this is not a new concept. we are both familiar with publications like leap and yishu with broadly similar goals. how is open ground a unique endeavor? what makes it different from other platforms dedicated to the subject? ellen ���>�� madeline, ü�ȯ�uéznjɩƅȩû�}�>øȍôx�ǁ���>łȑ��>�ǜª^�ü+ȯ��öɩƙŝ bdžüļɩɉə�sȯ�/űɩȫó û�j¡ƴ�ɍȳę>ü+ƭ¸ȯ�šĉɩƌƿ=�ȯ�šĉªa ;ðőɗ¼ɩ_ʒ�ȯ  rt�ǟőƒdⱦțŕțƹaçǔù� ǩº�>ȫ�ŋǧ��ɩĵ)�gā�ę>ȿ·�2ð&nã³û1�ȯ�ƅsç&ɛ�ȯťǂ��6 ǽę>ňųu¸ƌƿ�´ȍèû��=�ĸ��ňǽę>3ȣjd�´ǟőªƥdɖ¾� thoughts & things 01���� madeline eschenburg and ellen larson 1 7 0 t h o u g h t s & t h i n g s 0 1 � � � � contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.154 s����®�x\cȑsȯȫ�ɩ�óɂ��´ɖ<�łę��çɗ¼�ȁw��æ��'ȵĥijȑ ��ǒɓňƣm¸�ijǟő��üťęɩ°ưłő�#ɉ�§¸� âa5çǔʒ�ñ>�ǘƈƭï·�â a·*��ƻ7çð#þ�����*[¤ȏûz¦¯ ð#ɖô�"ç_ev-û��ð#�°íz*z xȟðn�;xøm#s rt��;¹�êjç@ȁ þ ýt�}8ȯ.ɉə�ęƙsȷȫxųü+� ´ȭ<ƥdĵū=�ƌȃɚ�dǽęü+ā<ɩɉəŋňųuɩƌƿ� ȯ�ɵƫɩļŭƀ½'ęü“öt”çáæ�üę�4ǒǹ�“öt”stvnŀɉ�ǝw+ŀ)~ùč� ǔʒę>�ǜɩƍůǂɛªa;ð&ǂ��ęîŋ“öt”#����i̇pdžǟőø�ʊè4�ðǐªɨș` \ő/űɩò�:ǒ�țǽȃ�ęîŋxųü+ŀɉªƭɉɩƌƿ�ɝ|ȯ.ŋǧŕa��ǖńɩ4>�� ǽȃ��țƙ,ĩěiàçȃž:ǒxųü�´�aā<đgɩƌƿ� ȯǽęđtđɉmɩi�ɉə -)z'äàhç��ǂ��ǔʒtmü+ƭ¸ɖéçéŝ�°đțę >ʼnq·�2ȯɂɩüȉ�ę>�lɩqǭłj+ę>ƙfɩĕŋ── ��´ā<ǟőúƭ��njdžlg� tºûȯôɓ��]ĺɩšĉ�ę>��ȿü leap n yishuȯ.ŋǧæǝƙ�ƙŝɩnƅćƀď�ĝ=ɉ ə·+�ę>ëkǽƭ¸ňƈƅ�ł5!ǽñ�s+añŋǧƙfƙŝɩò�� ellen october 1 hey ellen, it's interesting that you are approaching contemporary chinese art from the perspective of the history of modern china. in fact, i come from quite a different angle. my first experience with anything china-related, including its culture and history, was through contemporary chinese art. in fact, when i got my master's degree i was initially going to study italian renaissance art. but once i took a class about contemporary chinese art, i was hooked and decided to write my thesis about it. at that time, my knowledge of china was so minimal that i'm sure i misunderstood a lot of what i saw. but it was a great entry-point. since then i have continued to study china's history, culture, and language. i have lived in beijing off-and-on since 2010 and feel like my understanding of contemporary art here is becoming deeper and more nuanced. perhaps because i came to the field somewhat late in my educational career and moments of total incomprehension in front of a work by a chinese artist are still quite fresh in my mind (which still admittedly happens), questions of cultural translation are always of great interest to me. how does the meaning of an artwork change depending on its exhibition context? how does it change for the viewer deepening on his/her cultural context and educational background? as an american whose parents and grandparents immigrated to the states and who has been lucky enough to travel and live abroad many times, i haven't had the opportunity to strongly define my own identity based on regional boundaries. but, i have noticed that because china has such a long and rich history, with family lineages based in the same area for centuries, there are many chinese artists and critics who are heavily invested in preserving aspects of traditional chinese culture in their own work, while at the same time integrating diverse elements from a myriad of local and global encounters. in creating open ground i hope to open dialogue about cross-cultural translation and the notion of "tradition." i am similarly interested in knowing how this tension between "tradition" and the contemporary-global operates in other locations and in other time periods. i hope that colleagues studying visual culture in other fields will feel free to comment and start a dialogue about the artists and exhibitions we feature on this blog, thus creating a network for knowledge-creation that allows for looking at each featured work or exhibition from multiple angles. in terms of what sets open ground apart from other online journals such as leap or yishu, i see it as being a bit more flexible than either of those journals because it is not tied to a printed format at all. in this way, readers can continuously contribute to past posts, creating a pattern of thought that more closely resembles a web than a stream. it is also admittedly more local in 1 7 1 m a d e l i n e e s c h e n b u r g a n d e l l e n l a r s o n contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.154 scope in that we, living in beijing, will primarily be focusing on beijing-based artists, exhibitions, and art-world professionals. however, it has the potential to be incredibly global in scope, depending on responses we receive. i think that is a good question though, and i'm interested to hear your answer. here are my questions for you: what are your impressions of the contemporary art world in beijing right now? what kinds of questions do you have about this art world that you are hoping will be answered by the professionals we interview? what do you think are the benefits and limitations of a blog locally routed in the beijing art-scene, and yet also striving for new understanding based on comparisons with other cultures and times? madeline >��� hey ellenû � rî�h¤�æ rt�ǟőɩƣł�ŋȝɩdzǵ�)ô��ęł:��ƙü��ɩƕùŕɵƫɩ �ęʼnqü�´��ĸ�ƙ_ɩĝŋjdȿŷǜ�´ā<ǟő�)ô�� t��8ơ¿ðhŀ�ę�ŏł đð&ēærĸǟâ`ǟő�gƚŀę�'�ǡ�´ā<ǟő�ãǯa¥ýôfó=ť�ęũ�ȃĸɩ�ə �óŀu�ęü+�´ĸ�ɩ'ƿȧ�ŋɏ�=ǜ+āŀęô�ƣóǜëł¡ņƿ'ęɩĝdzĝɋ�gƚƣ ł�ć_ɇɩm\ž�:ƚ=�țęljljð&�´ɩ���ĸ�ªȍǹ�ǜ 2010 m k�ǂñ°t�2� ȩȥ#ɉęĕǵǜëüȯɂɩā<ǟő0ƍ'ňųɩ^ɜ� �ȁţł±�ęĭǹȯ�ɗ¼ŧȧł¢�ľŭƌƿɯvɩ�´ǟőɩ¹ń9��·ƙ ǒɖ7%ľŭò ]ȼ[ȯƨđg �ƞĸ�#ɉēčɩǭȫǽęɲȳ��?ǟő«ĝeȫɩēčłëk·��ɩèǵǖń� ȥī�ȯ?ǟő«·��dzbɩɯ���d±�ȯ.dzbɩķǖĸ�ǖńǒǯȋɂ���ɩó"�l��� ƥȧªƃȧʃũtǎ´�ô�ŋõäţj¾ļŷƌǜñi�ęɒ=ǝ¸¼ɩƒɏŕó"ęłȑ�gł�ęƒ ēt——q��´ɩ��ŷȱűɇ�øľɩşŷ�=·���¸ļȴÿt�i��ƻ�ǒćä�´ǟőøª ȅȃøɩl«ȿłų�ȯƨeljă¬��ť�ŀ�ǃ�'ľķā¸ª]ɗ�ekǒ0ƍɩzƹ�pú“öt” �j¡gp��2�ë�;�´nǽȃ“elj”ȯ�šĉɩüȉ��ŝ¸�ę%ćđ'ƿ“elj” t�/à; ȝ}ĝ0ƍɩek·��¸�ª��ŀōłëkȭl�ęîŋ·añɗ¼ð&dzǵĸ�ɩ�ǫ>ǜə¸ǽȃ ę>·ȯɂi̇jɩ�ə�ôèû��_+ǟőøªèǵɩüȉ�əťŗú��ƞȅɩnjdž:ǒæøǘå:� ǜɩƕùŕlŗŧ?ǟő«ęŧ�èǵ� á�äz'ǽ“öt”s"leapn yishuȯŝɩnjdžȑƅ�ǚɘǒj�ęǻ�“öt”êȧ+a;ȑƅ ǒǹň�żů±�ñò]�ǯa'�ñ�&¨r�eõ�ȯŝ�ŕ�ȑǐ>�=�ĺ¸üȫąɩïí�ǭȅ ȃ�pú��ňȝ�+njɔăǒɓƽ»ɩčnjǃŗ��ť�ŀ�±�ę>ȿçi·�2�ĝ=ę>ßd�ǰ _ŭ�2ǟőø�èǵªǟőƒêl4¦�ſǒ��f+ę>ĝıtɩ°â�“öt”jŀ%bŋŕa]ɗ� ɩźȗ�ęǻ�ȯł�ćêɩɉə�đ¤¤mɩdzƿ� ɖs�� 3�ɉə}äɉm mɖ·ëkšħmü�2ā<ǟőƒɩ�ȕ§�ü+ȯ�µí�mŋ5 !ƕɉđǰ:ę>ĝɀȃɩ��4¿�ćtƿư�ü+��=�2�şī¸��ǝw+·ƞĸ�üŧ�û� ĺɩƌƿɩ�ö�mǵć ��c}ªy}§� madeline october 3 madeline, i too am interested in extending the reach of open ground through interdisciplinary dialogue. i like thinking about this project as forming multiple webs of connections, initiated and expanded through thoughtful reflection and exchange of ideas, rather than a linear transmission of information to a static receiver. along the lines of your question regarding the benefits and limitations of the blog's current scope of interest, i think focusing our efforts on art being created in beijing is a unique endeavor. many publications find cohesiveness in a single topic, which changes issue to issue, perhaps, as a means to not exhaust a singular idea. however, i hope our focus on beijing will provide a clarity and cohesiveness, allowing for deeper 1 7 2 t h o u g h t s & t h i n g s 0 1 � � � � contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.154 and richer investigations of varied artistic practices, exhibitions and general attitudes towards art making. of course, we are in the very early stages of developing open ground. our goals and scope may evolve over time, but i am excited to ponder the significance of art making in beijing over an indefinite period of time. i hope this evolution will take place through not only our efforts, but also through contributions of our colleagues working within various disciplines, space and time. we have a unique opportunity to not only study contemporary art, but also live it here in beijing. therefore, we have exclusive access to the beijing art world. we may examine our own experiences in this moment in time in relationship with other metanarratives that are being simultaneously constructed around us. we are able to reach beyond exhibitions staged in 798, discovering art colonies, workshops and studios filled with a new generation of contemporary artists working both within and beyond the canon. at the same time, we may explore themes in contemporary chinese art with greater depth than previously considered. i think that with all the attention that has been placed on contemporary art in china, its significance and relationship to the contemporary moment has not been fully considered or even understood. it seems that "the market" has become synonymous with art making in china. however, i am not convinced that such broad generalizations provide any real insights on chinese art. like many other aspects of chinese society, i think its art world is widely unknown and often misunderstood. outsiders see certain artists as champions for ideas and politics that correspond to the way we think about china based on our own culture and value systems. in the west, throughout history, artists have sought independence from movements that came before them, seeking innovative, and often revolutionary new approaches to art making. however, in china, artists' relationship to their forbearers is dramatically different. for example, after the fall of the qing dynasty in 1911 and establishment of the republic of china, artists did not reject traditional painting in favor of "modern" aesthetics corresponding to political rhetoric of the period. rather, as a form of national strengthening, artists embraced traditional painting as ræ, or "national painting." in this way, tradition was adopted as a tool to promote nationalism after the birth of the modern republic. of many questions i have as of late, i am interested in exploring how chinese artists reconcile their "national" and "ethnic" identities, as well as "tradition" and "modernity." recently, i spoke with an artist who told me that while he views himself as culturally chinese, he does not make "contemporary chinese art." i am curious what "contemporary chinese art" means to different people based on their own history, education and professional experiences. does it have a negative stigma for some? if so, where does it come from? perhaps, this is unanswerable, but what does "contemporary chinese art" mean to you? ellen >��� madelineû �� ~ïȫë\òçüȉ¤�o“öt”��bȯ�ɖé}-���åiñ}±n�´¥×n���g ç2ùüdžûý÷ƽ{ç,|��e��s)ɉç�ù62�ȯ�?^dzƕc:}ɩɉə û�}�>2² �> <��§�tçǟő���¿½ç�r�ȁw4¼ðïȫ·ŧ�ō�èɖ���əɩ��dzƕ=ȼ[ ·���ə�ǔäǒ�ćřɓ$¨�ºýû�j¡�>ǘåħlj2²�<��ý�+��·���çdzåû �ýsþ·�ƨǟőűů�gǵn2�ǟő9(¢ìç�ñªy ȱǫ�¶ȱɩïõ�tº�û�>9·ú ƭ“öt”çê­ɍť�ɐɲŀɉɩįʃ�ę>ɩƙŝªdzƕdȶŵį÷�gę9ĕēǡľäɩŀɉ�ʌɵč ǐ�2ǟőplɩƀǰč�ęîŋȯƨȱ�ßd·ę>ªę>ŕǜ��ðőǖń���ŀɉªƭɉɩ�y> �ėɩ{w��ƍ� �>ĥ ȯ����$ß\&t�ǟőûý ßåf%s<�ç£#�� û�> �dçȗ¸a�ç <�çǟői¹��>f ƿõsȯt�ȯ�íɉ�>��îçn��>çǿ|��> £#�æ798g= þkç��ûa�ûiñ ì��� rt�ǟőø>ɩêl×��ť�ŀ�ę>îŋňųɩ'ƿ�´ā< ĸ�� 1 7 3 m a d e l i n e e s c h e n b u r g a n d e l l e n l a r s o n contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.154 �ǻ�ę>à·���´ā<ǟő«�tƀdzɩó<�ſǒ�ñɩƀǰčª�ā<��ɩƙ_č�ŏć tȟåɩ_ŭ�ƚțŕ�´ǟőplŵŵź��“i¹”çî"ȇ�ſǒ�ę%�ǻ�ȯ!÷ɩǣ²ª�ųu ɩĕƞi̇pć'ƛţē"�ɩ�´ǟőüȉ��´ǟő�ãţë�´ĸ��ñǯċdzęǐņƿ�åã4ƚt ś.đŭªʊɠªę>ĝ'ƿɩ�´ǟőøúƭ·ę>ǚų�ìŗưɩĸ�ª@vdz�·ǯļɩ����ǟ őø>ì:�ƨǟőűů�ƈƭjŕôǝw+pĺ�ǂñ 2�ǟőplɩɕ©čɩĺ�þ�ſǒ�·�´ �ǟőøª;>ɩvȧ>#ɉɩ_ʒěſ��+ǯļɩđg�ğ�ŧļȏ�āŵō· 1911 �œș�ūǧ� ��ũ´pƭ�ǟőø>%�ġģeljǟőõǎôĥġ“ɖ<�"”çõǎ:ǒņ®āŀɩĵūđg�ƙ�� ǟőø>ȵĥ'ĥġeljdžɛoë´ɛ�əť�·ĺɩ^ª´ȋƍ��elj�ė'xā´øǥǻĕɩ�ƨê b� ýs��îɉɩa;ɉə��ęȯđƞⱥ�´ǟőøłċŝȓª;>ɩ“r`”“ñ�”çwôì!û¬z �>ëk�ȓ“elj”n“ɖ<”�ɉɩ_ʒ�ʼnȭ�ęȹt��ǟő�;ǜƨ�ĸ��ɩ�r�û ��q“ rt�ǟő”ûý�ýoćêé��4łëkşī;>�ǜɩǂ� ðőǖńªêlǖń ŕó"“ rt �ǟő”�ü+ⱦl4ǒǹ�ñł¡ðŋȕɔɩž��ëřł�ȯ.ȕɔ�ȕ:kǒŕ� xªû¯ �îòø©û$“ rt�ǟő”ümǒǹē¨ɲ5!§� ellen october 12 hi ellen, yes, i think the definition of "contemporary chinese art" is an extremely timely and weighty question on the minds of many working in the chinese art world. ever since contemporary chinese art entered the international art market, the question of the relationship between visual expressions of "chineseness" and contemporary chinese art's acceptance into the market has been a much debated issue. now, almost 25 years after this change occurred, this question is still discussed by many. it seems like the debate is centered around two conceptions of "chinese:" one of which is iconographic, one of which is methodological. more recently, i think, the latter is the primary focus. much like the artist you just mentioned, i have also heard people say that such and such a chinese artist living and working in china is not a "contemporary chinese artist," usually implying that their working method is not in keeping with a traditional chinese method. so, for example, a chinese artist who went to art school in the west and came back to china might be creating "contemporary art" but not "contemporary chinese art." i've heard people say of other chinese artists, "oh, she/he is not a real contemporary chinese artist." i think this nationalistic emphasis is very much rooted in chinese culture and history and cannot be dismissed, despite my very american urges to minimize the importance of national heritage as a large part of one’s identity formation. there are dangers in defining who is a contemporary chinese artist and subsequently including or excluding artists from this category as a value judgment. as okwei enwezor has argued, the expectation that an artist from a specific location will express something culturally "pure" and "authentic" through their art is both unrealistic and restricting when considering the vast amount of global connectivity that has come about as a result of globalization. i think that more productive questions in our current context are not "what is contemporary chinese art?" but rather, "what is ‘chinese?’" "what is ‘tradition?’" and, “who now and historically has had the power to answer these questions and shape this discourse?” china is a huge country with a variety of minority cultures, traditions, and influences, and so, i find it problematic and simplistic to discuss "china" or "tradition" in any sort of monolithic terms. that is why the most interesting works of art address these questions from an honest and thoughtful perspective based on individual and familial experience. so, i don't think it is possible or interesting to define "contemporary chinese art" in a sentence or two in the same way i don't think it's possible to create an overall definition of "china" or "tradition." rather, i hope that one goal this blog can achieve is to explore the different ways artists probe their surroundings and their relationships with local, national, and international histories and flows of knowledge in order to break down any preconceived and simplistic ideas we may have. 1 7 4 t h o u g h t s & t h i n g s 0 1 � � � � contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.154 at this point i feel like we have both covered our backgrounds, our goals for the blog, and some important questions that are on our minds in regard to contemporary chinese art. so, i can't think of any more questions for this section. please let me know if you can. madeline >�>�� hi ellen, üû�ǻ�� rt�ǟő�ç]"·ćä:)�´ǟő�ƒɩ4ĉ �÷kôäçɉə�ǜ:�´ā <ǟőșȱ'´ɏǟőí¹�ëk·dzǵ�ǭɖj�´ƅǟª�´ā<ǟől«·í¹�ɩǯǻ�ù#ɉɩ _ʒt�(ǿ�·ȯij��ƍƺ*�-ó�ɩ7ç�ȁä49·ǽȃȯ�ɉə�ƚțŕ(ȃɩ�ĉ·+_+ “ r”ç�ñªyý�ñséwæɔ���ƨ·ƌȃæɔ�ǒ·ʼnȭ�ęǻ��ǐłƀž�ţëmļği̇� ɩƚhǟőø�ęň¤ɋ;4ⱥȏ·�´¶ƍ¶ɇô·ťȱǫǟőplɩǟőø�ł“ rt�ǟőø”ûï kȯ.ƌȃņĩȯ.ǟőø>ɩplĝŭ�ʈ��´ǟőeljɩļŭȃ�ĝ=�ǽę>��oíŕȏ��� ňƒð+ã��dã��;»ökprȱǫplɩ4pȸjɩl«ǯó"�“tºǟő”ý÷“ rt�ǟő”� ���lɋs4ȓȃ�´ǟőø——“oûyü� ����ë¬��´ā<ǟőø�ęǻ�ȯƨ´ø�"ɩ rƀžŷ+�´��ĸ��ĝ=ľȃǎüezëk·ǫʉ��4ŀđǰÿ�´øȼ0ü+��4ɩǜęó" ŋäƀǰ�ǒāę>đǰ�ó"���´ļ<ā<ǟőøłȑŀ�ȯɉəƚțŕ�âœ�gȯē¨ɲǰ�ƒ óǟőø>ł¡é+ȯ�ǣɣǒß;>lƶ�ţë okwei enwezorǽȃȫɩ�·]ɗ�ɩȝ}��ƒ�¸ ɩǔʒē�ƹú�ĝ=ōŋ��ǟő`ßåpljĸ��ò]ƽƶªţljɩ¸ļĸ�łŀ�ɖô�åɏɩ� ęǻ�·ā�ɩǖń�ę>�øȍɉ“��� rt�ǟő�”ý�“z'a]"�ü�”“���elj�” b ȑ�ŋȯ�œìɩ¸h�°ưȯ.ɉə:ǒdžȯ�(ȃi̇pƌȃşś�±��´ȯwæɩ´øŋɲ��àķ ũľɩĸ�eljªă¬�ĝ=ęǻ�đǰǝ��ɩőȍ�ȋɂ“ r”n“elj”�ȫ+ƴ��ǫ�ȷɩ�ȯ% ƿɂ'�5!ǒ4ý¨ɩǟől«ąąłȷȫ�4ǂ�ªjdôǝőô��ųuɩdzƕŕǭȫ�ĝ=�ãë řę>ľŭ·�ǹƃȍ#ɉó"“ r”n“elj”û�>�ŝľŭǝ��eȉ�ó"“ rt�ǟő”�êcû �j¡ȯ��öɩ��ƙŝł��ĭ��ǟőø�ǜƈƅɩǭɖĝŭŕèƣ�¼č�´ø ǜ´ɏ�ɩ�� ªƞȅ�ơƿę>ȫ+ƴ�ɩđŭ� ɖ·ę>ȿìǂ8ǁ'ę>ɩ�4ǂ�ªü+ȯ��öɩƙŝ�=�ę>ĉ��._+�´ā<ǟőɩ ɉə�ĝ=ęń�đ�tňä·ȯ�ƈǡȍɉɩɉə�ëřmđt�.ɉə�ȏ�ęl1� madeline october 16 madeline, i think you make several interesting observations, in particular, your hesitation to generalize "china," and by extension, contemporary chinese art, and its relationship to a single veined "tradition." as i reflect on contemporary art-making in china, i also struggle to sum it up in a few short sentences. however, what does come to mind is an evolving amalgamation of china�s many layered pasts, presents, and arguably futures. in my mind, it is impossible to view contemporary art making independently from its cultural, political and historical context. of course, chinese art has emerged within the context of rapid and complex social change in china. however, within contemporary chinese work, conscious allusions are also constantly being made to numerous cultural and political historical frameworks. as gao minglu has pointed out, some critics and art historians impose their own "western historical patterns and esoteric standards" in their analysis of contemporary chinese art. like you mentioned, i think it is important to avoid our own "western" predisposed urges when examining chinese work made within the last five decades. china's history and unique cultural context make it impossible to neatly categorize contemporary chinese art using a western model and/or western labels. 1 7 5 m a d e l i n e e s c h e n b u r g a n d e l l e n l a r s o n contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.154 for example, consider the groundbreaking 1989 china/avant-garde exhibition. while the chinese title rɖ�ǟőg literally translates to chinese modern art exhibition, the organizers adopted the english title china/avant-garde, as a western audience may assume that a "modern art" exhibition would include work created during the first half of the twentieth century. i think it's really important to think about different approaches to language and meaning when reflecting contemporary chinese works. it is rare that i pick up a book or have a conversation with a chinese artist where an allegory to history or a �ȍ (chinese idiom) is not dropped time and time again. these four character idioms are often deeply rooted in chinese cultural and philosophical history, and often capture the essence of one's thought like no other piece of language can. despite china's turn towards globalization, i still believe that elements of "tradition," as uncomfortable as this term may make some feel, are still relevant in our discussion of contemporary chinese art. some critics would argue that the more individualistic a work is, the "truer" it is. however, this argument dismisses the work’s integral connection to history, society, and to culture in general. of course, as we think more about work made by a younger generation of artists born more than a decade after the cultural revolution, i have more questions about their work in relationship to culture. i am especially interested in further exploring this topic. ellen >�>0� madeline, �ǻ�mdzûtćäŋȝɩɖȕ�âał�·ƴ�“ r”ç]"ŀmɩȡȣ� �gp¤ȏ��´ā<ǟő=�ñ���eljǘdž#ɉɩ_ʒ�āę�č�´ā<ǟőplŀ�ę{w áȉȫǝ�ǹƃȍ�šħ�ſǒ�ęĉ�}8ç� rwæţɩȫą�ā�ªáb(ǿɩŏŕ� �ǻ��ǚʀ'elj�ĵūª��ǖń�ƚąā<ǟőplł��ǘɩ�āſ��´ǟő·żȱǒ�â œɩƥd�ɕ�ǥǣ�ſǒ�·�´ā<ǟő��ŋēȅɩöǵ%�ŀǯǝlȁäĸ�ªĵū��ɩşś� ¬zù�â��4û �ǟőȅȃøªǟő�ðøǝ;>�ǜɩ“ã�h\«unŝh”s�>ü�´ā <ǟőɩɵƫ��ãxmĝȏɩ�ęǻ�ȼ[nǝę>ɩǯļŝh�ƚȭ-�óɩ�´ǟőłɓñƀǰɩ� �´ɩ��ªƈƅĸ�ǽę>ɒ=ǝǯļš»ªǯļŝʋ�lƶ� ��oí�ȉđ 1989 rçǟőijɕȭz�ā“ rɖ<ǟőè”ȯ�ŝə�ʊèƾǀļ�ßaȇ� chinaüavant-garde úx~��´�ǟőijɕ :ǒǯļdzbdįű��“ɖ<ǟő”#µèpl+*�� ƻ���ɩl«� �ǻ�·�č�´ā<ǟől«ŀ�áȉǝ��ļü�ĭǹaȍǹª£"ŀŕ�ƀǰɩ�ƚɋȑª�ǟ őø/ȓɩǂ���ę�ɖ·ǎȇɩȫƪ���cĵɑ®·ǎȇ�ȫƪ�ǯ�èôɓnjdz#)�ȯ.¯îė ȍ·�´ĸ�ª­ð���şųǩ³�ñǘhƣįȳ��4ɩčđô�a;ǭȳľŭ�<�äƴ�´țŕț ]ɗ��ęqſºsɲ“elj”.úû�ȃȯ�ȇęȁdǽⱦl4�ď�9ſłªę>ü+�´ā<ǟőɩǽ ȃŕ�ƙ_ɩ�  �ȅȃød(ȃ��l«țb�čãț�ƛô�ôo�ſ�ȯ�dzžċdz'l«ª���ªƥdȯŋ ªĸ�ɩǔʒ�āſ�·ę>đț·�ø>mk4ãçmȥ�<ǟőøĝplɩl«� 2��>ɩl«ª ĸ�ɩǔʒ�ęŋɲňäɉə�ü+ň÷ɩɵƫȯ��ə�ęģɲćæɩ`ȝ� ellen 1 7 6 t h o u g h t s & t h i n g s 0 1 � � � � contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.154 new articles in this journal are licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 united states license. this journal is operated by the university library system of the university of pittsburgh as part of its d-scribe digital publishing program, and is co-sponsored by the university of pittsburgh press. 1 mccloskey marking time vol 2, no 1 (2012) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2012.43 http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu marking time women and nazi propaganda art during world war ii barbara mccloskey abstract "marking time" considers the relative scarcity of woman's image in nazi propaganda posters during world war ii. this scarcity departs from the ubiquity of women in paintings and sculptures of the same period. in the fine arts, woman served to solidify the "nazi myth" and its claim to the timeless time of an aryan order simultaneously achieved and yet to come. looking at poster art and using ernst bloch's notion of the nonsynchronous, this essay explores the extent to which women as signifiers of the modern – and thus as markers of time – threatened to expose the limits of this nazi myth especially as the regime's war effort ground to its catastrophic end. about the author barbara mccloskey is associate professor of 20th century german art at the university of pittsburgh. contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 2, no 1 (2012) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2012.43 the image of woman as mother, muse, and sex object was a crucial component of national socialist art under hitler. these portrayals adorned party buildings as sculpted reliefs, filled the annual great german art exhibitions in painted form, and reached a mass audience through postcards and films. they helped to ensure the masculinist ethos of nazism, reinforce social policy on gender roles, and extend state power into the private realm. a preeminent example of this imagery is die vier elemente (the four elements) painted by adolf ziegler.1 the work was completed in 1936 and selected by hitler himself to serve as the centerpiece of the first annual great german art exhibition the following year. ziegler was an architect of the nazi cultural program and took a lead role in the systematic purge of modernist art from germany. this purge was part of hitler's larger campaign to eradicate the alleged formlessness and feminization of the despised weimar era. with its chaste allegory of woman as earth, air, fire, and water, the four elements served as a painted manifesto of germany's new, purified, and securely patriarchal cultural order. as ziegler himself put it, his triptych visualized in clear and unequivocal terms the nazi worldview and "its philosophical core: the affirmation of the laws of nature."2 given the apparent importance of woman and her image in nazi propaganda, the virtual absence of women in german world war ii poster art--arguably the most propagandistic of media--is all the more notable. this scarcity contrasts with the greater, indeed iconic presence of rosie the riveter, ruby loftus, and mother russia in american, british, and soviet posters of the same period. instead, those few german posters that do include women and appear from time to time in studies of the world war ii era comprise a small and predictable repertoire of beatific mothers, aryan goddesses, and gretchens in volkstrachten (traditional folk costume). the dearth of woman's image in german world war ii poster art is the focus of this contribution to contemporaneity. the relative absence of women in nazi posters points to an important, though visually repressed, presence of crisis in the regime's ideology. i argue in the following that attempts to contain woman's image exposed from the start fissures in the nazi dream of a homogenous volksgemeinshaft (people's community). this essay is adapted from a lecture delivered in november 2007 at the women in world war ii conference organized by helena goscilo at the university of pittsburgh and at the german art and culture since 1933 symposium organized by april eisman at iowa state university in october 2008. i thank the organizers and participants at these venues for their helpful responses to this analysis. 1 illustrations of ziegler's four elements and all other paintings and sculptures discussed in this essay can be found in the following sources: berthold hinz, art in the third reich (original german edition 1974), trans. robert and rita kimber (new york: pantheon books, 1979); peter adam, art of the third reich (new york: harry n. abrams, 1992); and hans-jörg czech and nikola doll, eds. kunst und propaganda im streit der nationen 1930-1945 (berlin: deutsches historisches museum, 2007). 2 kathrin hoffmann-curtius, "die frau in ihrem element: adolf ziegler's triptychon der 'naturgesetzlichkeit'," kritische berichte 17, 2 (1989): 5-6. marking time women and nazi propaganda art during world war ii barbara mccloskey 3 b a r b a r a m c c l o s k e y contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 2, no 1 (2012) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2012.43 more importantly, and of greater interest to the editorial concerns of contemporaneity, is the manner in which the depiction of women also intervened in the ungleichzeitgkeit (nonsynchronism) of nazi temporality. i borrow this notion of nonsynchronism from ernst bloch.3 bloch was an early and insightful observer of the nazi attempt to incorporate different temporalities, or social modes of experiencing and living in time, into its peculiar and popularly persuasive brand of atavism and futurity. for him, nazi ideology was defined through its effort to reconcile the rural and the urban and the traditional and the modern. the leadership's attempts at reconciliation ceaselessly confronted material and social contradictions that defined relations between these disparate modes of being in german society of the 1930s and 40s. bloch's notion of ungleichzeitgkeit described the german state of affairs under hitler, but it also, and more poignantly, played a prescriptive role in his revolutionary dialectic. he saw transformative potential in the material and social contradictions of a nonsynchronicity that might yet turn germany's unfolding history in a progressive direction. his insistence on taking time seriously set his analysis apart from others on the marxist left who continued to herald the working class as the historical agent of socialist revolution. they accordingly dismissed as anachronistic and politically inconsequential the interests of a rural peasantry and petite bourgeoisie seduced by nazism's appeal to earlier social modes. time and tragedy would prove this dismissal fatally flawed. in time, bloch too would see the hopefulness of his revolutionary dialectic extinguished in the ruins of hitler's third reich. his concept of the nonsynchronous has nonetheless enjoyed an afterlife in more recent analyses of “the nazi myth” as philippe lacoue-labarthe and jean-luc nancy described the hitler phenomenon in the 1980s.4 most relevant here is eric michaud's cult of art in nazi germany, which built on lacoue-labarthe and nancy's insights regarding the importance of art for the nazi myth and its project of racist selfdefinition and "will to form."5 for michaud, this myth included an expressly temporal dimension intrinsic to a nazi eschatology that heralded the thousand-year reich as a salvation simultaneously achieved and yet to come.6 continually resurfacing in this timeless time of nazi myth, however, was the sign of woman and her uncontainable timeliness. in the following, i examine various permutations of woman's image in nazi paintings, sculpture, and poster art. through this survey, we shall see the manner in which women marked time in ways that troubled the seamless gestalt of the nazi myth. in conclusion, we will also consider the extent to which woman and her imaging in the third reich continue to trouble our understanding of the nazi myth today. for this study, i surveyed approximately six hundred german posters of the second world war housed in the hoover institution at stanford.7 only thirty-three contained images 3 ernst bloch, "nonsynchronism and the obligation to its dialectics" (1932), trans. mark ritter, new german critique 11 (spring 1977): 22-38. 4 philippe lacoue-lebarthe and jean-luc nancy, "the nazi myth," critical inquiry 16, 2 (winter 1990): 291-312. 5 eric michaud, the cult of art in nazi germany (original french edition 1996), trans. janet lloyd (stanford: stanford university press, 2004). 6 michaud's concept of nazi myth exceeds the third reich as an historical phenomenon. he defines it instead as a "structure" with deep roots in the european past and with continuing resonance in the present. see michaud, xi-xiv. 7 the hoover institution in stanford possesses the largest collection of german posters of the nazi period in the united states, second only to that of the library of congress in washington dc. the library of congress collection remains uncatalogued and could not be consulted for this essay. 4 m a r k i n g t i m e contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 2, no 1 (2012) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2012.43 of women. thirteen of these depicted female nurses in support of the red cross and mothers and children as part of fundraising drives for family charities. the remaining twenty were issued by the propaganda ministry or regional party organizations to rally support for the war effort; a sampling of this latter group will be discussed in the following pages. the relative absence of women in nazi-era posters diverged sharply and programmatically from woman's pervasive presence in weimar visual culture. before hitler's appointment as chancellor in 1933, woman, specifically in her guise as the new woman, served as an icon of the weimar republic's accelerated tempo of modernization. her image embodied the era's changing gender roles and its flourishing mass culture industry of advertising, film, fashion, and consumerism. artists prominently featured the new woman in neue sachlichkeit paintings. she also saturated germany's 1920s mass-marketing poster and illustrated journal advertisements. her streamlined silhouette of short-bobbed hair and sheath dresses rendered her ideally suited to the graphic precision of commercial propaganda. the new woman thus announced modern subjectivity as mass media in the era of mechanical reproducibility. beginning in 1933, hitler instituted a series of social changes that reversed weimar's demographic trend toward women working outside the home. nazi legislation redefined women within the domestic sphere and as propagators of the race through its marriage loan program. meanwhile, policies that aimed to decrease the effects of economic depression returned men in greater numbers to the workforce. these measures were most successful among the middle and upper classes for whom wage concerns were less pressing than they were for peasants, workers, and others of the lower socio-economic rungs of german society. it was also among this middle and upper class demographic that the reich's appeal to traditional gender roles had its greatest resonance.8 oil painting in particular gave form to the reich's new social order in the early years of the nazi art program. these works frequently configured woman in traditional terms as the nurturing center of the aryan family. artists were exhorted to depict not one or two, but several children as part of any image devoted to german family life. such directives vividly demonstrate the unabashed use of high art media in the third reich for overtly propagandistic purposes, in this case providing visual persuasion for hitler's accelerated birthrate policies.9 in these works, women appear in rural settings and engaged in a way of life safely removed from the corrosive taint of the new woman's urban modernity. paintings and sculpture, media in which woman's image became ubiquitous after 1933, also safely ensconced her in the sanctity of high art. art thus helped to insulate women from the iniquity of the weimar-era commercialism for which the new woman's image had become the privileged sign. woman as the subject of nazi high art also legitimated the proliferation of paintings and sculpture devoted to the time-honored theme of the female nude. sepp hilz and ivo saliger were among those painters who specialized in presenting woman according to the most 8 claudia koonz, mothers in the fatherland: women, the family and nazi politics (new york: st. martin's press, 1987); and tim mason, "women in germany, 1925-1940: family, welfare and work," history workshop, part 1 (spring 1976): 74-113, and part 2 (autumn 1976): 5-32. 9 czech and doll, 316. 5 b a r b a r a m c c l o s k e y contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 2, no 1 (2012) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2012.43 stringent dictates of the aryan ideal.10 accordingly, their canvasses confront us with women who eschew makeup and the permanent wave hairstyles made fashionable at the time by marlene dietrich, greta garbo, and other film idols. instead, hilz and saliger's women embody an ideal aryan type with physiognomies composed of high foreheads, aquiline noses, and oblong faces. also in compliance with the ideal, each woman appears with her long tresses of "natural" hair pulled into a tidy, braided bun at the back of the head. moreover, their bodies are appropriately slender, but not skinny, and possessed of a glowing, healthy skin that pointedly distinguishes these aryan women from the pale reediness of their new woman predecessors. works on view in the great german art exhibitions typically cloaked renderings of the female nude in the acceptable guise of greek and roman mythology. artists also hewed closely to the party line by adopting various modes of realism, including those that emulated the exacting character of photography, over and against the figural distortions of modernist art. saliger's images in particular draw on the rhetoric of the photograph and its documentary claim to truth by employing flash-like illumination and a flat, stage-prop treatment of background landscape. his works portray dianas and venuses in settings with the rocks and trees of the out-of-doors. but his handling of cast shadows and use of artificial light signal that these settings are meant to be understood as existing within an interior, studio space. moreover, saliger's inclusion of pubic hair on the bodies of his nude goddesses recalls a similar pictorial strategy used by ziegler ("the master of german pubic hair") in his iconic painting the four elements of 1936. this motif worked in concert with the classical iconography and photo naturalism of ziegler and saliger's images to naturalize the ideal aryan body as true to nature. true to the nazi myth, it also rendered that body simultaneously contemporary and timeless. such paintings thus took their coercive place in the nazi biopolitical order by imaging aryan perfection as a realizable ideal for women in the third reich. within that order, these works also provided a visual rationale for nazism's use of eugenics, mass sterilization, and murder in order to enact its project of racial purification and supremacy. in his study of art in the third reich (1974), berthold hinz identified the commencement of world war ii as the moment when nazi imagery began to reflect the regime's shift away from its earlier populist phase. after 1939, autocracy replaced populism and the leadership took to crass assertion of its prerogatives over the values of christian bourgeois morality. these values had been used by the regime to garner public support in its early years. key for hinz in this regard was the appearance of paintings in the great german art exhibition of 1939 that departed from moralizing images of women as keepers of the hearth and home. instead, these works foregrounded woman's "sanctioned sexual domination" and her role as satiator of male fantasy.11 indeed, 1939 saw the unveiling of paul mathias padua's startling interpretation of leda and the swan in the great german art exhibition of that year. from the renaissance onward, art works devoted to the mythic encounter between zeus and leda typically stressed the elements of courtship and love contained in the tale. padua's rendering, by 10 see irene guenther, nazi chic?: fashioning women in the third reich (oxford: berg, 2004) for a thorough discussion of ever-changing and contradictory nazi ideas on women and fashion. "hard-liners" within the leadership were nonetheless consistent in their efforts to "rescue" women from fashion by insisting on a cosmetic-free,"natural" look as most consonant with the party's blut und boden ideology. among other things, hard-liners also spearheaded attempts to battle the appeal of french couture among german women by (fruitlessly) extolling the virtues of volkstrachten. 11 hinz, 150. 6 m a r k i n g t i m e contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 2, no 1 (2012) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2012.43 contrast, exceeds the bounds of art with a version of leda and the swan that borders on the pornographic. his swan's craned neck and extended wings signal climax while leda either surrenders to or recoils from the moment with her head thrown back, her right arm shielding her eyes, and the fingers of her left hand tensely splayed over the rumpled bedding on which the sex act takes place. leda's jewelry, painted lips, and lacquered fingernails underline her morally questionable status as either a prostitute or a woman "fallen" by other means, namely through the corrupting artifice of modern cosmetic fashion. in either case, leda appears literally prone to, and presumably deserving of, the sexual exploitation to which she is subjected. fearing public outcry, exhibition organizers heinrich hoffmann and gerdy troost urged that padua's leda and the swan be withheld from the 1939 great german art exhibition. hitler nonetheless insisted on its inclusion.12 in a precautionary move, officials admonished the press to refrain from any "negative discussion" of the painting three days before the opening of the exhibit.13 padua's salacious image appeared in the 1939 great german art exhibition alongside other works that also figure into hinz's thesis regarding the onset of the regime's autocratic phase. specifically, paintings by georg friedrich and adolf ziegler introduced the theme of the judgment of paris into the annual exhibit for the first time.14 friedrich chose a historicizing approach to his rendering of the mythic tale in which paris selects aphrodite over hera and athena as the most beautiful among the three goddesses. his figures appear in antique garb and the goddess aphrodite possesses a voluptuous form more consonant with the beauty ideals of greek and roman statuary than contemporary notions of healthy aryanism. ziegler, by contrast, incorporated the theme into the timeless time of nazi myth by rehearsing in his version the preferred aryan female body type, which he first introduced in his four elements of 1936. his version of the myth was illustrated in the 1939 edition of die kunst im deutschen reich devoted to the great german art exhibition of that year. nazi art critic robert scholz made no mention of friedrich's contribution in his review of the display. in contrast, he lavished fulsome praise on both ziegler and padua for leading the way toward a revived appreciation of the "beautiful human body" that had been lost during the years of modernist distortion.15 for hinz, ziegler and padua's images did nothing more than pander to the lascivious voyeurism of the male audiences for whom they were intended. michaud further anchors the exploitive nature of these works within the nazi biopolitical order where they served as instruments for the "shaping of tastes and vital reflexes" aimed at reproduction of aryanism's racist ideal in real life.16 this dynamic of spectatorial disciplining was made most evident in photo reproductions of josef thorak's sculpted version of the judgment of paris theme, which debuted in the great german art exhibition of 1941. as michaud notes, photographic 12 ines schlenker, hitler's salon: the große deutsche kunstaustellung at the haus der deutschen kunst in munich, 1937-1944 (oxford: peter lang, 2007), 129. 13 otto thomae, die propaganda-machinerie: bildende künste und offentlichkeitsarbeit im dritten reich (berlin: gebr. mann, 1978), 45. 14 works shown in the great german art exhibitions can now be viewed online as part of a research database devoted to art in the third reich compiled by the zentralinstituts für kunstgeschichte in munich. go to: www.gdk-research.de. 15 robert scholz, "tradition und zeitauftrag," die kunst im deutschen reich (august 1939): 253. see also scholz's more explicit defense of contemporary nude painting published the following year: robert scholz, "das problem der aktmalerei," die kunst im deutschen reich (october 1940): 292ff. 16 michaud, 158. 7 b a r b a r a m c c l o s k e y contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 2, no 1 (2012) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2012.43 versions of the sculptural group, which were featured in the art press, occasionally eliminated the figure of paris altogether and substituted his scrutinizing gaze with that of the camera lens.17 the consumer of the image thereby assumed paris's position of judging and selecting. viewers were thus put through the paces of experiencing an erotic gaze evacuated of desire and reduced to its most instrumental purpose of making a correct--and predetermined--"choice." these pornographic, exploitive, and manipulative images by padua, ziegler, thorak, and others made their way with greater frequency into the great german art exhibitions from 1939 onward. and their appearance there may indeed have signaled a change in the leadership's attitude toward its art public. but what hinz identified as a break between periods of nazi populism and autocracy in 1939 is better understood as a contradiction between populist and autocratic approaches to social policy that dogged the regime throughout hitler's reign. the sterilization law of 1933, the enactment of race-defilement legislation in 1935, and an easing of divorce regulations in 1938 exposed early on the leadership's duplicitous appeals to christian morality, on the one hand, and its simultaneous efforts to undo that morality in the name of racial purification, on the other. in 1935, woman's objectification as a means to nazism's end was made plain with the introduction of heinrich himmler's lebensborn procreation order. the order promoted sexual contact between the ss and aryan female civilians as a matter of patriotic duty. himmler's dual goal was to maintain a high birth rate despite wartime restrictions and to further the master race. single women selected for lebensborn duty were charged not only with breeding the aryan elite; they were also to serve as unalloyed examples of the blut und boden ideal. accordingly, these women were prohibited from wearing lipstick, using fingernail polish, or plucking their eyebrows.18 the extent to which the art public was able to make connections between these policies and the images that confronted them from the walls of the great german art exhibitions is unknown. however, some idea of viewer response can be gleaned from government security service reports on these annual shows. these reports, which began to be maintained in 1940, lend insight into public opinion that was otherwise silenced in the regime's highly regulated art press.19 in 1940, they document public demand for more works having to do with contemporary events, including war images and depictions of labor.20 in 1942, these reports also indicate a progressive decline in attendance at the yearly exhibitions particularly among workers and rural visitors. their diminished presence was attributed to increasing travel and economic difficulties since the outbreak of the war.21 meanwhile, the largely middle and upper class art public that still visited the annual shows registered its growing displeasure particularly with the number and character of the nudes on display. they also complained about the frequent dissemination of such images in the form of postcards. comments recorded from 1941 and 1942 compare the great german art exhibition to a "meat market." moreover, some visitors demanded a more aestheticizing approach to 17 ibid. 18 on lebensborn, see claudia koonz, mothers in the fatherland: women, the family and nazi politics (new york: st. martin's press, 1987), 398-99; richard grunberger, the twelve-year reich: a social history of nazi germany 1933-1945 (new york: holt, rinehart, and winston, 1971), 244-45; and guenther, 99. 19 thomae, 46-47. 20 ibid., 51. 21 ibid., 61-62. 8 m a r k i n g t i m e contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 2, no 1 (2012) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2012.43 portrayal of the human body in works that tended more toward the "unclothed" as opposed to the "nude." in 1942, attendees at the great german art exhibition especially criticized paintings by ziegler, hilz, and saliger for being "too naturalistic."22 public opinion favored works such as josef thorak's two humans, which security service reports recorded as one of the most popular works on view in the great german art exhibition of 1941. thorak's sculpture presents an idealized and traditional configuration of male protectiveness and female vulnerability. the male figure provides gentle support for his female counterpart, who balances on a canted surface as she extends her arms back and over her head to entwine him in a loving embrace. two humans thus presents a vision of gender relations based not on domination and "selection," but rather on shared desire and intimacy. a survey of catalogues from the great german art exhibitions suggests that the more popularly acceptable portrayal of the nude evident in thorak's two humans began to displace the crass configuration of woman as sex object that had made its way into earlier great german art exhibitions. in the wake of germany's defeat at stalingrad in 1942, hans schmitz-wiedenbruck's nation at war was among those works that resorted to chaste and maternal images of women in order to provide a continuing rationale for the increasingly desperate war effort. his canvas features a madonna-like woman cradling a small child in her arms, who is seated at the center of the composition. soldiers on the battlefront and laborers on the home front defensively encircle her as an emblem of a german hearth and home worth defending. poster artists, by contrast, faced the challenge of reconfiguring woman's image in ways that rallied support for the war effort not only among men. as we shall now explore, events also required their propaganda works to solicit support from women whose labor outside the home was demanded with evermore urgency by the changing realities of war. two posters from the hoover collection include images of women in propaganda related to the issue of territorial expansion and the political instrumentality of germans beyond germany's borders. one from the augsburg branch of the nazi party depicts a woman of the reich labor service (as indicated by her blue dress) marching in formation between two men, one dressed in military garb and the other as a farmer (fig. 1).23 all three display squared jaws and straight backs that declare their resolute and militant support for "all germans in the east." a large swastika flag hovers above and behind them, framing their unstoppable advance across a desolate plain. it descends from the heavens and anoints the marchers' forward advance with an unsubtle reference to the party and the sanctity of its racially superior mission. the second hoover collection poster referring to german territorial expansion was produced in munich sometime after 1939. in this instance, the artist deviated from our previous example in which woman was presented as a desexualized party automaton. instead, woman appears more eroticized in the munich poster, complete with heavily madeup eyes and painted lips (fig. 2). her blond, curled hair and clothes are dramatically windswept by the raging inferno behind her. a mother, she cradles a newborn in one arm while comforting a tearful young girl with the other. in this case, the artist combines the image of woman as mother with that of sexualized female victim. such images took their place in an extensive propaganda campaign designed to rally men to the battlefront with stories of the murder and rape of german women and children by enemies of the expansionist reich. 22 ibid., 57, 63. 23 see guenther, 124-25, on the attire worn by women and girls of the reich labor service. 9 b a r b a r a m c c l o s k e y contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 2, no 1 (2012) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2012.43 figure 1 "the nsdap is the support of all germans living in the east," undated. poster collection, hoover institution archives, ge 1052. figure 2 "bavarian charity drive: ease the need of germans living outside germany! help the pioneers of the german way of life!," 1939-45. poster collection, hoover institution archives, ge 235. 1 0 m a r k i n g t i m e contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 2, no 1 (2012) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2012.43 several additional posters surveyed for this essay come from the propaganda ministry's anti-espionage shadowman campaign that began in 1943.24 in one image, a woman fashionably attired in an orange shirtwaist dress and turban drapes herself on the arm of an off-duty serviceman (fig. 3). the two engage in an intimate conversation that is literally cast into darkness by the enlarged silhouette of hat-wearing man. the couple's shadowy encounter is thus rendered simultaneously illicit and potentially injurious to the nation. the poster encourages viewers to understand the threat as emanating not only from the eavesdropping specter who hovers nearby, but also from the flirtatious overtures of attractive young women who might seduce hapless servicemen into surrendering vital secrets. posters in the shadowman campaign suggest that the women of most concern were those outside the regulatory constraints of the home and loose not only on the streets, but also within the workforce. another image from this series depicts a telephone operator seated before a large and busy switchboard (fig. 4).25 the operator turns genially in the direction of the shadowman whose dark silhouette falls on the wall behind her. bright light from another source illuminates her smiling eyes, lips parted in speech, and the tight, regimented rows of her restrained, but fashionable permanent-wave hairstyle. citing the need for chemicals, the reich minister for the economy banned these hairstyles altogether in january 1943 only to lift the ban due to public complaint in march 1943. by then, however, few women--and certainly not your average switchboard operator--could afford them.26 with her "artificial" coiffure, the operator of the shadowman campaign takes her place among the ranks of urban, white-collar working women beholden to frivolous, "ungerman" fashion. moreover, her feminine vulnerability risks not only her own security, but also that of the nation. too trusting and chatty, her loose lips might indeed "sink ships." female workers fared better in poster propaganda when they could be abstracted from the negative taint of the urban. in a propaganda ministry poster titled "you also help" from 1941, a female worker, a nurse, and a farmwoman stride happily along, arm in arm, over an undefined landscape (fig. 5). behind them, the slightest suggestion of factory structures (at left) and cattle (at right) indicate the actual context for the help they are called on to perform. a colossal head of a male soldier hovers above them, god-like, in the sky. his sober visage provides a stern counterpoint to the smiling faces and light, happy-go-lucky steps of the women below. their work may be necessary, but the omniscient presence of male military prowess above guarantees that their efforts are a temporary lark that will end with the "inevitable" victory to come. several of the hoover posters used woman's image to urge public contributions of used clothing and linens to help offset material shortages during the war.27 in one, a distinctly maternal woman, depicted with puffed sleeves and soft beneficence, carries a full armload of coats, shirts, and sweaters ready for donation (fig. 6). this poster was produced in berlin for a june 1942 clothing drive, shortly before the opening of the german offensive on 24 czech and doll, 353. see also andreas fleischer, "feind hört mit!": propagandakampagnen des zweiten weltkrieges im vergleich (münster, 1994). 25 her blue blouse indicates she is not one of the so-called gray mice, the name given to the thousands of gray uniformed women who were trained in communications after the war commenced. see guenther, 126. 26 ibid., 249-250. 27 winterhilfswerk (winter relief work) came into being already in 1931 and was folded into the nazi drive for autarky after 1933. it was designed to provide needy germans with clothing and other supplies. see guenther, 232. 1 1 b a r b a r a m c c l o s k e y contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 2, no 1 (2012) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2012.43 stalingrad. after the reich's resounding defeat in that conflict, the leadership was forced to pursue the total mobilization of women for the war effort. the military had been urging the conscription of women since 1940 in the face of failed attempts to exhort their voluntary help in alleviating critical labor shortages in war factories. on january 28, 1943, a compulsory work registration decree was finally enacted. drafting women signaled a reversal of the social policies that had proved successful in garnering middle and upper class support for the regime in its first years. the leadership had long delayed this course of action, rightfully fearing popular disapproval.28 the fact that economically privileged women were still able to dodge service resulted in heightening growing class tensions.29 figure 3 "the enemy is listening!," 1943-45. poster collection, hoover institution archives, ge 1188. 28 mason, 21. 29 guenther, 249. 1 2 m a r k i n g t i m e contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 2, no 1 (2012) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2012.43 figure 4 "pst!," 1943-45. poster collection, hoover institution archives, ge 1189. figure 5 "you also help!," 1941. poster collection, hoover institution archives, ge 1070. 1 3 b a r b a r a m c c l o s k e y contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 2, no 1 (2012) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2012.43 figure 6 "give to the old clothes and textile collection drive, june 1-15, 1942," 1942. poster collection, hoover institution archives, ge 1049."give to the old clothes and textile collection drive, june 1-15, 1942," 1942. poster collection, hoover institution archives, ge 1049. after stalingrad, poster artists faced the task of initiating women into germany's new reality. the challenge was not only to rally the perennially suspect urban woman to the cause, but also to license her efforts within a male factory setting. in one solution, fritz r. weber depicts a vigorous phalanx of men strapping on their helmets for battle in his poster titled "harte zeiten, harte pflichten, harte herzen" (hard times, hard duties, hard hearts) (fig. 7). they join the charge behind a large swastika banner that flaps above their heads. the composition as a whole is a slashing diagonal of outstretched arms, blowing flag, and striding legs that underscores the heightened drama of the moment when the men heed the call to defend the fatherland. they hand their wrenches and hammers to the crowd behind them in the knowledge that others will take up the work to be done in the factory, which appears in the background. shown prominently in the foreground of the crowd are two women with their shirtsleeves rolled up and their strong arms and hands at the ready for the tools handed to them. their identity as modern, urban women is present but understated with their fashionable permanent-wave hairstyles making a covert, but crucial appearance. the blond curls of the woman at right are almost, but not entirely, obscured from view by the outstretched arm of the woman at left. and while a coil of brown hair peaks out from 1 4 m a r k i n g t i m e contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 2, no 1 (2012) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2012.43 under the headscarf of the woman at left, the rest of her head is blocked out altogether from the compositional frame. produced in 1943, "hard times" was adapted for a printed version of josef goebbels's declaration of total war announced at the berlin sportpalast in february 1943. 30 the propaganda minister's speech was a last-ditch effort to rally national unity and support for the regime's floundering war effort among a population increasingly resentful of shortages, air raids, mounting death tolls, and a leadership that betrayed its social promises. in 1944, security service reports indicate that the propaganda ministry's shadowman campaign encountered increasing public ridicule.31 the populace appears to have become unmoved by appeals to the enemy without as suspicion mounted that the real enemy existed within. attempts to whip up public paranoia fell on deaf ears as people began to regard propaganda posters as little more than a waste of precious resources, especially after the onset of extreme paper shortages in spring 1943. given that the shadowman images also tended to configure modern, urban women as the weak link in national security, it is conceivable that these propaganda campaigns also suffered from alienating a constituency on which the regime was increasingly--and reluctantly--reliant. figure 7 fritz r. weber, "hard times, hard duties, hard hearts," 1943. poster collection, hoover institution archives, ge 1228. 30 andreas fleischer, "politpropaganda zwischen bauhaus und wirtschaftswunder: ein beitrag zum verständnis ausgewählter plakate und kampagnen der jahre 1935-1955," in die nützliche moderne: graphik& produkt-design in deutschland 1933-1955 (münster: westfälisches landesmuseum für kunst und kulturgeschichte), 76. 31 czech and doll, 353. 1 5 b a r b a r a m c c l o s k e y contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 2, no 1 (2012) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2012.43 figure 8 "help: give to the textile, linens, and clothing collection drive, 1944," 1944. poster collection, hoover institution archives, ge 1215. indeed, images that configured men as protectors and defenders of women, home, and family in the last years of the war could only exist in the rarified realm of high art as women too were drawn into the war effort. poster artists only infrequently took up the challenge of addressing the changing reality of women as the war drew to its desperate close. the sign of this crisis was indeed the modern, urban woman above all, whose image made only a brief and tentative appearance in nazi propaganda campaigns in the late war years. another example is a poster devoted to a clothing collection drive in 1944. unlike her earlier, more maternal counterpart (fig. 6), this woman is decidedly young and urban with her painted lips, eye shadow, and telltale permanent-wave hairstyle (fig. 8). the squared shoulders and pointed collar of her dress combine with her sober expression to convey the restraint and selflessness demanded by current realities. the young woman holds out to the viewer a meager pile of clothes in a humble gesture of sacrifice that signals the increasing extremity of the time. the reason for the drive comes into view behind her where men engage in combat on a low hillock. the pitched roofs on the houses, which appear behind the coils of smoke at the far left, suggest that distinctions between home front and battlefront have now all but disappeared. the nazi war machine collapsed in 1945 after six years of mass death. once again, women served as an emblematic sign of the times, in this case in the guise of the trümmerfrauen (rubble women) who began the inch-by-inch, piece-by-piece task of putting their cities, villages, and lives back together again. documentary photos record these women bending, stooping, and scouring through wreckage to salvage what could be salvaged and clear away what could no longer be redeemed. their sunken eyes, sack-like clothing, and limp, unwashed hair further register the deprivation and extremity of war's end. the nazi regime they once knew had been undone from without by allied strategizing. the fundamental contradiction between its traditional social policies and the modern imperatives of mechanized warfare had also contributed to the undoing of the third reich from within. as 1 6 m a r k i n g t i m e contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 2, no 1 (2012) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2012.43 we have seen, the poster art of this era, in its circumlocutions around the image of those very women the regime increasingly relied on to realize its war aims, registered this crisis in visual terms. history "resolved" this crisis in 1945 when women were literally bombed back to another era bereft of permanent waves, fashionable make-up, and the confident posture of the modern. in the end, nazi hard-liners got their way on the woman front, but only in the wake of the regime's ignominious demise. in his analysis of the nazi myth, michaud recounts how hitler's cultural ideologues assigned to painting and sculpture a special role in the formation of the third reich's racist gestalt.32 these media, above all, had the capacity to enfold within themselves past tradition and an ideal aryan future to which present reality was slated to conform. given the centrality of her image to the timeless time of the nazi myth, woman's relative exclusion from the time-bound immediacy of propaganda posters comes as little surprise. when she did make an appearance there, however, she exposed a widening chasm between nazism's aspiration to an eternal present and the rapidly changing realities of its war campaign. in her allegiance to fashion, the modern, urban woman above all marked time in a manner that the regime, especially in its period of disintegration, could no longer afford to exclude from its image realm. to look beyond her picturing and to interpret woman's allegiance to fashion in the third reich as somehow dissident or subversive is to misconstrue a central feature of the nazi phantasmagoria, however. as scholars have demonstrated, the third reich proved itself consistently adept at using fashion, entertainment, and other arenas of everyday desire and fantasy to preserve the illusion of freedom, personal fulfillment, and individual choice within its dictatorial machinery.33 none other than hitler recognized the importance of keeping beauty parlors open even under conditions of total war.34 women marking time in nazi reality and its visual economy did nothing, in short, to hasten the regime's end. modern woman's enduring traces, faint as they are, nonetheless permit an important glimpse of the limits of the nazi myth and its gestalt. troubling those limits, woman and the complexity of containing her image held out the possibility of exposing the nazi myth to reason. as we know, that reason remained in abeyance throughout the third reich. it remained so until the regime's fantasy of a timeless time was finally extinguished by the demands of time and a post-war history still coming to terms with the nazi myth's seductive powers. 32 see, for example, his discussion of baldur von shirach's discussion of the relationship between art and reality. michaud, 95ff. 33 on the historiography of this issue, see lutz p. koepnick, "fascist aesthetics revisted," modernism/modernity 6, 1 (1999): 51-73. 34 guenther, 250. 1 7 b a r b a r a m c c l o s k e y contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 2, no 1 (2012) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2012.43 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-noncommercial-no derivative works 3.0 united states license. this journal is operated by the university library system of the university of pittsburgh as part of its d-scribe digital publishing program, and is co-sponsored by the university of pittsburgh press. 4 donnelly mirror of time vol 2, no 1 (2012) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2012.38 http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu mirror of time temporality and contemporaneity in the work of jorge luis borges jennifer donnelly abstract jorge luis borges recognized the cracking facade of modernity and the fragility of its monist absolutisms, its commitment to linearity, and its faith in historical progress. by disavowing the ability of time to be contained within any collective structure of representation, borges both refutes modernist conceptions of time and offers insight into recent theories of contemporaneity. a contemporaneous reading of borges opens lucid temporal relationships, challenges assumptions about the affinities between the self and time, allows for the existence of multiple temporal antimonies, and ultimately reveals the contemporaneous relationship between individual sensations of time of the collective structural composition of temporality. about the author jennifer donnelly is a phd student in the department of history of art and architecture at the university of pittsburgh. contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 2, no 1 (2012) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2012.38 between 1939 and 1945, the absolutist ideologies and insurmountable cultural, political, and economic tensions of the industrialized world erupted into global war. during this period, jorge luis borges published tlön, uqbar, orbis tertius (1940), the garden of forking paths (1941), and a new refutation of time (1944-1946). like many of his contemporaries, borges recognized the cracking facade of modernity and the fragility of its monist absolutisms, its commitment to linearity, and its faith in historical progress. borges refutes modernist conceptions of time by disavowing the ability of time to be contained within any collective structure of representation. furthermore, borgesian time is illuminating for recent theories of contemporaneity, because it opens lucid temporal relationships, challenges assumptions about the affinities between the self and time, and allows for the existence of multiple temporal antimonies.1 therefore, i propose a reading of the garden of forking paths, tlön, uqbar, orbis tertius, and a new refutation of time based on borges’ theories of temporality. borges’ nonlinearity, idealism, and anti-monism reveal not only his negation of modernist absolutisms, but also the contemporaneous relationship between inherent individual sensations of time of the collective structural composition of temporality. the garden of forking paths dr. yu tsen, a chinese spy for the germany army, realizes that he will soon be murdered. his enemy is in pursuit, and he alone holds an important military secret for the chief. dr. yu tsen flees. in his terror, he has a moment of clarity about temporal instantaneousness, and the (seemingly) unconditional singularity and individuality of time. there can be only one moment of actuality (happening now) in reference to all other moments of actuality (not happening now), and there is only one experience of selfhood, in reference to all other selfhoods: “then i reflected that all things happen, happen to one, 1 this essay deals with a narrow subject within the philosophy of time: the refutation of linear time and the emergence of contemporaneity and multiple theories of time over the course of the twentieth-century as a reaction against the universal, progress-oriented modernist theories of time of the early twentiethcentury. i am concerned with the way in which borges refutes modernist theories of time in his essays, and therefore i primarily cite authors who focus on borges’ philosophy of time. for information on the literary interpretation and meaning of borges’ oeuvre, see beatrix sarlo, jorge luis borges: a writer on the edge, ed. by john king (london: verso, 1993), daniel balderston, out of context: historical reference and the representation of reality (durham: duke university press, 1993), and sylvia malloy, signs of borges, trans. by oscar montero (durham: duke university press, 1994). for theoretical discussions of borges’ philosophy of time see ana maría barrenechea, borges: the labyrinth maker, trans. by robert lima (new york: new york university press, 1965), shlomith rimmon-kenan, “doubles and counterparts: patterns of interchangeability in borges’ the garden of forking paths,” critical inquiry, 6, no. 4 (summer 1980): 639-647, robert l. chibka, “the library of forking paths,” special issue: the new erudition (autumn, 1996): 106-122, w.h. bossart, borges and philosophy: self, time, and metaphysics (new york: peter lang publishing, 2003), kate jenckes, reading borges after benjamin (albany: suny press, 2007), and stefan herbrechter and ivan callas, editors, cy-borges (lewisburg: bucknell university press, 2009). mirror of time temporality and contemporaneity in the work of jorge luis borges jennifer donnelly 7 7 j e n n i f e r d o n n e l l y contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 2, no 1 (2012) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2012.38 precisely now. century follows century, and things happen only in the present. there are countless men in the air, on land and at sea, and all that really happens happens to me.”2 dr. yu tsen finds in a telephone book the address of the only man who can help him. he departs immediately by train for the village ashgrove, narrowly escaping his enemy on the train platform. uncannily, a group of children direct him towards his destination as he steps off the train. taking every left fork, dr. yu tsen advances toward the house of dr. albert, while ruminating on the work of his great-grandfather, ts’ui pên, the author of a lengthy, incomprehensible novel, the garden of forking paths, and the builder of a labyrinth that has never been found. at the gate of the home of dr. albert, dr. yu tsen is unwittingly led through a garden to the missing work of his ancestor, now in the possession of his host. dr. albert had discovered that ts’ui pên’s novel and his labyrinth were one in the same: a work of time that omits any mention time. after sharing the ancestral text, dr. yu tsen murders dr. albert with a single shot. he is shortly arrested, and a story runs in the papers about the mysterious murder of dr. albert by yu tsen. the chief, however, interprets the message and the english city named albert is bombed the following day. moments before his murder, dr. albert revealed about the work of ts’ui pên: the garden of forking paths is a picture, incomplete yet not false, of the universe such as ts’ui pên conceived it to be. differing from newton and schopenhauer, your ancestor did not think of time as absolute and uniform. he believed in an infinite series of times, in a dizzily growing ever-spreading network of diverging, converging, and parallel times. this web of timethe strands of which approach one another, bifurcate, intersect, or ignore each other through the centuriesembraces every possibility. we do not exist in most of them. in some you exist and not i, while in others i do, and you do not, and in yet others both of us exist. in this one, in which chance has favored me, you have come to my gate. in another, you, crossing the garden, have found me dead. in yet another, i say these very same words, but am an error, a phantom.3 the kafkaesque triad of time, referring to kafka’s parable of man struggling between the antagonistic past and future, is ruptured in borgesian time into innumerable possible and imaginary pasts and futures: converging, diverging, running parallel, repeating and bearing 2 jorge luis borges, “the garden of forking paths” in ficciones, ed. anthony kerrigan (new york: grove press, 1962), 90. translated from jorge luis borges, “el jardín de senderos que se bifurcan,” in ficciones (buenos aires: emercé editores, s.a., 1956): “después reflexioné que todas las cosas le suceden a uno precisamente, precisamente ahora. siglos de siglos y sólo en el presente ocurren los hechos; innumerables hombres en el aire, en la tierra y el mar, y todo lo que realmente pasa mi pasa a mí...” 3 borges, “the garden of forking paths,” 100: “el jardín de senderos que se bifurcan es una imagen incompleta, pero no falsa, del universo tal como lo concebía ts’ui pên. a diferencia de newton y de schopenhauer, su antepasado no creía en un tiempo uniforme, absoluto. creía en infinitas series de tiempos divergentes, convergentes y paralelos. esa trama de tiempos que se aproximan, se bifurcan, se cortan o que secularmente se ignoran, abarca todas las posibilidades. no existimos en la mayoría des esos tiempos; en algunos existe usted y no yo; en otros, yo, no usted; en otros, los dos. en éste, que un favorable azar me depara, usted ha llegado a mi casa; en otro, usted, al atravesar el jardín, me ha encontrado muerto; en otro, yo digo estas mismas palabras, pero soy un error, un fantasma.” 7 8 m i r r o r o f t i m e contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 2, no 1 (2012) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2012.38 down on the moment of what “happens happens to me.”4 in the garden of forking paths, self-affirmation is bound between the uniqueness of each passing moment and the timenegating endlessness of repetition, which concurrently “disintegrates and defines the self.”5 the nonlinear relationship between two temporal moments in a successive series is evident by the indisputable presence of repetition, and therefore the possibility of linear time is nullified for borges. linear history is a fiction, a futile attempt to carve a sense of reference for what “happens happens to me” out the vast expanse of limitless time. the negation of linear time bursts the floodgates of temporality, allowing for nearly infinite possibilities of divergent, convergent, and parallel times. tlön, uqbar, orbis tertius in tlön, uqbar, orbis tertius, borges narrates the story of a puzzling encyclopedia entry concerning the land of uqbar. borges and his colleagues search exhaustively for information on the illusive uqbar in order to determine its reality or unreality. their knowledge is of uqbar is dependent on a single obscure article in one copy of the anglo-american cyclopedia, 1917, which only obliquely remarks that the literature of uqbar refers not to reality, but only to the imaginary regions of tlön and mlejnas. after the death of a family friend, borges discovers the first encyclopedia of tlön in the deceased man’s belongings, and is able to unlock the mystery of tlön. in the realm of tlön, “the world is not a concurrence of objects in space, but a heterogeneous series of independent acts. it is serial and temporal, but not spatial.”6 the tlönians lack any structural association between the cognitive, temporal world and the material, spatial world: “they do not conceive of the spatial as everlasting in time.” 7 like the garden of forking paths, tlön, uqbar, orbis tertius symbolizes the arbitrary order imposed upon human experience.8 in the anachronistic postscript of tlön, uqbar, orbis tertius, dated 1947 (the story was originally published in 1940) borges reveals both that tlön was an imaginary world created by a secret group of scholars, but that since 1940, tlön entered reality, and was sweeping through society at an astonishing rate. in tlön, uqbar, orbis 4 kafka’s parable: “he has two antagonists: the first presses him from behind, from the origin. the second blocks the road ahead. he gives battle to both. to be sure, the first supports him in his fight with the second, for he wants to push him forward, and in the same way the second supports him in his fight with the first, since he drives him back. but it is only theoretically so. for it is not only the two antagonists who are there, but he himself as well, and who really knows his intentions? his dream, though, is that some time in an unguarded momentand this would require a night darker than any night has ever been yet he will jump out of the fighting line and be promised, on account of his experience in fighting, to the position of umpire over his antagonists in their fight with each other.” quoted from hannah arendt, between past and future: eight exercises in political thought (new york: viking, 1961), 7. 5 shlomith rimmon-kenan, “doubles and counterparts: patterns of interchangeability in borges’ the garden of forking paths,” critical inquiry, 6, no. 4 (sumer 1980): 640. 6 jorge luis borges, “tlön, uqbar, orbis tertius” in ficciones, ed. anthony kerrigan (new york: grove press, 1962), 23. translated from jorge luis borges, “tlön, uqbar, orbis tertius” in ficciones (buenos aires: emercé editores, s.a., 1956): “elle mundo para ellos no es un concurso de objetos en el espacio; es una serie heterogénea de actos independientes. es sucesivo, temporal, no espacial.” 7 borges, “tlön, uqbar, orbis tertius,” 24: “no conciben que lo espacial perdure en le tiempo.” 8 w. h. bossart, borges and philosophy: self, time, and metaphysics (new york: peter lang publishing, 2003), 106. 7 9 j e n n i f e r d o n n e l l y contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 2, no 1 (2012) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2012.38 tertius, borges blends “fictional and material manifestations of the real” seamlessly until the meaning of one is lost without the other.9 a new refutation of time in a new refutation of time, borges consolidates his ideas about the illusionary nature of time in two philosophical treatises. as in the garden of forking paths, he denies the existence of linear time based on the assumption that a single instance of repetition destroys the successive sequence of time: “is not one single repeated term enough to disrupt and confound the history of the world, to reveal that there is no such history?”10 in the end, however, borges concedes that his refutations are unsatisfactory, and acknowledges that the denial of temporal succession only leads one back into time: and yet, and yet…to deny temporal succession, to deny the self, to deny the astronomical universe, appear to be acts of desperation and our secret consolations. our destiny (unlike the hell of swedenborg and the hell of tibetan mythology) is not terrifying because it is unreal; it is terrifying because it is irreversible and iron-bound. time is the substance of which i am made. time is a river that sweeps me along, but i am the river; it is a tiger that mangles me, but i am the tiger; it is a fire that consumes me, but i am the fire. the world, unfortunately is real, and i, unfortunately, am borges.11 therefore, on contradictory terms, borges seems to accept, despite his refutation, the existence of collective structures of time and the position of the self as embedded in such constructions. borges has simultaneously established that time is not temporally successive, and that temporal succession is not unreal (and therefore time is not not temporally successive.) according to kate jenckes in reading borges after benjamin, borges does not necessarily negate time, but instead asserts there is more to temporality than the conception of time as a continuum that is accessible to cognition.12 in other words, borges attempts to unlock the concurrent existence of multiple temporalities both within and beyond the limits of comprehension. for borges, the self not only constructs the past and the present as successive temporal moments, but also deconstructs succession in order to rebuild it, in an unending cycle of self-referentiality. as borges has shown, it is not enough to look backward at what has been and forward at what will be; time is not a line, but a web. 9 gordon calleja, “of mirrors, encyclopedias, and the virtual” in cy-borges, ed. stefan herbrechter and ivan callus (lewisburg: bucknell university press, 2009), 92. 10 jorge luis borges, “a new refutation of time” in on mysticism, ed. suzanne jill levine (new york: penguin books, 2010), 75. translation of “nueva refutación de tiempo” reprinted from borges, jorge luis. selected non-fictions, trans. by suzanne levine and eliot weinberger. new york: penguin books, 1999: “¿no basta un solo término repetido para desbaratar y confundir la historia del mundo, para denunciar que no hay tal historia?” 11 borges, “a new refutation of time,” 77: “and yet, and yet...negar la sucesión temporal, negar el yo, negar el universo astronómico, son desesperaciones aparentes y consuelos secretos. nuestro destino (a diferencia del infierno de swedenborg y del infierno de la mitología tibetana) no es espantoso por irreal; es espantoso porque es irreversible y de hierro. el tiempo es la substancia de que estoy hecho. el tiempo es un río que me arrebata, pero yo soy el río; es un tigre que me destroza, pero yo soy el tigre; es un fuego que me consume, pero yo soy el fuego. el mundo, desgraciadamente, es real; desgraciadamente, soy borges.” 12 kate jenckes, reading borges after benjamin (albany: suny press, 2007), 118. 8 0 m i r r o r o f t i m e contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 2, no 1 (2012) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2012.38 in order to distinguish the moment “happening now” from all other moments “not happening now,” and thus assert that what “happens happens to me,” referentiality is built out of future presents and past presents in order to locate the eternal present inside of time. borges continually refutes the domination of linear constructions of time for other temporalities that exist beyond representation. representational limitations, for borges, do not reconcile individual sensations of time with collective constructions of time. jenckes elucidates borges’ distinction between an idealist conception of history “inside our heads,” and a materialist conception of history “outside our heads,” as a discernment of the limits and capabilities of representation: “what lies outside of representations of linearity and identity are often voiceless forces of history that do not have direct access to language, but which are nevertheless capable of shaking and disturbing dominant forms of representation in such a way that opens new possibilities for the future.”13 temporal constructions/deconstructions within borges’ texts, multiple modes of temporality are constructed within the limitations of knowledge, and then deconstructed, refuted, or contradicted, creating cracks of inconsistency, openness, and even limitlessness in the comprehensiveness of time. borges refutes both the singularity and precedence of linear time; he allows for the coexistence of contradiction, the concurrence of universalizing time with alternative times, and the presence of multiple temporalities in any moment. within the garden of forking paths, tlön, uqbar, orbis tertius, and a new refutation of time, i have identified the interplay of five temporalities: internal temporality, material temporality, representative temporality, recurrent temporality, and eternal presentness. internal temporality is an idealist conception of an identity in time. material temporality and representative temporality are “extent” temporalities that exist within the materialist limitations of representation. recurrent temporality and eternal presentness are both temporalities beyond the structural containment of linear representation. internal temporality is an individualistic temporal identity; it is the accumulation of “still living pasts” and “yet lived futures” that are “in effect” in the present moment. internal temporality reconciles borges’ “what happens happens to me,” with histories constructed within material temporality and representational temporality. individual selves internalize numerous definitive historical moments in the development of a temporal identity, including personal experiences, spiritual and mythical attachments, and significant historical events. as an individual moves laterally from an “inner” temporal identity to “outer” surrounding ideological spheres in which multiple temporal influences converge and conflate in the sociospatial present, dominant temporalities emerge which determine the structural dimension of behavioral control. as a result, the temporal structure of the socio-spatial present is tenuously and consistently vacillated by the passing influence of multiple temporal identities within multiple ideological spheres. therefore, the individuality of “what happens happens to me” generates a multiplicity of divergent temporalities existing concurrently in the same present moment. material temporality is the search for time in space, meaning the objective collection and intellectual dissemination of all objects and spatial associations, from pinheads to pantheons, into a linear history based on historic value and age value as a concrete verification of the 13 jenckes, reading borges after benjamin, 100. 8 1 j e n n i f e r d o n n e l l y contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 2, no 1 (2012) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2012.38 continuity of human existence despite the (non)-passage of time.14 the refutation of material temporality is essentially the denial of any linear history constructed by the continuity of space in time, which is a central theme of borges’ work. borges undermines the continuity of space in time through eternal presentness in tlön, uqbar, orbis tertius and denies linearity through recurrent temporality in a new refutation of time. additionally, borges refutes material temporality by blurring the distinction between material history and fiction in ts’ui pên’s labyrinth of the garden of forking paths. ts’ui pên’s labyrinth explores the possibility of multiple “diverging, converging, and parallel” strands of time that embrace every possibility, both what happened and what could have happened. because borges draws no distinction between the histories of actual events and the histories of potential non-events, the precedence of “having happened” is neutralized. therefore, the concrete historical legitimization of material temporality is nullified in the garden of forking paths. representational temporality is the code of representation (language) through which the cognitive realm of past presents and future presents (internal temporality) is abstracted into the spatial realm (the linear-temporal sequence of material temporality). in a new refutation of time, borges recognizes that the inherent quality of language follows a lineartemporal sequence: “all language is of a successive nature; it does not lend itself to reasoning on eternal, intemporal matters.”15 in other words, language is embedded in the structural limitations of its representations, including the constructions of time borges attempts to reject. borges recognizes his trap, as a writer bound to words chained in time, yet attempting to refute time, yet never able to reach the possibility of accessing clarity outside of language, and therefore time. in tlön, uqbar, orbis tertius, borges ends the story by recounting his futile translation of sir thomas browne’s urn burial as the real world dissolves into tlön. for borges, the act is one of defiance, because translation is a material representation of thought in space. ultimately, the translation will become incomprehensible, as the structural continuum between space and time disintegrates into a tlönian impossibility. furthermore, borges often misquotes or invents encyclopedic texts and reference books in order to undermine the legitimacy of material temporality and representational temporality. the citation of liddell hart’s report in the preface of the garden of forking paths, upon closer observation, is disorienting and opaque. in comparison to the actual book written by liddell hart, borges has slightly altered the book’s title, shifted the month of the event, and changed the page number of the citation.16 according to robert chibka in the “library of forking paths,” the garden of forking paths breaks the binding of any book that seems to contain it, sending us through stacks that begin eerily to resemble the library of babel, full of possibly insignificant variants on indeterminately significant texts.” 17 like the 14 alois riegl defined historic-value as “everything that has been and no longer is…in accordance with the modern notion that what has been can never be again, and everything that has been constitutes an irreplaceable and irremovable link in a chain of development,” and age-value as “catalysts which trigger in the beholder a sense of the life-cycle.” materials with historic value are specifically related to successive development over time, while those with age-value manifest vague associations of the passage of time due to their origins. from alois reigl, “the modern cult of monuments: it’s character and origin,” trans. kurt w. forester and diane ghirardo, oppositions, no. 25 (fall 1982): 21-24. 15 borges, “a new refutation of time,” 68: “todo lenguaje es de índole sucesiva; no es hábil para razonar lo eterno, lo intemporal.” 16 robert l. chibka, “the library of forking paths,” special issue: the new erudition (autumn, 1996): 109-110. 17 chibka, “the library of forking paths,” 109-110. 8 2 m i r r o r o f t i m e contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 2, no 1 (2012) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2012.38 garden of forking paths, the characters of tlön, uqbar, orbis tertius are both actual people in borges’ life and imaginary figures. whereas the imaginary reference in the garden of forking paths exists outside of the story in the “real world” of material temporality, in tlön, uqbar, orbis tertius, the “real” encyclopedia becomes a fictional character of the story, but the imaginary reference it contains becomes a reality. by legitimizing fiction through material references, borges blurs the distinction between reality and fantasy, and therefore dissolves the legitimization of temporalities within the materialist limitations of representation. recurrent temporalities are instances of sameness, near-sameness, repetition, and reproduction that interrupt the continuity of linear time and material temporality. in a new refutation of time, borges states that the negation of linear time involves two denials: “denying the succession of two terms in a series, and denying the synchronism of terms in two series.”18 that is to say, one must not only deny linearity, but also that linearity is unilateral; one must additionally deny the existence of a single time. borges continues with a description of the uncanny experience of walking down a street from his childhood thirty years hence, which had not changed: the easy thought i am somewhere in the 1800s ceased to be a few careless words and became profoundly real. i felt dead, i felt i was an abstract perceiver of the world, struck by an undefined fear imbued with science, or the supreme clarity of metaphysics. no, i did not believe i had traversed the presumed waters of time; rather i suspected that i possessed the reticent and absent meaning of the inconceivable word eternity…now i shall transcribe it thus: that pure representation of homogeneous factscalm night, limpid wall, rural scent of honeysuckle, elemental clayis not merely identical to the scene on that corner so many years ago; it is, without similarities or repetitions, the same. if we can intuit that sameness, time is a delusion: the impartiality and inseparability of one moment of time’s apparent yesterday and another of time’s apparent today are enough to make it disintegrate.19 for borges, the concept of sameness demonstrates the insubstantial nature of linear temporality. objects having separate spatial-temporal conditions, for borges, are distinguished as two distinct things in both space and time.20 the sameness of the “homogeneous facts,” between borges’ experience and his recollection lack any kind of distinction and are therefore the same thing. the basis of their apparent difference, the passage of several decades, is meaningless; homogeneous facts exist in space yet outside of the historical succession of material temporality. therefore the homogeneous facts reveal linear history as a performance of time, but not time itself. the homogeneous facts do not 18 borges, “a new refutation of time,” 75: “negar el tiempo es dos negaciones: negar la sucesión de los términos de una serie, negar el sincronismo de los términos de dos series.” 19 borges, “a new refutation of time,” 70: “el fácil pensamiento estoy en mil ochocientos y tantos dejó de ser unas cuantas aproximativas palabras y se profundizó a realidad. me sentí muerto, me sentí percibidor abstracto del mundo; indefinido temor imbuido de ciencia que es la mejor claridad de la metafísica. no creí, no, haber remontado las presuntivas aguas del tiempo; más bien me sospeché poseedor del sentido reticente o ausente de la inconcebible palabra eternidad...la escribo, ahora, así: esa pura representación de hechos homogéneosnoche en serenidad, parecita límpida, olor provinciano de la madreselva, barro fundamentalno es meramente idéntica a la que hubo es esa esquina hace tantos años; es, sin parecidos ni repeticiones, la misma. el tiempo, si podemos intuir esa identidad, es una delusión: la indiferencia e inseparabilidad de un momento de su aparente ayer y otro de su aparente hoy, basta para desintegrarlo.” 20 bossart, borges and philosophy, 96. 8 3 j e n n i f e r d o n n e l l y contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 2, no 1 (2012) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2012.38 participate in the theater of history, they can not be recognized as belonging to time that has passed, time that is, or time that will be: they belong to all three. for borges, when two distinct things are also the same thing, the sameness disintegrates the possibility of movement from one spatial-temporal condition to another, and therefore refutes the passage of time. and if two distinct things are also the same thing there is no longer a single time within which occurrences can be identified in reference to each other, because time multiplies exponentially into divergent and convergent temporalities. eternal presentness is the disassociation of time from space. borges explores eternal presentness in tlön, uqbar, orbis tertius as a refutation of material temporality. in tlön, any affiliation between space and time is nonexistent; events occur in time, but not in space. by breaching space from time, the objects in question lack any reference to materiality: they exist as purely ideological concepts. borges extrapolates further with a story of lost objects in tlönians time: two people are looking for a pencil; the first one finds it and says nothing; the second finds a pencil, no less real, but more in keeping with his expectation. these secondary objects are called hrönir and, even though awkward in form, are a little larger than the originals...the methodological development of hrönir…has been of enormous service to archaeologists. it has allowed them to question and modify the past, which nowadays is no less malleable or obedient than the future.21 in tlönian logic, what would be considered to be two found pencils is actually one lost pencil and two secondary objects, or hrönir. there is no spatial continuity between the lost pencil and the found pencil, only the temporal continuity of the idea of a pencil. hrönir represent the disjointed nature of pure idealism. the concepts in this story return to the notion of containment, or the difference between what can be represented within structures accessible to cognition and what exists beyond. borges refutes the ability to spatially locate time, and therefore also the self’s understanding of referentiality in time, within the structures of representation that he has shown to be inexorably linked to materiality. borgesian temporality and contemporaneity borges’ nonlinear temporalities are a reaction against the unilateral linearity of historically progressive modernist time. borges investigates the concept of multiple temporalities co-existent in the same time and refutes the exclusivity of linear time. by doing so, borges creates a “space of incompletion” in the totality of modernist temporality. 22 however, since the early twentieth century, that totality has faded and weakened. from the aftermath of modernity’s broken attempt at unity, contemporaneity has emerged as a methodology of temporal thought. according to terry smith, “contemporaneity consists precisely in the acceleration, ubiquity, and constancy of radical disjunctures of perception, of mismatching ways of seeing and valuing the same world, in the actual coincidence of asynchronous temporalities, in the jostling contingency of various cultural and social 21 borges, “tlön, uqbar, orbis tertius,” 29-30: “dos personas buscan un lápiz; la primera lo encuentra y no dice nada; la segunda encuentra un segundo lápiz no menos real, pero más ajustado a su expectativa. esos objetos secundarios se llaman hröner y son, aunque de forma desairada, un poco más largos...la metódica elaboración de hrönir...ha prestado servicios prodigiosos a los arqueólogos. ha permitido interrogar y hasta modificar el pasado, que ahora no es menos plástico y menos dócil que el provenir.” 22 jenckes, reading borges after benjamin, 138. 8 4 m i r r o r o f t i m e contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 2, no 1 (2012) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2012.38 multiplicities, all thrown together in ways that highlight the fast-growing inequalities within and between them.” 23 have borges’ nonlinear refutations been eclipsed by the emergence of contemporaneity, or is borges’ work transcendent as a critique of temporal perceptions? this question is layered with many queries about the nature of time and temporal cognizance. is there any distinction between one moment and another beyond limited constructions of history? can the content of temporality change in different times, or is it structure of temporality that changes? or is it the frequency of temporality that changes and it is the content that is repeated? if one group of people constructs temporality through any of the methodologies elaborated by borges, what is to say that all peoples of the past and future have not also done so, and will not also do so, at least in some combination? in other words, what is universal about the sensation of time, and what is limited by historically specific collective temporal constructions? on one hand, many of borges’ perceptions of multiple convergent and divergent temporalities are deceptively similar to the theory of contemporaneity. the concept of multiple concurrent temporalities in effect on a global scale can be understood on borgesian terms as multiple temporalities in effect in the self, and then constructed into socio-collective drifts of time. borges is extrapolating the structural relationship between sensations of time “inside one’s head,” and the collective construction of temporality “outside of one’s head.” by doing so, borges expands nature of temporal understanding beyond the unilateral structural constraints of modernism, and can be understood as a methodology for theorizing about the asynchronous multiplicity of contemporaneity. furthermore, the temporal flow between modernity and contemporaneity is a continuum, rather than a rupture. therefore, the absolutist historical progression of modernist temporality is contemporarily relevant, if only as one of many aspects of harry hartoonunian’s concept of the thickened present, “a present filled with traces of different moments and temporalities” from the past.24 on the other hand, contemporaneity is conceptually a universal multiplicity, whereas borges’ temporality is a refutation of a totality and a symptom of modernity. according to smith, contemporaneity is not an entry point or evidence of a greater totality, but is instead a conceptualization of temporality in which the particular has become the general.25 however, borges often negates totality by inverting time, creating an internal self-negating cycle, which is both a totality and the opposite of totality, and therefore not yet released from totality. as borges’s deconstructions negate modernist time, constructions of the past and future generate an eternally referential “happens now” and in effect carve modernist time out of negated time. this time, which is then negated again by borges’s time, in turn negates eternity onto itself by the process of its present non-presentness. borges’ negated time is therefore encapsulated in a paradox that cannot be separated from modernist time. though borgesian temporalities are an aspect of contemporaneity, contemporaneity also involves multiplicities of temporality beyond the borgesian web. the critical distinction lies between borges’ negation of modernist time and borges’ understanding of the relationship between the internal sensation of time and external 23 terry smith, “introduction: the contemporaneity question,” in antinomies of art and culture: modernity, postmodernity, contemporaneity, ed. terry smith, okuwui enwezor, and nancy condee (durham: duke university press, 2008), 8-9. 24 harry hartoonunian, “remembering the historical present,” critical inquiry, 33, no. 3 (spring, 2007): 476. 25 smith, “introduction: the contemporaneity question,” 9. 8 5 j e n n i f e r d o n n e l l y contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 2, no 1 (2012) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2012.38 collective constructions of time: the former is deeply embedded in modernism, yet the latter deals with the universal human experience of time. borgesian temporality is both a mirror of modernist time and a transcendent exploration of contemporaneous temporalities. within the cracks of modernity, borgesian time manifests an “either/or” relationship between the self and temporality. contemporaneously, however, borgesian time coalesces into a “both/and” relationship between the self, structural temporality, and a web of enmeshed and divergent interpretations of time. 8 6 m i r r o r o f t i m e contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 2, no 1 (2012) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2012.38 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-noncommercial-no derivative works 3.0 united states license. this journal is operated by the university library system of the university of pittsburgh as part of its d-scribe digital publishing program, and is co-sponsored by the university of pittsburgh press. microsoft word 143-157 curatorial panel 7-27.docx vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.151 http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu curatorial practice as production of visual & spatial knowledge panel discussion, october 4, 2014 abstract the following is a transcription of a conversation between curators of art, science, and digital data about how their practice creates knowledge in their respective fields. drawn from pittsburgh’s rich institutional resources, the panelists include dan byers, (then) richard armstrong curator of contemporary art, carnegie museum of art; dr. alison langmead, director, visual media workshop, department of history of art and architecture, and assistant professor, school of information scienes, university of pittsburgh; dr. cynthia morton, associate curator of botany, carnegie museum of natural history; and dr. terry smith, andrew w. mellon professor of contemporary art history and theory, university of pittsburgh. moderated by nicole scalissi, phd candidate, department of history of art and architecture, university of pittsburgh. introductions by colleen o’reilly, phd candidate, department of history of art and architecture, university of pittsburgh. the panel took place as a part of debating visual knowledge, a symposium organized by graduate students in information science and history of art and architecture at the university of pittsburgh, october 3-5, 2014. the transcription has been edited for clarity. contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.151 colleen o’reilly (cr): this panel was conceived and organized by nicole scalissi, who is a fourth year phd student in history of art and architecture. her research focuses on images of staged violence in contemporary art and the expansion and contraction of categories of gender within performative spaces. nicole carries a master’s degree in art history from penn state where she completed her qualifying paper on andy warhol’s paintings of female wrestlers and the construction of female masculinity. our panelists, first, dan byers. he is the first richard armstrong curator of modern and contemporary art at the carnegie museum of art and his recent shows include the first u.s. museum exhibition of the icelandic artist ragnar kjartansson and he was the co-curator of the 2013 carnegie international. we have dr. cynthia morton, who is an associate curator and head of section of botany at the carnegie museum of natural history, ranked as one of the top five natural history museums in the u.s. dr. morton’s research involves the taxonomic relationships using morphological and molecular data of a large tropical group containing many citrus fruits. dr. morton also works with the pennsylvania department for the conservation of natural resources to document the plant diversity for each county in western pennsylvania, to aid in the restoration of natural resources. dr. morton holds a phd from cuny and the new york botanical gardens. dr. alison langmead holds a joint faculty appointment here at pitt between the dietrich school of arts and sciences and the school of information sciences. she is the principal contact of the dhrx (digital humanities research at pitt), which represents a transdisciplinary network of scholars who use digital methods to study the ways in which humans interact with their environments, whether social or cultural, natural or human created. dr. langmead holds a phd from columbia university. and then we have dr. terry smith, who is the andrew w. mellon professor of contemporary art history and theory here at pitt. his major research interests include contemporary art of the world, including its institutional and social contexts, the history of multiple modernities and modernisms, and the history and theory of contemporaneity. dr. smith is author and editor of many books on modern and contemporary art history and theory including thinking contemporary curating, published by independent curators international in 2012. nicole scalissi (ns): thank you so much, colleen, for this introduction. thanks to all of the panelists for accepting my invitation and i want to thank them for their generosity and their spirit of experimentation and collaboration. since these scholars come from various disciplines, for this panel, i will put them into a conversation on how curating can produce knowledge on both visual and spatial levels. my plan is to put dan and cynthia in conversation with each other, and also ask terry and alison to think through questions together, and then hopefully ask questions of each other, about what curating means for us both in general terms and in our own disciplines. towards the end of the discussion, i would like to invite the audience to participate as well and perhaps pose questions to our panelists. so first, cynthia and dan, to put you in conversation: you have this institution, the carnegie museum, in common. i am curious about the relationship between your research and public exhibitions. cynthia, can you explain the basics of your job, so we get a better sense about curatorial practice as production of visual & spatial knowledge panel discussion, october 4, 2014 1 4 5 c u r a t o r i a l p r a c t i c e a s p r o d u c t i o n o f v i s u a l & s p a t i a l k n o w l e d g e contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.151 what it means to be the curator of botany and also what the relationship is between your research and public exhibitions? cynthia morton (cm): my job entails research, getting grants and outreach. that means i have to publish in peer-reviewed journals. i have to pull in grant money, and here at the natural history museum, your sources are limited. you are asked to get funding from places like nsf (national science foundation), and from state agencies, so it is very different. it is very academic, but in an academic world, i’d probably be able to get funding from other places. here, it is very limited where you can go. outreach means that i have an adjunct position as a professor at both pitt and at cmu (carnegie mellon university), and so i teach there, and i also teach a broad range of topics here, from children that come through to board members. i work with a broad range of people from girl scouts, libraries, and homeschoolers. you may say, “oh, isn’t that very difficult?” you know, i must admit, sometimes the same lecture i give to a four-year-old, i also give to a forty-year-old. visually, because i work with morphology and molecules, it’s really challenging to get across ideas, and i am trying to use a variety of means when i do that, by talking about it, showing it, and giving students something to touch. with one activity, we cut out a bunch of acgts, that’s the code for dna, and i have them lay out about 35 letters, and then we go to a place called genbank and look up what they are. they can pull up fish and bacteria, and start thinking across about different concepts. it’s tactile, it’s something that they can see, and it’s great getting them to do something and then figuring out what it means. so that’s what my job consists of, which dan, as a curator may do a little bit differently. ns: dan, can you explain your job as a curator at the carnegie museum of art? and also maybe both you and cynthia can work through this problem of researching for exhibitions for us. dan byers (db): the research component in my job, in relation to what we talked about, is thinking about contemporary art in relationship to the museum’s collection, its programming, its history, and its relationship to other institutions and fields of art history, curatorial practice, and what artists are doing. all that is how i occupy my time but, of course, the decisions about what exhibitions i present here, that research falls through to the exhibition program, so my job consists of both caring for and building the museum’s collection of art post-1945. about half of my time is spent researching acquisitions and in the actual acquisition process. the other half of my time is spent on exhibition-making, working with artists, doing studio visits, travelling, and research. it is interesting, talking about how we get grants. i have to write all of the grants as well but there’s a lot of individual donor cultivation and that type of fundraising, so that is also a very present side of what i do. cm: speaking of collections, many people are not aware that i am also in charge of collections at the natural history museum. we have over half a million plant specimens, which are on dry, 11 by 17 sheets and that’s in an herbarium. we have to bring in new specimens and we also have to do something with that data. when i arrived here, one of the big parts was getting everything data-based. we do a collection here a little bit differently. while dan actually uses it daily in creating exhibits, here in the natural history museum, the only roaming exhibit hall we have is on the upper floor. there’s a hall of botany and we are trying to bring more stimulation into it. 1 4 6 c u r a t o r i a l p r a c t i c e a s p r o d u c t i o n o f v i s u a l & s p a t i a l k n o w l e d g e contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.151 there are dioramas in there from the 1940s that are just amazing. the information that you have in there is absolutely fascinating and you can do so much more with that data by looking at it in different ways. for instance, for plants, i always tell people, your air, your food, and your medicine comes from it. all those things can be conveyed though these dioramas. we are trying to generate more knowledge coming out of our halls because we only have one that is basically constantly changing, and when they do bring something in, they are not fabricating it. db: it is interesting that the whole idea of visual knowledge here is knowledge related to education. we use our collections of art in many different ways. still, we try to look at our permanent collection as a living collection, one that is contingent and subjective, and displayed in various ways, depending on either my subjective approach as the curator or from a revisionist approach to art history. but i often wonder in those spaces, especially in our permanent collection galleries, how much of what we’re trying to do here is educational? though the experience of art is education, of course, we double as a place to experience art. that experience can be defined in many ways. we try to teach people a very basic primer of contemporary art history through exhibition, because, of course, there is very little or no art history in american education. the way that we have approached our permanent collection has to both appeal to and to teach those who know nothing about 1945 to the present in international contemporary art. it also has to be the legitimate curatorial statement or art historical statement, or artist statement about art for those who are coming to the museums to engage in that discourse. so this experience is not necessarily about learning but about engagement or confrontation with art. ns: cynthia, education has been one of the key concepts we were talking about earlier when we were discussing your research. could you discuss a little bit more now about how important that is to you? when you were discussing the static hall of botany and about reactivating that through teaching, you had a number of strategies that you were excited to talk about. cm: sure, the hall of botany. my research deals with rutaceae, which is citrus. as research, i collect citrus and i figure out relationships. citrus is economically important. it’s used in medicine. it is used for a variety of things. if you understand the relationship of these things, you can basically use it better. the hall of botany has a whole case of citrus, but in the twelve years i have been here, they’ve never used one of my research articles. i like people to touch things, see things, smell things, and eat things, and i think through all of these things, no matter the age, there is a connection. one time, we were talking about extreme environments with kids. we then acquired some food from that area and asked kids to taste it and to look at the plant. we have to be very careful with our plant specimens because some of them are from the 1800s. we find that we can xerox nowadays, and we get kids to touch, look at them, and say, “see this is the plant where cinnamon comes from,” or, “this is the plant what walnut comes from,” to help them make that connection. i would love to see our hall of botany bringing in whole foods for kids to try stuff, and look at stuff, and have that connection there about where their food came from. my research has also spanned to look at urban trees. we found out several years ago that most of our trees planted in the urban environment are cloned. cloning is bad because, if you have everything the same, something like the emerald ash borer comes through and it wipes out all of the trees. therefore, this isn’t something just important to pittsburgh, this is something important all across the united states. then, we realized, here’s an easy fix. we should give cuttings of these beautiful old trees outside to huge nursery factories out in 1 4 7 c u r a t o r i a l p r a c t i c e a s p r o d u c t i o n o f v i s u a l & s p a t i a l k n o w l e d g e contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.151 washington and oregon and fix the problem. once again, it's important to get that information across to people, and to kids. getting that across is one of the ways of being creative with education and there are different methods of doing that. ns: many of the ways that you describe getting that information across has been tactile. you want them to do things, smell things, eat things, and touch things. it seems that it is beyond the visual in many ways. i was wondering, dan, if you had comments about how you engage with the other senses or, if your curatorial practice is exclusively visual. is it the visual that helps you construct an argument? db: the arguments i am making are largely constructed in space visually through comparison, juxtaposition, and through durational accumulation of experience. those sets of choreography or syntax are definitely the way that i work with art and space. however, many of the artists that i work with are interested in engaging other senses and that can create interesting tension in a museum environment where we are not hugely receptive to food and other non-traditional materials inside the galleries. it is an interesting tension between the museum’s obligation and mission to collect and preserve. the collection is forever, so we create a condition in the museum that is conducive. however, there are also many artists we’re bringing in that want to use food, chemicals, oils, and various kinds of things in artworks. different institutions have different protocol levels for that. one of the reasons i am a curator is to be able to construct an argument in space and to work with artists in a gallery as the medium for the message and the medium for thinking about art. compared to essay writing which is also a big part of what i do, i think, art lives very differently within a space. ns: i’ve been asking about research as something that you conduct, that you perform, and those results sometimes end up in a public exhibition and sometimes don’t. i am also interested in this idea that curation itself is a type of research methodology. terry, can we see curation as a type of research methodology? terry smith (ts): absolutely. the main thing i tried to do in thinking contemporary curating was to identify what was specific in contemporary curatorial thinking as distinct from what we might imagine to be relatively typical art historical thinking, or art critical thinking, or theorizing about art. each one of us on this panel comes from a different disciplinary background, and we have assumptions that are grounded in our disciplinary training. yet we are also trying to transform our home disciplines for the better, not least through interaction with adjacent ones. art critics, theorists and historians have immediate responses to works of art—often to artworks they are seeing in exhibitions or museum installations, that is, in already curated situations. they consider their responses, then articulate them in language that is shared with their readers, the potential viewers of the artworks, those who might attend the exhibition. meanwhile, the work of the curator has already been done: it is mostly manifest in the exhibition itself, supplemented by written words, in wall texts, catalog statements, and related discussions. but the core work that the curator does, based on the research and thinking that we just heard about, is to create an exhibit. to exhibit something is to hold it out, as evidence, for inspection, instruction, education, or entertainment. we might also say, speculatively, that an exhibition removes the inhibitions from works of art. an exhibition organizes a selection of artworks in a certain way, as dan just said, and constructs them in space, as points on a journey through a space or sequences 1 4 8 c u r a t o r i a l p r a c t i c e a s p r o d u c t i o n o f v i s u a l & s p a t i a l k n o w l e d g e contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.151 of spaces. to curate is to offer a different kind of argument about art than that offered by critic, theorist, or historian. to begin with, it is logically prior to what they do, and usually precedes their ways of making art public. i am fascinated by the nature of the kind of thinking that takes each artwork as a potentially exhibitable object, idea or event. it could be exhibited alongside other ones in a plain, sequential way, or become the key to everything that is arranged around it. these days, non-art objects are frequently thrown into the mix. alternatively, an exhibition could set up unequal, different, variable dialogues that have beginnings, developments, and ends. to a degree, these options parallel the ways in which art historians or theorists shape and present an argument. but curating operates primarily in terms of potential connections between a number of artworks, each of which is imagined, or prefigured, but the curator as an element within a possible exhibition. when the exhibition is installed, its meaning emerges within the network of interactions between the actual artworks. there’s a constant production of new knowledge in that process, which, again, parallels the new knowledge that art historians discover during their research process. perhaps we can think of this process as one in which the art historian keep arranging and rearranging a set of images of works by an artist, or groups of artists, as pictures in his or her mind. we check these arrangements against facts we can draw from documents, or statements by the artist, or by comparison with other works, and with known facts about the circumstances in which the work was made. you might say that art historians visit and revisit imagined exhibitions of this kind, ones that exist in a fluid mental space rather than in the constraints of actual rooms. this constraint means that curators have a job that is different in kind. they deal first and last with arrangements of specific artworks, the ones that they can assemble for the occasion. these particular artworks begin talking to each other, and may say unexpected things. to me, curatorial knowledge can have an impact on art critical, art historical, and art theoretical ways of thinking in showing us how to be more attentive to the interplay between the visual interaction of ideas––abstract ones, quite concrete ones, or even ideas about how historical change happens. let me give an example of the last. i am just back from presenting a talk about world picturing by contemporary artists at the national gallery of art at ottawa. afterwards, i had an interesting conversation with the canadian artist, geoffrey farmer. i had admired the work he made for documenta (13), at kassel in 2012, entitled leaves of grass. it was an amazing display consisting of photographs cut from life magazine, from its first issue in the 1930s up until the early 1970s when it ceased publication. he affixed the images to stems of long grass that were mounted in a low base that was lifted to waist height and ran the length of a narrow room. it was a great evocation of the democratic spirit of walt whitman’s famous poem, and the idea behind life magazine of seeing the whole world and all who live in it through pictures. anyway, after my talk, geoffrey commented on my powerpoint charts of terms that are widely used to describe how we see the world today, saying ‘you arrange your ideas about how the world is now, and what it is like to live today, a lot like i arrange the visual images in my work.’ he was thinking about how images and ideas move through historical time, like the wind through grass on an open plain. there is a convergence here between artistic, curatorial, and art historical thinking that is very interesting… ns: alison, could you explain a little bit about what your work is, especially since you don’t prefer to use the term “digital curation”? perhaps you could explain what other terms you use, and then also a bit about what your job entails? al: sure. there are two parts of the conversation about how we go about organizing, arranging and making available digital objects, and they are both represented in the work that i do in the visual media workshop. my job has two different components, one of which is to run a traditional digital repository of images, if one can have a “traditional” digital 1 4 9 c u r a t o r i a l p r a c t i c e a s p r o d u c t i o n o f v i s u a l & s p a t i a l k n o w l e d g e contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.151 repository of images. it has certain criteria for collecting digital images, so i suppose you could think of this collection as something that is a little bit like a collection of specimens, or a permanent collection. but my job here is less to make exhibits of the digital images than to simply make them available, and this is what i wanted to be sure to mention here. i’m trained in the information sciences as well as art history, and this part of my job is information-heavy, and quite specifically focuses on tasks associated with so-called fancy words (which truly aren’t that fancy) like metadata and structure standards. these are the things that serve in the digital realm to help people find and organize what they want to work with, and we need these tools precisely because we don’t have the physicality of the real world to help us. this is to say, we need to figure out how you find things when you don’t have a physical drawer that you can rifle through, or when you don’t have walls in a museum that behave in ways that everybody knows about through real-world experience. when you work with a digital space that is very, very flexible—but that isn’t infinitely flexible contrary to popular belief—it still doesn’t have the same sort of tactile stuff associated with it. you can’t smell digital images. you can’t use all of your senses in the same way that you can in the physical world. as for the use of the term, “digital curation,” the reason that the use of the phrases data curation and digital curation in the ischool world have a sort of strange negative connotation for me at the moment is because it co-opts the titles of a profession that is better represented here by my fellow panelists. this type of curation has a broader scope than just the selection, description, and re-presentation of data. that isn’t to say that the work of curation doesn’t overlap with that of information and data management, or that it doesn’t share characteristics, but i don’t use the term partially because i have worked with “real” curators in my art history life, and it isn’t the same thing as what a digital information manager might do. the other aspect of my job, however, probably responds better to your question about whether exhibition and curation are related to research, because i also produce academic digital humanities projects. not that a digital image library isn’t a dh project, but its form of argumentation is not the same type of argumentation as the rest of the curatorial panel is presenting. i impress upon my students, some of whom are in the back here, that creating an academic research argument is about knowing your tools and using the one that is most appropriate to your particular needs. the thing that the computer often gives you when you are presenting an academic argument in the digital space is, yes, interactivity, and yes, multimedia events, and affect— but you have that in the real world too. so, don’t consider it to be a complete changeover in your approach to research. it is an expansion of your set of tools. think about what you’re actually trying to say. as terry was just mentioning, you need to consider what it is that you want to convey and then know your toolbox in order to know how to convey it. and in that way, working on research—such as an exhibition project—is the process of learning what you know about what you are doing and then learning what tools you have at your disposal. it is interesting, as [dan byers] just said, in the accumulation of experience over the course of a show, which is also something that you can do in a digital space, but you need to construct it differently because there isn’t the same sort of longstanding tradition of how you experience necessarily something like this in the digital environment as there is in the physical environment. as patrick jagoda [the keynote speaker] was just saying about interactivity and video games, the game can itself manipulate you and show you a new way to experience things, and i suggest that a curator might or might not choose to do the very same thing using their tools and their environments. i consider both of these types of presentation (or publication) a form of research. ts: the metaphor that comes to my mind is that curating is a sort of software. in this context, it is a kind of a set of practices and protocols, those sort of things. it can operate, perhaps more than art history or criticism, in this character. i see software as a sort of 1 5 0 c u r a t o r i a l p r a c t i c e a s p r o d u c t i o n o f v i s u a l & s p a t i a l k n o w l e d g e contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.151 interface, and it has certain characteristics relating to what we are talking about, as opposed to the hardware which is the art works and the collections. al: it’s interesting that you bring up the subject of software in this context, as another thing that i’ve been thinking a lot about recently is the way that digital machines are actually layers upon layers of these sorts of rearrangements of experience just how you are also talking about it. there are the bells-and-whistles that you see on the front end, but, more or less, if you were to peel back the layers of the modern iphone, at the bottom, you actually find a computer from the 40s. this object just sort of accreted over time, creating this sort of monster that has, itself, shrunk, but it has basically imploded more than anything else. the whole operation—this hardware-software interface, that we very much still talk about—is still critical even in conversations around computing. ns: cynthia, what do you think of this metaphor of curating as a type of software? cm: as alison was describing this, i was thinking in my mind, she’s talking about evolution. db: the idea of curating is very good at generating metaphors. there’s so many ways to describe curating. there’s a long and ridiculous list, whether you’re a custodian, whether you’re a producer, whether you’re whatever. i think software is a good metaphor to add. especially being an institutionally affiliated curator, there is an interesting confusion between software and hardware, whether you’re talking about this museum, this gallery, this artwork, this history, this collection, this city, these sets of visitors, this sort of obdurate specifics of the space, versus the approach that i bring to playing that space or interacting with it. there’s always an interesting back and forth for me between the hardware and the software. i don’t want to confuse these metaphors too much, but i think that’s one of the distinctions. you’re curating as an untethered act, approaching curating as a way of thought or an approach to art, collection, or ideas versus a job of being a curator at an institution, which offers many different interesting specifics and obstructions and opportunities based on building, staff and city. i find all of these things really enriching, and that’s why i choose to situate my practice in a place like this. al: i’m running through in my head what i would actually do with the hardware-software metaphor. i’m going to push this somewhere that may or may not be crazy. if i were to make the hardware-software metaphor for curation, i would say that the hardware that curators work with are actually the human beings. they are going to do what they are going to do. you can’t shift them. you can nudge them, you can try to get them to do what you want them to do, but the overlay on top that, and what lies over the hardware of the computer, is a series of what i consider to be “hacks.” people often talk about hacking computers as something separate from the “real” use of computers, but to me a computer is nothing but hacking—making do with what you have at any given moment. i mean, the inside of a computer can really only do about four or five essential things, but it’s the effective combination of those four or five things that make the magic happen—that’s hacking. and so in terms of curation, everything that you layer on top of your human hardware—[dan’s] decision of what art to put up, [cynthia’s] decision about which citrus fruit to bring out, [terry’s] decision to make a metaphor in public that actually speaks to art and computing—that is hacking the human hardware system that actually consists of the way that we are socialized to interact with these things. that’s where i’d push this metaphor, and the art itself participates in that. 1 5 1 c u r a t o r i a l p r a c t i c e a s p r o d u c t i o n o f v i s u a l & s p a t i a l k n o w l e d g e contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.151 ns: alison, i was hoping you could discuss a little bit more about this idea of digital humanities, and i’m curious if you see your work as actually limited to the humanities. how is what you do isolated to the humanities, or could we attach it to other disciplines? al: yes, because i work for two schools, i confront this all the time. i work as a transdisciplinary scholar in the information sciences and, frankly, art history (not “the humanities”). i feel very tied to my home discipline of art history and to doing research and teaching in that discipline. it just so happens that i use a computer to do it. that’s the extent to which i am a digital humanist. in the [graduate seminar in the digital humanities] that i am teaching this term, i actually surprised myself on the first day of class with my own polemicism about what dh is and isn’t. because of this realization, what is really driving my career forward right now is an effort to demystify what it means to “use” computers, and to help people understand better what it is that computers really do and don’t do. and, if these people then choose to use digital methods in their own research and teaching then, more power to them, but if they don’t, then they made a knowing decision to not use those digital methods, and that is, of course, a completely valid way to move forward. i am not in the dh camp that argues that “all the humanities are the digital humanities,” but i do also feel that computers are here, they’re integrated in all of our society, and you can’t get rid of them. they’re on your wrist (although not my wrist), they’re in these mics, they’re in these lights, they’re in that projector, and so everything here could be considered “digital” and “the humanities,” but my take on dh is that the approach is simply a question of how intelligently and proactively you use the digital in your work. for my own research, i produce digital projects such as itinera with drew armstrong and decomposing bodies with josh ellenbogen, or even the digital image library.1 this is to say that i am studying art history, studying humans and how they interacted with each other (in my case) in the far past. i am also investigating the ways in which the computing infrastructure of the planet can help us reach more people, or reach more specific types of people—digital work doesn’t always have to be about “more,” the internet isn’t always about “more.” it can also be about better targeting specific groups of people. some of my digital work (especially surrounding decomposing bodies) isn’t on the internet and that’s where it is going to stay because it isn’t appropriate for that work to be so publically accessible due to privacy restrictions or even copyright restrictions. ns: terry, i was wondering if you could talk a little bit about these theories of curation you’re working on. can we use what you’ve observed and what you’ve theorized in other disciplines? can we curate botany or non-art objects with what you’ve been thinking about? 1 itinera is a map-based, interactive, digital resource that overlays and juxtaposes the movements of 18thand 19th-century travelers alongside the objects of their study and their own creative output. itinera.pitt.edu decomposing bodies seeks to defamiliarize the process of breaking down and defining what we see into quantized digests, by collecting, analyzing, digitizing and re-presenting the data created by the process of bertillonage – the system of criminal identification that classified human beings on individual standardized cards as a set of biometric measurements. constellations.pitt.edu/decomposingbodies 1 5 2 c u r a t o r i a l p r a c t i c e a s p r o d u c t i o n o f v i s u a l & s p a t i a l k n o w l e d g e contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.151 ts: well, let me tell you a story that connects these ideas. gregory pryor is an artist based in perth, australia, with a particular interest in botanical illustration. in 2002, he had a fellowship at the natural history museum in vienna. he knew that the museum held certain specimens that had been collected when europeans first explored the continent of terra australis in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. so he looked into the boxes that had the specimens of a plant named banksia, after sir joseph banks, the scientist who accompanied captain cook on his voyages to the pacific. it’s a small desert bush that produces flowers that look like bottlebrushes. they had collected specimens, which, of course, were young, succulent, and green in color, and hadn’t flowered. but when pryor opened these folders, it was obvious that the plants had exploded, turned black and brittle, and scattered their seeds across the archival papers. this is what they do naturally, every year, when it gets very hot. it seems that, during the second world war, when vienna was bombed, an explosion close to this building had produced enough heat to generate these plants. naturally, he made an exhibition out of this phenomenon of time-lapse across differentiated locations. contemporary art is so open to experience, and so alert to many different kinds of historical time. artists love to show these times together, to time travel back and forward in time, between temporalities, and across time. this capacity has been recognized by museums of ethnography and natural history all over the world, so one regularly finds works of contemporary art in all kinds of museums, particularly those that seem to be losing touch with contemporary life. in the carnegie international, the french artist pierre leguillon created a set of panels and dioramas, one in the main galleries and another in one of the diorama booths in the national history museum. we were invited to go to a far room in a distant corner of the natural history museum. in effect, dan was drawing a connection between different kinds of archival thinking, researching, and displaying. it can be amusing to go, say, to the museum of archaeology and anthropology at cambridge university, and marvel at the persistence of eighteenth-century and nineteenth-century modes of display. the director there, nicholas thomas, is very open to contemporary art, and includes a lot of it within the displays. unfortunately, the architectural setting in such places is so powerful that the contrast between it and the contemporary work has the effect, usually, of underlying the separations and fragilities of cultural continuity rather than reinforcing them. all around the world, we are seeing this phenomenon of museums presenting confused messages about their own temporality, usually for reasons that have more to do with bringing in crowds than expanding their educational outreach. i’m not saying that every museum and every space should become 2014 in its look. but it is dismaying, frankly, to see these different kinds of times jutting up against each other when they’re not speaking to each other but are simply abutting each other. i think we need to create platforms, like we’re doing right here, to share perspectives, and perhaps, help each other through these dilemmas. cm: it’s really interesting because, in the last several years, this has been at the forefront for me. there’s this attitude where people want to spend several million dollars and rip out the hall of botany. you don’t have to rip it out. you just have to look at it differently. you can actually bring something in to convey. the beauty about botany is that you can go to underprivileged people and students in that group and say, let’s walk around pennsylvania today. “let’s go to a bog,” or, “now, let’s go to lake erie,” and talk about all the cool things that are there, whether we’re talking about equisetum (horsetail plant) that you can use to scour your hands and clean with, or talking about the woodpecker in the tree, or about the necessity of dead trees, because that woodpecker needs that tree. we can also talk about why we need an equal balance of things. in the hall of botany, we can go to the laurel highlands, a woodland, and even the florida everglades. i truly believe we have to find a 1 5 3 c u r a t o r i a l p r a c t i c e a s p r o d u c t i o n o f v i s u a l & s p a t i a l k n o w l e d g e contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.151 way to make the hall of botany more interactive, because it is stagnant there. but, we don’t need to rip it out. each one of those dioramas has plants, animals and insects, and is a whole world. every single plant in there isn’t a dry plant but handmade wax plants. if we remove the dioramas, we will never get that back again. the wax plants are art themselves. db: it’s interesting to think about the levels of self-awareness an institution can bring to these things, because my attraction to that space is purely through an aesthetic and historical pleasure in this outmoded setting. i always go to the hall of botany because it’s so quiet, contemplative, and relaxing. when i told cynthia this, she said, “oh no, it’s supposed to be interactive and engaging.” i’ll visit a natural history museum for the wonder of a specimen. i used to go to the peabody in cambridge which was where i grew up going. that was my idea of a natural history museum with wood cases and a nineteenth-century approach to knowledge. what’s interesting about the carnegie museum of art is that we are a museum of museums. we have a hall of sculpture, a hall of architecture, which are really time capsule places. they display france’s architecture in the way that it was displayed in the late nineteenth, early twentieth centuries. we’ve kept that space essentially as is. but there’s been an institutional mediation to talk about how it is a hundred year old display, that’s on display as a display of museology. this approach gets complicated. it’s between the actual display of knowledge versus a kind of self-aware approach to the history of that knowledge. i think about museum display and the growing field around exhibition history as a way to look at art history. i wonder if in the digital humanities, alison, you’re beginning to historicize your research knowledge or culture through the artifacts, the websites, and the different kinds of interactive things that are being produced. are you historicizing the way that we’re looking at art history or the history of science through exhibition history? al: that’s a fascinating topic of conversation. a student of mine [aisling quigley] and i are currently working on a project that is looking at one of the oldest dh projects produced at pitt, alison stone’s medart (http://medart.pitt.edu). the first web crawl of medart by the wayback machine (https://archive.org/web/), was the first web crawl that the wayback machine ever made. this makes medart older even than the wayback machine. and it happens that we are finding that the technology that underpins medart is so basic, and so fundamental to the way that the internet itself works, that it has helped it hold up pristinely this entire time. other projects do not fare as well, and we are finding that it is the case that the most easily sustainable dh projects on the web have been the ones that are the least “fancy.” the fancy digital bells and whistles require that we change, transform, and remediate that technology over time because these types of technologies go obsolete and stop working, which is almost the inverse of the case of [cynthia’s] wax flowers that cannot be put back once they’ve been forcibly ripped out. with digital projects, we oftentimes have to transform it into a very different state just so that it can persist. it is therefore very difficult to go back and time and look at these exhibitions or projects and see them as they once were, unless their technologies were so fundamental to the internet that they can stay the same. but, if you go and visit medart right now, you will notice that there is a cost for this. the site looks quite dated, a bit like our earlier discussion of the look-and-feel of the hall of botany. medart uses background tiles (remember them?) and displays an aesthetic that reminds one of the web was when it was all animaniacs and william shatner. so, yes, we are thinking about the history of dh projects, but we are facing a type of obsolescence that the physical world doesn’t give us any helpful analogous, tactile experiences to understand. it ends up being a lot more logical and intellectual, and we have to make decisions, just like archivists do, about which parts of the experience to preserve, because we can’t preserve them all. 1 5 4 c u r a t o r i a l p r a c t i c e a s p r o d u c t i o n o f v i s u a l & s p a t i a l k n o w l e d g e contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.151 ns: so you all have built so much on top of my questions and brought up all these really interesting ways of thinking about your work and each other’s work. are there questions from our audience? nicole coffineau, phd student in art history at pitt: i have a question for dan. there have been a couple different modes of argument named, such as actually curating objects, making an argument in a digital form, and of course, writing an art historical or critical argument. my question is, how much do you feel like you have to acknowledge the possibility of other modes of argument when you’re making your curatorial argument? for example, if you’re curating the international, there’s a lot written about it in lots of different ways. do you feel like you have to prepare within your curatorial argument possibly for those other kinds of arguments, or do you block them out? db: that’s a really good question. i approach them knowing there are contingent modes at work, but i think that everything that is most important to you about that argument or about those artists or about the ideas has to be in the exhibition itself. it has to be present to the viewer and present to someone in that space. of course, you can’t get everything in there, and many of what i consider to be the smartest curatorial moves are lost on a visitor. or sometimes, they’re not aware that they’re taking part in an argument or a choreographed situation. there is an interesting relationship between the exhibition and the catalogue, which is a legitimate kind of contingent relationship. when you’re looking at an exhibition as a catalogue, you have to understand the back and forth between those things, without excusing yourself to put the most precise arguing in text or in that form. i also think that the knowledge you have of art and working with living artists is always really messy. it’s hard to determine, how to separate the knowledge of the artwork from the knowledge of the artist, to the knowledge of the gallery from the knowledge of what your studio assistant did to make this work, to the knowledge of how they think about their artwork situated among the artworks in the exhibition. i’ve realized in the last few years that the simpler the argument in the gallery space, the better, because then you can use simpler tools like juxtaposition and gallery lighting to affect and become a communicative medium. as much as exhibitions are a way to produce knowledge and art history, it wasn’t until i worked in the international that i realized that it could be a communicative thing, that someone could speak through it in a way, and people could understand, and come out the other side not totally garbled. ns: cynthia, your title as curator: is that an idea you had chosen before or was that something chosen by the museum? do you use this term to describe your position? cm: natural history curation is not just looking at your specimens but creating research for publication, so i think it’s a different form. it’s similar to being tenured. i think with each one of us, we all have a very different angle that we take on our profession, our careers, even between art and the natural history. when we talk about curation, i don’t think that there’s one solid definition. each runs a little bit differently. my job as a curator fills these different holes and that’s how other natural histories fulfill it too. i think that the goal of doing exhibits is downplayed because we don’t have that kind of rolling exhibition space. i think of myself as a curator, but it’s a different definition. 1 5 5 c u r a t o r i a l p r a c t i c e a s p r o d u c t i o n o f v i s u a l & s p a t i a l k n o w l e d g e contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.151 ts: for me, the fundamental dynamic in an art museum is the friction between the collection and the temporary exhibition space. in a traditional museum, the temporary space was, often, an experiment for how to reinstall at least one of the rooms in the main collection. today, however, temporary exhibitions have become much more varied in type and kind, to such an extent that it’s mainly art which originates outside of the museum, rather than art destined for the museum, that is entering the museum, albeit on a temporary basis. cynthia, could i ask you what prevents the museum of natural history from seeing itself as a place that has great permanent art, but also temporary exhibits? cm: there are very few spaces. ts: is it all in the numbers? do people just like to see the same thing when they go to a natural history museum? because when it comes to art, the assumption is that most visitors like a mix of familiar and unfamiliar things, but repeat visitors expect reasonably constant change. cm: well i think that there’s a dual edge here. in pittsburgh, people do like to come back and see the same thing. but i think that it’s going to have to change. is it by pulling things out and rebuilding things? that’s really costly. this particular community is not going to be able to withstand that kind of cost. we have to be creative, and find different ways to get information across. the main people that come in to the natural history museum are children and families. we can’t just keep it for adults. we have to diversify here. we have small kids coming in and we have to accommodate that. but we can also empower the adults with information so that they can convey it to children. we don’t have to rip out the dioramas, but we do have to make it in a way so that people want to come in. but we have to accommodate our audience. al: if i might, i’d like to comment about the remediation of arguments, and talk about how we change arguments through different ways of doing. i was struck when dan was talking about his work, because when you produce a relational database model, it’s a lot more like his presentation of curation. you are reconfiguring things in your head and distributing them across “rooms,” for lack of a better word, that are notional spaces in the computer’s memory that can be easily accessed. db: terry, i want to go back to your question of communication. i’ve done exhibitions that have gotten both positive and negative reviews, but it wasn’t until a lot of the more substantial long-form reviews of the international came out that the critics understood, what i describe as an affective mood of the exhibition. this is something that, as curators, we had only begun to articulate amongst ourselves, but it was picked up in the way and the tone that people wrote. i think that exhibitions can teach people about art history. you can teach people about artists, about the world. the international is special as a way to deal with the world through artworks. what i experienced as a really communicative act or mode was what you would expect from a poem. it has knowledge in it that is really about conveying how to see the world through feeling. people picked up on the fact that there was engagement with different ways of pleasure, and play, but also the political valiances that are important to us, in our selection and combination of artists and artworks. these things were not explicitly drawn attention to in labels or any traditional modes of communicating information. i’m still trying to figure out 1 5 6 c u r a t o r i a l p r a c t i c e a s p r o d u c t i o n o f v i s u a l & s p a t i a l k n o w l e d g e contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.151 how we did that, and i’d like to do it again. that is something beyond knowledge and more interactive. ts: in the international art world, there’s a huge, almost impossible demand that every biennial, and now there are 150 of them, should stand out from every other one. the strictest requirement as to how to do that is to invent a variation not so much in what you make the show about, or where it is, or who the artists are, but in how you present the exhibition. curators now, all around the world, want to see some innovation in exhibitionary form itself. otherwise, they believe, all the exhibitions remain the same. i think that you, daniel baumann and tina kukielski responded to that demand, to a degree– –with the play element, and the loans from the library at braddock, for example. but it was not your main motivation. no one thing stands out as the key factor in shaping the most recent international. rather, it was the combination of all of the things you just mentioned which produced the affect that the critics picked up on so astutely. to me, the exhibition profiled a certain mode of being in the world: i would characterize it as tentative yet open, care-filled yet determined, moderately ambitious, watchful yet positive. the exhibition itself, as it came together, produced and generated this affect––more than, as you attest, the fully articulated intentions of the curators. the outcome was, i think, a very important moment in the history of exhibitions in this city. 1 5 7 c u r a t o r i a l p r a c t i c e a s p r o d u c t i o n o f v i s u a l & s p a t i a l k n o w l e d g e contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.151 new articles in this journal are licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 united states license. . tsang vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.58 http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu creating national narrative the red guard art exhibitions and the national exhibitions in the chinese cultural revolution 1966-1976 winnie tsang abstract the artistic development in china experienced drastic changes during the cultural revolution from 1966 to 1976. traditional chinese art was denounced, whereas propaganda art became predominant in shaping the public’s loyalty towards the communist party and the country. two major groups of art exhibitions emerged during the revolution—the unofficial red guard art exhibitions organized by student activists in collaboration with local communes and art schools between 1966 and 1968, and the state-run national exhibitions from 1972 to 1975. these exhibitions were significant to this period because they were held frequently in the capital city beijing and occasionally elsewhere, and through art they presented unique revolutionary beliefs to the chinese people in a public setting. while the red guard art exhibitions and the national exhibitions certainly created different national narratives, i argue that the national exhibitions were in fact an attempt to revise the national narrative created by the red guard art exhibitions in order to re-establish a more utopian, consistent, and official national narrative. this paper unravels the intricate relationship between the two groups of exhibitions by comparing their exhibition venues, ideological focuses, work selection and quality editing. about the author winnie tsang has recently completed her m.a. in art history and archaeology at washington university in st. louis, specializing in nineteenth-century european art and modern chinese art. previously she has earned her m.phil. and b.a. in fine arts from the university of hong kong. she has published essays on the subjects of nude and commercial art, and has given two papers on propaganda art and art exhibitions during the chinese cultural revolution at the university of pittsburgh and the ohio state university. she is currently a lecturer in art history at wells college. contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.58 between 1966 and 1976, china underwent the turbulence of the cultural revolution launched by chairman mao zedong (1893–1976). claiming to revolutionize china on the surface, the cultural revolution was in fact a nationwide movement mao manipulated to facilitate his own power struggle within the communist party by inciting the fanatic sentiments of the masses, especially young people.1 mao’s advocacy of proletarian struggles against the bourgeois not only caused enormous loss of lives and shattered the social structure, but also radically challenged artistic development in china.2 traditional chinese art was now denounced as one of the “four olds” to be destroyed—old thinking, old culture, old customs, and old habits—whereas propaganda art demonstrating mao’s revolutionary thoughts dominated the art scene to shape the public’s loyalty toward the communist party and the country.3 what deserves more attention is that the art produced during the revolution was exhibited frequently in beijing and occasionally elsewhere to present unique national narratives to the chinese people in a public setting. two major groups of art exhibitions emerged during the cultural revolution. the first group was the red guard art exhibitions held between 1966 and 1968. in 1966, mao distinguished students supporting him as the “red guards,” whose goals were to uproot the “four olds” and to smash capitalists within the party.4 the red guards played a crucial role in producing propaganda art and launching the red guard art exhibitions.5 in 1967, the red guard art activities were particularly frequent with at least six art exhibitions organized.6 three of the exhibitions in 1967 were noteworthy. at the exhibition long live the victory of mao zedong thought commemorating the twenty-fifth anniversary of mao’s talk at yan’an held on may 23 at the national art museum of china, a few hundreds of works were shown 1 julia f. andrews, “the art of the cultural revolution,” in art in turmoil, ed. richard king (vancouver: ubc press, 2010), 28. 2 according to lent and xu, the number of deaths reached around one million people in the first three years of the cultural revolution. many died because of the persecution and mass killing by the red guards, whereas others committed suicide as a result of false charges. for further information, see john a. lent and xu ying, “cartooning and china’s ‘cultural revolution,’” int. j comic art 7. 2 (fall 2005): 89. 3 kuyi shen, “propaganda posters and art during the cultural revolution,” in art and china’s revolution, ed. melissa chiu and zheng shengtian (new haven and london: yale university press, 2008), 149. 4 andrews, “the art of the cultural revolution,” 33. 5 wang mingxian, “hongweibing meishuyundongji dui dangdaiyishu de yingxiang,” yishu tansuo 19, no. 2 (april 2005): 33. 6 apart from the three exhibitions mentioned in the text, the other three red guard art exhibitions held in 1967 included the show entitled “caricatures: smashing the reactionary line advocated by liu shaoqi and deng xiaoping” that opened at the beijing planetarium on february 5, the exhibition named “capital red guard rebel exhibition” on june 6 at the beijing exhibition center, and the show “the radiance of chairman mao’s thought brightens the anyuan workers movement” on october 1 held at the museum of revolutionary history. detailed information of the red guard art exhibitions has not been fully documented in the current scholarship, and my research has not been able to locate the exact duration of each of these exhibitions. relatively more systematic records of some of these exhibitions can be found in wang, “hongweibing meishuyundongji dui dangdaiyishu de yingxiang.” creating national narrative the red guard art exhibitions and the national exhibitions in the chinese cultural revolution 1966-1976 winnie tsang 1 1 9 w i n n i e t s a n g contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.58 ranging from woodcuts and cartoons to propaganda posters. two days later, on may 25, another exhibition called long live the great proletarian cultural revolution opened at tiananmen square, exhibiting around 150 works. the works included pictures that appeared in the publications of mao’s revolutionary quotes as well as woodcuts, paper cuts, and cartoons. this exhibition then toured around factories, communes, and army units in the beijing suburbs. then, on october 1, in celebration of the 18th anniversary of the founding of the people’s republic, an exhibition entitled long live the victory of chairman mao’s revolutionary line was organized at the national art museum of china. it was the largest scale of all other exhibitions of the same year, showcasing around 1600 works that included oil paintings, ink paintings, woodcuts, posters, sculptures, and craftworks. in 1968, upon removing his major rivals in the party and fearing that the factional warfare caused by the red guard activities would lead to further social chaos, mao dismissed all the red guards and sent them to the countryside for “re-education.” these red guards were then rusticated to become workers, peasants, and soldiers, which drew to an end the red guard art exhibitions. between 1969 and 1971 there were no major exhibitions because of political turmoil within the party. mao was involved in another power struggle with his vice-chairman and designated successor, lin biao (1907–1971). the struggle ended in 1971 when lin biao mysteriously died in a plane crash.7 seeing the declined reputation of mao after the constant strife within the party, the communist party began to restructure itself to restore social order in the early 1970s. during the first half of the cultural revolution, the former cultural organizations of the government such as the ministry of culture, the central propaganda department, and the chinese artists association responsible for directing art affairs were abolished. in 1971, the state government resumed the function of the ministry of culture by forming a culture group (國務院文化組) under the leadership of jiang qing, the wife of mao, to oversee national cultural and art activities.8 the second group of exhibitions emerged at this time when the culture group began to launch annual national exhibitions to properly represent the communist party and the nation. art professionals were appointed to coordinate the national exhibitions; among them were wang mantian, the director of the culture group, and gao jingde, a young oil painting instructor.9 between 1972 and 1975, national exhibitions were organized every year in beijing at the national art museum of china on october 1, china’s national day. the artworks were selected from all parts of china. while some of the works were done by professional artists who were recently freed from labor camps by the state council, over half of them were produced by amateurs including rusticated youth, workers, peasants, and soldiers, who were encouraged by the state to paint.10 some of the exhibitions were specifically designated to exhibit works created by one of these groups. the national exhibitions ended with the death of mao in september 1976, which also put an end to the cultural revolution. the art exhibitions that appeared in the cultural revolution were a manifestation of the ideas expressed in mao’s talks at the yan’an forum on literature and art in may 1942, in which mao emphasized the indispensable role of revolutionary art in educating the masses 7 roderick macfarquhar, “the cultural revolution,” in art and china’s revolution, 47. 8 julia f. andrews, painters and politics in the people’s republic of china, 1949–1979 (berkeley and los angeles: university of california press, 1994), 349. 9 andrews, “the art of the cultural revolution,” 46. 10 ibid. 1 2 0 c r e a t i n g n a t i o n a l n a r r a t i v e : t h e r e d g u a r d a r t e x h i b i t i o n s a n d t h e n a t i o n a l e x h i b i t i o n s i n t h e c h i n e s e c u l t u r a l r e v o l u t i o n 1 9 6 6 1 9 7 6 contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.58 and the essential purpose of art in serving the people. 11 these exhibitions, whether in a museum or other public spaces, displayed mao’s values to the audience and visually educated them about his revolutionary beliefs. exhibitions construct new ways of understanding the world.12 additionally, they institutionalize values and create narratives. while the red guard art exhibitions and the national exhibitions certainly created different narratives to gather support for mao, they were closely connected, especially in the way the national exhibitions responded to the red guard art exhibitions. this paper will explore the intricate relationship between the two groups of exhibitions by comparing their national narratives in terms of the exhibition venue, ideological focus of works, work selection and quality editing. red guard art exhibitions “for visitors, the exhibition environment is the primary medium of communication,” states ross loomis.13 exhibition venues shape audience’s experience with the exhibitions and the exhibits, resulting in different exhibition narratives. what made the red guard art exhibitions unique was the fact that their exhibitions were held at different locations in beijing, including the national art museum of china, tiananmen square, the museum of revolutionary history, the beijing planetarium, the beijing exhibition center, and the factory regions in beijing suburbs. while the unofficial nature of the exhibitions and the different combinations of organizing units at different times in part explained why the red guard did not have a fixed exhibition venue, the response to mao’s advocacy of making the art available to the masses also contributed to the itinerant nature of the exhibitions. these various exhibition venues, however, gave the shows a strong revolutionary character. for instance, on may 25, 1967, the outdoor exhibition entitled long live the great proletarian cultural revolution opened in tiananmen square. displaying at tiananmen square had a special revolutionary significance to the red guards. the square was the imperial icon of the city center, the front gate of the forbidden city. it was also where mao made public announcements and received the red guards. between august and december of 1966, there were eight occasions of mao receiving the red guards coming from different parts of china at tiananmen square.14 the estimated number of red guards gathering there to meet with mao was between ten and thirteen million.15 in other words, for the mainstream, the square was a contact point between the party and the people; for the red guards, it resembled a holy destination to see mao. exhibiting red guard art in the square not only increased audience’s proximity to mao, but also reinforced mao’s revolutionary values. as the red guard art exhibitions were launched spontaneously by students in collaboration with different communes or rebel units, and organizing units of each exhibition were different every time, it is logical to conclude that these exhibitions were not professionally planned and administered. in preparing for the exhibitions, the red guards 11mao tse-tung. mao tse-tung: talks at the yenan forum on literature and art (peking: people’s publishing house, 1953), 2, 26. 12 sharon macdonald, “introduction,” in theorizing museums: representing identity and diversity in a changing world (oxford: blackwell publishers, 1996), 7. 13 ross j loomis. museum visitor evaluation: new tool for management (nashville: american association for state and local history, 1987), 160. 14 andrews, “the art of the cultural revolution,” 34. 15 ibid. 1 2 1 w i n n i e t s a n g contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.58 assembled posters and works that had been popularly seen on street walls in newspapers or journals.16 many of the paintings they gathered were collectively produced by workers belonging to certain communes.17 but the artists were not given official guidelines or strict supervision on the content and technical quality of the art apart from following the abstract concepts of mao’s talk on literature and art, and further editing of the work was minimal. considering over half of the works gathered were produced by amateurs who might not have had professional training in art, divergent styles and varying technical skills were found in the works exhibited. in terms of ideological focus, art produced by the red guards themselves largely served the interests of the communist party. the works shown in the exhibitions reflected this tendency with three ideological focuses. with mao’s revolutionary ideas so prevalent at the time, the call for revolution was a major emphasis. the woodcut print titled advancing through the storm in the footstep of chairman mao (fig. 1) made by shen yaoyi was exhibited in the show long live the great proletarian cultural revolution on may 25, 1967 in tiananmen square. 16 wang, “hongweibing meishuyundong ji dui dangdaiyishu de yingxiang,” 33. 17 ibid., 34. figure 1 shen yaoyi, advancing through the storm in the footstep of chairman mao, 1966. woodblock print. collections of wang mingxian. 1 2 2 c r e a t i n g n a t i o n a l n a r r a t i v e : t h e r e d g u a r d a r t e x h i b i t i o n s a n d t h e n a t i o n a l e x h i b i t i o n s i n t h e c h i n e s e c u l t u r a l r e v o l u t i o n 1 9 6 6 1 9 7 6 contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.58 this image was adapted from a photograph taken on the occasion of mao receiving the red guards on august 18, 1966 after mao’s official declaration of the “may sixteenth directive” on may 16, 1966 announcing the beginning of the cultural revolution.18 the photographed image was redeveloped as prints and an oil painting. in this black and red print, dressed in a typical army black suit with a red badge on his left sleeve reading “red guard,” mao dominates the space. he waves at the young red guards, who are holding the red books of mao’s revolutionary quotes. as mao looks to the left, the red guards follow, suggesting the red guards’ loyalty to mao. it is important to note how popular this print was at the time because of its nature as a woodcut. woodcuts were widely promoted by the party as a form that could be mass-produced for propaganda purposes.19 the printing house xinhua printing works reproduced this print in large numbers for distribution nationwide.20 showing this print in the red guard art exhibition reinforced the audience’s connection to this familiar image of the revolutionary leader and incited viewers’ revolutionary sentiment. 18 tan jingxia, xinzhongguo meishujingdian: 60 (wuhanshi: hubei meishu chubanshe, 2004), 154. 19 yan shanchun, “painting mao,” in art and china’s revolution, 96. 20 ibid. figure 2 paen to the red guards, 1966. clay sculpture. photograph collection of wang mingxian 1 2 3 w i n n i e t s a n g contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.58 the paean to the red guards (figs 2 and 3) is a series of sculptures illustrating the revolutionary fervor of youth in struggling against the intelligentsia. they appeared in the red guard art exhibition long live the victory of chairman mao’s revolutionary line held on october 1, 1967 in the national art museum of china. influenced by the model sculpture series rent collection courtyard made in 1965, which was an overt statement against bourgeois oppression of peasants, a group of art teachers, students, workers, and liberation soldiers produced these life-sized sculptures. rendered in socialist realist style, this series expresses the glorious moment of the proletarian struggle by depicting the red guards engaging in successive scenes of revolutionary activities to uproot the “four olds.”21 almost a hundred clay sculptures were made within twenty days. unfortunately, they collapsed after the exhibition because the clay used was not durable. but the series was vigorously praised for its affecting power in portraying the red guards’ struggles and fully reflecting the revolutionary current.22 a review in the journal new art written in 1967 described, “ . . . although [this work] was a bit coarse, its very strong revolutionary fervor received widespread praise from the revolutionary mass.”23 21 wang mingxian, “the red guards’ fine arts campaign,” in art and china’s revolution, 196. 22 tan, xinzhongguo meishujingdian: 60, 156. 23the original chinese quote reads “儘管有些粗糙，然而由於他强烈的斗爭氣息，而受到廣大革命群眾熱烈讚揚。” ibid., 60, 156. figure 3 paean to the red guards, 1966. clay sculpture. photograph collection of wang mingxian. 1 2 4 c r e a t i n g n a t i o n a l n a r r a t i v e : t h e r e d g u a r d a r t e x h i b i t i o n s a n d t h e n a t i o n a l e x h i b i t i o n s i n t h e c h i n e s e c u l t u r a l r e v o l u t i o n 1 9 6 6 1 9 7 6 contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.58 in support of mao, a goal of the red guards was to smash the counter-revolutionaries within the party. criticism of mao’s rivals therefore became a focus unique to the red guard art exhibitions. from june to july of 1966, liu shaoqi and deng xiaoping, the vice-chairman and the secretary of the party respectively, sent “work teams” to colleges to suppress students’ revolutionary activities. in response, mao wrote a big-character poster entitled bombard the headquarters—my big-character poster on august 5 and displayed it on the door of the room where the central committee met to criticize the acts of liu and deng. a big-character poster was a poster with handwritten calligraphy that served to discredit people or policies.24 this incident inspired a group of workers and peasants to create an oil painting sharing the same title as mao’s poster (fig. 4). this work was selected for the red guard art exhibition in the national art museum of china on october 1. in this painting, mao has just finished writing his big-character poster. the way he holds the poster with his clutched hand while fixing his gaze in the distance displays his insistence on denouncing the acts of his opponents. 24 andrews, “the art of the cultural revolution,” 33. figure 4 bombard the headquarters— my big-character poster (now lost), 1967. oil on canvas. 1 2 5 w i n n i e t s a n g contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.58 an essential focus of the red guard art exhibitions was to venerate mao. this theme consistently appeared in a number of important works chosen for the exhibitions. liu chunhua’s oil painting chairman mao goes to anyuan (fig. 5) was shown in another red guard art exhibition entitled mao zedong’s thought illuminates the anyuan workers’ movement in october 1967 held in the museum of revolutionary history in beijing. the work exemplifies people’s enthusiastic admiration of mao, almost to the point of deifying the chairman. liu depicts the young mao’s visit to anyuan to re-organize the coal miners in 1921, a critical moment in mao’s early political life. set in a spectacular landscape, mao is standing at the mountain top with his left hand in a clenched fist. the wind billows his robe but mao remains steadfast on the ground. these pictorial treatments fashion mao as a determined and confident young leader. the monumentality of this painting further enhances the lofty position of the image. the painting’s height of over two meters forces the viewer standing in front of it to look up to see mao’s face. highly praised by jiang qing, this work very soon became the model image of mao. the popularity of this image reached its peak when the government authorized people’s daily, the communist party’s official newspaper read by a large audience, to reproduce the painting as colored posters.25 later on, this portrait of mao was mass-produced in other popular forms of propaganda items such as badges, paper-cuts, and pocket mirrors.26 liu chunhua himself later recalled that during the cultural revolution there were around 900 million copies of this image printed.27 viewed as a politically significant iconographical representation of mao, the culture group decided to reexhibit this painting in the first national exhibition in 1972 in the national art museum of china to serve as the model painting.28 25 andrews, “the art of the cultural revolution,” 43–44. 26 ibid., 44. 27 ibid. 28 cai qing, xinzhongguo meishujingdian: 70 (wuhanshi: hubei meishu chubanshe, 2004), 5. figure 5 liu hunhua, chairman mao goes to anyuan, 1967. oil on canvas, 220 x 180 cm. china construction bank. 1 2 6 c r e a t i n g n a t i o n a l n a r r a t i v e : t h e r e d g u a r d a r t e x h i b i t i o n s a n d t h e n a t i o n a l e x h i b i t i o n s i n t h e c h i n e s e c u l t u r a l r e v o l u t i o n 1 9 6 6 1 9 7 6 contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.58 national exhibitions the national exhibitions run by the culture group of the state seemed to respond to the red guard art exhibitions in every aspect. the national exhibitions not only exercised greater control on the exhibition venue, they also shifted the ideological focus of works and carefully supervised the works’ technical quality, revising the national narrative established by the red guard art exhibitions. contrary to the red guard art exhibitions, the national exhibitions were held once every year in the same venue—the national art museum of china. the national art museum of china is at the heart of beijing, and only a seven-minute walk from the northern edge of the forbidden city. founded in 1961, the museum was one of the ten architectural projects planned at the outset of the founding of the people’s republic in 1949. in 1963, mao inscribed a chinese title board for the museum entrance, giving it the status of a national museum of art.29 since then, it became the venue hosting anniversary exhibitions in celebration of the founding of the people’s republic of china. given the national significance of this venue, the national art museum of china legitimized its exhibitors and exhibits. to viewers, the art displayed projected a pictorial narrative that signified the permitted taste and standard of the state. compared to the red guard art exhibitions that were installed in scattered spots throughout the city and the suburbs at various times within a year, the national exhibitions offered a more official and consistent curatorial image of national identity. 29 “history,” the national art museum of china, accessed november 29, 2011, http://www.namoc.org/en/about_namoc/history/index.html. figure 6 he kongde, gutian meeting, 1972. oil painting, 175 x 290 cm. 1 2 7 w i n n i e t s a n g contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.58 figure 7 shen jiawei, standing guard for our great motherland, 1974. oil on canvas, 189 x 158 cm. collection of shen jiawei. 1 2 8 c r e a t i n g n a t i o n a l n a r r a t i v e : t h e r e d g u a r d a r t e x h i b i t i o n s a n d t h e n a t i o n a l e x h i b i t i o n s i n t h e c h i n e s e c u l t u r a l r e v o l u t i o n 1 9 6 6 1 9 7 6 contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.58 like the red guard art exhibitions, the works in the national exhibitions continued to glorify mao. along with showing the oil painting chairman mao goes to anyuan (fig. 5) again in the first national exhibition in 1972 to assert mao’s supremacy, paintings such as he kongde’s gutian meeting (fig. 6) also exalted mao’s leadership. similar to liu chunhua’s painting, he kongde uses a past event in the life of mao as his subject matter, recalling the event when mao went to the gutian village in fujian to present new doctrines to the communist troops in december 1929.30 the young mao is surrounded by the rural troops who are attentively listening to his teachings. the spotlight cast on mao highlights his importance relative to the other members. his hand gestures—right hand placed on his waist and left hand in motion—tells of his authority. the symbol of soviet russia on the wall behind mao emphasizes the socialist thought advocated by mao. the portrayal of mao as an authoritative military leader in this painting reminds the audience of mao’s accomplishments and contribution to the military structure even before he became the leading figure of the cultural revolution. in the red guard art exhibitions, there was a heavy emphasis on revolutionary emotions and criticism against the party’s enemies. this tone, however, diminished in the national exhibitions, possibly because most of mao’s rivals had been purged by 1971. what the national exhibitions focused on instead was a more utopian vision of people contributing to communist society, which paralleled the party’s new direction to maintain a more stable political condition in the early 1970s. the oil painting standing guard for our great motherland (fig. 7) exhibited in the 1974 national exhibition received jiang qing’s attention and high recognition. the painter shen jiawei was a sent-down youth and an amateur painter. he began attending art classes organized in heilongjiang in 1973. his work depicts the heroic contribution of a few rusticated youth who were sent-down soldiers in heilongjiang, near the siberian border. shen depicts three young soldiers standing on a tower roof in extremely cold weather, alertly performing their duties. their stern facial expressions and poised gestures demonstrate their fearlessness in devoting their youth to guard the frontier of their motherland. the grandeur of the snowy land in the background further romanticizes the heroism of youth. tang muli’s acupuncture anesthesia (fig. 8) in the first national exhibition offered another idealized picture of communist society. tang muli was also a sent-down youth who worked in a dairy farm in the suburb of shanghai. like shen jiawei, he attended art classes for sent-down youth in his spare time after work where he discovered his gift for painting. in 1971, he was commissioned by the health department to produce a finer version of an accepted work depicting the administration of acupuncture. his large painting was a collaborative effort, which involved the decisions of six members from the department, including the artist himself, to arrive at an approved storyline. the group members made a few decisions with the artist: the surgery had to be a lung surgery, the patient had to smile so as to imply the effectiveness of acupuncture, and the nurse would not wear a mask in order to show her smile to indicate her happiness at work.31 the smile of the nurse and the patient certainly turns a stressful moment into a relaxed and pleasant one. such idealizing treatment of the content of this painting not only sought to magnify the effectiveness of the chinese medical treatment, but also to fabricate an ideal scene of medical workers making contributions to the communist life with passion. 30 cai qing, xinzhongguo meishujingdian, 70, 48. 31 andrews, painters and politics, 357–359 and tang, muli, “chongzai tianyaju: huiyi youhuazhencimazuide chuangzuojingguo,” women zheyidai: 40 hou shanghai youhuajia yishuwenxianji (shanghai: shanghai jinxiuwenzhang chubanzhe, 2011), 268–271. 1 2 9 w i n n i e t s a n g contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.58 not only were the works’ content closely inspected, the technical quality of selected works was also more strictly monitored for the national exhibitions to ensure a greater consistency in style and technique, which appeared to be a direct response to the disorganized red guard art exhibitions. jiang qing laid down the guidelines as to what criteria the work should fulfill in order to be accepted to the national exhibitions. there were two major requirements: correct political message and high technical standard.32 jiang qing also suggested the principles of three prominences—“red, smooth, luminescent”— which meant that in depicting chairman mao or the main protagonist, artists should portray him or her as red, bright, and shining.33 these guidelines were disseminated to art authorities in all provinces. the culture group then sent officials to visit provinces to look for suitable works according to the official requirements on contents and technical skills. there were also commissioned works that involved different officials’ decisions about their contents. tang muli’s painting (fig. 8) is a good example of such cases. what is intriguing is the formation of painting correction groups for different genres such as oil painting and guohua (national painting). owing to the fact that more than half of the selected works were done by amateurs that expressed appealing political messages but demonstrated poor painting skills, painting correction groups were formed to refine the 32 andrews, “the art of the cultural revolution,” 47. 33 shen, “propaganda posters and art,” 158. figure 8 tang muli, acupuncture anesthesia, 1972. oil on canvas, 165 x 229 cm. collection of the national museum of china. 1 3 0 c r e a t i n g n a t i o n a l n a r r a t i v e : t h e r e d g u a r d a r t e x h i b i t i o n s a n d t h e n a t i o n a l e x h i b i t i o n s i n t h e c h i n e s e c u l t u r a l r e v o l u t i o n 1 9 6 6 1 9 7 6 contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.58 accepted works.34 these groups consisted of professional painters from various art academies in different parts of china appointed by the culture group. as the system required, these professionals, who were from the same region as the artists whose works were chosen, were to accompany the works from the original provinces to beijing and to “correct” any problematic parts of the works if they were considered technically inadequate by the jury. if the correction was still not satisfactory, a professional from another province would give further help.35 the paintings discussed earlier had indeed been repainted by the correction groups. he kongde’s gutian meeting, (fig. 6) for example, had the right political message but the committee decided that the face of mao should be more smoothly painted, so the correction group repainted mao’s face so that it looked smoother and brighter than the others.36 shen jiawei’s standing guard for our great motherland (fig. 7) was also revised by the correction group. the group, based on the principles of three prominences, repainted the face of the two main characters standing at the front to make their skin look redder, smoother, and lighter with fiercer expressions, a decision that displeased shen.37 there was also a painting correction group for guohua in the 1973 exhibition. zhou sicong, a graduate of the central academy of fine arts, was once assigned to repaint an ink painting produced by a worker with the subject matter of an actress trying on her ballet slippers before an opera performance at the factory. since the worker did not have adequate skills to depict the subject with anatomical accuracy, zhou had to make an entirely new painting according to the original work’s composition, and the work was still displayed under the worker’s name in the national exhibition.38 this very idea of forming official correction groups to edit the colors, to determine what to include and exclude, or even to replace the work with another done by a professional hand was significant to the creation process of national narratives for the national exhibitions. the notion of editing artists’ works to make figures or story lines fit certain criteria implies the intention to create and re-construct an idealized and utopian narrative of communism to represent the nation. this high degree of editing and revision to exhibition materials was not commonly found in the red guard art exhibitions. conclusion in comparing the two groups of exhibitions that emerged during the cultural revolution, art exhibited in the red guard art exhibitions was filled with strong revolutionary spirit and criticism. in terms of artistic quality and organization of the exhibitions, the red guards, however, gave an ambitious yet disorganized effort in administering the exhibitions to present maoist revolutionary thoughts. in contrast, the state-run national exhibitions offered a more idealized national vision by portraying the social contributions of heroic youth. moreover, through stricter supervision on works’ content and quality, and a more organized system of coordinating the shows, the national exhibitions constructed a more consistent and official national identity. in my research, i have not been able to locate official documents publicly stating that the resumption of the state’s control over art exhibitions was a direct result of the chaotic condition of the red guard art exhibitions, nor do i know if such documents even exist. but considering the differences between the two groups of exhibitions 34 andrews, “the art of the cultural revolution,” 47. 35 ibid. 36 ibid., 48. 37 ibid., 54. 38 ibid., 50. 1 3 1 w i n n i e t s a n g contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.58 in terms of exhibition venue, ideological focus of works, work selection and quality editing, i believe that the national exhibitions were the state’s attempt to revise the unofficial and chaotic national narrative of the red guard art exhibitions in order to re-establish a more utopian, consistent, and official national narrative and to restore social order. it is, however, important to note that despite the different narratives of the two groups of exhibitions, what remained unchanged was the supremacy of mao, which could be testified by the display of the painting chairman mao goes to anyuan in both exhibitions. although more recent research has paid attention to specific groups of propaganda posters or paintings produced during the cultural revolution and how contemporary chinese artists have re-worked the icons of cultural revolution art, scholarship and discussion of art exhibitions held during this period are still rather limited, and many questions such as the reception of the art itself and the specific curatorial practice of each individual exhibition remain unanswered. the complicated politics during the period and the inadequacy of surviving information about the exhibitions make the study of this area both challenging and exciting. what is necessary for the study of this topic is perhaps more scholarly recognition of the exhibitions that took place during this disturbing period as significant attempts in institutionalizing and promulgating revolutionary values to the general public in large scale settings. rather than understanding them as by-products of a politically failed moment in the past, it is important to acknowledge that these exhibitions are in fact major carriers of ideas of a unique historical moment in china that still have repercussions today, and it is the hope of this project to inspire new interests and perspectives of the art and the exhibitions during this period when china was internally so explosive and yet remained so isolated from the world. 1 3 2 c r e a t i n g n a t i o n a l n a r r a t i v e : t h e r e d g u a r d a r t e x h i b i t i o n s a n d t h e n a t i o n a l e x h i b i t i o n s i n t h e c h i n e s e c u l t u r a l r e v o l u t i o n 1 9 6 6 1 9 7 6 contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.58 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-noncommercial-no derivative works 3.0 united states license. this journal is operated by the university library system of the university of pittsburgh as part of its d-scribe digital publishing program, and is co-sponsored by the university of pittsburgh press. contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture vol 5, no 1 “agency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2016.130 http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu architectural ruins and urban imaginaries carlos garaicoa’s images of havana jodi kovach abstract contemporary cuban artist carlos garaicoa juxtaposes photographic images of havana’s architectural ruins with timidly articulated drawings that trace the outlines of the dilapidated buildings in empty urbanscapes. each of these fragile drawings, often composed of de licate threads adhered to a photograph of a site after demolition, serves as a vestige of the sagging structure that the artist photographed prior to destruction. the dialogue that emerges from these photograph/drawing diptychs implies the unmooring of the radical utopian underpinnings of revolutionary ideology that persisted in the policies of cuba’s período especial (special period) of the 1990s, and suggests a more complicated narrative of cuba’s modernity, in which the ambiguous drawings—which could indicate construction plans or function as mnemonic images—represent empty promises of economic growth that must negotiate the real socio-economic crises of the present. this article proposes that garaicoa’s critique of the goals and outcomes of the special period through havana’s ruins su ggests a new articulation of the baroque expression— one that calls to mind the anti -authoritative strategies of twentieth-century neo-baroque literature and criticism. the artist historically grounds the legacy of the cuban revolution’s modernizing project in the country’s real economic decline in the post-soviet era, but he also takes this approach to representing cities beyond cuba’s borders, thereby posing broader questions about the architectural symbolism of the 21st-century city in the ideological construction of modern globalizing society. about the author dr. jodi kovach is the curator of academic programs at the gund gallery, kenyon college. her scholarship focuses on contemporary latin american art, specifically in the mexican context. she has also taught art and design history, and has contributed to multiple exhibition catalogues, including art of two germanys/cold war cultures (los angeles county museum of art, 2009), the geometry of hope: abstract art from the patricia phelps de cisneros collection (blanton museum of art at university of texas and grey gallery, nyu, 2007), reality bites: making avant-garde art in post-wall germany (mildred lane kemper museum, washington university, 2007), and inside out loud: visualizing women’s health in contemporary art (mildred lane kemper museum, washington university, 2005). http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.130 contemporary cuban artist carlos garaicoa takes the architectural ruins of havana as a point of departure for imagining new urban landscapes in cuba’s post-soviet era. for example, his photograph/drawing diptych, el sueño de algunas ciudades es llegar a convertirse en otras (the dream of some cities is to become another) (2001), shows pedestrians passing through a narrow city street in the heart of havana’s historic district, unencumbered by abandoned sewage trenches and rubble scattered through the passageway (fig. 1). they seem unconscious of the crumbling buildings that are literally collapsing around them—as if they are acquiescent to time’s degenerative process, which has not only taken form in the architecture , but has also shaped their everyday existence.1 this atrophic ethos conveyed through the photograph has a strange, insidious vitality as nature overtakes the remaining fragments of architecture, creating a mass of wooden beams that look more like malignant outgrowths of the languishing buildings than structural supports. in his photograph of the site, garaicoa highlights this corrosive dynamic by framing the image to focus on a makeshift arch of wooden scaffolding that braces the sagging structure against the building directly across from it in a desperate attempt to salvage the remains of the drooping edifice. ironically, he then pairs this photograph with a small pencil sketch of the same scene in which he tamed the ungainly architectural forms by straightening lines and smoothing surfaces, by replacing the wooden buttresses with delicate bridges connecting the buildings, and by drawing a set of stairs leading up to an entryway in place of the beams that prop up the façade. el sueño de algunas ciudades es llegar a convertirse en otras highlights the conceptual underpinnings of a series of photographs for which garaicoa used the deteriorating sectors of havana as a touchstone in his practice of representing and imagining urban architecture through the lens of the ruin. in his depictions, the improvisational construction and persistent decay of these architectural relics culminate in a clichéd baroque tragic beauty that he overwrites with provisional models and modifiable architectural plans. he pairs photographs of dilapidated architecture with drawings of imagined construction to examine the interplay between concepts of ruin and utopia, which have long figured differently in local and foreign perceptions of cuba. intertwined in tourists’ exotic imaginings of cuba’s tragic baroque beauty, and enveloping the historical narratives of oppression and dreams of modern progress that together fueled revolutionary ideology, the ruin/utopia metaphor romanticizes the link between poverty and creativity, mythologizes m etaphors of cuban resilience, and destabilizes the historicity of cuban modernity.2 in the 1990s, however, utopia—the revolution’s ideological dream of a unified, pan-latin american socialist society— 1 benjamin desc ribes the experience of space through architecture—it organizes experience, its presence is received collectively, unconsciously. the relationship is reciprocal: architecture shapes experience but also arises out of it. see walter benjamin, the arcades project, trans . howard e iland and kevin mclaughlin (c ambridge, mass. & london: belknap p ress, 1999). 2 luc ia m . suarez, “ruin memory: havana beyond the revolution,” canadian journal of latin american and caribbean studies 39 , no. 1 (2014): 38 -55. architectural ruins and urban imaginaries carlos garaicoa’s images of havana jodi kovach http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 7 4 u r b a n i m a g i n a r ie s c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.130 figure 1 c arlos garaicoa, el sueño de algunas ciudades es llegar a convertirse en otras (the dream of some cities is to become another), 2001. left, duraflex color photograph, 80 x 60 cm. right, ink and graphite on board, 100 x 70 cm. c opyright c arlos garaicoa. became the catalyst of ruin in cuba.3 the revolution, already defeated following the dissolution of soviet-led economic structure comecon, represented nothing more than the desperate effort on the part of the cuban government to continue its socialist agenda, isolating cuba from the modern globalizing community. the policies of what is known as the período especial (special period) ushered in a devastating economic crisis that cr ippled the country in the 1990s and into this millennium. the galvanizing political slogan of the special period, ¡socialismo o muerte!, in fact turned out to be a grim omen portending the ruin of the cuban economy and its society.4 during this time garaicoa made artwork that cr itically engages his city in ruins: his work appropriates the nostalgia of allegorical ruins to cr itic ize the cuban government’s blind commitment to a defunct ideology, presenting photographic snapshots of contemporary architecture in disrepute alongside hesitantly executed drawings of the same buildings. together, the images that comprise his diptychs suggest the 3 luis suárez salazar and c arlos perez, “the c uban revolution and the new latin a merican leadership: a v iew from i ts u topias,” in “c uba: interpreting a half c entury of revolution and res istance, p art 2 ,” special is sue, latin american perspectives 36 , no. 2 (march 2009): 114-127. 4 geraldine lievesley, cuban revolution: pas t, present and future perspectives (new york: p algrave macmillan, 2004), 4; 161-168. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 7 5 j o d i k o v a c h c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.130 unmooring of the radical utopian underpinnings of revolutionary ideology, and suggest a more complicated narrative of cuba’s modernity, in which tentative construction plans represent empty promises of economic growth that must negotiate the real socio-economic crises of the present. this paper explores how garaicoa intervenes in images of havana’s ruins through diptych photograph/drawings of dilapidated architecture before and after buildings were demolished. in the diptychs of urban scenes in havana discussed here, i investigate garaicoa’s method of writing over the image of a site after a building’s removal. using delicate pencil or thread, he creates ghostly mirages of the demolished structures, thus reimagining what once existed rather than envisioning something new. these timidly articulated visions of reconstruction bear the persistence of havana’s present state of poverty, decay, and disrepair, which garaicoa attributes to blind fa ith in the goals of the cuban revolution and the collapse of eastern european communism. i propose that this strategy for critiquing the goals and outcomes of the special period through havana’s ruins suggests a new articulation of the baroque expression— one that calls to mind the antiauthoritative strategies of twentieth-century neo-baroque literature and cr itic ism. i then show how the lens of havana’s failed modernity has shaped garaicoa’s perception of urban landscapes beyond cuba, particularly in a photograph/drawing diptych in which he features the destruction/imaginary reconstruction of an unremarkable site in los angeles. a comparison of these two works demonstrates how the artist historically grounds the legacy of the cuban revolution’s modernizing project in the country’s real economic decline in the post-soviet era, but also poses broader questions about the architectural symbolism of the 21st-century city in the ideological construction of modern globalizing society.5 garaicoa’s interpretations of ruins share affinities with the work of other contemporary international artists like cyprien gaillard and tacita dean, for example, who represent eastern european modernist architecture in its present dilapidated state to reveal the failure of its ideological underpinnings and to provoke consideration of what these ruins convey about the changes taking place in post-communist european societies.6 garaicoa’s ruins likewise criticize the fallacies of the revolution and its promise of improving cuban society , but his artwork also ironically reconstructs his downtrodden city. this seemingly paradox ical gesture is underscored by a sentiment of ambivalence about the future that has distinguished the work of his contemporaries in cuba since the early 1990s. specif ica lly in garaicoa’s work, it is driven by the concern that development will not happen unless plans for social and economic progress are grounded in cuba’s material reality.7 5 a nthony d. king, writing the global city: globalisation, pos tcolonialism and the urban (new york: routledge, 2016), 75 -79. 6 see francesca p icchi, “modern ruins: intervista con c yprien gaillard/interview with c yprien gaillard,” domus 926 (june 2009), 70 -73; p . a rdenne, “la terre es t ronde – nouvelle narration,” art press 238 (sept. 1998): 72-73; and susan stewart, “tac ita dean,” in the open studio: essays on art and aes thetics (c hicago: university of c hicago p ress, 2005). 7 enwezor explains how contemporary artists working in c uba, while not conforming to a spec ific s tyle or conceptual practice, subvert the rhetoric of the state without completely assimilating to contemporary “western” art. see o kwui enwezor, “between a pparatus and subjectivity: c arlos garaicoa’s p ost-utopian a rchitecture,” in carlos garaicoa: overlapping, ed. enrique juncosa (dublin, i reland: i rish museum of modern a rt, 2010), 16-21. see also abelardo mena chicuri, cuba avant-garde: contemporary cuban art from the farber collection (gainesville: university of florida, 2007), 21 -23. this exhibition suggested that the juxtapos ition of utopia with dys topian realities and ironic humor often found in contemporary c uban art suggests a potential for new beginnings in the troubled pos t-communist era. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 7 6 u r b a n i m a g i n a r ie s c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.130 growing up in havana during the cold war, garaicoa saw the stagnancy of modernization in cuba as a unique moment for critical reflection on the myth of progress that undergirds the country’s modernist plans for societal reconstruction. garaicoa explained: after the fall of european socialism, many cuban construction and architectonic projects were halted or abandoned. in havana, as well as in other cuban cities, idyllic and nostalgic ruins from the colonial and first republic periods coexist with the ruin of a frustrated political and social project. unfinished buildings abound, neglected and in a sort of momentary oblivion. the encounter with these buildings produces a strange sensation; the issue is not the ruin of a luminous past but a present of incapacity. we face a never-consummated architecture, impoverished in its lack of conclusion, where ruins are proclaimed before they even get to exist. i call these the ruins of the future.8 in this statement, garaicoa describes havana’s ruins as the materia l embodiment of cuba’s inability to fully realize its socialist goals for implementing modernizing processes. he explained that as a child he found that the baroque aura of old havana’s ruins, the palpable and material aesthetic of its decay, emanated a gritty authenticity that disclosed real existing conditions under communism: “it was a very intense part of the city, a very poor area, dangerous in some places, but rich in its architecture and people…we would go walk ing in the streets competing to discover places none of us had ever noticed before.” 9 garaicoa’s depictions of old havana’s ruins do not aestheticize poverty and human suffering, nor do his images convey an exotic escape from modern life or express nostalgia for the greatness of a past era. in his work, decay disrupts the utopian imaginings of a society beyond the here and now; it is material, tangible, and present. furthermore, the city is a metaphor for society’s potential and, by contrast, the ruin is a device garaicoa uses to represent the passage of modern time as fragmented and non-linear. this depiction of modern temporality through havana’s deteriorating urban landscape undermines the future-gazing of utopian imaginings. architectural ruins hold particular significance in urban imaginaries, both historical and modern. as a visual form, the ruin expresses the seventeenth-century baroque fascination with decay and destruction. using it to give form to his modernist conception of temporality, walter benjamin explained that the ruin in baroque allegorical expressions concretizes the fragmentary movement of time and gives a layered picture of history.10 the ruin complicates notions of historical time as linear and evolutionary and for this reason is used in postmodern 8 c arlos garaicoa in “c arlos garaicoa by holly block,” bomb 82 (winter 2003), http://bombmagazine.org/article/2523/carlos-garaicoa 9 c arlos garaicoa quoted in marc spiegler, “c ity lights,” in trans(ient) city (barcelona: bom publishers, 2008), 204. 10 the ruin represents the allegorical structure, which benjamin contrasts against the “symbol,” which embodies “momentary totality,” as it is “self-contained, concentrated, s teadfastly remaining itself.” benjamin’s thes is on baroque allegory c riticized affirmative tendencies in the tradition of idealist philosophy and laid the groundwork for what evolved into his modernist sensibility: the allegorical perspective, or a way of desc ribing nature through the fragment as opposed to a unified whole. for benjamin allegory is dialectical, “a successively progressing, dramatic and mobile, dynamic representation of ideas which has acquired the very fluidity of time.” see walter benjamin, the origin of german tragic drama, trans . john o sborne (frankfurt am main: suhrkamp verlag, 1963), 165. for benjamin’s ideas on his torical materialism, see also “theses on the philosophy of h is tory,” i lluminations , 262-263. a s benjamin suggests, “[a] his torical materialist approaches a his torical subject only where he encounters it as a monad. in this s tructure he recognizes the s ign of a messianic cessation of happening, or, put differently, a revolutionary chance in the fight for the oppressed pas t.” http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 7 7 j o d i k o v a c h c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.130 art to question the teleology of modernism. it figured in robert smithson’s critique of modernism in the 1960s and seventies when he depicted the architecture of suburban new jersey as “ruins in reverse,” or monuments to banality that rise, rather than fa ll into ruin, thus making visual the condition of entropy that smithson believed character ized modern society.11 in postmodern expressions, the ruin is often viewed as the antithesis of utopia; it emphasizes the inescapability of a present state of dystopia with the same intensity that utopia reaches toward an unattainably perfect future. while utopia is pristine, intangible, and untouched by time, the ruin is concrete, worldly, and fragmented by time’s ravages.12 in the years between 1995 and 2004, garaicoa documented sites in havana before and after abandoned or neglected architecture was torn down. from these he created a series of untitled diptychs, for which he then pinned red, green, or blue thread on the photographs taken after the demolition, outlining the razed buildings on the sites where they once stood. for example, sin título (hotel san carlos) (untitled [san carlos hotel]) (1995-2004) includes two black-and-white photographs of the same site: a vacant and deteriorating seven -story building (fig. 2). the photograph on the right depicts the timeworn, hollowed-out encasement that was once the hotel. in the adjacent photo of the same site taken after the destruction, garaicoa used red and blue thread to outline the geometric shapes of the slender windows, the superimposed pilasters ornamented with small scrolled capita ls, and the carvings along some of the windowsills, all of which crumble and seem to fade into the surface of the façade. both photographs were taken from the ground looking up, emphasizing the massiveness and verticality of the looming structure in spite of its state of decay. in the earlier photograph, the building hovers above this vantage point in the center of the composition and seems to force the smaller adjoining buildings to the edges of the frame. at the same time garaicoa’s oblique perspective emphasizes the building’s vertica l thrust, delineated by the narrow elongated windows and the lines of superimposed pediments that extend the entire length of the building, which nearly reaches the top of the frame. in contrast to this portrayed grandeur, the building’s dark empty windows ev idence its somber, haunting vacancy. meanwhile a stray electrical wire extends from a streetlight and dramatically intersects the form of the hotel at a right angle, but this thin, tenuous line appears as useless and insignificant as the abandoned building in this completely uninhabited space. cuba’s vernacular architecture, shown by garaicoa in a state of disrepute, also expresses creative adaptation and inspires garaicoa’s ironic visions of reconstruction. 13 the accumulation of multifarious styles, pulled together from european sources and modified for local purposes, is apparent in his diptych sin título (hotel san carlos). here, garaicoa animates this dynamic, showing havana’s architecture simultaneously decaying and 11 jennifer l. roberts , “smithson and stephens in yucután,” in mirror-travels : robert smithson and his tory (new haven & london: yale university p ress, 2004), 110-112. see also robert smithson, “inc idents of m irror-travel in the yucután [1969],” in robert smithson: the collected writings , ed. jack flam (berkeley: university of c alifornia p ress, 1996), 119-133. 12 rahul mehrotra, “simultaneous modernity: negotiations and res istances in u rban india,” in ruins of modernity, ed. julia hell and a ndreas schönle (durham, n.c .: duke university press, 2010), 244-249. see also benjamin, the origin of german tragic drama, 66: “for as an antithes is to the his torical ideal of res toration it is haunted by the idea of catas trophe.” 13 enwezor comments that, “[garaicoa’s ] work is inves ted in the investigation of the different architectural discourses of colonial, modern, and soc ialist c ity-making practices. this analysis subtends the late baroque buildings and enormous squares of spanish colonial urban planning to the modernist experience of twentieth-century architecture and the centralized planning that represents the socialist inheritance of c uba’s pos t-revolutionary period.” see enwezor, 18 . http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 7 8 u r b a n i m a g i n a r ie s c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.130 regenerating in a relentless cycle of ruin, particularly by confounding the order in which the viewer reads the process (did the plans for the building emerge before or after the blighted structure?). by portraying sites in old havana in this way, he reflects more broadly on the growth of cuban vernacular architecture as the product of simultaneous additive and fragmenting processes that reproduce miscellaneous architectural fragments of the urban setting.14 figure 2 c arlos garaicoa, sin título (hotel san carlos ) [untitled (san carlos hotel)], 1995-2004. diptych. p hotographs and drawing with thread. 123 x 100 cm each. c opyright c arlos garaicoa. like many contemporary cuban artists who emerged on the international art scene in the 1990s, garaicoa critiques his country’s communist revolutionary ideology through a specifically cuban artistic voice that he draws from his country’s rich “unoffic ial” aesthetic history, which emerges from havana’s architectural landscape.15 baroque influences have shaped this aesthetic history from the colonial period to the present day. modernist and postmodernist appropriations of baroque aesthetics informed an insurgent modernist perspective in cuba the fifties, sixties, and seventies through neo-baroque literature and critical theory, while more recent iterations—in the work of garaicoa, for example—enable 14 rachel c arley, cuba: 400 years of architectural heritage (new york: whitney library of des ign, 1997). 15 kerry o liver-smith, “globalization and the v anguard,” in cuba avant-garde: contemporary cuban art from the farber collection (gainesville: samuel p. harn museum of a rt, university of florida), 21-23. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 7 9 j o d i k o v a c h c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.130 the subversive critique of the official culture and politics of cuba. 16 neo-baroque literary theory composed in these decades by cuban writers and scholars josé lezama lima (191076), alejo carpentier (1904-80), and severo sarduy (1936-93) spearheaded notions of the new world baroque as evidence of a period of artistic “invigoration” in cuba, and of the origins of peculiarly latin american and cuban modernist sensibilities. as scholar of spanish literature césar augusto salgado has demonstrated, the positive formulation of the new world baroque as a regeneration of the european aesthetic model was augmented by neo baroque theorists in considering how this mutation functioned as a form of resistance within the oppressive regimes of colonialism.17 in the 1950s, lezama lima wrote about the broader significance of the new world baroque and its revival to a pan-latin american modernism. according to lezama lima, baroque expressions created in latin america represented a form of resistance—a counterconquest culture that signaled the onset of a new modern sensibility. in other words, the new world baroque was a collection of cultures operating outside of tradition, and which was concerned with the secular and the present, rather than with the theatrical styles and mystical content that characterize spanish baroque art. the new world baroque aesthetics of rupture that lezama lima identified could then be used as a springboard for formulating a peculiarly latin american modernist expression. according to lezama lima in his essay “la curiosidad barroca,” the “barroco americano” is underscored by plutonismo, which he defined as an eruption of a deep-seated, subterranean creative impulse within an assimilated european style. the metaphor of a volcanic eruption, evoked to describe the productive, as opposed to the destructive, power of the baroque, connotes a resurgence of hidden grotesque impulses that break apart a unified, closed, balanced aesthetic and give way to open and inclusive forms.18 alejo carpentier saw the radical aesthetic qualities of the cuban baroque in temporal terms: he discovered the modern baroque expression in the rhythms of new world 16 o n this topic , monika kaup argues for a transhistorical and transnational conception of the baroque, sugges ting that “we need to replace the notion of a s ingle baroque—usually identified with the european baroque of the c ounter-reformation and absolutism, masterfully analyzed in josé antonio maravall’s culture of the baroque—with that of multiple baroques.” see kaup, “‘the future is entirely fabulous’: the baroque genealogy of latin a merica’s modernity,” in “globalism on the move,” ed. marshall brown, spec ial is sue, mlq 68 , no. 2 (june 2007): 233. 17 c esar augusto salgado, “hybridity in new world baroque theory,” in “theorizing the hybrid,” eds . deborah a . kapchan and p auline turner strong, special issue, the journal of american folklore 112, no. 445 (summer, 1999): 316-331. salgado notes that although new world baroque “often s tands as a formula for a utopian ethnic integration, the neobaroque theoris t also reminds us that this ‘pos itive’ mongrelization of european high s tyles resulted from the painful and incongruous overlapping of foreign and native morphologies in conflict.” 18 josé lezama lima, “la c uriosidad barroca,” en la expres ion americana (santiago de c hile: talleres de editorial universitaria, s. a ., 1969), 34 . lezama lima portrayed the baroque era as the explosive origination of modern latin a merican culture, having s tated that, “…we can say that among us the baroque was an art of counter-conquest.” he described the baroque expression as “el fuego originario,” or the c reative force that dismantled decadent european traditions and opened art to c reative input from many different cultural backgrounds. lezama lima ’s essay la curios idad barroca, which he presented at the national institute at havana in january 1957 and published in his book of essays entitled la expres ión americana that same year, desc ribes the impac t of baroque culture on latin american modernism. h is theses on neo-baroque aesthetics explore how rupture within an ass imilated european artistic language was expressed through heteroglossic forms and poverty, means that opened onto new opportunities for artis tic invention. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 8 0 u r b a n i m a g i n a r ie s c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.130 improvisational forms like jazz. he believed that jazz gave form to variegated temporalities, which undercut the universal concept of time that buttressed power relations between the old and new worlds. as scholar monica kaup has discussed, carpentier focused on a specifically cuban baroque that exemplified the dynamic processes observed by lezama lima in his theorizing of a broader, new world baroque.19 carpentier’s version of an improvised, adaptive art form created by colonized subjects figures in havana’s unwie ldy urbanscape in his 1964 text “la ciudad de las columnas” (“city of columns”), in which he vividly describes an unsystematic, profuse accumulation of eclectic columns that line the streets of the city.20 the spontaneous character of old havana’s vernacular architecture that intrigued carpentier also captivates garaicoa. the artist’s decision to include in the compositions of both photographs for sin título (hotel san carlos), the mudéjar-style façade of the building next to the hotel points to the conspicuous presence of moorish influences in havana’s colonial architecture which contributed to the unwieldy eclecticism of the c uban baroque style. complete with trefoil window arches and elaborate geometric-patterned carvings, this building, juxtaposed with the less-embellished façade of the hotel, the street light, and the layers of sagging structures with arched porticos and awnings, hints at the multifariousness of cuban vernacular architecture that resonates in the diverse architectural styles brought together in havana’s contemporary urban landscape. in photographs such as these, garaicoa reveals havana’s architectural vista as the product of an erratic outgrowth of disparate stylistic fragments that have been modified, adapted, and cobbled together. in his images of architecture, baroque elements, as popular expressions of the cuban people, reside within and beneath the ostentatious, yet crumbling, symbols of the colonial and communist authorities.21 neo-baroque theorists qualified cuban baroque forms as the subversive, creative means for breaking through the voice of authority to express multiple, marginalized perspectives. they developed a concept of the baroque expression in new world contexts to encompass new models of temporality and spatiality in order to represent modern experience in frameworks pertinent to everyday, vernacular experience. severo sarduy expanded on these notions in the 1970s when he conceived the neo-baroque modality as a de-centering force in art and literature that served to critique modernist spatial organizations based on unity and centrality.22 in sarduy’s work, the neo-baroque expression is a form of postmodern intertextuality that cuts through unitary languages. inspired by what he identified in new world baroque art as modalities of cultural assimilation, transformation, and demystification, 19 monika kaup, “‘¡ v aya p apaya!’: c uban baroque and v isual culture in a lejo c arpentier, ricardo porro, and ramón a lejandro,” pmla 124, no. 1 (jan. 2009):156-171. 20 see a lejo c arpentier, “la c iudad de las columnas,” in tientos y diferencias y otro ensayos (barcelona: p laza, [1964] 1987), 40 -48. see also kaup, “‘¡ v aya p apaya!,’” 159. 21 “however, he does not view the phenomenon of abandonment of the old and the enthus iasm provoked by the new soc ialist form as separate entities…[he analyzes] how the architecture of the pas t and that of the present are both symbols of the imagination of other empire-builders at the expense of the c uban people.” enwezor, 18 . 22 severo sarduy, barroco (buenos a ires: sudamericana, c . 1974). see also sarduy “dispersión (falsas notas/homenaje a lezama lima),” and “sobre góngora: la metáfora al cuadrado,” in escrito sobre un cuerpo:ensayos de critica (buenos a ires: sudamericana, 1969). sarduy draws influence from hispanic baroque literature and neo-baroque tendencies in latin a merican pos t-boom literature. sarduy’s novels are labeled pos tmodernist, while his c ritical writings fit into discussions on pos tstructuralism. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 8 1 j o d i k o v a c h c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.130 sarduy sought to destabilize authoritative meaning in literature. this, in theory, could open a space for writers and readers to dissent from the patriarchal tone that the cuban revolution was taking on in the seventies.23 garaicoa taps into the insurgent strategies of the neo-baroque, but moves beyond these authors’ de-colonizing objectives.24 his ruin-gazing complicates a stereotypically baroque fascination with decay and destruction, along with a fragmented version of history and temporality, and with this he confronts cuba’s incapacity to realize its revolutionary goals for social progress by incorporating this history, through images of the ruination of its urban landscape, into depictions of cuba’s current reality. in this way he eclipses the utopian visions of the cuban revolution by refusing to look directly to the future and leave his country’s current state of socio-economic crisis behind. with the image of the ruin, as walter benjamin explained, “history merges into the setting…history is scattered like seeds over the ground.”25 more precisely, the thread drawings garaicoa adds overtop the photographs frame a history lying in rubble.26 the building’s destruction is transformed in his work—it becomes the impetus to rebuild. still, the architectural plans merely repeat the form of the pre existing structure, and thereby serve as a bleak reminder of this part of the c ity that was destroyed. garaicoa’s architectural imaginaries focus on an absence that, for him, provides a possible framework for invention—yet one that must account for previous attempts at modernization and the problematic outcomes.27 garaicoa explained that the juxtaposition of ruin/utopia in his art should “be understood not as a dream for the future but rather as an immediate action on reality—a lucid and conscious gesture concerning the collapsed present and the urban and po litical fabric of contemporary society.”28 his work shifts between depictions of presence and absence, decay and regeneration, making the concepts of ruin and utopia a provocative pair: because they are intertwined, the images of decay and the architectural plans for the future always beg for more description, complicating notions of real and imaginary, as well as how the city ex ists in the past, present, and future. as a result, ruin/utopia becomes a format for thinking of the city historically, and for inspiring the imagination to explore ways of changing what exists — not for envisioning what lies beyond it. garaicoa’s imaginary of ruins therefore opens onto a revolutionary way of thinking about the present historically; in other words, of thinking of the present as part of a continuum of social, political, and cultural change. his historical perspective reflects on cuba’s position in 23 c arlos garaicoa quoted in inge ruigrok “c uba: c ultural p olicy of non-western c ountries,” the p ower of c ulture, june 2006, http://www.krachtvancultuur.nl/en/policy/cuba.html. 24 severo sarduy and roberto gonzález echevarría, “interview: severo sarduy,” trans . jane e . french, diacritics 2 , no. 2 (summer 1972), 41 -45. 25 benjamin, the origin of german tragic drama, 92 . 26 p revious exhibitions of garaicoa’s work have addressed the inc ipient utopian dimensions of his representations of havana’s visual decline, in which are also embedded dreams of trans forma tion and redemption. see carlos garaicoa: overlapping (dublin: i rish museum of modern a rt, 2010); carlos garaicoa: capablanca’s real pass ion (p rato: gli o ri, 2005); and carlos garaicoa: la ruina la utopia (bronx museum of a rt bogota: biblioteca luis ángel a rango casa de moneda, 2000). 27 a ndreas huyssen, “a uthentic ruins: p roducts of modernity,” in ruins of modernity, 17-28. huyssen discusses “absence” as understood by giovanni battista piranesi, theodor a dorno, and a lbert speer. 28 garaicoa in “c arlos garaicoa by holly block.” http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 8 2 u r b a n i m a g i n a r ie s c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.130 the postmodern world: cuba is slowly emerging from what was formerly known as the third world—the underdeveloped regions of the world that today produce political voices and cultural expressions that stand outside of, and contradict, what are often perceived as the homogenizing processes of globalization. literary critic and marxist political theorist fredric jameson, in considering the continued discrepancies of uneven development around the world, proposed that late capitalism could only come into being fully with the disappearance of the third world. within his theory, however, the third world also prov ides a histor ica l lens, or a chance to gain a historical foothold in the drive for attaining global modernization. without this foothold we lose the capability to understand the conditions that have created real economic disparities, and therefore are unable to bring about susta inable social and economic development on a global scale.29 garaicoa provides this historical lens when he focuses on isolated areas of major cities in the united states that remind him of havana’s decay. in fact, he admits he is incapable of seeing the world through any lens other than that of his lived experience in havana. 30 for example, a work he created similar to sin título (hotel san carlos), entitled sin título, l.a. (untitled, l.a.) from 2004 is a diptych of a condemned office building in los angeles pictured before and after its demolition (fig. 3). figure 3 c arlos garaicoa, sin título, l.a. [untitled, l.a.], 2004. diptych. p hotographs and drawing with thread, mounted and laminated on black gator board. 125 x 175 cm each. c opyright carlos garaicoa. in reference to his earlier photographs of the cuban hotel, garaicoa shot the black-andwhite photographs for this diptych from a low vantage point and filled the frame with, f irst, the structure, and in the second image, nearly the exact same s ite where it once stood. also, he once again included signs of waning urban life: vacant lots, debris like ly le ft from other demolition projects, and street lamps and telephone poles, anchoring electr ical wires that indiscriminately traverse the space around the office building. both photos show the site to be virtually uninhabited, with the exception of a few cars passing at the lower edge of the frame. similar to garaicoa’s representation of the san carlos hotel, the lyon building shown 29 for more on this topic , see santiago c olás, “the third world in jameson’s pos tmodernism or the cultural logic of late capitalism,” in “third world and p os t-colonial issues,” special issue, social text, no. 31/32 (1992): 258-270. 30 see lorenzo fus i, “a c onversation with c arlos garaicoa,” in carlos garaicoa: capablanca’s real pass ion (p rato, i taly: gli ori, 2005), 106. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 8 3 j o d i k o v a c h c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.130 here was ultimately demolished, and the artist resurrects its image through a thread drawing. furthermore, by exhibiting the two photographs of the l.a. site s ide-by-side, he makes it appear as if this building—and all of the stories contained within it—continues to haunt the city block on which it once stood. garaicoa does not forsake the disparities of modernity and inequities of globalization when using the same visual and conceptual strategies to represent havana and los angeles in ruin/reconstruction.31 the ideological underpinnings of the ruinous site in l.a., however, are more ambiguous than those in his havana diptych, and the convolution of history/present/future is more disorienting. the viewer, therefore, must interpret this work in dialogue with the artist’s representations of sites in havana. when comparing the two sets, the emptiness of these sites becomes apparent: closely framed and largely decontextualized from surroundings, and with little indication of human presence, garaicoa directs our attention to the symbolic relationships among the urban architecture, in spite of their different social, political, and economic histories. garaicoa employs the same visual vocabulary for both diptychs, presenting both structures in a perpetual cycle of ruin/re imagination, apparently mirroring cuba’s decline in his response to l.a.’s urban landscape. with this in mind, could these diptychs serve to challenge ideological assumptions about capitalist progress and communist stagnancy that bolstered the u.s. assertion of power and authority during the cold war and have continued, until very recently, to help justify the u.s. embargo on cuba? perhaps garaicoa’s representation of the l.a. ruins therefore suggests an effort to expose and undermine what art historian okwui enwezor describes as the “opposed logics of contemporaneity,” or in other words, the illusion of capitalism’s presumed benefits in contrast to the deficiencies of cuban communism.32according to these images, the legacy of the cold war, underpinned by conflicting myths of progress, afflicts both countr ies—two countries that have only recently begun to normalize diplomatic relations.33 garaicoa reflects upon the ruins of his city as a starting point for envisioning societal renewal. his diptychs are not entirely dystopian; rather, in his work ruin is set against utopia, presence against absence, in ways that offer a layered conception of history. the concept of the ruin on which he expounds appropriates specifically baroque notions about time as a layered process, thus giving history an involuted rather than evolutionary movement. this historical perspective guides viewers to think critically about the economic, 31to nuance this relationship between the local and global, i am extrapolating from ernesto laclau, “universalism, p articularism, and the q uestion of identity,” october vol. 61 (summer 1992): 89. a s laclau says , “[t]he universal emerges out of the particular not as some principle underlying and explaining it, but as an incomplete horizon suturing a dis located particular identity…the universal is the symbol of a miss ing fullness , and the particular exists only in the contradictory movement of asserting a differential identity and s imultaneously canceling it through its subsumption into a nondifferential medium.” 32 enwezor, 16 . 33 see david hart, ins ide/outs ide: contemporary cuban art (wins ton-salem, nc : c harlotte and philip hanes a rt gallery, wake forest university, 2003). see also william m. leogrande and julie m . thomas, “c uba’s q uest for economic independence,” journal of latin american studies 34 , no. 2 (may 2002): 325363. c uba’s alterity to global power operations is unique, particularly within the varied geography of latin a merican economic activity. o ver the course of the pas t two and a half decades, global economic activity has trans formed power s truc tures and polarized national economies within latin america, causing, in recent years, for example, são p aulo to emerge as major center of global finance while countries such as bolivia and v enezuela continue to reinforce national boundaries and identities to protect their economies from liberalization. see also h. m ichael e risman and john m . kirk, ed., redefining cuban foreign policy: the impact of the “special period” (gainesville: university press of florida, 2006). http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 8 4 u r b a n i m a g i n a r ie s c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.130 social, and ideological circumstances that put societies in ruin. rather than simply forgetting the past to imagine utopias of the future, garaicoa cast architectural plans and designs for urban living through the ruins of havana to ground his visions for the city’s regeneration in a concrete history and present socio-economic reality. moreover, the fact that his sketches are easily modified, thus open to creative interpretation, may also suggest the potential to move beyond both the state of ruin and empty utopian promises. new articles in this journal are licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 united states license. this journal is operated by the university library system of the university of p ittsburgh as part of its d-scribe digital p ublishing p rogram, and is co-sponsored by the university of p ittsburgh press. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/ http://www.pitt.edu/ http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/ http://www.upress.pitt.edu/upressindex.aspx http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4. greenwold vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.56 http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu “the great palace of american civilization” allen eaton’s arts and crafts of the homelands, 1919-1932 diana greenwold abstract allen eaton’s arts and crafts of the homelands exhibition premiered in buffalo, new york in 1919, where it drew record crowds to the albright gallery. iterations of the display soon opened in albany, rochester, and then in several other cities across the united states. arts and crafts of the homelands showcased european craftwork of local immigrant groups to celebrate a model of early twentieth-century american pluralism. this article examines the aims of exhibit organizers, immigrant presenters, and native-born visitors to these exhibitions. the structure of the displays—which highlighted domestic tableaux of old-world objects—obfuscated the contemporary contributions of immigrant groups to american cultural and economic forums. i argue, however, that local groups took advantage of the exhibit’s performance spaces to assert their active presence in american public life. about the author diana greenwold is a ph.d. candidate in the history of art at the university of california, berkeley. she is currently a douglass fellow at the metropolitan museum of art and is at work on her dissertation, “crafting new citizens: immigrant craft workshops in american settlement houses: 1884-1945.” contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.56 at the 1919 arts and crafts of the homelands exhibition in buffalo, new york, over 40,000 visitors admired this swedish-made chest (fig. 1). its image also featured prominently in organizer allen eaton’s 1932 publication, immigrant gifts to american life, which chronicled the displays at buffalo and the exhibit’s subsequent iterations in rochester, albany, and across the united states.1 an examination of the chest’s design elements quickly reveals what eaton found so compelling. decorated with symmetrically spaced sprigs of painted white flowers, the wooden trunk exudes old-country charm. metal supports that secure the box create decoratively undulating bands crossing the chest’s front and top surfaces. within these bands, one can make out the excised silhouette of a pair of houses, an evocation of the domestic space in which such a trunk and its contents would have resided. the chest carries the markings of its owners in the looping white script painted on its face with the dates 1739 and 1805 and the initials ac, nd, and ih each signaling the passing down of this heirloom and its contents from one generation to the next. its exhibition in buffalo conjured the vast distances its owners travelled from europe to the united states and registered the american presence of the family whose names and histories adorn its surface. this swedish example is merely one of hundreds of objects from the homes of european immigrants that populated buffalo’s stately albright gallery for two weeks between october 22 and november 3, 1919, when exhibits sprawled across six galleries and the museum’s atrium, displaying objects from twenty-two countries.2 with funds from the american federation of arts, the university of the state of new york, the buffalo fine arts academy, the buffalo mayor and city council, local organizations, and individual citizens, the display in buffalo transformed a beaux-arts palace of fine arts into a celebration of america’s shared european heritage.3 this article examines the exhibition’s displays and the expressed and implicit messages they conveyed to native-born and immigrant visitors. using eaton’s written account of the exhibitions, immigrant gifts to american life, i argue that arts and crafts of the homelands enacted a progressive model of american multiculturalism. in some respects, however, 1 versions of the exhibition as well as displays inspired by eaton’s model include the 1921 america’s making exposition at the new york city armory as well as iterations of the homelands’ displays in trenton, cincinnati, cleveland, and boston. allen eaton, immigrant gifts to american life: some experiments in appreciation of the contributions of our foreign born citizens to american culture (new york: the russell sage foundation, 1932). 2 according to the albright knox gallery’s exhibition checklist, the 1919 displays included objects labeled as amish, french, italian, irish, russian, polish, dutch, scotch, english, danish, swedish, norwegian, finnish, hungarian, jugo slav, cecho slovak, armenian, adazian and persian, roumanian, greek, bulgarian, ukranian, swiss, belgian, indian, and alsace lorraine (spelling appears here as it is listed in the original document). homeland arts object list, 1919, courtesy of the g. robert strauss, jr. memorial library and archives, albright-knox art gallery. 3although the object list includes some examples from outside europe—such as a single indian object and materials from persia and armenia—the majority of items on display came from european communities. “exhibition of the arts and crafts of the homelands exhibition at the albright art gallery,” academy notes: january-july, 1920 (buffalo, ny: the buffalo fine arts academy, 1920), 18. “the great palace of american civilization” allen eaton’s arts and crafts of the homelands, 1919-1932 diana greenwold 1 0 0 “ t h e g r e a t p a l a c e o f a m e r i c a n c i v i l i z a t i o n ” contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.56 homelands’ exhibition strategies cordoned immigrants off from mainstream american commercial and popular culture. while the strictures of eaton’s model associated immigrants with old-world europe, local communities nonetheless found ways to transcend the display’s boundaries and manipulate its messages. homelands provided immigrants with opportunities to assert their relevance to contemporary american life, educate their children about their european heritage, and inscribe the boundaries of outsider access to particular community knowledge. part handicraft display, part domestic tableau, and part community performance space, arts and crafts of the homelands drew record crowds of immigrant communities and nativeborn americans alike.4 versions of the original buffalo exhibit opened across the united states between 1919 and 1932 with each iteration featuring the same basic structure: 4 according to the academy notes, “the attendance for the exhibition of the arts and crafts of the homelands, held at the albright art gallery october 22nd to november 4th, was 42,951. this was the largest attendance on record for the gallery during any two consecutive weeks since it was dedicated.” “exhibition of the arts and crafts,” 18. figure 1 “swedish immigrant’s trunk at buffalo and albany,” in allen h. eaton, immigrant gifts to american life. © 1932 russell sage foundation, 112 east 64th street, new york, ny 10065. reprinted with permission. reprinting, reposting, or republishing is prohibited without written consent from the russell sage foundation. 1 0 1 d i a n a g r e e n w o l d contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.56 booths devoted to each participating ethnic community and a large performance and gathering space. in the buffalo, rochester, and albany exhibits, visitors entered through a small showcase of objects gleaned from participating groups and then proceeded to individual displays arranged regionally where costumed interpreters helped guide visitors through arranged scenes. during the day, representatives from local communities demonstrated weaving, carving, or sewing techniques, and in the evenings, participants performed the dances, theater, and music of their native countries. allen hendershott eaton was the primary promoter of the exhibition. born in union, oregon in 1878, eaton dedicated his life to exhibitions and publications that celebrated the work of folk craft and artists from marginalized communities. eaton was inspired by arts and crafts principles, namely, the valuation of hand craftsmanship as an antidote to the industrialization and standardization of commercially produced objects.5 according to david b. van dommelen, the young eaton first recognized the plight of immigrant americans during his work with the emergency fleet corporation of the united states shipping board, through which he came to know hundreds of newly-arrived european workers. sympathizing with the difficulties of adjusting to life in new surroundings, eaton vowed that, “if i ever could find any way to do so, i would try to do something to help interpret these immigrants to our native born citizens, and reciprocally our native born citizens to them.”6 he began his work on homelands as field secretary for the american federation of arts. in 1920, eaton joined the russell sage foundation, where he spent the rest of his career organizing exhibitions and crafts displays and publishing surveys of regional craftwork, such as handicrafts of the southern highlands and handicrafts of new england.7 eaton’s lifelong interest in reinvigorating hand artistry and addressing the needs of populations outside mainstream american culture converged early in his career in the conception and execution of homelands. collective identity in collected objects in immigrant gifts to american life, eaton stated that the purpose of the displays was to encourage americanization efforts among immigrant communities by celebrating their inclusion in american life and fostering their unique artistic heritages.8 for participating ethnic communities, homelands visibly enacted what jewish activist israel friedlander described as “the great palace of american civilization.” within this metaphorical structure, friedlander proposed that ethnic communities might each, “occupy our own corner, which we 5 a useful overview of eaton’s career can be found at “allen eaton,” craft revival: shaping western north carolina past and present, accessed may 1, 2013, http://www.wcu.edu/library/digitalcollections/craftrevival/people/alleneaton.html 6 david b. van dommelen, allen h. eaton, dean of american crafts (pittsburgh: local history co., 2004), 58. for more on connections between the american arts and crafts movement, immigrant assimilation, and american settlement houses, see eileen boris’s art and labor: ruskin, morris, and the craftsman ideal in america (philadelphia: temple university press, 1985), 51. 7 allen eaton, handicrafts of the southern highlands (new york: the russell sage foundation, 1937). allen eaton, handicrafts of new england (new york: harper and brothers, 1949). the russell sage foundation, founded in 1907 by margaret olivia sage, was committed to “the improvement of social and living conditions in the united states of america.” the foundation was an early leader in promoting american social work and sponsored the influential 1907 pittsburgh survey, the first study to systematically explore working-class life in a large american city. 100 years of social science research: the russell sage foundation, 1907-2007 (new york: the russell sage foundation, 2007), 3. 8 eaton, immigrant gifts, 21. 1 0 2 “ t h e g r e a t p a l a c e o f a m e r i c a n c i v i l i z a t i o n ” contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.56 will decorate and beautify to the best of our tastes and ability to make it not only a center of attraction for the members of our family, but also an object of admiration for all the dwellers of the palace.”9 based on such early twentieth-century models of multiculturalism, eaton aimed to “strike a new note in americanization—that instead of telling the immigrant what america had done for him, that we proclaim publicly what the immigrant had done for america.”10 he proposed that displays could, “through sympathetic and wise treatment, and by conserving and fostering the offerings they [immigrants] brought from all corners of the 9 israel friedlander, “the problem of judaism in america,” in israel past and present: a collection of jewish essays (cincinnati: ark publishing company, 1919), 277. similar metaphors included horace kallen’s 1915 image of the american symphony, in which each immigrant community in the united states was represented by a particular instrument whose unique voice combined to create the rich sound of a full orchestra. horace kallen, “democracy versus the melting pot,” the nation, february 25, 1915. these models differed from earlier conceptions of america as a melting pot, which proposed immigrants shed much of their individual ethnic identity to espouse shared american attributes. werner sollors, beyond ethnicity (oxford: oxford university press, 1987), 89–91. 10 van dommelen, allen h. eaton, 59. figure 2 george hare, installation photograph of the arts and crafts of the homelands exhibition held at the albright-knox gallery october 22-november 4, 1919. © 2013 albright knox gallery. image courtesy of the g. robert strauss, jr. memorial library, gallery archives, albright knox gallery, buffalo, new york. 1 0 3 d i a n a g r e e n w o l d contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.56 earth . . . enrich this nation as no country in history had ever before been enriched.”11 in the face of increasingly brazen american nativism, calls for immigration restriction, and world war i-era solidarity efforts—many of which questioned immigrant patriotism—eaton’s model of progressive pluralism aimed to use objects to celebrate americanization efforts while nurturing communities’ unique ethnic identities and contributions to a shared american culture.12 within the first moments of entering eaton’s exhibits, visitors encountered displays visualizing the project’s collaborative nature and its claims for shared communal stakes in a collective american project. introductory displays featured costumes, textiles, and small objects from participating communities to propose equivalencies between european traditions (fig. 2). in his written account of homelands, eaton encouraged future exhibitors to feature such introductory exhibits because, “this was a kind of association of nations group bringing together something from each country and making of them one harmonious 11 eaton, immigrant gifts, 9. 12 this article deals primarily with the early stagings of the exhibition as described in eaton’s 1932 account of the exhibitions. although the book centers on the 1919-1921 displays, eaton did not publish his work on the exhibitions until 1932 and so the conclusions he draws are necessarily colored by the massive political and social changes of the intervening years. by the time eaton published immigrant gifts, the johnson act had all but cut off united states immigration from eastern and southern europe forcing eaton to frame his efforts under the guise of salvaging cultural heritage already present in the country rather than welcoming new immigrant traditions into the united states. as he explained, “if then, in the necessity to limit our immigration, we have lost one of our oldest and most precious traditions (the taking in of immigrants), perhaps we can find a substitute for our loss, a kind of compensating principle by consciously setting about to discover and conserve the best qualities which our immigrants have brought and are bringing from their old homelands.” ibid., 19. figure 3 unknown photographer, exhibit booths in right aisle at the rochester arts and crafts of the homelands exhibition held april 10-19, 1920 on the grounds of exposition park in rochester, ny. memorial art gallery, university of rochester archives. 1 0 4 “ t h e g r e a t p a l a c e o f a m e r i c a n c i v i l i z a t i o n ” contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.56 unit.”13 the opening object groupings—scandinavian carved furniture below italian embroidered textiles, italian ceramics nestled beside english needlework—melted distinctions between communities and invited visitors to marvel at a shared pan-european disposition towards fine craftsmanship. rather than arrange individual ethnographic groups along a continuum designed to foster comparison and exaggerate difference, eaton’s opening gallery nestled objects from the united states’ newest immigrants, such as the polish, alongside those of communities who had lived in the country for hundreds of years, such as the french. the “association of nations” provided a venue that effectively erased the hierarchies prevalent in exhibitions such as world’s fair ethnographic displays, the antecedents to eaton’s multicultural celebration. such a formation helped eaton sidestep questions about the relative sophistication of various racial, religious, and ethnic contributors. rather, his displays celebrated the collective promise of immigrant artistry to augment and uplift america at large. while some of his fellow americans, such as the members of the immigration restriction league, were debating which communities of immigrants were and were not worthy of american citizenship, eaton’s exhibit visualized equivalence between the nationalities on display.14 eaton’s introductory presentation created spaces where cultures converged, but the exhibition also provided each community a distinct space to exhibit objects gathered from its own members (fig. 3). in rochester, wooden barriers surrounded each group’s offerings to physically separate ethnicities from one another as well as to maintain distinctions between visitors and exhibitors. the exhibits’ visual permeability, however, also allowed viewers to take in the exhibition space as a whole and consider the various ethnic booths as part of one continuous display. homelands’ visualization of working artisans alongside crafts divided by nationality has its roots in techniques pioneered in the nineteenth century at international world’s fairs in europe and the united states. beginning in 1851 at london’s crystal palace, exhibitors juxtaposed massive presentations of western technological advancement against exhibits of the daily life and activities of cultures deemed less sophisticated. anthropological exhibits such as the exposition universelle’s 1889 “histoire de l’habitation” in paris allowed western european and american visitors to peruse examples of domestic architecture from around the world and to watch representatives from communities across the globe enact daily rituals and special ceremonies.15 based on ideas of social darwinism, ethnographic displays in world’s fairs equated folk traditions from across the world with the pre-industrial past of western nations. as we will see, eaton’s displays borrowed from these constructions both as a means to celebrate the array of nationalities that made up urban populations in the united 13 eaton, immigrant gifts, 36. 14 mathew frye jacobson discusses eugenicists of the early twentieth century and their influence on debates leading to the passing of the 1924 johnson act, which capped new eastern and southern european immigration at 2% of each community’s population in the united states as of the 1890 u.s. census. he cites the immigration restriction league of 1893, 1910’s dillingham commission report, and madison grant’s 1916 passing of the great race as some of the catalysts for the narrowing conceptions of which ethnicities were valuable as american citizens. matthew frye jacobson, whiteness of a different color: european immigrants and the alchemy of race (cambridge, mass: harvard university press, 1998), 77–86. 15 the most comprehensive treatment of american expositions and the use of foreign people and objects to advance western imperialism is robert w. rydell's all the world’s a fair: visions of empire at american international expositions, 1876-1916 (chicago: university of chicago press, 1984). 1 0 5 d i a n a g r e e n w o l d contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.56 states, but also to showcase european immigrants as linked to an idealized vision of european peasant life. in addition to borrowing from the formal strategies of world’s fairs displays, eaton's collaborative strategies were connected to larger efforts among fine art institutions to display european handicraft. the metropolitan museum of art, the boston museum of fine arts, and the newark museum instigated programs to engage directly with local immigrant organizations and create displays reflective of local artistic traditions.16 in 1916, the metropolitan sponsored an exhibition of immigrant crafts at washington irving high school with the folk craft guild and the national conference on community center problems. using language that eaton would mimic in his writing, the metropolitan museum of art bulletin described the importance of these crafts and the threat to their survival as immigrants assimilated into the dominant culture: folk craft is part of the social heritage of every old group of people. today when the immigrant comes to america this valuable heritage is lost. the present movement, of which the exhibit was one expression, does not hope to revive traditional designs so much as traditional principles of social art.17 in addition to using these displays to cultivate connections with new constituencies, the metropolitan displayed immigrant handicraft to celebrate the small-scale production on which it was based. centered on concerns over the rapid homogenization of american culture, the museum sought out “old” groups whose craft traditions might serve as alternatives to the sea of mass-produced objects available to american consumers.18 in 1916 the newark museum also premiered an exhibition of new jersey textiles, which featured a section entitled homelands, to highlight objects made by newark’s immigrant communities alongside articles of pre-industrial spinning and weaving.19 similar to the efforts at the metropolitan, the newark museum’s director, john cotton dana, gathered items from local community members by soliciting donations through local public schools. unlike the display sponsored by the metropolitan, however, which celebrated immigrant handicraft in opposition to modern mass-produced objects, dana’s displays incorporated immigrant crafts into a celebration of new jersey’s textiles industry. in newark, a booming industrial center, 16 in the early twentieth century, museums and immigrant communities used the school system as a primary space for collaboration. public schools served as the exhibition venue for the metropolitan’s exhibit and the means by which the newark museum obtained objects for its homelands display of textiles. 17 “notes,” the metropolitan museum of art bulletin 11, no. 7 (july 1, 1916): 159. 18 eaton was no doubt well aware of the metropolitan’s efforts to exhibit immigrant crafts through his multiple connections to robert w. de forest of the metropolitan museum, the american federations of arts, and the russell sage foundation. de forest, a noted lawyer and philanthropist, served as trustee, secretary, vice-president, and president of the metropolitan along with his position as president of the russell sage foundation and olivia russell sage’s personal lawyer. de forest also served as president of the national federation of arts, where eaton began his work on the homelands exhibitions. the metropolitan museum of art bulletin 26, no. 6 (june 1931): 138. the metropolitan museum of art memorial exercises (new york: metropolitan museum of art, 1931), 4. 19 as director of the newark museum, john cotton dana helped create 1916’s homelands exhibition at the burnet street public school, but because of political squabbles with the museum’s board of directors, he did not officially participate in the exhibition. eaton was likely aware of dana’s exhibitions of industrial arts and immigrant crafts in newark, although further research must be conducted to know if the two met or corresponded. carol g. duncan, a matter of class: john cotton dana, progressive reform, and the newark museum (pittsburgh, pa: periscope publishing, 2010), 131. 1 0 6 “ t h e g r e a t p a l a c e o f a m e r i c a n c i v i l i z a t i o n ” contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.56 european handicraft displays celebrated the expertise that immigrant craft workers brought to the united states. the exhibit proposed that knowledge of old-world spinning and weaving would make newly arrived european workers well suited for employment in the city’s modern factories. eaton’s efforts constitute larger scale visions of experiments already underway in museums under the direction of like-minded progressive museum professionals. however, as we will explore, eaton followed the model of the metropolitan more closely than that of newark by presenting european handicraft as opposed to, rather than complimentary with, industrial products and means of production. arts and crafts of the homelands’ communal focus was also closely linked to celebrations of immigrant artistry and hand production on display in american settlement houses, the most popular of which premiered at chicago’s hull-house in 1900.20 hull-house founder jane addams’ labor museum highlighted the craft industries of local immigrant communities by presenting handicraft techniques related to five principle materials: metals, woods, grains, textiles, and bookbinding.21 addams and co-curator jessie luther populated their displays with prints and artifacts borrowed from chicago’s field museum, raw materials, tools, examples of handmade crafts, and immigrant artisans demonstrating various skills. similar to the anthropological and midway displays at the 1893 chicago world’s fair, the labor museum’s exhibits visualized the evolution of technology from the primitive to the modern. the industrial united states represented the pinnacle of modern progress while immigrant crafts and production were positioned as less sophisticated iterations of contemporary domestic goods and technologies. similar to the newark museum, hull-house promoters imagined their displays as a means to educate immigrant workers and native-born visitors about the origins of various trades rather than to advocate for immigrant handiwork as a viable commercial alternative to factory labor.22 eaton’s displays borrowed many of the formal strategies of hull-house exhibits, but homelands showcased a very different message, one that de-emphasized immigrant contributions to modern industry and enforced ties to a pre-industrial past. eaton’s displays celebrated multiculturalism by showcasing a profusion of small items that collectively represented the heritage of a local community. as a crafts promoter, eaton spent a lifetime defending the artistic worth of handmade crafts and the importance of saving disappearing techniques of hand workmanship. yet, the exhibit model he championed for the homelands exhibitions relied little on the individual value or the aesthetic quality of any particular item on display.23 in his instructions to exhibitors in immigrant gifts, eaton acknowledged the necessity of assessing artistry when selecting objects for display from local 20 kristin l. hoganson, consumers’ imperium: the global production of american domesticity, 1865-1920 (chapel hill: university of north carolina press, 2007), 216-217. 21 jane addams, “labor museum at hull house,” commons 47 (june 30, 1900): 3. a discussion of addams’ goals for the labor museum can also be found in duncan, a matter of class, 61. 22 shannon jackson’s reading of the labor museum proposes that while the progressives established an evolutionary framework within the museum, immigrant visitors read these messages selectively to favor the contributions of their own communities and used the exhibits to forward narratives which celebrated the achievement of their home nations. shannon jackson, lines of activity: performance, historiography, hull-house domesticity (ann arbor: university of michigan press, 2000), 260. 23 simon bronner extols eaton’s imbedding of folk art objects into composed domestic scenes over the model promoted by institutions such as abby aldrich rockefeller’s folk art museum, which isolated individual objects in a “fine art” arrangement and in doing so, removed them from their cultural context. simon j. bronner, following tradition: folklore in the discourse of american culture (logan, utah: utah state university press, 1998), 413. 1 0 7 d i a n a g r e e n w o l d contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.56 groups, but he also stressed that communities should feel included regardless of the quality of their contributions. “such an exhibition is more than a display of artistic skill judged by a narrow standard,” eaton explained, “it is an expression of the love of people for familiar objects which combine both human interest and beauty.”24 eaton’s text also reminds future exhibitors that clever exhibition tricks can easily disguise homelier offerings within larger arrangements.25 this image of rochester’s russian booth showcases how such items could be combined to create a compelling presentation (fig. 4). within the booth, nearly every surface has been covered with all manner of textiles, ceramics, furniture, tapestries, and paintings. the back wall displays multiple examples of embroidery and lace while the tabletop is littered with ceramics and metal work. paintings fill the shallow sidewalls of the three-sided booth. no single object in this scene appears designed to arrest the attention of the visitor and, indeed, the barriers enclosing the booth deliberately keep audiences at a remove from the assembled items and discourage careful observation of any particular object. that eaton’s priorities lay in stimulating cooperative energy over promoting individual examples of craftsmanship is also evidenced in the small number of items that travelled to more than one exhibition venue. promoters worked with local community organizations at each new location to assemble novel displays almost entirely from scratch. from albany to rochester to cleveland, each venue celebrated the unique constellation of that city’s 24 eaton, immigrant gifts, 76. 25 ibid., 76. figure 4 unknown photographer, russian booth at the rochester arts and crafts of the homelands exhibition held april 10-19, 1920 on the grounds of exposition park in rochester, ny. memorial art gallery, university of rochester archives 1 0 8 “ t h e g r e a t p a l a c e o f a m e r i c a n c i v i l i z a t i o n ” contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.56 immigrant groups and the objects gathered from their attics.26 as a reporter for the christian science monitor described the homelands displays at buffalo: in place of the old masters came the new peoples. where had hung the redfields and innesses was a brave array of the lace work of the sophie kremeneffs and thamar nijinskys. the symons and duvenecks gave way to embroideries from the painstaking fingers of johanna kroghs and olga zbories, and the loving handiwork of the carving pietros and the brass stamping giuseppis replaced the sleek bronzes and selfsufficient marbles.27 the article distinguishes immigrant craft objects from the “self-sufficient” work of european masters. no one object stands alone in the writer’s estimation, who concedes only that the labor involved in creating the works was both “painstaking” and “loving.” singular paintings and sculpture from the hands of western european and american masters were replaced by “a brave array” of alternative items, which in their abundance and variety alone approach work from the hands of trained painters and sculptors. eaton’s communal booths, in their profusion of objects, allowed for more comprehensive participation amongst various communities while coding the objects on display explicitly as craft and therefore of use to create a composition rather than worthy of singular display. the collections of small crafts celebrated the unique contributions of participating local communities but inferred that handmade objects and the craftsmen who created them were less sophisticated than the museum’s typical installations of western european and american painting and sculpture. domesticating and de-modernizing the immigrant arts and crafts of the homelands celebrated american pluralism, yet its display techniques also constructed a palatable vision of ethnic diversity for native-born audiences by fashioning immigrants as part of a safely domesticated past.28 in her discussion of ethnographic displays, barbara kirshenblatt-gimblett explains that for turn-of-the-century exhibitors, “recently arrived immigrants became the ethnographic ‘other,’ in part as a way of creating social distance under the threatening conditions of physical proximity.”29 eaton’s exhibits enacted this distance by constructing a vision of immigrant life as pre-industrial and domestic, distinct from modern american industrial processes and urban consumerism. homelands premiered amongst heated debates over the status of the immigrant and his role in the larger american social body. lingering distrust of some immigrant groups stemming from world war i infused rhetoric among nativists eager to keep select european 26 allen h. eaton, “art and americanization: arts and crafts of the homelands exhibition,” the american magazine of art 11, american federation of arts (1920): 97. 27 report from the christian science monitor quoted in eaton, “art and americanization,” 98. 28 kristin hoganson argues that the immigrant gifts movement promoted a safe and sanitized version of european immigrant life to quell unease about the role of the immigrant in political and social upheavals of the early twentieth century. hoganson, consumers’ imperium, 236. 29 kirshenblatt-gimblett, “objects of ethnography,” in exhibiting cultures: the poetics and politics of museum display, ed. ivan karp and steven d. lavine (washington, d.c.: smithsonian books, 1991), 411. 1 0 9 d i a n a g r e e n w o l d contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.56 groups from entering the united states.30 the exhibit also opened amidst labor unrest associated with immigrants, notably 1919’s failed steelworker’s strike, the seattle general strike, and nationwide steel and coal walkouts. homelands premiered only a few years before congress enacted laws sharply curbing the number of southern and eastern europeans coming into the united states.31 by the time eaton published immigrant gifts, 1924’s johnson-reed act had tightened immigration with strict quotas that choked off nearly all non-western european arrivals into the united states based on the science of eugenics and theories of racial purity.32 immigrant tenement neighborhoods had also become feared spaces for some middle-class americans concerned about sanitation and the spread of disease in cramped living quarters and overcrowded streets.33 eaton’s displays addressed wary native-born americans by presenting a non-threatening image of immigrant life, one that placed immigrants worlds away from unruly picket lines, bustling factories, and dingy tenement homes. perhaps nothing could be further from such menacing spaces than the albright gallery, nestled within buffalo’s delaware park, where homelands first welcomed audiences. to reach the exhibits, the visitor navigated a route of serpentine paths before ascending a staircase that placed him above and away from the city’s urban core.34 eaton claimed that he chose the site, “in spite of the admonition that it was ‘too high-brow for the people you want to reach,’ and ‘people won’t go beyond the business section of buffalo for a thing of this kind.’”35 in fact, it seems that eaton selected both park and gallery not in spite of, but specifically for the distance it afforded patrons from buffalo’s workplaces and immigrant neighborhoods. for the duration of the exhibit, the academy of arts removed its permanent collection of european and american masterworks to feature craftwork of western and eastern europeans. by situating these heirlooms in place of the albright’s permanent collection, eaton denaturalized objects from the immigrant neighborhoods in which they would typically be found. the displays celebrated craft as an alternative, though not equivalent, artistic inheritance from europe. visitors to the exhibitions were constantly aware of the larger building envelope that enclosed the small vignettes. as we can see in the image of the russian booth at the rochester displays, the gallery’s interior with its tall windows is visible above the constructed booths (fig. 4). though a visitor might have been transported temporarily to the cozy interior of a peasant home, she was ever aware of the larger 30 for a detailed account of the effect of the first world war on particular american immigrant groups and how these changes were visualized in an immigrant-gifts-inspired exhibition, see ilana abramovitch’s chapter, “the hyphen: immigrants at america’s making” in her 1996 dissertation, america’s making exposition and festival (new york, 1921): immigrant gifts on the altar of america (new york university, graduate school of arts and science, 1996). 31 abramovitch also connects fear of immigrant strikers to the red scare by explaining that native born americans often feared strikers were bolsheviks. abramovitch, america’s making, 25. 32 jacobson, whiteness of a different color, 77–86. 33 tracts such as robert w. de forest and lawrence veiller’s the tenement house problem (london: the macmillan company, 1903) exposed the poor conditions of life in immigrant neighborhoods. while these publications were designed to instigate reform, they also brought images of urban poverty to public attention, which helped fuel stereotypes about the cleanliness of immigrant homes and neighborhoods. 34 the park in buffalo was originally landscaped for the 1901 world’s fair. 35 eaton, immigrant gifts, 35. 1 1 0 “ t h e g r e a t p a l a c e o f a m e r i c a n c i v i l i z a t i o n ” contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.56 museum architecture that re-contextualized these objects from immigrant neighborhoods into an elite cultural institution. if eaton’s exhibits elevated the status of immigrant craft, they also disengaged these same communities from full participation in contemporary american life. rather than present items forged in the united states, which would have celebrated the integration of immigrant talents into american culture, eaton specified that all objects on display evoke the domestic spaces of pre-industrial europe. for his exhibits, eaton solicited what he deemed “fine expressions of yesterday” and stipulated that items on display celebrate “old-world” traditions and pre-industrial techniques of production.36 records from the buffalo display make proud note of the age of select objects and their histories, such as a swiss watch described as having been “presented to donor's grandfather by charles the twelfth,” or a spanish convent sampler “from the fifteenth-century.”37 the celebration of ancestral treasures gleaned from the attics of what eaton called “the older races,” masked the hybrid nature of immigrant life in the united states and the degree to which immigrant families participated in the modern american production and consumption of mass-produced goods as well as in the cultural and social life of american cities. as lizabeth cohen has described, european families newly arrived to the united states eagerly purchased industrially-produced furnishings for their homes as signs of middle-class taste and sophistication.38 unlike displays at newark, which sought to celebrate european craftwork in order to elevate modern american industry, eaton’s displays of craft traditions, what the rochester democrat and chronicle termed an “old-world medley,” disengaged immigrants from the larger structures of the commercial economy and undermined immigrants’ role as participants in the contemporary workforce and the consumer culture of northeastern american cities.39 in arts and crafts of the homelands, composed scenes of handcrafted objects featured items such as rugs, chairs, and kitchen implements: objects that collectively celebrated rural peasant life. here in the danish booth in rochester, several types of elaborately carved seats and a low bench create an informal semi-circle that welcomes an imagined guest into the constructed domestic space (fig. 5). on the back wall, sconces frame an elaborately carved triangular shelf, which displays small metal cooking and serving bowls to conjure associations of familial eating and drinking. above the shelf hangs a painted or embroidered image of a village gathering to link this domestic scene to an idyllic agrarian existence. the rug on the floor lies ready to warm the imagined feet of the family who might gather in such a room, and—to complete the tableau—we find an open chest, a symbol of familial continuity in which these family heirlooms would be lovingly stowed. such a domestic vision traded potentially disconcerting visions of worker unrest for a rosy picture of the european hamlets from which many americans imagined these immigrants came. 36 eaton, immigrant gifts, 155. 37 homelands objects list. 38 eaton, immigrant gifts, 32. for information on immigrant interest in mass-produced domestic furnishings, see lizabeth a. cohen, “embellishing a life of labor: an interpretation of the material culture of american working–class homes, 1885–1915,” journal of american culture 3, no. 4 (december 1, 1980). 39 “homelands exhibition seems more like old-world medley than mere american exhibit,” rochester democrat and chronicle, april 14, 1920, 26. 1 1 1 d i a n a g r e e n w o l d contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.56 unlike the labor museum, which exhibited european craft traditions to provide the immigrant industrial worker with a sense of his contribution to the advancements of modern industry, eaton celebrated a strictly pre-industrial vision of european peasant life as the contemporary contribution of immigrant communities to american culture. in articulating the aims of the labor museum, jane addams explained that “young people who earn their livings in the shops and factories would have a chance to gain some idea of the material which they are constantly handling and might in time become conscious of the social connection of their work.”40 according to addams, lessons in the origins of various industries would benefit the local immigrant working classes by situating their labor within a larger historical framework.41 her model readily acknowledged the role of immigrant labor in american factories. conversely, homelands exhibitions obscured these associations with exhibits geared solely towards exhibiting the lives of families before their immigration. 40jane addams, “first report of the labor museum at hull house” (chicago, 1902), 1. 41 jane addams, “educational methods,” in democracy and social ethics (new york: macmillan co, 1902), 94–95. figure 5 unknown photographer, danish booth at the rochester arts and crafts of the homelands exhibition held april 10-19, 1920 on the grounds of exposition park in rochester, ny. memorial art gallery, university of rochester archives. 1 1 2 “ t h e g r e a t p a l a c e o f a m e r i c a n c i v i l i z a t i o n ” contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.56 immigrant bodies and the social body eaton was, no doubt, aware of the potentially alienating effects that exhibiting explicitly old-world craft might entail. homelands’ program of daily and nightly live performances and demonstrations inserted living immigrant performers into the exhibition space as teachers to younger generations, cultural interpreters to native-born audiences, and gate-keepers to their community’s privileged traditions. in buffalo, rochester, and albany, eaton designed spaces around large central areas for nightly performances, concerts, and gatherings in which dance, theater, and music breathed fresh life into the staid examples of european handicraft. to visualize such bodies permeating the barrier between rural domestic scenes and an open, public performance space allowed participating communities to claim a shared stake in a larger forum and to present themselves as essential to the construction of a collective american community. in this image of a performance in buffalo, a man extends a leg to begin teaching a dance to his young pupil under the watchful eye of classical statuary (fig. 6). their bent bodies, both dressed in similar white costumes, mirror one another and form an enclosed circle between teacher and student. the man’s open hands create a frame for the boy’s forward-leaning torso, as if he were gathering energy from his eager pupil, who leans his body into the gap his instructor’s outstretched arms provide. at the far left, a nearly invisible spectator alongside a group of chairs evokes an audience who was or will soon be enjoying the dance. similar to handicraft demonstrations at the labor museum, these expressions of figure 6 george hare, photograph of dancers performing during an event that corresponded with the arts and crafts of the homelands exhibition held at the albright-knox gallery october 22-november 4, 1919. © 2013 albright knox gallery. image courtesy of the g. robert strauss, jr. memorial library, gallery archives, albright knox gallery, buffalo, new york. 1 1 3 d i a n a g r e e n w o l d contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.56 multi-generational learning helped affirm the continued importance of european traditions to younger groups and facilitated the communities’ claims to space within the public arena of the exhibition and, by extension, the civic arena at large. homelands’ dance and theatrical performances, which were conceived of and realized by local community groups, took inspiration from larger progressive interests in civic pageantry to picture america as a nation of immigrants whose individual contributions collectively strengthened the larger national character.42 such pageants often culminated in personifications of the united states welcoming costumed members of various groups of european immigrants united to form one community. naima pivots describes one such pageant, boston’s 1910 cave life to city life, in which representatives hailing from countries across europe performed dances from their native regions before joining together to participate in the symbolic “aspiration” dance as a single group.43 progressives argued that the cooperative process of practicing and performing pageants fostered tolerance among immigrant groups and between native-born and immigrant communities. while eaton’s message did not advocate the stripping away of “foreign” attributes in favor of american ones, his programming took advantage of various ethnic dance, music, costume, and theatrical traditions as a primary means to visualize the offerings immigrants brought to enrich the character of american life at large. posters advertising the exhibitions underscore the use of the immigrant body to bridge the temporal disconnect separating immigrants from contemporary urban life (fig. 7). as with presenters in the exhibition’s public spaces, this poster depicts the corporeal presence of a youthful immigrant who simultaneously embodies her european past while contributing her traditions to the shared culture of a modern united states. artist vojtech pressig’s linoleum cut for buffalo and albany’s promotional materials depicts a lithe young woman wearing a prim white dress and colorful cap. the economy of line and the poster’s limited palette renders the pattern on her costume nationally ambiguous, so she may stand for the body of every immigrant presenter at the exhibitions—although her fair skin would have made her complexion markedly lighter than many of the southern and eastern european presenters. while her body forms a static white mass in the center of the frame, she appears to have flung open the chest and the black hatbox in the foreground to reveal textiles gleaned from her family’s home country. pressig frames the woman with the lid of the massive chest, a blocky form that fuses into the back wall of the room as it creates a border surrounding her figure. the ambiguities of space in this image, in which chest dissolves into room and then back to dimensional object, create a feeling that the sitter herself may have sprung from the opened trunk as a beloved memento from overseas. like the men, women, and children who performed during the exhibitions, her presence alongside the objects of her homeland unites past and present to propose the continued relevance of old-world objects and people in twentieth-century civic culture. 42 david glassberg describes a springfield massachusetts’ 1908 july 4th parade, which featured a “pageant of nations” in which thirteen immigrant groups created floats illustrating their contributions to the shared project of american life. david glassberg, american historical pageantry: the uses of tradition in the early twentieth century (chapel hill: university of north carolina press, 1990), 63. 43 naima prevots, american pageantry: a movement for art & democracy (ann arbor: umi research press, 1990), 35. 1 1 4 “ t h e g r e a t p a l a c e o f a m e r i c a n c i v i l i z a t i o n ” contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.56 figure 7 vojtech pressig, “poster used at the exhibitions of the arts and crafts of the homelands”, image from page 60 of allen h. eaton, immigrant gifts to american life. © 1932 russell sage foundation, 112 east 64th street, new york, ny 10065. reprinted with permission. reprinting, reposting, or republishing is prohibited without written consent from the russell sage foundation. 1 1 5 d i a n a g r e e n w o l d contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.56 conclusion arts and crafts of the homelands provided allen eaton, the american federation of arts, and the sage foundation with an important opportunity to display the european craft traditions of urban immigrant communities to the american public. a visual manifestation of friedlander’s corners in the american palace—in which each community might decorate its own space as one part of a larger whole—homelands celebrated early-twentieth century conceptions of multiculturalism. yet, eaton’s displays also intimated that these groups were not full participants in modern american institutions. similar to contemporaneous projects at northeastern american museums, eaton worked to counteract this reading by welcoming local communities to people the exhibition with intergenerational celebrations of immigrant life in the united states; an effort that helped native-born americans experience a shared multi-ethnic public forum. in considering the effectiveness of eaton’s exhibits to display the heritage of america’s immigrant groups, we must note that the displays invited the shaping of local community identity selectively. homelands evolved from the input only of those community members willing to loan objects, volunteer time, and offer contacts. for many newly arrived european immigrants, such as those not fluent in english, participation in projects such as homelands likely held little interest. eaton’s representation of immigrant life must therefore be considered as successful only in so far as it promoted the objects and performances of those already at least somewhat integrated into local projects and familiar with urban civic institutions. our analysis has considered homelands primarily as the work of one dedicated promoter, allen eaton, and discussed his efforts to create a forum for immigrant and nativeborn interaction. immigrant representatives at the homelands displays also took advantage of eaton’s framework to communicate messages intended for their own communities rather than for general consumption. homelands helped immigrants advance their own means of self-identification by delineating the boundaries of how much the non-native viewer might explore traditions unique to each immigrant group. turning again to pressig’s image, we see a closed book resting on the ledge of the chest. while trunk and hatbox are open for the viewer’s inspection, here is one portion of the immigrant’s gifts that remains shuttered to the outside world. the inclusion of the locked book, whose decorative exterior is on display, but whose contents remain unknowable to the non-native viewer, gestures to the limits of knowledge attainable when surveying the domestic tableaux at these exhibitions. though the attractive presenter’s smile and the framing of her face with her hands coyly suggest her availability for inspection and her desire to introduce the array of objects before her, the book is a small but present portion of her identity to which the viewer has no access, but which the community insider might unlock for herself. the book within the open chest registers the stakes for participants in these displays and the limits of eaton’s reach as manager of the exhibits. while his strategies and performance schedules governed the ultimate look and agenda of the exhibition, homelands also functioned as a forum in which immigrants could, to some degree, set the terms on which their communities might be understood and penetrated by native-born americans and other immigrant groups. 1 1 6 “ t h e g r e a t p a l a c e o f a m e r i c a n c i v i l i z a t i o n ” contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.56 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-noncommercial-no derivative works 3.0 united states license. this journal is operated by the university library system of the university of pittsburgh as part of its d-scribe digital publishing program, and is co-sponsored by the university of pittsburgh press. young vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.96 http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu culture v. capital the rebecca belmore case india young abstract this paper considers a civil suit between an artist and her former gallery dealer. in the case of nadimi v. belmore, the plaintiff and the defendant exemplify two opposing ideologies, which in turn reflect two possibilities for understanding art. this paper considers the case, and belmore’s artworks as representative of both systems. through a strategic defense of her art and her practice, belmore upholds a complex understanding of the value of art. the current legal system, however, only ascribes art value as commodity product. this paper demonstrates how belmore’s actions and artworks related to the case supersede simple categorization. her works cannot be corralled into any one classification; they are not only fine art, nor simply first nations art. the article exposes how her works deploy multiple socio-cultural systems simultaneously: from an anishnabe worldview, to european-canadian art history, from the public museum, to the commercial gallery, to the toronto bound freeway. i contend that this strategic employment of multiple systems is recognized in newly established international law, and articulated in the united nations declaration of indigenous peoples as traditional knowledge. the belmore case illustrates the immediate need for governmental systems to acknowledge and employ such international law in order to redress systemic misconceptions of indigenous arts practices. about the author somewhere between her alaskan home, her new york college education, and peace riots in la paz, india young decided art best expresses activism. she returned to school to learn the practice of sharing her passions. in 2011, she graduated from the university of victoria with a master's degree in the history of art, and today she continues on her course as a doctoral candidate in art history at the university of new mexico. young researches print media, contemporary indigenous arts, and activist art. her curatorial pursuits focus on the spaces of interconnection between indigenous arts and the larger world. contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.96 to address oneself to the other in the language of the other is, it seems, the condition of all possible justice . . . the violence of an injustice has begun when all members of a community do not share the same idiom throughout. jacques derrida1 “i quit!” bellowed rebecca belmore to conclude her performance worth (a statement of defiance) at the vancouver art gallery in september 2010. the twenty-minute piece was performed at the door of the former courthouse-turned-gallery, as one of the anishinabe artist’s responses to the legal battle between herself and her former toronto dealer, pari nadimi. in 2005, belmore terminated her professional relationship with nadimi and requested the return of her artworks from the gallery. as the dealer was in the process of negotiating the sale of one of these works, ayum-ee-aawach oomama-mowan: speaking to their mother, to the national gallery of canada, a disagreement arose between the parties and the sale was never brokered. the disagreement led to legal mediation, which failed. nadimi filed civil suit against belmore and claimed punitive damages and loss of potential sales in the amount of 1.1 million dollars.2 while disputes between artists and dealers are not uncommon in the art world, the defendant’s methodology to address her case publically was unique. the plaintiff and the defendant in this suit represent two opposing cultural ideologies, which in turn reflect two differing systems of power. through civil suit, nadimi employed the prevailing system of governance. fortunately for her, this system is structured to favor commerce and capital over personhood.3 belmore was forced to contend against this same system, which she has sought to contest through her work. this paper considers two differing systems of social thought exemplified by this case. the suit, quietly settled out of court in 2013, illustrates how the invocation of these two systems affirms historic and current power structures. this paper argues that the prevailing system fails to fully recognize the various kinds of value— apart from capital—that belmore creates through her works. i consider nadimi and belmore in relation to the systems they employed to argue their cases as plaintiff and defendant. while nadimi solely employed the arm of the law, belmore’s artistic actions constitute a strategic, public defense against the objectification of her work. these actions included a legal defense, public appeal, and collaboration between herself, other artists, and her supporters. i further argue that these strategies of defense demand a more complex and interconnected understanding of artworks, artistic practice, and life-ways than the current court system recognizes. this paper reveals a broader 1 jacques derrida, “force of law: the mystical foundation of authority,” in deconstruction and the possibility of justice, eds. drucilla cornell, michel rosenfeld and david carlson (new york: routledge, 1992), 17. 2 marsha lederman, “the story behind belmore’s ‘i quit’ performance,” the globe and mail, september 22, 2010, accessed february 14, 2013, http://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/the-story-behind-rebeccabelmores-i-quit-performance/article4326740/. 3 peter kulchyski, “theses on aboriginal rights,” unjust relations: aboriginal rights in canadian courts (toronto: oxford university press, 1994), 1–20. culture v. capital the rebecca belmore case india young 7 9 i n d i a y o u n g contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.96 understanding of belmore's artworks and actions that relate to the case. i consider belmore’s works in relation to an indigenous cosmology that is often referred to in academic and legal discourses as “indigenous knowledge,” “cultural knowledge,” or “traditional knowledge.” such a broad concept is not fixed, but fluid, or dynamic, and underlies aboriginal ways of understanding the world. j. m. flavier generalizes: indigenous knowledge is . . . the information base for a society, which facilitates communication and decision-making. indigenous information systems are dynamic, and are continually influenced by internal creativity and experimentation as well as by contact with external systems.4 to consider belmore's artworks as illustrative of or participating in an indigenous, or traditional knowledge system, is to value them as cultural expressions. the euro-canadian court system would have her works recognized solely as “art,” which is only ascribed a monetary value. meanwhile, an indigenous way of knowing considers belmore and her works as representative of broader concepts of worth. in this system there is intrinsic value in knowledge gained or shared through objects, in relationships within and between communities, and in the representatives of cultural expression. through her legal action, nadimi has successfully employed the prevailing eurocanadian legal system to relegate belmore's artistic expressions to one economically quantifiable category. the canadian legal system, as with many socio-cultural systems in canada, is predicated on reductionism. reductionism, like indigenous knowledge, is a broad 4 l. j. slikkerveer, david brokensha, wim dechering, and dennis m. warren, the cultural dimension of development: indigenous knowledge systems (london: intermediate technology publications), 479. figure 1: rebecca belmore, worth (a statement of defiance), 2010. performance still. courtesy of harold coego. 8 0 c u l t u r e v . c a p i t a l : t h e r e b e c c a b e l m o r e c a s e contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.96 cultural concept that underpins larger social understanding. it purports that a complex system can be understood when reduced to the sum of its parts.5 in terms of the legal process, reductionism manifests in the assertion that complex understandings can be discretely categorized for the benefit of the outcome. with regard to nadimi and belmore, the complaints of a civil suit were compartmentalized in relation to an object-based valuation and translated into economic terms. the bones of the case, and of this paper are these: rebecca belmore is an acclaimed artist, who has been celebrated nationally and internationally for her works which comment on the contemporary state of indigenous peoples. as happens more than the art world openly acknowledges, a gallery owner representing belmore sold her works on commission, but reportedly failed to pay the artist the verbally agreed upon compensation.6 when belmore chose to remove her works from the gallery, a dispute arose, and when mediation failed, both parties were compelled to obtain legal representation to protect and advance their respective positions.7 the dispute, which began in 2004, continued through the various stages of litigation until it was quietly settled out of court in 2013.8 both parties were unable to discuss their legal actions while the case was ongoing, and have been silent about the terms of the settlement.9 regardless of these legal conditions belmore demonstrated her position towards the suit publicly, while nadimi declined to make comment through any public channels. disclosure issues within the canadian legal system have led to varied and patchy media coverage making the facts of the case difficult to substantiate. however, my scholarship—as with belmore’s defense—is not tied to the facts of the case itself, but to the broader issues of representation and voice faced by indigenous artists. as i will show, the suit’s resolution impacts not only all canadian artists, but affirms current capitalist based notions of art only as commodifiable object. nevertheless, as belmore has not quit the “business” of cultural representation, her works and actions continue to uphold an indigenous worldview, and theoretically, a global legal doctrine. 5 reductionism was originally a seventeenth century philosophic and scientific theoretical framework. scholars today consider the ramifications of this theoretical framework as foundational to european sociocultural systems. for more information see terrance brown, and leslie smith, “reductionism and the development of knowledge,” jean piaget symposium series (mahwah, n.j: l. erlbaum, 2003). 6 don ahnahnsisi mcintyre’s blog discusses this issue of an oral contract between the artist and the dealer. see “rebecca belmore, priceless stories,” law, art, and indians, december 13, 2011, accessed february 18, 2013, http://law-art-and-indians.blogspot.ca/2011/12/normal.html. other media sources give a more broad overview of the dispute. see kevin griffin, “rebecca belmore: billboard keeps issue alive,” vancouver sun, december 6, 2011, accessed february 18, 2013, http://blogs.vancouversun.com/2011/12/06/rebecca-belmore-billboard-keeps-issue-alive/. 7 email exchange between author and original mediation lawyer, january 27, 2014. 8 media coverage of the suit is inconsistent about its origin date. most sources originate the suit in 2005. marsha lederman who wrote about the case herself first notes the suit began in 2004 (the earliest date in public record), and later states that the suit was not filed until 2007 (marsha lederman, “b.c. artist takes her legal woes to the level of performance art,” the globe and mail, september 15, 2010, accessed february 18, 2013, http://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/bc-artist-takes-her-legal-woes-to-the-level-ofperformance-art/article4190034/#dashboard/follows/; lederman, “the story behind belmore’s ‘i quit’ performance.” 9 terms of the settlement likely included a mandate of confidentiality, as insinuated by belmore’s only statement about the case. this enforced silencing speaks to the success of slapp suits, the type of litigation employed by nadimi. see stephen thomson, “long-time vancouver artist rebecca belmore wins governor general’s award,” the straight, march 12, 2013, accessed january 20, 2014, http://www.straight.com/arts/360881/long-time-vancouver-artist-rebecca-belmore-wins-governorgenerals-award. 8 1 i n d i a y o u n g contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.96 in this paper i first consider the legal mechanism enacted by nadimi through civil suit. i then consider belmore's public defense, and her artistic productions as expressions of her indigenous worldview. to consider belmore's artworks through this lens is to affirm their complex and dynamic nature. in 2007 the united nations, through the declaration on the rights of indigenous peoples, officially recognized this “indigenous” or “traditional” knowledge as something that demands special protection. while the case against belmore was quietly settled out of court in 2013, belmore and her works continue to express complex, dynamic connections between personhood, artistic expression, and cultural knowledge. this civil suit and its outcome illustrate the need to legally recognize how traditional knowledge is expressed within the dominant euro-canadian systems. this paper finally contends that the importance of the united nations declaration only becomes legible through its real world applications, and it reframes belmore’s case in terms of the inherent legal rights of an aboriginal person under the declaration. the position of the plaintiff after failed private mediation, pari nadimi hired the powerful toronto law firm, heenan blaikie. the suit was first filed in 2004, and escalated in 2006, and again in 2010.10 nadimi and her lawyers have never spoken publically about the case. conversely, belmore’s defense continually sought to reach beyond the court into the public sphere as public protest. two lawyers volunteering their services represented belmore, who repeatedly noted that her financial situation made the suit a literal taxation upon her person.11 in an effort to rally resources, belmore’s friends and colleagues began the rebecca belmore legal defense fund in 2010. the fund organized a charity art auction, solicited donations, and used social networking to raise public awareness, but failed to garner significant financial contributions.12 in 2012, belmore continued her public defense through another performance piece at the art gallery of ontario.13 in 2013 the case was settled out of court. the choice to file civil suit enacts a particular euro-canadian approach to conflict resolution. yet, pari nadimi is herself a cultural minority in canada. a first generation 10 lederman, “b.c. artist takes her legal woes to the level of performance art,” and “the story behind belmore’s ‘i quit’ performance.” 11 the sign, “i am worth more than one million dollars to my people,” solidifies the personification of monetary value of the suit as an art object. in several quotations in the media belmore reiterated, “even though i've had all this critical success, it doesn't necessarily boil down into dollars… as an artist, i'm not obsessed with making a lot of money. i'm more obsessed with being a good artist and trying to contribute to culture. i'm not out to make a million dollars. 'cause i'm worth much more than that as the sign says,” lederman, “the story behind belmore’s ‘i quit’ performance”; “i’m being sued for a large amount of money and in making the sign, i’m just saying that as an artist, what i do goes beyond money… the idea that someone can place a value on an artist’s work is very problematic and is very insulting because it devalues it in some way,” mallory clarkson, “million dollar message,” london community news, december 8, 2011, accessed february 19, 2013, http://www.londoncommunitynews.com/newsstory/1356289-million-dollar-message/. see also leah sandals “legal action sparks art auction.” the star, february 23, 2011, accessed february 18, 2013, http://www.thestar.com/entertainment/2011/02/23/legal_action_sparks_art_auction.html; andrea carson, “artist rebecca belmore sued by toronto dealer,” september 15, 2010, accessed october 06, 2012, http://viewoncanadianart.com/2010/09/15/artist-rebecca-belmore-sued-by-toronto-dealer/; paul chaat smith, “’delta one fifty," in vision, space, desire: global perspectives and cultural hybridity (washington, d.c.: national museum of the american indian, smithsonian institution, 2006), 31–40. 12 email exchange between author and scott watson, director of the fund, march 4, 2013. 13 mathieu, “artist rebecca belmore becomes part of the show at ago.” 8 2 c u l t u r e v . c a p i t a l : t h e r e b e c c a b e l m o r e c a s e contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.96 immigrant from iran, she spent time in italy cultivating her art career before opening her gallery in toronto in 1998. as she could not be reached for interviews, her actions, like belmore’s performances, must speak as her words. by enacting a lawsuit against belmore, nadimi affirmed her trust in the totalizing power and authority of canada’s legal system in favor of its capitalist and reductionist underpinnings. in her statement of claim, nadimi sought monetary restitution for potential (rather than actual) sales, sought punitive damages as assessed in pecuniary terms, and suggested that belmore’s participation at the venice biennale was something economically quantifiable.14 the conflation of belmore’s actions with her artworks in the statement of claims reveals nadimi’s underlying intent to regulate and control belmore’s personhood as a commodity product. this intention can be framed within the specifics of civil litigation, as well as the larger legal frameworks that constrain aboriginal peoples. writing on the unjust relations of canadian courts towards aboriginal people, peter kulchyski contends that the canadian legal system is rooted in capitalist infrastructure that displaces alternative value systems and systematizes the accumulation of power through wealth. this capitalist infrastructure becomes the legally sanctified cultural order. his scholarship confirms that the canadian legal system is not only ill equipped to mediate alternative value systems, but that it methodically excludes said alternative frameworks in order to maintain a “totalizing” authority. about the canadian legal system he writes: justice colludes with totalizing power. aboriginal rights themselves have been oriented as another tool of totalization . . . totalization: the process by which objects, people, spaces, times, ways of thinking, and ways of seeing are ordered in accordance with a set of principles conducive to the accumulation of capital and the logic of the commodity form. wealth piles up; every social product including people is made to be bought and sold, to have an exchange value and a use value; these principles spread as the dominant way of being in the world today.15 through this lens, aboriginal identities are ascribed value only when they enter the capitalist infrastructure as products. kulchyski suggests that the project to acknowledge aboriginal rights must navigate this imposed structure predesigned to evade just such recognition. nadimi’s mechanization of the system affirms the totalizing authority of capital, while belmore and her actions bespeak alternative values, and alternative ways of thinking and knowing. belmore, through her art, negotiates the art world with an anishinabe sensibility and an awareness of a particular political history. such negotiations of multiple systems cannot be quantified only in terms of a monetary system of measurement. while kulchyski writes in terms of broader legal and theoretical frameworks, the nadimi suit conforms to more particular and overt methods of control. civil suits, in recent decades, 14 “nadimi is seeking $750,000 for wrongful termination as well as unspecified damages for wrongful interference, and unspecified punitive damages for ‘egregiously high-handed conduct,’ according to the statement of claim…’the art gallery's efforts to promote belmore were highly successful. in 2005, belmore was named as canada's official representative at the 2005 venice biennale, one of the preeminent international art exhibitions in the world. this achievement represented a tremendous accomplishment for both belmore as an artist and the art gallery as a successful promoter.’ the statement alleges that belmore stopped a sale of her work megaphone to the national gallery shortly before the work, valued at about $100,000, according to nadimi, was to be shipped. this was ‘embarrassing to the art gallery, damaging to nadimi's professional reputation and caused her significant mental distress,' her statement of claim reads.” lederman, ”the story behind belmore's ‘i quit’ performance.” 15 kulchyski, “theses on aboriginal rights,” 1. 8 3 i n d i a y o u n g contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.96 have become a corporate strategy to control and contain dissenting opponents, who through legal action, become defendants. in the 1980s, two american legal scholars, george prigg and penelope canan, noted a new trend in civil suits. this litigation was commenced by corporations, and targets individuals and organizations whose campaigns, protests, or demonstrations were “perceived to threaten the filers’ economic interests.”16 the scholars also observed that merits for these cases were notoriously dubious, their grievances were against lawful, public participation of the defendants, and that the plaintiffs aimed to move the public conception of their case from “political” to “legal.”17 such cases, although difficult to uphold in court, were rarely lost because individual defendants with few resources were usually forced to cease their activities opposing the claimants’ interests in order to have the civil action cease.18 prigg and canan coined a term for this phenomenon: slapp, or strategic litigation against public participation. this litigation was employed strategically to intimidate individuals or groups who disagreed with particular corporate values.19 the litigation became particularly popular in the united kingdom and canada, whose legal systems offered significant leverage for filers.20 while in the united states, the legal system equally upholds the rights of individuals and those of corporations, the canadian system (influenced by the british system) favors governance over individual expression. this places canadian slapp defendants, and belmore, at an additional disadvantage. nadimi’s civil suit against belmore fits this model of corporate interest. my research suggests that nadimi’s legal action against belmore was of dubious merit, and her grievances were against belmore’s lawful actions and expectations.21 moreover, her total dismissal of public inquiry suggests that nadimi recognized the power of the law to supersede any social or cultural conditions besides commerce. nadimi clearly perceived belmore’s efforts to leave her gallery as jeopardizing an economic investment.22 nadimi claimed that belmore violated a contract, yet no such written contract exists, and furthermore, nadimi would be in violation of any such contract should she fail to properly pay belmore for works sold.23 she also claimed defamation of character, however, in no public statement does belmore defame nadimi.24 rather, it appears that belmore’s original actions to regain control over her 16 douglas vick and kevin campbell, "public protests, private lawsuits, and the market: the investor response to the mclibel case," journal of law and society 28, no. 2 (june 2001): 204. 17 chris tollefson, "legal intimidation by fiona donson," journal of law and society 27, no. 2 (december 2001): 633. 18 vick and campbell, “"public protests, private lawsuits, and the market,” 205. 19 fiona donson, author of “legal intimidation”, notes that canadian and british legal scholars have reframed slapp legislation more broadly as “a useful shorthand for intimidatory legislation.” tolleffson, "legal intimidation by fiona donson," 634. 20 ibid., 634. 21 it is the author’s own opinion that the suit was of dubious merit, predicated on the understanding that with only a verbal contract, an artist retains legal ownership of their products. 22 lederman, “the story behind the ‘i quit’ performance.” 23 mcintyre, “rebecca belmore, priceless stories.” 24 lederman, “b.c. artist takes her legal woes to the level of performance art”; stephen thomson, “artist rebecca belmore faces legal battle with toronto’s pari nadimi gallery,” the straight, september 22, 2010, accessed february 18, 2013, http://www.straight.com/arts/artist-rebecca-belmore-faces-legal-battletorontos-pari-nadimi-gallery 8 4 c u l t u r e v . c a p i t a l : t h e r e b e c c a b e l m o r e c a s e contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.96 artworks and subsequent public support for belmore have tarnished nadimi’s reputation. since the settlement, belmore has remarked that she cannot speak openly about its conclusion; she is now unable to continue the public defense of herself and her works.25 a global defense over the past thirty years a global collaboration of indigenous activists have written the declaration on the rights of indigenous peoples, and have worked for its global recognition.26 the declaration was accepted by the united nations in 2007, but only in november 2010, three months after belmore’s performance worth, was it formally recognized by canada.27 most recently, in october 2013, the united nations sent a delegation to canada to investigate the canadian government’s relationship to its aboriginal peoples based on the standards established by the declaration. the purpose of the declaration is to ensure acknowledgement of the unique rights of indigenous peoples, globally. while indigenous communities throughout the world vary greatly, they have suffered common, recognizable injustices in the face of colonization. the language of the declaration has been carefully crafted to directly address the eurocentric infrastructures that have so often undermined indigenous value systems at a governmental level.28 applicable to the belmore case is the declaration’s recognition of “traditional knowledge.” it defines traditional knowledge in relation to “cultural property,” which includes any objects operational in economic systems; it links intangible concepts with tangible objects and expressions; and it specifies maintenance, and protection of said knowledge in relation to already recognized “intellectual property.”29 it contends that traditional knowledge encompasses: music, songs, and dances for entertainment or education, which usually link present performance with past generations and traditions but which also present renditions; graphics, designs, crafts, textiles, paintings and three-dimensional art (i.e., plastic arts) such as sculpture, carvings, models, figures and so on, whether as an economic asset or as cultural heritage . . . it is not static knowledge. indigenous peoples . . . 25 thomson, “long-time vancouver artist rebecca belmore wins governor general’s award.” 26 marie battiste and james youngblood henderson, “united nations declaration on the rights of indigenous peoples,” in protecting indigenous knowledge and heritage: a global challenge (saskatoon: purich publishing, 2000). 27 marie battiste, “canada endorses the united nations declaration on the rights of indigenous peoples,” november 12, 2010, accessed december 4, 2012, http://aerc.usask.ca/whatsnew.html. 28 see “existing legal régimes and indigenous knowledge and heritage,” in battiste and youngblood henderson, protecting indigenous knowledge and heritage: a global challenge, 169-200. 29 battiste and youngblood henderson, protecting indigenous knowledge and heritage: a global challenge; val napoleon, "looking beyond the law: questions about indigenous peoples' tangible and intangible property,” in first nations cultural heritage and law: case studies, voices, and perspectives, eds. catherine bell and val napoleon (vancouver: university of british columbia press, 2008), 372-393; robert howell and roch ripley, "the interconnection of intellectual property and cultural property (traditional knowledge)," in protecting of first nations cultural heritage: laws, policy, and reform, eds. catherine bell and robert paterson (vancouver: university of british columbia press, 2009) 223-244. 8 5 i n d i a y o u n g contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.96 have the right to maintain, control, protect and develop their intellectual property over such cultural heritage, traditional knowledge and cultural expressions.30 the purpose of this broad definition is to be inclusive towards growing traditions within indigenous communities, and to recognize simultaneous engagement of multiple knowledge systems. through the history of colonization, indigenous peoples ingeniously adapted alongside imposed cultures to maintain their own societal values. today, many traditional objects enter the market place and the declaration asserts that those objects retain equal status as culturally valuable. value, in this sense, may be measured economically, but the declaration affirms that value is an expansive ideology. aboriginal legal scholar, brian noble, considers this difference of value conceptually. he notes a eurocentric, capitalist system favors the notion of “ownership,” particularly of property, or objects. meanwhile, an indigenous worldview conceptualizes the relationship of “belonging.”31 in this knowledge system, value is not placed upon any one object, but upon relationships, which like traditional knowledge, are far less tangible. the declaration is not legally binding, yet with its canadian endorsement, it may be activated within the legal system sui generis, or on a case-by-case basis. still, debates rage as to whether legal protection of traditional knowledge is even possible. many scholars are wary of employing the very system which traditional knowledge fundamentally evades. because of the historic commoditization of indigenous socio-cultural systems, first nations and international indigenous activists have debated whether and how to situate indigenous concepts of knowledge within more broadly accepted frameworks of intellectual property.32 they recognize that their traditional knowledge, which is sometimes embodied in physical objects, may be protected as though intellectual property. marie battise and james youngblood henderson, two first nations consultants on the declaration, write: . . . the commodification of culture . . . is the real basis for intellectual property. indigenous knowledge and heritage tend to be seen as existing within the area of material or everyday culture. since this layer has been largely taken over by the consumption of commodity items, it is in exploitation that indigenous knowledge becomes “visible” to the non-indigenous world.33 battise and youngblood henderson argue that current laws protecting intellectual property are “awkward and inadequate tools for the protection of culture, communication, and technology that fall outside [a european, capitalist] system.”34 while this legal system is 30 howell and ripley, "the interconnection of intellectual property and cultural property (traditional knowledge)," 225; un general assembly, united nations declaration on the rights of indigenous peoples: resolution adopted by the general assembly, 2 october 2007, a/res/61/295, accessed 7 may 2014. http://www.un.org/en/ga/search/view_doc.asp?symbol=a/res/61/295&lang=e 31 brian noble, “owning as belonging/owning as property: the crisis of power and respect in first nations heritage transactions with canada,” in first nations cultural heritage and law: case studies, voices, and perspectives, eds. catherine bell and val napoleon (vancouver: university of british columbia press, 2008), 465-488. 32 noble, “owning as belonging/owning as property,” 145-168; napoleon, "looking beyond the law: questions about indigenous peoples' tangible and intangible property,”; howell and ripley, "the interconnection of intellectual property and cultural property (traditional knowledge)," 223-246. 33 battiste and youngblood henderson, protecting indigenous knowledge and heritage: a global challenge 244. 34 ibid., 250. 8 6 c u l t u r e v . c a p i t a l : t h e r e b e c c a b e l m o r e c a s e contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.96 predicated on capitalist reductionism, indigenous cosmologies favor complex interpretations that privilege interconnections. the declaration’s expansive definition for cultural property, as connected to intangible types of knowledge, aims to revise how such objects are evaluated. to consider belmore and her artworks within the context of traditional knowledge is to diversify euro-canadian understandings of the art object, and to affirm the complexities and continuities of how indigenous knowledge interconnects with other socio-cultural systems. i suggest that belmore’s works directly exemplifies notions of cultural property as traditional knowledge; they invoke multiple systems of value, which are only comprehensive when their relationships to aboriginal peoples are recognized. furthermore, i suggest that belmore’s performative actions related to the suit illustrate the interconnections of indigenous knowledge as simultaneous expressions of personhood which link historic and contemporary indigenous communities socially and politically. to view the belmore case within the context of the declaration demonstrates how traditional knowledge may negotiate economic systems while simultaneously retaining alternative value systems. upholding belmore’s defense as indigenous knowledge and her work as cultural property infuses a more broadly tractable sense of value into current conceptions of art. belmore’s cultural capital the strategic employment of several socio-cultural systems allows belmore’s work to be categorized both as art object and cultural property. her works are sites of activism embedded within dominant cultural structures of the commercial and capitalist oriented art world. each of the following works related to belmore’s case contributes to her identity as an anishinabe woman, a national icon, a first nations activist, and an emissary of traditional knowledge. i consider these works as examples of cultural property embedded within the art system. often both corporeal and transitory, ephemeral and memorable, historic and contemporary, these works epitomize the interconnectedness of indigenous knowledge systems. the 2001 installation and performance wild is representative of how belmore’s larger body of work negotiates colliding histories and ways of knowing. it locates her body partially naked and partially covered in the center of converging identities. here the nineteenth century victorian grange mansion bedroom at toronto’s art gallery of ontario is usurped by subtle symbolism. belmore hides references to first nations contributions to canadian history and heritage under what, at first glance, appears to be an empty, private space. over the mantle hangs a realist landscape of colonialism’s manifest destiny. by the fireplace sits a coalscuttle on a pristine white sheet. nearby, a floral armchair with queen anne legs reeks of victorian values, and was possibly embroidered by an unacknowledged anishinabe woman.35 the four-poster bed is adorned with a canopy and settled there, like goldilocks, is belmore tucked under the duvet made of satin and human hair. the canopy is made of beaver pelts and embroidery evocative of the trade networks of the métis and the early commodification of aboriginal arts. the duvet is covered with locks of black hair, very much like belmore’s own. as a “wild” woman, belmore cozily makes herself at home among the familiar and the foreign, among the private and the public, and most significantly, among the seemingly quiet but subtly hostile environment. 35 for more on the history of woodlands women embroidery in the victorian market, see ruth philips, trading identities: the souvenir in native north american art from the northeast, 1700-1900 (seattle: university of washington press, 1998), 135-7, 215-18. 8 7 i n d i a y o u n g contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.96 wild re-visions aboriginal histories into a picture of canada’s colonial past and present. the subtleties of her revisions illustrate the interconnectedness of an indigenous worldview, or way of knowing. a counterpoint to this sensibility of the connectedness between the social, ceremonial, and legal is the categorizing systematization that is the canadian government, which separates the social, the ceremonial, and the legal into distinct entities. as kulchyski notes, the canadian system is organized to maintain its own authority, often in spite of the ethical authority of those who oppose it.36 this regulatory system relates directly to the history of aboriginal arts in canada. aboriginal affairs and northern development has historically regulated the production and commoditization of aboriginal art, and then claimed these arts as products of nationhood.37 the relationship between this system and native artists creates a forced imbroglio. nation-building systems, including the art world’s renowned venice biennale, historically and routinely employ aboriginal peoples as representatives of national culture, mandating the commoditization of personhood. this commodification of indigenous identity creates what kulchyski considers a “totalizing” system. belmore is acutely aware of the history of the system and its implications for contemporary aboriginal communities. while through her work she struggles to make the historic and continued injustices against indigenous peoples visible, because belmore must employ capitalist structures to gain recognition, she herself risks becoming totalized, and totally obscured by said system. just such a metaphor for the system appears in the 2008 work fringe, created three years into litigation. this photographic work, first appearing on a billboard in montreal, comments on the objectification of native women and their arts within canadian culture. belmore situates the native figure as obscured and violated. her position upon a white couch references the long, distinguished western history of objectification of the body as art.38 the composition distinctly invokes the odalisque, the french term coined in the nineteenth century to describe a composition of a white nude woman costumed as an oriental other. the lash across her back has been stitched with beads that hang like dripping blood. to be present and to represent one’s self and culture as a first nations woman in this western system is to be obscured, violated and objectified. one photograph from the edition was sold through an art auction organized by the rebecca belmore legal defense fund, along with donated works from many artists, to raise money to continue the battle of maintaining control over her works and her identity.39 belmore asserts that her identity cannot be oversimplified. through her work she actively combats the impositions of the canadian government and the expectations of the art world. she is known for her deft negotiation of her aboriginal, modern, female identities: 36 kulchyski, “theses on aboriginal rights,” 1. 37 built into the title of this ministry is a bond between capitalist interests and the governing of aboriginal peoples. martine reid, "tenuous lines of descent: indian art and craft of the reservation period," in in the shadow of the sun: perspectives on contemporary native art, ed. gerald mcmasters (hull, quebec: canadian museum of civilization, 1993), 154-169; john milloy, “indian act colonialism: a century of dishonour, 1869-1969,” national centre for first nations governance, 2008, accessed may 7, 2014. http://fngovernance.org/ncfng_research/milloy.pdf 38 lynda nead and marcia pointon, the female nude: art, obscenity and sexuality (new york: routledge, 1992). 39 “belmore supporters auction art in her defense,” cbc news, february 28, 2011, accessed october 4, 2013. www.cbc.ca/news/arts/belmore-supporters-auction-art-in-her-defence-1.1085085; sandals, “legal action sparks art auction.” 8 8 c u l t u r e v . c a p i t a l : t h e r e b e c c a b e l m o r e c a s e contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.96 i’ve been described as making political performance pieces. that’s a way of speaking about it. i had no choice. it was a way for me to have control and create an autonomous space for myself. i think performance is the strength of my work, because it most likely comes from somehow knowing, without knowing, that what i was being taught from a very young age was negotiable. i think this process of negotiating space and occupying it shows up in other work that i make.40 the historic and continued compromises of aboriginal communities in the face of eurocanadian systems are ever present in belmore’s works. in 2005, the inaugural year of her dispute with nadimi, belmore represented the canadian pavilion at the most internationally celebrated art event in the center of colonizing territory: the venice biennale. only the second first nations artist to show at the venice biennale, belmore was the first to directly represent the canadian nation. she chose to work in her most powerful medium: performance. while certainly considered contemporary art, performance deftly eschews precise categorization. as something ephemeral, it has no root objecthood, and cannot be directly commoditized. 40 rebecca belmore, interview by scott watson, rebecca belmore: fountain (vancouver: morris and helen belkin art gallery, 2005), 24. figure 2 rebecca belmore, fringe, 2008. billboard, and photograph edition. image courtesy of the darling foundry visual arts centre. 8 9 i n d i a y o u n g contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.96 for fountain, belmore created a video installation recorded in the industrial bay waters of vancouver, which, in venice, was projected onto a screen of falling water.41 the scene opens on a flaming pyre before a calm, gray sea. it cuts to the artist submerged in the sea, no longer quiet, but violently agitated by her struggle with a simple tin pail. the pail and the ocean struggle to drown the native, the artist, the woman. but she labors against the seemingly consuming ocean and emerges hauling the pail. she struggles barefoot over the tundra-like landscape and arrives before the camera to hurl the contents of the bucket upon the viewer; it is not water but blood, which drips a red sheen over belmore’s now still, staring visage. the medium is modern, the means—fire, water, and blood—are eternal, and the ambiguity of the audience implicates all viewers: canadian, european, male, female, indigenous, and settler. the curatorial catalogue does not explain the meaning of the piece. the writers are careful to allow the piece to speak for itself. still, they openly acknowledge belmore as a first nations activist who represents contentious issues for canadian society. in curator scott watson’s interview he asked how belmore’s performances related to her activism, to which she replied, “ . . . it has to do with a particular history, a particular political history of being born into a political situation…” belmore’s works, as with all aboriginal artworks, are necessarily political because they are embroiled with a particular political history. fountain asserts a political history through contextuality. it can only be understood in relation to the geographies of the performance, and the governmental terms under which the artist was commissioned. even while presenting on behalf of the nation that dictates the relative autonomy of first nations people, belmore labored to claim a place for herself and for all indigenous artists. for nadimi, performance, action, prestige, and political statement could be distilled into monetary measurements. in the statement of claim, nadimi wrote, “in 2005, belmore 41 rebecca belmore. “fountain. canadian pavilion, venice. 2005,” accessed october 6, 2012, http://www.rebeccabelmore.com/exhibit/fountain.html figure 3 rebecca belmore, fountain, 2005. video stills from installation. photographer, josé ramón gonzález. venice biennale. courtesy of the morris & helen belkin art gallery. 9 0 c u l t u r e v . c a p i t a l : t h e r e b e c c a b e l m o r e c a s e contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.96 was named as canada's official representative at the 2005 venice biennale, one of the preeminent international art exhibitions in the world. this achievement represented a tremendous accomplishment for both belmore as an artist and the art gallery as a successful promoter.”42 through the claims of the suit belmore had become kulchyski’s social product. her political performance became a blood-diamond: simultaneously representative of tyranny over aboriginal peoples, while ready equally for consumption. what is immediately evident in this work, and in all of belmore’s pieces, is a communication of complex social meaning, or value. wild, fringe, fountain, and worth are simultaneous expressions, contestations, invocations, and acts. they refer to contemporary and historic socio-cultural worldviews. they speak to the art world, but they address all cultures and humans. finally, they are the embodiments of ideas that cannot be completely bound to objects. they serve to relate shared experiences. while, as objects, these pieces have entered the market, they insist upon multiplicities of value that exceed mere dollars worth. these works express an alternative, or expansive socio-cultural system that can be conceptualized as indigenous knowledge. they cannot be reduced to only a commercial value. speaking out, speaking back the piece at the center of the lawsuit is the most remarkable because it most decidedly identifies belmore’s condition as a communicator of traditional knowledge. when the dispute arose, nadimi was in the process of negotiating the sale of an object to the national gallery of canada, ayum-ee-aawach oomama-mowan: speaking to their mother.43 for belmore, and all aboriginal peoples, this work represents more than an art object. it is a communicator of traditional knowledge and therefore a piece of cultural property. both an object and an act, this work employs a monumental wooden megaphone to speak out and speak back. it was first created to address the oka crisis in mohawk territory.44 belmore’s intention with this work was to bypass the need for cultural translation. it was a work for first nations to directly address themselves to their lands, their sources of power, authority, and knowledge.45 the original performance was held in banff in 1991, where thirteen first nations speakers gathered to address the earth. these individuals spoke to the land and spoke back to the world. chief bernard ominayak stepped before the megaphone first. he entreated that all present should join in the political struggle of first nations to prevent the expropriation and destruction of their lands. belmore’s own performance has lived on in the memories of her audience, and as with the body of her performative works, has been retold and relived like the historic oral narratives of her home community. cherokee artist and curator, lara evans, asserts that belmore’s speech at that first performance, with its pattern, rhythm, and words, as performed before elders, was a form of prayer. she has felt hesitant to write about the work because of its evident power.46 during ayum-ee-aawach oomam-mowana’s first 42 lederman, “the story behind the ‘i quit’ performance.” 43 ibid. 44 harry swain, oka: a political crisis and its legacy (vancouver: douglas and mcintyre, 2010). 45 diana nemiroff, robert houle, and charlotte townsend-gault, land spirit power: first nations at the national gallery of canada (ottawa: national gallery of canada, 1992), 118. 46 lara evans, “megaphone? what megaphone?” not artomatic, september 22, 2010, accessed october 6, 2012. http://travelpeapod.wordpress.com/2010/09/. 9 1 i n d i a y o u n g contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.96 speaking-out, a nearby hiker slipped from a trail and fell to his death. belmore has never publicly spoken of the event. evans suggests this loss of life transformed the performance into a ceremony. although wary, she notes: “what happened to that performance makes an important point about the ethics of native and first nations performance art practices. performances have power.”47 in many indigenous value systems, certain actions have deep cosmic power that cannot be explained. these actions, when part of ritual and ceremony, are forms of traditional knowledge as defined in the declaration of the rights of indigenous peoples. regardless of there being no evident correlation between the death and ayum-eeaawach oomam-mowana, belmore was deeply affected by this first performance, and questioned for a time if the work should be used. during that time it sat silently on exhibition in the halls of the national gallery, a mute object, speaking only in the art terms valued by the museum: decontextualized, secularized, representing singular authorship and authenticity. however, in 1996, ayum-ee-aawach oomam-mowana was needed within its community once more. the assembly of first nations, the elected representative voice for all first nations in canada, was excluded from parliament’s first minister’s conference. belmore offered her megaphone to the assembly. on the lawns of canadian parliament, within view of the national gallery, assembly leaders used belmore’s work to speak in protest: to make their voices heard. chief ovide mercredi, then leader of the nations, called out the historic malignment of first nations voices, governmental attempts to silence first nations peoples, and the egregious injustice of this enforced silencing. the megaphone then became the voice of all first nations seeking representation and equality within the canadian nation. the megaphone has since traveled around the country to allow aboriginal peoples to speak amongst themselves and their lands. it is much more than an art object. within the canadian legal system, which represents the interests of the gallery system, it has been a political tool employed to demand recognition and to assert authority. first nations are often in need of a louder voice and the megaphone is the kind of object that contains so much power that its use can threaten the hegemony. and still, from its first use, it has also been a traditional ceremony. its performances link generations, from youth to elders, to their lands. it is ritual. it is prayer. as such an object, it is assured international protection as a conveyer of traditional knowledge. indeed, it would be antithetical for a canadian institution such as the national gallery to obtain the megaphone as its property. governmental ownership and exhibition of such an object threatens to control, to displace, and to mute the megaphone. to return this work to the halls of the national gallery against the will of its maker would be an act of recolonization towards aboriginal peoples. in order for ayum-ee-aawach oomam-mowana to remain accessible to aboriginal communities, it should be distinguished as cultural property, capable of conveying meaning as more than an aestheticized, commoditized object. belmore prevented this work from being acquired by the most powerful art institution in canada. her action bespeaks her interest in the object as something beyond its monetary value; it suggests her valuation of the object, as related to its cultural and political contexts, as priceless.48 47 evans, “megaphone? what megaphone?” 48 in 2007 ayum-ee-aawach oomama-mowan: speaking to their mother was purchased by walter phillips gallery with the support of the york wilson endowment award and in 2008 belmore returned to banff to recreate its first performance. 9 2 c u l t u r e v . c a p i t a l : t h e r e b e c c a b e l m o r e c a s e contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.96 figure 4 rebecca belmore, worth (a statement of defiance), 2010. performance stills. courtesy of harold coego. 9 3 i n d i a y o u n g contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.96 defense of art as culture in september of 2010, as belmore faced a fresh onslaught of litigation, she took action. frustrated and finally exhausted from fighting she returned to her performative voice to call out to the art world through worth.49 footage of the piece shows belmore in front of the entrance to the vancouver art gallery, historically a courthouse, dragging a garbage can and mounting a hand painted sign. evocative of several of her other works, she takes water and rag from the very pail she used in fountain to meticulously scrub the sidewalk before arranging three parcels. she unwraps them to the beat of a drum (from a boombox leaning against a nearby tree) revealing pieces of embroidery and beaver pelt from her grange installation about colonization, wild. she carefully lays them out and then lies upon the hair blanket, as though crucified. after minutes of stillness she bolts upright, rewraps her coverlet, pelts, and embroidery and presents them to the chief curator of the vancouver art gallery. as the video capturing this performance follows the retreat of the curator, belmore walks off screen and cries out in frustration, “i quit.” while the media coverage of the dispute between nadimi and belmore centered on objects and commerce, it was belmore herself who risked being objectified. to attempt to claim ownership and authority over her work would be to recolonize the personhood of a first nations woman.50 the sign, “i am worth more than one million dollars to my people,” solidifies the personification of monetary value of the suit as an art object. belmore has reiterated: even though i've had all this critical success, it doesn't necessarily boil down into dollars… as an artist, i'm not obsessed with making a lot of money. i'm more obsessed with being a good artist and trying to contribute to culture. i'm not out to make a million dollars. 'cause i'm worth much more than that—as the sign says.51 in worth belmore demonstrates, while her works may live within the art system, and she can be martyred, she cannot be claimed and her works cannot be owned. her wild work can be gifted, just as its display was, at the art gallery of ontario, offered as a gift of knowledge—indigenous epistemological knowledge about relationships. in 2011 the sign from worth was repurposed as a billboard. belmore did not make this work herself. rather, fellow artists asked to have the hand painted sign. jamelie hassan and ron benner, in conjunction with the london live arts festival, blew it up and placed it along the nearby freeway to toronto as a beacon to the public about belmore’s legal predicament. larger than life, the sign is symbolic for belmore herself and her contributions as artist and activist on behalf of first nations in canada. the billboard proclaims: i am worth more than one million dollars to my people. 49 rebecca belmore “rebecca belmore worth sept. 12 2012.” youtube. september 12, 2010, accessed october 6, 2012. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cv9dfvazok4. 50 mike blanchfield, “canada says no to un call for review of violence on aboriginal women,” in huffington post canada. september 19, 2013, accessed october 1, 2013. http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2013/09/19/canada-un-aboriginal-women_n_3952425.html. 51 lederman, “the story behind the ‘i quit’ performance.” 9 4 c u l t u r e v . c a p i t a l : t h e r e b e c c a b e l m o r e c a s e contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.96 conclusion in the civil suit between one art dealer and one artist pari nadimi positioned herself as a corporate body, and mechanized the legal system as a tool for intimidation of an individual. with the “resolution” of the suit, belmore has been effectively silenced, and her position as social product with regards to the law has been cemented. the dominant system is not organized to acknowledge people; it recognizes commerce, markets and ownership through value exchange. yet, this case is not simply a personal dispute; belmore is not the only person affected by its outcome. many canadian artists have expressed fears about the implications of their relationships with the commercial arm of the art world. during the suit the media speculated about the potential infringements of belmore’s right to property.52 this perspective remains myopic. it is not the majority of artists who have a historic relationship of regulation within the canadian legal system. it is aboriginal peoples who are most directly affected by the adjudication. the canadian system of governance has routinely and systematically usurped indigenous personhood while paternalistically claiming authority over particular aboriginal rights.53 such a history makes it impossible to separate the belmore case from the larger governmental systems that regulate aboriginal peoples in canada. it is also this history that explains belmore’s unique reaction to the suit. it is through these systems that indigenous peoples have been the continual objects of federal persecution. the government historically disenfranchised aboriginal peoples, excluded them from equal citizenship, relegated them to certain communities and geographies, and prohibited their languages and religious practices, all the while claiming first nations cultural objects as signifiers of canada as a nation.54 these governmental systems, based on european social, philosophical, and scientific concepts of reductionism, establish discreet categories for understanding.55 the canadian legal system, predicated on such reductionism is prone to discreet categorization. in the legal case, belmore’s artworks became mere objects with ascribed commercial value. indigenous knowledge systems alternatively emphasize the importance of relationships, as does belmore through her artworks and through her public defense. belmore’s actions and artworks negotiate multiple cultural systems and modes of perception. her system of 52 only one native writer considered the potential recolonizing of first nations art production: evans, in “megaphone? what megaphone?” 53 for information on recent united nations interventions see: jessica hume, “un to investigate canada’s treatment of aboriginal peoples,” toronto sun, august 10, 2013, accessed 16 september 2013. http://www.torontosun.com/2013/08/10/un-to-investigate-canadas-treatment-of-aboriginal-peoples; the canadian press, “un human rights investigator says canada needs inquiry into missing aboriginal women,” the globe and mail, october 15, 2013, accessed may 6, 2014. http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/un-human-rights-investigator-says-canada-needs-inquiryinto-missing-aboriginal-women/article14870214/; the canadian press, “northern gateway: first nations ask un to investigate b.c. government's actions,” huffington post, september 13, 2013, accessed may 6, 2014. http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2013/09/30/northern-gateway-first-nations-un_n_4016368.html. 54 for some history of first nations iconography as nationhood see michael dorland, “a thoroughly hidden country: ressentiment, canadian nationalism, canadian culture,” in sightlines: reading contemporary canadian art, eds. jessica bradley, lesley johnstone (artexte information centre, 1994); daniel francis, national dreams: myth, memory, and canadian history (vancouver: arsenal pulp press, 1997); nelson graburn, “the fourth world and fourth world art,” in in the shadow of the sun: perspectives on contemporary native art (ottawa: canadian museum of civilization, 1993), 1-26. 55 on reductionism and the legal system see john millary, “indian act colonialism: a century of dishonour, 1869-1969,” research paper, national centre for first nations governance, 2008; kulchyski, “theses on aboriginal rights.” 9 5 i n d i a y o u n g contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.96 defense expands beyond the boundaries of the courtroom into the very society she seeks to address. to revalue belmore’s works as indigenous knowledge affirms a more malleable, less consumerist-driven concept that conforms to more complex social value systems. this case illustrates the need for such recognition of art objects within the canadian legal system. this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-noncommercial-no derivative works 3.0 united states license. this journal is operated by the university library system of the university of pittsburgh as part of its d-scribe digital publishing program, and is co-sponsored by the university of pittsburgh press. contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture vol 1 (2011) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2011.36 http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu from “modern” to “contemporary” a case in post-cultural revolutionary art wu hung abstract this paper was to have been wu hung’s contribution to the conference “contemporaneity in the history of art” at the sterling and francine clark institute, williamstown, mass., october 8 and 9, 2009. however, he was unable to attend. the paper is presented here in the form in which it would have been presented. see also, in this issue of contemporaneity, notes from this conference by its convener, terry smith. about the author wu hung is harrie a. vanderstappen distinguished service professor of art history, east asian languages and civilizations, and the college; director, center for the art of east asia; and consulting curator, smart museum of art at the university of chicago. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/� contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 1 (2011) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2011.36 is “contemporary” an art historical period that has succeeded modernism? is contemporary art a kind of modernism that has outlived its time? these are two questions raised by the workshop organizers. in this short talk — a self-reflection actually — i will take a rather strictly historical perspective. this is not to say that i reject philosophical contemplation on the concept of the contemporary. but as an art historian i must entertain the possibility that the word can convey specific meanings in different contexts, and can refer to varied — though possibly linked — responses to works of art. for the past two years i have been working with new york moma to compile a book called contemporary chinese art: primary documents.1 for this project i have read and reread many published and unpublished materials written by chinese artists and art critics from 1976 to 2009. these texts are wide ranging in content and informative in many ways. one of their possible contributions to our current discussion is that they may reveal a pattern underlying the use of terms like “modern,” “modernism,” “avant-garde,” and “contemporary” in post-cultural revolution chinese art. by “pattern” i mean a certain discursive juxtaposition between these concepts, because a “pattern” always implies a perceptual and conceptual structure constituted by more than a single element. a “pattern” is a template that has been discerned from previous happenings, or a model capable of generating new forms and events.2 since not everyone here is familiar with the history of post-cultural revolution art, i should first provide some background information. briefly, the cultural revolution took place from 1966 to 1976. during this period, “modern art” — xiandai meishu in chinese — was officially banned from exhibition and publication. but after mao died and the gang of four were arrested in 1976, unofficial art reemerged in the late 70s and brought about a nationwide avant-garde movement around the mid-80s. in this movement, called the ’85 new wave, more than a hundred “avant-garde” art groups and societies emerged all over the country. at the forefront of this movement was a group of young art critics, who took up the role of bestowing the movement with a coherent agenda. in their writings, these critics in both logic and method, to discern a pattern differs from defining an individual phenomenon on the one hand, and from constructing a continuous historical narrative on the other hand. whereas a historical narrative describes and interprets history as an unbroken process, “pattern recognition” — to borrow a phrase from scientists — attempts to identify a conceptual/perceptual archetype and to observe its manifestations in seemingly unconnected contexts. because one of this workshop’s purposes is to think about the notion of the contemporary not only in today’s art but also in past art, one way to achieve this goal may be to observe similar patterns concerning artistic temporalities at different times. 1 wu hung, ed., contemporary chinese art: primary texts (new york: museum of modern art, 2010). 2 according to wikipedia, “a pattern is a form, template, or model (or, more abstractly, a set of rules) which can be used to make or to generate things or parts of a thing, especially if the things that are generated have enough in common for the underlying pattern to be inferred or discerned, in which case the things are said to exhibit the pattern.” see online: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/pattern from “modern” to “contemporary” a case in post-cultural revolutionary art wu hung http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/� 3 7 w u hu ng contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 1 (2011) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2011.36 unanimously adopted the term “modern art” for the ’85 movement. their final effort to sustain this movement was to organize a large exhibition in 1989, which they titled “a grand modern art exhibition.” three months after the exhibition, the tiananmen student demonstrations took place and ended in bloodshed. chinese art after 1990 had a very different appearance: the energy of a mass movement was completely gone. in its place emerged numerous individual and smaller-scale experiments. issues of common concern included art medium and language, identity, the public function of art, and globalization. working with independent curators, artists also tried to create new exhibition venues and commercial infrastructure for their works. it was around this time, starting from the early 90s, that the term dangdai yishu or “contemporary art” replaced “modern art,” appearing on many book covers and in exhibition titles. yet, there wasn’t any serious discussion of the concept of “contemporary art.” reading documents from that period, one gets a feeling that the term quietly emerged on its own, without any theoretical articulation or political endorsement. instead of proclaiming a consensual view or agenda as “the modern” had done, it seems that this term defied social specificity or political commitment. literally it means “art of this time.” but everyone also knew that it didn’t just mean this, because only a self-selected group of artists and critics favored it. i have termed this phenomenon a “contemporary turn” in post-cultural revolution chinese art.3 during the “contemporary turn,” however, many chinese artists and critics abandoned, or at least distanced themselves, from the modernist undertaking. underlying this change was a major shift in how they thought about history and themselves. understood in this historical context, “modern” and “contemporary” actually indicated two different ways to contextualize post-cultural revolution chinese art, one temporal and diachronic, the other spatial and synchronic. to understand it, i believe that we should approach it as a series of linked conditions and responses. one important condition was an acute notion of departure from a previous position. when avant-garde artists and critics called themselves “modern” during the ’85 art new wave, they identified themselves as participants in a delayed modernization movement, which aimed to transform china based on a western, enlightenment model. this movement had started in the early 20th century, but was interrupted during communist rule. in practice, these artists embraced newly translated western literature and philosophy, and made works based on reproduced western images. styles and theories that had long become past history in the west were used by these artists as their direct models. the meaning of their works as “modern art” was located not in the original historical significance of the styles and ideas, but in the transference of these styles and ideas to a different time and place. this shift points to another crucial condition of the “contemporary turn,” which was an historical and psychological gap between history and the present. in the early 90s, this gap was caused by the traumatic memory of the tiananmen massacre in 1989. but if we broaden our view to observe a longer duration of chinese art history, we find a “pattern of rupture” as a general condition of artistic creativity. throughout the 20th century, violent intrusions of sociopolitical events, including wars, ideological and political clashes, foreign invasions, and the endless political campaigns mobilized by the communist party from the 1950s to the 1970s produced a series of deep ruptures. each rupture forced artists and intellectuals to reevaluate and reorient themselves. instead of returning to a prior time and space, the 3 wu hung, “a case of being ‘contemporary’ — conditions, spheres, and narratives of contemporary chinese art,” antinomies of art and culture: modernity, postmodernity, contemporaneity, eds. terry smith, okwui enwezor, and nancy condee, (durham: duke university press, 2008): 290-308. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/� 3 8 f r o m “ mo d e r n ” t o “ c o n t e mp o r a r y ” contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 1 (2011) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2011.36 projects they developed after each rupture often testified to a different set of parameters and to a different temporality and spatiality. this notion of contemporaneity explains the sudden change in artists’ attitudes after 1989, and also enables us to see 80’s “modern art” and 90’s “contemporary art” not as two consecutive trends, but as disconnected endeavors conceived in separate temporal/spatial schemes. when “contemporary art” replaced “modern art” in the early 90s, what it signified was, first of all, a sense of rupture and demarcation. but was the traumatic tiananmen incident the sole — or even main — cause of the “contemporary turn”? a careful study of post-cultural revolution art reveals that a departure from the ’85 new wave had in fact occurred before 1989. this understanding is based on an analysis of a series of art projects dating from 1986 and 1988. these projects are well known, but have been taken as representative examples of the ’85 new wave. i have been following this view in my earlier writings, but have begun to question this received interpretation. a critical reassessment of these projects shows that they actually signified an intentional rupture — a breakaway from the ongoing collective, modern art movement. unlike the ’85 new wave that aimed at reinserting chinese art into world art history, these products were typically iconoclastic, rejecting any historical framework or standard stylistic references. there were three major tendencies in this departure from the ’85 new wave. the first — a deliberately iconoclastic, anti-historical gesture — is exemplified by huang yong-ping’s 1987 work, “the history of chinese art” and “a concise history of modern art” after two minutes in the washing machine. among the two volumes he machine-washed, the first was by the senior chinese art historian wang bomin and had been used widely as a standard textbook in chinese art schools; the second book, by herbert read, was well-known in chinese avant-garde circles in the 1980s, partly because it was one of the few introductions to modern western art available at the time in chinese translation. putting these two books through a two-minute wash cycle in a washing machine, huang yong ping produced a pile of paper pulp — the remains of the books — which he then displayed on a broken glass panel atop a used wooden box. according to him, this was his response to an enigmatic question that had preoccupied generations of modern chinese intellectuals and artists: how to position oneself between tradition and modernity and between east and west? instead of providing another idealistic solution, huang’s installation challenges the premise of the question by eliminating the binary concepts. the paper pulp, as the joint remains of the two books, can be considered an art product that erases the conventional dichotomy between tradition and modernity and between east and west. actually huang had started this line of work in 1984 and continued it after immigrating to france in 1989. in the later cases, displaying destroyed books in prominent western cultural institutions signified huang’s intensified desire to challenge the dominance of eurocentrism. the second tendency is represented by xu bing’s book from the sky. these books are unreadable because all the characters were invented by the artist. but the books’ composition, printing, and binding techniques were strictly traditional. in the first exhibition of this work in 1988, multiple copies of the books lay on the floor in rows. large paper sheets printed with the same characters covered a wall and hung from the ceiling. although the installation was striking visually, the project realized its prime significance through its painstaking creation over several years. in fact, when book from the sky was shown in october 1988, it was still only half completed; it was not until two years later that xu bing would finish carving a total of four thousand “fake characters” to print four hundred books of nonsense texts. xu himself identified this “temporal” significance of the work in a short essay he published in 1989. the text contains an anecdote: one of my painter friends once told me about a "crazy" guy in his home village, who always went out to collect waste paper at a certain hour, washing these papers in a river, carefully mounting them piece by piece, and then storing them http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/� 3 9 w u hu ng contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 1 (2011) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2011.36 under his bed after they had become dry and flat. i thought quite a long time about this person's behavior. finally i realized that it was a kind of qigong — a kind of cultivation of the tao. it was indeed a very powerful kind of qigong. [it exemplifies] an eastern way of achieving true knowledge — obtaining sudden enlightenment and correspondence with nature by endlessly experiencing a fixed point…. unlike the modern concept of enlightenment embodied by the ’85 art new wave, here xu bing envisioned his enlightenment as the construction of an interior time and space through meaningless repetition. the idea of evolution was rejected; instead there was a “sudden” achievement of knowledge, a contemporary moment outside the flow of history. my last example is an installation made by wu shanzhan in 1986. it was a windowless room covered with layers of torn paper and pieces of writing, and thus alluded to big character posters, a major form of political writing during the cultural revolution. this connection becomes visible not only in the work's general visual imagery, but also in medium (ink and "poster paints" on paper), color scheme (predominately red), production (random participation of the "masses"), and psychological impact (sense of suffocation produced by chaotic signs in a sealed space). but wu was not simply restaging a vanished historical episode: the words on the walls are not the revolutionary slogans fashionable during the 60s and 70s, but commercial ads that began to fill chinese newspapers from the mid-80s. in wu's simulation of big character posters, therefore, past and present merged into a single moment. the result was a supra-historical temporality recognized as the contemporary. a final question: can we use the pattern i describe here as a general condition for the contemporary in different historical situations, not only in our time but also in the past? i’m not ready to answer this question definitively. but it is interesting to notice parallel situations in art history, in which rupture and departure characterized artistic creativity, and art projects signaled the effort to construct suspended time and space out of a linear history. can we identity such situations as moments of the contemporary linked not by historical progression but by similar responses to history? perhaps we can discuss these questions in this workshop. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/� 4 0 f r o m “ mo d e r n ” t o “ c o n t e mp o r a r y ” contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 1 (2011) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2011.36 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-noncommercial-no derivative works 3.0 united states license. this journal is operated by the university library system of the university of pittsburgh as part of its d-scribe digital publishing program, and is co-sponsored by the university of pittsburgh press. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/� http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/� http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/� http://www.pitt.edu/� http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/� http://www.upress.pitt.edu/upressindex.aspx� << /ascii85encodepages false /allowtransparency 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/hrv (za stvaranje adobe pdf dokumenata najpogodnijih za visokokvalitetni ispis prije tiskanja koristite ove postavke. stvoreni pdf dokumenti mogu se otvoriti acrobat i adobe reader 5.0 i kasnijim verzijama.) /hun 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/pdfxoutputintentprofileselector /documentcmyk /preserveediting true /untaggedcmykhandling /leaveuntagged /untaggedrgbhandling /usedocumentprofile /usedocumentbleed false >> ] >> setdistillerparams << /hwresolution [2400 2400] /pagesize [612.000 792.000] >> setpagedevice contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 1 (2011) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2011.31 contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture is a journal of visual culture that explores how temporality has acquired visual form in a range of different cultural and historical settings. devoted to presenting the diverse ways in which time becomes visual as well as how visual culture conditions time and our perception of it, contemporaneity aims to publish work that grapples with the question of how cultures worldwide and throughout history use images to record, define, and confront their historical context and lived experience of the temporal. as historicist master narratives and totalizing theories of the end of history lose their relevance for today’s scholars, it has become clear that time is not an empty duration unaffected by the events that fill it. in the past century, we became aware that different cultures past and present conceive of and value time differently, and that time itself has a history. time is neither homogenous nor blank but is constructed, contested, multiple, and asymmetrical, and, moreover, there are many ways of being in time and belonging to it (or not belonging to it) that coexist contemporaneously. taking this complex understanding of temporality as its structuring theme, contemporaneity rethinks the relationship between visual culture and time and facilitates understanding of how the present was, is, and will be experienced differently depending on both individual and social histories. new scholarship on pre-modern art has increasingly taken time into account, examining cultural notions about the present and their profound effects on image-making. as we become ever more aware of the disjointedness of our current temporal condition, the need for contemporaneity becomes clearer and clearer. sharpening our sense of how images from the past construe relationships to, with, through, in, and against time will help us to grasp features of our own time, such as the persistence of the past in the present or the lost faith in a utopian future. contemporaneity is published in the conviction that all images have something unique to tell us about our historical condition, and that they configure the plural temporalities of our contemporaneity in ways that deserve our closest attention and most rigorous scholarship. we welcome your involvement as both readers and contributors. contemporaneity will be published annually in the spring. submissions should be sent by august 30 each year. we support scholarship on art, architecture, photography, film, and new media as well as texts and projects by practitioners working in these areas. cristina albu, robert bailey, saskia beranek, brianne cohen, heidi cook, amy cymbala, rachel miller, yuki morishima, sara sumpter are the editors of contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture. about contemporaneity http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/� 2 contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 1 (2011) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2011.31 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-noncommercial-no derivative works 3.0 united states license. this journal is operated by the university library system of the university of pittsburgh as part of its d-scribe digital publishing program, and is co-sponsored by the university of pittsburgh press. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/� http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/� http://www.pitt.edu/� http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/� 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can be opened with acrobat and adobe reader 5.0 and later.) >> /namespace [ (adobe) (common) (1.0) ] /othernamespaces [ << /asreaderspreads false /cropimagestoframes true /errorcontrol /warnandcontinue /flattenerignorespreadoverrides false /includeguidesgrids false /includenonprinting false /includeslug false /namespace [ (adobe) (indesign) (4.0) ] /omitplacedbitmaps false /omitplacedeps false /omitplacedpdf false /simulateoverprint /legacy >> << /addbleedmarks false /addcolorbars false /addcropmarks false /addpageinfo false /addregmarks false /convertcolors /converttocmyk /destinationprofilename () /destinationprofileselector /documentcmyk /downsample16bitimages true /flattenerpreset << /presetselector /mediumresolution >> /formelements false /generatestructure false /includebookmarks false /includehyperlinks false /includeinteractive false /includelayers false /includeprofiles false /multimediahandling /useobjectsettings /namespace [ (adobe) (creativesuite) (2.0) ] /pdfxoutputintentprofileselector /documentcmyk /preserveediting true /untaggedcmykhandling /leaveuntagged /untaggedrgbhandling /usedocumentprofile /usedocumentbleed false >> ] >> setdistillerparams << /hwresolution [2400 2400] /pagesize [612.000 792.000] >> setpagedevice 5 h8w vol 2, no 1 (2012) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2012.47 http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu an interview with lucy skaer of henry viii’s wives brianne cohen abstract this interview took place on january 26, 2012 over skype. i, brianne cohen, posed a series of questions to lucy skaer about three of henry viiis’s wives’ artworks presented in this volume of contemporaneity – spiral betty (2004), mr. hysteria (2005), and the returning officer (2009) – in order to draw out thematic connections not only among the art collective’s moving-image installations, but also throughout their larger, diverse oeuvre. the six members of henry viii’s wives live and work in different cities, but have collaborated and exhibited together since 1997, primarily in europe. i am thankful to lucy skaer for her thoughtful answers and to henry viii’s wives for permission to present their video and filmic work. about the author lucky skaer is one of the six members of henry viii’s wives, as well as an independent artist based in new york. brianne cohen is an editor of contemporaneity. contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 2, no 1 (2012) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2012.47 this interview took place on january 26, 2012 over skype. i, brianne cohen, posed a series of questions to lucy skaer about three of henry viiis’s wives’ artworks presented in this volume of contemporaneity – spiral betty (2004), mr. hysteria (2005), and the returning officer (2009) – in order to draw out thematic connections not only among the art collective’s moving-image installations, but also throughout their larger, diverse oeuvre. the six members of henry viii’s wives live and work in different cities, but have collaborated and exhibited together since 1997, primarily in europe. i am thankful to lucy skaer for her thoughtful answers and to henry viii’s wives for permission to present their video and filmic work. brianne cohen: to begin with, can you explain how your group formed, and why you chose the name “henry viii’s wives”? lucy skaer: we basically all studied together, and part of our study was to do public art projects. we found that we just kind of naturally teamed up to do those because they were all projects that had to be outside the gallery or school. so we formed a natural squad for those, and then when we left school we applied to do a show at transmission gallery as a group. we’d shown together a couple of times before then as a group but with our individual work. the idea to actually form a collaboration came up when transmission asked us for a more clear proposal of what we were going to do. so then we thought, “why don’t we actually collaborate together rather than just make another group show?” so that’s how the collaboration came about, and as for the name, it was actually the name of our first show. the exhibition title was “henry viii’s wives,” and that migrated to being our name because it just seemed to fit somehow, in the way that it doesn’t really fit because it doesn’t describe any of us [laughs]. the title for the show was made in response to the death of lady diana. the show was that winter, and she’d been killed in the autumn. so it was inspired by that huge media response and the idea of other royal deaths. the poster had six small thumbnail drawings of her crashed car, so there was a direct reference. bc: let’s begin now with spiral betty. can you tell us what the title of this piece signifies, and why does it seem to have this reference to robert smithson’s spiral jetty (1970)? ls: well yes, although the work came from quite a serious point, the title was a joke. we were working with this gallery, iris kadel, in karlsruhe, and she was quite keen to market our work and take it to art fairs and things. there was something about the way the group worked that didn’t take this kind of proposition very seriously, so we called it something that we thought she would have a hard time explaining [laughs]. but also it seemed in keeping with our general mood, that we would take some art references and use them as a form of nonsense. funnily, rosemarie trockel has also used that title, which we didn’t know about. so we’re in good company. an interview with lucy skaer of henry viii’s wives brianne cohen 8 9 b r i a n n e c o h e n contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 2, no 1 (2012) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2012.47 regarding smithson, the course that we studied was environmental art, so smithson was a big reference in our education. land art and public art were something to be revered, so i think it was a kind of hangover from that as well. bc: right, can you tell us quickly which school you’re referring to? ls: yes, glasgow school of art had this department that was really successful in the 90s and early 2000s, and taught the philosophy that context is half the work. so the viewing situation for the work had to be taken into account, and you couldn’t just assume you had a certain audience. you couldn’t assume that you had a white box. bc: so in the video installation, it’s clear that two women are engaged in some kind of dialogue, but it’s quite disconnected and fragmented. can you tell us how you staged and edited this piece in order to achieve such an effect? ls: this was actually the second time we’d done this kind of format. we arrived at the script from a series of interviews. this one was generally interviews with “the good” and interviews with “the bad.” it’s making a huge assumption that’s not viable about who in society is good and who is bad, and playing with what they say – kind of out of the horse’s mouth. we interviewed prisoners in the north of england and prostitutes for our “bad” camp, and the “good” camp was church-goers, charity workers, members of the women’s institute, which is a quite village-like association in the uk. then we took their words and knitted them together into this script, so that one woman in the film says lines put together from the stereotypical bad, while the other one speaks the lines of the “good.” it’s a conversation between the “good” and “bad,” but the way it actually comes across in the film is that one character seems to take the moral high ground, and the other one doesn’t. what they actually say is impossible to separate into “good” and “bad.” bc: in the artwork, the women are also blind and elderly. in several of the group’s pieces, you have employed the help of elderly people, blind people, or people who suffer from dementia (as in the case of the returning officer). do you feel they have a special viewpoint to offer in your edited conversations? ls: i guess what we wanted to do was find a pre-existing group of people, so that we weren’t choosing people for how they looked or what their class was, or where they were from or anything like that. we tapped into this secondary characteristic that they’d already used to define themselves as a group. the first time we made a film with blind people was in our show light without shadow, and we were actually just quite interested in how they were on the screen after we made that. so with the one we shot in new york [spiral betty], we wanted to further pursue that – the way that the women are on the screen, and the way that they say lines and respond to each other’s speech. bc: in the background of the women’s conversation, one views the skyscrapers of new york. this is your first piece exhibited in the united states, and it was also produced only one year after george w. bush’s state of the union address labeling certain countries along 9 0 h e n r y v i i i ’ s w i v e s contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 2, no 1 (2012) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2012.47 an “axis of evil.” do you think such post-9.11.01 labels and fears, between the “good guys” and the “bad guys,” informed the backdrop of this piece? ls: the building you see out of the window is the united nations, and we’d originally wanted to film it in the un. so we were thinking about that kind of angle of the work with this – the whole idea that at that point “good” and “evil” became really politicized. we wanted to complicate that. bc: ok, so let me move on now to mr. hysteria. this piece hinges on the idea of fear and hysteria. can you tell us what kind of research you did for the preparation of this piece, and how you collected statements to compose its script? ls: we made mr. hysteria for the show populism, which was touring around various venues in europe, and we wanted to make something that had more of a narrative than spiral betty. so we were interviewing about these moments where reality and daily life became overwhelmed by something and detached, or in a space where that detachment was a kind of normal situation. for example, we filmed in the stock exchange in berlin, where there’s a high degree of speculation, i guess, on what certain realities are. and we interviewed people about mass experiences like big political marches or the fall of the berlin wall. we tried to put these together in a narrative sequence. so we’d interview people about, say, an approaching crowd or being part of a crowd. then we’d interview someone like a long-distance runner about running a race, so we’d have that movement from “approaching crowd” to “running,” and then to “arriving in a space.” we interviewed people about coming home after a long time away. we tried to add a narrative dimension. our plot was basically this kind of mounting mass feeling – a movement (like running) and an arrival and the description of an object in space. one object we gave people to describe was a rope knotted into a noose; another one was an alarm clock that had stopped at a certain time. i can’t remember what the other objects were, but again, the whole script is made up from these interviews. we didn’t write any part of it. it is put together to have a recognizable structure but still maintain this kind of disjunctive strangeness, which is heightened by the way it’s edited, the way the camera moves, these different non-actors, and various locations. the locations are the stock exchange, a maternity hospital, a prison/police station with cells in lithunia, and a newspaper archive in berlin. bc: can you talk more about why you chose those locations? ls: i guess with the stock exchange it was this element of speculation and divorce from reality – that it felt like a hothouse of speculation in there. and the maternity hospital for its links with hysteria, being this “disease of the womb,” going back to the very early definitions of hysteria. the police station – i think because it’s kind of this odd, in-between place. bc: yes, sirko knüpfer [another member of henry viii’s wives] described the police as “detectors of mismatched reality.” ls: he put it well. and the newspaper archive is a place where reality is finally settled on and defined in a way. 9 1 b r i a n n e c o h e n contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 2, no 1 (2012) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2012.47 bc: so you’ve described how you’re trying to achieve a certain feeling in the video, and we see in it that there’s a quickening of pace from beginning to end, and different men and women in various scenes seem to replace each other anonymously. their voices overlap and carry through as if in one conversation, building to a pitch at the conclusion. how do you see these people relating to each other across the span of the film? are they mimicking a type of rumor or hysteria? ls: the way that i see them is that they’re both enacting and telling at the same time, like the relationship an oracle might have to a society, that they’re these “tellers” rather than what they’re saying being particularly applicable in a certain way. they’re more abstractly, or not literally, describing or saying. i think we were interested in that mode. bc: how does that connect to the show you made it for, populism, which was an exhibition that was particularly interested in the growing strength of populist parties throughout europe in the last fifteen years? how did you approach the idea of populism through this piece? ls: the structure of our piece leads towards a kind of crisis, from this group movement to a slightly overwrought description of an object, from this mass movement to moment of subjectivity. i think we were looking at a kind of isolation, or bringing about a point of isolation between these people. they’re artificially united in our film with what they’re doing and what they’re talking about, but there isn’t actually cohesion between them. bc: ok, moving on to the last piece featured here, the returning officer – this threescreen video installation is different from spiral betty and mr. hysteria in the sense that you did not conduct interviews or collect statements for it. it is a three-part, silent “film” accompanied by an organ, literally situated underneath two of the back-to-back screens. why did you decide to shift strategies for this piece? ls: well we started in a different place for this piece. we were shooting on film, which we hadn’t done before, and that leads to sound being a problem. part of it was an interest in the image over speech, which is why we made it in film. i would almost put the returning officer in a different series than the other ones, although it has some tactics in common, like using people in the places where they live and work. and it’s a multi-screen, almost like a disjointed narrative bringing together these disparate places. instead of a bringing together of interviews and places, it’s more that the content just comes from the place. so with the poppy field, we used the family who owned the poppy field in their poppy field, and we directed them a bit based on a scene from the wizard of oz. but that was just more a way of having some kind of direction for them – getting them started and then letting them do their own thing. with the house in belgrade where we shot, it was quite a strange context [the legacy house in belgrade, serbia, officially known as “legacy of milica zorić and rodoljub čolaković,” and now owned by the museum of contemporary art]. what we wanted to do is just make a very simple narrative: this guy fixes the lights inside this house, and he manages to fix them in time before the evening gets darker and darker. so as night falls, the lights will come on. he collapses in the garden, but that collapsing is a reenactment of something that happened in the building. the building was part of the museum in belgrade. the museum was taken over during the milošević regime, and the house that had been a residency for the museum had been turned into a kind of gambling den and brothel. that’s 9 2 h e n r y v i i i ’ s w i v e s contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 2, no 1 (2012) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2012.47 how we found it. it had tons of cigarette burns on the floor and a very unpleasant feeling to it. one of the gangsters who’d run that place had been shot in the garden, so we made this reenactment with the caretaker – i suppose bridging the reality of the caretaker, who was there to do things such as fix the lights, with this recent history of the building. bc: and the other screen? ls: the third film was this organ builder’s house in vilnius, where’d actually gotten an organ pipe built by him [for an earlier piece, the lowest note on an organ = the length of a human fingernail grown since 1730 = 8hz/subsonic (2005)]. we’d gone to visit him and were just really amazed by the structure of his house because it was built around the negative shape of a church organ, so that he could build the pipes inside the house. it was really a kind of bizarre, specialized architecture, and the house was ramshackle. but the organ pipes inside were absolutely perfectly crafted. there was a certain idea in those films [the returning officer] about the building somehow achieving its potential. very early in the belgrade film, in our first proposal, we wanted to make an installation in the house that filled it with light and noise, and it would just play in that neighborhood. that got transmuted into the film – this idea of filling the house with light. and similarly with the organ builder’s house, there was this moment of realizing the potential of this whole house becoming a musical instrument. in that film, the organ builders have a fan they hook up to the organ pipes in order to make them sound, so that they can tune them. our film with its live accompaniment – it’s the picture of this happening. the organ pipes having this air flow through them is matched with this live sound of the organ, which gets louder and louder and more discordant. bc: and there’s also a scene with elderly people that we see, right? ls: yes, there’s a cutback from the poppy field to these elderly people in a home near bristol. it’s almost like they’re the built-in audience. and part of what we were interested in with the poppy fields is this dual idea of forgetting on one hand and remembering on the other – the opium poppy versus the red poppy. there’s a play on oblivion with those people with dementia, but also on the red poppy, the wartime remembrance poppy. bc: you also produced a trailer for the piece, which is still available on youtube. can you tell us how you created this and how it functions within the larger project? ls: yes, quite often with the works, such as mr. hysteria or spiral betty, we take existing material, feed it through another process, give it back to other people, and then take it back from them, etc.… so we gave all of our footage to a commercial editor to see what he would put together from it, knowing that it would come out very differently from what we would edit [laughs]. it was a content-generating thing – we wanted to simultaneously undermine our artistic presentation with a commercial presentation that we wouldn’t have made. bc: overall the piece seems to act like a spoof horror film. is this an effect you intended, and does it relate at all to the fear/anxiety that we see in mr. hysteria? 9 3 b r i a n n e c o h e n contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 2, no 1 (2012) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2012.47 ls: i think there is an underlying threat in the returning officer, but there’s also a funny humanity that you see. we didn’t think about it being a horror film necessarily, but that is how it seems in the trailer certainly. i hadn’t thought about it being like a horror film, although it is a spoof in some ways. i think there’s something in the work that allows it to play with these quite recognized forms but also make them disconcerting by the humanity of them, the way that people – non-actors – react. we certainly never rehearsed things. it was a big part of the mechanism that we used to make the films – that we kept them being very unrehearsed and very raw. bc: this seems to be an overarching aspect of your work – the idea of playing with narratives, the idea of storytelling or history-writing, for that matter. would you say that this is one of your larger goals as a group? ls: yes, i think back from our very first works together, we were playing around with the idea of reenactment, and particularly reenactment of key things in human development like making fire or fending off a pack of dogs with torches. so i think that theme goes all the way through our work, and became increasingly complex and convoluted. the project that we’re dealing with a lot now is the tatlin’s tower project, which is, again, a reenactment of a certain point of history, but a complete breakdown of it and an ironic staging of it. bc: can you give us a quick sense of what that project is about? ls: it’s an ongoing attempt to build vladimir tatlin’s monument to the third international. the original tower was designed between 1919 and 1921 and was meant to house the international communist headquarters. it was a completely radical design, and the fact that it wasn’t built is often cited as a turning point in history where that branch of the russian avant-garde – and its goal to unite art and politics – failed. so our attempt to build tatlin’s tower is to build it full size (and it was meant to be twice the height of the empire state building) and from the original materials, but in small pieces around the world until the whole tower exists. but it’s not going to be united ever. it’s always going to be kept as this disparate thing, and part of the reason we thought that would be interesting is because it seems like that set of ideas and the situation of the un-built tower has different resonances in different countries, different political environments, different social groups, as well as if it’s in, say, a park or a gallery. it just seems to bring up a lot of baggage. yes, so our project is this ongoing attempt. bc: do you see your group’s work moving now from video and film to more public sphere projects, and what was it about video/film that attracted you? ls: i think right from the beginning, it was an easy way that we could work together. it’s a great leveler, whereas making a drawing (we have done that was well) is more problematic. video and film seemed to bring an immediate sort of unity. and i don’t know what we’re going to do next… 9 4 h e n r y v i i i ’ s w i v e s contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 2, no 1 (2012) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2012.47 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-noncommercial-no derivative works 3.0 united states license. this journal is operated by the university library system of the university of pittsburgh as part of its d-scribe digital publishing program, and is co-sponsored by the university of pittsburgh press. 114-345-6-le vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.114 http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu skin deep: surfacing with leigh-ann pahapill gabrielle gopinath abstract gabrielle gopinath examines works from leigh-ann pahapill’s compilation video and exhibition titled likewise, as technical experts, but not (at all) by way of culture (20122013). a version of the artwork is included in contemporaneity, vol. 3, no.1. about the author gabrielle gopinath teaches modern and contemporary art history at humboldt state university in arcata, california. she received her ph.d from yale university, where her dissertation addressed the theme of bodily absence in the multimedia art of the 1970s. she has published articles on video, graffiti, sound art, and new media. her current book project addresses euphoric and dysphoric metaphors of containment in postwar american art. about the artist the installations of canadian artist leigh-ann pahapill question how we apprehend our world, and investigate the frameworks that shape how we come to know things. careful studies of the gallery site, its particular formal qualities and conceptual regimes, become new opportunities to query the capacity of formative structure to yield experience that can be characterized as phenomenologically immediate. her work engages the space and the intricacies of the gallery to understand how we conceive our worlds, bringing fragments, events, and ideas into tenable meaning. the objects on view grow to include the gallery, the encounter with the objects themselves, and the process of cognition. the artist asks us to reflect upon the degree to which predetermined ideas, concepts, and ways of framing are already embedded in acts of looking. recent solo exhibitions include window (re/production re/presentation), asheville, nc (2013); penelec gallery, allegheny college, pa (2013); the cornell fine arts museum, fl (2011 & 2012); 47, toronto (2009); and dova temporary gallery, chicago (2009). recent group exhibitions include proofofproofofconcept at the ontario college of art and design university graduate gallery (2013); mirages, fountains, and dissociative compositions at galerie catherine bastide, brussels (2011). pahapill is an assistant profesor of art at bowling green state university in ohio. contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.114 leigh-ann pahapill’s compilation video likewise, as technical experts, but not (at all) by way of culture brings together four videos created for an identically titled exhibition. first installed at the cornell fine arts museum, florida in 2012, the exhibition was modified and re-installed in the penelec gallery at allegheny college a year later (figs 1 and 2). the compilation video that accompanies this article uses a four-way split screen to present four videos simultaneously. the videos were initially created to be seen in the context of an installation that also included site-specific wall paintings, photographs, and three monumental sculptures. (in their original display format, the videos looped rather than finishing at different times, as they do in the version seen here.) all four videos offer surface views, looped sequences shot during the show’s installation process. each presents the viewpoint of a static camera pointed directly at a panel of translucent plastic sheeting. the panels ripple slightly, as if ruffled by a breeze. arrows have been scrawled in black marker on two of the sheets, cueing the viewer to the right. a sense of urgency attaches to the marks because of their repetition and the hurried way in which they appear to have been inscribed. that said, they are less than useful as indices. like the plastic sheeting that sustains them, the arrows are perfectly reversible. if we turned the allbut-invisible membrane that constitutes their support inside out, they would gesture in the same way, but they would indicate the opposite of what they seem to suggest in this context. the plastic sheeting was an artifact of the installation process. pahapill recalls that museum preparators used the sheeting during installation to protect other artworks from construction dust. this material intrusion proved serendipitous. pahapill’s working process often proceeds from the “collision” of theoretical inquiry with the particularities of a given space. here, plastic sheeting proved an apt vehicle for exploring simultaneity and surface. the inclusion of these looped sequences further complicated the installation’s already intricate time signature, vested in the provenance of pahapill’s sculptural forms. the monumental sculptures situated near the videos are recreated props designed by caspar neher for bertolt brecht stage plays in 1926, 1931 and 1949. installed among videos and photographs that documented the exhibition space in the process of transition, these recreations prompted a complicated mode of being-in-time characterized by contemplation of the present through simultaneous engagement with multiple moments of the historical past. the videos amplified this effect. each of the four screens opened onto a looped sequence from a different moment in the process of the work’s assembly. in their initial exhibition at the cornell fine arts museum, the works played continuously on floor-mounted flat-screen monitors. in the allegheny college exhibition, they were projected onto walls. skin deep: surfacing with leigh-ann pahapill gabrielle gopinath 1 3 5 g a b r i e l l e g o p i n a t h contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.114 like the adjacent sculptures, the videos proposed a model of existence as depthless surface. plastic sheeting has no interior and no exterior, no front and no back. the marks found upon its surface are reversible. likewise, a stage prop is an object that is valued for its surface appearance. its interiority—or lack thereof—is unimportant. façade is key. this ontological model differs from most ways of understanding being that have been advanced in western thought, because it is not presaged on a binary hierarchy. the privileged term of this binary pair is interior (think of the positive metaphorical valence associated with the words deep and profundity); the term of lesser value is surface. pahapill advances façades as a means to question our ideas about the fixity of things and to query the role that our notions and experiences of surface may play in shaping our understanding of the world. the surfaces in these videos are analogues to skin. this organic membrane is the site of tactile input/output, the translucent envelope through which a subject perceives the world. imagine the worldwide network of perceptive faculties flattened out to resemble an epidermis with no interior, and no psychologically freighted depths. this vision parallels the treatments of surface that appear in several philosophical accounts of the contemporary condition. maurice merleau-ponty explored the implications of pure surface for phenomenology; gilles deleuze explored the concept from an ontological perspective. more recently, scholars working in the field of animal studies have claimed the surface as a platform for thought that seeks to avoid anthropocentric bias. in his recent work, giorgio agamben uses the concept of an infinitely extendable, depthless surface as a metaphor for the networked public sphere. this interpretation seems particularly relevant to pahapill’s videos, with their emphasis on the surface as site for signal transmission. figure 1 installation view of likewise, as technical experts, but not (at all) by way of culture, penelec gallery (allegheny college), 2013 1 3 6 s k i n d e e p : s u r f a c i n g w i t h l e i g h a n n p a h a p i l l contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.114 in the coming community, agamben elaborates an argument about the politics of networked consciousness by positing a networked poetic space that exists “outside” regular space. this poetic exteriority receives various appellations in agamben’s text: threshold, singularity, multitude, border, emptiness, passage, and even face.1 it is “the most difficult to think” because it is so profoundly remote from our experience: it is nothing less than “the absolutely non-thing experience of a pure exteriority.”2 agamben proposes that “consciousness” is now networked, and that this perpetually expanding network is inevitably experienced at the threshold, as a threshold. it can best be defined as the experience of “being-within an outside.” 3 this is an outside-without-inside, a depthless surface. surfaces that resonate with this description proliferate in pahapill’s videos. seen as an ensemble, they produce a spatiotemporal experience characterized by the ubiquity of thresholds and the coexistence of multiple time signatures. a text-based video created for the allegheny exhibition, composed in response to a request for a description of the work, emphasized that the multiplicity in question was not only spatial but temporal in nature. “a sign to guide / to indicate the proper road to a location / in due time / in the present / in the future / in the past / in a moment / inside and into.” viewers moving through this installation were confronted with a complicated spatial environment punctuated by multiple screens, each depicting events transpiring on a different timeline. being confronted with multiple visual foci in this way induced a state of distraction, at once taxing and oddly familiar: an artfully exaggerated version of the distracted interactions many of us undertake daily, through various species of screen interface. the project’s hedgy, equivocating title, drawn from walter benjamin's account of bertolt brecht's epic theatre, is a sentence in search of a subject—another recursive cue that 1 giorgio agamben, the coming community, theory out of bounds, vol.1 (minneapolis: university of minnesota press, 1993), 68. 2 ibid., 67. 3 ibid., 68. figure 2 hollowed tree from likewise, as technical experts, but not (at all) by way of culture, cornell fine arts museum, 2012 figure 3 close-up of hollowed tree 1 3 7 g a b r i e l l e g o p i n a t h contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.114 directs would-be interpreters back to the surface. it’s a verbal equivalent to the double-ply surfaces in the videos and the sculptural recreations of props that anchor pahapill’s installations. one of pahapill’s props, a hollowed tree emerging from a stage rake, exemplifies this principle (figs 3 and 4). while the pithed tree has lost its property of inwardness, what it loses in dimension it gains in terms of surface area and points of potential access. the other props that pahapill recreates—a balcony and a signpost—are similar in the sense that they are also objects that mark thresholds. brecht’s half-curtain apparatus, one of the defining characteristics of his epic theatre, functions like pahapill’s depthless surfaces. or perhaps it’s better to say that the depthless surfaces that proliferate in this artist’s installations elaborate brecht’s vision. the half-curtain allows viewers to have it both ways, puncturing the theatrical illusion while at the same time allowing part of it to be sustained. audience members at the epic theatre partake in illusion, simultaneously remaining conscious that they inhabit the here and now. pahapill’s installations induce a similar effect in viewers by generating an origami complex of intricately folded surfaces. these surfaces invite a species of material experience that parallel the structure of our networked collective consciousness. this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-noncommercial-no derivative works 3.0 united states license. this journal is operated by the university library system of the university of pittsburgh as part of its d-scribe digital publishing program, and is co-sponsored by the university of pittsburgh press. 2 otto real men wear uniforms vol 2, no 1 (2012) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2012.44 http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu real men wear uniforms photomontage, postcards, and military visual culture in early twentieth-century germany elizabeth otto abstract this essay examines early twentieth-century german representations of men and women in uniform to consider how mass culture allowed individuals to participate in aspects of gender construction. it also reveals how masculinity was increasingly linked to military ideals. the pictures under scrutiny here were made in two significant but as yet under-researched types of pictures: pre-avant-garde photomontaged soldier portraits and popular postcards. both of these visual forms originated in the 1870s, the decade that germany was itself founded, and they both were in wide circulation by the early twentieth century. individualized soldier portraits and postcards offered a glorious vision of a man’s military service, and they performed what theodor lessing has called vergemütlichung, the rendering harmless of history. these idealized images of soldierly life were available to a broad swath of the public, but their democratization only extended so far. representations of women in uniform served to reinforce—through stereotyping and humor—the unquestionably male nature of military institutions and, by extension, of public space. at the same time, by making apparent their own constructed nature, these portraits and postcards offered viewers a glimpse behind the masquerade of masculinity. this essay thus also identifies these images’ links to the subsequent work of avant-garde artists and to the national socialists’ return to the ideal of uniformed masculinity. about the author elizabeth otto is associate professor of modern art history in the department of visual studies at the state university of new york at buffalo. she works on new media and gender in germany of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. she is the author of tempo, tempo! the bauhaus photomontages of marianne brandt (berlin: bauhaus-archive and jovis verlag, 2005) and the coeditor of the new woman international: representations in photography and film from the 1870s through the 1960s (ann arbor: university of michigan press, 2011). otto is currently working on a book titled haunted bauhaus: sprit and body in the home of rationalized culture, which investigates the bauhaus’s ongoing engagement with spiritualism and the occult, gender and figuration, and surrealism in order to examine the embrace of the irrational which lurks beneath the sleek surfaces and cold structures most commonly associated with the school. contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 2, no 1 (2012) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2012.44 pictures have routinely been enlisted to bring populations in line with governmental or political projects.1 in times of crisis, particular ideological pressure has often been brought to bear on the construction of manhood, which is seen as essentially linked to the ideals of nation building, war, and imperialism. but the complex mechanics of this gender construction, which could signify in allegorical and even contradictory ways, are as yet under researched and little understood. in this essay i examine representations of german military masculinity from the early twentieth century in photography-based, mixed-media portraits and popular postcards. the soldier has been one of the most enduring symbols of ideal manhood, one that has transcended not only time and place, but often social class. this imagery came strongly to the fore in germany during the early twentieth century, a time when the work of shoring up the unity of this still new nation was intensely under way and while germany struggled to remain relevant on the international stage of colonialism.2 as i show in this essay, these images of male bodies reveal a framework of visual technologies and tropes that was deployed to create a specific form of representative manliness. while i focus on images of the idealized male body in popular visual culture, there are several key comparisons that i make which illuminate the workings of these images. first, when contrasted with representations of these same subjects made by members of the avant-garde, the ideology at work in mainstream military portraits becomes clearly apparent. second, my close readings also engage the female bodies that often populated the peripheral regions of visual militaria or which were themselves featured in uniform. indeed, so much was at stake in creating an inclusive definition of military manliness that the uniformed female body could be used—through gender stereotyping and humor—to define the outer border of this inclusive form of masculinity. the literature on the representation of women in art and media culture has grown by leaps and bounds over the past half century, yet only more recently has scholarship on imaged male bodies or on the relationship between pictured masculinities and femininities begun to develop into a substantive body of work. in the mid 1990s harry brod looked back to the 1920s and the work of psychoanalyst joan riviere in order to explore masculinity as a form of masquerade. brod argues that “the masculine self has traditionally been held to be inherently opposed to the kind of deceit and dissembling characteristic of the masquerade.… like the american cowboy, ‘real’ men embody the primitive, unadorned, self-evident, natural 1 elements of a much earlier version of this essay were published in “uniform: on constructions of soldierly masculinity in early twentieth-century visual culture,” kunst, geschlecht, politik: geschlechterentwürfe in der kunst des kaiserreichs und der weimarer republik, ed. martina kessel (frankfurt: campus verlag, 2005), 17-42. my thanks go to the editors of contemporaneity for including my work in this issue and to a very thoughtful anonymous peer reviewer for excellent comments. unless otherwise noted, translations are my own. 2 germany is not unique in having produced complex photography-based portraits of soldiers. indeed, ambrotypes produced during the united states civil war can also be considered as assembled images with their elaborate frames and protective cases. the type of intricate, largely photo-based compositions that i discuss in this article did exist in neighboring european countries, but anecdotal evidence—which is currently all that is available—suggests that they were far more common in germany than elsewhere. real men wear uniforms photomontage, postcards, and military visual culture in early twentieth-century germany elizabeth otto 2 0 r e a l m e n w e a r u n i f o r m s contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 2, no 1 (2012) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2012.44 truths of the world…. according to the traditional view, only effeminate men would adopt a masquerade.”3 and yet, as brod points out, masculinities are as much constructions as their feminine counterparts, and they require just as much unpacking and analysis.4 as i show in this article, in the visual culture of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, there were types of hyper-masculine portraiture made through modern visual technologies that openly revealed their constructed nature to the viewer. investigating these now lesserknown visual forms allows us to further probe monolithic and unified constructions of masculinity and to imagine how historical viewers participated in a process of imagining modern gender types. a certain standardization of the male body was an essential part of the development of nineteenthand twentieth-century military culture. as early as the seventeenth century, soldiers began to wear specialized clothing of a somewhat unified style, but a rigorous system of elaborate dress uniforms and more practical battle uniforms first came into being only in the early nineteenth century, in part in order to distinguish one nation’s army from another’s.5 national borders were in flux in nineteenth-century europe, and it was only in 1871 that germany became a united country. it did so under prussian leadership, which was famous for its authoritarianism, military traditions, and general stiff-upper-lip approach.6 starting in the early nineteenth century, prussian schools began to be called upon to introduce sports into curricula to physically prepare young men for military service. indeed, the military itself soon was considered an essential part of the education system as “school of the nation.”7 representations also served as visual aids to imagine individual men as prime examples of military fitness, and photography became one of the most important tools used to this end. from its start in the early nineteenth century, portraiture was one of the main sources of this technology’s dramatic rise in popularity.8 photography was often tasked with showing individuals in an ideal manner, yet at the same time, photographs were prized for their 3 harry brod, “masculinity as masquerade,” the masculine masquerade: masculinity and representation, ed. andrew perchuk and helaine posner (cambridge, mass.: mit press, 1995), 13. for joan riviere’s seminal text, see, “womanliness as masquerade,” international journal of psychoanalysis 10 (1929), 30313. 4 here he is also drawing on judith butler, gender trouble: feminism and the subversion of identity (new york: routledge, 1990). 5 for more on the history and development of uniforms, see timothy newark, brassey’s book of uniforms (london: brassey’s inc., 1998). 6 on this topic see for example karen hagemann, “männlicher muth und teutsche ehre”: nation, krieg und geschlecht in der zeit der antinapoleonischen kriege preußens (paderborn: ferdinand schöningh verlag), 2002; and emilio willems, a way of life and death: three centuries of prussian-german militarism, an anthropological approach (nashville: vanderbilt university press, 1986). 7 ute frevert identifies several examples of the linkage between gymnastics and military training for boys in the early nineteenth-century. already in 1811, friedrich ludwig jahn—better known as “turnvater jahn”—called for the creation of gymnastics halls to make the youth ready for future wars. ute frevert, die kasernierte nation: militärdienst und zivilgesellschaft in deutschland (munich: beck verlag, 2001), 4647. there are a number of excellent studies on masculinity and military service in germany that have recently been published including karen hagemann and stefanie schüler-springorum, eds, home/front: the military, war and gender in twentieth-century germany (new york: berg, 2003). 8 as elizabeth anne mccauley has pointed out, the number of photographic studios in paris went from thirteen in 1848 to approximately three hundred and sixty five only twenty years later. elizabeth anne mccauley, industrial madness: commercial photography in paris, 1848-1871 (new haven: yale university press, 1994), 1. 2 1 e l i z a b e t h o t t o contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 2, no 1 (2012) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2012.44 perceived realism and truthfulness.9 in most cases, any practices that obviously altered the photographic image or portrait were precluded except in a few specific instances, such as art photography or political satire.10 but starting in the 1870s, concurrent with the founding of the german nation, a new form of portraiture became widely available to soldiers. it was a form that relied heavily on alteration through photomontage. that word “photomontage” was not yet in use at this time, and these would have been referred to simply as portraits or “glued pictures.” however, these portraits were one of the earliest wide-spread uses of the cut-and-paste visual techniques that we have now come to commonly refer to as photomontage, so i will call them by this name.11 such portraits were based on a readymade composition that was created on a printing press, often in color. by the early twentieth century, these backgrounds were sometimes themselves reproduced photographically. to make such a portrait, a soldier would go to a local studio and select a composition, often one that had been manufactured by the photographer himself. it might show a domestic interior, a peaceful rural scene, or a vision of quaint town life. set within this composition would also be an ideal, uniformed body that was ready to receive the soldier’s head. like the background, the uniformed body was also standardized, so that each man who chose this image would have looked identical from the neck down. once a background had been selected, the photographer would take a headshot, cut the head out, and paste it into the composition. such portraits could be made on a soldier’s own initiative, or they could be purchased together with other members of his regiment; both forms provided a glorified keepsake of the sitter’s own particular tour of duty.12 9 william henry fox-talbot, the inventor of the photographic calotype process in the 1830s, famously proposed that photographs might serve to document the contents of a house so that, in case of the theft of any of the items, they could be used as proof in court. see william henry fox talbot, the pencil of nature, ed. beaumont newhall (new york: da capo press, 1969), n.p. 10 as early as the later 1850s, oscar rejlander and henry peach robinson experimented with narrativebased and artistic photographs that were made from combined negatives. there is a wealth of scholarship on early photography that was altered to create caricatures or for political ends. see, for example, bodo von dewitz and roland scotti, alles wahrheit! alles lüge! photographie und wirklichkeit im 19. jahrhundert (dresden: verlag der kunst, 1996). 11 one of the oldest examples of montaged soldier portraiture is from 1878, reprinted in robert bosshard, ute eskildsen, and robert knodt, eds., with texts by robert bosshard, erinnerung an die dienstzeit: fotografien der jahrhundertwende (essen: museum folkwang, 1993), 47. for more on critical, avantgarde photomontaged soldier images in the interwar period, see my essay, “the secret history of photomontage: on the origins of the composite form and the weimar photomontages of marianne brandt,” weimar publics/weimar subjects: rethinking the political culture of germany in the 1920s, ed. kerstin barndt, kathleen canning and kristin mcguire (oxford: berghahn books, 2010), 66-92. hanne bergius also cites soldier portraits as key to the rise of dada in montage und metamechanik: dada berlin— artistik von polaritäten (berlin: gebr. mann verlag, 2000). hanno möbius dwells on the subject of montages made prior to the twentieth century at some length in montage und collage (munich: wilhelm fink verlag, 2000), see especially chapters 1-8. 12 the details of the practices for commissioning such portraits come from conversations in 2002 with robert knodt of the photography department at the museum folkwang, essen and with h.-d. richter of the militär-historisches museum, dresden. individually-made beer steins were another form of memento, and their imagery is often similar. some of these steins include photographic-based images as well. mr. richter showed me a rare form of beer stein that is topped with a glass-eyed metal horse; a viewer can peep in one eye and see a tiny slide photographic slide that is backlit through the other eye. to my knowledge there is nothing published on this type of object. for more on the more typical steins, see r. ron heiligenstein, regimental beer steins of the imperial german and royal bavarian armies and the imperial german navy / reservistenkrüge, 1890-1914 (milwaukee: delzer lithograph co., 1997); and gary kirsner, german military steins, 1914 to 1945 (coral springs: glentiques, 1989). 2 2 r e a l m e n w e a r u n i f o r m s contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 2, no 1 (2012) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2012.44 even more important than providing personal keepsakes, these portraits collectively created powerful counter narratives to the hardship and brutality that were typical of war experiences. thus, as robert bosshard suggests, they evidence a larger desire that is prevalent in practices of photography, namely the wish to fictionalize through a medium that presents itself as nonfiction.13 ute daniel picks up on a similar but even broader idea in her history of gender, class, and the first world war by drawing attention to the ideas of theodor lessing. in lessing’s geschichte als sinngebung des sinnlosen (history as giving sense to the senseless), written during world war i and published in 1919, he explains his critique of what he calls vergemütlichung, the practice of “making (something) more comfortable,” which always gets smuggled into the analysis.14 “everything historical,” lessing wrote, becomes “the subject of novelists.” and thus, daniel asserts, representing events through the writing of history—or, we might add, in images—“renders them harmless.”15 this attempt to make difficult history more comfortable through representation was clearly, almost painfully, in evidence in the photomontaged soldier portraits. above all, this process was orchestrated by the portraits’ backgrounds, in which setting and soldier body had been printed in advance. in their narrative vergemütlichung, these backgrounds usually referred to traditional forms of representation including history painting and royal portraiture. for example, in an 1899 photographic portrait by f. frenkel of ulan rafflenbeul, a lancer or member of the light cavalry, the sitter’s head has been placed on top of a body that has been colorfully painted over by hand to show the perfection of his uniform (fig. 1). the setting is photographically reproduced and shows a well-appointed interior that opens directly onto a garden. the column on the left and the swag of velvet at the right are timehonored and standard elements of portraiture for royalty and nobility, common in the work of such well-known painters of previous centuries as anthony van dyke. through this setting and well-appointed—if somewhat schematic—interior, the cavalry member is instantly granted an approximated vision of a noble history that, prior to the advent of these visual technologies, would have been beyond his means and inaccessible to members of his social class. one of the most spectacular types of combinatory soldier portraiture was the so-called dreifachporträt or triple portrait, which unites traditions of representing the heroic individual with those of group portraiture. for example, a portrait of a gunner named sauerbier from 1911 is a large, high-quality, glossy lithograph showing an elaborate and multicolored scene (fig. 2). the background combines a romantic pastoral landscape with the imagery of monarchy in a compositional mode similar to the neuruppiner bilderbogen. these were a very well-known type of informative broadsheet that, starting in 1825, were printed lithographically and in color. the bilderbogen had multiple frames to convey scenes of contemporary events, particularly wars.16 by calling up the tradition of the bilderbogen, the triple portrait suggests the news-worthiness of sauerbier’s storied military career. 13 bosshard, erinnerung an die dienstzeit, 64. 14 ute daniel, the war from within: german working-class women in the first world war, trans. margaret ries (new york: berg, 1997), 2. theodor lessing, geschichte als sinngebung des sinnlosen (1919; leipzig: reinicke verlag, 1927). lessing’s text was published in 1919 due to censorship. to date it has not, to my knowledge, been translated into english. 15 daniel, the war from within, 2. 16 stefan brakensiek, regine krull, and irina rockel, eds., alltag, klatsch und weltgeschehen: neuruppiner bilderbogen, ein massenmedium des 19. jahrhunderts (bielefeld: verlag für regionalgeschichte, 1993). 2 3 e l i z a b e t h o t t o contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 2, no 1 (2012) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2012.44 figure 1 f. frenkel, ulan raffenbeul, 2. escorte thüringisches ulanen regiment nr. 6, berlin (lancer raffenbeul, 2nd escort of the thüringen lancer regiment, nr. 6, berlin). 1899. silver chloride gelatin photograph with paint and collaged photograph. collection of the museum folkwang, essen. 40.7 x 32 cm. 2 4 r e a l m e n w e a r u n i f o r m s contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 2, no 1 (2012) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2012.44 the details of this portrait’s central landscape create an evocative network of symbols and allegories that underline the glorious nature of sauerbier’s time as a soldier. it is framed by oak trees for masculine strength and the german nation; armor laid to rest to evoke the spoils of war; scenes of military life; a cacophony of texts, flags, and crests; and a row of royal and military portraits which includes the pictorial presence of kaiser wilhelm ii himself. all of these elements converge to create a heroic setting that is both general and specific at once. it exalts sauerbier, but it would do so for anyone portrayed in this picture. even more than this portrait’s overabundance of symbolic and iconographic imagery, one of its most astonishing elements is its method of representing sauerbier. each of the three figures that appear under the brilliant blue lithographic sky presents an aspect of the same man; three photographs of sauerbier’s head have been glued onto the three different bodies. on the left, the cannoneer appears in his dress uniform, a pillar of strength like the oak tree by his side and the architectural columns behind him. at the right he is shown ready for battle with helmet and sword. finally, in the center this same gunner appears in an equestrian portrait. he signals a call to fight from atop his noble steed, a further fantasy since sauerbier was neither an officer nor a member of the mounted cavalry and therefore would not have ridden a horse. this three-in-one portrait type is both absurd and a bit uncanny for a viewer of today. yet the fact that the same face appears in all three poses is this image’s strength. sauerbier is, from left to right, a gentleman-soldier who will serve in war or peace; a man who is valiant and prepared to charge on horseback; and a cannoneer, trained to work the modern equipment that stands at the ready behind him. this triple portrait also parallels another trinity to which sauerbier is faithful. it appears on a banner wrapping the tree trunk at the left: “mit gott für könig und vaterland” (with god for king and fatherland). the opposing tree at the right is bedecked with the phrase “einigkeit macht stark” (unity creates strength). this slogan reminds the viewer that germany was still a relatively young nation in 1911, and that it continued to maintain colonies in various parts of the world; a shoring up of the construction of a unified nation was therefore essential. the portraits, flags, and shields peppered throughout the picture evoke germany’s various distinct parts. the prominence of the phrase “einigkeit macht stark” attempts an easy drawing together of these disparate parts and a smoothing over of regional differences. but embedded within it is the suggestion that unity is never quite guaranteed; it must always be sought after or fought for. further, this phrase reveals a story about manhood that this image strives to tell. while the head of the cannoneer fits these three different but standardized bodies, and each one of these is ready to fill any number of roles, the viewer knows that sauerbier’s triple presence is a physical impossibility. germany’s distinct parts may be unified, but this singular individual has had to be multiplied and divided in order to mythologize his transformation from mere man into soldier. this photomontaged simultaneity permits him to be all that he can be, as a recent slogan for the united states’ army proclaimed. but it also gestures to his limitations with the suggestion that it would take three sauerbiers to fulfill all that is expected of him as a gunner in the german army. 2 5 e l i z a b e t h o t t o contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 2, no 1 (2012) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2012.44 figure 2 unknown photographer and verlag v. j. petzer, berlin, kanonier sauerbier bei der 4. batterie, 2. kurhessisches feld-artillerie-regiment nr. 47, fulda (cannoneer sauerbier of the 4th battery, 2nd kurhessische field artillery regiment, nr. 47, fulda). 1911. multicolored lithograph with collaged photographs. collection of the museum folkwang, essen. 45 x 57 cm. 2 6 r e a l m e n w e a r u n i f o r m s contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 2, no 1 (2012) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2012.44 an aspect of this portrait that would have been equally as troubling to viewers as the tripling of sauerbier is the break on the portrait’s surface where each photographed head is attached to the lithographic background (fig. 3). in person, it is always clearly visible where one of the heads has been glued onto a body. if one looks carefully, the gesture seems awkward or even comical. yet there were reasons for photographers to risk showing a very serious subject through techniques that might appear grotesque. soldier portraits like sauerbier’s combined these two media to draw on what viewers perceived as their different strengths: the accuracy of photography and the naturalistic and much-admired coloration of lithographic prints. once they were combined, the truths of these two forms of representation created a powerful fiction of military masculinity. soldier bodies are presented as conforming to a single, perfect standard, and the cause of german unity that has called these men into uniform is shown as glorious and beautiful. in some types of soldier portraits, photograph and romanticized landscape are brought together through another device: combined negatives that were used to make a single, uninterrupted photographic print. most often in these a soldier appears in a figurative window, and the rest of the composition serves as both a narrative framing device to tell this man’s story and as an actual frame for his photograph. in one such portrait from c. 1910 of a man whose name has not been recorded, the window through which we see him bears the organic asymmetry of jugendstil, and it sprouts flowers that extend across the heavens (fig. 4). the constructed nature of the image is readily apparent through this whimsical framing of the portrait’s sitter and in its overlyidealized landscape. this landscape plays out a number of distinct scenes. soldiers in an evergreen forest to the far left are tending a few canons. to the right, a peaceful town appears in the distance, and, just outside of it, an orderly troop of soldiers trains by marching through rolling fields. the most prominent landscape element is the scene that dominates the lower third of the composition. here identically uniformed and helmeted soldiers stand around chatting and striking relaxed poses; they are at ease, and no enemy is in sight. this is an enticing view of military service as a kind of pastoral and homosocial social hour. unlike the large photographic portrait that dominates the composition, the faces of these soldiers in the landscape are obscured by distance or shadow, or by the fact that they stand with their backs to us. these compositional devices allow their identities to remain open. they are the fondly-recalled comrades of everyman, ready to serve in any man’s portrait. through its composition, this picture conveys a duel message of the peacefulness and equality of military life and the omnipotent specialness of the portrait’s subject. figure 3 detail from the right of figure 2. 2 7 e l i z a b e t h o t t o contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 2, no 1 (2012) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2012.44 figure 4 unknown photographer, portrait of a soldier whose identity is also unknown. c. 1910. single gelatin silver bromide photograph made from a montaged negative. collection of the museum folkwang, essen. 14.8 x 9.9 cm. 2 8 r e a l m e n w e a r u n i f o r m s contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 2, no 1 (2012) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2012.44 other types of soldier portraiture relied on a more intimate relationship to the male body, as we see in an assemblage made by carl dreesen in 1903. it represents a man named hürter who served as a dragooner, or member of the light cavalry (fig. 5). the photograph of this soldier appears in a small oval that is just one element of a complex iconographic program, a kind of altarpiece to this man’s military experience. at the center of the composition is a cardboard representation of hürter’s epaulette. it is enshrined in enameled metal swags of oak and laurel leaves and small silk flags to symbolize the figure 5 carl dreesen, dragoner hürter (dragooner hürter). 1903. assemblage of hand-colored albumin print, plastic, metal, velvet, and silk. collection of museum folkwang, essen. 48.5 x 36.7 cm. 2 9 e l i z a b e t h o t t o contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 2, no 1 (2012) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2012.44 victorious german nation. the entire composition is framed in enameled metal text that gives the epaulette meaning: “stolz kann ich sagen / dies zeichen durft ich tragen” (proudly i can say / i was allowed to wear this symbol). the epaulette shown here is a recreation of those that are painted in bright colors onto hürter’s shoulders in the photographic portrait. the two lines of text call attention to the cardboard epaulette as a coded metonymic device. it evokes the whole of this individual’s military experience and his status as one of a group of soldiers. in addition to the epaulet, the portrait also recreates the fabric of the dragoon’s uniform itself in the blue velvet upon which the portrait is assembled. like an element in a saint’s reliquary, this cloth has been emptied of its corporeal contents and enshrined, but it stands in to remind us of the once uniformed body. a standard, youthful, and presumably heterosexual male body was an essential criterion for admission into the military. even today, after the integration of women into many countries’ militaries and, in the united states, the recent end of the so-called “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy throughout all branches of the armed services, an assumption of sameness still dominates. to be a soldier was and is in part predicated on being able to appear to conform to a group. this illusion of sameness was largely created through and made manifest in the wearing of uniforms. because most of these portrait backgrounds would have been used for multiple men, these images took the uniform ideal a step further.17 the male body is always identical for each man imaged through the use of a particular background composition. in creating a portrait in which a soldier’s own body is replaced by one that is standardized, these images remove any corporeal particularities of height or weight, or even battle wounds. the portraits also parallel these men’s situations in the military, where one body can be easily replaced with another, should the need arise. while some of the men shown in the portraits that i discuss here may have served in relatively peaceful situations, many of them would have been involved in germany’s colonial wars or other conflicts up to and including world war i. wars had the potential to further the military and imperial interests of germany, but for individuals, they were highly risky affairs. they taxed and often harmed the soldier’s body and wreaked havoc on the countryside and on local populations.18 even for men who did not see combat, military life was not easy and came with the threat of danger. thus the stories told by many of these combinatory portraits were not simply harmless fictions made to glorify an individual man’s time of service; they also functioned as propaganda that was all the more effective because it was personal. these portraits might have been purchased for individuals, but they served the militaristic and expansionist monarchy, which required standardized and regimented male bodies in order to maintain its military strength in europe and abroad. the fragmentary nature of these portraits raises significant questions about how they would have been interpreted by viewers. scholars have long argued that the disjointed surfaces and compositions of avant-garde photomontage encourage allegorical modes of 17 because so many of these portraits and the studios’ records have not been saved or are not catalogued in museum collections, it is currently impossible to determine the extent of print runs. however, from the existence of a number of specific types of images in multiple archives, we can be certain that they were popular and would have been made many times. 18 robert whalen thoughtfully explores the experiences of german soldiers who were victims of world war i in bitter wounds: german victims of the great war, 1914-1939 (ithaca: cornell university press, 1984). 3 0 r e a l m e n w e a r u n i f o r m s contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 2, no 1 (2012) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2012.44 viewing, which activate a spectator and render his or her gaze culturally critical.19 likewise, these soldier portraits have fractured hearts; their illusions are never complete. and yet they do not function in the same activating manner as avant-garde photomontages. the broken and combined nature of the soldier portraits would have engaged viewers, but through a process in which these viewers’ understandings of family and nation would have been enlisted to create a personalized experience of propaganda. rather than fostering a critical gaze, the images encouraged viewers to suspend disbelief, elect to overlook the portraits’ broken surfaces, and see the represented men as perfect wholes augmented by their various parts. in taking this leap, viewers would have been rewarded. they could believe that the perfect, uniformed body in front of them belonged to the loved one whose face was perched above it and that this individual really had, in fact, experienced a war that was as idyllic and peaceful as it was shown in the boiler-plate setting. these fragmentary portraits worked because photographers could count on a sympathetic viewing audience who would have been amenable to this vergemütlichung of history. ironically, it was the military service commemorated in these portraits that at times caused actual bodily fragmentation, the loss of limbs or even death. by world war i, it became commonplace for soldiers to end their service having been diminished or damaged by it in body, mind, or spirit.20 postcards were another common and influential pictorial form that began to be used in europe in the 1870s.21 in military culture, they played an important role in a young man’s time away from home, and they allowed for the exchange of small symbolic images among soldiers and with civilians that tapped into a larger discourse on the male body in the service of the militarized state. these postcards have multiple similarities to the soldier portraits. like them, the postcards were printed in series and then individually personalized; in the case of the postcards this happened through hand-written texts. and similar to the photobased portraits, these postcards often relied upon combinatory imagery or series of vignettes that created particular visual narratives. lastly, not the least of the similarities between 19 in the interwar period, the heyday of avant-garde photomontage, a number of cultural theorists made assertions similar to this. see especially walter benjamin, the origin of german tragic drama (1928), trans. j. osborne (london: verso, 1977), 159-167, 233. more recently, this argument has been articulated by peter bürger in theory of the avant-garde (1974), trans. michael shaw (minneapolis: university of minnesota press, 1984); and benjamin buchloh, “from faktura to factography,” the contest of meaning: critical histories of photography, ed. richard bolton (cambridge, mass.: mit press, 1989), 49-81. 20 for more on the physical and psychological scars that war veterans sustained, see sabine kienitz, “die kastrierten des krieges: körperbilder und männlichkeitskonstruktionen im und nach dem ersten weltkrieg,” zeitschrift für volkskunde 95.1 (1999), 63-80; and deborah cohen, the war come home: disabled veterans in britain and germany, 1914-1939 (berkeley: university of california press, 2001). paul lerner investigates the rise of mass “hysteria” in male soldiers during the first world war and subsequent responses to and treatments of it. he asserts that psychiatry ultimately would reject the notion of war as traumatic and instead cast it as a positive experience for both individual men and the nation as a whole. see paul lerner, hysterical men: war, psychiatry, and the politics of trauma in germany, 1890-1930 (ithaca: cornell university press, 2003). 21 from the 1870s on, postcards came into ever-increasing use almost immediately. by the outbreak of world war i, postcard production had grown into a major industry, with cards made by over 250 companies in germany alone. see: horst hille, postkarte genügt: ein kulturhistorisch-philatelistischer streifzug (heidelberg: r. v. decker’s verlag, 1988), 7; and sigrid metken, “’ich hab’ diese karte im schützengraben geschrieben...’: bildpostkarten im ersten weltkrieg,” die letzten tage der menschheit: bilder des ersten weltkrieges, ed. rainer rother (berlin: ars nicolai and deutsches historisches museum, 1994), 138. 3 1 e l i z a b e t h o t t o contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 2, no 1 (2012) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2012.44 postcards and soldier portraits is that both, despite being very popular forms of visual culture and common objects of exchange, have been too little studied to this point.22 i will turn now to examine representations of military culture in a number of examples of postcards and some related artworks in order to reflect upon the ways in which these images construct and police the boundaries of gender. a frequent theme of these postcards is the muster [musterung], the initial medical check which young men had to undergo to become soldiers and the site of intense norming 22 while the amount of scholarship on postcards is surprisingly small given their prevalence, important studies of them include hille’s postkarte genügt and david prochaska and jordana mendelson, eds., postcards: ephemeral histories of modernity (university park: the pennsylvania state university press, 2010). figure 6 artist unknown, gruss von der musterung (greetings from the muster). c. 1913. postcard. stiftung historische museen hamburg-altonaer museum. 13.8 x 9 cm. 3 2 r e a l m e n w e a r u n i f o r m s contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 2, no 1 (2012) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2012.44 of the male body at the very start of military life. it is from this that we have the phrase “passing muster.” the muster and subsequent basic training were a significant part of many men’s lives in germany of the kaiserzeit; this was a time of alchemical change from civilian to soldier. visual culture provided tools to create and maintain particular gendered ideals that supported these and other military institutions. for example, in 1913, one trainee for germany’s quickly-growing navy sent a card titled gruss von der musterung (greetings from the muster) to his family (fig. 6). in the upper left, the muster itself is significant as the only part of the composition that has its own title, “vor der commission” (before the commission). the half-naked bodies of two young, nearlyidentical recruits are shown in front of the well-staffed commission of uniformed men. the two recruits are being checked over carefully but respectfully; in the foreground a doctor listens to a recruit’s heart, but he looks him in the eye. despite its prominent label, the muster plays a relatively small part in the card’s composition. this scene practically goes up in the smoke that comes out of one of the impressive-looking ships of the card’s dominant image. here we see the young man already transformed into a sailor. it is clear that he has moved easily through various minor, barely-uncomfortable steps to pass muster, and has now climbed high in the rigging of his ship. he is triumphant and ready to serve the flag of the imperial german navy, which flies behind him. a sound male body and a good character will lead to nearly effortless success, the image suggests to the audience at home. the following year, at the start of the first world war, the avant-garde artist max beckmann would create an etching that showed a very different representation of the muster (fig. 7). in beckmann’s musterung, five naked recruits are crowded together in an awkward group. at the right, a tall man covers his genitals and looks away from the short doctor in a dark uniform who is giving his body a painstakingly meticulous inspection. despite the fact of the recruits’ collective nudity, beckmann’s image emphasizes their difference from one another in height and girth and in the few aspects of individuality left to them, such as facial expression or hairstyle. the partial figure of a sixth recruit appears at the left side of the picture and disrobes clumsily. his presence seems to allude cynically to the endless supply of male bodies presumably waiting to enter the picture. behind this figure, barely visible, is a bureaucrat seated at a desk. he notes down the man’s personal and medical information, even as the latter already seems to have his pants around his ankles. that the recruit’s arms are raised to struggle out of his undershirt gives him an almost comic look, like an inept thief who has been told to stick ‘em up. beckman’s scene is cramped, cold, and unpleasant, and it gives the lie to the standard propaganda images of the muster that appeared on postcards. works by many artists who served in world war i provide powerful expressions of the inhumanities and horrors that these artists witnessed or experienced, as richard cork has shown.23 in these artists’ images the male body is often represented not in the peaceful, mythic landscape or triumphant at sea, but in uncomfortable situations such as beckmann’s rendering of men at the musterung or in a painting by ernst ludwig kirchner in which naked artillerymen in the shower (1915) are being barked at by an officer.24 that same year kirchner also painted his even more jarring self portrait as a soldier, in which he shows himself smoking and in uniform, but with a right forearm that is only a bloody stump. kirchner suffered no such injury during his service in the war. rather, this symbolic amputation gives form to his war-damaged psyche and profound feelings of ambivalence 23 richard cork, a bitter truth: avant-garde art and the great war (new haven: yale university press, 1994). 24 cork, a bitter truth, 107-08; see especially chapter 4, “disillusion (1915-16),” 91-113. 3 3 e l i z a b e t h o t t o contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 2, no 1 (2012) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2012.44 about the war.25 over the course of world war i, these male bodies would emerge in the work of many artists and with increasing frequency, as in renderings of mass graves by ernst barlach from 1915, or in the work of otto dix.26 but such one-off, modernist representations were not what most of the public saw of the war. instead, both they and the authorities preferred their history retouched in the reproducible soldier portraits and the widely circulated postcards.27 while male protagonists dominate in military visual culture, the construction of an essential link between militarism and masculinity was also predicated on particular beliefs about the nature of femininity. an 1813 poem by ernst moritz arndt described the imperative of maintaining gendered labor divisions: and when the man doesn’t carry the weapons, and the woman isn’t diligent at the hearth, things can’t stay that way for the long haul, and home and reich are bound to fall.28 arndt’s poem links men to weapons and women to the kitchen, and it sets the maintenance of these divisions as conditions for the very existence of the nation. such stereotypes were supported by various forms of imagery that asserted the essential nature of gender roles through representations of uniformed bodies. images of women in military visual culture were generally used selectively and strategically in order to support and even accentuate gendered divisions in society. for example, while sauerbier’s portrait is dominated by the representations of five noblemen and three pictures of the cannoneer himself, it also includes a series of four small vignettes running across the bottom of the picture that illustrate scenes from the life of a cannoneer; two women do appear in the vignette furthest to the right. these female figures are astonishingly petite compared to the strapping soldiers who step off of a train. the women signify a return to a domestic space and to pre-war normalcy, and they lend a sense of scale for these men who have returned from the battlefield not just safely, but larger than life. 25 peter springer, hand and head: ernst ludwig kirchner’s self portrait as soldier, trans. susan ray (berkeley: university of california press, 2002). 26 cork reproduces the barlach and discusses it, a bitter truth, 112-13. 27 while it is beyond the scope of this study, it is important to note that photography played a much larger role in the first world war than it had in any previous war. bodo von dewetz argues that, although there was a high level of saturation of photography, certain—and often shifting—prohibitions against photographing or the censorship of photographs were in place in many areas during much of the war. further he asserts that the authenticity and meaning of many first world war photographs is at times unclear. for example, images were often falsely labeled as having been taken at the front. bodo von dewetz, “zur geschichte der kriegsphotographie des ersten weltkrieges,” in rother die letzten tage der menschheit: bilder des ersten weltkrieges, 163-76. 28 “und wenn der mann nicht die waffen trägt, und das weib sich nicht fleißig am herde regt, so kann’s auf die länge nicht richtig stehn, und haus und reich muß zu grunde geh’n.” ernst moritz ardt, “grundlinien einer teutschen kriegsordnung” (leipzig, 1813), reprinted in frevert, die kasernierte nation: militärdienst und zivilgesellschaft in deutschland, 45. 3 4 r e a l m e n w e a r u n i f o r m s contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 2, no 1 (2012) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2012.44 figure 7 max beckmann, musterung (muster). 1914; printed by paul cassirer verlag in 1918. etching and drypoint on etching board. collection of the sprengel museum hannover. 29.6 x 23.7 cm. photo: michael herling/aline gwose. © 2012 artists rights society (ars), new york/vg bild-kunst, bonn. 3 5 e l i z a b e t h o t t o contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 2, no 1 (2012) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2012.44 female allegories were common in military visual culture, and in many soldier portraits and military-themed postcards images of women appear as abstract symbols to invoke “home” or “nation.”29 photographs of women dressed as germania, an allegory of the german nation, appeared frequently in war chronicles, within soldier portraits, and on postcards. one card from the first world war, sent in 1915, shows a crowned woman with streaming blond hair standing before the german flag (fig. 8). the picture’s text titles it die macht an der weichsel (the power on the vistula) referring to germany’s ongoing battle on the east front with the russians for poland’s strategically-important longest river. a poem at the bottom of the image tells of how paul von hindenburg, by this time commander of the east front, will soon make a quick end of “the russian.”30 germania waits to crown victorious soldiers with a ring of laurel leaves. while her presence declares military might at this river, she herself is only a symbol of power with no fighting abilities of her own. there were, however, types of images that placed women at the center of military culture. a tremendously popular series of postcards known as the zukunfts-bilder—pictures of the future—imagined the tragicomedy of a world in which women would take over roles that had traditionally been the strict purview of men, that of the soldier most prominently.31 these pictures were part of a larger backlash against the increased visibility of women working outside of the home and the growing suffrage movement.32 in the face of attempts to shift and expand women’s roles in public life, this postcard series fought back by ridiculing deviance from traditional gender conventions. women in uniform had been present on battlefields since the middle of the nineteenth century as vivandières, nurses, and, starting in world war i, as non-combatant members of the military.33 despite this, the zukunfts-bilder are premised first and foremost on an assumption that the female body in uniform is, in and of itself, ridiculous. 29 for more on the tradition of female allegory see marina warner, monuments and maidens: the allegory of the female form (london: weidenfeld and nicolson, 1985). 30 for more on the tradition of the poem postcard, see cary nelson, “love your panzer corps: rediscovering the wartime poem postcard,” in prochaska and mendelson, postcards: ephemeral histories of modernity, 167-81. 31 the altonaer museum in hamburg, which holds the best collection of postcards in germany, has an extensive series of these cards with numerous copies of each, attesting to their popularity. 32 a related example of highly popular anti-suffrage imagery is discussed by melody davis in “the new woman in american stereoviews, 1871-1905,” the new woman international: representations in photography and film from the 1870s through the 1960s, ed. elizabeth otto and vanessa rocco (ann arbor: university of michigan press, 2011), 21-38. 33 newark, brassey’s book of uniforms, 101-04. figure 8 artist unknown, die macht an der weichsel (the power on the vistula). c. 1915. postcard. stiftung historische museen hamburg-altonaer museum. 13.8 x 9 cm. 3 6 r e a l m e n w e a r u n i f o r m s contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 2, no 1 (2012) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2012.44 in a card from approximately 1907 titled zukunfts-bilder der kanoniere (pictures from the future of the cannoneers), the central image shows the muster dominated by the improbable scene of two attractive women doing eye tests in their bloomers (fig. 9). as was typical in traditional postcards showing men at the muster, here too we see a woman having her height measured. or rather she has removed all but her underclothing and the top of a measuring stick brushes her bun, but the attending doctor looks down at her scantily-clad body, rather than up to note her stature. the other portions of the card provide a series of four cartoon vignettes that echo those at the bottom of sauerbier’s portrait. but each of these small zukunfts-bilder puts a new, gendered spin on the scene. the upper left picture, “fire!” shows a group of uniformed women operating a heavy cannon. the woman with her back to us in the center is cool and collected, and there is a touch of the dominatrix about her with her high boots and unsheathed sword. but those at the right cover their tender ears to show that they are simply too sensitive for such work. the picture to the lower left, “abschied” (leave taking), reveals an even more twisted development in modern womanhood. in contrast to the warm welcome that the male cannoneers receive in the farthest right of sauerbier’s vignettes, this sad future picture figure 9 artist unknown, zukunfts-bilder der kanoniere (pictures from the future of the cannoneers). c. 1907. postcard. stiftung historische museen hamburg-altonaer museum. 13.8 x 9 cm. 3 7 e l i z a b e t h o t t o contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 2, no 1 (2012) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2012.44 shows only a stiff handshake between man and wife as the female cannoneer departs for duty. she abandons her emasculated husband with the children, who she flatly ignores as they reach for her. rather than comforting the distressed tots, this mother’s free hand rests on her sword. overall, this postcard gives glimpses of a future dystopia to show the hilarious impossibility and utter wrongness of women attempting to fit into what are shown by negative example as decidedly male roles. a 1908 postcard from this series is labeled “schwere reiterei!” or “heavy cavalry!” (fig. 10). the upper and lower portions of the composition are separated by the title zukunftsbild surrounded by draped flags and oak leaves, which, as we have seen, are typical tropes of soldier portraits and other forms of militaria. the upper half of the postcard displays rows of nearly-identical, buxom women who seem to anticipate the exaggerated physical style of painter fernando botero. clad only in slips, they are measured, assessed, and caressed by four diminutive men in the requisite mustering scene. these exaggeratedly round female bodies are turned out as cavalry officers in the lower portion of the card. this process parallels the image of the sailor’s conversion in the gruss von der musterung postcard. yet the women’s plump bodies do not exhibit physical correctness in the end. they only barely fit into male soldiers’ uniforms and seem hardly ready to take on men’s roles. instead of the master equestrians taking off for heroism and adventure that we might expect from a picture of the “heavy cavalry,” no horses appear in this image. instead, the heaviness of the title is evident in the female soldiers themselves, who merely stand and pose to display the generosity of their feminine physiques. the comedy of these pictures is that they are the everyday made grotesque through the mixing of gender codes: right place, wrong body. with the the turnabout, inside out, and travesty logic of carnival, fears that women might successfully enter what had long been men’s domains are easily allayed.34 these female bodies clearly have no place in the military. while the zukunfts-bilder purport to show female dominance, the representations of women’s tendencies to startle in battle, the dangerous repression of maternal instincts, and the unwieldy nature of their bodies make the idea of militarized womanhood the easy butt of a joke. in her study of feminism and film theory, mary ann doane poses a relevant question about a photograph that i will tweak for my own purpose here: “what is it that makes the [postcard] not only readable but pleasurable—at the expense of the woman?”35 for the answer to this question, doane draws on sigmund freud’s analysis of the dirty joke. this kind of humor is an exchange that takes place between men, one who tells the joke or proffers the funny image, and one who hears or sees. even though the exposed, fetishized body of the woman is the subject of the joke, the woman herself is only the passive object of the exchange. her inability to participate actively in this exchange is what makes this sexually-charged exchange funny. through the presence of the woman’s body and the negation of the female gaze, doane asserts, the male spectator’s pleasure is produced.36 34 while he does not focus on gender specifically, mikhail bakhtin’s exploration of carnivalesque humor as a vital part of medieval life helps to illuminate the functioning of these postcards. mikhail bakhtin, rabelais and his world (1965), trans. helene iswolsky (bloomington: indiana university press, 1984), see esp. 11, 18-21. 35 mary ann doane, femmes fatales: feminism, film theory, psychoanalysis (new york: routledge, 1991), 31. 36 doane, femmes fatales, 30. 3 8 r e a l m e n w e a r u n i f o r m s contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 2, no 1 (2012) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2012.44 figure 10 s. stern, frankfurt, zukunftsbild: schwere reiterei! (future picture: heavy cavalry!). 1908. postcard. stiftung historische museen hamburg-altonaer museum. 13.8 x 9 cm. 3 9 e l i z a b e t h o t t o contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 2, no 1 (2012) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2012.44 in the zukunfts-bilder postcards, the halfnaked or uniformed female bodies are always too much, somewhat obscene. it is the joke-work, as freud calls it, which contains them. the viewer can laugh and sigh with relief, and these postcard images of women can be encouraged to proliferate. their logic asserts that, the more that such postcards are circulated as jokes among men, the less likely it would be that women themselves might actually don such uniforms. we can follow these ironic images of the militarized female body into the period of the first world war, in which, more than ever, visual images engaged anxieties about blurred gender roles. with a level of mobilization never before seen, the presence of women in typically male roles had become a reality on germany’s so-called home front. a number of mass-produced images from this time thematized new forms of labor for women. the april 30, 1916 edition of the illustrierte familien-zeitung (illustrated family news) features a studio photograph of a smiling young woman who wears a modified version of the traditional chimney sweep’s uniform (fig. 11). she has, the caption tells us, stepped in to do her father’s job so that he can go and fight at the front. the very rightness of her uniform is conveyed in the caption’s text, since it emphasizes that it is only a passing thing. further, this particular uniform would have been a happy sight for germans, since they consider chimney sweeps good luck. a contemporaneous newspaper photograph shows another uniformed woman working as a conductor on a berlin streetcar (fig. 12). she appears serious and competent under the title “female conductors of the great berlin streetcars as replacements for their husbands who have gone to war.”37 what made both of these images—chimney sweep and conductor— newsworthy was the novelty of seeing women in uniforms typically worn by men. but this novelty was made safe by the war context. texts always emphasized the temporary necessity of this state of affairs, and they communicated clearly that all would soon return to normal. 37 schaffnerinnen der großen berliner straßenbahn als ersatz für ihre in den krieg gezogenen männer. the picture was published under this title in a. grohs, illustrations-verlag; reproduced in rother, die letzten tage der menschheit: bilder des ersten weltkrieges, 485. figure 11 ein weiblicher schornsteinfeger (a female chimneysweep). 1916. illustrierte familien-zeitung 18 (30. april, 1916), p. 140. 12.5 x 8 cm. 4 0 r e a l m e n w e a r u n i f o r m s contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 2, no 1 (2012) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2012.44 there was a powerful perception held by many during the first world war and afterwards that circumstances of the war radically shifted women’s roles in both the workplace and society. while these changes affected much smaller numbers than many presume, this belief had significant effects on the culture of the war. ute daniel quotes as typical a 1917 publication: “[t]oday, seamstresses, ironers, shopgirls and, in by far the greatest numbers, women who have never worked before and ladies’ helpers are showering the enemy with bombs and grenades.”38 these female wage laborers are presented not only as producers of munitions, but as actual soldiers at the warfront. here too, representations of women taking on men’s jobs for the war effort were intended to suggest the extent of societal mobilization and commitment, rather than any ambition for lasting change on the part of these women. at this time when large numbers of women really did don uniforms, their images’ earnestness suggests that they were haunted by the zukunfts-bilder. the zukunfts-bilder and newspaper photographs focus on images of women, but they imply just as much about manhood. in these pictures, represented men were sometimes dominant and in charge as they bossed female recruits around; in other cases they are diminutive and threatened by these overpowering if relatively docile bovine female bodies. pictures in the fantasized and ridiculed world of female dominance of the zukunfts-bilder reinforce notions of male bodies as uniquely and inherently able to be transformed into soldiers. uniforms might make all men more or less alike, but they are clearly—to the delight of the postcard-buying public—unable to turn women into soldiers. likewise, the newspaper stories of uniformed women are comments about men, since the latter are evoked in the pictures and captions as painfully absent. like the uniforms, equipment, and military training that soldiers received, new forms of visual images such as the soldier portraits, postcards, and others served to unify and shape gendered identities. they provided a common culture and a place for visual exchanges on 38 m.-e. lüders, “die volkswirtschaftliche bedeutung der qualifizierten frauenarbeit für die gewerblichen berufe, in frauenberufsfrage und bevölkerungspolitik.” jahrbuch des bdf (berlin and leipzig, 1917), 7-8; quoted in daniel, the war from within, 37. see also 5-13 and chapter 3, “women’s wage labor in the first world war.” figure 12 a. grohs, illustrations-verlag, schaffnerinnen der großen berliner straßenbahn als ersatz für ihre in den krieg gezogenen männer (female conductors of the great berlin streetcars as replacements for their husbands who have gone to war). c. 1915. bibliothek für zeitgeschichte in der württembergischen landesbibliothek stuttgart (file nr. 80). 18 x 13 cm. 4 1 e l i z a b e t h o t t o contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 2, no 1 (2012) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2012.44 gender; they also acted as a form of evidence for the truism that men’s bodies fit a standard which women’s bodies never could. that these messages could be personalized—with the addition of a photograph to a portrait or with a note on the back of a postcard—made them all the more powerful. as soldiers subsequently had to be turned out on the massive scale necessary for the first world war, so postcards were printed in larger quantities to be sent as families and friends were parted in the name of military victory.39 the weimar republic is well known for its vibrant culture that opened up gender codes and for its experimental mixture of “glitter and doom,” as a recent exhibition put it.40 one new but frequent sight from this time were the wounded veterans who sometimes wore their uniforms to remind others of the cause for which they had sacrificed.41 this interim period between the first world war and the rise of national socialism saw women achieve the vote, participate in politics, and experience cultural freedom and independence as never before. yet 1933 would see a sharp turn back to traditions, particularly those that furthered the goals of the national socialist state. again there was a frequent emphasis on the construction of women as polar opposites to men and as inherently linked to the home. and yet, during the first world war, women under nazism were also permitted to engage in the noble tradition of donning uniforms if necessity seemed to dictate it.42 it will surprise few to read that uniforms again became an essential way of defining masculinity under the national socialists. but there is a twist on the return to this tradition. as cary nathenson asserts in his cogent analysis of the film comedy quax, der bruchpilot (crash pilot quax, 1941), the uniformed male body of national socialism “reflects more strongly nazi racial theory and its conception of the true nature of germans.”43 in quax, the pilot’s uniform allows michael—the main character who begins the film as a poet and a bumbler who is afraid to fly—to become a real man. he is only able to do so, however, because he already has an as-yet untapped core of german masculinity. as viewers, we know this because when michael is first checked over by the flying school’s physician to see if he passes muster, he “scores off the charts in every category.”44 when the school’s tough 39 while it is beyond the scope of this essay, it is worth noting that at this time a popular fascination on the part of the german public with soldiers from around the world. andrew evans has argued that the first world war was a turning point in german anthropology, for it was then that anthropologists began routinely to study and photograph the bodies of foreign pows in order to detect racial difference and map racial types onto ideas of nation. see andrew evans, anthropology at war: world war i and the science of race in germany (chicago: university of chicago press, 2010). 40 sabine rewald et al, glitter and doom: german portraits from the 1920s (new york: metropolitan museum of art, 2006). 41 see for example kienitz, “die kastrierten des krieges” and cohen, the war come home. 42 for a complex analysis of competing notions of womanhood in nazism, see irene guenther, nazi chic? fashioning women in the third reich (oxford: berg, 2004). 43 cary nathenson, “fear of flying: education to manhood in nazi film comedies: glückskinder and quax, der bruchpilot,” cultural history through a national socialist lens: essays on the cinema of the third reich (rochester: camden house, 2000), 99. although this film—which was made in 1941—is set in 1928, during the period of the weimar republic, nathenson asserts that quax is essentially a war comedy film, and that the flying school that michael (heinz rühmann) attends for his conversion to true manliness would have been legible to viewers as a stand in for the luftwaffe. 44 nathenson, “fear of flying,” 99. the scene of this exam is key for establishing michael’s hidden physicality. the doctor administering the physical has been instructed to throw michael out if there is the slightest reason to and, at the start, he accuses michael of being afraid like a little girl. but then we see how in test after test—for balance, lung capacity, strength, etc.—michael receives full marks and even jovially breaks some of the machines as evidence that he doesn’t know his own (natural-born) strength. 4 2 r e a l m e n w e a r u n i f o r m s contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 2, no 1 (2012) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2012.44 instructor puts him into a uniform and makes him fly planes alone, he is terrified. but as he comes to know himself—germany, awake!—he blossoms into a man of action and a stellar pilot who never wants to return to his former, un-manly life again.45 the images that i have discussed in this essay play out performances of masculinity and femininity as gendered polarities that strive to maintain norms. but in their striving, these pictures also reveal the constructs that made them. judith butler has famously pointed out that there is a lot at stake in the relationship between gender construction and political realities; “[t]he foundationalist reasoning of identity politics tends to assume that an identity must first be in place in order for political interests to be elaborated and, subsequently, political action to be taken. my argument is that there need not be a ‘doer behind the deed,’ but that the ‘doer’ is variably constructed in and through the deed.”46 in “doing” masculinity and femininity, these popular forms of militaria helped to reify the soldier as the truest form of manhood. thus a tautology was born that all men were born to serve in the military and that such service made the man. this tautology paved the way for an ever-expanding military machine in germany. even as photomontage and printing techniques allowed for the creation of new visions of ideal masculinity, these forms potentially provided space for an interruption in the process of construction. while butler shows how structures of gender come to be, her argument is also potentially liberating, in that she proposes parody as a potential site of intervention in the truism of gender.47 we might also consider some of the images that i have analyzed as having offered a chance for such interventions. for, like parody, these representations also create a failed copy of a nonexistent original, the simulacrum of gender. the montage of an individual’s photograph into a mechanically reproduced background would have given viewers the chance to see the built nature of these masculinities and to glimpse the emptiness of such gendered ideals. these portraits struggle to integrate specific individuals into fantastical scenes, and they never quite succeed at doing so. their compositions are unlikely, and their picture planes are irregular. they rely on photography’s indexicality to create a likeness of a soldier, but the rest of the image cannot follow through, and the reality effect is jarringly interrupted. therefore even as the images’ technical shortcomings might create space to engage sympathetic viewers, who would exert themselves all the more to believe in their truths, dissonant readings also lie very close to their surfaces. a complex system of visual imagery developed around the uniformed male body, and these codes served to cover over differences and unify members of military units. these pictures argued that one of the defining elements of masculinity was sameness to other men and difference from women and the female body. thus personal portraits and humorous postcards argued for the strict maintenance of ever-more conservative gender ideals even as they revealed military masculinity to be an anxious construct that might crumble without constant support. any documented case of photomontage having realized its powerful potential to interrupt the standardized ideals of military masculinity would have to wait until after the first world war for dada, the bauhaus, and constructivism. members of the avant 45 nathenson notes that the archangel michael was an allegorical figure linked to germany and thus this name was a highly legible stand-in for the german everyman and for germany itself. 46 butler, gender trouble: feminism and the subversion of identity, 144-47. 47 “as the effects of a subtle and politically enforced performativity, gender is an ‘act’ as it were, that is open to splittings, self-parody, self-criticism and those hyperbolic exhibitions of ‘the natural’ that, in their very exaggeration, reveal its fundamentally phantasmatic status.” butler, gender trouble: feminism and the subversion of identity, 148. 4 3 e l i z a b e t h o t t o contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 2, no 1 (2012) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2012.44 gardes knew the local visual history and looked back to it for inspiration. sometime around 1920, hannah höch obtained one of the triple soldier portraits and glued a label onto it: “the beginning of photomontage.”48 48 this photomontage is reproduced in hannah höch: ein lebenscollage, v. 1 part 1 (berlin: berlinische galerie/argon verlag, 1989). both hannah höch and raoul hausmann would later tell of having “discovered” photomontage when they saw one of the triple soldier portraits on vacation together in 1918. see raoul hausmann, courrier dada (1958; paris, 1992), 44-45 and hannah höch, “erinnerungen an dada: ein vortrag 1966,” hannah höch, 1889-1978: ihr werk, ihr leben, ihre freunde (berlin: berlinische galerie, 1989), 208. i also reproduce it in “the secret history of photomontage,” 73. for more on the history of the rise of dada photomontage see andrés zervigón, “postcards to the front: john heartfield, george grosz, and the birth of avant-garde photomontage,” in prochaska and mendelson, postcards: ephemeral histories of modernity, 54-69. i have written on masculinity and photomontage at the bauhaus: “designing men: new visions of masculinity in the photomontages of herbert bayer, marcel breuer, and lászló moholy-nagy,” bauhaus construct: the object of discourse, ed. jeffrey saletnik and robin schuldenfrei (new york: routledge, 2009), 183-204. 4 4 r e a l m e n w e a r u n i f o r m s contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 2, no 1 (2012) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2012.44 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-noncommercial-no derivative works 3.0 united states license. this journal is operated by the university library system of the university of pittsburgh as part of its d-scribe digital publishing program, and is co-sponsored by the university of pittsburgh press. microsoft word 158-163 curatorial panel responses 7-27.docx vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.152 http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu curatorial practice as production of visual and spatial knowledge panelists respond alison langmead, dan byers, and cynthia morton abstract three participants in the panel “curatorial practice as production of visual and spatial knowledge” reflect upon the ideas raised in their discussion about curating, both in their respective fields and as a general practice. the panel was a part of debating visual knowledge, a symposium organized by graduate students in information science and history of art and architecture at the university of pittsburgh, october 3–5, 2014. a transcription of the panel is available in this issue. about the author dr. alison langmead is the director of the visual media workshop in the department of history of art and architecture and assistant professor in the school of information scienes at the university of pittsburgh. dan byers is senior curator at the institute of contemporray art, boston. at the time of the discussion, he was richard armstrong curator of contemporary art at the carnegie museum of art. dr. cynthia morton is associate curator of botany at the carnegie museum of natural history. contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.152 alison langmead: upon rereading our conversation, i was struck by a number of themes produced by our interactions, and i appreciate being given the opportunity here to reflect upon a few of them. the first such topic, and i think it was a central one, was our communal focus on all of the senses and their ability to produce meaning through a variety of experiences that extend beyond just sight. for me, this panel returned again and again to “debating sensory knowledge,” not just visual knowledge. cynthia was so very eloquent about the use of smell and touch in her presentation of her particular area of scientific research—citrus—and also in her approach to the hall of botany in the carnegie museum of natural history. from cutting out pieces of paper marked acgt and then rearranging them to better understand the code for dna, to hoping to invite whole foods to participate in her museum interpretations in order to make plain the fundamental connection between plants, the livelihood of human beings, and the livelihood of the planet, her approach to incorporating more than sight into her curatorial practice was inspiring. dan, too, focused on the whole-body experience of creating and then visiting a curated show in a museum. for me, his description of his rhetorical toolkit—comparison, juxtaposition, and durational accumulation of experience—delineated a fascinating combination of traditional academic stances toward art history (comparison and juxtaposition) with an important focus on the embodied experience of physically walking through an exhibition and developing a layered, sensory understanding of its meaningful choreography. it seems to me that dan was asking us to see that it is through the eyes, the mind, and the body that meaning and knowledge can be constructed in the context of a museum. terry also picked up on this theme when he discussed the ways in which curated exhibitions produce meaning as a network of interactions between the works of art, and then also the works of art and the visitor. through contemporary innovations in the very form of the museum exhibition, curators are allowing for more than just abstract contemplation in their spaces; they are making room for a full-body process that can even take into account the past and the present of the museum itself. as for myself, i also addressed this theme when i drew attention to the fact that we actually lose the ability to call on a number of our senses when we move into the digital realm. for example, where an old drawer of 35mm slides took advantage of the affordances of physical objects and incorporated our own bodily movement into its information architecture (i.e., rifling through the slides with our fingers or moving through the history of art by physically moving through the collection), a digital image library cannot take advantage of those exact same affordances. we sit stationery at our computer, more or less, when we use them. we do not participate in a full-body choreography (for now—or perhaps forever). to move forward here, i argue, we have two main options. either pretend that the digital space should be treated as a “virtual physical space” and attempt to map the world out here to the world in there through a process of mimicry and/or artificial recreation, or begin investigating the organizational principles native to the digital environment itself and use them to their best advantage. i, myself, am much more interested in the latter. our digital world is not a blank slate. it deserves to be respected as an environment that is connected to, but not necessarily a replica of, our sensory environment. we have only scratched the surface of the possibilities inherent in the digital world we have constructed for ourselves. the second theme is more directly related to our conversation about hardware and software as a metaphor for curation and the museum environment. it seems most salient to curatorial practice as production of visual and spatial knowledge panelists respond alison langmead, dan byers, and cynthia morton 1 6 0 c u r a t o r i a l p r a c t i c e a s p r o d u c t i o n o f v i s u a l a n d s p a t i a l k n o w l e d g e contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.152 me, now that i have been able to reflect upon the ways in which our discussion unfolded, to bring in a brief mention of platform studies here. the scholars of our digital history who produce platform studies, such as nick montfort and ian bogost, argue that the distinctive line traditionally drawn between hardware and software is much more fuzzy than is habitually accepted. just as software cannot be created without taking into consideration the ways in which the hardware wants to receive the information delivered for processing, modern hardware—certainly all hardware created commercially since the rise of the semiconductor—is likewise never created without considering the preexisting needs of contemporary software systems. what we have been producing for a while now are “platforms,” perhaps to be understood also as digital ecosystems that are co-created by not just the hardware and the software, but also the entire cultural infrastructure surrounding the global digital world. there is no independent world for hardware or software to inhabit. with this in mind, i would like to end my reflections with a comment on how terry’s thought-provoking metaphor might further inform our understanding of the relationship between curatorial practice and the physicality of the museum environment. by bringing in the hardware/software dichotomy, terry did a great job of drawing our attention to the material reality of the museum infrastructure and the more abstracted, time-delimited work of the curator. curatorial efforts could indeed fruitfully be seen as different software applications that run on the semi-fixed architectural hardware of the museum. taking a cue from the platform studies scholars, however, we might be able to contextualize this analogy further, and perhaps even to draw in an additional theme present in the panel discussion. the practice of curation within the museum environment might instead be productively called a platform for the creation and expression of sensory knowledge. indeed, terry himself gestured to this idea when he noted that contemporary curatorial practice is very much engaged with tampering—or could we even say hacking?—the museum environment in order to transform the exhibitionary form itself. during the panel presentation, i argued that human beings might be considered as the “software” of this platform, but i stand now more sure that the co-creation of the “curatorial ecosystem” implies that such one-to-one correspondences are probably beside the point. given how our conversation unfolded, i am inclined to believe that in the context of such metaphors, curation might most productively be compared to a complete platform for creating sensory experiences, out of which new knowledge and new meaning can be produced. with this, i feel that i have returned to the central theme i have chosen to take away from the work of this panel. we engaged in a conversation about the implications of a “sensory knowledge” in which our eyes play only one part. it was a great honor to participate in this fascinating discussion, and i thank my fellow panel members for their time and expertise as well as nicole for her skilled facilitation. dan byers: after so much time has passed since our stimulating conversation in the carnegie museum of art theater (and i now find myself in boston, at the ica, staring out of my office across a sunny boston harbor as planes take off and land at logan airport), the questions and impressions i am left with are about big ideas and questions. i remember being struck, upon my first conversation with cynthia, by the lack of visibility her important research received at the natural history museum. why weren't the public programs and exhibitions of that museum derived from the research, and its attendant questions, generated by cynthia and her scientist colleagues? it struck me how different this model was from the art museum, where it would be impossible to cleave the exhibitions from the interests, knowledge, and work of the museum's curators. upon further reflection, i think each model could learn from the other. and the lessons they would learn are big ones, about the public impact of culture, science, research, and the passions and knowledge of those who seek to define their parameters. scientists who work 1 6 1 a l i s o n l a n g m e a d , d a n b y e r s , a n d c y n t h i a m o r t o n contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.152 in museums should be encouraged to make their research public, and to explore the forms and media by which this translation could occur. its display and dissemination may very well create new pathways for research and new questions to ask. this is especially true for the research being conducted on questions and crises of the environment. this is labor that absolutely should be made public and drive the discourse around such urgent issues. however there is also something sacrosanct about the research undertaken in museums and universities that may not find its way to the public for a very long time. it is vital that our society support this kind of work. and more and more, i believe art museums should also support their curators in this way. the public remains the most vital voice within any museum, and differentiates it from the academy. knowledge and experience is shared, and in the sharing, culture is made. but as the emphasis is placed on spectacle, and on audience "development," "engagement," and "participation," (all concepts which are very easily bastardized today towards lowest common denominator ends), art museums could benefit from curators who have also spent long years in conversation with artists and researching in private. this program could happen simultaneously and develop into a more standard model. as "sharing" has become not the means to the end, but rather the end itself, what might this model look like that withholds and nurtures and delays that moment of "sharing?" what if curators of contemporary art were encouraged to conduct studio visits, write, plan exhibitions, but then delay their actualization? how might private investigations flourish and become expansive, rather than elitist or myopic? art is strange, and its making, curating, and interpretation is done by those who self-select because its ways and languages offer refuge and unique opportunities for understanding and communication. perhaps contemporary art and curating would benefit from more invisibility, less sharing (in the social media sense), and more delay before the robust act of generosity and democracy enacted by the meeting of art and its publics. cynthia morton: the organization of this panel as well as the revelation of ideas and information from the communication before and after the conference has changed botany hall and my perspective on the curatorial positions at carnegie institute. before this conference, botany hall badly needed renovations. i knew that removing the existing dioramas completely was not the answer because of their historical and educational value. the high cost of major renovations, as well as the artistic methods used in the creation of the dioramas, could never be replaced. since this meeting, new led lights have been installed in the dioramas and in the central area making the colors and the ability to see the details within the cases absolutely remarkable. new carpeting was installed and more hands-on activities were created to go along with the visual component of the hall. still more work needs to be done, however this has transformed botany hall. more people are using it daily and it has shown what a little renovation can do to make a space viable again. before the panel, i had a meeting with dan byers to discuss our jobs. in the twelve years i had been a curator at the museum, i had never had this discussion before. i discovered that dan spent about half of his time researching acquisitions and the other half of his time making the exhibition, working with artists, working with the development staff on writing proposals, individual donor cultivation, and fundraising. i did not realize that there was a real difference in our jobs. my job entails scientific research (maintaining the collections and conducting molecular studies), writing papers for peer review journals, applying for grants to limited funding sources, fulfilling outreach by teaching internally or externally, and working with education or exhibits to develop new botanical tools or exhibit experiences. as a curator, i am not involved in donor cultivation for research or exhibits. 1 6 2 c u r a t o r i a l p r a c t i c e a s p r o d u c t i o n o f v i s u a l a n d s p a t i a l k n o w l e d g e contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.152 when i examined the files from the past, i noticed that the positions were not so different and only in the last several decades had there been a change. scientific research could be even more amazing at the museum but perhaps it needs a little renovation. i see great possibilities for our museums, especially using the new technologies that are emerging every day. i am grateful for the organization of this panel for it has made me see the potential in truly a new light. 1 6 3 a l i s o n l a n g m e a d , d a n b y e r s , a n d c y n t h i a m o r t o n contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.152 new articles in this journal are licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 united states license. this journal is operated by the university library system of the university of pittsburgh as part of its d-scribe digital publishing program, and is co-sponsored by the university of pittsburgh press. vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.131 http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu “we never did return” migration, materiality and time in penny siopis’ postapartheid art allison k. young abstract this article explores “migration” as both theme and operation in two works by the south african artist penny siopis, each created in the year 1997: the artist’s first film, my lovely day, and a related object installation entitled reconnaissance (1900-1997). in each work, siopis traces the course of her grandmother’s emigration from europe to africa through a variety of found, collected, or inherited components that bore witness to the longue durée of imperialism and apartheid. mediating between national, cultural, and familial narratives, these works are inherently archaeological in nature, and allowed viewers at the time to reflect on the multiple entangled histories that comprised the post-apartheid condition. the late nineties in south africa were defined by the conclusion of apartheid, the truth and reconciliation commission, and two major biennale exhibitions of contemporary art. the decade thusly saw a stream of collective efforts to both unearth the past and envision the future, marking a time of great cultural, artistic, political, and discursive transition. mapping questions of medium-specificity and affect over this larger context, i investigate siopis’ use and manipulation of historical traces as well as notions of contemporaneity and temporality in her art. about the author allison k. young is a doctoral candidate in art history at the institute of fine arts, new york university. contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.131 so you see. i have my own story, and increasingly in my old age it weighs on me. now that every turn in the weather whistles an ache through my bones, i stir in bed and the memories rise out of me like a buzz of flies from a carcass. i crave to be rid of them, but find myself being too careful, too, choosing which ones to let out into the light. i want you to find me innocent. barbara kingsolver the poisonwood bible1 when the second johannesburg biennale was launched in 1997 under the artistic directorship of okwui enwezor, the young democracy was just three years into its new postapartheid government, and one year into a landmark truth and reconciliation commission (trc). the sprawling metropolis, which artist william kentridge once described as a “rather desperate provincial city,” was for the second time transformed into the site of a major international contemporary art event.2 naturally, many of the artworks that accompanied this transitional moment reflected on the nation’s fraught recent past and interrogated the legacies of imperialism and global conquest with which its modern history was so entangled. framing the biennale around the thematic scope of its title, trade routes: history and geography, enwezor commissioned and selected works that spoke to various types of migrations: of people, commodities and ideas.3 the biennale’s flagship exhibition alternating currents, curated by both enwezor and octavio zaya, was installed in the electric workshop, a renovated power station built in 1929 and later repurposed as a cultural hub; like the “gold city” itself, the space was industrial and somewhat derelict. within it, the biennale constructed a mini cinema theater in which the south african artist penny siopis debuted her first moving-image work. the atmosphere was completed by four short rows of distressed red-cushioned seats and a small movie screen flanked by velvet curtains (fig. 1).4 1 barbara kingsolver, the poisonwood bible (new york: harper collins, 1998), 8. 2 the 1st johannesburg biennale, titled africus, took place from february 28 – april 30, 1995, under the artistic directorship of lorna ferguson. the second johannesburg biennale was scheduled to be held from october 12, 1997 – january 18, 1998, but it closed one month early, on december 12, due the city’s financial problems. no johannesburg biennale has taken place since then. 3 see rory bester and matthew debord, ed., trade routes: history and geography: 2nd johannesburg biennale, exh. cat. (johannesburg: greater johannesburg metropolitan council, 1997). 4 these descriptions are based on installation shots as well as the author’s informal in-person discussion with okwui enwezor in january, 2012, and an informal interview via skype with penny siopis in january, 2012. “we never did return” migration, materiality and time in penny siopis’ post-apartheid art allison k. young 4 7 a l l i s o n k . y o u n g contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.131 figure 1 penny siopis, my lovely day (installation view), 3rd ed., 1997. video installation of mini cinema and 8mm film transferred to video, 21 minutes. museum of modern art, stockholm; south african national gallery, cape town; the artist (photo: courtesy penny siopis and stevenson gallery, cape town). the visitor would enter the dimly lit space of the installation to take his or her seat and wait, until finally, with the faint crackling of a 78-rpm record, the opening image faded in onto the screen: two african nannies gaze toward the lens, squinting in the sunlight beside their surrogate white daughter, whose head is whipped around towards the hedges behind her. the title, my lovely day, appears in large antique typeface over the photographic still, as a woman’s singing emerges from the distorted soundtrack of a digitized gramophone record (fig. 2). as the camera slowly pans across an ivy-covered verandah, an old woman gazes towards the camera from the safe shade of its enclosure, and the first subtitle then appears below her: “after all my travels, that i should land up in this god-forsaken place!” 4 8 “ w e n e v e r d i d r e t u r n ” contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.131 figure 2 penny siopis, my lovely day (film still), 3rd ed., 1997. video installation of mini cinema and 8mm film transferred to video, 21 minutes. museum of modern art, stockholm; south african national gallery, cape town; the artist (photo: courtesy penny siopis and stevenson gallery, cape town). this article explores migration as both theme and operation in siopis’ art, as well as the archaeologies of space and time that characterize her work in the post-apartheid period, with focus on two installations created in the year 1997. my lovely day and reconnaissance (1900-1997) both narrate the stories of three generations of women in siopis’ family, displacing onto found images and objects the auratic resonances of memory and postmemory.5 my lovely day, for instance, is comprised of re-sequenced found home movies, shot in south africa in the 1950s and ‘60s on 8mm film by the artist’s mother, anna siopis (fig. 3). its narrator is dorothy frangetes, the artist’s maternal grandmother, whose words are composed from writings found on old postcards, as well as from siopis’ memories of her speech. dorothy was english, and this was “a great source of pride to her,” as the artist 5 see marianne hirsch, “the generation of postmemory,” poetics today 29 (2008): 103-128. the literary theorist marshals the term “post-memory” to signify “the relationship of the second generation to powerful, often traumatic experiences that preceded their births but that were nevertheless transmitted to them so deeply as to seem to constitute memories in their own right” (103). this concept is typically invoked in literature pertaining to the holocaust. 4 9 a l l i s o n k . y o u n g contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.131 notes.6 as such, she felt stigmatized for marrying a greek man, his mediterranean blood exotic enough to mark the union as taboo in the early twentieth century. however, the assurgent greco-turkish conflict, which accompanied the partition of the ottoman empire, eventually forced dorothy and her family to flee the region. figure 3 penny siopis, my lovely day (film still), 3rd ed., 1997. video installation of mini cinema and 8mm film transferred to video, 21 minutes. museum of modern art, stockholm; south african national gallery, cape town; the artist (photo: courtesy penny siopis and stevenson gallery, cape town). given the biennale’s theme of “trade routes,” the topic of migration is a viable point of entry to any discussion of my lovely day, which was commissioned specifically for that exhibition. this term may be applied sociologically, to connote diasporas or voluntary emigrations, or in terms of media-theory, given the chain of technological formats that the original material has moved through. it can even be harnessed in the vein of new materialist theories that have recently invigorated art history, visual culture studies and anthropology. in the south african anthology, shoe shop, for instance, w.j.t. mitchell recently reproduced 6 penny siopis, “the hooks of history: three films,” in shoe shop: walking through africa, the arts and beyond, ed. mariehélène gutberlet and cara snyman (auckland park, south africa: femela/jacana media, 2012), 47. 5 0 “ w e n e v e r d i d r e t u r n ” contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.131 a text on “migrating images,” which asks: “what would it mean to talk about images as migrants, as immigrants, as emigrants, as travelers, who arrive and depart, who circulate, pass through, thus appear and disappear…?”7 do such images bear physical or auratic traces of these journeys? what might we learn from their sojourns through space and time? siopis’ work certainly reflects upon the moving, both in terms of the multiple meanings suggested by t.j. demos, who writes of artworks that harness “new modelings of affect [and] creative modes of mobile images… with which to negotiate the increased movements of life across the globe”8 but also in the sense that her images, in this case, have literally moved out of another artwork: reconnaissance (1900-1997), an installation of found or collected objects that debuted at the goodman gallery just months before the opening of the biennale. the supposition that fuels mitchell’s own project, “the notion of images as living organisms driven by desire, appetite, need, demand and lack,”9 encourages an inquiry into the histories and afterlives of such images and objects. in order to nuance the ways in which concepts such as migration and materiality operate in the case of this specific pair of artworks, i adapt concepts in archaeology that help to articulate the relationships between certain ‘actants’: past histories (apartheid, colonialism, the artist’s genealogy), the remains of these histories (objects and images), the artist (as archaeologist) and the contemporary viewer (in 1997). in his seminal book, archaeology and time, for instance, gavin lucas provides a thorough historiography of his discipline with regards to questions of time and chronology.10 lucas explains that archaeologists might view a site or record as a kind of palimpsest, “the cumulative remains of past processes”11 that reflects multiple histories, rather one specific point in time. while this theory honors the complexity of a record’s “systemic context”–meaning that it may contain traces of several cultural systems through time–he urges readers to also consider the “archaeological context” with equal importance. this means that an archaeologist who discovers or handles the record continues to affect it, and that the record’s “social life” (to borrow loosely from arjun appadurai) is continuously being reformulated into the present. siopis has worked in a wide range of media that continuously recur and overlap, suggesting a meandering artistic process that kiki smith once described as “walking around in a garden.”12 as a result, many commentators tend to promote either medium-specific or thematic groupings that demonstrate how her works reverberate across different phases in her oeuvre. 13 these studies are indisputably valuable and shed light on the development and 7 w.j.t. mitchell, “migrating images: totemism, fetishism, idolatry,” in shoe shop: walking through africa, the arts and beyond, ed. marie-hélène gutberlet and cara snyman (auckland park, south africa: femela/jacana media, 2012), 125. 8 see t.j. demos, the migrant image: the art and politics of documentary during global crisis (durham and london: duke university press, 2013), xiv. 9 mitchell, “migrating images,” 126. see also w.j.t. mitchell’s seminal book, what do pictures want? the lives and loves of images (chicago: university of chicago press, 2004), which examines affective exchanges between images and beholders and explores the proposition that images might have individual agency and lives of their own. 10 see gavin lucas, the archaeology of time (london and new york: routledge, 2005). 11 lucas, the archaeology of time, 34. lucas paraphrases a debate between micahel schiffer and lewis binford about the temporality of archaeological records. 12 see helaine posner, “approaching grace” in posner et al, kiki smith (new york, ny: monacelli press, 2005), 26. 13 see, for instance, medium-specific assessments such as t.j. demos, “penny siopis’ film fables,” in penny siopis: time and again (braamfontein: wits university press, 2015) or griselda pollock, “painting, difference and desire in history: the 5 1 a l l i s o n k . y o u n g contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.131 recurrence of the artist’s key concerns. in the present article, however, i engage with works of different mediums that were created in a short but significant span of time. relevant social and art historical context will shed light on the developments and changes that took place in her work specifically during the post-apartheid years. i begin with a brief introduction to siopis’ early work through the mid-1990s, after which i examine some of the debates and events that characterized south african art and political culture in the late nineties. this will set the stage for a closer examination of my lovely day and reconnaissance (1900-1997), which i hope will enable a fuller understanding of what these works can tell us about the transitions that they mark: in siopis’ oeuvre, in south african contemporary art more broadly, and in this moment of nation-building for the country at large. i. transitions and debates in politics and art siopis did not forge her career as a moving-image artist. in the 1970s and 1980s, she worked primarily in the mediums of painting, drawing, and pastel, and her art was characterized by a figurative style that made heavy use of iconography and allegory. inspired by her early studies in feminist and psychoanalytic theory, her cake paintings of the early and mid-1980s treated paint as flesh, invoking the consumption of the female body through a series of lusciously suggestive renderings of cakes and pastries (fig. 4).14 the artist later merged her interest in feminism with the more pressing subjects of apartheid and colonialism that were now at the fore of south african art; she linked these topics by exposing the patriarchal ideology that underlies both the oppression of women and that of third world subjects. one of her first major works, dora and the other woman (1988) (fig. 5), for instance, brought together the stories of two oft-cited historical cases: the xhosian saartjie baartman, commonly referred to as the “hottentot venus,” who was placed on exhibition in london and paris at the turn of the nineteenth century, and ida bauer, sigmund freud’s young patient known as “dora,” whose story attests to the pathologizing of female sexuality at the turn of the twentieth century. the central figure is an altered self-portrait;15 siopis depicts herself standing against a blood-red ground, concealing her nude body with a white cloth that gathers “in shapes reminiscent of female genitalia.”16 this shroud is adorned with archival caricatures of baartman’s body. both concealment and work of penny siopis 1985-1994,” in penny siopis , ed. kathryn smith (johannesburg: goodman gallery, 2005), or thematic assessments such as brendon maart, ed., red: the iconography of color in the work of penny siopis (durban, south africa: kznsa gallery, 2009). 14 for more on siopis’ cake paintings, see brenda schmahmann, “representing regulation – rendering resistance: female bodies in the art in penny siopis” in between union and liberation: women artists in south africa 1910-1994, ed. marion arnold and brenda schmahmann (london: ashgate, 2005). also see colin richards, “prima facie: surface as depth in the work of penny siopis,” in penny siopis, ed. kathryn smith (johannesburg: goodman gallery, 2005). 15 siopis renders the figure racially ambiguous by choosing a slightly darker hue for her skin tone. 16 penny siopis, “dissenting detail: another story of art and politics in south africa” in grey areas: representation, identity and politics in contemporary south african art, ed. brenda atkinson and candice breitz (johannesburg: chalkham hill press, 1999), 248. 5 2 “ w e n e v e r d i d r e t u r n ” contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.131 exposure feature prominently in the work’s composition, throughout which we find iconographic signs relating to each woman’s story.17 figure 4 penny siopis, plum cream, 1982. oil on canvas, 159.5 x 201.5 cm. location unknown (photo: courtesy penny siopis and stevenson gallery, cape town). systems of truth production also emerged as a major theme throughout siopis’ early oeuvre. her series of history paintings produced in 1988 and 1989 reflect not only on the past but also on the act of looking towards it. in patience on a monument: a history painting (1988) (fig. 6), an african woman sits atop a heaping pile of painted and collaged images culled from textbooks, newspapers and scientific archives. the beholder is granted the scopic view of history implied in walter benjamin’s famous reading of paul klee’s angelus novus, who “sees one single catastrophe, which unceasingly piles rubble on top of rubble and hurls it before his feet.”18 layers of collaged debris surround the female figure in an all-over composition that stretches to the perimeters of the canvas, creating a sense of “infinite regression” that offers no glimpse of a horizon. images pulled from seemingly objective 17 for more on this work, see marion arnold, “proclaiming womanhood,” in women and art in south africa (london: palgrave macmillan, 1996) and pollock, “painting, difference and desire in history,” 46-67. 18 walter benjamin, theses on the philosophy of history (new york: schecken, 2007), 257-258. 5 3 a l l i s o n k . y o u n g contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.131 sources are used to subvert the notion of truth and to challenge the hegemonic writing of history.19 figure 5 penny siopis, dora and the other woman, 1988. pastel on paper, 153x 120 cm. private collection, johannesburg (photo: courtesy penny siopis and stevenson gallery, cape town). 19 for more on siopis’ history paintings and related works, see richards, “prima facie,” 6-45. 5 4 “ w e n e v e r d i d r e t u r n ” contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.131 in 1996, siopis was one of several artists targeted by enwezor in a controversial essay entitled “reframing the black subject: ideology and fantasy in contemporary south african representation,” which sparked heated debates about identity, appropriation and visual culture in south africa.20 enwezor insisted that white artists should stop reproducing narratives and images related to the oppression of africans in their work, and instead might take on their own experiences and histories as subject matter. his censure relies on an acknowledgment of the lasting power of such representations; as noted by andrés mario zervigón, “images remain haunted by their previous use even while charged with their new task of renegotiating identity.”21 indeed, enwezor argues that the utter familiarity of racist tropes, such as those found in ethnographic postcards, is evidence of their lasting currency, and enlists the words of postcolonial critics such as homi bhabha, stuart hall and franz fanon in decrying the depictions of “near-naked african women in a state of colonial arrest”22 reproduced in works by siopis and candice breitz, among others. in so doing, he denounces the artist’s use of such images, even critically, likening these to “over-aestheticised vessels for pleasurable consumption, untroubled and available.”23 debates surrounding the reproduction of stereotypes were not uncommon during this decade most famous for its identity politics–kara walker, whose controversial racial caricatures and antebellum references incited calls for censorship of her work in 1994, comes to mind–but enwezor is concerned here with the question of white artists who assign themselves the role of “historicising black desire.”24 enwezor’s text was received with a degree of hostility within the tightknit south african art world, even prompting an anthology of essays to be published in response to it in 1999.25 in her introduction to the publication, entitled grey areas, brenda atkinson recalls the emergence of an “e-mail debate” and mentions other texts and events that stoked tensions, including olu oguibe’s “beyond visual pleasures: a brief recollection on the work of contemporary african women artists”; oguibe was more sympathetic to siopis and artist sue williamson, but echoed enwezor’s rebuke of breitz’s rainbow series, which appropriates ethnographic motifs. these debates also resurfaced during the biennale’s academic conference; in a 1998 article, artist and critic carol becker details how the panel in which she 20 okwui enwezor, “reframing the black subject: ideology and fantasy in contemporary south african representation,” third text 40 (1997): 21-40. originally published in the catalogue for an exhibition entitled contemporary art in south africa that was curated by marith hope and toured throughout norway in 1997. this text also has since been reproduced in olu oguibe and okwui enwezor, ed., reading the contemporary: african art from theory to the marketplace (london: institute of international visual arts, 1999), 376-339. 21 andrés mario zervigón, “the weave of memory: siemon allen’s screen in post-apartheid south africa,” art journal, 61 (2002): 77. 22 enwezor, “reframing the black subject,” 28. 23 ibid., 28. 24 ibid., 31. 25 the history of the article’s reception is outlined in brenda atkinson’s introduction to the grey areas volume. atkinson explains, “enwezor’s article… was brought to the attention of the south african art community by art critic kendell geers, in an article that appeared in the star newspaper’s cultural supplement, tonight. geers’ article–‘dangers inherent in foreign curating’–criticised the fact that ‘so many of the battles, debates and developments [in contemporary south african art] are being played out on foreign soil’ and warned of ‘the dangers of foreign curators who come to this country with their old colonial prejudices intact and who use our artists for their racist imaginations.’” (17) as atkinson later points out, “both geers’ and enwezor’s pieces became important catalysts and focal points for a particular debate around issues that had, until then, been largely repressed within the art community, at least in the public domain.” (19) 5 5 a l l i s o n k . y o u n g contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.131 was meant to participate had dissolved into a heated argument wherein many intellectuals and artists were subject to bitter accusations. becker writes: “the tensions in the south african art world, politely contained all week, had finally exploded.”26 figure 6 penny siopis, patience on a monument: a history painting, 1988. oil and collage on board, 180 x 200 cm. william humphreys museum, kimberly, south africa (photo: courtesy penny siopis and stevenson gallery, cape town). 26 carol becker, “the second johannesburg biennale,” art journal 57 (1998): 97. 5 6 “ w e n e v e r d i d r e t u r n ” contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.131 in hindsight, it seems that a rare degree of honesty, criticality and sheer willingness to engage is found throughout this conversation, which is indicative of an uncommon commitment to political expression, especially when it entails laying bare the uncomfortable contradictions and grievances of a fragmented national community.27 in her own contribution to the anthology, siopis warns her readers: “i do not believe art to be the domain of ‘correctness’, of non-violence, of polite relations, as is sometimes implied.… [its] potency perhaps lies more fully in the place it offers for explorations of things which are emphatically tentative, painful, fragile, violent, even angry. art is not a sanitised, entirely civil activity….”28 she reproduces selections from past writings and notes spanning from the 1970s to the 1990s, and emphasizes the messy entanglement of racial and sexual politics in south africa’s history. her text subtly betrays the ambivalence of the white female perspective, wherein her impassioned engagement with feminist theory was also met with the realities of her alignment with the european as ‘oppressor.’ during a sojourn in england and france as an art student, for instance, she was engrossed in an insurgent rise in feminist scholarship on the history of psychoanalysis and theories of hysteria; yet, her “working through” of this material was inevitably scored through with memories of her upbringing in south africa. in the case of saartje baartman, for example, the sexist methodologies of nineteenth-century european scientists and the dehumanizing reality of colonialism were, perhaps, two sides of the same coin. also implicit in enwezor’s critique was a challenge to the assumption that whiteness is synonymous with citizenship and belonging, a belief that he felt appeared exempt from political inflection in south african art and visual culture. it was considered imperative that artists and writers challenge the “narratives of the past” that normalized south africa’s european presence. such a shift is discernible in siopis’ work and in that of her peers during and beyond the late nineties, but it should be acknowledged that this dialogue had already begun to open; thus, this transition is not solely responsive to his critique, but rather is indicative of a growing collective awareness. siopis had already started using family photographs in works such as tula tula (1993-4), which focused on the complex and traumatic relationships between black domestic workers and the white children whom they looked after (in the piece, her own brother is pictured as an infant in his nanny’s arms).29 also in 1997, artist brett murray exhibited a photo-installation entitled guilt and innocence 1960-1990 (1997) in the newly instated robben island museum (figs. 7 and 8). the piece contains over one hundred family photographs depicting the artist’s childhood in the years during which nelson mandela was incarcerated at robben island. these works joined a growing number of artist’s reflections on the psychology of whiteness in south africa.30 my lovely day was, nevertheless, commissioned by enwezor, and thus her shift towards a more rigorous investigation of personal subjectivity might also be linked to this collaboration. fragmenting and layering the stories of three generations in her family, siopis’ film contains, as annie coombes suggests, “the conflicts and compromises of ‘whiteness,’ the 27 this point is made especially clear in the intention of the editors of grey areas to launch during the second johannesburg biennale (although it ended up being published much later), and in enwezor’s simultaneous collaboration with and support of several of the artists mentioned in his article. 28 siopis, “dissenting detail,” 245. 29 for more on the tula tula series, see siopis, “dissenting detail.” 30 see annie coombes, “what’s in a name? the place of ‘ethnicity’ in the ‘new’ south africa” in history after apartheid (durham and london: duke university press, 2003) 206-242. 5 7 a l l i s o n k . y o u n g contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.131 uncomfortable prejudices but also the legitimate desires of an immigrant middle class scored through with the traces of migratory histories and dreams of belonging.”31 just a stone’s throw away from the electric workshop, a much larger conversation about the country’s past and future was taking place on a public level.32 in johannesburg, cape town, and randburg, the truth and reconciliation commission was raising questions about complicity and culpability, witnessing and remembering, and this context must also be revisited in considering artistic practice after apartheid. the trc began in 1996 and lasted for approximately three years.33 it existed as a public forum through which human rights violations committed between 1960 and 1994 were investigated. the testimonies of both victims and perpetrators were broadcast daily, and in some cases, individuals who had committed politically-motivated acts of violence applied for amnesty. importantly, the trc’s purpose was not entirely judicial; it also comprised a reparation and rehabilitation committee that sought to restore dignity to victims and to encourage collective healing. as the chairman, archbishop desmond tutu, famously envisioned, the institution hoped to “unearth the truth about our dark past, to lay the ghosts of that past so that they will not return to haunt us.”34 tutu formulated a rubric naming four distinct types of “truth” that would be honored during the commission’s hearings: 1) factual or forensic; 2) personal or narrative; 3) social or dialogic; and 4) healing or restorative.35 by suggesting that the concept of truth might be adaptable, the trc acknowledged that more is needed for healing to take place than the exposure of hard evidence, and that contradictory views of history needed to be aired before closure may be reached. the trc’s emphasis on the importance of personal memory– however incomplete or fragmented–echoes some of the abovementioned strategies and debates in artistic discourse. in the following section, i return to siopis’ artworks. i hope to hold in suspension the metaphor of tutu’s call to “unearth” the past as i discuss the contents of my lovely day and reconnaissance (1900-1997) and shift to an analysis that concerns the affect and agency of found images and objects, as well as their resonance within the post-apartheid contexts outlined above. ii. materiality and time in two works by penny siopis my lovely day is assembled from clips of home movies that had been shot by the artist’s mother, anna, in the 1950s and 1960s. siopis writes its subtitled script from the perspective of her grandmother dorothy who, in the 1920s, fled with her husband and children from the violent greco-turkish conflicts that followed the first world war and accompanied the 31 coombes, history after apartheid, 278. 32 in her article, “the second johannesburg biennale,” carol becker writes: “during the biennale’s opening days, the truth and reconciliation commission was meeting only blocks from the electric workshop. in a medium-size room in the sanlam center, filled predominantly with journalists but open to the public, south africa’s apartheid past was on trial.” (89). 33 the commission was not disbanded, however, until the publication of its conclusive reports in the early 2000s. 34 desmond tutu, “bones of memory,” south african broadcasting corporation website, accessed january 31, 2015, http://www.sabc.co.za/sabc/sabctruth/bones.htm. 35 see deborah posel, “the trc report: what kind of history? what kind of truth?” in commissioning the past: understanding south africa’s truth and reconciliation commission, ed. deborah pose and graeme simpson (johannesburg: witwatersrand university, 2002): 147-172. 5 8 “ w e n e v e r d i d r e t u r n ” contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.131 partition and fall of the ottoman empire. in the opening segment alone, dorothy mentions her ‘travels’ in nearly every subtitle. my lovely day is one of the first contemporary works of art in south africa to actively probe the history and psychology of imperial diasporas in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.36 figure 7 brett murray, guilt and innocence, 1997. site-specific installation (photo: courtesy the artist and goodman gallery, cape town). bits of this history come through in siopis’ film, from which we learn about losses of property and clandestine migrations across rocky terrain. the light in which the artist portrays her grandmother is not entirely sympathetic; dorothy often reinforces the rhetoric of a ‘divide and rule’ mentality, thus betraying her colonial upbringing; she compares venetians to the so-called “infidel turks,” for instance, and attributes her husband’s temper to the “macedonian in him,” all the while reminding us of her own “superior” english genealogy. yet, my lovely day is not only a film about the artist’s grandmother. her narration annotates footage that actually documents the following two generations, visually marking one future outcome of the story of migration that she tells. as siopis explains, “the place from which she speaks is a small desert town in south africa called vryburg…. the historical moment of her telling is apartheid south africa, but her references to social turmoil and 36 the term “imperial diaspora” loosely describes the migration of europeans to colonial territories during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and i have borrowed this usage from robin cohen, global diasporas: an introduction, 2nd ed. (new york: routledge, 2008). 5 9 a l l i s o n k . y o u n g contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.131 catastrophe are to those of earlier times.”37 together, text and image straddle the temporal lapses that separate the speaker’s memories of the 1920s and ‘30s, her intended ‘audience’– her daughter and grandchildren in the 1950s–and viewers of siopis’ work in 1997. figure 8 brett murray, guilt and innocence (detail), 1997. site-specific installation (photo: courtesy the artist and goodman gallery, cape town). at times, dorothy re-enters the space of the footage, for example, when accusing the children of leading charmed lives. scenes of leisure and games of dress-up in the garden appear above her admonishments: “you play as if nothing is happening around you” (fig. 9). a teenage girl faces the camera and strolls through the grass in her sundress, while a younger child clutching a parasol smiles eagerly nearby. “look how you cavort in the garden. one would think you were imbeciles!” as dorothy’s words make clear, the reality of apartheid is only palpable in the absence of its signification; penny and her siblings appear completely sheltered from the political events unfolding around them. here, text and image are synchronous, as her words directly address the figures flickering across the screen. 37 quoted in colin richards, “the wake of words: a response to my lovely day,” in penny siopis: my lovely day,” (johannesburg: goodman gallery, 1999) [ephemera]. 6 0 “ w e n e v e r d i d r e t u r n ” contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.131 however, this relationship is inconsistent and changes with every jump cut or narrative shift. siopis explains that at times, “connections are entirely tenuous, even false.”38 moments of incongruity are just as common, and often reflect a sense of irony; when dorothy insists, for instance, that south africa is “so uncouth,” siopis sets her words against a scene of white europeans dancing wildly at a party (fig. 10). the moral ambiguity of dorothy’s character–a theme that has defined all of siopis’ filmic works–reflects the wide reach of colonialism. she has been subject to incredible hardship in the midst of shifting national and imperial borders, and she does demonstrate an awareness of the horrors of apartheid. however, her family is privileged in their new home, and the mere existence of a leisure class within an otherwise dehumanizing society is thus brought sharply into focus. in a maneuver that recalls the testimonies being broadcast by the trc, siopis lays bare an ambivalent collection of memories–both lived and inherited–that defined her upbringing in south africa. at the film’s close, the phrase “a true story” flashes onto the screen, further dissolving the boundaries that mark truth, fiction, and memory. this ambiguity serves the artist’s purpose. the work extends beyond siopis’ own lifetime, and thus is not purely autobiography or memoir, no less due to the clear lack of authorship one senses in its fractured narrative. “events not experienced in my time shall shape my experience as a subject in process,” she has written. “this is difficult terrain, and not easy to deal with directly.”39 if artworks may aid the psychological process of reparation, this may not always be achieved at an intellectual level, an approach more analogous, perhaps, to the “factual” or “forensic” kind of truth defined by archbishop tutu. while allegorically complex, siopis’ early paintings addressed systemic forms of violence in ways that make the work accessible to active, viewers. in dora and the other woman, for example, iconographic references to dora’s story appear in the form of men’s dress shoes and an opened jewel box; these are symbols that may be decoded through an academic edification of psychoanalytic history. instead, my lovely day appeals empathically, not just conceptually, to the lived experiences of its beholders, which are not always easy to reach. the holes or losses in memory, whether corroded by trauma or by feelings of guilt, might be addressed using what film theorist laura marks describes as a haptic visuality. “haptic images,” marks asserts, “invite the viewer to respond to the image in an intimate, embodied way, and thus facilitate the experience of other sensory impressions as well.”40 seizing the term’s applicability towards tactile, material encounters, colin richards has invoked marks’ study in reference to the sensuous surfaces of siopis’ paintings.41 thus, not only may the “haptic” provide a useful framework for characterizing her work in film, as will be discussed below, but it may also reveal a common thread across her works in diverse mediums. 38 penny siopis, “my lovely day” in penny siopis, ed. kathryn smith (johannesburg: goodman gallery, 2005), 96-7. 39 siopis, “my lovely day,” 95. 40 laura u. marks, the skin of the film, 2nd ed. (durham: duke university press, 2000), 2. 41 see richards, “prima facie,” 14-15. 6 1 a l l i s o n k . y o u n g contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.131 figure 9 penny siopis, my lovely day (film still), 3rd ed., 1997. video installation of mini cinema and 8mm film transferred to video, 21 minutes. museum of modern art, stockholm; south african national gallery, cape town; the artist (photo: courtesy penny siopis and stevenson gallery, cape town). haptic visuality is marked by its appeal to fractured memories; it invites the viewer to reconstruct a sense of narrative from his or her individual reservoir of experiences. when my lovely day was debuted, many (primarily white) commentators wrote of the work’s sense of familiarity; richards found that the footage invoked “the very picture of a white south african childhood,”42 and jennifer law remarked that “we feel as though we have entered into another mind remembering.”43 scenes of domestic comfort, coupled with dorothy’s accusations towards her grandchildren, may have complicated the strong allegiance felt by many white artists to the anti-apartheid cause. while the result is no less provocative, the familiarity of images that defined whiteness resonated in very different ways than the familiarity of ethnographic tropes that had disturbed enwezor. 42 richards, “the wake of words.” 43 jennifer law, “my lovely day,” 1997. ephemeral exhibition material provided to the author by the artist in 2011. 6 2 “ w e n e v e r d i d r e t u r n ” contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.131 figure 10 penny siopis, my lovely day (film still), 3rd ed., 1997. video installation of mini cinema and 8mm film transferred to video, 21 minutes. museum of modern art, stockholm; south african national gallery, cape town; the artist (photo: courtesy penny siopis and stevenson gallery, cape town). while domestic life appears blissful in the film, the footage is contemporaneous with events such as the sharpeville massacre of 1960, one of the first truly violent clashes between anti-apartheid protestors and the police, or the rivonia trials that imprisoned nelson mandela and other freedom fighters in the early 1960s. as siopis has explained, many families were growing anxious about the inevitable unrest ahead of them.44 these tensions are rarely discernible in the film, but are occasionally present in the textual narration. near the end of the film, for instance, as the camera peers through a chain-linked fence towards “the big hole,” the site where diamonds were first found in south africa in 1871, dorothy admits: “this is a dangerous place, a place of ruin. know it in my bones.” when discussing the potential slippages between what is depicted and what is experienced, siopis described her first encounter with this footage, noting the contradictions that arise between what you are told about yourself or your past, what you see in old photographs and 44 penny siopis, informal interview with the author via skype, january 9, 2012. 6 3 a l l i s o n k . y o u n g contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.131 documents, and what you can truly remember. the idyllic footage had still triggered her recollection of a sense of fear or anxiety that pervaded this time.45 siopis’ experience of “looking back” aptly illustrates gilles deleuze’s theorization of the actual and the virtual, which articulate the dual temporalities inherent to filmic images, a concept that is especially pertinent in the case of home movies, as marks points out. the actual and the virtual correspond to the splitting in time that differentiates the “passing of the present” and the “preservation of the past.”46 the former is generally difficult to pin down (it denotes personal or sensory memories), whereas the latter, the remaining document, “becomes the institutionalized representation of the moment.”47 in siopis’ case, the footage sparked a reintegration of these two very different types of memory. the forensic value of the photographic document merged with the narrative of dorothy’s storytelling, thus cutting across several of tutu’s definitions of truth. for the viewer, the resulting work is confusing in its oscillation between image and text, narrator and protagonist, monologue and direct address. we cannot know which words were written or spoken by the “real” dorothy, and which were invented by penny siopis; in the end, the confusions between the two are far more telling. the artist also deliberately chose to include sequences that stressed the materiality of her medium, favoring artifacts such as sprocket marks, spots of dust, scratches and water damage, or “the effects of amateur camerawork: wrong exposure, camera shake, light flares, and oddly angled points of view.”48 both she and t.j. demos have written at length about this effect.49 these are all qualities that marks defines as “prohaptic,” which, as imperfections or disruptions, “raise ontological questions about the truth of photographic representation.”50 the resulting aesthetic encourages instead marks’ embodied form of spectatorship, which focuses less on what is represented in each image than on the raw tactility of the images themselves. siopis followed my lovely day with several more moving-image works, and much of the recent literature on the piece addresses it in the context of these, as a series.51 it is logical to group her works in this way, as the introduction of a new medium is a noteworthy shift in any artist’s practice, but it should be mentioned that her later films made use of strangers’ home movies, which are often sourced in thrift shops.52 during the time of my own writing, a groundbreaking new monograph has been produced to accompany the artist’s 2015 retrospective, penny siopis: time and again, organized by the south african national gallery in cape town. demos’ contribution, entitled “penny siopis’ film fables” primarily concerns her 2010 film, obscure white messenger, which chronicles the story of a man who, in 1966, 45 siopis, ibid. 46 see gilles deleuze, “the actual and the virtual,” in dialogues ii, trans. eliot ross albert (new york: columbia university press, 2007), 151. 47 marks, the skin of the film, 46. 48 siopis, “the hooks of history,” 46. 49 demos, “penny siopis’ film fables” and gerrit oliver, ed., “video stories” (penny siopis in conversation with gerrit olivier) in penny siopis: time and again (braamfontein: wits university press, 2015), published on the occasion of the exhibition penny siopis: time and again, south african national gallery, cape town, 2015. also see siopis, “the hooks of history.” 50 marks, the skin of the film, 172. 51 these include: pray, 2007; obscure white messenger, 2010; communion, 2011; the master is drowning, 2012. 52 see siopis, “the hooks of history.” 6 4 “ w e n e v e r d i d r e t u r n ” contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.131 assassinated south african prime minister h.f. verwoerd. demos seeks to articulate the artist’s “signature mode” as a filmmaker, describing how she combines “clips of found footage” with “narratives derived from historical documents.”53 it is important, however, to distinguish my lovely day as the only case in which the footage itself is an originary document with a known source (along with the postcards, notes, and memories), while also standing alone in unearthing the artist’s own familial history, rather than that of a public figure. thus, rather than framing my lovely day in the context of her later films, i want to connect it to another artwork also produced in 1997, with which it perhaps resonates more strongly at a thematic and material level. this allows us to sustain focus on the social or art historical context in which the film was created and to think between the boundaries of the diverse mediums in which she works. in february, 1997, some eight months before the opening of the biennale, siopis exhibited a piece entitled reconnaissance (1900-1997) at the johannesburg-based goodman gallery’s inaugural group show, lift off. reconnaissance was a temporary installation comprising what brenda atkinson calls “memorial piles of objects”:54 inherited, found and collected pieces laid out on a dais like desmond tutu’s “ghosts of the past” before the viewer (fig. 11). many of the objects had come into siopis’ possession just one year earlier in 1996, when she left for australia where her mother, who was severely ill, had recently emigrated. the artist “found herself attempting to arrange her mother’s things in the advent of her death,”55 and she observed at the time: looking at all these things in piles on the floor i thought, ‘this is another version of seeing a life flash before your eyes.’ i was aware that my mother’s life included her mother’s life, and our lives–her children. the date in the title [1900-1997] stems from the idea that a person’s memory covers something like one hundred years, because you inherit the memories of people who have come before you.56 most of the objects had passed through anna and dorothy’s hands, while others were penny’s more recent acquisitions in south africa. performing an act of surveillance, as suggested in the work’s title, the viewer studies the spread from above, scanning an assemblage of mismatched things: piles of bones, shells, military paraphernalia, knives, textiles, and shoes. relics of dorothy’s victorian upbringing share space with nelson mandela campaign memorabilia and springbok rugby souvenirs. each object carries traces of touch and wear; silk gloves and ballet slippers index the hands and feet that once slipped into them. like my lovely day, reconnaissance (1900-1997) represents an accumulation of intergenerational experiences. as marks explains, “personal objects remember and attest to events that people have forgotten.… to touch something one’s mother, one’s grandmother, or an unknown person touched is to be in physical contact with them.”57 while this was not siopis’ first or only installation comprised of object-assemblages, reconnaissance is unique among these works in that its subject is explicitly familial. 53 demos, “penny siopis’ film fables,” 210. 54 brenda atkinson, “the ocean in a bottle: penny siopis and the slippage of history,” in penny siopis, ed. kathryn smith (johannesburg: goodman gallery, 2005) 72. 55 atkinson, “the ocean in a bottle,” 72. 56 penny siopis, quoted in atkinson, “the ocean in a bottle,” 72. 57 marks, the skin of the film, 107-112. 6 5 a l l i s o n k . y o u n g contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.131 figure 11 penny siopis, reconnaissance (1900-1997), 1997. installation of found objects, dimensions variable (photo: courtesy penny siopis and stevenson gallery, cape town). there are two objects in particular included in reconnaissance (1900-1997) that foreshadow my lovely day. the first is an enlarged black-and-white photograph that was positioned like a screen behind the entire installation, bent and tilted forward so that its concave surface cradled the platform and faced the viewer just below eye level (fig. 12). at the bottom of the image, scribbled in white ink, are the handwritten words: “metro theatre. umtata.” it depicts a cinema house owned by siopis’ grandfather in the 1930s in south africa’s eastern cape, and dorothy returns here during her reminiscences in my lovely day to mention that he also went on the road, once even showing the notoriously racist film “the birth of a nation” in paris. her words, “i sewed the curtain for the metro. cost me sweat and blood,” invoke her intimate relationship to the depicted space. the photograph served as a model for the film’s viewing room, which bears the sensory imprint of the 1930s: red velvet curtains, gramophone soundtrack, and vintage seats that had been lent from johannesburg’s market theatre.58 the result was uncanny; as jennifer law wrote, at the time, “this space and the images which are projected remain somehow distantly familiar.”59 58 penny siopis, informal interview. the market theatre was one of the only spaces to permit racial integration during apartheid; this fact elicits an ironic juxtaposition to the less progressive metro theatre owned by siopis’ grandfather. 59 jennifer law, “my lovely day.” 6 6 “ w e n e v e r d i d r e t u r n ” contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.131 figure 12 metro theatre, umtata, south africa, c. 1930. archival photograph (photo: courtesy penny siopis and stevenson gallery, cape town). included as well among the things that siopis brought home after her visit to australia were some old canisters of 8mm film, contents unknown, which were displayed as found objects in reconnaissance (1900-1997) (fig. 13). siopis eventually had these converted to video, and after the gallery exhibition had closed she watched the old footage of her childhood for the first time in several decades. this film eventually became the material for my lovely day. it is here that we find a literal example of migratory images, as well as a chance to explore an analogy to “archaeological context” as introduced at the start of this article. beginning as celluloid strips kept in dusty cases (thus, as object) the film would have experienced its first migration when projected through light to be accessed as moving images, and then again, the film was migrated to video, to be edited, spliced, and resequenced. these images were now dislocated and re-translated in a new time, through new eyes–the artist’s as well as the beholder’s–and the transformation of celluloid strips from the ‘remains’ of the past into a contemporary artwork constitutes a new formulation of its identity. as mitchell reminds us, of course, “the true found object never quite forgets where it came from.”60 it is no surprise that my lovely day should have been borne from this earlier installation, as both works index two important moments in south africa’s history: the beginning of apartheid in the 1950s, and an earlier wave of colonial settlement around the 1920s and 1930s. they also addressed a specific, local audience in 1997, at a moment in which discourses on history and memory resonated in ways that may not have been 60 mitchell, what do pictures want, 115. 6 7 a l l i s o n k . y o u n g contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.131 applicable to viewers of siopis’ later films. the debates about race and representation, which were partly sparked by enwezor’s essay, were fresh in the minds of the south african art world. as ivor powell suggested in the biennale’s catalogue, “at some point south african artists need to take a deep breath, peg their noses, and dive out into the deep-end of experience, the unknown and unchartered depths of reality in the making.”61 siopis’ work offered a chance to do just this. figure 13 penny siopis, reconnaissance (1900-1997) (detail), 1997. installation of found objects, dimensions variable (photo: courtesy penny siopis and stevenson gallery, cape town). 61 ivor powell, “the pale and beyond: rethinking art in a reconstructed society,” in trade routes: history and geography: 2nd johannesburg biennale, exh. cat. (johannesburg: greater johannesburg metropolitan council, 1997), 53-54. 6 8 “ w e n e v e r d i d r e t u r n ” contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.131 in response to the rhetoric of unearthing past narratives, both in artistic and political discourse, the chronological layers that comprise both my lovely day and reconnaissance (1900-1997) shed light on the “multi-temporality” of the present (post-apartheid) moment. this notion of “multi-temporality” has been harnessed by gavin lucas in reference to the problem of chronology in the field of archaeology to address the issues of how to assign a date to a historical site. it might be similarly adapted to our understanding of artworks that include found objects.62 lucas explains how objects contained within an archaeological site may be of different times, and cites laurent olivier’s poignant description of his house, a twentieth century structure that sits “in the courtyard of an ancient farm.”63 a house may be filled with décor collected from past eras and faraway places, and we may not see these objects as “contemporaries,” at least not in origin. but they do all still exist in the present, together. similarly, the objects contained in reconnaissance or the flickering scenes and transcribed recollections in my lovely day may have originated in different decades, on different continents and in opposing social contexts, but as such, the collection provides a metaphor for the multi-temporality of contemporary south africa. to speak of these works as accumulations of intergenerational memories, as “ghosts of the past,” or “memorial objects,” might encourage us, finally, to also reconsider the image of benjamin’s “angel of history,” who is caught at the chaotic junction of past, present and future. as previously stated, that passage from his theses on the philosophy of history is alluded to in siopis’ earlier paintings, which depict heaps of collaged and painted ruins culled from official sources and historical documents. one of her paintings from 1989 bears the title piling wreckage upon wreckage in direct quotation of benjamin’s prose. while i have attempted to show that reconnaissance and my lovely day mark a departure in siopis’ work from public to private themes, from a political to an intimate aesthetic, she has also sustained an investment in alternative historical forms, which is evident across each phase of her work. benjamin’s writing reached its maturity during and after the first world war, also following a period of upheaval, migration, and political trauma; this led him to become skeptical of historical progress and to be drawn, instead, to fragments, constellations, and networks of association. siopis’ rich allusion to and application of his work in the postapartheid context testify to the lasting relevance of his eclectic project in an increasingly unstable political landscape. her output in the late nineties thus adheres to the archaeological metaphor of “unearthing” the past, faces inward in response to debates on subjectivity, and reflects the question of migration from a nuanced, critical perspective. in line with the topic of “trade routes,” the final sequences of footage in my lovely day allude to transportation, but we somehow keep missing the chance to depart. perhaps we are forced to inhabit the present, itself swollen with layers of time. boats are anchored at port; a man walks along railroad tracks as a train barrels past him; a small girl watches another train rush by. we, behind the camera, stand firmly in our place. the voice of siopis’ mother singing, which opened the film, gently rocks us back into waking life. the song is one of the most beloved tracks from vivian ellis’ 1947 musical bless the bride, set in victorian 62 see gavin lucas, “time and the archaeological record,” in the archaeology of time (london and new york: routledge, 2005), particularly the discussion through pages 32-43. 63 as quoted on by lucas in “time and the archaeological record”: “the house where i am writing this paper was built towards the beginning of this century, in the courtyard of an ancient farm whose structure is still visible. from my open window, i see an interweaving of houses and constructions, most of them dating back to the 19th century, sometimes including parts of earlier constructions from the 18th or 17th century.… right now, the present here is made up of a series of past durations that makes the present multi-temporal.” (37) see laurent olivier, “the hochdorf ‘princely’ grave and the question of the nature of archaeological funerary assemblages,” in time and archaeology, ed. tim murray (london: routledge, 1999). 6 9 a l l i s o n k . y o u n g contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.131 england: “i’ll remember, i’ll remember / when the time has come for happiness to pay / sad and sighing, old and dying / i’ll remember how we loved our lovely day.” we awaken at last from the theatre of the artist’s memories as the film closes with a subtitle that seems to introduce all of the footage we have just seen, and also foreshadows the artist’s relationship to the events that followed it: “you know, of course, we never did. we never did return.” acknowledgement: this research was generously supported by a robert holmes travel/research award for african scholarship from the graduate school of arts and sciences, new york university, as well as a shelby white and leon levy travel grant from the institute of fine arts, new york university, both in 2011. early versions of this paper have been presented at “the tangible: 4th annual graduate symposium” hosted by the department of art history and communication studies at mcgill university on april 27, 2013, and at “movement: the body and object in motion,” the cornell university annual history of art graduate symposium on october 4, 2013. the author would like to thank penny siopis, okwui enwezor and linda nochlin for their assistance at the beginning stages of research, as well as the editors at contemporaneity for their feedback on an earlier version of this manuscript. the ideas presented in this article do not necessarily reflect the views of the named individuals and institutions. 7 0 “ w e n e v e r d i d r e t u r n ” contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.131 new articles in this journal are licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 united states license. this journal is operated by the university library system of the university of pittsburgh as part of its d-scribe digital publishing program, and is co-sponsored by the university of pittsburgh press. contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture vol 1 (2011) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2011.20 http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu waiting for art the experience of real time in sculpture elizabeth buhe abstract why and how does some contemporary art make us wait, and why does the beholder choose to stay? this study seeks to answer this question by exploring what happens to the viewer while waiting in front of a “time sculpture,” a term coined here to mean a three-dimensional artwork that is dynamic over a set period of time. through an analysis of select works by artists anish kapoor, amelia whitelaw, michael sailstorfer, and roman signer, the article posits that while in front of these time sculptures, the viewer experiences an anxiety of waiting and temporal confusion that glues him to the spot. ultimately, by drawing upon henri bergson’s concept of duration, the essay suggests that the viewership of time sculpture allows for a heightened state of perception. about the author elizabeth buhe received her ma from the courtauld institute of art in 2010 and has spent the last year in the department of sculpture and decorative arts at the j. paul getty museum. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/� contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 1 (2011) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2011.20 spending time waiting does not arrest or accelerate perception, but rather heightens it. in everyday life, actuality is forever escaping our grasp — once we perceive something it is already past — already an artifact, a history. the same is not true in the museum where, confronted by static objects, we are the ones with the agency to move. and we do move, until something captivates our gaze, entangles us. we choose to wait. what happens when these objects grab a hold of our attention and keep us there — looking, waiting? these works, which unfold in front of the viewer’s eyes, pull the viewer into the object’s temporal realm; this is a different conception of time. in the museum, not many works actually make us wait for something to be revealed, using time as a device that affects us, that pervades our physical and mental space and grabs hold of our glance and our attention. as a conscious and deliberate means to force the viewer to experience the presentness of real time, contemporary artists have used their works to visualize time by allowing and even demanding the viewer to see and acutely feel the passage of time as a work moves before their eyes while they wait. the artist intentionally mediates the construction of time and how the viewer will experience it. waiting for the work of art produces a temporal disturbance that takes us out of “human time” and puts us into the “object’s time.” as viewers, the moment in which we realize the collision of these two kinds of time causes a profound sense of anxiety. this is an anxiety caused by temporal uncertainty: the beholder’s innate curiosity to understand the world prompts him to cede the agency of human time, to stay and reconcile the unknown durations of both the work and of his stay in front of it. the viewer is placed in an unsettling position by the “staging of an object as a temporal unfolding,” a type of work which, as art historian pamela lee states, “violates a reading of the work of art as static, as ontologically secure, and as either genre or medium specific.”1 she explains that it disrupts both how we view the work and how we conceive of its relationship to us in the museum space. here the artist withholds something by disallowing the work from revealing itself in its entirety at first glance. it is precisely these works that i wish to consider: sculptures that unfold in real time in the gallery space, which i call “time sculptures.”2 1 pamela lee, chronophobia: on time in the art of the 1960s (cambridge, ma: mit press, 2004), 51. lee’s book examines art of the 1960s in the context of postwar culture and the information age. the author argues that art from this decade reveals a fundamental anxiety or uneasiness about time. though scattered within the oeuvres of many artists who have highly diverse practices and backgrounds, the similarity among these diverse works is the element of waiting. at time sculpture’s core is the viewer’s experience, and bringing into focus this unifying characteristic allows for a new line of inquiry. as an artwork which is purposefully designed to undergo changes over a set period of time, time sculpture most importantly rests upon the viewer’s specific experience. by the very existence of its duration, time sculpture takes into account the viewer’s presence by the waiting it presupposes. time sculpture constructs the parameters through which the viewer must wait, through which the viewer sees and feels the presentness of real time on the object’s terms. 2 though “time sculpture” as a term has been intermittently used by artists and critics to discuss artworks which engage questions of temporality — as in the case of swiss artist roman signer, discussed later in this paper — there is no regularly accepted definition of this terminology, nor is there extensive theory on this specific issue. my extension of the use of the term encompasses several different art practices, delimited by works which require the human element of waiting. waiting for art the experience of real time in sculpture elizabeth buhe http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/� 1 1 9 e l i z a b e t h b u he contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 1 (2011) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2011.20 with this definition in mind, i will argue that the anxiety-inducing experience of “waiting for art” heightens our perception so that we are more fully engaged in the act of viewership.3 it is the anticipation and thus anxiety that time sculpture arouses in us, the confusion of the temporal parameters through which we experience it — human time or object time — that leads to a heightened state of awareness, and arguably, even impels us to stay longer. the longer we stay, the more anxiety mounts, raising the stakes so that we demand the moment of catharsis even more intensely. in this way, anxiety and waiting are united in an inextricable bond, and must be relieved simultaneously. further, we should note that this time-based anxiety is very different from the unease aroused by the work’s content and our subsequent associations. although both contribute to heightening attentiveness, it is the temporal anxiety we feel that glues us to the spot, heightens our perception, and makes time sculpture worthy of further inquiry. i have chosen to focus on time sculpture as opposed to other modes of art that take place in real time such as performance art, new media, and film because the unexpected perceptual experience of an inanimate object interfering with our sense of time is a unique, jarring, anxiety-producing encounter.4 necessarily, my observations rest on limitations. understanding art by grouping it according to overall style or region has become increasingly insufficient given the speed, volume, and level of inter-connectedness with which it is being produced today. the very fact that this trend is manifest in the work of a diverse group of artists suggests its wide-ranging resonance and its importance for further inquiry. though the oeuvres of each of the artists considered here are different in many ways, they all involve themes of anxiety, process, time, and its effects. what brings these works together is their relationship to the passage of time in the gallery. 5 the works themselves are not expressly about waiting, but the act of waiting is central to the viewer’s perception of them.6 3 jonathan crary’s seminal work suspensions of perception offers a thorough study of the relationship between perception and art in terms of societal change. it posits that in the late-nineteenth century, modes of perception changed in accord with a growing disorder of the social experience in a capitalist world, affecting how people saw the work of art, a shift reflected in radical changes in the artist’s method through the development of novel forms of visual depiction. see jonathan crary, suspensions of perception: attention, spectacle, and modern culture (cambridge, ma: mit press, 2001). 4 nicolas bourriaud’s theory of relational aesthetics could offer a further lens through which to analyze time sculpture; however, for the purpose of this article, the individual encounter with the work of art is privileged over the collective experience, a choice necessitated by the importance of the individual mind to bergson’s theories of perception as later discussed. 5 the limited scope of this article makes it impossible to discuss the many works relevant to an investigation of time sculpture. i have restricted the number of works analyzed to those i have seen in person, given that the experience of seeing (and waiting for) a work is so intrinsic to time sculpture. yet even within these parameters, there is an abundance of time sculpture (for example, see works by rebecca horn or arcangelo sassolino), which merit attention and which could enrich a further investigation. 6 a number of recent exhibitions have dealt explicitly with the question of time in art and society, suggesting a heightened interest in the topic. “as soon as possible: acceleration in contemporary society” at the palazzo strozzi in florence in summer 2010 showcased artists whose work addressed the show’s theme of a heightened sensitivity to time. see centre for contemporary culture strozzina, as soon as possible: acceleration in contemporary society, exhibition catalog (florence: centre for contemporary culture strozzina, 2010). the 2008 whitney biennial was concerned with a “temporal tenuousness — the sense many artists feel of being in transition” and with a re-conception of time, which curator shamim momin saw manifest in the works as either an investigation of time and process through sculpture as a spatialization of time, or a non-linear trend through seriality in a system-based versus medium-specific production. see shamim m. momin, “time change,” in whitney biennial 2008, ed. henriette huldisch and shamim m. momin, exhibition catalog (new york: whitney museum of american art, 2008), 51-78. further, the courtauld institute of art’s east wing viii exhibition “on time” explored notions of temporality, as well as constructed, deconstructed, modified, and manipulated time. it showcased the fall, a work by amelia whitelaw discussed in detail later in this article. see eleanor clayton, et al., eds., *footnote continued on next page http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/� 1 2 0 w a i t i n g f o r a r t contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 1 (2011) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2011.20 the first section of this article defines time sculpture first by way of michael fried’s criticism of minimalist sculpture in the 1960s, taking his analysis of this work as the arthistorical beginning of the relationship between sculpture, anxiety, and the viewer. the second section explores this anxiety as it relates to the time sculptures of four contemporary artists and the various durations present in each, as well as to the oeuvre of each of those artists more broadly. finally, section three details the effect of this anxiety on our perception, where the interval of the viewer’s mental activity while in front of the work is pivotal to the result of heightened awareness. time sculpture: some history and limitations sculpture’s relationship to a temporal duration was famously articulated by michael fried in his essay “art and objecthood” from 1967, which, according to pamela lee, “inscribes a marked anxiety about time.”7 literalist sensibility… is concerned with the actual circumstances in which the beholder encounters [it]… whereas in previous art ‘what is to be had from the work is located strictly within [it],’ the experience of literalist art is of an object in a situation — one which, virtually by definition, includes the beholder. fried’s notion that the viewer’s presence had become essential to the understanding of a sculptural work provides the foundation for our analysis of a sculpture-catalyzed anxiety. the ideas he developed have implications for a contemporary reading of anxiety and for temporal duration in art today, though in a decidedly different way. in the 1960s, minimalist artists were reducing sculpture to its most fundamental forms, creating work which could not be read as illusionistic and consisted only of its most necessary elements. fried’s discomfort about these developments, which he thought denied the viewer a proper aesthetic experience, led him to argue in “art and objecthood” that minimalism (or “literalism,” as he called it) betrayed the accomplishments of modernism because the meaning of the work was not wholly manifest, as it was contingent upon the viewer’s presence: 8 this contingency on the external element — the viewer’s presence, which was crucial to the work’s meaning — prompted fried to assert that minimalist sculpture was approaching what he called “objecthood.” this was a mere thing-like status or a non-art condition. according to fried, literalist sculpture lacked what he called “presentness.” for fried, this objecthood derived from two interrelated conditions. first, he saw minimalist sculpture as theatrical because its meaning was not intrinsic, requiring the individual experience of the viewer. the work engulfs the viewer, challenging him to confront it “within a situation which he experiences as his,” which “means that there is an important sense in which the work in question exists for him alone, even if he is not actually alone with _______________________ on time: east wing collection viii, exhibition catalog (london: the courtauld institute of art, 2008). finally, “disarming matter” at the dunkers kulturhus investigated the self-erasure, withdrawal, or negation of matter in both the physical and mental sense through art. see anncatrin gummesson, et al., eds., disarming matter, exhibition catalog (helsingborg: dunkers kulturhus, 2008). 7 the author goes on to delineate the kind of time that concerned fried: “time in the work of art; time in the experience of minimalism as quotidian; time experienced as the endless, ‘on and on’ of a new kind of art making. time as the foundation of what fried called theatricality: the staging of minimalist sculpture as contiguous with the actual conditions of the beholder’s surroundings.” lee, chronophobia, 38. note, however, that fried did not employ the term “anxiety” in “art and objecthood,” discussed in this section. 8 michael fried, “art and objecthood,” artforum 5 (june 1967), 15. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/� 1 2 1 e l i z a b e t h b u he contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 1 (2011) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2011.20 the work at the time.”9 second, fried saw this theatricality to have an endless duration, or to be dependent upon the potential for the beholder’s experience in front of the work to never end. the former relies upon the latter because, as fried states, it is “above all the endlessness, or objectlessness, of the approach or onrush or perspective” — in all, the beholder’s experience — which replaces the object.10 it is fried’s notion of endlessness which brings us to time sculpture. while the “theatricality” of time sculpture is manifest in the same way that fried saw it (requiring the viewer’s presence), the divergence lies in what he presumes to be its endless condition. while static sculpture creates experiences that can endure, time sculpture creates a temporal break that defines the duration(s) of the beholder’s experience. when spending time in the gallery with a time sculpture we are not entirely free of temporal limitations, simply because we know we are waiting for something to happen. we wait for catharsis: a culmination of our period of waiting, a fulfillment of time sculpture’s promise to the beholder, and a subsequent alleviation of our anxiety. in its way, while we wait time sculpture has us in its grasp, but is quite different from the experience defined by fried in terms of “a presentment of endless, or indefinite, duration.” in short, objecthood derives from the theatricality of the viewer’s participation, which itself may be endless. 11 this article explores how the duration of waiting for the work of art and the subsequent cathartic break affect the viewer’s experience. there are no “right” or “wrong” ways for the beholder to determine the length of his stay in front of a work. indeed, across different time sculptures there can be multiple durations with varying degrees of cathartic release. however, for all time sculpture, our primary anxiety as viewers is the realization that our own time is ruptured by these durations. it is the cognizance that these intervals exist explicitly — that a cathartic moment will occur, and that this will happen outside our control — which cements our anticipation as viewers of time sculpture. his argument has renewed relevance because time sculpture has a defined duration for the viewer: fried’s endlessness is no longer in play; hence, we need to re-evaluate how anxiety functions in the sculptural realm. theatrical in the experience it presupposes, time sculpture drives at an anxiety much different from fried’s discomfort over the inexhaustibility of literalist work. time sculpture defeats this anxiety, but in its “endness,” it creates an anxiety not of the critic, but of the viewer. in our lives, humans are always on the move; objects are not — or at least not seemingly of their own accord. we relate to other humans on our own terms, in our own time, in a way that we cannot relate to inanimate objects in our space. from these objects, we expect something different, a non-threatening presence, a sense of being “in the background.” yet time sculpture is in our space and in our way, so that this attitude toward “the object” becomes inadequate or impossible. we thus become anxious because of the temporal and spatial disruptions that compel us to relate to objects outside everyday terms. this anxiety arises from a realization of the collision of human time and object time, and only in time sculpture does it have the capacity to shift the viewer’s state of awareness to one of such enhanced perception. 9 ibid., 21. art historian rosalind krauss explained the beholder’s role in this interplay in the following way: “by the mid 1960s, it was clear that theatricality and performance could produce an operational divide between the sculptural object and the preconceptions about knowledge that the viewer might have about both it and himself.” rosalind krauss, passages in modern sculpture (cambridge, ma: mit press, 1981), 240. 10 fried, “art and objecthood,” 19. 11 ibid., 22. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/� 1 2 2 w a i t i n g f o r a r t contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 1 (2011) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2011.20 anxiously waiting: views in the gallery anish kapoor’s shooting into the corner (2008–9) and svayambh (2007) sit tightly in their galleries (figs. 1–2).12 the cannon firing cartridges of scarlet wax into the corner suggests an additive process rather than a destructive one, unsettling and difficult to reconcile given the work’s reference to the human body. kapoor himself describes the process as “very violent and deeply phallic,” contrasting it with the symbolic interpretation of the corner as “a fundamental beginning point for architecture, of creation — it is feminine.” each is surrounded by empty space and bright white walls, yet the space seems used up, not empty at all. our first glance registers this as a desolate place: the history of destruction is everywhere. judging by the spatters of red wax spread across the walls and the ceiling near shooting into the corner, the lumps of redness hanging on the gallery doorways, and the crimson covering smeared along the track on which svayambh sits, it is clear that these works were not — or are not — entirely static. in this moment of hesitation, both beckon the beholder to come closer to investigate. the apparatus of each work becomes apparent: a sleek pneumatic cannon larger than the human body in the case of shooting into the corner and a sunken metal rail, covered by the red substance itself in the case of svayambh. replacing the gesture of the artist, this mechanization suggests a loss of subjectivity, a sense that the work has given itself over to a pre-determined set of rules. yet the accumulation of material throughout the gallery suggests something else: that some force of nature is at work here, slowly shaping the formulation of material in space. 13 given the deep redness and viscous residue of the works, the reference to the human body, violence, ejaculation, and menstruation is undeniable, further jarring the beholder into a state of unease.14 confusion over this additive and destructive process begs the question: is the work finished? rarely do we expect to come to an art museum to see the fabrication of a work in progress, a visual unfolding in real time, yet it seems that is exactly the circumstance in which the viewer finds himself.15 it is an uncomfortable, if seductive, situation. the slow-moving rectangle has already been formed at the top into the shape of the galleries’ doorways; alongside, another twenty-pound lump of wax is projected, adding to the heap. but it is not with the effects themselves, but with “bringing about a heightened sensibility on the part of the viewer, who suddenly becomes aware of losing his safe distance from the object” that kapoor’s ultimate concern lies.16 12 these works are described as seen at the royal academy of arts, london, in the exhibition “anish kapoor,” september 26, 2009 — december 11, 2009. as we wait, kapoor throws us, like the works, into a transitional state. what are we waiting for? 13 gabriel ramin schor, “in the end was the vaseline: on anish kapoor’s shooting ‘beyond the pleasure principle,’” in anish kapoor: shooting into the corner, ed. peter noever, exhibition catalog (ostfildern: hatje cantz, 2009), 162. 14 alternatively, it has been suggested that svayambh alludes to the trains on which the nazis deported people to concentration camps, particularly in light of kapoor’s partially jewish heritage. kapoor’s initial idea was to name the work paint train. see gilles a. tiberghien, “entretien,” in anish kapoor: svayambh, ed. charlotte lair de la motte, exhibition catalog (nantes: musée des beaux-arts, 2007), 21. 15 neither svayambh nor shooting into the corner was conceived specifically for the royal academy exhibition, though this was the first occasion in which they were shown together. svayambh had previously been exhibited at the musée des beaux-arts de nantes (2007) and the haus der kunst, munich (2007–8). shooting into the corner is owned by mak museum for applied arts / contemporary art, vienna, where it was first shown in 2009; it was also on view at the guggenheim museum bilbao in summer 2010. 16 camiel van winkel, “on the sublime in the work of anish kapoor,” in anish kapoor, exhibition catalog (london: royal academy of arts, 2009), 168. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/� 1 2 3 e l i z a b e t h b u he contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 1 (2011) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2011.20 figure 1 anish kapoor, shooting into the corner, (2008-9). mixed media. dimensions variable. installation: royal academy of arts, london, 2009. photo: dave morgan. courtesy of the artist. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/� 1 2 4 w a i t i n g f o r a r t contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 1 (2011) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2011.20 figure 2 anish kapoor, svayambh, (2007). wax and oil-based paint. dimensions variable. installation: royal academy of arts, london, 2009. photo: dave morgan. courtesy of the artist and the royal academy of arts. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/� 1 2 5 e l i z a b e t h b u he contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 1 (2011) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2011.20 this uncomfortable anticipation translates into feeling a loss of control. kapoor’s works develop a distinct duration in which we realize we are anxiously waiting on the object’s terms. we know svayambh moves slowly through its galleries; the noise of an explosion heard muffled several galleries away tells us that shooting into the corner will detonate at regular intervals. but this does not quell our fears or satiate our curiosity: is recognizing the dynamism of these works enough? no. we wait. how does the work move? what happens when the cannon releases? when does this object come into being? the collective act of waiting creates a unique experience, a temporal anticipation that is central to the work. indeed, though the gallery guide stated that “a cannon is fired at twenty-minute intervals,” museum guards were instructed by the curators not to tell curious visitors, when asked, how frequently the cannon would fire.17 the beholder’s loss of control, then, was very much intentional.18 as the exhibition’s popularity grew, visitors had increasingly heard about these two wax works and the experience of waiting to see them in motion. 19 the waiting wall of people became part of the exhibition, perhaps explaining why kapoor alternatively described the show as both theatrical and mysterious, hoping that his work would “maintain its mystery and never reveal its plan…i want to try to make things that remain secret.”20 throughout his artistic practice, kapoor has been interested in concealing the artist’s presence. as he put it: “i have a fantasy about the auto-generated, self-made, somehow revealed object… i want to deny the hand. i want to get beyond gesture.”21 indeed, “svayambh” comes from the sanskrit word svayam, meaning “in person, oneself, itself, of one’s accord,” and of it, kapoor said, “the form, i insist, made itself,” denying the viewer knowledge of authorship.22 by confusing our notion of how and by whom these works were made, kapoor aims to resituate the viewer in relation to his works. he stated: i am interested in sculpture that manipulates the viewer into a specific relation with both space and time. time, on two levels: one narratively and cinematically as a matter of the passage through the work, and the other as a literal elongation of the moment….space is as complex. the space contained in an object must be bigger than the object which contains it. my aim is to separate the object from its object-hood.23 in separating his self-proclaimed “object” from its “objecthood,” kapoor effectively claims his work as “art,” directly referencing fried. in desiring a “literal elongation of the moment,” kapoor acknowledges that his works do have an end, and thus come up against the 17 royal academy, anish kapoor, gallery guide, “shooting into the corner.” 18 adrian locke, exhibitions curator at the royal academy of arts, conversation with author, july 26, 2010, london. the cannon was manned by a team of cannoniers comprised of local theater students. suited up in black, they were instructed to shoot the cannon at regular intervals and retreat to a chair in the corner after detonating the cannon, functioning as triggers for a repeated act. 19 the aspect of external promotion and spectacle is underscored by the fact that the royal academy had a camera streaming live action video of the cannon on its website for the duration of the show. the visitor numbers for “anish kapoor” were an all-time record for an exhibition of a living artist at the royal academy, at around 277,500 people. locke, conversation with author, july 26, 2010. 20 heidi reitmaier, “descent into limbo,” tate international arts and culture 1 (september — october 2002), 92. 21 homi bhabha, “homi bhabha and anish kapoor in conversation, 1st june 1993,” in anish kapoor, ed. nehama guralnik, exhibition catalog (tel aviv: tel aviv museum of art, 1993), 61. 22 sandhini poddar, “suspending disbelief: anish kapoor’s mental sculpture,” in anish kapoor: memory, exhibition catalog (new york: guggenheim museum publications, 2008), 34. 23 reitmaier, “descent into limbo,” 92. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/� 1 2 6 w a i t i n g f o r a r t contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 1 (2011) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2011.20 “endlessness” (and subsequent “objecthood”) fried rejected. rather, kapoor’s elongation of the moment corresponds to the duration of time in which the viewer waits for the work of art. similarly, amelia whitelaw’s viscous, seeping dough sculpture unravels in real time, confronting the viewer both with its process and the residue of its journey through time and space. suspended in its net encasement, the fall (2008–9), a mass of fresh salt dough, hangs in a stairwell, slowly traversing its container (figs. 3–4).24 gravity coaxes the dough downward, and initially it retains its unity of form. with each passing moment, the mixture is sectioned by the square-patterned ropes of the netting into bulbous forms, detaching from the sagging mass in tresses like the tentacles of an octopus moving fluidly outward from its body. the first chunk falls downward, only to be caught by another disk of netting, to accumulate and fall again; four nets of decreasing diameter slow the dough’s descent until it reaches the floor. stasis. the stairwell acts as an attention tool, training the eye upward and back downward as more dough leaks toward the floor.25 at the same time that the dough persists downward, particles cling to the fibers of the rope, recalling the passing of movement, imploring not to be forgotten or swallowed up by pieces to come. it is a haunting of both the actual moment and the moments to follow, rendering visible different durations layered upon each other. as the dough continues to collapse, it slows, eventually becoming a sculpture of frozen action suspended delicately and vertically in space. over the course of the exhibition, air hardens the dough so it eventually grows static, its loss of movement rendering it an object. no end is in sight. 26 for whitelaw, this remainder is key: “the only testimony of our passing is collective memory…what is left at the end of the process, the residue, the elastic concept of time and memory.”27 the waiting and reward are a significant factor of these works. i have often found myself trapped watching the pieces until it reaches a slowed state of momentum…. tentative to start, speeding up to a frenzy, finally exhausting to an eventual stop. as we wait, the interval of our attention is variable, arguably heightening our level of engagement. do we seek to witness the catch and release of one, two, three masses of dough? to see the first splat of dough on the floor? or to see the dynamism of the work over the whole course of its showing? as whitelaw put it: 28 unlike the rhythmic nature of kapoor’s works, this elongation of time is undefined, the level of incident is less stark, and the parameters of the beholder’s experience are more subjective. this is an understanding of the passage of time as physical or visible rather than conceptual, of natural rather than mechanical. yet once again the beholder has no control: 24 the fall was shown in the exhibition “on time” at the courtauld institute of art, january 26, 2008 — july 26, 2009. whitelaw’s first suspended dough work was entitled as in death, an iteration in which she “restricted the viewing of it until after the piece, in effect, had ‘died.’” hence, it denoted a marked difference from the fall in which the beholder’s presence was key. whitelaw, e-mail message to author, august 28, 2010. 25 of the function of the stairwell and the beholder’s ability to change perspective by climbing or descending it, whitelaw stated, “by making use of the entire height of the stairwell i gave the experiential responsibility over to the viewer.” amelia whitelaw, e-mail message to author, august 29, 2010. 26 jack hartnell, curator of “on time” at the courtauld institute of art, conversation with author, july 13, 2010, london. 27 susanna bianchini, “spotlight: amelia whitelaw,” cura magazine 4 (april 2010), http://www.curamagazine.co m/en/?p=1033. 28 whitelaw, e-mail message to author, august 29, 2010. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/� 1 2 7 e l i z a b e t h b u he contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 1 (2011) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2011.20 figure 3 amelia whitelaw, the fall, (2008-9). mixed media. dimensions variable. installation: the courtauld institute of art, 2008-9. photo: ross mcnicol. courtesy of the artist and the wallis gallery. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/� 1 2 8 w a i t i n g f o r a r t contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 1 (2011) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2011.20 figure 4 amelia whitelaw, the fall, (2008-9). mixed media. dimensions variable. installation: the courtauld institute of art, 2008-9. photo: ross mcnicol. courtesy of the artist and the wallis gallery. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/� 1 2 9 e l i z a b e t h b u he contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 1 (2011) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2011.20 gravity and chance take over. even the artist has surrendered agency to the accident of these natural forces.29 like the morphing materiality and remains of kapoor’s work, the fall enraptures the viewer by rupturing expectations of passivity in the gallery. indeed, whitelaw said: “i found that the dough installations impose an innate responsibility for the witness. the observer is lured into following the progression of a strand or clump of dough as though by watching one gives the form value.” 30 the cyclical processes of creation, destruction, and regeneration are also central to the work of german artist michael sailstorfer. spinning relentlessly, futilely, and infinitely to its own self-destruction, zeit ist keine autobahn (2005–) consists of a tire pressed against the gallery wall powered by an electric motor (fig. 5). as a presence in our very space, it captures our attention, alluring us to stay, to watch and wait, to feel the vividness of time’s measure. 31 the tire’s exact rate of decay is unpredictable, determined by the energy the engine consistently supplies and the uneven pressure of the plaster. as with whitelaw’s dough sculpture, the level of incident is minimal, and the duration of the beholder’s attention is less easily defined, for there is no cannon explosion to wait for here; instead, we wait for a discernable accumulation of rubbery dust below the wheel to render time visible. situated waist-high on the wall, the work’s absurdity becomes immediately apparent, defying our most basic understanding of a tire’s functionality and the impossibility of seeing it up-close in motion. our initial reading of the work as a tire like any other is quickly and repeatedly annulled by the blackened carnage below and the stench of exposed rubber, which bring to the fore the process-based questions of temporality, endlessness, mobility, and decay. though moving, it goes nowhere, trapped in a state of perpetual immobility as intimidating as it is impotent. yet it is exactly this kind of contradiction that puts us at unease. sailstorfer turns quotidian objects into sculptures void of functional value, challenging the way we normally read them. the putrid scent of burning rubber can be detected much before we can see or hear its source, heightening our senses and our anticipation. splattered rubber particles cover the wall, slowly piling up in a mound below the work, telling of its continual struggle to move not only toward some undefined horizon, but also toward its own friction-caused disintegration. tiny pieces of plaster from the gallery wall can be spotted amongst the sooty-black debris, suggesting that it is not solely the tire that is at risk of destruction. one contradiction in particular lies at the heart of sailstorfer’s artistic investigation: as he puts it, his current preoccupation is with “travelling and yet still settling down somehow, or feeling at home in the interim space.” 32 29 set into motion by jack hartnell, the curator of the courtauld exhibition “on time,” the 440-pound mass of dough was released only once. the artist had no part in this action: “i was there, strangely impassive, and i was waiting to see if everything would fall down or stay up…” said whitelaw. see bianchini, “spotlight: amelia whitelaw.” this tension between home and travel, stability and flux is one we can all relate to, and is alarming for threatening to come so close to — or, 30 whitelaw, e-mail message to author, august 28, 2010. 31 zeit ist keine autobahn was conceived in 2005 for the yokohama triennale and has since been shown in various other venues, including frankfurt, berlin, minneapolis, and florence. each time, the name of the city in which the exhibition was located was appended to the title of the work. the specific installation referred to here is zeit ist keine autobahn, minneapolis, shown at the walker art center’s exhibition “the quick and the dead,” april 25, 2009 — september 27, 2009. the english translation of the work’s title is time is no highway. 32 helmut friedel, “michael sailstorfer and helmut friedel,” in michael sailstorfer, ed. giovanni iovane (paris: dena foundation for contemporary art, 2005), unpaginated. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/� 1 3 0 w a i t i n g f o r a r t contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 1 (2011) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2011.20 figure 5 michael sailstorfer, zeit is keine autobahn — frankfurt, (2008). tire, iron, electronic engine, electric current, wall. dimensions: 80 x 95 x 65 cm (31 1/2 x 37 1/2 x 25 1/2 in). photo: norbert miguletz ©vg bild-kunst, bonn. courtesy of johann könig, berlin. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/� 1 3 1 e l i z a b e t h b u he contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 1 (2011) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2011.20 alternatively, to suspend — our retreat to that which is our closest, most private, and most protected space. like time, space is something we understand based only on experiential knowledge — indeed sailstorfer is fascinated by space because “we cannot really grasp or explain how it all relates” — and the confrontation of this uncertainty is disconcerting.33 the experience of waiting is also exemplified by the work of swiss artist roman signer, a self-described artist of time sculpture. to understand the space between, or from, point a to point b, we must understand what or where those two points are. yet sailstorfer’s work addresses this very “interim space,” this interval of transience, non-identity, and turbulence. the non-travel of the tire reveals the catastrophe of its condition. waiting restlessly, the visitor feels the anxiety of this active paralysis. the work’s title, zeit ist keine autobahn (or time is no highway), suggests the consistency of time: though the tire tries hopelessly to accelerate, time takes time, its speed invariable, based necessarily only upon our own subjective exposure. the tire’s process of destruction and replacement both affirms the consistency of time’s measure and the suspicion that it will self-destruct only in its own time — its object time. 34 renowned for the literal explosiveness of his works, the state of transition, the transformation of matter, and the traceable duration of time within an explosion comprise, for signer, the essential components of sculpture. he is “fascinated by changes of state. a sudden switch in the case of a slow movement — for example a fuse is burning slowly, and then suddenly the explosion comes. that is a sculpture, a time sculpture, a combination of very slow and very fast.”35 and yet, in his work, this discernable moment of flux for which we wait need not necessarily be an explosion. the passage from slow to fast and the tension between stasis and movement are the central tenets of his work rad (wheel) (1996/2008) (fig. 6). a bicycle wheel standing upright, its lower rim frozen into an oblong block of ice, sits quietly in the center of the gallery, perched upon a low pedestal with a raised perimeter to prevent the water from spreading across the floor.36 delicately perched, the wheel is absurd in its translucent stand. in monochrome, it creates a feeling of calm, yet something is awry. as the viewer sees the wheel begin to lean in its melting anchor point, glistening ice catches his eye. the shininess of the base and the growing accumulation of water along the edges of the ice block, stretching at a glacial yet visible rate along the surface from its source, announce the instability of the wheel’s ever tilting position. along the wheel’s edges the crevices slowly expand, the ice releasing its frozen grip on the tire’s treads. the slowness with which this visualization of time occurs gives the viewer time to consider the duality of these states of flux: on the one hand, the icy like the objects in sailstorfer’s work, signer’s wheel is pulled from the banality of its quotidian state by being crippled of its usual function; the signification of the wheel is called into question, creating a tension of both meaning and movement. 33 ibid. 34 signer traces his artistic influences back to minimalism and arte povera. while he was a sculpture student at the school of applied arts in lucerne, switzerland, he saw harald szeemann’s exhibition “live in your head: when attitudes become form” in 1969 at the kunsthalle bern. he calls himself “a child of those times,” while still distancing his own artistic practices from these precedents, saying: “i have always tried to find my own way, which cannot be quite straight. it is hard.” signer was particularly influenced by robert morris, whose work he found “open-minded” and useful as “tools for thought processes,” exemplifying signer’s fascination with openness and a challenged concept of sculpture. paula van den bosch, “paula van den bosch in conversation with roman signer,” in roman signer, ed. gerhard mack, paula van den bosch, and jeremy millar (london: phaidon press, 2006), 39 and 13. 35 lutz tittel, “a conversation with lutz tittel (extract), 1984,” in roman signer, ed. gerhard mack, paula van den bosch, and jeremy millar (london: phaidon press, 2006), 120. 36 this work is described as seen at the walker art center’s exhibition “the quick and the dead,” april 25, 2009 — september 27, 2009. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/� 1 3 2 w a i t i n g f o r a r t contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 1 (2011) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2011.20 figure 6 roman signer, rad (wheel), (1996/2008). refrigerator cell, bicycle wheel, ice. dimensions variable: ice block 10cm x 10 x 80 cm. installation: rochester art center, 2008. photo: gene pitman. courtesy of the artist and hauser & wirth. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/� 1 3 3 e l i z a b e t h b u he contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 1 (2011) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2011.20 base’s transformation from frosty sturdiness to a trickling pool of water, and on the other hand, the wheel’s transformation from rigid uselessness to tragic fall. in this transition across all states, signer denies the wheel the productive movement it normally affords. in so doing, the viewer senses the parallel tension between the transitory states of movement of both the ice and the wheel, thus experiencing a continuous sense of anxiety through the absurdity of it all, until the wheel suddenly falls. the variability and unpredictability of the interval of waiting are especially significant in signer’s work, which promises a cathartic moment or a highly-sensory, abrupt change of state. this foregrounds the importance of the viewer’s active participation, for “the brilliance of the piece is how quickly you intuit what is waiting to eventually happen.”37 somewhere there’s an explosive charge, and the fuse is burning, and then you wait. the waiting is terrible. terrible.… and you wait and wait, [imitates the noise of an explosion] and then you really feel as if you could fly, you are so completely free. it is an addiction. perhaps this is my drug. indeed, signer acknowledges the fundamental importance of the interval of time the work takes up, the time during which both artist and viewer wait. 38 bound to the work itself, this temporal element marks a duration in which the beholder anticipates a significant change: a sort of catharsis, a freedom from the anxiety of waiting. time sculpture forces our attention by challenging our understanding of the status quo in the museum space — cannons shooting red wax into the corner, dough seeping slowly, tires going nowhere fast, and blocks of ice melting — jarring us from our own comfortable interaction with time. it grabs our attention; anxiously we wait on time sculpture’s terms. the amount of time we spend in the museum runs parallel to the exertion of the work itself. how much are we willing to exert ourselves; how long will we pay attention? how deeply will time sculpture engage us? bracketing time: beginnings and ends of perception though we think we understand it, time is fundamentally inconceivable. time is comprehensible only in intervals, and time sculpture provides one such interval. the time in which the work is still changing — “in production” or “in flux” — and the duration of the beholder’s engagement with that time sculpture are inverted from the “usual” situation in which the viewer’s experience is presumably endless, as in the “literalist” work which concerned fried. it is precisely this endlessness of experience which distinguishes time sculpture from other sculpture. it changes the way we regard the viewer’s perception of the work because the viewer’s experience no longer seems endless: due to its climactic moment(s), it now has a duration. can time sculpture, then, effectively bracket time? the anticipation of the dynamism and catharsis intrinsic to time sculpture glues us to the spot and makes our experience a finite one during which we experience the anxieties and discomforts described above in the works of kapoor, whitelaw, sailstorfer, and signer. and it is a dynamic dimension that will occur again at (ir)regular intervals: tomorrow, twenty minutes from now, or in the next exhibition. as we have seen, these durations can be of varying lengths, even layered upon each other, such as the singular yet continual and minimal build-up of rubber under zeit ist keine autobahn, or the distinct yet multiple 37 peter eleey, curator of “the quick and the dead,” at the walker art center, minneapolis, e-mail message to author, august 30, 2010. 38 whitelaw, e-mail message to author, august 29, 2010. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/� 1 3 4 w a i t i n g f o r a r t contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 1 (2011) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2011.20 durations of the falling dough in whitelaw’s work. these durations can also be of varying levels of recognizability; they can be conceptual, in which case we know something will happen in our space yet no visible dynamism alludes to it, as in signer’s wheel, or they can be physical, in which case a steady movement indicates that we should wait, as in kapoor’s svayambh. yet across the works the collision of human time and object time induces a timebased anxiety and anticipation of waiting. how is our perception affected in this situation of duration which is so different from the endlessness fried describes? this anxiety-laden duration in front of the work of art, then, is key to our understanding of perception. french philosopher henri bergson developed the idea of duration as a way to counter philosophical arguments of his day that posited memory as a kind of matter, which he saw as a reduction in the idea of man’s free will and spirituality.39 though over a hundred years old, his fundamental understanding of time is highly relevant to our reading of time sculpture because of his notion that it is within a certain duration — between the awareness of stimulation and the reaction to it — that the pivotal moment of mental activity lies. a central concept for bergson was that within this temporal space or duration there “is no perception which is not full of memories. with the immediate and present data of our senses we mingle a thousand details out of our past experience.”40 to further explain this position, bergson posited two states of being: first, a vital order, which is intuitive (willed, creative, individual; it continues fluidly uniting each moment of experience indefinitely through an intuited succession, not a juxtaposition), and secondly a geometrical order, which is intellectual (automatic, non-directional; it neglects natural unity and breaks the world into homogenous, artificial units). we are, he says, usually in this latter state of intellect, operating on autopilot; this is a condition which exists in space and does not engage higher orders of thinking and is not an ideal or desirable state of being. rather, bergson prefers the vital order, which exists in time and in which we are alert, engaged, and synthesizing our memories with sensory input in real time. intuition necessarily delays the automatic reaction characteristic of the geometric state. in fact, bergson rejected the concept of time as having spatial qualities, because this denied its durational capacity. instead, he saw time as having a one-directional forward momentum, pointing out that we cannot go backward in it in the same way that we can revisit a location, because — unlike temporal elements — all spatial elements are alike and can be reordered. these principles of geometrical order can be predicted because they are based on patterns and universal laws. thus, space and time begin to illuminate the binary structure of bergson’s theory. our experience, then, is always tainted by memory, a condition we cannot escape. for the duration of our experience with time sculpture, our memories color our thought processes in front of the work of art, making our perception, in bergson’s view, one of individuality and higher order. what is easy to see is that in practice we cannot always be in a state of intellect (automatic thinking) nor can we always be in a state of intuition (active thinking). what is less clear is how, based on bergson’s system of dichotomies, all matter must fall into either the geometrical or vital category. there is a problem here, for art cannot exist wholly within either the geometric or vital realms.41 39 for more on bergson’s concept of duration, on which he wrote extensively, see for example time and free will: an essay on the immediate data of consciousness (1889) and matter and memory (1896). art is not totally vital because art itself exists, at least partly, within this geometrical order as a non-continuous entity, made of discrete forms or shapes and of discernable, finite durations (the tempo of a musical score, the content inside the frame of a painting, the time until catharsis of a time sculpture). these elements are 40 henri bergson, matter and memory (1896), trans. nancy margaret paul and w. scott palmer (mineola, new york: dover publications, inc., 2004), 24. 41 for a nuanced analysis of the work of art in relation to bergson’s theories, see ruth lorand, “bergson’s concept of art,” the british journal of aesthetics 39, no. 4 (october 1999), 400-415. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/� 1 3 5 e l i z a b e t h b u he contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 1 (2011) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2011.20 conceptually and fundamentally irreconcilable for bergson with the faculties of the vital order or intuitive state. likewise, art cannot be totally geometrical because there are no independent principles that govern it, and because bergson sees geometrical aspects of the world to be ordered, and therefore predictable.42 but we know art to be unpredictable, and bergson agrees, for he sees no distinction between the moment of artistic conception and creation. these are inseparable and occupy the same instant because art is a “truly new form,” a form which could not know its meaning, content, or appearance before the very moment of its consummation: an unpredictable, and thus intuitive, order.43 in this way, then, art escapes being always in either the geometric or the vital realm, because, as we can see, certain of its characteristics or components exist in both orders. we are therefore able to argue that art exists in the geometrical realm, resting on discrete and concrete compositional elements and in a set duration at the same time that it necessitates the vital orders of its maker’s intuitive creation and its beholders’ continual perception. bergson’s philosophy is based on polarities that leave no room for an interaction between these two states, but in fact require cooperation. the duration of time sculpture is more precisely defined than that of its artistic counterparts, painting and static sculpture. since we cannot always be in a state of attentive concentration or absorption as bergson desired, time sculpture presents a very fitting case in which we recognize the distinction between these two states. under these circumstances, we must analyze the artwork intuitively, for analysis by intellect would produce a list of non-ordered facts. art, then, is predictable neither for the artist nor for the beholder, for if it was, it would not be unique. furthermore, it relies upon its surroundings for its interpretation, constituting not only the fabrication of a singular work of art, but also a singular experience for the beholder. it is precisely because art falls between bergson’s categories that we are offered a sort of portal into the transitory states of our own condition as observers. time sculpture is unique in relation to art generally, because, as i argue in this paper, it triggers bergson’s vital state since it defines an explicit experiential duration. because time sculpture defies definition in terms of bergson’s dichotomy, its instability induces a shift in the viewer’s perception while in front of the work. the anxious moment in which we realize we are waiting — our realization of the collision of object time and human time — snaps us from our quotidian or automatic condition, throwing us into a heightened awareness that necessitates our operation within the intuitive and attentive state. indeed, what makes time sculpture so powerful is that it defines the duration of this intuitive state, and in so doing it is as if the beholder is operating on the object’s time, not human time — stuck in the moment, in a rush of memory and image. 42 yet by this estimation, art would also continue forever, for as part of the vital realm, it would depend upon “what may be called an endless multiplicity of contracting into a duration too narrow to permit of the separation of its moments.” bergson, matter and memory, 271-272. 43 as lorand notes, “there is no basis for prediction in the case of art or in any case of a ‘truly new form.’ art expresses an unpredictable order.” lorand, “bergson’s concept of art,” 405. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/� 1 3 6 w a i t i n g f o r a r t contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 1 (2011) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2011.20 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-noncommercial-no derivative works 3.0 united states license. this journal is operated by the university library system of the university of pittsburgh as part of its d-scribe digital publishing program, and is co-sponsored by the university of pittsburgh press. 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/pdfxoutputintentprofileselector /documentcmyk /preserveediting true /untaggedcmykhandling /leaveuntagged /untaggedrgbhandling /usedocumentprofile /usedocumentbleed false >> ] >> setdistillerparams << /hwresolution [2400 2400] /pagesize [612.000 792.000] >> setpagedevice 81-326-8-le vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.81 http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu what to do with the “most modern” artworks? erwin panofsky and the art history of contemporary art flora lysen abstract in the 1930s, when the world-renowned medieval and renaissance art scholar erwin panofsky became acquainted with the new york contemporary art scene, he was challenged with the most difficult dilemma for art historians: how could panofsky, who was firmly entrenched in the kunstwissenschaftliche study of art, use his historical methods for the scholarly research of contemporary art? can art historians deal with the art objects of their own time? this urgent and still current question of how to think about “contemporaneity” in relation to art history is the main topic of this paper, which departs from panofsky’s 1934 review of a book on modern art. in his review of james johnson sweeny’s book plastic redirections in 20th century painting, panofsky’s praise for sweeney’s scholarly “distance” from contemporary art developments in europe is backed by a claim for america’s cultural distance, rather than a (historical) removal in time. taking a closer look at panofsky’s conflation of historical/temporal distance with geographical/cultural distance, this paper demonstrates a politically situated discourse on contemporaneity, in which panofsky proposes the act of writing about the contemporary as a redemptive act, albeit, as this paper will demonstrate, without being able to follow his own scientific method. about the author flora lysen is a ph.d. candidate in the department of media studies at the university of amsterdam. contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.81 an incomprehensible monkey in his early and foundational text “zum problem der beschreibung und inhaltsdeutung von werken der bildenden kunst” (1932), erwin panofsky briefly reflected on the difficulty of interpreting a recent, almost contemporary, work of art.1 according to panofsky, franz marc’s painting der mandrill (1913), exhibited in the hamburger kunsthalle in 1919, did not offer art historians a possibility for interpretation because they had not been able to “grow into” (hineinwachsen) the historical situation; they could not yet understand the principles of representation at the heart of the painting.2 the monkey’s tubular shapes in green, blue, and yellow, entangled in a sea of abstract forms, were puzzling to both museum visitors and art historians. since one could barely recognize the animal, a scholarly, kunstwissenschaftliche study of the painting hardly seemed possible, as panofsky’s iconological method depended on an interplay between the various levels of interpretation, which derived from direct experience, knowledge conveyed by literature, and a consideration of possible world views. instead, for panofsky, it seemed that an understanding of a contemporary work of art depended on a “subconscious habituation to the new” (eine unbewusste gewöhnung an das neue).3 yet, even a habituation necessitated some form of “renegotiation,” or “reinterpretation” (umdeutung) of the image (“any description will—even before it opens— already have had to renegotiate the purely formal elements of depiction into symbols of something depicted”) and it seemed that such a renegotiation was impossible due to der mandrill’s contemporary, ungraspable, expressionist nature.4 consequently, one must conclude that for the “most modern” art works, as panofsky called them, the art historian is left without an apparent scholarly, systematic method of interpretation. while for older art works one is able to use a scientific, interpretative method, for modern art pieces it seems the art historican is left to a haphazard and contingent process. panofsky at the museum of modern art two years later, panofsky changed his opinion on the scholarly interpretation of contemporary art works. by then, panofsky, a jewish intellectual from hamburg, had fled to new york after his exclusion from the german work force in 1933 and had become increasingly enmeshed in the world of modern and contemporary art in america. during a 1 erwin panofsky, “zum problem der beschreibung und inhaltsdeutung von werken der bildenden kunst,” logos 21 (1932): 103-19, in aufsätze zu grundfragen der kunstwissenschaft, eds. hariolf oberer and egon verheyen (berlin:bruno hessling, 1964), 88. unless otherwise noted, i use the following translation: erwin panofsky, “on the problem of describing and interpreting works of the visual arts,” trans. jaś elsner and katharina lorenz, critical inquiry 38, no. 3 (march 1, 2012): 467–82. 2 panofsky, “zum problem,” 88, translation by author. 3 ibid. 4 ibid. 86. what to do with the “most modern” artworks? erwin panofsky and the art history of contemporary art flora lysen 4 0 w h a t t o d o w i t h t h e “ m o s t m o d e r n ” a r t w o r k s ? ! contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.81 stay at new york university (nyu) in 1933, panofsky visited the museum of modern art (moma) on numerous occasions together with curator philip johnson, director alfred barr and his wife margaret barr, who had rallied for panofsky’s tenure at american universities. with them he discussed the question “whether or not van gogh belongs to the jugendstil,”5 and on another occasion he was horrified by the sight of the so-called “international show” at the rockefeller center because he thought picasso, amongst other artists, had been misrepresented.6 over the course of several stays in new york, panofsky was increasingly engaged with a young group of art scholars in the city, among which was not only barr, but also the art historian meyer schapiro, who was by then a lecturer at both nyu and columbia university and a member of the board of trustees at moma. in 1935, shapiro had invited panofsky to join a private discussion group called λογων εστιαζιζ (translated “word fest,” an expression borrowed from plato), which was hosted every month at moma.7 little is known about the contents and actual frequency of these meetings.8 amongst the members of λογων εστιαζιζ were at least robert goldwater, jerome klein, louis lozowick, lewis mumford, dimitri tselos, jere abbott, and james johnson sweeny.9 many of its participants shared a strong interest in modern art: goldwater worked on a book on primitivism in modern art, klein was an art dealer at the new york downtown gallery for contemporary art, lozowick a modern artist from russia, and mumford a critic of contemporary architecture and culture.10 in 1934, within panofsky’s increasingly networked new york situation, barr asked him to write a review of james johnson sweeney’s recently published book plastic redirections in 20th century painting. panofsky’s article was considerably cut down prior to its publication in the bulletin of the museum of modern art.11 yet the gist of panofsky’s argument was left 5 erwin panofsky to margaret barr, 8 february 1933, korrespondenz, vol. 1, 568. cited letters are from dieter wuttke, ed. erwin panofsky: korrespondenz 1910-1936. erwin panofsky: korrespondenz 19101968. eine kommentierte auswah in fünf bänden, bd. 1. (wiesbaden: harrassowitz, 2001). translations by author. 6 “the mac-mahon show is simply poisonous: every country represented by one picture, mostly his worst. thus picasso is ‘illustrated’ by one of the most uncharacteristic, dullest paintings he ever made in 1932, so that, measured by the standards of this exhibition, he would seem to be much less important than one of the mexican or checoslovakian anonymi. it would be an alluring idea to figure, that all the modern pictures in the world would go lost except for this exhibition. and then an art-historian in 2500 writing a book on the ‘situation of art in 1933’.” panofsky to margaret barr, 9 march 1933, korrespondenz, vol. 1, 578. 7 original invitation in 1935, answered by panofsky on 26 march 1935, see korrespondenz vol. 1, 938. 8 more about the meetings can be found at the moma archives, ny: ahb [aaa: 2165; 981], as cited by sybil gordon kantor, alfred h. barr, jr. and the intellectual origins of the museum of modern art (cambridge: mit press, 2002), 451n59. 9 alice goldfarb marquis, alfred h. barr, missionary for the modern (chicago: contemporary books, 1989), 125; kantor (2002), 451n59; the membership of james johnson sweeney is attested in lee sorenson, “meyer schapiro,” dictionary of art historians, accessed march 16, 2014, http://www.dictionaryofarthistorians.org/schapierom.htm. 10 wuttke, korrespondenz, 938n2. 11 erwin panofsky, “review of plastic redirections in 20th century painting by james johnson sweeney,” the bulletin of the museum of modern art 2 (november 1934), 3. the original article enclosed with panofsky’s letter to barr is no longer present in the alfred h. barr, jr. papers at the museum of modern art archives, new york. erwin panofsky (princeton) to alfred barr (new york) october 1934, korrespondenz vol. 1, 764. 4 1 f l o r a l y s e n ! contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.81 intact: by employing the right kind of scholarly detachment, mr. sweeney “has now proved that it is, after all, possible to apply the methods of art-history to contemporary art.”12 sweeney’s book followed an exhibition (curated by sweeney) at the renaissance society of the university of chicago that displayed new developments in modern art such as cubism, surrealism, and super-realism.13 evolution in sweeney’s plastic arts in his review of sweeney’s book, panofsky reminded his readers again of the rightful practice of an art historian: “the scope of art history is: to understand a work of art with respect to its essential structure (formal and iconographic), to evaluate this structure under the aspect of its historical significance, and to connect phenomena so as to gain an insight into what is called ‘evolution.’”14 any good art historian “applies to artistic creations what seems to be a system of abstract categories and, in addition, considers them in connection with as many other facts as are available.”15 this approach to “evolution” is indeed one of the things panofsky could have appreciated in respect to the work of james johnson sweeney. in the first paragraph of the book, sweeney responds to doubts of historical distance and emphasizes the importance of looking at the modern “plastic arts” in relation to previous events. in the field of aesthetic concepts he detects a considerable change with the past, especially evident in the plastic arts: “and, while the event is still too close to us to admit an unprejudiced critical consideration, its character has never been ambiguous: an attempt at complete severance from all the dominant trends of the preceding century—a break and a new beginning.16 sweeney describes a growing need for a “break,” a resentment to the rationality as developed in the renaissance, which caused new modern art forms to object and deviate from this rational standard. “it was realized that a new epoch could grow only out of a new archaism.”17 sweeney’s remarks echo panofsky’s description of alternating “advances” and “reversals” of direction and that every so often return back to “primitive” or “archaic” modes of representation, as expressed in his famous essay “perspective as symbolic form.”18 12 panofsky, “review of plastic redirections,” 3. 13 james johnson sweeney, plastic redirections in 20th century painting, published in the “studies of meaning in art” series (chicago: the renaissance society of the university of chicago: university of chicago press, 1934). little has been written on the life and work of sweeney. recent interest has resulted in a symposium: “the poetry of vision: james johnson sweeney and the twilight of modernism” april 25, 2008 at the pollock-krasner house and study center. for more information on sweeney, see james johnson sweeney, vision and image: a way of seeing (new york: simon and schuster, 1968); denys sutton, “obituary for james johnson sweeney,” the burlington magazine 128, no. 1004 (november 1986): 809-810; eric de chassey, “j.j. sweeney, passeur entre l'europe et les etats-unis,” connaissance des arts 600 (2002): 72-77. 14 panofsky, “review of plastic redirections,” 3. 15 ibid. 16 sweeney, plastic redirections in 20th century painting, 3. 17 ibid. 18 panofsky, perspective as symbolic form, trans. christopher s. wood (new york: zone books; cambridge, mass.: distributed by mit press, 1991), 47. 4 2 w h a t t o d o w i t h t h e “ m o s t m o d e r n ” a r t w o r k s ? ! contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.81 sweeney’s approach to the history of modern art as “breaks and new beginnings” must have appealed to panofsky, as did sweeney’s attempt to find the impetus for a process of redirection in the arts. “when we discover what demands or interests gave its peculiar character and to what particular directive it is a response, it will take its place with a surprising—almost bathetic—ease.”19 in his book, sweeney contended that one could even come to understand the “contribution of our contemporaries” by “an analytic consideration of both a work and its background-tradition.”20 indeed, for sweeney, the interpretation of contemporary works is all together possible: “time effects its clarifications for us painlessly; at close quarters a conscious effort is required to compass similar ends.”21 sweeney suggests a general, all-encompassing impetus for change, a driving force that oscillated between the polarities of objective and subjective form production. the examples of paintings in plastic redirections thus become a procession of advances and reversals on this larger scale of development. this diachronic account, a series of solutions linked by the same “problem,” stands out in plastic redirections and must have been favorable to panofsky, who was much influenced by the diachronic approach of alois riegl.22 the riegelian approach was similarly present in alfred barr’s famous exhibition and book cubism and abstract art, (accompanied by a well-known art historical chart), a project that was much influenced by sweeney’s plastic redirections.23 precisely because sweeney’s account emphasized diachronicity over a consideration of the contemporaneous context of the artworks, panofsky could evade a detailed evaluation of sweeney’s analysis of “both a work and its background-tradition,” to use the words of the latter. hence, in so far as sweeney had supplied twentieth-century “redirections” in art with an impetus for change, his account could fit panofsky’s framework. sweeney’s book lacked a thorough analysis of the relationship between artistic developments and historical events and did not accord to panofsky’s three-step model of art historical interpretation. therefore, to understand panofsky’s encouraging appraisal of sweeney’s book, we must discern a second, and more important reason why panofsky regarded the book as valuable as an example of a scholarly approach to modern art. the careful classification of “reversals” and “advances” he recognized in sweeney’s account of art (i.e. the necessary quality of an art historian of contemporary art) was not by accident exhibited by an american author, according to 19 sweeney, plastic redirections in 20th century painting, 42. 20 ibid. 21 ibid. 22 riegl’s theoretical influence on panofsky’s work is profound and too complex to be accounted for in this paper. as michael ann holly has pointed out, both riegl and panofsky alternated between “synchronic” and “diachronic” models for art history. in panofsky’s eyes, sweeney’s book might have read as an attempt to balance these models, although the latter approach evidently stood out. michael ann holly, “the origin and development of erwin panofsky’s theories of art,” (phd diss, cornell university, 1981), 69. 23 susan noyes platt suggests barr had borrowed sweeney’s conception of “analytic” and “synthetic” cubism from plastic redirections. susan noyes platt, “modernism, formalism, and politics: the ‘cubism and abstract art’ exhibition of 1936 at the museum of modern art,” art journal 47, no. 4 (winter 1988): 284-295. marcia brennan mentions the similarities between sweeney’s and barr’s catalogues and exhibitions (although she is mainly interested in the gendered dimension of their canonical accounts) in “the multifaceted masculinity of canonical modernism: james johnson sweeney and alfred h. barr, jr. in the 1930s” in partisan canons: discursive and institutional sites, ed. anna brzyski (durham and london: duke university press, 2007), 179-201. 4 3 f l o r a l y s e n ! contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.81 panofsky. “it is possibly a privilege of american scholarship to construct the history of an art which in itself is not yet a ‘historical phenomenon,’” panofsky would conclude his review.24 temporal distance and intellectual distance in the review, panofsky praised sweeney’s scholarly “detachment” from the works under scrutiny. while “european publications on contemporary art are often either mere manifestoes ‘for’ or ‘against,’”25 as an american art historian, panofsky argued that sweeney was able to construct the history of contemporary developments in europe with more objectivity. panofsky’s review of sweeney is an early instance of an argument that he would frequently repeat: american historical scholarship is less biased because it is not entangled in the risky web of national politics in europe. especially when it comes to modern art, americans like sweeney are particularly capable of reliable scholarly analysis. from their position in america they are able to replace historical distance, generally needed for the analysis of art objects, with a cultural and geographical distance from the art movements in europe. hence detachment, for panofsky, is not only the necessary temporal distance from a work in order to place it within a history of traditions, but it can also refer to the cultural or intellectual detachment that, compensating for a lack of temporal distance, fosters the ability to understand the work within a history of traditions. before examining the implications of panofsky’s stance towards american scholarship in the arts, a closer look at panofsky’s conflation of temporal and intellectual distance is necessary, for which we must return to his famous text “perspective as symbolic form” of 1927. in “perspective as symbolic form,” panofsky did more than just outline a theory of perspective. perspective both constitutes and structures our visual apprehension of the world and can thus be regarded a symbolic form because, as keith moxey has pointed out, “the means by which the process of making knowledge characteristic of each period cannot be divorced from the knowledge it produces.”26 although at first panofsky seems to have a cultural relativist conception of this process of knowledge production, he nonetheless grants the renaissance use of perspective a privileged status in its way of constructing and gaining knowledge of the world. for panofsky, it seemed renaissance perspective represented the most objective view of the world, as it exemplified the ability to conceive of a distance between itself and the past by developing a geometric system that permitted a convincing representation of space. as the spatial rationality of the renaissance became a metaphor of objectivity, it made way for an extension of italian perspective into a metaphor for the production of knowledge itself and above all, a metaphor for the role of the historian. keith moxey adequately explains the metaphorical fusion of “perspective” and “history”: history, like perspective, is not only a means of representing knowledge but a means of constituting or becoming knowledge. just as the word "history" can refer either to what happened in the past or to accounts that purport to tell us what happened in the 24 panofsky, “review of plastic redirections,” 3. 25 ibid. 26 keith moxey, “perspective, panofsky, and the philosophy of history,” new literary history 26 (1995), 778-779. 4 4 w h a t t o d o w i t h t h e “ m o s t m o d e r n ” a r t w o r k s ? ! contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.81 past, so the word "perspective" can mean either one point of view among many, or the point which organizes and arranges all the others.27 for panofsky, it was the renaissance perspective that, due to its particular construction of distance, afforded genuine access to interpretation of past events. panofsky hence related the ability to interpret history to a particular cultural situation. after his move to the united states, he would become increasingly forthright and confident of the superior position of the culture of the renaissance in the history of perspective, a shift most palpably expressed in the publication of renaissance and renascences in western art (1960), in which there is no trace of the cultural relativity of perspective and the gaining of knowledge.28 in his review of plastic redirections, panofsky attributed a particular ability for distance and access to knowledge to american scholarship; similar to the way he privileged the italian renaissance. this association of the american academia with the objectivity of the renaissance and the superiority panofsky thus granted to the field of american art history must be understood in light of the political context of the 1930s. panofsky was much concerned with the influence of biased, nationalist tendencies on the practice of art history. during his stay in new york in 1933, panofsky reflected upon the political developments in his home country and touched upon the role of distance: the present situation in germany, . . . (that is to say the international nationalism) is a mere reaction against the modern means of communication which have narrowed the distance (both physical and intellectual) between the various nations too much and, above all, too suddenly, so that they have an opportunity of fighting . . . and are anxious about their ‘individuality’.29 according to panofsky, international nationalism dangerously impinged on the decrease of physical and intellectual distance by glorifying particular national artistic achievements. modern art, because of its close temporal relationship to the nationalists, was especially vulnerable to such a biased interpretation, as was the case with the aforementioned franz marc’s work der mandrill, a painting that was included in the exhibition entartete kunst in munich in 1937. panofsky’s praise for american scholarship of modern art because of its special vulnerability, modern art was particularly instrumental for panofsky’s emphasis on american intellectual and cultural distance. one year after his review of sweeney’s book, in 1935, panofsky’s high esteem of american scholarship in the field of modern art resulted in a proposal for the establishment of a professorship of modern art at the princeton institute of advanced studies (ias), where panofsky himself was based. in a memorandum to the university staff, panofsky argued that although the post in the institute for an authority on modern art may seem to bring the humanistic school rather dangerously up to date as a school of research . . . the fact is that american scholarship is peculiarly fitted to exercise perspective over modern art in a way that is quite impossible for the european student thereof, the reason 27 moxey, “perspective, panofsky, and the philosophy of history,” 779. 28 erwin panofsky, renaissance and renascences in western art (stockholm: almqvist and wisksells 1960). 29 erwin panofsky to margaret barr, 9 march 1933, korrespondenz vol. 1, 574. 4 5 f l o r a l y s e n ! contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.81 being that what perspective is lacking in time is made up by geographical distance, enabling the american students of the subject to view the process as a whole. 30 in 1944, panofsky raised the issue again and rallied for the appointment of alfred barr for the position of professor in a chair of modern art at ias. at the time, barr had been forced to step back as the director of the moma.31 according to panofsky, research in modern art was fundamental not only to counterbalance the emphasis on classical and medieval studies in princeton and “to establish a vital yet disinterested contact between humanistic research and life of our own day,” but also because: it is only in this country that the art of the present can be studied and interpreted with the same scholastic detachment and strictness of method as can that of the past. . . . on this side of the atlantic, the european developments [in art] could and can be registered and coordinated both comprehensively and impartially, the distance in space and traditions serving as an equivalent of that ‘historical perspective’ which in europe can be engendered only by time; it is no accident that the very idea of a museum of modern art . . . could be conceived and realized only in the united states.32 it was about time, according to panofsky, that ias enabled the most knowledgeable scholar of modern art to write a long awaited book on the history of modern art.33 ultimately, panofsky did not succeed in convincing the ias staff. barr would take up a specially created position at moma, in which he advised the new director and mainly devoted himself to research. panofsky’s statements against nationalist and biased art history would become most acute in his famous text “three decades of art history in the united states: impressions of a transplanted european,” written for a collection of essays on european scholars in america (1953).34 for americans, europe could merge into “one panorama,” panofsky said, whereas european scholars were preoccupied with questions of which country was the first to invent the cubiform capital or the rib-vault.35 unbiased by nationalism, detached from the cultural and intellectual roots of the objects, the americans were not only more apt to look at the past, “so were they able to see the present in a perspective picture undistorted by personal 30 erwin panofsky and charles rufus morey, memorandum on immediate and future needs for research in art and archeology in the school of the humanities of the institute of advanced study (october 1935), partly reprinted in korrespondenz vol. 2, 539. 31 barr was forced to resign from the moma in 1943 due to the influence of stephen c. clark, new chairman of the moma board of trustees and mrs. rockefeller. the reason for barr’s resignation was the fact that he still had not published his book on modern art, although he argued this was part of the agreement at the time of his appointment (according to wuttke, korrespondenz vol 2, 464). 32 panofsky, “report of mr. panofsky on mr. alfred h. barr, jr.” erwin panofsky to frank aydelotte, 27 february 1945. korrespondenz vol. 2, 536. 33 ibid., 536. 34 panofsky, erwin “three decades of art history in the united states: impressions of a transplanted european” first published as “the history of art” in the cultural migration: the european scholar in america, ed. w. r. crawford (philadephia: university of pennsylvania press, 1953). reprinted in college art journal 14, no. 1, (autumn, 1954): 7-27. 35 panofsky, “three decades,” 13. 4 6 w h a t t o d o w i t h t h e “ m o s t m o d e r n ” a r t w o r k s ? ! contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.81 or institutional parti pris.”36 in europe, the “direct impact” of art movements such as french impressionism, international surrealism, and bauhaus, forced either defense, attack, or silence. in america, in contrast, panofsky saw that there was acceptable scholarship of contemporary art. “‘historical distance’ (we normally require from sixty to eighty years) proved to be replaceable by cultural and geographical distance.”37 with his remarks on the american ability to come to a more objective evaluation of what happened in tumultuous and violent europe, panofsky yet again expressed the redemptive and humanistic qualities of the discipline of art history. his repeated trust in the american capacity for cultural distance reads as an appeal to the exercise of scholarly analysis of what had happened, but more importantly, what was then happening in europe. departing from a philosophical account of perspective in his “perspective as symbolic form,” panofsky’s conflation of intellectual, cultural, historical, and geographical distance takes on a clear-cut political dimension in his review of sweeney and other writings. the political reasons for panofsky’s emphasis on america’s ability to distance itself were part of a larger agenda of american cultural politics. according to keith moxey, panofsky’s confident attitude and trust in the sound methodological foundation of art history practices in america was “symptomatic of a deeper philosophical and cultural change in his way of thinking,” caused by an across-the-board atmosphere of positivism in american universities.38 moxey sketches a situation of unprecedented economic growth and national confidence after the second world war. america pulsated with a new feeling of “manifest destiny,” an eagerness to lead the world. within this climate the academic field of the humanities tried to live up to the very apparent successes of their empiricist, scientific colleagues in other departments, by emphasizing the objectivity of sound (art) historical research methodology. yet panofsky’s outright trust in the abilities of american scholarship would be tempered during his later years in the united states. the dominant climate of positivism was both a “blessing” and a source of “conflict,” said panofsky in 1953.39 distrust of german art history while art historians in exile were first hauled in for their particular erudition and cultivation, panofsky had already experienced distrust of his “german” ideas on methodology upon his arrival in the united states, when he had been dubbed the "hitler of art study" by art historian bernard berenson.40 in 1943, panofsky’s study of the iconography of the “blind cupid,” published in studies in iconology in 1939, was critiqued in the new york times as: 36 panofsky, “three decades,” 13. 37 ibid. 38 moxey, “perspective, panofsky, and the philosophy of history,” 777. 39 panofsky, “three decades,” 14. 40 according to wuttke, berenson considered panofsky his worst enemy. he thought panofsky and other immigrated german scholars tried to spoil his reputation. of all people, it was to margaret barr he called panofsky a “poseur” and the hitler of art study. see march 17, 1934. korrespondenz vol. i, 722n3. 4 7 f l o r a l y s e n ! contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.81 pedantic scholarship . . . imbuing all but the initiate with a sense of ignorance and unworthiness and erecting a wall of erudition between the ordinary citizen and the praetorian guard of germanic art specialists.41 panofsky was appalled by the vicious and bigoted tone of the article. behind it, he suspected the guiding hand of francis henry taylor, director of the metropolitan museum of art since 1940, who had, according to panofsky, “initiated a movement to protect the american museums from foreigners."42 taylor had published his book babel’s tower: the dilemma of the modern museum in 1945, which read as a particular attack on german scholarship. according to taylor: more than ever before the american museum will be called upon to fulfill a social function. . . . our soldiers and sailors, who have learned the lesson of world geography so bitterly, will be the first to return once more to the humanities. . . . unless, of course, we want to see these veterans peddling the golden apples of the hesperides on the street corners of chicago and new york, we must give them something more rewarding than iconology. our job is to deal straightforwardly in human values. had our german colleagues been more concerned with these in teaching their nazi pupils, they might not find themselves in their present situation. the veteran will want something more than empty vessels. like odysseus he will not be content with the ghosts of past civilizations but will want their flesh and blood. to give him this will require a better and more fundamental teaching, a teaching concerned with human values rather than with accumulation of statistical knowledge.43 taylor thus argued the methods of german iconology were not apt to the social tasks of post-war art history, but had instead driven art historians into the arms of hitler. these hostile reactions towards german scholarship and ostentatious examples of biased historical analysis must have gradually tempered panofsky’s trust in america’s intellectual distance and objectivity. the american world of art appeared to be hardly the distanced and objective refuge panofsky had hoped it to be.44 in retrospect, panofsky’s praise for sweeney’s american distance becomes all the more ironic, since sweeney would become one of the main propagators of the “great american artists” of the post-war era. it was sweeney, for example, who first championed jackson pollock together with other american artists in his 41 howard devree, the new york times, sunday, december 26, 1943, 9. partially republished in korrespondenz vol. 2, 444-45. 42 erwin panofsky to wolfgang stechow, korrespondenz vol. 2, 195. panofsky also vigorously expressed his concerns about the reception of his methods in the united states in a letter to henri van de waal, professor of art history at leiden university. erwin panofsky to henri van de waal, 20 november 1946, korrespondenz vol. 2, 770. taylor had also become the opponent of alfred barr, director of moma, by publishing the article “modern art and the dignity of man” in the atlantic monthly. according to taylor, contemporary artists only communicated to an “intellectual elite—the fashionably initiated.” in irving sandler, defining modern art: selected writings of alfred h. barr, jr. (new york: harry n. abrams inc. publishers, 1986). 43 henry francis taylor, babel’s tower: the dilemma of the modern museum (new york: columbia university press, 1945), 50, quoted in a review by meyer schapiro, “review of babel’s tower: the dilemma of the modern museum by henry francis taylor,” art bulletin 27 (1945), 273. 44 on national politics related to art in america after world war ii, see serge guilbaut, how new york stole the idea of modern art (chicago and london: university of chicago press, 1985) and irving sandler, introduction to defining modern art: selected writings of alfred h. barr. jr. 4 8 w h a t t o d o w i t h t h e “ m o s t m o d e r n ” a r t w o r k s ? ! contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.81 article “five american painters” in 1944: “each of these men in this vitality, individuality of outlook, and present freedom from obvious debts to his predecessors, holds the promise of a new and encouraging phase of american art.”45 sweeney would come to embody a certain ambiguity of american scholarship towards europe in the 1950s, mapping out the preeminent direction of american artistic developments and its duty as an intellectual leader and at the same time re-evaluating the importance of european roots and european lessons.46 in 1952, he co-hosted a famous symposium by the american journal partisan review, entitled “our country, our culture,” which proposed that america had now become the protector of western civilization, not only in the military and economic sense but also as a new, historically unprecedented, cultural exemplar. conclusion a close analysis of panofsky’s relation to contemporary art in this paper has revealed the extent to which methodological discourses concerning the study of contemporary art are particularly bound up with political perspectives. the paper demonstrated how access to the past and the practice of sound art historical methods depended, according to panofsky, on cultural and geographical distance. succeeding this theoretical argument, the article shows how national politics are entangled in panofsky’s contention that america could exercise art history from a more distanced and nuanced point of view. his plea for a distanced american evaluation of art was part and parcel of his own identity as a jewish refugee from germany, a famous scholar in exile affected by the war and removed from the european scene after 1936. this analysis emphasizes panofsky’s complex engagement with the rise of new approaches to contemporary art in mid-twentieth century america. writing about art of the present from the viewpoint of america could be a redemptive and political, scholarly act. at this particular moment in history, the concept of “contemporaneity” in relation to the discipline of art history occupied a specific polemic position that was itself vulnerable to political instrumentalism after the second world war. 45 james johnson sweeney, “five american painters,” harper’s bazaar (april 1944): 126, cited in guilbaut, how new york stole the idea of modern art, 87. the article featured milton avery, morris graves, roberto matta, jackson pollock and arshile gorky and came with a large color reproduction of jackson pollock's the she-wolf (1943), which was purchased about a month later by alfred barr for the museum of modern art. 46 edith kurzweil, a partisan century: political writings from partisan review (new york: columbia university press, 1996), 115-118. 4 9 f l o r a l y s e n ! contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.81 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-noncommercial-no derivative works 3.0 united states license. this journal is operated by the university library system of the university of pittsburgh as part of its d-scribe digital publishing program, and is co-sponsored by the university of pittsburgh press. microsoft word 1-23 enlivening and dividing 7_27.docx vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.73 http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu “enlivening and – dividing” an aporia of illumination hans christian hönes abstract in 1798, karl august böttiger paid a nocturnal visit to the gallery of antiques in dresden, illuminating the statues with a torch. at first glance, this seems to be yet another example of a popular practice for visiting galleries c.1800. illuminating the sculptures by torchlight was a popular means of enlivening the objects, set in motion by the light flickering on their surfaces. the collections were thus meant to become a place where cold, white stone comes to life, and where the beholder becomes part of a revived antiquity. this was precisely what böttiger intended, too. but to him, the effect of the torchlight appeared to be, as he wrote, “enlivening and – dividing!” the torchlight highlighted not only the beauty of the sculptures but also their modern restorations. böttiger apparently failed to experience the living presence of the antique celebrated by many of his contemporaries (e.g. goethe, moritz). this essay focuses on the consequence of such a perception of sculptures as historically multi-layered objects. böttiger’s experience resulted in a problematic situation. in trying to view the sculptures as contemporaries, he hoped to become ancient himself. but this operation failed in the moment when the sculptures themselves appeared to be anachronistic, impure palimpsests. in consequence, galleries may not only be the place were art history as chronological stilgeschichte was born. they may also be the site where this perception changed into the experience of a more chaotic shape of time. about the author hans christian hönes is a research associate on the project bilderfahrzeuge: warburg's legacy and the future of iconology at the warburg institute in london. he is the author of kunst am ursprung: das nachleben der bilder und die souveränität des antiquars (bielefeld: transcript, 2014) and co-editor of volume iv of aby warburg’s gesammelte schriften (fragmente zur ausdruckskunde auf anthropologischer grundlage, berlin: de gruyter, 2015). contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.73 in 1798, the german archaeologist karl august böttiger paid a nocturnal visit to the gallery of antiques in dresden, one of the most important collections of that time in europe (fig. 1).1 he did not view the statues in bright daylight. instead, they were illuminated by böttiger’s torch, as he acted as the cicerone of a group of “lovers of the arts, who attended and prepared for that event already some days in advance.” this visit was not a unique event; other nocturnal visits with böttiger as guide are reported, some with famous visitors including hegel and jean paul.2 böttiger published his impressions and experiences with this kind of artificial illumination in a short disquisition, printed privately in the same year and again ten years later in the journal prometheus.3 böttiger articulated his expectations for this visit in a straightforward manner. the effect of the illumination was “comparable to the touch of a promethean torch.” as an epigram for his text, he quoted a few lines by herder, speaking of the “torch of life,” whose blaze soaks the dead stone. in the flickering light of the torch, the visitor expected a more or less mystical experience, whereby the dead, white stone should be bathed in warm light and lively animation.4 the statue should become “a human form, animated by sunfire.”5 this formulation comes quite unexpectedly, because, of all means of lighting, böttiger did not chose the sun to illuminate the figures. the message is, nevertheless, clear. böttiger desired to emulate what prometheus had once achieved: to bring the statues to life. 1 on the history of the dresden collection, see: hildegard gabriele boller, “die dresdner antikensammlung,” in tempel der kunst: die geburt des öffentlichen museums in deutschland, 1701-1815, ed. bénédicte savoy (mainz: zabern, 2006), 117144. 2 “in böttigers vorlesung war ich gestern; heute abend will er uns die antiken im fackelschein zeigen.” georg w.f. hegel, briefe von und an hegel, 1813-1822, vol. 2, ed. johannes hoffmeister (hamburg: meiner, 1969), 293; jean paul, “titan,” in werke. titan / komischer anhang zum titan / clavis fichtiana seu leibgeberiana, 6th ed., ed. norbert miller (münchen/wien: hanser, 1999), 178; see also the commentary ibid., 1079. 3 karl august böttiger, die dresdner antikengalerie mit fackel-beleuchtung gesehen den 25 august 1798 (dresden: private print, 1798). republished under the same title in prometheus 2 (1808): 3-9. this account is, as rené sternke wrote, “part of a larger, handwritten account of his stay in dresden.” rené sternke, böttiger und der archäologische diskurs (berlin: akademie, 2008), 228. cf. sächsische landesund universitätsbibliothek msc. dresd. h 37 verm. 4°, viii, nr. 16. all translations are the author’s unless otherwise stated. 4 “man kann eine solche beleuchtung mit der berührung einer prometheus-fackel vergleichen”; the quote by herder says: “o welchen schatz des holden und des guten / hast du, o kunst, in manchen stein gesenkt! / wie quillt’s hervor, wenn mit den flammengluten, / den todten stein die lebensfackel tränkt!” böttiger, dresdner antikengalerie, 1. strangely, this enthusiastic reception of an artwork seems to be quite the contrary to the sober and still beholding herder propagated in his other writings. cf. erik forssman, goethezeit (münchen/berlin: deutscher kunstverlag, 1999), 147. 5 karl august böttiger, ideen zur kunst-mythologie. erster cursus (dresden/leipzig: arnold, 1826), 3. “enlivening and – dividing” an aporia of illumination hans christian hönes 3 h a n s c h r i s t i a n h ö n e s contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.73 figure 1 interior of the dresden gallery of antiques, from heinrich hase, verzeichniß der alten und neuen bildwerke in marmor und bronze in den sälen der kgl. antikensammlung zu dresden (dresden: walther, 1826), frontispiece (photo: author). at first sight, böttiger found what he was looking for: “everything real is springing up animatedly.” however, his grand expectations were soon to be disappointed. the effect of the illumination was not untroubled pleasure, but rather proved to be – as he wrote – “enlivening and – dividing” (belebend und – trennend). the torchlight also illuminated what böttiger did not want to see, that which he considered not to be “real”: “even the untrained eye will recognize the sins of the restorers, the ignorance of cavaceppi, or of even worse fellows.”6 the beauty of the antique, which böttiger hoped to enliven by torchlight, was 6 böttiger, dresdner antikengalerie, 1. it’s an amusing footnote to our subject matter that, contrary to böttiger, bartolommeo cavaceppi granted the dresden collection, maybe not surprisingly, the highest praise. k.w. dassdorf, estimating cavaceppi to be “one of the greatest artist still alive,” reported that he claimed that in dresden he found “eine bewundernswürdige menge von statuen, büsten, erhabenen arbeiten, kurz mit stücken vom höchsten werthe,” and he was “erstaunt über eine so reiche und schöne sammlung.” karl wilhelm dassdorf, beschreibung der vorzüglichsten merkwürdigkeiten der churfürstlichen residenzstadt dresden und einiger seiner umliegenden gegenden (dresden: walther, 1782), 552. 4 “ e n l i v e n i n g a n d – d i v i d i n g ” contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.73 apparently contaminated by later restorations. “all later patches appear ugly and crude”;7 indeed, they kept böttiger from experiencing the figures’ living presence. the effect of the torchlight was contrary to what was intended. the statues appeared “transfigured” only at the moment when the light of the torch hides more than it illuminates. so it was in the case of an aesculap (fig. 2), which did seem to begin to move when lit by the flame, but was beautiful and enjoyable only “because the spiritual torch illuminated only the beautiful upper parts of the figure, and cloaked the horror the restoration did to the drapery and discarnate extremities.”8 such disappointed, or at least ambivalent, reactions to the fashionable practice of illuminating antique sculpture by torchlight, have been, as far as i can see, overlooked by art history.9 yet böttiger was by no means the only one to criticize the practice of illuminating statues with torches. several years later, for example, an englishman claimed that lighting from above was much more suitable for viewing the artworks than the permanent flicker of the torches was.10 still, böttiger’s reaction was quite different from such practical objections. his short disquisition is even more interesting because he claimed to have felt and seen the total opposite of what nearly all of his contemporaries described in writing about their experiences with these popular nocturnal visits. at that time nocturnal gallery visits still seemed new and exciting. earlier cases could be named, starting at the latest with benvenuto cellini, but the true craze for visiting galleries at night began only in the 1780s.11 7 “wie hässlich und plump erscheint alles angeflickte machwerk.” böttiger, dresdner antikengalerie, 1. 8 “auf seinen heil-bedeutenden schlangenstab gestützt schien uns der gott wirklich im vorschreiten begriffen. denn die vergeistigende fackel beleuchtete hier nur die schönen obertheile, und vehüllte die restaurationsgräuel der treppenformigen draperie und der abgefleischten untern gliedmasen.” böttiger, dresdner antikengalerie, 2. 9 on this phenomenon, cf.: j.j. l. whiteley, “light and shade in french neo-classicism,” the burlington magazine 117, no. 4 (1975): 768-773; oskar bätschmann, ausstellungskünstler. kult und karriere im modernen kunstsystem (köln: dumont, 1997), 21 et seq.; michael diers, “nach-lebende bilder. praxisformen klassizistischer kunsttheorie,” in die schöne verwirrung der phantasie. antike mythologie in literatur und kunst um 1800, ed. dieter burdorf and wolfgang schweickhard (basel: francke, 1996), 175-205; claudia mattos, “the torchlight visit: guiding the eye through late eighteenthand early nineteenth-century antique sculpture galleries,” in critical exchange: art criticism of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in russia and western europe, ed. carol adlam and juliet simpson (bern: peter lang, 2009), 129-151. the only exception, taking also into account critical perspectives on this phenomenon, is the essay by dominik müller, “statuenbelebung – realistisch. in wilhelm raabes ‘frau salome’ sowie gottfried kellers ‘regine’ und ‘herr jacques,’” jahrbuch raabe gesellschaft (2004): 16-32, focusing, however, on a very different subject, namely literature of 19th century german realism. 10 “place the light on the ground so as to throw the shadows upwards, and the best piece of antique sculpture will become absolutely ludicrous; introduce it either from one side or the other horizontally, and the figure becomes lopsided and disproportioned.” pamphlets on english public works and engineering (s.l., 1800), 23. 11. for the case of cellini, cf. horst bredekamp, the lure of antiquity and the cult of the machine (princeton, nj: markus wiener, 1995), 1. 5 h a n s c h r i s t i a n h ö n e s contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.73 figure 2 aesculap, from wilhelm gottlieb becker, augusteum ou description des monuments antiques que se trouvent a dresde, tome i (leipzig: hempel, 1804), plate xvi (photo: author). 6 “ e n l i v e n i n g a n d – d i v i d i n g ” contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.73 the most famous description of a visitation of this type and its desired effects is, of course, found in goethe’s “italian journey.” the apparition of the statues in the light appeared to goethe as a “dream floating along my soul.”12 other german travellers reported similar experiences.13 karl julius weber praised the “ghostly lustre” of the illuminated marble, and he emphasized the “ceremonial grandeur and ease” evoked by this spectacle.14 or, as siebenkees wrote: “the stony image disappears, and you believe to see the goddess herself.”15 this effect of the illusion of a living presence was visually documented most famously by joseph wright of derby (fig. 3), where young men touch and interact with a statue which seems to have become a living contemporary. in that case, illumination served as a kind of time machine, whereby the beholder was transported to the glorious days when the antique art was still gleaming and new. another reason for the popularity of this practice may have consisted in the growing conviction that the ancients themselves regularly beheld their sculptures with artificial illumination. this practice thus enjoyed a certain aura of authenticity. henry matthews, for example, claimed that in antiquity, statues were mostly exhibited in windowless rooms; this thesis was notably picked up by madame de staël in corinne ou l’italie.16 böttiger, on the contrary, was quite sceptical about the ancient nightlife. he claimed, for instance, that the ancients regularly went to bed at dusk, for the sake of their waking power.17 of course, the aim of art lovers such as goethe and weber was not to travel back in time or invoke a true historical transformation. rather, they sought to experience a kind of ideal timelessness. as siebenkees stated, to behold a statue in this way is to see the presence of a goddess: he felt transported to a mythical greece, not subordinated to the flow of time. consequently, he himself became (ideally, at least) an ancient greek, worshipping the same idols they once venerated. nevertheless, this supposed “historicist” 12 “[...] ein solcher genußreicher umgang durch die herrlichsten reste der kunst, welcher meistenteils wie ein entzückender, nach und nach verlöschender traum vor der seele schwebt.” johann wolfgang von goethe, italienische reise, ed. andreas beyer and norbert miller (münchen/wien: hanser, 1992), 524. 13 english cases were also common, but it is striking that the phenomenon is more or less restricted to these two nationalities; in france, this mode of presentation became popular only after 1803. cf. marjorie b. cohn and susan l. siegfried, works by j. a. d. ingres in the collection of the fogg art museum (cambridge, mass.: fogg art museum, 1980), 44. 14 “die nacht und der fackelschein wirft geisterglanz über diese versammlung der götter und heroen, die phantasie erwärmt sich, und ergriffen von der nähe des griechischen genius wandelt man bebend durch die hochgewölbten hallen, in jener feierlichen würde und ruhe, die winkelmann als charakter classischer kunst bezeichnete.” karl julius weber, deutschland; oder, briefe eines in deutschland reisenden deutschen, vol. 3 (stuttgart: franckh, 1828), 178. 15 “bey nacht, beym fackellicht, thut sie erstaunliche wirkung; das steinerne bild verschwindet, man glaubt die gottheit selbst zu sehen.” johann philipp siebenkees, handbuch der archäologie oder anleitung zur kenntniß der kunstwerke des alterthums und zur geschichte der kunst der alten völker, vol. 1 (nürnberg: stein, 1799), 279. 16 “many of them [the statues] were found in baths, where light was not admitted. they were created therefore for torchlight as their proper element.” henry matthews, the diary of an invalid, 2nd ed. (london: murray, 1822), 132; “les anciens […] les [the statues] placoient souvent dans leurs thermes où le jour ne pouvoit pas pénétrer. a la lueur des flambeaux, l’ombre plus prononcée amortit la brillante uniformité du marbre.” anne louise germaine de staël, corinne, ou l’italie (1807; nouvelle ed., new york: leavitt & allen, 1857), 149. 17 “nachtfeste und spiele bei nächtlicher beleuchung waren der lebensart der griechen und römer ganz fremd.” böttiger, ideen zur kunst-mythologie, 153. 7 h a n s c h r i s t i a n h ö n e s contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.73 experience of the ancient statues, this time-travel to the revered past, is in fact fundamentally ahistorical. this point was made most explicit by karl philipp moritz, who wrote that, in illuminating a sculpture, “all of a sudden our perception of time fades, and everything is condensed in one single moment, which seems to last forever.”18 he was aiming at a mystical effect like the one shown in the frontispiece (fig. 4) of the short-lived german journal der torso, where a “genius of art” (not an ordinary beholder) lights, and thereby animates, the eponymous statue.19 because period descriptions of viewing antique sculpture by torchlight anticipated that the beholder will experience a certain extemporality, one might not be surprised that the practice of illuminating statues in this way was clearly less valued in the case of contemporary art, even though the practice seems to originate in drawing classes, viz., contemporary art practice (fig. 5). when corinne in mme de staël’s famous novel visits the atelier of canova by night, she remarks, after initially praising the effect that the statues seen in candlelight “appear as pale figures.”20 this observation is stated even more explicitly by an anonymous german author, who wrote that, in the case of thorvaldson, artificial illumination was aesthetically very counterproductive, because his sculptures then appear to be “only dull copies” (nur matte copien) compared to the splendour of the ancients.21 the reason for these ambiguous judgements may have been that there was no necessity for animating the already contemporary present. moritz was not the only author to emphasize the immersive effects torchlight had on the beholder. heinrich meyer, for example, claimed that, when illuminated by a torch, each and every statue is viewed as entirely isolated and independent. thus, the artworks are no longer seen in a historical sequence, or in relation to other works in history, but as individual, timeless epiphanies.22 shrouded in the cone of light, beholder and artwork may communicate eye to eye, and as equals. karl julius weber described this immersive effect thusly: “under torchlight, you wander through the antiques to mount olympos, as the greek once did.”23 an even more intense encounter was documented by an english traveller, who wrote that the hercules farnese “seemed to advance, half alive, from amid the darkness, and the flames appeared to tinge him with the warm colouring of an animated gigantic body.”24 18 “[...] so sieht man hier alles schöne, was man sehen kann, auf einmal, der begriff von zeit verschwindet, und alles drängt sich in einem moment zusammen, der immer dauern könnte.” karl philipp moritz, reisen eines deutschen in italien in den jahren 1786 bis 1788: in briefen. dritter theil (berlin: maurer, 1793), 155 et seq. here, he is describing the effect of a “paradoxen zugleich einer bewegten unbewegtheit,” destined “die veränglichkeit des lebens imaginativ aufzuheben, indem die dauer der kunst für sie einzutreten bestimmt ist,” as harald tausch analysed. see harald tausch, entfernung der antike (tübingen: niemeyer, 2000), 112. 19 cf. ekkehard mai and kurt wettengl, ed., wettstreit der künste (wolfratshausen: edition minerva, 2002), cat. nr. 193. 20 staël, corinne, 149. 21 “thorwaldsens werkstätte zu rom,” iris: unterhaltungsblatt für freunde des schönen und nützlichen 1 (1827): 494-495. 22 “vorteile der fackelbeleuchtung: jedes stück wird nur einzeln abgeschlossen von allen übrigen betrachtet, und die aufmerksamkeit des beschauers bleibt lediglich auf dasselbe gerichtet.” goethe, italienische reise, 524. 23 “[...] unter den antiken wandelt man im fackelschein in den olympos, wie die griechen, wenn sie phidias jupiter zu sehen nach olymp reisten.” weber, deutschland, 53. 24 friedrich carl ludwig sickler, “account of the regj studj, or royal museum of antiquities at naples,” the new monthly magazine vi (1816): 131. 8 “ e n l i v e n i n g a n d – d i v i d i n g ” contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.73 figure 3 joseph wright of derby, an academy, 1769. oil on canvas, 127x101.2cm. yale centre for british art (photo: wikimedia commons). 9 h a n s c h r i s t i a n h ö n e s contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.73 figure 4 frontispiece from der torso: eine zeitschrift der alten und neuen kunst gewidmet, 1796. from ekkehard mai and kurt wettengl, ed., wettstreit der künste (wolfratshausen: edition minerva, 2002), 415 (photo: author). 1 0 “ e n l i v e n i n g a n d – d i v i d i n g ” contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.73 here, torchlight’s enlivening effects actually appear to animate the statues. in fact, the late eighteenth century developed an array of possibilities for “animating” the antique. the presentation of sculptures on movable pedestals and, of course, the theatrical re-enactment of antique imagery, as practiced most famously by emma hamilton in her “‘attitudes,” are only two examples (fig. 6).25 in both cases, the beholder remained more or less passive. by enlivening statues with torch in hand, he became something of an artist himself, some kind of new pygmalion. for böttiger, too, the idea of physical contact, or what victor stoichita called the “pygmalion-effect” (viz., the coalescence of the bodies), seemed to be the ideal. he wished “to touch the flesh, to see whether it gives way to the pressure of my fingers.”26 figure 5 5 william pether after joseph wright of derby, three men at a table, studying the figure of the ‘gladiator,’ 1769. mezzotint, 471x554mm (photo: wikimedia commons). 25 christian m. geyer, “bewegliche sockel für antike statuen und deren abgüse,” in gipsabgüsse und antike skulpturen, ed. charlotte schreiter (berlin: reimer, 2012), 95-114. alicia craig faxon, “preserving the classical past: sir william and lady emma hamilton,” visual resources 20 (2004): 259-273. 26 he “wünscht das fleisch zu betasten, ob es dem fingerdruck weiche.” böttiger, dresdner antikengalerie, 7 et seq. for an analysis of the “pygmalion effect,” see victor i. stoichita, l’effet pygmalion: pour une anthropologie historique des simulacres (genève: droz, 2008). 1 1 h a n s c h r i s t i a n h ö n e s contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.73 the main critique against the practice of “enlivening” statues by torchlight was that the sculptures seemed to become a bit too alive. a telling statement to this effect was made by bonaventura in his “nachtwachen.” here, the author describes how a group of young men approach a statue of venus in torchlight and, subsequently kiss and caress the marble (a scene, again, resembling the paintings of wright of derby). bonaventura’s description of this event does not evoke a marvellous unification with the past but rather an uncanny conjuration of their ghosts.27 in fact, the idea of enlivening images with artificial light seems to be closely related with much-criticized illusionistic practices such as the laterna magica and similar optical spectacles, often understood as devices of deceiving, especially indicted by protestant authors claiming these practises were part of a corrupting catholic seduction.28 it is all the more interesting that the protagonists quoted here are nearly all protestants, a group seemingly more prone to the epiphanies offered by the idols of art venerated in a quasi-religious manner. the case of böttiger, who discovered through the illumination only detested restorations, runs contrary to this model. finding the images “abused,” as he wrote, his torch resembled less the chisel of pygmalion, and even less the torch of prometheus, than the light of an excavator that illuminates the sediments of modern stone which are burying the true antique. here, he acts like travellers such as charles dupaty, lighting rough terrain: “to see the theatre of herculaneum, you must descend under a damp vault, by torch light, and wander, a long time.” described here is a scientific view, as practised by an author in the journal of natural philosophy, chemistry, and the arts, who was trying to identify a forged antique gem, “examining it by torchlight, and at some distance.”29 for böttiger, antiquity was not directly accessible by imagination, as it was for moritz, who was able to get there “all of a sudden.” his antiquity was located in what may be called a “vertical history,” more complex and multi-layered than the clear dichotomy of “ancient” and “modern” many of his contemporaries drew. böttiger approached the artwork only from the outside, unable to penetrate its potentially living core – a strategy which only disappointed him. the impression he received in front of a candelabrum was typical for him (fig. 7; see also fig. 1). enthusiastically, he described “how sharp the contour of this unique three-cornered base of a candelabrum is protruding in the light of the torch.” but the light in his hand stayed in front of the candleholder; böttiger may illuminate it, but he could not reinstall the light on the candelabra where it originally belonged. he capitulated with a sigh of sorrow: “o, would only this holy flame blaze above it.”30 the light helped to examine the object, but he remained unable to bring it back to life and to reinstate it to its original function. 27 cf. müller, “statuenbelebung,” 18. 28 cf., among many others, barbara maria stafford, artful science: enlightenment and entertainment and the eclipse of visual education (cambridge, mass: mit press, 1994); gerard vaughan, “’a kind of magick:’ art, deception and illusion in later georgian england,” in geschichte und ästhetik, ed. margit kern, thomas kirchner and hubertus kohle (münchen/berlin: deutscher kunstverlag, 2004), 209-218. 29 charles dupaty, travels through italy (london: g.j. and j. robinson, 1788), 327. guyton, “account of the antique vessel that was preserved at genoa,” a journal of natural philosophy, chemistry and the arts 18 (1807): 97. 30 “wie scharf zeichnen sich die umrisse der unvergleichlichen dreieckigen candelaber-basis mit dem dreifuss-raub hier gegen den fackel-schimmer! o loderte die heilige flamme noch über ihm!” böttiger, dresdner antikengalerie, 1. 1 2 “ e n l i v e n i n g a n d – d i v i d i n g ” contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.73 figure 6 lady hamilton’s “attitudes,” from friedrich rehberg, drawings faithfully copied from nature at naples (london: s.w. fores, 1797), unpag. (photo: author). 1 3 h a n s c h r i s t i a n h ö n e s contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.73 figure 7 candelabrum, in: becker, augusteum, plate v (photo: author). 1 4 “ e n l i v e n i n g a n d – d i v i d i n g ” contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.73 the torchlight acted as a sober and more scientific form of illumination. such a rational approach, represented for example in benjamin zix’s drawing of napoleon visiting the louvre,31 was definitely not what the majority of the lovers of antiquity were interested in (the englishman quoted above, pleading for top-lit galleries, was a notable exception). only later in the 19th century did illuminating art galleries all-over by a roof light become ubiquitous.32 participants in a tour like böttiger’s were not interested in historical or scientific ballast, rationalizing their emphatic experience of the artworks. his lectures perhaps offered a too realistic, too worldly outlook on the ancient societies. it is thus not surprising to hear that there were multiple reports of visitors who participated in böttiger’s tours leaving unconvinced by his academic approach of pointing out restorations. caspar david friedrich and ludwig tieck, for example, both complained that böttiger failed to communicate the deeper artistic values of the objects. tieck wrote that he “described mainly superficial and negligible aspects, but didn’t penetrate the deeper artistic meaning of the artworks.”33 they, too, were missing the enlivening promethean touch böttiger himself had not found. for böttiger, the statues’ real presence inhibited a perception of their “ideal presence,” as lord kames would have called it. but for this ideal presence it was a prerequisite to have an imaginative free space. only then would the beholder be able to fall in the “waking dream,” a “kind of reverie” that kames defined as the characteristics of an “ideal presence.”34 winckelmann was able to enjoy antique art in just this way, paradoxically because it was damaged and long-time past.35 his most emphatic descriptions were dedicated to statues that were conserved only in fragments, as, most famously, in the case of the torso belvedere – one of the rare antiques that had never undergone restoration and was always preserved as a fragment. the non-finito of the statue is the pre-condition of the imaginative expansion winckelmann so masterly evoked. the best visual adoption of this thought may be seen again in the already-mentioned frontispiece of the german journal der torso. only in view of the blank spaces could the beholder’s eyes get a starting point for his purely imaginary reconstruction. again, with this creative re-imagination of the animating work of the artist, the beholder became a true pygmalion himself. but not only did the fragmentary state of preservation open the way for antiquarian imagination; it also guaranteed that the beholder could hold a piece of “pure” antiquity before his eyes. and it was exactly this of which böttiger was unsure. even filtering out the true, unrestored core of a sculpture (a discrimination in certain cases already visualized in 31 on this drawing, see whiteley, “light and shade,” and europa 1789: aufklärung, verklärung, verfall, ed. werner hofmann (köln: dumont, 1989), cat. nr. 482. 32 on the history of roof-lit galleries: ruth guilding, “robert adam and charles townley. the development of the top-lit sculpture gallery,” apollo 143 (1996): 27-32. 33 “bei wiederholten gelegenheiten bin ich zeuge davon gewesen, dass er alsdann mit einem schwall von gelehrten redensarten vieles aeußerliches und nebensächliche beschrieb und der tiefsinnig künstlerischen bedeutung des betreffenden kunstwerkes kaum eine andeutung widmete.” hermann von friesen, ludwig tieck. erinnerungen eines alten freundes aus den jahren 1825-1842, vol. 1 (wien: braumüller, 1871), 64. and friedrich wrote: “hier führte der allwissende böttiger bei fackellicht zu den antiken und hielt seine modischen vorlesungen, die man schwer verstand.” caspar david friedrich, bekenntnisse, ed. kurt karl eberlein (leipzig: klinkhardt & biermann, 1924), 7. 34 henry home kames, elements of criticism, vol. 1 (london: bell and creech, 1788), 90 et seq. cf. eric rothstein, “’ideal presence’ and the ‘non finito’ in eighteenth-century aesthetics,” eighteenth century studies 9 (1976): 307-332. 35 for this figure of thought, see: peter geimer, die vergangenheit der kunst: strategien der nachträglichkeit im 18 jahrhundert (weimar: vdg, 2002). 1 5 h a n s c h r i s t i a n h ö n e s contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.73 the illustrations of the catalogues of the dresden gallery (fig. 8), even before the restorations were finally removed) did not prove successful.36 in more than one case, böttiger had to admit that the first restorations were most probably already made in antiquity. the monolithic view of “the” antique as an extemporal asylum of a pure and perfectly well-ordered world collapsed with this insight. the antique already produced temporally multi-layered objects, and their histories reached out to the present. böttiger thus lacked the experience of historical distance to the antique that his contemporaries both felt and bridged by various devices of imagination. paradoxically, he failed at perceiving the godly presence of the antique, because he realized that the sculptures were more contemporary then he wanted them to be. in admitting that some restorations were already made in antiquity, böttiger had to realize that the ancients were in no way better than the moderns; their behaviour may have been, in fact, quite similar to what böttiger witnessed in his own, debased present. antiquity thus lost its character as a utopian past but rather appears very modern, in some respects. the “object biographies” of the antique statues present themselves as a series of restorations, going on uninterruptedly from the time of their making through the present. nevertheless, this shape of time does not seem to be the same as a concept of “survival” that might be associated with authors such as richard payne knight or karl philipp moritz.37 according to the latter, in mythology (and mythological artworks), there is a “secret trace leading back to the oldest, long lost history” to be found.38 the history of art, therefore, is to be understood as an uninterrupted thread leading back to the origins of art. moritz’s “traces” were quite literally illustrated by a mode of depiction that is conceivably different to the three-dimensional plastic forms böttiger encountered. his götterlehre was illustrated by outline engravings (fig. 9) – a popular style that corresponds neatly with the idea of a “trace,” a surviving remnant of the former abundance of classical beauty.39 even winckelmann had a vision of such a relationship with the antique when, in the famous final scene of his geschichte der kunst des altertums, he stylized himself as a (female) lover, standing on the shore, and “follows with tearful eyes her departing sweetheart, with no hope of seeing him again, and believes she can glimpse even in the distant sail the image of her 36 the restorations were finally taken off only around 1900 by georg treu, cf. kordelia knoll, “zur entstehung der dresdner antikensammlung,” in von der schönheit weißen marmors, ed. thomas weiss (mainz: zabern, 1999), 64, and kordelia knoll, “ein wirkliches rettungswerk. zur sog. entrestaurierung der dresdner antiken,” in “wiedererstandene antike”: ergänzungen antiker kunstwerke seit der renaissance (münchen: biering & brinkmann, 2003), 223-227. 37 for böttiger’s interest in knight’s writings, see: karl august böttiger, “ueber richard payne knight,” amalthea 3 (1825): 408-418. on knight’s theory of ‘survivals’, see whitney davis, queer beauty (new york: columbia univ. press, 2010), chapter 2; hans christian hönes, kunst am ursprung: das nachleben der bilder und die souveränität des antiquars (bielefeld: transcript, 2014), chapters 4 and 5. 38 pictures are, for him, “eine geheime spur zu der ältesten verlohren gegangenen geschichte.” karl philipp moritz, götterlehre oder mythologische dichtungen der alten (berlin: unger, 1791), 3. cf. michael thimann, “vergangene wirklichkeit oder sprache der phantasie? transformationen der götterbilder bis um 1800: montfaucon, winckelmann, moritz,” in götterbilder und götzendiener in der frühen neuzeit, ed. maria effinger, cornelia logemann and ulrich pfisterer (heidelberg: winter, 2012), 23-35. 39 cf. ulrike münter, “gebannter bilderrausch. bild und text in karl philipp moritz’ götterlehre,” in karl philipp moritz in berlin 1789-1793, ed. ute tintemann and christof wingertszahn (hannover: wehrhahn, 2005), 39-56; thimann, “vergangene wirklichkeit,” 29. 1 6 “ e n l i v e n i n g a n d – d i v i d i n g ” contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.73 lover.”40 this image of the lover, this silhouette in the sail, strongly resembles the shadow the legendary dibutades circumscribed (fig. 10) – again a linear “trace” leading back to the origins, the founding scene of art, and art history. figure 8 restaurated statue, from: becker, augusteum, plate xv (photo: author). 40 johann joachim winckelmann, history of the art of antiquity, trans. harry francis mallgrave (los angeles: getty publications, 2006), 351. 1 7 h a n s c h r i s t i a n h ö n e s contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.73 figure 9 jean joseph tassaert after asmus jakob castens, apollo, from karl philipp moritz, götterlehre (berlin: unger, 1791), 325 (photo: university library heidelberg). 1 8 “ e n l i v e n i n g a n d – d i v i d i n g ” contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.73 figure 10 louis-pierre henriquel-dupont after anne-louis girodet, the origin of painting, from oeuvres posthumes de girodet-trioson, peintre d’histoire, ed. p.a. coupin (paris: jules renouard, 1829), unpag. (photo: author). 1 9 h a n s c h r i s t i a n h ö n e s contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.73 these ideas are profoundly grounded in the platonic assumption that the traces present in the visual manifestation of the artwork lead back to no “real things,” but pure ideas. as moritz wrote, the traces of the original myth “stand outside any context with the real things.” but these “real things” were the ones with which böttiger was confronted. their material presence hindered him from seeing them as purely spiritual, purely antique, apparitions. in fact, already naming the sculptures depended on their multi-layered history. the best example is the much-praised statue of the above-mentioned “aesculap,” today interpreted as a zeus by phidias (fig. 11). his identifying (and name-giving) attribute, the snake-entwined staff, was a baroque addition. the torchlight revealed that the antiques, from the beginning, were palimpsests, a body of stone that had more than just one place in history (even in antique history). the statues appeared to be anachronistic in themselves; they had already experienced too much history to be viewed as purely spiritual anymore. when winckelmann was weeping over the trace of his departed lover, he had only a memory image left, but this image was entirely his own – memories don’t have to be shared. the restored statues böttiger saw had, on the contrary, uncounted lovers. these innumerable cavaceppis penetrated the statues’ formerly pure marble with their dirty hands and left their marks. böttiger, living in the poorest state of modern history, was put off by “modern botch, mated with antique artworks in an incomprehensible manner”; the “molested images” had lost their innocence.”41 in the end, böttiger had to capitulate to the aporia of his experience. he attempted to rescue his image of antiquity by returning to the grace of darkness: “away with the torch, so the ugliness of the absurd restorations may not cause disgust.”42 böttiger tried to get rid of his unexpected and unwanted impressions and repress the fearful image of anachronistic sculptures. but this repression did not succeed; in fact, böttiger participated – if only in imagination – in rewriting the palimpsest into even more complex and absurd figures. what happened here seems to share the characteristics of a psychological trauma, an enduring repeating of overwhelming events. in his sorrow of seeing two “molested” images standing side by side, böttiger proposed to recombine the original antique substance of the much-praised upper parts of his beloved aesculap with the antique parts of a minerva (at least he thought this sculpture to represent one; fig. 12).43 that is, he pleaded to create a monstrous recombination of the two sculptures – hermaphroditic and iconographically nonsensical. böttiger’s illumination ultimately did not lead back to an original perception of the antiques, which itself may have never had existed. rather, it added to their history and carried their palimpsestic rewriting yet another step further. 41 in dresden, he observed how “das mittelmässigste mit dem vortrefflichsten, modernes machwerk mit antiker kunstschöpfung auf die unbegreiflichste weise [sich] zusammenpaarte.” karl august böttiger, kleine schriften archäologischen und antiquarischen inhalts, vol. 3 (dresden/leipzig: arnold, 1838), 32. 42 “doch weg mit der fackel, dass uns die hässlichkeit der sinnlosen ergänzung nicht mit widerwillen erfülle!” böttiger, dresdner antikengalerie, 3. nevertheless, böttiger, didn’t remove the restorations, even after he became supervisor of the dresden collection. there may have been political reasons: böttiger came into office during the very liberal prussian-russian government in dresden, installed during the seven-year-war. after the restitution of the saxonian kingdom (1815), his ideas of antique art as a symbol of democratic freedom were no longer officially supported. cf. julia schmidt-funke, karl august böttiger (heidelberg: winter, 2006), 107; boller, “die dresdner antikensammlung,” 138 et seq. 43 “o könnte aus den zwei hier vorhandenen, so gemishandelten bildern ein alter meister aus der minervenstadt ein gutes erschaffen!” böttiger, dresdner antikengalerie, 2. 2 0 “ e n l i v e n i n g a n d – d i v i d i n g ” contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.73 figure 11 dresden zeus, from hans schrader, phidias (frankfurt a.m.: frankfurter verlags-anstalt, 1924), 59 (photo: author). 2 1 h a n s c h r i s t i a n h ö n e s contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.73 figure 12 minerva, in: becker, augusteum, plate xiv (photo: author). 2 2 “ e n l i v e n i n g a n d – d i v i d i n g ” contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.73 acknowledgements: for valuable suggestions and comments on this paper, i’d like to thank karen appel, eckart marchand, and elizabeth j. petcu. a first version of this text was presented at the conference moving in three dimensions: a conference on sculpture and change, organized by jim harris at the courtauld institute of art in london in may 2012. 2 3 h a n s c h r i s t i a n h ö n e s contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.73 new articles in this journal are licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 united states license. this journal is operated by the university library system of the university of pittsburgh as part of its d-scribe digital publishing program, and is co-sponsored by the university of pittsburgh press. contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture vol 5, no 1 “agency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2016.170 http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu james luna and the paradoxically present vanishing indian elizabeth s. hawley abstract james luna’s performances interrogate how representations of native americans have been made to fit western assumptions about the “real indian.” using his recognizably native body as a marker of both presence and endangered existence, luna links peggy phelan’s conception of performance as the presence of loss with the centuries-old stereotype of native americans as the “vanishing race”—a stereotype that continues to exert influence. in take a picture with a real indian (performed in 1992, 2001, and 2010), he invites viewers to have their photograph taken with him wearing one of three options: war dance regalia, a loincloth, or khakis and a polo shirt. few people choose the third option. the performance foregrounds what has become a tradition of native americans performing/posing the ir native -ness as otherness for the camera, strategically employing imagery that plays to nostalgic western views of native peoples as perpetually vanishing. i argue that luna’s performances comment not only upon western preconceptions of native americans, but also upon the ways that native americans have historically reasserted their agency by manipulating such expectations, staging themselves to fit the stereotype. about the author elizabeth s. hawley is a phd candidate in art history at the cuny graduate center. her dissertation analyzes the art production in santa fe, new mexico in the early twentieth century, putting the works of american modernists who visited the area into dia logue with the works of native artists from the surrounding pueblos. hawley earned her ma from the courtauld institute of art, and her ba from harvard university. she recently completed a museum research consortium fellowship at the museum of modern art, new york , where she undertook research on frank lloyd wright’s use of native and meso-american forms in his architecture and decorative designs. she is currently teaching art history courses at york college and st. francis college. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.170 take a picture on october 12, 1911—columbus day—ho-chunk artist angel decora took to the podium at a society of american indians conference to give a talk on native american art. she argued for the development of the “decorative instinct of the indian to modern methods” in response to the rapid and continual renegotiation of her people ’s position in society and history.1 decora concluded her rousing speech with the assertion that “the indian in his native dress is a thing of the past, but his art that is inborn shall endure.”2 nearly a century later contemporary luiseño performance artist james luna used the occasion of columbus day to stage a work that indeed proved decora’s prediction of the endurance of what she termed “indian art” prescient, albeit in a postmodern, parody -laced manner that continued to incorporate the native dress decora already assumed anachronistic. in the performance, provocatively titled take a p icture with a real indian (2010), luna placed three life-size, black and white cardboard cutouts of himself at the base of the columbus memorial, a park-like traffic circle adjacent to the capital grounds in washington, d.c. that houses a huge statue of the man who cla imed to have discovered america (fig. 1). the memorial immediately calls forth stereotypes of the indian against which luna positions his own work: on the west side of the sculpture, an unnamed american indian kneels at columbus’s feet, and an inscription claiming that columbus “gave to mankind a new world” leaves unacknowledged the fact that american indians had inhabited this land for centuries, and further denies them a place in the euro-american conceptualization of “mankind.” against this backdrop luna positioned three cutouts of himself clad in different clothing: in one he wears a buckskin breechcloth and moccasins; in the next, he sports regalia including feathered headwear and a beaded breastplate; and in the third, he appears dressed in khakis and a polo shirt. luna then stepped onto the makeshift stage that had been placed between the cutouts three times, each time wearing a version of the costumes depicted in the cutouts, and each time reciting, “take a picture with a real indian. take a picture on this beautiful sunny day. take a picture with a real indian on one of the saddest days of our history . . . america needs to face up to reality. america needs to put down the romanticism.”3 he explained to audience members that they could only have the ir picture taken with him once by one of the professional photographers he hired for the occasion. the photographers would produce two polaroids, one to be left with the artist, and one for the audience member to keep as a memento. viewers then approached the stage to have the ir 1 a ngel decora, “native indian a rt,” in report of the executive on the proceedings of the firs t annual conference of the society of american indians held at the univers ity of ohio, c olumbus, o hio (o ctober 12-17, 1911), 1: 84. for further information on dec ora see e lizabeth hutchinson, the indian craze: primitivism, modernism, and transculturation in american art, 1890-1915 (durham: duke university p ress, 2009). 2 dec ora, “native indian art,” 87. 3 james luna, take a picture with a real indian performed in 2010, washington d.c . national museum of the a merican indian performance recording, accessed from http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=10100243886416480. james luna and the paradoxically present vanishing indian elizabeth s. hawley http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 7 e l i z a b e th s . ha w l e y c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.170 photo taken with whichever clothing-designated iteration of the artist that they felt best represented a “real indian.”4 perhaps inevitably, most participants chose to be photographed with luna while he was wearing his regalia. figure 1 james luna, take a picture with a real indian, 2010. live performanceins tallation with photographs, washington, d.c . p hotographer unknown. image courtesy of james luna. take a picture is particularly pointed in its interrogation of the pose and the photograph, and how both native and non-native peoples are implicated in and affected by the resulting stereotypes: native peoples are expected to adhere to the stereotypic construction of indian identity, but in performing this role, they reify the stereotype. at the same time, non-native peoples perpetuate the problematic cycle by only characterizing as “indian” those native peoples that adhere to the stereotype that non-native peoples have constructed and come to expect. this article addresses the ways in which luna’s performance engages with the history of such constructions, their problematic persistence in the present, and the evolution of theoretical discourse around these issues. luna often restages his works, and the 2010 performance of take a picture was itse lf a reenactment. the cardboard cutouts of luna depict him as a younger man and can be seen in a photograph of his original performance of the piece at the whitney museum of art in 1991 (fig. 2). as amelia jones observes, “re-enactments remind us all that present 4 when i use the term “real indian” in the following artic le, i am alluding to luna’s conception of an indian identity that fits—or is constructed to fit—non-native expectations. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 8 j a m e s lu n a a n d th e p a r a d o x i ca l l y p r e s en t v a n i s hi n g i n d i a n c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.170 experience, including . . . the apprehension of things called ‘art’ or acts called ‘performance,’ is only ever available through subjective perception.”5 luna’s performance at the base of the columbus monument doubled such subjectivity: he staged a long-standing stereotype of the native american and did so within the context of a performance that has had previous iterations. nearly twenty years after the first performance, he tested whether the outcome of the 2010 version would be less starkly stereotypical in terms of audience subjectiv ity. he perhaps expected participants to be less inclined to deem his regalia-clad self the real indian, since such categorization is a fallacy, and none of the three characters performed by luna can be declared more “indian” than the others. the performance, however, played out much as it had two decades before, which he had described thus: it . . . was leading—there was an indian in a breechcloth with everybody going ‘oh wow, there's an indian.’ then i came out in my street clothes and they said, ‘oh, there's a guy.’ but when i came out in my regalia, i knew that it would get that response from the audience. everybody went for it. there was a big ooh and aah when i stepped up on that pedestal with my war dance outfit. they forgot about all the rest and really lined up to have their picture taken. this is the memento that they really wanted. even people that were art savvy fell for it.6 figure 2 james luna, take a picture with a real indian, 1991. live performance-installation with photographs, whitney museum of a merican a rt. p hotographer unknown. i mage courtesy of james luna. 5 a melia jones, “‘the a rtist is present’: a rtistic re -enactments and the impossibility of p resence,” tdr: the drama review 55, no. 1 (spring 2011): 42. 6 kenneth r. fletcher, “james luna,” smithsonian magazine (a pril 2008), http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/james-luna-30545878/. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 9 e l i z a b e th s . ha w l e y c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.170 of course, having his audience members “fall for” this outcome was crucial to the message of the work; in order to point to the persistence of native stereotypes, luna had to create a situation in which they are unlikely to be overcome. his use of the term “leading” is telling, for the manner in which the work was presented ensured a certain scripted outcome, and failure to achieve this outcome would have detracted from the artist’s intended message by rendering it an overstatement. the cutouts informed viewers which costumes luna would don during the performance and by saving the best for last, so to speak, he set up a situation in which the majority of photographs would be taken of his last appearance, both because this costume is the most visually striking and because it was the last chance to take a photograph—the grand finale of the performance. agency, here, was with the artist; luna was in control, manipulating audience members to achieve a more powerful statement with the work. but in doing so, he re-inscribed the stereotypes of indian identity against which the work was ostensibly aimed. then again, while the “art savvy” people may have been duped, they also may have been consciously participating in luna’s performance of parodic, scripted stereotypes. perhaps aware of luna’s intended message, it is possible that these viewers played the role of uninformed audience members ignorant of contemporary native american experiences and concerns, as expected—needed even—by the artist. luna mentions these savvy spectators because, as with most of his works, he first performed take a picture in a museum. staging the work outside of the museum context in 2010 marked an intriguing departure from his usual practice and caused a change in the scripted quality of the piece. it gave viewers both more and less command over the ir own actions: more in that luna could not control unauthorized photographs of a performance staged in a public space, and less in that some viewers stumbled upon the work, thus receiving only a fragmentary explanation of it and what their actions might signify.7 and while the towering columbus monument provided a politically suggestive backdrop to the performance that took place on a controversial national holiday, i argue that as a public space it also foregrounded the significance of photography in the work.8 luna’s earlier performances of the piece include the aforementioned 1991 whitney museum location, as well as a 2001 staging at the herbert f. johnson museum of art at cornell university.9 in these contexts, the “take a picture, leave a picture” component of the performance could be better enforced, since museum photography policies and the guards who enforce them would have discouraged participants from taking their own photographs. indeed, the institutional setting protected luna and his performance from concerns varying from copyright infringement to potential heckling. in the open space of the monument, however, luna’s posed body became subject to unauthorized photographs taken by anyone in the area. holly stewart, social media coordinator of the national museum of the american indian, noted that “the setting was inspired,” and described “a second ring of audience 7 the performance was sponsored by the smithsonian’s national museum of the a merican indian in association with “v antage p oint: the contemporary native a merican a rt collection,” an exhibition that highlighted the work of twenty-five contemporary native a merican artists working in all media, inc luding performance. 8 that morning, the u .s. marines had held their annual ceremony in honor of c olumbus day and had placed wreaths of flowers on the other s ide of the s tatue. this evidence of their nationalistic reverence s tood in s tark contrast to luna’s subsequent performance on the oppos ite s ide of both the s tatue and t he ideology to which it bears witness. 9 a curtailed version of the work was also s taged in t imes square, new york c ity in 1994 as part of the 42nd street art project. in this piece, the three cutouts were placed in a small s torefront window and an audio element ins tructed passersby as to the intent of the work. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 1 0 j a m e s lu n a a n d th e p a r a d o x i ca l l y p r e s en t v a n i s hi n g i n d i a n c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.170 participants snapping photographs from taxis and tour buses.”10 the photographs resulting from this outer edge of action were a consequence of the public setting as well as contemporary image culture itself, in which nearly anyone with a phone has the capability of quickly documenting moments, memorable or not, from their day-to-day experiences. such was not the case at the original staging of take a picture, both because the museum context set a tone of respectful audience obedience in terms of documentation, and simply because cameras were less common and more obtrusive. attempting to regulate images of their work has become increasingly difficult for performance artists, particularly for pieces performed in public. the 2010 version of take a picture created a mise-en-abyme of photos—carefully composed by luna’s professional photographers, amusedly taken by friends of the participants who ventured onstage, and hastily snapped by confused but intrigued passengers in cars swinging around the traffic circle. luna’s performance here thus a lluded to both our contemporary conceptualization of photography and documentation, as well as to luna’s loss of control concerning the image of himself and his art. reading photographs of native americans the latter aspect speaks to a long history of non-native photographers turning native americans into the unknowing, hesitant, or unwilling subjects of their images. scholars in the 1980s and 1990s frequently referenced these histories in their analyses of photographs depicting native peoples, often comparing the photographer’s camera to the colonizer’s gun: vine deloria, jr. calls early twentieth-century photography “a weapon in the final skirmishes of cultural warfare in which the natives of north america could be properly and finally embedded in their places in the cultural evolutionary incline.”11 comanche curator paul chaat smith takes this analogy a step further, arguing that just as the walker colt revolver was “a machine designed for one purpose: to kill comanches . . . there should have been a special camera invented to shoot indians as well, given the tremendous influence photography has had on us.”12 smith observes, “those [indian coffee-table] books and the photographers behind them are like big game hunters on safari and their big game is the real indian.”13 the hunters ignore the “fourteen year old boy in baggy pants” and the “fat guy with the marine haircut,” just as take a picture participants seldom desired a picture with luna in his khakis.14 the so-called real indian sought by the camera-wielding hunters described by smith was, and continues to be, the regalia-clad version of the real indian in luna’s performance—the spectacle of otherness. many native americans balked at the intrusive cameras, for a variety of reasons, but their desires to remain un-photographed were ignored. some feared the implications of having their image replicated on paper; lucy lippard observes that the “transfer of a black and-white likeness to paper meant to some that a part of their lives had been taken away, to 10 holly stewart, “james luna: take a p icture with a real indian,” the national museum of the american indian blog, o ctober 12, 2010, http://blog.nmai.si.edu/main/2010/10/james-luna-take-a-picture-with-areal-indian.html. 11 v ine deloria, jr., introduc tion to c hristopher m . lyman, the vanishing race and other i llus ions: photographs of indians by edward s. curtis (new york: p antheon books, 1982), 11. 12 paul c haat smith, “ghost in the machine” in strong hearts : native american vis ions and voices , ed. p eggy rolf (new york: a perture, 1995), 6 -7. 13 ibid., 7 . 14 ibid. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 1 1 e l i z a b e th s . ha w l e y c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.170 others that their vital power had been diminished.”15 however, this fear should not be overstated; the stereotype that native americans feared cameras would “steal the ir souls” has become an enduring and inaccurate perception. other native americans objected to this exploitative photography not out of fear, but in protest against its intrusiveness. jane alison analyzes the literalized rhetoric of non-natives taking photographs of natives, emphasizing that these images are taken, not requested.16 james c. faris examines unequal photographic encounters at length, pointing to images like navajo children (ca. 1925), which shows a missionary student and two young boys tightly grouped together as though to avoid the photographers that close in on them (fig. 3). the younger boy hides in the skirts of the student, as she and the older boy look away from both the photographer in the image, as well as the unknown photographer from whose view we access the scene. just as the student and children avoid the immediate threat of the camera-wielding photographers, so too do they avoid the gaze of contemporary viewers, thus implicating the v iewer in the invasive scene. their evasion is echoed in three navajo girls wearing blankets (ca. 1936-1941), which shows three young native american women, two with their heads turned and a third who casts her eyes downwards, refusing the gaze of the camera (fig. 4). faris notes that this refusal is seen over and over again in photographic archives, and that “such photographs are often labeled ‘shy women’—that is, in terms that do not condemn the photographer.”17 figure 3 photographer unknown, navajo children, ca. 1925. image courtesy p alace of the governors. p hoto a rchives (nmhm/dca), #53801. 15 lucy r. lippard, introduc tion to partial recall: photographs of native north americans (new york: the new p ress, 1992), 30 -31. 16 jane a lison, introduction to native nations: journeys in american photography (london: barbican a rt gallery, 1998), 14. 17 james c . faris , navajo and photography: a critical his tory of the representation of an american people (a lbuquerque: university of new mexico p ress, 1996), 47. lucy lippard also c omment s on t h i s v i sua l phenomenon, noting that, “[i]n the archives, there are many photographs of native people h i d i ng t he i r faces or otherwise trying to avoid the camera . . . soon it was recognized as the ultimate invasion of social religious, and individual privacy.” lippard, partial recall, 29 . http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 1 2 j a m e s lu n a a n d th e p a r a d o x i ca l l y p r e s en t v a n i s hi n g i n d i a n c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.170 figure 4 helen m . p os t, three navajo girls wearing blankets , ca. 1936-1941). gelatin s ilver print, 8 x 7 15/16 in. image courtesy of the a mon c arter museum, fort worth, tx, p 1985.50.837. of course, not all native americans objected to cameras, and scholars should refrain from assuming that any image of a native person is a portrayal of victimhood. if some native americans shunned cameras and photography, others were curious and used them to their advantage. scholars in the last fifteen years have moved beyond analyzing the presumed objectification of native subjects to instead examine native cognizance, collaboration, and participation in the photographic process. frank h. goodyear argues that lakota leader red cloud exploited photography and the western fascination with his image to emphasize his continued existence and relevance in contemporary society.18 in his study of h. h. bennett’s photographs of members of the ho-chunk nation, steven d. hoelscher argues that while photography has “served as a technology of domination to subdue indigenous peoples . . . it has also worked to provide those very peoples a medium for the ir cultural survival, endurance, and renewal—for their survivance.”19 this concept of survivance, along with the related theories of contact zones and v isual sovereignty has shifted the framework of analysis for such imagery. gerald vizenor defines survivance as “an active sense of presence, the continuance of native stories, not a mere reaction, or a survivable name,” arguing that “native survivance stories are renunciations of 18 frank h. goodyear, red cloud: photographs of a lakota chief (lincoln: university of nebraska p ress, 2003). 19 steven d. hoelscher, picturing indians: photographic encounters and touris t fantas ies in h. h. bennett’s wiscons in dells (madison: the university of wisconsin p ress, 2008), 10. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 1 3 e l i z a b e th s . ha w l e y c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.170 dominance, tragedy, and victimry.”20 native peoples do not just survive, they actively recalibrate cultural mores in ways that honor the past, accept the present, and anticipate the future. this takes place within social spaces that mary louise pratt has termed contact zones. she acknowledges the imbalanced power relations, coercion, and conflict associated with such zones, but also notes, “while a subjugated people cannot readily control what emanates from the dominant culture, they do determine to varying extents what they use for their own, and what they use it for.”21 while luna cannot change the invasive way that american indians have been photographed, he can take this technology and use it for his own purposes—namely, to reference these photographic histories, the stereotypes that they reveal, and to question the way stereotypic attitudes toward and expectation of native peoples circulate in the present. michelle h. raheja has coined the term visual sovereignty to describe the tactics native americans have used “to confront the spectator with the often absurd assumptions that circulate around visual representations of native americans, while also flagging their involvement and, to some degree, complicity in these often disempowering structures of . . . dominance and stereotype.”22 in raheja’s study of representations of native american s in cinema, she considers both native participants in early films produced by non -natives, as well as contemporary native filmmakers, noting that stereotypic images of native americans have become a part of native history, especially since native americans at times participated in the creation of such stereotypes.23 rather than reject such imagery, contemporary filmmakers and performance artists grapple with the implications of collusion. of course, there are shades of gray within the spectrum of sovereignty. lippard references the case of lillie benally, a navajo woman who allowed laura gilpin to photograph her in 1932, but did not consent to the publication of the image. upon hearing that the amon carter museum in fort worth, tx was using the photograph in museum publicity materials in 1984, she sued.24 benally’s case points to the complex web of legal and cultural issues surrounding photographs of native americans. her simultaneous control and loss of control over her image—she posed for the photograph but did not consent to its publication—can be productively compared to luna’s performance. his “take a photo, leave a photo” policy permits audience members to go home with a souvenir photograph of themselves with luna, while also ensuring that luna comes away with a copy of the same image. there is a sense of reciprocity, in that both parties are given a copy of the photograph, and both are present in the image. but this reciprocity broke down in the 2010 performance due to the busy public area in which the work was staged. what luna gained in terms of the symbolism of the site, he lost in terms of control over the dissemination of his work. 20 gerald v izenor, manifes t manners: narratives on pos tindian survivance (lincoln: university of nebraska p ress, 1999), vii. 21 mary louise pratt, imperial eyes: travel writing and transculturation (london: routledge, 1992), 6 . p ratt approaches “contact zones” in terms of their relevance to language and literature, but the term has been more recently put to use in pos tcolonial theory and native s tudies. 22 michelle h. raheja, “reading nanook’s smile: v isual sovereignty, indigenous revisions of e thnography, and "a tanarjuat (the fast runner)” american quarterly 59, no. 4 (december 2007): 1160. 23 ibid., 1162. 24 l ippard, partial recall, 31. benally’s case is also briefly discussed in john henry merryman and a lbert edward e lsen, law, ethics , and the visual arts (new york: kluwer law international, 2002), 552-53. the federal dis trict court dismissed the case because it lacked personal jurisdiction, and while an appellate court reversed the dismissal, it did not rule on the merits of the case. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 1 4 j a m e s lu n a a n d t h e p a r a d o x i ca l l y p r e s en t v a n i s hi n g i n d i a n c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.170 photographs and film stills that document luna’s performance at the columbus monument show the artist, cutouts, and participants, with the addition of the photographers and gathered crowd (fig. 5). documenting the audience and outdoor location is crucial to the 2010 iteration of take a picture; luna reveals the continued perception that a real indian can be discovered amongst the three characters he proffers. when luna attired himself in khakis and a polo shirt he disrupted broad cultural expectations, becoming a member of the group philip j. deloria has termed “indians in unexpected places.”25 by choosing instead to take a picture with luna in his war dance regalia, participants upheld the problematic notion that native americans can only be seen one way, as romantic figures of peoples ’ past. luna ensured that their choice designated this character the most “real” of the three indian identities proffered, indicating that he must thus pose in this manner to gain himself a position in the realm of contemporary western conceptions of the real. luna does not aim to confirm or deny the realness of any depiction of indian identity; he rather exposes the very concept of the real indian as a construct with a complex visual history. figure 5 a udience documenting james luna’s take a picture with a real indian performed in 2010, washington d.c . film s till from national museum of the a merican indian performance recording, accessed from http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=10100243886416480 edward s. curtis and the legacy of the pose take a picture draws on a long tradition of native americans being staged and staging themselves to fit western audiences’ expectations. such preconceptions were both represented and produced by edward s. curtis’s early-twentieth-century photographs of native americans. luna has long been aware of curtis and his methods: “curtis ’s images were first highlighted for me in the late 1960’s . . . they represent that image of the indian that people feel comfortable with and then, later on, i came to learn that some were posed, 25 p hilip j. deloria, indians in unexpected places (lawrence, ks: university press of kansas, 2004), 4 . http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 1 5 e l i z a b e th s . ha w l e y c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.170 with the same regalia on two different guys, for example.”26 his comments on curtis’s photographs and the conditions of their production necessitate a closer look at these iconic yet problematic images. curtis’s photographs have come to define indian imagery to the extent that even now, as luna’s piece has documented, most viewers only see a real indian before them if s/he dresses in recognizably native clothing. in anthropological terms, this attitude reflects the outdated idea of an ethnographic present, the artificial construction of a pre-contact people and the expectation that their modern descendants look and behave within the confines of the construction.27 paige raibmon notes that the fallacious notion of authenticity is judged by the degree to which native peoples recognizably adhere to the expectation of this construction.28 roland barthes defines this culturally contingent recognition by way of the pose, a specific way of staging oneself, and/or the objects around oneself, to ensure that photographs conform to certain societal connotations.29 curtis was adept at posing: he photographed native americans in artificially staged settings and stances, and he carefully culled his collection of markers of modernity before publishing his portfolio. curtis a sserted at the start of his project, “above all, none of these pictures would admit anything which betokened civilization, whether in an article or dress or landscape or objects on the ground.”30 like many of his contemporaries, curtis viewed native americans as a “vanishing race,” and he set out to document as many native peoples as he could before their presumed extinction. in his published portraits of native americans, the s itters somberly stare out from the photos, with raking light thrown across their faces that gives a ll but the youngest sitters an aged appearance, as can be seen in strike on his head, crow indian, montana (fig. 6). the figures in his photographs sit upright, giving their statures a k ind of ethnographic, pseudo-scientific verity.31 many of these portraits were, however, highly posed. faris has described curtis’s “legacy of posing,” noting that in his images of navajos, the photos were “completely set up, using not only ‘phony’ costumes, additions, and poses . 26 james luna, “james luna,” in staging the indian: the politics of representation, eds . jill d. sweet and ian berry (saratoga springs, ny: the tang teaching museum and a rt gallery, skidmore college, 2002), 73 . 27 see johannes fabian, time and the other: how anthropology makes i ts object (new york: c olumbia university p ress, 1983). 28 p aige raibmon, authentic indians: episodes of encounter from the late-nineteenth-century northwest coas t (durham: duke university press, 2005). 29 he observes that when the pose is used, “the photograph c learly only s ignifies because of the exis tence of a s tore of s tereotyped attitudes which form ready-made elements of s ignification.” barthes further notes that in the pos ing of objec ts , “the meaning comes from the objec ts photographed (either because these objec ts have . . . been artific ially arranged in front of the camera or because the person responsible for lay-out chooses a photograph of this or that objec t).”roland barthes, “the photographic message,” in image – mus ic – text, trans . stephen heath (london: fontana p ress, 1977), 22. in his analysis of pos ing, s tereotypes, and the use of photography in identity formation, barthes considers the photographic genre as a whole, not jus t images of native peoples. 30 edward s. c urtis , quoted in hans christian a dam, “edward s. c urtis and the north a merican indians,” introduc tion to the north american indian: the complete portfolios (new york: taschen, 2001), 26. 31 for analys is of these o thering s trategies, see christopher m . lyman, the vanishing race and other i llus ions: photographs of indians by edward s. curtis (washington, d.c .: smithsonian institution p ress, 1982), 61. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 1 6 j a m e s lu n a a n d th e p a r a d o x i ca l l y p r e s en t v a n i s hi n g i n d i a n c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.170 . . but, indeed, in some cases, actual phony navajo.”32 not only did curtis insist on removing any signifier of assimilated western customs, he also emphasized their native-ness through the use of objects and activities that ancestral navajos would have found as foreign as the ir descendants did, but that served as markers of real indians for western audiences. catherine c. robbins observes that “he posed indians in the fashion of his time in sometimes fanciful contexts; his hopi women ground corn in ceremonial dress.”33 in the photo to which she refers, four women kneel in the time-honored task of grinding meal, but instead of donning their typical day-to-day clothing, the women have adorned themselves in the jewelry, blouses, and side-buns usually reserved for ceremonial occasions (fig. 7). whether they are doing so of their own accord or at curtis’s instruction, the activity is clearly staged: all four women are in the exact same position, as though the backbreaking work of producing cornmeal would be synchronized. a bowl of already ground meal has been placed in the center of the foreground, to further define the activity for uninitiated viewers. nothing in the photograph is materially or temporally inaccurate, but the image collapses different facets of hopi culture into one visually readable and formally pleasurable pose. figure 6 edward s. c urtis , strike on his head, crow indian, montana, ca. 1908. digital file from original. library of c ongress, p rints & photographs division, edward s. c urtis collection, [lc -usz62-106763]. 32 faris , navajo and photography, 107-108. 33 c atherine c. robbins, all indians do not live in teepees (or cas inos) (lincoln: university of nebraska p ress, 2011), 244-245. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 1 7 e l i z a b e th s . ha w l e y c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.170 figure 7 edward s. c urtis , the mealing trough – hopi, ca. 1906. digital file from original. library of c ongress, p rints & photographs division, edward s. c urtis c ollection, [lc -dig-ppmsca-05085]. recent scholarship on curtis seeks to move beyond the critique of his posing and staging activities because, as aaron glass notes, “it has tended to grant curtis sole authorship and control, completely ignoring the active participation and possibly strate gic agency of the indigenous people who chose to sit and post and dress up for him.” 34 g lass instead examines the motivations of kwakwaka’wakw sitters pictured in volume ten of curtis’s extensive book series the north american indian. he focuses on george hunt, a figure of english and alaskan tlingit descent who married into the kwakwaka’wakw, concluding that hunt’s own ethnographic interests as well as his desire to fit into his wife ’s culture likely influenced his decision to pose for curtis. in a similar singular study of a sitter, shamoon zamir analyzes curtis’s portrait of alexander b. upshaw, a crow man who studied at the carlisle indian school, married a white woman, and became a respected advocate for tribal rights (fig. 8). in earlier portraits, upshaw is depicted in a suit and tie, hair neatly 34 a aron glass, “a c annibal in the a rchive: p erformance, materiality, and (in)v isibility in unpublished edward c urtis photographs of the kwakwaka’wakw hamat’sa” visual anthropology review 25, no. 2 (fall 2009): 130. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 1 8 j a m e s lu n a a n d th e p a r a d o x i ca l l y p r e s en t v a n i s hi n g i n d i a n c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.170 parted. but in curtis’s photo, upshaw sports a feathered crow headdress as well as an elaborate crow necklace over his bare chest. figure 8 edward s. c urtis , upshaw – apsaroke. ca. 1905. b&w film copy negative. library of c ongress, p rints & photographs division, edward s. c urtis collection, [lc -usz62-124178]. if luna’s take a picture voids the validity of the designation real indian, so too does upshaw’s attire. noting the precipitous drop in the crow population and the cultural practices that had atrophied or been outright banned by the american government, zamir argues that for upshaw, “the donning of costumes and the rehearsal of tribal beliefs and practices . . . constituted a use of tradition to legitimize a contemporaneous project of social, economic, and political survival.”35 he further observes that for figures like upshaw, “the border between ‘invented’ and ‘lived’ tradition was no doubt a fluid one, if it was experienced as real at all.”36 curtis may have posed his sitters, but they also participated in active self-fashioning that affirmed native tradition as a part of—rather than a negation of—native modernity. the descendants of these sitters are often thankful to have these images. gros ventre curator george p. horse capture, whose grandfather was photographed by curtis, declared: “real indians are extremely grateful to see what their ancestors look like or what they did and we know they are no stereotypes. no one staged the people. and we see them at the ir c lassic finest.”37 35 shamoon zamir, “native a gency and the making of the north american indian: a lexander b. upshaw and edward s. c urtis” american indian quarterly 31, no. 4 (fall 2007), 637. 36 ibid., 637. 37 george p . horse c apture, foreword to native nations: firs t americans as seen by edward s. curtis , ed. c hris topher c ardozo (boston: little, brown and c ompany, 1993), 17. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 1 9 e l i z a b e th s . ha w l e y c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.170 the archival logic of the museum ethnographers also photographed luna’s ancestors. in the interest of i l lustrating her article on luiseño indians, constance goddard dubois took a photo of luna’s greatgrandmother maria soledad apish trujillo and her young daughter (fig. 9).38 unlike curtis, who had artistic as well as ethnographic intentions, dubois allowed e lements of western influence to enter the image just as they had the lives of the people she was documenting. trujillo and her daughter are thus pictured in the cotton dresses that had become typica l day-to-day wear for many native american women by the turn of the twentieth century. nonetheless, trujillo’s posture is rigid and her expression somber, conveying the same k ind of ethnographic verity that curtis sought in his portraits. whether or not trujillo was instructed by dubois on the proper position to assume, her young daughter’s inquisitive look and the half-hidden presence of a young boy curiously looking on from the shadows add a familial, human element to an otherwise ethnographically distancing pose. figure 9 c onstance goddard dubois, trujillo's wife & children, potrero (valley center, san diego county, california) 1906. c ontact print on photographic paper, 5 x 4 in. c ons tance goddard dubois c ollection, san diego museum of man. c opyright 2016 san diego museum of man. to see this photograph, luna must visit the san diego museum of man where it has been categorized, catalogued, and duly archived. jane blocker has effective ly discussed luna’s oeuvre in archival terms. she concentrates her analysis on the artifact piece (1987), a work first staged at the same institution housing the photograph of luna’s great 38 c onstance goddard dubois, “the religion of the luiseño indians of southern c alifornia” univers ity of california publications in american archaeology and ethnology 8, no. 3 (berkeley: the university p ress, 1908). http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 2 0 j a m e s lu n a a n d th e p a r a d o x i ca l l y p r e s en t v a n i s hi n g i n d i a n c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.170 grandmother, linking ethnographic interest in his ancestors to the continued western epistemological obsession with archiving the other (fig. 10).39 in the work, luna, s lightly sedated, lay wearing a breechcloth in a sand-covered museum display case, his body framed by museum labels that rhetorically ruptured romantic preconceptions of the indian. for example, one described an unsuccessful marriage, stating: “sk in callous on ring finger remains, along with assorted painful and happy memories.” the description of a physical callous and the memories it evokes for the artist brought luna’s native body into the present and his life into the contemporary context, as did one of the vitrines placed near his body (fig. 11). contained within was a personal potpourri of mementos from the artist’s own history, including a driver’s license, diploma, divorce papers, tapes and records of contemporary musicians, political buttons, comic books, and small figurines.40 by providing information about luna’s own life, the placards and the vitrine spoke to what serge gruzinski has called the mestizo mind and blocker terms a history of mélange; that is, a society that exhibits ambiguously ambivalent signs of a composite cultural identity.41 such signs are generally repressed in the institutional context to what jean fisher calls “the necrophilous codes of the museum.”42 museums’ visual and rhetorical cues often represent indigenous peoples as anachronistic to modern life, perpetually vanishing because they are characterized as already of the past. as blocker notes, the western institutional archive favors bones over flesh, the ancients over their living descendants.43 luna’s intervention was thus to rupture this archival assumption of pastness by bringing his own bodily presence into the museum, emphasizing the present by parodying the institutional insistence on the past.44 performance proves a particularly apt strategy for disrupting the western fantasy of the “vanishing race,” for, as peggy phelan notes, absence always underlies the presence of performance.45 her point is particularly poignant for native performers who stage the constructed aspect of native identity, as the ir audiences often paradoxically view them as part of a vanished culture, despite the performers’ physical presence. if take a picture insists on the presence of a khakis-clad contemporary native american even while highlighting the way in which most audience members designate the regalia that of the real indian, the artifact piece stresses the lived presence and physica l 39 jane blocker, “a mbivalent entertainments: james luna, p erformance, and the a rchive,” grey room 37 (fall 2009): 55 -62. 40 for a more complete list, see jennifer a. gonzalez, subject to display: reframing race in contemporary ins tallation art (c ambridge, ma: the mit p ress, 2008), 40. 41 serge gruzinski, the mestizo mind: the intellectual dynamics of colonization and globalization, trans . deke dus inberre (new york: routledge, 2002), 9; blocker, 61 . these terms are part icularly pertinent in discussing luna’s work, as he identifies as both luiseño and mexican-american has addressed his multiple rac ial identities in other works . 42 jean fisher, “jimmie durham,” in matoaka ale attakulakula anel guledisgo hnihi, exhibition catalogue (london: matt’s gallery, 1988), 12. 43 blocker borrows her use of the “flesh over bone” archival logic from rebecca schneider, who asserts that, “in the archive, flesh is given to be that which s lips away. flesh can house no memory of bone. o nly bone speaks memory of flesh.” blocker, 54; rebecca schneider, “a rchives: p erformance remains” performance research 6, no. 2 (summer 2001): 102. 44 he does so by way of the pose and, though i do not discuss them here, mimic ry and masquerade —and the discourses s urrounding such s trategies—are also important aspects of his work. a rtis ts with feminist agendas have long used these s trategies; indeed, luna learned them from e leanor antin, a feminis t artis t and ins tructor at the university of c alifornia, i rvine while he was a s tudent there. 45 p eggy phelan, unmarked: the politics of performance (new york: routledge, 1993), 146-166. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 2 1 e l i z a b e th s . ha w l e y c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.170 present-ness of a contemporary native american through the stereotypical staging methods of the museum, which are usually used to stress the historical past-ness of the cultures on display. luna asserts native agency by parodying the typical lack thereof in the institutional context. figure 10 james luna, the artifact piece, ins tallation view, 1987. live performance-installation, san diego museum of man. p hotographer unknown. c opyright 2016 san diego museum of man. figure 11 james luna, the artifact piece, ins tallation view (vitrine), 1987. live performance-installation, san diego museum of man. p hotographer unknown. c opyright 2016 san diego museum of man. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 2 2 j a m e s lu n a a n d th e p a r a d o x i ca l l y p r e s en t v a n i s hi n g i n d i a n c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.170 luna’s contemporaries luna’s work is often compared to coco fusco and guillermo gómez-peña’s two undiscovered amer-indians visit the west (1992-1994), another performance piece that plays off stereotypes of essentialized native identity in order to reveal them as such. in the work, the artists presented themselves as amer-indians from an island in the gulf of mexico that had somehow escaped western discovery (fig. 12). in various public spaces such as museums, public squares, universities around the world, they had themselves presented in a cage containing assorted material markers of their fictional everyday lives. so-called experts were on hand to answer questions about them. like the vitrine of contemporary objects included in luna’s the artifact piece, fusco and gómez-peña’s performative project included a number of props that applied pressure on the notion of indigenous authentic ity; tour ist badges, plastic sunglasses, a laptop, a bottle of coca-cola and more made up what caroline vercoe calls “their living cargo-culture diorama.”46 fusco recalls that upon seeing this assortment, “a native american elder from the pueblo tribe of arizona . . . said that our performance was the most real thing about the native americans displayed in the whole museum. he said the installation and performance ought to be permanent to give people a very clear idea of the native american experience.”47 however, other viewers questioned the legitimacy of natives possessing commercial items. the artists were surprised by the negative reactions. while they assumed their commentary would be clear as a construct, many people engaged with the performance believing that the artists actually were natives from guatinaui, their fictional homeland. figure 12 c oco fusco and guillermo gómezpeña, two undiscovered amer-indians vis it the west, 19921994. live performanceins tallation, c olumbus plaza, madrid, spain. c opyright coco fusco. 46 c aroline vercoe, “a gency and a mbivalence: a reading of works by c oco fusco,” in the bodies that were not ours , and other writings , ed. c oco fusco (new york: routledge, 2001), 233. 47 c oco fusco, qtd. in a nna johnson, “c oco fusco and guillermo gómez-peña” bomb 42 (winter 1993), accessed may 4, 2012, http://bombs ite.com/issues/42/articles/1599. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 2 3 e l i z a b e th s . ha w l e y c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.170 part of the performance involved the sale of polaroid images to audience members who posed with the so-called savages for souvenir pictures, a strategy that links the project to luna’s take a picture—which he had performed just one year before fusco and gómez-peña first staged two undiscovered ameri-indians—and points to a western history of using the othered body for entertainment. luna’s contemporary zig jackson (mandan, hidatsa, arikara) also bitingly commented on the continued tourist tendency to photograph traditional native american culture in his indian photographing tourist photographing indian series from 1991 (fig. 13).48 the tourists, clad in cargo shorts, blue jeans, and anoraks, view the ceremonial dance through their expensive cameras, clicking away, seemingly oblivious to their own intrusion and jackson’s doubled documentation. formally, the layering of lens views in his images echoes those of images taken by bystanders of luna’s take a picture as well as navajo children; in each instance the resulting imagery shows native bodies being photographed. the identities of the photographers documenting the native peoples, and the photographers documenting the documenters shift from photo to photo, but the native body as other is central to all three images both pictorially and rhetorically. figure 13 zig jackson, untitled from indian photographing touris t photographing indian series, 1991. silver gelatin print, 16 x 20 in. image courtesy of zig jackson. 48 for more on this projec t, see “social identity: a v iew from within, p hotographs by zig jackson,” in strong hearts : native american vis ions , ed. p eggy roalf (new york: a perture, 1995), 34 -37. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 2 4 j a m e s lu n a a n d th e p a r a d o x i ca l l y p r e s en t v a n i s hi n g i n d i a n c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.170 conclusion james luna’s oeuvre accommodates the historiographical shift in discourse on images of native americans from the exploited native body towards the more complex account of indigenous agency. examining the work—and the evolving reception thereof—of native american artists like luna allows for a nuanced analysis of this shift, and illuminates the role that indigenous cultural producers have played in steering the dialogue towards an acknowledgement of native agency. explaining the impetus behind take a picture, luna stated, “i saw some indian selling his red ass to sell jewelry, and i was ashamed but i knew what he was doing—he was working. i’ve worked too . . . as indians we have all been on the tourist line.”49 his sentiment echoes that of paul chaat smith, who describes the experience of being a native american as partially “our own frequent willingness to lead the searchers in their quest for the real indian.”50 viewed sequentially, the various iterations of take a picture thus bring to light dual visual historical narratives: the stereotypical depictions of native americans by non-natives, and the way native americans have posed themselves to f it and challenge these western stereotypes. the history of native self-staging to fit western expectations productively problematizes a shortsighted reading of luna’s work. louis kaplan argues that, “if we take a picture of another person or of a group, we pose them in a relationship with exteriority—exposing them to the look of others and even to themselves as other.”51 the complex relationships between identity, agency, and the other—particularly as enacted in the pose and the photograph—are fraught for native americans whose past continues to be colonized by western representational epistemologies that encroach on their lived present. yet, as catherine robbins notes, echoing george horse capture’s appreciation for curtis’s photographs, “some of curtis’s ‘vanishing’ indians—alive and well today—admire his portraits.”52 posed though they may be, photographs like curtis’s are a part of native american history and can be admired for their visual pleasure, even with an awareness of their construction. 53 extrapolating from an earlier version of take a picture, blocker asserts that, “even as the ethnographer, curator, and historian take a picture, they also leave a picture.”54 in her estimation, this “trade,” while potentially exploitative, allows for continued native presence in the face of “a visual discourse working hard to make them disappear.”55 c haracter iz ing such interactions as a “trade” acknowledges the agency of native americans who may have strategically posed for documentary photographs. indeed, even while curtis characterized his sitters as the “vanishing race,” those sitters insisted on their continued existence, their survivance, by agreeing to pose for him. regardless of the participants’ selection of rea l 49 luna, quoted in blocker, “failures of self-seeing: james luna remembers dino,” paj: a journal of performance and art 23, no. 1 (january 2001), 31. 50 smith, “ghos t in the machine,” 9 . 51 louis kaplan, “being exposed: thinking photography and c ommunity in spencer tunick’s naked world through the lens of jean-luc nancy,” in photography: theoretical snapshots , eds . j.j long, a ndrea noble, and edward welch (new york: routledge, 2009), 128. 52 robbins , all indians , 245. 53 in a way, such pos ing was inevitable; lippard notes that “the pose is an imposition, s ince native people had not traditional way of s itting for a portrait or a photograph; self-representation in that sense was not part of the cultures.” lippard, partial recall, 39 . 54 blocker, “a mbivalent entertainments,” 73. 55 ibid. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 2 5 e l i z a b e th s . ha w l e y c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.170 indian to be photographed with in take a picture, luna’s very presence reminds his audience that native peoples have not disappeared. while the photograph and the pose are key to luna’s take a picture, the multiple performances of the work also necessitate a consideration of different forms of reenactment. colloquially speaking, to reenact is simply to act or perform again. in this sense, luna can be seen to reenact two aspects of reenactment: first, since most audience members e lect to have their photograph taken with luna in a headdress, the performance can be interpreted as a reenactment of stereotypical western conceptions of the real indian. second, luna’s purposeful participation in this performance indicates that it is a reenactment of the way native americans have frequently re-appropriated western stereotypes for various reasons. but these forms of reenactment could be carried out with a single performance; the multiple restaging points to a third and fourth aspect of reenactment pertinent to luna’s work: thirdly, luna insists on the enduring presence of the so-called vanishing race by continuing to reenact take a picture, for while absence may underlie the presence of performance, performances that are staged again and again disrupt disappearance. fina lly, because no performance can ever be repeated exactly, and no performance can ever replicate past attitudes exactly, reenactments have an emancipatory potential. in his debordian essay “an arena in which to reenact,” sven lütticken notes: “operating within contemporary performative spectacle, if from a marginal position, art can stage small but significant acts of difference. from this perspective, historical reenactment and living history too may constitute a potential waiting to be activated.”56 in this sense, take a picture does not just re-inscribe stereotypical attitudes through reenactment. rather, the restaging of the performance allows for intervention, for potentially changing these attitudes. luna’s staging strategy for take a picture thus far seems to encourage viewers to choose the character in regalia as the real indian, thereby pointing to the continued circulation of native american stereotypes. yet the work also provides for potentially different reactions: despite pushing viewers to choose his regalia-attired indian, luna seems to paradoxically hold a simultaneous expectation with each restaging that this time, the outcome will be different. while stereotypic imagery will always be a part of native american history, future attitudes regarding native americans may change. perhaps in performances of take a picture with a real indian yet to come, audience members’ choices will be more evenly distributed amongst the three constructions of indian identity; since the very designation “real indian” is a fallacy, none of these constructions represent the real indian, and yet, in a way, they all do. 56 sven lütticken, “a n a rena in which to reenact,” in life, once more: forms of reenactment in contemporary art (rotterdam: witte de with, c enter for c ontemporary art, 2005), 60. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 2 6 j a m e s lu n a a n d th e p a r a d o x i ca l l y p r e s en t v a n i s hi n g i n d i a n c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.170 new articles in this journal are licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 united states license. this journal is operated by the university library system of the university of p ittsburgh as part of its d-scribe digital p ublishing p rogram, and is co-sponsored by the university of p ittsburgh press. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/ http://www.pitt.edu/ http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/ http://www.upress.pitt.edu/upressindex.aspx http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture vol 1 (2011) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2011.32 http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu contemporaneity in the history of art a clark workshop 2009, summaries of papers and notes on discussions terry smith abstract sponsored by the clark institute, williamstown, and the getty research institute, los angeles, the workshop was convened by terry smith, and held at the sterling and francine clark institute, williamstown, mass., october 8 and 9, 2009. these notes do not record the exact statements of all participants, neither in the summaries of papers nor notes on discussions; rather, they represent the author’s own impressions of the workshop as it unfolded. see also, in this issue of contemporaneity, wu hung’s contribution to the workshop. about the author terry smith is andrew w. mellon professor of contemporary art history and theory in the department of the history of art and architecture at the university of pittsburgh. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/� contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 1 (2011) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2011.32 sponsored by the clark institute, williamstown, and the getty research institute, los angeles, the workshop was convened by terry smith, and held at the sterling and francine clark institute, williamstown, mass., october 8 and 9, 2009. participants: aa alexander alberro; ag andrea giunta; ap andrew perchuk; aw anne wagner; bg boris groys; cj caroline jones; ds david summers; js joshua shannon; km keith moxey; mah michael ann holly; ml mark ledbury; oe okwui enwezor; pg peter galison; ts terry smith; wu hung was absent due to illness but sent a paper. clark fellows thierry de duve and hollis clayson also contributed. references, including texts read by the participants prior to the workshop, may be found in the footnotes. thanks to nadav hochman for research assistance. special thanks to michael ann holly and thomas gaeghtens for supporting this project, and to mark ledbury and andrew perchuk for their work on bringing it into being. these notes do not record the exact statements of all participants, neither in the summaries of papers nor notes on discussions; rather, they represent my own impressions of the workshop as it unfolded. — terry smith. key themes 1. histories of contemporary art. to many, the idea that contemporary art might be subject to historical analysis and interpretation is unthinkable: it seems to be a contradiction in terms (and thus a conceptual error); the proper province of critics, not historians, who should just wait; a practical impossibility given the evident diversity of contemporary art; a mistaken enterprise given contemporary art’s radical pluralism; finally, and worst of all, it might, if successful, operate as a constraint on art practice. recently, however, such objections have been sidelined by actual world historical developments, concomitant changes in art practice during the past forty years, recent shifts in critical theory, and a growing number of attempts by curators and others to apply both historical and art historical perspectives to contemporary art. more broadly, new understandings of “the contemporary” as the multiplicity of ways of being in time are coming into focus. is “contemporary” the name of an art historical period that has succeeded modernism, or does “contemporaneity” mean that periodization is past (an anachronism from modernity) both in the general culture and in art? does it then follow, as many argue, that contemporary art can only be a kind of modernism that has outlived its time? against this, there is the view that the multiple modernisms and non-modern practices within twentieth century art prefigure the diversity of contemporary art. this implies that shifts from modern to contemporary art occurred in distinct ways in different places, and that tracking these is an urgent art historical task. looking directly at the present, we might ask whether or not contemporary conditions have reshaped our conception of “the world” (in planetary terms, for example, as worlds-within-the-world), and thus our conception of the currents manifest in global contemporary art? are the evident interconnections between each region, people, city, even locality in the world today sufficient to enable us to speak of a new, contemporary phase in the “world” history of art? 2. contemporaneity in the art of the past. at the millennial turn, time in art became a much-discussed topic at a number of scholarly fora, not least ciha 30, london, 2000. if we understand “the contemporary” as pointing to a multiplicity of ways of being in time — in contemporaneity in the history of art a clark workshop 2009, summaries of papers and notes on discussions terry smith http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/� 5 t e r r y s m i t h contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 1 (2011) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2011.32 particular, to awareness of what is it to be in the present whilst being alert to the “presence” of other kinds of time — it is immediately obvious that this is not just a modern but an ancient concept, and that contemporaneity itself has many histories and histories within the histories of art. the art historical quest unleashed by the idea of contemporaneous temporalities might go all the way back. it pushes us to ask some unexpected questions. to what extent, and how, was awareness of the disjunctions between being and time registered within the symbolic languages that adorned the caves of africa, marked the deserts and the rocky plateaus of what became australia, painted in the caves of what became europe, and created on the plains and islands of what became asia and the pacific? in other words, everywhere — and up to the present. papers and discussions session 1 — what is contemporaneity? terry smith — introduction: contemporaneity and contemporary art within the vast proliferation of discourse around contemporary art there is a near-total reluctance — at times, an outright refusal — to engage with key terms, foundational questions, core issues. the range of responses to october’s “questionnaire on ‘the contemporary’” is disappointingly representative of this state of affairs.1 if, however, we spotlight the etymology of the word “contemporary” we find much more than mindless up-to-datedness: the oxford english dictionary’s four definitions bespeak a multiplicity of ways of being in time, and of so existing with others — who may share something of our own temporality but may also live, contemporaneously, in distinct temporalities of their own — and thus also share a sense of the strangeness of being in time now. in the same dictionary, the word “contemporaneity” is defined, simply, as “a contemporaneous state or condition,” one that could, of course, occur at any place or time. yet if we read this term through the richness we now see in the term “contemporary,” we recognize its potential to name a broad, worldwide situation, the most definitive characteristic of which would be the experience of multiple ways of being in time with others. our time, in fact. the questionnaire is acute in raising the issue of the conjunction of an unthought, almost empty value (“the contemporary”) and the elaborate institutional commitment to contemporary art. most responses, regrettably, stayed within this impasse. let me gloss the workshop themes summarized above from this perspective. we might take particular contemporaneity to mean the immediacy of difference — in three strong, usually but not necessarily interdependent senses: difference in and of itself, difference to proximate others, and difference to oneself. in his essay, ian baucom highlights localizable contemporaneities of this type.2 1 “questionnaire on ‘the contemporary’,” october, no. 130 (fall 2009), 3-124. when it comes to art, we would expect to find specific instances of engagement with contemporaneity throughout its history. for example, in what is contemporary art? i describe caravaggio’s the taking of christ (1602), that i saw in dublin a few years back, just after it was liberated from a monastery there, in these terms: 2 ian baucom, “introduction: atlantic genealogies,” south atlantic quarterly 100, no. 1 (winter 2001), 213. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/� 6 c o n t e mp o r ane i t y i n t h e h i s t o r y o f a r t contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 1 (2011) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2011.32 in this painting, contemporaneity is manifest not only in the artist’s cladding of the soldiers in seventeenth-century armor while maintaining for christ, judas and others costuming imagined as of their ancient time, it is also present in the dazzling centrality of the reflection on the soldier’s arm, the attention drawn to the weighty gesture of arrest, the freezing of the rhythms in and out of light and dark that undulate across the painting, the holding of the viewer’s eye at just this moment of perception, the grasping of the viewer’s soul at the moment of its submission to authoritative possession. against precursors such as this, viola’s efforts at telling anachronism seem awkwardly contrived.3 georges didi-huberman is devoted to readings such as these, taking them to be antichronistic (and thus closer to art’s essential spirit). 4 alongside this quest, what might be said of contemporaneity in more general or historical, as distinct from particular, terms? the background readings contain a number of theorizations of world historical trajectories, longue durée tendencies that unfold contemporaneously with each other, sometimes at a sufficient distance for that to be relatively inconsequential, at other times — such as ours — with enormous consequences. geopolitically, for example, europe and china from the fourteenth century to the nineteenth, or china vis-à-vis the us and europe now; paul gilroy’s tracking of black atlantic exchanges; more generally, north/south divides in recent centuries, as in the three worlds thesis (to which migrations to the metropolitan centers of the previously colonized have created a dispersed “fourth world”); similarly, west/east interactions not just on the borders of europe but more globally, as in samuel huntington’s “clash of civilization” thesis so trenchantly critiqued by appadurai and others. less devoted to essences, i take it that there have been many artists who have been alert to multi-chronicity as a quality of the world, especially of world actors (such as christ) who defy linear or otherwise determined chronicity, and to situations that do so. another, perhaps better, way of putting this is to say that these actors and these situations have called forth representation time and time again. let us try to track these occurrences, let them surprise us, let us see what their historical trajectories might have been. a quest, as i say in the second workshop theme, well worthy of our time. indeed, it may be crucial to the future of art history as a relevant discipline. a danger inherent in this quest is that it could lead us into essentialism, into taking contemporaneity as the only or most definitive thing art does/should do. 5 these manifest themselves in other spheres, such as the history of thought, as highlighted by chakrabarty’s distinction between history i and history ii (with its concomitant obligation to “provincialize europe”); they also tie to larger forces, as he shows in his recent critical inquiry article on historical thinking vis-à-vis ecological consciousness.6 3 terry smith, what is contemporary art? (chicago: university of chicago press, 2009), 202. 4 georges didi-huberman, confronting images: questioning the ends of a certain history of art (university park: pennsylvania state university press, 2005). 5 paul gilroy, the black atlantic: modernity and double consciousness (cambridge, ma: harvard university press, 1993); samuel huntington, the clash of civilizations and the remaking of world order (new york: simon & schuster, 1996). 6 dipesh chakrabarty, provincializing europe: postcolonial thought and historical difference (princeton: princeton university press, 2000); dipesh chakrabarty, “the climate of history: four theses,” critical inquiry 35, no. 2 (winter 2009), 197-222. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/� 7 t e r r y s m i t h contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 1 (2011) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2011.32 one implication of taking these clashing historical big pictures together is that periodization becomes an issue. it could be that our contemporaneity is a condition after periodization, after its possibility — or at least, that we have entered a situation when history exists in the present more and more as a memory of past modes but with little determinative power. at the same time, everyone feels free to invent pasts, speculate futures, although usually at small scales. jameson reminds us that breaking from the past and prefiguring the future was absolutely central to modernity’s identity: it had to periodize, incessantly.7 echoing ernst bloch, harry hartoonian emphasizes the contemporaneity of the non-contemporaneous in modernity (to him, a phenomenon that is still unfolding, increasingly in this direction).8 in his essay mentioned earlier, baucom calls on us to “map the conjunction of differences.” pouillaude shows this conjunction to be a core concern of contemporary dance.9 giorgio agamben conceives contemporaneity above all in terms of subjective experience — taking as his key point of reference those intellectuals, poets, artists, scientists who feel most deeply the spirit of the times in their very alienation from it. everywhere we look, a radical (rooted) contemporaneousness of deep differences. 10 this echoes baudelaire on modernité, and of course nietzsche’s “untimely meditations.” for aravamudan, such readings of the present imply multiple, proliferating futures.11 against these modernist, and pluralistic, views, i see the relationships here as contingent — not the base-superstructure dialectic of classic marxist theory, not even the revised raymond williams one, but rather as foucaultian structural homologies that occur without predetermination, quasi-accidentally, but occur they do, determine events they do, and those effects stick: history, in this contingent sense, happens, and through this affiliative heterogeneity, shapes our lives.12 1. globalization: drives for hegemony in the face of increasing cultural differentiation, for control of time in the face of the proliferation of distinct, conflicting temporalities, and for continuing exploitation of diminishing natural and virtual resources. now failing… a finite set of forces, i believe, is shaping our contemporaneity: 2. accelerated inequity between peoples, classes, and individuals that threatens both the desires for domination entertained by states, ideologies, and religions and the persistent dreams of liberation that continue to inspire individuals and peoples. 3. immersion in an infoscape (a spectacle society, an image economy, or a regime of representation) that is capable of the instant and thoroughly mediated communication of all information and any image anywhere. it is, at the same time, fissured by the uneasy 7 fredric jameson, the cultural turn: selected writings on the postmodern, 1983–1998 (london: verso, 1998); fredric jameson, a singular modernity: essay on the ontology of the present (london: verso, 2002). 8 harry harootunian, “remembering the historical present,” critical inquiry 33, no. 3 (spring 2007), 471494. 9 fréderic pouillaude, “scéne and contemporaneity,” tulane drama review 51, no. 2 (summer 2007), 124-135. 10 giorgio agamben, “on contemporaneity” (lecture given at the european graduate school, 2007) published in giorgio agamben, “what is an apparatus?” and other essays (stanford: stanford university press, 2009), 39-56. 11 srinivas aravamudan, “the return of anachronism,” modern language quarterly 62, no. 4 (december 2001), 331-353. 12 michel foucault, the archaeology of knowledge (london: routledge, 2006). http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/� 8 c o n t e mp o r ane i t y i n t h e h i s t o r y o f a r t contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 1 (2011) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2011.32 coexistence of highly specialist, closed-knowledge communities, rampant popular fundamentalisms, and open, volatile subjects. these, in turn, shape art practice in homologous ways, such that three broad currents, each quite different in character, each with internal tendencies, may be discerned, as follows: 1. official contemporary art, visible as art styles and as medium-based practices, has in recent decades taken these forms: postmodernism, retro-sensationalism, and remodernism. in most of these respects, it continues to be a contemporary elaboration of modern art, persisting through the present. 2. the transnational turn has drawn artists to engage directly and via indirection with geopolitical forces, ideologies and issues that have been precipitated by the processes of decolonization, the rise of new nationalisms (and their implosion in many cases), the impact of globalization, against which some seek an open internationalism, others a broader cosmopolitanism, within which art may work as a mode of translation between differences. this is a transitional state, obviously; even nations that seem strong in relation to others are undergoing internal transitions of many kinds. 3. within and beyond these currents, a mostly younger generation of artists deploys strategies to explore their affective experiences of emergent worlds. four themes recur. world picturing, placemaking and connectivities between them are in constant relationship: location is sought, and dislocation experienced, everywhere and always. given our new understanding of “the contemporary” as a multiplicity of ways of being in time, and being so with others (of whom we are more aware than ever before, and in unprecedented detail), it is no surprise that asynchronic co-temporality is a recurrent subject. nor that these artists see themselves as immersed within media, both ubiquitous mass media and mediated communicative systems, while at the same time they seek new kinds of distinctiveness within this envelopment. circuitry of this kind is a relay between effect and affect. in my book what is contemporary art? i argue that these currents constitute three answers to the question posed by the book’s title. while they are in fact contemporary to each other, as a synchronous read of the above outline would show, i am of course implying a diachronic narrative. the first answer, while now dominant, may become residual, and perhaps go into decline, the second is becoming dominant as decolonization (despite many setbacks) continues to unfold around the world, while the artists working in the third current — one that signals world changes that will fill the future — are emergent. in my current project — a textbook on the various shifts from modern to contemporary art that have taken place all over the world in recent decades — i track these currents more thoroughly, especially the second. the framework looks like this contents page of my forthcoming book contemporary art: world currents: introduction: contemporary art in transition: from late modern to now i becoming contemporary 1. late modern art becomes contemporary 2. postmodernism, retro-sensationalism and remodernism ii the transnational turn 1. russia and (east of) europe 2. south and central america, the caribbean 3. china and east asia http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/� 9 t e r r y s m i t h contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 1 (2011) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2011.32 4. india, south and southeast asia 5. oceania 6. africa 7. eastern mediterranean and arabian peninsula iii contemporary concerns 1. world picturing, making art politically 2. environmentalism, catastrophe, planetarity 3. affects of the times, mediated conclusion: permanent transition this framework is built on a proposition about seeing contemporary art historically, from inside out — it is an art historical hypothesis. i would be very interested in what you think of the methods i am using, and of the hypothesis itself. tomorrow, the key question before us will be: does the distinction between particular vis-à-vis general contemporaneity help us to open out what have become (arguably) increasingly closed histories of past art? aw: how does relational aesthetics relate to “affect/effect” in your schema?13 ts: i understand “affect” as the general domain of the affective, but also as the kinds of broad-scale subjectivization brought about via spectacle, and thus take “effect” to indicate the necessity for action between agents independent from, or at least at angles (preferably political ones) to spectacle. so, to me, relational aesthetics points to one moment in this shift (during the 1990s) when this was understood and indeed enacted by artists, but that is a memory now. oe: yes, look at the trouble nancy spector had with the exhibition “theanyspacewhatever” at the guggenheim.14 aw: we are caught up by the rhetoric of the new. yet art is now recursive: the contemporary can only be contingent, relational. it is always with us, and always leaving. ts’s profile is outmoded because it does not encompass the locally specific. for example, los angeles is currently being shattered by economic realities that have been brought about by local, national and world forces. we have to remain alert to the fine grain of the local when we try to map larger forces. however successful or not the original situations may have been, the attempt to restage them failed. the question is: how is the contemporary produced? can it be reproduced? there is a larger issue here about coevality: we may share the same time but not the same space. 13 nicolas bourriaud, relational aesthetics (paris: les presses du réel, 2002). 14 nancy spector, theanyspacewhatever, exhibition catalogue (new york and london: guggenheim museum, d.a.p./distributed art publishers, and thames & hudson, 2008). http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/� 1 0 c o n t e mp o r ane i t y i n t h e h i s t o r y o f a r t contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 1 (2011) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2011.32 ts: indeed we should, and i attempt to do so by treating the art of each region as part of a social historical narrative, as presented by local authors primarily — including the contestations between them. wu hung’s paper has an excellent, fine-grained account of the interplay between modern and contemporary currents in chinese art after the cultural revolution. it is an exact study of contemporaneity in operation, with many subtle elements. (see appendix) aa: we can position small-scale changes against longer-term, perpetual ones when we see them shift together at epochal moments, such as around 1989. these map onto discernable changes in what it is to be a spectator, including a spectator of art. ag: there are obvious technological changes that transform life for everyone, such as the internet. the problem is to identify the real modes of mediation. km: ts persists with a version of the base/superstructure model as revised by raymond williams, yet also claims to be identifying determinations that occur contingently. ts: in fact, i do both. williams revised by foucault, then deconstruction… aw: well, we can track the current changes in california to key events of 1974. ag: as i argue, argentina entered its current state of crisis in 2001, due to changes in the structures that had prevailed since the 1980s, not because of 9/11. ap: the key question is what is different/contemporary about these moments? how could one know what would happen? km: surely it comes down to questions of power. where are these specified in this account? ts: it is all about power, both as to the premises of the overall picture and in the details. question to ts: i am concerned about “world” in the title of your textbook, especially when you treat regions outside the west in the central part, but leave unnamed the fact that you treat the west in the first part. why is oceania covered in fewer words than anywhere else? ts: i want to argue against the idea that transformations in late modern art occurred only in the west, although it is true that those transformations were noted everywhere else. yet is important to register that many of these transformations were reactions by artists inspired, at least in part, by disgust at what their nations were doing in their role as colonizers, and by admiration for the liberation struggles being undertaken in the third world. nevertheless, i will probably add “in euroamerica” to the title of the first part to make clear the geopolitical spread of the whole conception. as for oceania relative to the rest of the world, this is the first time that the art of that region will feature at all in such a book. its relative weight is what it is, not what one might ideally wish it to be. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/� 1 1 t e r r y s m i t h contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 1 (2011) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2011.32 boris groys — comrades of time15 i begin from the title of a film by alexander kluge, attacks of the present time against other times. by the latter he meant both the past and the future. it might help us to understand contemporaneity better if we think of how the warring that occurs between different times/periods actually occurs in different times/periods. modernity is usually defined as a conflict between the past and the future, the progressive and the reactionary, plus other similar binaries. this permits two perspectives. to the viewpoint that values the past above all, the present is always a time of decline, degeneration, and thus no future is desirable (certainly not more of the same). from a utopian perspective, however, the present is an obstacle to the future; it is not the birthplace of the new, rather it is a slowing down of the coming of the new. for example, in the soviet union, with its hope that communism would come eventually, the present was full of unpleasant delays that had to be overcome. this dream is ironized in the slogan: “comrades, sleep faster!” sleeping through the present became a revolutionary duty.16 now, however, we are experiencing a counter-attack against this “sleeping.” we find an ever increasing, faster and faster proliferation of histories. modern perspectives are having trouble with this. for utopians, many futures are too many. for reactionaries, multiplying pasts, all told from present perspectives, is disastrous. both had assumed one, unified future (if opposite versions of it). now, however, there is no acceptance of the likelihood of a common future, or of a shared past. indeed, everyone invents their own history, and thus their individual future. every author needs to be original. the present thus becomes the production site of historical narratives, more and more of them, overriding past, present, future distinctions. some features of contemporary art demonstrate these changes. when we go to a museum it is as if we pass in and out of one screening room after another, with no synchronicity between our spectatorship and the time of the film itself. being a consumer is a lesser way of understanding; the best way is to be involved in the production, to share in its making, with everyone picking up understanding as they all go along together. every young artist seeks to invent his or her own heritage. we are coming to see history as a series of processional presences, as a string of individual moments, each one a present. participatory art can give us access to such moments: its goal is to produce time. in this sense, we are contemporaries in a new sense, one that comes out if you distinguish between two german words for “contemporary”: “zeitlich” means to be in time, or temporary, whereas “zeitgenössiche” — the widely used word for the contemporary as a period — is translatable, literally, as “comrade of time.” this translation invites us to work with time, to be its colleague, to help it to be timely. in all these senses, we may be more contemporary than ever before; more in accord (in time, in tune) with our contemporaneity than past contemporaries have been with their times. aa: one of the markers of the present is that it seems harder to imagine a future, any future, than it seems to have been even a generation ago. my historical reading tells me that 15 boris groys, “comrades of time”, e-flux journal 11 (december 2009). available online at: http://www.e-flux.com/journal/view/99 16 cf. sigizmund krzhizhanovsky, memories of the future (new york: new york review books, 2009); sleeper, directed by woody allen (usa, 1973). http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/� 1 2 c o n t e mp o r ane i t y i n t h e h i s t o r y o f a r t contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 1 (2011) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2011.32 futures were intensely desired, much thought about, planned for…but now, one hears little talk of futures, just fears. bg: a recent german government poll among youth about their views of the future found that the thing most desired was that they would retire on a government pension. for them, the state was the future. ag: i agree that there is a great sense of paralysis at present. it seems hard enough to be able to do anything now, let alone imagine being able to act in the future. aw: we experience the present mostly through our bodies and minds: through music, at rallies, teaching… it is very specific. the future can be present to us in provisional ways, “as if” it were this or that. right at the end of michael fried’s famous “art and objecthood” essay, just before he concludes with the quote “presentness is grace,” there is an “as if” moment… as if we could experience this work of art in all its fullness, then future grace is possible in the present.17 in your art bulletin essay, terry, you misinterpret this, i believe.18 km: heidegger and derrida are helpful to us on these questions, especially derrida’s point that to be meaningful the present moment requires a supplement of some kind. js: “moment” is a concept that strikes me as needing some careful thought. the idea of a historical moment is clearly a historians’ device, a necessary fiction. we also have to think of such moments spatially: for whom, where in the world, were these events so momentous? ts: contemporaneity is precisely a concept that tries to capture the occurrence of events simultaneously and in many, contingently connected places, without presuming that a shared historical unfolding has freeze-framed everything in the same way for everyone involved (see jim chandler on england in 1819;19 bg: we are perhaps redefining our immediate project in contrast to the utopianism, or the instinctive optimism, of the 1960s. we are seeking a permanent state of presentness. this contrasts with those young germans who wanted only the security blanket. they are young people with only one wish: to grow old as fast as possible and stay that way for as long as possible. many of us on 1989, or 2001). boris is right that we may be more contemporary than before, with less thinking about the future, as alex says: there is in contemporary experience a thickening of the present, a stretching of it beyond the immediate moment back and forward in time a little, and across world space. ap: what this suggests to me is that people are looking for a variety of modes of participation, to be contemporary in different ways. okwui enwezor — non-alignment: the tessellation of historical times 17 michael fried, “art and objecthood” (1967), art and objecthood: essays and reviews (chicago: university of chicago press, 1998), 148-172. 18 terry smith, “the state of art history: contemporary art,” art bulletin xcii, no.4 (december 2010), 366-383. a manuscript version of this text was distributed to participants prior to the workshop. 19 james chandler, england in 1819: the politics of literary culture and the case of romantic historicism, (chicago: university of chicago press, 1998). http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/� 1 3 t e r r y s m i t h contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 1 (2011) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2011.32 the crucial question is this: how do we think historically in the present? my goal as a curator is to link what i do in trying to think in this way to the work of the artworks i show, to link the present of those artworks to that of the spectator who will see them, to create in this way a contemporary moment. we have begun to think about contemporaneity because of the geopolitical interruptions to the previously dominant conceptions of time: above all, the modern — monocultural, monotemporal — view of the contemporary. these breaks occurred in the 1950s, at the bandung conference that formed the non-aligned nations, if you want a specific date (1954), and have continued right through the decolonizing process, one that is still going on. at the 2009 venice biennale, fiona tan showed her installation disorient. tracking the journeys of marco polo through video, photographs, montages and text, through archives as well as through the artist’s travels to these places, it was premised on the idea of thinking historically in the present. it shows the archive to be discrepant, not systematic. it is inflected with the artist’s own multiple heritages: indonesian/dutch, chinese/australian. in 1997 she labeled herself a “professional foreigner,” as someone who carried a set of usable, unusable, and partly usable identities: indonesian, postcolonial, etc. disorient was shown in the dutch pavilion. in 1993 the german pavilion showed naum june paik and hans haacke, artists who had lived for brief periods in germany, paik with no german heritage at all. this year british artist liam gillick was invited to show in that pavilion. geopolitical ruptures have dispersed artists all over the world, carrying their archives with them, just as they enter new archives. tan shows that marco polo’s journey was a similar experience. disorient raises the question of orientation, it challenges orientalist imaginings, it invites us to “dis-orientalize.” for example, if you reflect on the recent history of exhibitions such as documenta, it is important to recall the european post-war and cold war context, and as serge guilbaut has shown, the cultural warfare across the atlantic. but don’t forget that the first documenta in 1955 was contemporary with the bandung conference. we should think of the “tessellation of historical times.” in the british pavilion at venice this year steve mcqueen showed giardini, reminding us that we all come from somewhere. this contradicts the postmodern dismissal of tradition, and its love of allegory as a (deliberately anachronistic, ironical) technique for dealing with the coexistence of incommensurability. bg: maybe one of the differences between the modern and the contemporary is that there were certain frameworks that were to a degree shared by everybody on the planet, and now there are none. during the 1950s the cold war hegemony touched everybody in one way or another. since then, there has been a lack of an identifiable central event. [both bush and his opponents tend to see 2001-2008 as the “war on terror” period.] oe: but the non-aligned movement was precisely intended to dis-identify with dividing the world on cold war lines. aa: is it not the case that after 1945 the three worlds structure was put in place, and that it collapsed in 1989? bg: i see it rather as a split within modernity. from moscow, the cold war looked as if it was wracked with tensions. km: all of these narratives are invested with many supplements; it is these that destabilize their claims as history. ml: what is fiona tan’s vision of contemporaneity? is it is be in the present of a past project? or to show misunderstood views of the past as present to us now? http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/� 1 4 c o n t e mp o r ane i t y i n t h e h i s t o r y o f a r t contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 1 (2011) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2011.32 oe: tan does not have a central point of departure, because she lives within open archives. in contrast to what terry calls placemaking she lives within placelessness, a “professional foreigner.” steve mcqueen’s giardini — which in the manner of an ethnographic film, tracks the giardini during the months when the biennale is not being shown — also exposes the inauthenticity of national pavilions. the point is that we are now all living within the postcolonial constellation. aw: is every artist positioned in relation to a specific (national, civilizational, ethnic) cultural archive, or some general one? if there are no cultural limits, then who can speak to which past, any past? for example, do we still ask: can a white person from the us authentically do x? would this not proscribe documentary, for example? oe: i am reminded of kara walker being attacked by betye saar and others when she won the macarthur in 1997, when they accused her of feeding “white guilt.” [when they meant that she was trashing black americans, especially women.] the archive is open to everybody. thierry de duve: i accept your reading of fiona tan’s work, but am puzzled by her saint sebastian. its treatment of the young women archers performing the shinto ritual seems to evoke a rather standard set of modern binaries, and be lushly beautiful in a way that the other works are not. general agreement. question to oe: say more about how curatorship can impact on art history. oe: many exhibitions are art historical arguments. for example, most directors of documenta have attempted to reframe prevailing art historical narratives, often by showing artists or tendencies that have been neglected. 1955 aimed to bring west german art contemporary with the us; at documenta 10 catherine david reminded us of the centrality of oiticica and pistoletto…this is true even of daniel birnbaum’s recent venice biennale. ag: exhibitions are crucial to rewriting the european and us narrative of modernism. other nations had their modernities: those stories need to be told. anne wagner — intersections between art history and contemporaneity: the everyday cites henri lefebvre inviting us to decode the modern world according to the everyday, and michael fried’s remark that we are all literalists for most of our lives.20 violence is the concealed truth of contemporary experience: how do works of art define this? primarily through the imagery of bodies, through genre such as portraiture or self-portraiture. contra fried, or perhaps with him, art seeks to make interesting the ordinariness it aims to supplant. 20 henri lefebvre, critique of everyday life (london: verso, 2002-2005); michael fried, “art and objecthood,” 168. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/� 1 5 t e r r y s m i t h contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 1 (2011) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2011.32 what is involved in representing a figure in the late twentieth/early twenty-first century? mass culture predominates in defining what we are, but what about the ordinary, the aimlessly unspecial character of everyday life? what resources does it retain? dan graham’s figurative (1965) randomly inserted a sequence of numbers, cashregister style, in a magazine where it appeared between advertisements for tampons and a warner’s push-up brassieres. dollars and cents are at the core of everything on this page, as graham’s insert makes clear. he ties the advertisements to “the contemporary” through the receipt. the work appears on the front cover of this month’s issue (october 2009) of artforum: another contemporaneity, related of course to his current retrospective at the whitney museum. timothy hawkinson’s e-motor (2002) is an enlarged mug shot of his upper body with sections of his face printed on plastic parts that are attached via plastic tubes that run to a small motor that is digitally linked to a small television monitor. the tubes and therefore the facial parts are animated by the light emissions of whatever program is being broadcast. the feelings that the spectator takes to be portrayed by the face are generated randomly: they have no causal connection to the emotions that may be being portrayed by the television program. the work seems to embody marshall mcluhan’s principles concerning television as a medium: that it is all surface. yet, while seeming to portray mechanical detachment, it actually conveys the opposite: a sense of desperate affectiveness. in the absence of readable style, look, or discernable set of intentions, where do we stand in relation to contemporary conditions? i propose that we should return to the everyday as a source of value. it may be routinized, structured by bureaucracies, and commoditized, but it is also vast, and therefore open to change. it is loaded against women, the working class, employees and the young. lefebvre said that it was cyclical as well as rational. can it be the grounds of personhood? perhaps we can excavate the literal in art since 1966 as in fact the ground of the everyday. in this sense it occurs in a variety of instances, for example, conceptual photography (heubler, ruscha), in johns’ appropriations, etc. perhaps “presentness” is experienced when art’s otherness to life becomes visible to you. (this may be recursive: otherness to everyday life may be this art’s way of showing you something important about it.) ap: causality in the hawkinson work seems rather obvious, mechanical even. thierry de duve: many current artists prefer older mediums, obsolete mechanisms. km: this work seems to be an allegory of mediation, one of terry’s main themes, or concerns, of contemporary art. mah: can we consider the saying that history is an ailment only when it feels as full as an egg. we are interpreting “contemporary” as being replete with a multiplicity of temporalities, as simultaneously arresting something and holding it within an existent bundle of times. i wonder what george kubler and walter benjamin would have to say about these questions? ml: certainly the everyday discussed by anne is very different from that understood during the eighteenth century. aw: a phenomenologist, lefebvre highlighted the dialectic between one time and another as inhering in people’s bodies. ts: in his essay “a short history of photography,” benjamin wrote about a photograph by hill and adams of a fishwife, of how she seemed to glance up at the photographer, http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/� 1 6 c o n t e mp o r ane i t y i n t h e h i s t o r y o f a r t contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 1 (2011) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2011.32 perhaps coquettishly, at which moment her glance, he said, flashed through time to stir his sensibilities. there are many contemporaneities in action here. one of them is a time before people were used to being photographed.21 aw: what i take away from that essay is the description of august sander as the unintentional historian of the present day, labeling his project antlitz der zeit (face of our time) a “training manual” for reading the present accurately. overall, the affect of the real that i am speaking about is a moving target: it is found and must be refound. it is associated with the anxiety of identity, with the fear of its disappearance. ds: kubler’s time zones might be thought of as histories of everydayness.22 session 2 — contemporaneity with the west, other contemporaneities (1960s, 1989 to now) alexander alberro — periodizing contemporary art23 we should take a double optic toward this question, one that is both historical and spatial. yet we cannot expect widespread homogeneity as in earlier periods, not even a foucaultian episteme. instead, a theory of hegemony allows us to acknowledge a certain dominance within which subordinate features may be discerned, it allows totality and difference at the same time. it helps us identify a change in the ways art positions its subjects, a change in artistic agency. in historical terms we can identify 1989 as a turning point within art, geopolitics, and technology. it is not a seamless transition from the modern to the contemporary, rather a radical break. indeed, it is the focus on this break, by interpreters, that turns the contemporary into a period. all of its constituent features have come into place in the past two decades. these include iconographic references to globalization; the rise of global exhibitions organized into spectacles that cannot be taken in fully by any one visitor, which produces an overloaded, vertiginous effect that has changed the nature of spectatorship; technological transformations including installations that have changed the kind of time we spend with works; a shift from analog to digital imagery has led us to assume that all images are manipulated rather than that they are veristic, and that fictive methods are necessary to narrate facts; display has moved from the white cube to the black box, from the video monitor to the wall projection; the image has replaced the object as the central concern of art and its interpretation, thus the rise of visual studies; avant-gardism has been reconsidered, relational aesthetics and utopic strategies preferred; in philosophical aesthetics there has been a surprising return of interest in essentialist ideas such as beauty; in art writing the emphasis is now on affect, not the search for meaning, a change with serious consequences for critical theory. all of this is occurring in the context of a spatial shift in world power, and the rise of multiculturalism. experience is all, but the subject is alienated. 21 walter benjamin, ”short history of photography,” trans. phil patton, artforum 15, no. 6 (february 1977), 46-51. 22 george kubler, the shape of time: remarks on the history of things (new haven: yale university press, 1962). 23 alberro published a fuller version of this text as his response to the october “questionnaire on ‘the contemporary’.” see october, no. 130 (fall 2009), 55-60. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/� 1 7 t e r r y s m i t h contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 1 (2011) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2011.32 the artwork is wide open, the spectator active in new ways. all of these qualities are evident in the work of artists such as olafur eliasson and isaac julien. js: why not persist with the postmodern/postmodernity framework? how do we distinguish between art historical and broader historical realities? aa: for my generation, 1989 was what 1968 was for an earlier generation. it signifies changes that go beyond those that led to postmodernity in the 1970s and 1980s. obviously there are artistic precursors: barbara kruger consciously made art for audiences with, in her words, shorter attention spans; what we call “critical” or “resistant postmodernism” is one of the first signs of an emergent contemporary art. bg: it is important to identify changes in the mediating terms between the art scene and the various social layers. one obvious change is on the level of mass culture and art’s role within it. during the cold war period, on both sides, spectacle came from above, from the more powerful — this is true in the soviet union and for pop art in the us. now, with facebook, etc. on the internet, design has permeated everyday life; everybody is using selffashioning modes from late modernism; everyone is a global spectator of everyone else. professional art has to resituate itself in this new context to remain professional. oe: if we think about exhibitions as descriptive spaces, as a place to unfold a narrative, then we can experience them as chronotopes. 1989 does allow us to think contemporaneity differently. “magiciens de la terre” was a marker of openness to art from outside europe and america but it located very different art from distinct parts of the world synchronically, in pairs that matched, somehow, formally or thematically. as terry and alex say, contemporary art can been seen as congealed, as hegemonic in form. some curators respond to this; one marker might be that since 1989 there has been a growing tendency in megaexhibitions to deliberately create heterochronological spaces, ones that cannot be grasped within the framework of an overall narrative. for documenta 11, we aimed to be anti-hegemonic, to deterritorialize kassel time, to confront the historical phenomenon that was documenta with its own limits. against the idea of “epic time” we presented a density of temporalities that no spectator could master (too many 3mm video loops); contrasting the time of the works against the time of the exhibition. when you say that all biennales are disorienting spectaculars, you have to remember practical issues. only a few biennales can actually be spectacles: many places simply do not have the money to be more than modest. another paradox: during the 1990s, much of the financing of the megaexhibitions came from older artworld networks such as small scale governmental agencies (like the arts council of great britain) or private foundations, not cities, nations, etc. mah: how can we connect these ideas with those that animated some of the most interesting modern art history? for example, how is alex’s list of qualities of contemporary art different from the set of categories that alois riegl told us were being used by the spectator seeking value in modern art in 1903?24 24 alois riegl, the modern cult of monuments: its character and its origin (cambridge, ma: mit press, 1982). http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/� 1 8 c o n t e mp o r ane i t y i n t h e h i s t o r y o f a r t contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 1 (2011) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2011.32 thierry de duve: i am interested in alex’s remark that 1989 was for him what 1968 was for an older generation — me, for example. clearly, paradigm shifts do not occur every ten years. contemporaneity becomes relevant when it is offset by factors with longue durée, such as the anti-aesthetic attitude, which represses affect. compared to, say, bruce nauman’s work at the tate, eliasson’s weather project looks like wagnerian kitsch: installing mirrors would have been enough, but that sun, and then a fog machine, really! aw: returning to the idea of hegemony, i wonder how useful it is for us now. for gramsci, it explained the persuasive power of the fascist nation state in italy, their influence beyond direct coercion. fascism worked precisely because it was persuasive. how does this relate to the years after 1989? who is operating the hegemon? aa: to me, 1989 marks a moment when the imagined community that is the nation state slides into the sand, when globalization emerges to set the agenda, when un style internationalism begins to fail, when statelessness becomes the norm for millions, etc. who operates the hegemon? neoliberalism, multinational corporations, finance capital are the operators. aw: i think that the idea of hegemony needs further work in this context. oe: if there were hegemony, would there not be one kind of spectatorship? ts: there are, on my argument, not one, nor an infinite number, but just three kinds of subjects under formation, and thus three kinds of spectatorship coexisting contemporaneously: those set out on my chart earlier. this gives us profiles of power, as an ensemble of contending elements, not a hegemon ruled by one group, or coalitions, or class, or abstraction (such as “empire”), nor by these in contention (although, of course, on other levels, they are very much in contention). confusion might arise from failing to grasp the fact that each of these seeks to be hegemonic, but fails. andrea giunta — argentina around 2000: some implications i am not sure that paradigm changes can be tied to specific dates: they are certainly experienced differently in different parts of the world. for latin america, 1989 is significant mainly because it meant the sudden cessation of soviet support for cuba. in art terms, there does seem to be a worldwide shift from the 1960s through the 1980s when we consider postmodernism, the impact of the internet, the rise in collaborations between artists and social groups as theorized by grant kester and homi bhabha. what we might name it i am not sure. the present tense can be more important at some times rather than others. there are the canons established by moma, new york. in textbooks on modern art, contemporary art is the next style following modernity: “moments” replace “movements.” all-inclusive models tend to extend canonicity rather than mobilize archives and activate history. in argentina the pivotal date was 2000, when it was realized that the social redistributions promised by the elected government would not occur. during this period artist magdelena jitrik was invited to join a community (san selmo) engaged in urban redevelopment. she produced a design for a do-it-yourself building so that its apertures spelt out the word “libre.” this is a contemporary response, but is also traditional. perhaps the generation for whom 1989 was pivotal is so uncertain about the future, and so afraid of a return to the past, that it elects to stay inside this time, the present. km: this paper makes it clear that certain stories may work in dominant centers, but will not work in other places. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/� 1 9 t e r r y s m i t h contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 1 (2011) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2011.32 ag: because of its history — particularly the spanish and portuguese occupations, then the national liberations — latin america is not postcolonial in the same way as elsewhere. many countries see themselves as european. ts: if we think of the present in a “thickened” sense, we can stretch our synchronic gaze — one that on my model sees three historical currents moving through the present simultaneously, yet a different rates, with different kinds of power, and probably different fates — in a diachronic way, pushing back in time, and forward, in both directions at once as it were. after all, the mapping that i offer covers a forty-year time span up to now, and goes forward. this is the present we are in, thickly. bg: we must not forget the class factor. contemporary art looks very different depending on whether you can afford to buy it, and which art you can afford. this gives you a different perspective from when you are contemplating it as a phenomenon from a distance. oe: and it is important to remember from where one is looking, from which position of cultural power within the still unfolding history of colonialism. session 3 — contemporaneity within the modern, in the west, mostly peter galison — time in modern and contemporary physics if there is one consistent trajectory in physics since the early twentieth century it is that ideas of time have been destabilized again and again. relativity has been succeeded by multiverses, then these by current ideas that the most basic elements of matter are a state of froth. at the end of the nineteenth century, it seemed to many physicists that the earth was slowing. time measurement was changing, against the presumption of choices about time, local times, those of train timetables, etc. empires imposed their own times as global by locating themselves as centers of worldwide zones (e.g. greenwich mean time). time itself was measured via simultaneity, as signals exchanged between two clocks, allowing for the time of transmission. this seemed universal, or at least seemed to open the world to being mapped via time measurement: thus the great expeditions, the laying of transmission cables under the oceans, connecting everywhere via telegraph signals. poincare, speaking in december 1900, could bring together the three major discourses of physics: a philosophy of time, a technology of measurement, and the laws of the electrodynamics of moving bodies. this was paradigmatic: metaphysical issues were physical, too. einstein, in contrast, was not at all interested in the actualities of managing an empire, rather in what the world must be if the laws themselves were consistent. physical issues became metaphysical. it followed that different kinds of time were possible in different states. there was no “universal tic-toc.” while euclid’s geometries were true and useful in everyday life, einstein’s higher geometries were necessary at universal levels. general relativity is a theory of the behavior of light in universal time and space; it explains all fields of matter, it presumes that nothing existed before and is untroubled by this. space-time is a product of pure energy, within which objects move depending on the movement of other objects. some artists responded to theses ideas. duchamp read jouffret’s studies of http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/� 2 0 c o n t e mp o r ane i t y i n t h e h i s t o r y o f a r t contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 1 (2011) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2011.32 geometry of the fourth dimension,25 buckminster fuller imagined a time lock in 1927.26 mendelssohn sought to build einstein’s ideas into the design of his tower.27 quantum physics demonstrated that aspects of general relativity did not operate at nanolevels, and thus a unified theory of matter was impossible. by recognizing the existence of many dimensions, perhaps infinities, string theory attempts to bring together general relativity and the theory of matter. artists such as matthew ritchie illustrate this effort in works such as m theory (2000) and yes/no (2004). 28 recently, physicists have attempted to rethink the larger “landscape” on which matter itself is being conceived, using concepts such as “event horizon.” there is a division of opinion emerging between “landscapists,” who allow that matter might exist in a limited number, say 5 or 6, of forms, incommensurable but connected, and “anti-landscapists,” many from stanford, who posit the existence of 10 to 1,000, perhaps an infinite number of forms of matter, all realized in a non-concatenated universe, one that is self-replicating, inflationary. can these two views be reconciled? do they have to be matched? the most recent idea in this long history of destabilizations is that space-time might not be a fundamental entity at all, that it might be in constant mutation, like the frothy mix that constitutes a bubble bath, an incessantly mutating manifold. froth seems to be replacing strings as the theory able to encompass most of what we might know about matter. [if matter is still what is being explained by physics.] how these changes relate to those occurring in culture in general and art in particular, i leave to you. cj: what about heisenberg’s theory that matter cannot be measured exactly due to the “observer effect”: the impact of the observation on the phenomenon, of both the recording devices and the consciousness of the observer?29 pg: yes, that is part of quantum theory, of course, but that theory still permits us to predict the behavior of matter at nanolevels and to do useful, even mechanical-seeming, things at that level. this is less a matter of subjective infusion; it is more that the universe splits whenever change occurs — we see it one way or another. this implies an ontological profligacy, the existence of multitudes. mah: are you describing the situation in the philosophy of science or in hard science itself? why bother unifying space and time? why not maintain the contradiction between general relativity and theories of matter? 25 esprit jouffret, traité élémentaire de géométrie à 4 dimensions et introduction à la géométrie à n dimensions and mélanges de géométrie à 4 dimensions (paris: j. gabay, 2003). 26 richard buckminster fuller, 4d time lock (albuquerque: biotechnic press, 1972). 27 klaus hentschel, the einstein tower: an intertexture of dynamic construction, relativity theory, and astronomy (stanford: stanford university press, 1997). 28 see online at: http://www.matthewritchie.com/ 29 werner heisenberg “über den anschaulichen inhalt der quantentheoretischen kinematik und mechanik,” zeitschrift für physik 43 (1927), 172–198. english translation: j. a. wheeler and h. zurek, quantum theory and measurement (princeton: princeton university press, 1983), 62–84; werner heisenberg, the actual content of quantum theoretical kinematics and mechanics (washington, d.c.: national aeronautics and space administration, 1983). http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/� 2 1 t e r r y s m i t h contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 1 (2011) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2011.32 pg: string theory was meant to be an answer to such questions, resolvable at the level of matter, but the problem was that it proposed reconciliations at levels so small or so distant that they could not be measured. no experiments could check them. mathematicians have always dreamed of a unified theory. many now say, no, there are ten thousand theories, maybe more. ts: have you sketched out for us the entire landscape of thinking about these questions, both in its institutional forms and in its accounts of matter? is possible to distinguish a contemporary as distinct from a modern physics? pg: in the continual destabilization of ideas of time, space, matter, etc. there has been a kind of continuity, however disrupted. at the institutional and intellectual history level the current split between landscapists and anti-landscapists is nonetheless a split within a broadly shared approach, however untheorized at its outer edges. if we had to distinguish a new kind of physics, maybe a new period in physics, i would say that it involves a stepping away from ontological claims. the key question, now, is not “what is the world?” it is “what can we make?” physics is much more oriented toward engineering, to any kind of science that can be used for the specified purpose, no matters its origins. so there is a hybridized science accompanied by indifference towards ontology. certainly this outlook dominates university-based research. in nanoscience the distinction between presentation and representation is being overridden, becoming redundant (to take up a theme treated in the last chapter of the objectivity book).30 bg: i am reminded of heidegger’s comment that science is, after all, a technique, and therefore, like a religion, it cannot think. at that level it is not a matter of identifying something then working out how to represent it in order to work with it or on it. you just work with it and it changes to do the job required, or, if it does not you modify what you are doing until it does. pg: science is based in the ancient practices known then as techné: it still moves back and forth between systems of the sensory, of representation, and of actual existence. science and conscience cannot be separated; there is no “day pass” from the rest of the world. hollis clayson: how do these considerations relate to recent changes in the biological sciences? i have read that they have become more specialized — into focus on cells, or biogeographics, or bioinformatics, for example — with no one working on the full organism, on “animals.” question to pg: could we go back to the question: is there a contemporary science that may be distinguished from modern science? pg: certainly there is no longer a fixed sense of what counts as arising from the history of science. scientists today feel less constrained by it. from an institutional point of view you could say that the cold war had the effect of freezing in place certain research structures, above all around university-based, discipline-oriented research. since the late 1980s, however, this has diversified, with some major private initiatives (e.g. the genome projects). 30 lorraine daston and peter galison, objectivity (new york: zone books, 2007). http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/� 2 2 c o n t e mp o r ane i t y i n t h e h i s t o r y o f a r t contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 1 (2011) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2011.32 science has, as i said, become more technique focused; there are multiple connections but there is no longer a driving center. as for basic physics, it has changed radically and is seen differently, both inside and outside the profession, thus the froth concept. ts: great! contemporaneity everywhere! caroline jones — blind epistemology in confrontation with contemporaneity a paradox of the current situation is that many artists are very involved with history while at the same time a majority of art historians feel themselves in crisis as to how to deal with the contemporary. sarat maharaj recently concluded that art history has nothing more to offer, and that curators have made the contemporary into a counter-discourse.31 art is always con-tempo, that is, timeless, an opening out to a perpetual and ever shifting present. what counts as “now”? for hartoonian, it is 1969-2009. these ideas are explored very well in ben rubin and mark hansen’s moveable type (2007), an installation in the lobby of the times building in new york featuring 560 small-screen panels that project texts from the day’s news stories. irit rogoff argues that the object of visual cultural studies should be to produce and defend spheres of activity in which contemporaneity can enact itself. in some art discourse, “experience” is the key value: it seem to be envisaged as a pure present, without words or ideas being made palpable, just experienced — for example, the utopia station section of the 2005 venice biennale, or in olafur eliasson’s environments. to me, the “contemporary” is a moving target, changing constantly, but always specific to its moments. i agree entirely that we should write histories of these changes. in my current project i begin from a narrative produced in 1851, a visit to the international exhibition supposedly by a blind man: the conceit being, of course, that, undistracted by the dazzle, he was able to “see” the exhibits for what they really were. today, the contemporary artist has been delegated a similar role, as someone so open to present experience, so able to absorb it unfiltered, that she is uniquely positioned to be the most qualified producer of knowledge about the present — a blind epistemologist. the difference being that she operates with her eyes wide open to the overwhelming visuality of contemporaneity. plato’s cave allegory is a subject of great interest to contemporary artists (for example, mike kelley). the relationship between vision and blindness, truth and deception is at the core of western thinking about the operations of thought itself. socrates is just one of many mediators between these states. in the engraving by jan saenredam after cornelius cornelisz, the cave of plato, 1604 (british museum), the professoriate is shown as the mediator. for descartes, and diderot, the blind man has sensations more intense than the sighted, that is, he feels the world more. if a blind philosopher feels the surface of a globe: is he experiencing the world as a picture? during the twentieth century, blindness comes into fruitful conjunction with the technological sublime. duchamp’s blind man (1917) through to mariko mori’s wave ufo to the whole genre of relational art, art that is increasingly embedded in the “experience economy.” these relationships are questioned by some artists, such as kutlug ataman in his strange spaces (2009), and javez tellier’s 2008 video in which people with distinctly marked 31 maharaj made this comment during the 2009 bergen biennale conference. see elena filipovic, marieke van hal, and solveig øvstebø, eds., the biennial reader: an anthology on large-scale perennial exhibitions of contemporary art (ostfildern-ruit and bergen: hatje cantz & bergen kunsthall, 2010). http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/� 2 3 t e r r y s m i t h contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 1 (2011) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2011.32 race, class, and gender differences describe an elephant. the contest here is between generalized knowledge and the ethics of the partial view. ds: in his optics, descartes uses the metaphor of a blind man’s sticks to conjure the operations of human sight.32 cs: an interplay between the experience of objects and the virtuality of imagery experienced through video and digital screening is a core concern of contemporary art. of course, it goes both ways: many artists are fascinated with the materiality of anachronistic apparatus (e.g. tacita dean, eliasson). analogue projectors come to seem like sculptures in some installations. but we have moved from such indexical knowing into much more complex, variable domains of visual understanding, through movies, mass media, the internet, etc. aa: sound, and smell, “taste” in a more literal sense — these are becoming more important, although few writers recognize this. it is a legacy of the early 1960s in latin america, of lygia pape, lygia clark, oiticica, and it links to new york art via projects such as matta-clark’s food.33 cs: gesammtkunstwerken, but at a smaller, more intimate scale. bg: merleau-ponty’s epistemology is, i think, relevant to caroline’s project. and we should not forget the last implication of the cave allegory: when the philosopher returns to the cave, enlightened and ready to lead others out, they will kill him. km: contemporaneity seems to privilege the partial view, to value heterochronicity, the present in presentation. it also seems to include “escapes” from time, or at least linear historicization, as in the multiverses peter spoke of: these are other, beyond human being. cj: in xu bing’s book from the sky something like this is thematized: the universe is presented as a book that writes itself, as a total environment, the ultimate enlightenment. yet, this world is indecipherable, because the characters are fake — in fact, it is meaningless. oe: in south africa at around the same time (1998) willem boshoff began his ongoing series the blind alphabet, consisting of wooden “signs,” icons in braille, readable to the touch of a blind visitor, but otherwise unreadable. there are obvious political dimensions to these works, in their contexts. mah: what are the implications for art historical method of these revisions of our sense of temporality? with so many temporalities coexisting, and more appearing every day, is the only method left to us a kind of let’s “cut the salami” and look at what is in the slice? ts: that would be to do a synchronic read, to see the present as a frozen array of elements that are coherent only because they have been sliced. it risks mistaking observation for reality. i think, instead, we have all been highlighting certain forces, 32 rené descartes, discourse on method, optics, geometry, and meteorology (indianapolis and cambridge: hackett, 2001). 33 catherine morris, food: gordon matta-clark (köln and manchester: walter könig and cornerhouse, 2000). http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/� 2 4 c o n t e mp o r ane i t y i n t h e h i s t o r y o f a r t contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 1 (2011) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2011.32 tendencies, trajectories that are unfolding through a thickened, extended present, one that can also be read diachronically. alex outlined a post-1989 hegemon; anne put her money on the depths of everyday life and its resistance to spectacularization; okwui has defined a “postcolonial constellation” as the main figure. i have outlined a paired, three part schema, for both contemporaneity in general and contemporary art in particular. aw: we will keep on debating these questions, i am sure, but for now i just wanted to draw attention to some further aspects of duchamp’s work relating to vision. the whole trajectory of his enterprise leads toward the sighted viewer, the enabled spectator. after all, his “anemic cinema” attacked the seductions of its day. his business card described him as a “precision occulist.” the interplay between subjectivization and criticality in his work remains relevant. joshua shannon — the contemporary art historian in 2007 maurizio nannucci spelt out in neon a statement across the façade of the altes museum, berlin: all art has been contemporary. this is true now, but has not been equally true of all times. what distinguishes the contemporaneity of recent art, compared to that of other times and places? perhaps it is that it is more difficult to think present contemporaneity than it was before? the society of contemporary art historians (which you can join just by sending me an email) and the contemporary art think tank do not have methodological agendas — indeed, you could say that they have non-methodological agendas. they are responses to the enormous interest in contemporary art among art historians: the caa lists now regularly feature twice as many job searches in this very new field than for two previous hot areas — nineteenth century and american art — combined. “contemporary” means different things when it is deployed in art criticism, art theory, art history, and art practice. to me, history is the key: through intense critical examination of contemporary art we can learn much about the history of recent decades. is exploring the history of artmaking the same as looking for its “contemporaneity”? for the october critics/historians, history is a longue durée, an epistemic phenomenon conceived in foucaultian, adornesque terms. they favor an economic political totality, and view possible subjectivities are shaped by these conditions. they pay less attention to the details, the locations, the specifics of intense particularity that one finds in archives. we need, i believe, to get out from under the model (handed to us by several october writers) that good art must be above all “critical,” asking instead that it be, above all, deeply and revealingly “representational” of its age. the aim, then, is to learn about a period from art, rather than ask whether the works have political agency in themselves. critics and historians need to show us the complexity of contemporaneity. we should always assume the presence of contemporaneous cultures, some echoes of past cultures, others greatly changed, all of them revolutionary, all in constant interaction. today, because of global connectivity, contemporaneity is no longer incidental, inconsequential. consider the contemporaneity of rubens to his time, compared to that of, say, nikki s. lee today: in all cases it is a matter of their coordinates in relation to power. is there anything relatively coherent that we can call “contemporary art”? two fissures question this possibility, one temporal, the other geographic. if we compare art from the 1950s and 1960s with that since 1989 it is clear that each requires a different historicization — that some kind of at least informal break occurred. similarly, the spread of attention from paris and new york to los angeles and elsewhere across the same period shows that contemporary art is now more “inclusive.” “world art now” is tenable as a single field; there is a widespread sense of belonging to a shared place and time, however internally contested. yet the idea of world contemporary art, crucial and indispensable as it is, has two endemic http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/� 2 5 t e r r y s m i t h contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 1 (2011) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2011.32 problems: (a) what dates are “contemporary”? (this word is a convenient fiction used to refer to the recent past), and (b) is date now more important to art making than place (i.e. is art now more contemporary than it is chinese, american, etc.)? that may often be the case, but we should never assume so. this temporal shift and geographic spread raises some interesting conundrums: for example, is jasper johns a contemporary artist? two imperatives come into view. we must overcome the provincialism of euroamerica by locating contemporary art everywhere and at the same time. yet also acknowledge that each geographic region has priority, at least to itself. this leaves us with a hybrid, and with the problem of articulating “the contemporary” when we move from the specific to the general. the move here does not create a new periodization, rather a signal that the work in question belongs to the recent past, a placeholder within the present, a trial balloon, with future capacities, possibly… km: how do we decide that one contemporary artist is more contemporary than another? especially when we acknowledge, as terry does, non-synchronous contemporaneities. cj: another problem here, in the expansion of the field, is the danger of replicating the issues around area studies: can we speak of “the art of the middle east” without being orientalist? i do not think so. pg: as well, there is a political history to historical thinking that needs to be taken into account. think of the chain of modes of historical inquiry that dominated the practice for centuries, only to fall away: the classical historians; diplomatic history; marxism — all, in their ways, were objectivist objections to presentism. oe: we need to be aware of the “pothole effect.” daniel birnbaum was criticized for including some less than blue-chip works in the 2009 venice biennale: but why not a biennale of terrible works from everywhere? that would shake things up. what terry calls “official contemporary art” i see as westernism plus those artists from elsewhere whose work can be “seen” or recognized as art by viewers in the west or elsewhere with this perspective. but there is a whole other field of encounters between artists and their localities: kinshasha “popular painting,” for example, takes two forms: western type and local type — you can find, or commission, either one. the point here is that contiguous cultural spaces like these coexist all over the world. they can connect, or not, depending on preferences, circumstances, etc. this is another important way in which contemporary art relates to contemporaneity. in my essay in the altermodern catalog i speak about an “off-center” condition, and cite the work of curators such as patrick flores who track these kinds of relationships in places such as the philippines and malaysia.34 david summers — real spaces and contemporary art there is no single, general picture of contemporary art. let me begin with a comment on periods, and art historical periodization. gombrich reminded us that classicism defined itself against barbarism. it may be that contemporary art will define itself not so much in relation to contemporaneity but via exclusion from it. 34 okwui enwezor, “modernity and postcolonial ambivalence,” altermodern: tate triennial, ed. nicolas bourriaud (london: tate publishing, 2009), 27-40. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/� 2 6 c o n t e mp o r ane i t y i n t h e h i s t o r y o f a r t contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 1 (2011) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2011.32 other tendencies have worked in different ways: we can read the baroque as a mode that neutralized critical judgment, and defended classicism from contemporary threats. the best way of going forward is by constantly adjusting our aesthetic attitude to works of art. taking art history as a whole, it is evident than an administrative taxonomy survives, and seems essential to the discipline (it has changed renaissance to early modern, for example). what are we to make of the fact that the italian renaissance and the highpoints of aztec culture are parallel in time, that 1521 marks the incidental contemporaneity of europe and the americas, the renaissance and the age of european expansion? the “new spain” developed a local spanish classicism; art in mexico has a revolutionary past, yet we use blunt tools to examine mesoamerican art. if we draw on anthropology and archaeology we can introduce intercultural interaction into art historical methodology. this was my goal in real spaces.35 we need to rethink what art is, not least to place western art within world art traditions. western art production assumes mental images, then an idea of work — assumptions not shared in the east. the key terms are not visual but spatial, if we want foundational, universal bases. human sociality is at the core of architecture, images, etc. social spaces last longer than their usages. contemporary art does have a distinctive set of real spaces: museums, biennales, new media, art schools, etc. it also seems tied to a progressive political program centered on human rights. museums offer new conditions for art, they become more and more important in modern and contemporary architecture. they have made us more aware of the spaces of display than ever before. they are also the sites of institutional critique. in his book, terry cites heiner friedrich on the immediate experience of art having the potential to enable a transcendence of history.36 js: since stella’s black paintings, there has been a progressive literalization of abstraction in art: from judd’s specific objects that require particular observer behavior, to the current prioritization of the viewer/spectator over the object. i am trying to think how your outline relates to changes such as these. yet pueblo indians were very conscious of building structures that would be there long after their own lives, and after the lives of generations to come. art has never been one thing: historical particularity is not the same as aesthetic particularity. place and time should be respected in both. every culture has a chronology unique to itself: art historians should be alert to each one, discern their uniqueness. “international art” is a misnomer: people within each culture have lien on their traditions. these values give us a basis to think about an art history respectful of rights and of specificities. aw: there are many implications in such questions. another one is: what kind of temporality does an observer have in relation to every artwork after the invention of photography? is it, as benjamin suggests, no longer auratic? more generally on david’s proposition: of course we should endeavor to apprehend and respect difference, right up to the limits of our own perception of it. 35 david summers, real spaces: world art history and the rise of western modernism (london; new york: phaidon press, 2003). 36 terry smith, what is contemporary art?, 38-39. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/� 2 7 t e r r y s m i t h contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 1 (2011) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2011.32 ds: respect is the foundation of recognizing rights: obviously, you cannot have one without the other. the great pre-columbian sculpture coatlicue embodies values and beliefs — re sacrifice, for example — that we would find abhorrent, but we respect their embodiment in this work. aw: looking at a work such as this in a museum enables us to ask: how did this set of values come into existence, why did they find such powerful form in this work? the museum could come to be a place where intercultural rights could come to be identified and respected — indeed, many museums are precisely such places. returning briefly to benjamin on the decline of the aura: he was registering its decline in a europe subject to rising mechanical reproductive modes themselves brought about by the industrial revolution; he did not speak about its decline in the rest of the world. indeed, he did not address the situation outside europe (and presumably the us). art historians, by contrast, should explore the pasts that were specific to each part of the world, and bring them into the present in ways appropriate to the present needs of that culture. mah: this raises, again, the question of anachronism. didi-huberman has reminded us of the power of images to be alive in every situation. before each work of art we have a shorter life span. indeed, we have a number of ways of relating to each work historically: riegl made important distinctions between “historical value” and “eye” or “present value.” ds: i am not keen on periods, either as used by historians or art historians. usually, they are evidence of cultural blindness. art’s history reveals, mostly, continuities over very long stretches of time: for example, the optical tradition in the west. under some culturally specific conditions, substitutions can be made: for example, western modernism is a real, and recent, break in the history of world art. cj: there are many events occurring now that have a periodizing character to them, and some art addresses this question directly. some feel that the more confusion there exists on this front the better. thierry de duve: periods are often proposed by those living through them, and by those seen later to have lived through one (that is, period status is often assigned retrospectively). both impulses always compete, and are obvious today. keith moxey — do we need another renaissance? since burkhardt the idea of the renaissance as a period of great art has been central to the very idea of the history of art.37 1. burkhardt placed the renaissance at the birth of art’s embrace of modernity, that is, his own time. this was the first grand schema linking art to broad historical progress. for panofsky, the renaissance overcame the miseries of the middle ages, and released their potentialities. are we reaching a point at which contemporary art — however defined, or left undefined — might be replacing the renaissance as this core object? let me tackle this question in five steps. 38 37 jacob burckhardt, the civilization of the renaissance in italy (new york: harper & row, 1958). conceptions of the renaissance as continually rebirthing, or modernizing, 38 erwin panofsky, renaissance and renascences in western art (copenhagen: russak, 1960). http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/� 2 8 c o n t e mp o r ane i t y i n t h e h i s t o r y o f a r t contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 1 (2011) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2011.32 itself prevailed until the 1960s/70s. since then this great narrative has been subject to a number of critiques: postmodern, postcolonial, poststructuralist. these have proved devastating. we are left with what didi-huberman calls “the anachronism of images.”39 2. contemporary art: its recent triumph challenges modernism, but it also challenges this great art historical narrative, and may be the final nail in the coffin of this grand historical schema. if modernism remains crucial to the contemporary as the main point of opposition, art before modern art (as hans belting refers to it 40 3. contemporaneity: is it a period, or the end of time-based understandings of the world? there is a lot of apocalyptic thinking around: end of art, the degradations of the cultural industry, etc. marc augé speaks of “asynchronic slices of time” coexisting; ) has all but disappeared from sight, and the idea of the renaissance is falling way. the art of the past is seen as being defined by continuity and stasis, modern art by change and breakage. postmodernism is seen as too 1980s, but perhaps this is a sign that it is still too hot to handle? jameson’s argument for postmodernity remains influential, even though he reduced it to late capitalism. 41 nicolas bourriaud of the “altermodern” as a moment, not a period, precisely in order to avoid teleology.42 4. there are different stories within heterochronicity: how are these to be related to each other? peter galison spoke of landscapists and anti-landscapists among contemporary theorists of physics. yet even between incommensurable worlds, universes, there are relationships of power: dominant stories repress others. translation is the task in this situation. yet there is an element of incoherence in the spaces between the specificities of “other” cultures. and there are commonalities, common kinds of denomination, such as the world time system. is the concept of contemporaneity haunted by the concept of modernity? does the latter project developmentalism as an eternal present? 5. this, too, will pass. as george kubler remarked, we see light after it has traveled toward us for millennia.43 thierry de duve: our conceptions of artistic modernity need to be radically revised, rescued from narrow modernism. it has always been more complex than having a teleological conviction. baudelaire’s thinking, for example, was far from teleological; it was recursive, ironic, always doubled. nineteenth century discourse was much concerned with “the arrow of time.” the second law of thermodynamics: can it be averted? the anxieties of the multitudes exist in tension with hegel’s world historical time machine driven by absolute spirit: perhaps his thinking was a response to anxiety about multitudes. to me, the challenge is to produce a radically non-teleological art history. i mean “nonteleological” in the darwinian sense: that evolution is a complex array of determinative effects that occur, and can be observed to do so, but a unified goal is not part of the process. intentions, and small-scale purpose, can be seen, but no overall end is in sight. for example, to see manet without using a greenbergian optic is to see him very differently; perhaps, 39 georges didi-huberman, devant le temps: histoire de l'art et anachronisme des images (paris: editions de minuit, 2000). 40 hans belting, art history after modernism (chicago: university of chicago press, 2003). 41 marc augé, non-places: introduction to an anthropology of supermodernity (london: verso, 1995). 42 nicolas bourriaud, ed., altermodern: tate triennial (london: tate publishing, 2009). 43 george kubler, the shape of time: remarks on the history of things. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/� 2 9 t e r r y s m i t h contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 1 (2011) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2011.32 even, as an artist for whom the renaissance remained important. more generally, art history needs to tell the stories of its many modernities, and do so differently. pg: if i could comment on your analogy to darwin’s theory of evolution. it is certain that the general theory of entropy allows for, in fact requires, local changes within its overall tendency. there are, of course, other general theories out there: cyclic universes, multiple universes, each contemporary to others but changing differently in relation to each other. the implication for thinking about modernity is that there has been a multiplicity of modernisms. what counts as modern science has been intensely competed over, and defined often in relation to classic physics. bg: artists’ understanding of themselves as being contemporary is strong during modernity, and each generation it becomes stronger. today, it is very intense, as most artists are interested in what is happening in different parts of the world, especially in the work of artists of the same generation. but at the same time they know — for reasons of artworld recognition, marketing, public attention, etc. — that they need to appear distinct from their contemporaries, so they use invented histories of other artists to demonstrate what it is that makes them different. for curators committed to internationalization, their distinctiveness is in the different historical narratives that they can propose and show to be present in the art that they choose to exhibit. invented history, therefore, is absolutely primary in contemporary art: it is the most contemporary thing about it — more important than the influence of the market, more than an artist’s individual brand within the symbolic economy. or, you could say, within contemporaneity an artist or curator’s invented history is his or her best brand. aw: i am concerned that heterogeneity is becoming a bright new toy for art theory. there seems to be a widespread anxiety about sameness (a fear of hegemony). yet the planet needs human behaviors that are commensurate with its needs. this bears on a whole host of issues, rights, and duties: reproduction, death, speech, communication, tool making, agitation, religion, and magic, just to list some. it leads us back to the matter of respect. art history’s current nightmare is part of a larger nightmare of relevance. bg: yes, but we must add that any idea of commensurability between humans has also to account for the tendency toward incommensurability revealed by, for example, the holocaust. ts: this is, perhaps, where coevality comes in: if there is an ethics particular to contemporaneity, it would be a practice that above all acknowledges and respects real, intractable difference, not just diversity; it would be antinomic, not humanist or generalist in some other way; it would require the creation of new equalities of coexistence — that is, contemporary kinds of commensurability — between the elements thrown up by a world shaped by insistent, ongoing, and seemingly fundamental incommensurability. well, having arrived at what is probably the core question about contemporaneity, we have run out of time to discuss it further. perhaps, however, we have been doing so all along. on behalf of my fellow conveners, i thank you all for your participation. it means a lot to me personally. i also believe that the questions we have raised are of significance for the profession, and beyond it. public conversation (stone hill center) a brief introduction outlining the main themes of the workshop was given by ts. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/� 3 0 c o n t e mp o r ane i t y i n t h e h i s t o r y o f a r t contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 1 (2011) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2011.32 audience member: how do you think that your discussion will be viewed in the future? how do you think that you will be written into the history of art history? cj: we do have the anxiety of trying to find a role for art history in or against contemporaneity. aw: certainly we should pay attention to the evasions that follow from our politics, and admit them frankly. ds: i remain optimistic. in real spaces i attempted to expand the ideas of art then prevalent. i see that a further effort needs to be made to relate them to contemporaneity. this is difficult to do, difficult to formulate in accessible ways. it is going to require a lot of constructive thought. pg: the procedures for doing so are in place, and are not unusual. you propose a set of problems and questions, decide on which features to highlight, and for what purposes, then decide which allies to bring in to get to these goals. it will always be a competition with others over what we want to be — in this case, a competition over the definition of “contemporary.” ap: there is more writing about art than ever before — in art history departments, other parts of the academy, in blogs, etc. what is the role of professional art historians in this expanded discursive space? some contemporary artists have approached this by adopting de-professionalizing modes. art is being increasingly driven by experience, but it takes ever more extreme kinds of experience to capture attention. this is a direction in which art historians should not go. audience member: what do you see as the differences between the roles of curators, critics and artists? thierry de duve: in 2000 i curated an exhibition in belgium with the title “voici [look]: 100 years of contemporary art.”44 ts: a modernist answer, using avant-garde criteria, specifically a duchampian one. it may be that this is reversed in contemporaneity, as the presumption now is that everything may act as art, be art. actually, it will be more than simply reversed, as that starts the dialectic again. the question is spread over a wider range of terms — as boris groys explains. i showed works by manet, rodin, fox talbot, etc. right up to dan graham, along with new work and some commissions. the publicity statement read: “when a work speaks to you in the present tense, it is contemporary.” these kinds of statements are always partial truths. i now think that i should have said: “a work of art remains our contemporary as long as it runs the risk of not being perceived as a work of art.” ag: during the 1980s in argentina, it was very dangerous to articulate the present. since then, redefinition has become really important. i agree that some major change is occurring, but i do not think that we know its name as yet. i am not sure about “contemporaneity.” 44 thierry de duve, look: 100 years of contemporary art (ghent: ludion, 2001). http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/� 3 1 t e r r y s m i t h contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 1 (2011) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2011.32 cj: another anxiety that the question raises is one about jobs for curators, critics, etc. currently there is a match between graduates and jobs, but how long will this last? on the matter of the task before historians, critics, artists, etc., i would say that historians have the responsibility to locate an artwork historically, whereas the critic’s primary task is to evaluate the work. historians work in and through archives; we value thoroughness, however infinite an archive might be. each practice requires a different research, teaching, learning context, with specialist knowledge needed for art, architecture, curatorship, etc. doctorates for artists are raising many concerns. but category swapping is not new: harald szeemann treated curatorship as an art practice.45 aa: interest in contemporary art is at an all-time high. 80% of applicants to graduate art history schools hope to study contemporary art; there is a huge interest among undergraduates; contemporary topics predominate at caa. what is the source of this fascination? “ahistoricization” became favored during the postmodern moment. curators such as okwui reacted by a deep emphasis on actual history: events, documents, and works of art as historical instances. the increasing interest in the recent past is throwing up some interesting problems, for example, the re-performance of performance art. ts: during the workshop many answers to this question came up. there are obvious, specific reasons: the buzz of high auction prices, the outrageous, publicity-grabbing behavior of some of the artists, the seemingly instant comprehensibility of much of the art, its fun aspect, its participatory forms, its fusion with new technologies and communicative networks. to me, however, the relevant answer is that contemporary art, when it is truly contemporary, offers responses to the conditions of contemporaneity, those in which we all live. aw: while students are flocking to contemporary art, few of the art history institutions are following them: many departments, research institutes, and journals want to foster scholarship in other areas. their thinking is something like this: perhaps the student who opts for late roman is the more independent thinker? who is more likely to come up with the next paradigm shift in art historical thinking? perhaps it will be a scholar of chinese notation systems. cj: actually, in china now many of those scholars also want to teach contemporary art and write about it. for art historians such as wu hung it has been liberating. yet there is a more general concern: the balkanization problems that have beset area studies in many disciplines have a particular resonance here. given the expectation that the scholar of contemporary art have a global understanding, one that goes beyond art that is already internationalist, how do you acquire sufficient specialized knowledge to be accurate and effective in your understanding of art from specific regions? aw: scholars are motivated to do research and publish ideas that will act as interventions to help change the world for the better. js: since the late 1960s, we expect that art will speak to its moment, in at least some way. coming into this workshop i had felt that doing contemporary art history is the most 45 hans-joachim müller, harald szeemann: exhibition maker (ostfildern-ruit and maidstone: hatje cantz and amalgamated book services, 2006). http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/� 3 2 c o n t e mp o r ane i t y i n t h e h i s t o r y o f a r t contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 1 (2011) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2011.32 challenging kind that one could undertake. after anne’s earlier comment, i now feel that it might be easier than tackling art from an earlier period. km: one of the results of modernism having come to an end is that unidirectional presumptions of historical progression have evaporated. one consequence is that we no longer feel so separated from past periods. premodern historical domains, especially, are more accessible than before (when we had to go through modernism to get to them). we inhabit “the end of time.” [the froth in the present.] audience member: what are artists saying that they do? how do they understand the contemporary? aa: actually, many of us teach in schools of art, many of our students are artists. cj: many artists today are into knowledge production: it is their main material. for example, two artists who often work in puerto rico (jennifer allora and guillermo calzadilla) subtlety protested the environmental pollution coming from a us base on the island by carving the soles of sneakers with messages to that effect. contemporaneity here is as important as it was to gericault’s raft of the medusa. whenever they or others walked the beaches, that knowledge was spread. in contrast, there are some scholars, such as whitney davis, urging us to concentrate on the norm, the ordinary, the boring stuff produced throughout the history of art and artifacts. aw: we need to be aware of the blindness of being in the present. “the contemporary” could turn out to be one of the great myths of our moment, our orientalism, our neoclassicism. real gericaults will appear when art meets lived experience. truth might appear in the guise of history painting. looking back people will say: when they used the term “contemporary” for good or ill, through their parapraxis, what were they disguising? audience member: to me, everyone on this panel is an artist. archives hold residues of the mind of the artist. as a sculptor i feel that writing about art should take on a more bottom-up, artist-oriented perspective. the theory party is over; it is time for intuition. js: we begin from what we cannot make sense of… audience member: what about the patronage of contemporary art? has it changed in character? cj: artists can strive to manage their own agendas, many do so very carefully, including — after a certain point — choosing those who will be their patrons. but the more interesting point is that some artists strive to set the terms on which their art becomes contemporary: bruce nauman, for example. ts: yes, on this level, it is becoming obvious that there is a recent history to setting the agenda of what counts as contemporary art. if we take the idea of patronage in its broader sense (that of the patriarch, the “father” whose role is to both provide for and oversee the fortunes of the “family”), then we can say that, since the 1950s, agenda-setting in the artworld has been done, in turn, by artists, critics, theorists (in parallel, often, with arts administrators), gallerists, curators, auction houses and collectors. after last year’s market implosion, it is not clear who will take up this role, or, indeed, if it will be taken up. to me, it is the art historian’s turn to clarify what is contemporary art — in an open-ended, not an exclusionary or hegemonic, way, in full awareness that history is no longer setting our disciplinary agenda. audience member: is jasper johns a contemporary artist? http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/� 3 3 t e r r y s m i t h contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 1 (2011) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2011.32 ts: not now, not for decades. he was a great innovator — along with many others, such as rauschenberg, oiticica, beuys, warhol, lewitt — within late modern art. he was highly alert, as they were, to the contemporaneity within it. (and to his contemporaneity with it — after all, he is the author of the painting from which he has taken a bite.) audience member: reading t.j. clark’s the sight of death leads me to ask: has the kind of time that has to be taken by a viewer of works of art changed in contemporary conditions?46 cj: jacques derrida’s memoirs of the blind would suggest that times and kinds of looking at art are not only subject to the conventions prevalent at any given time, but also that they can escape such determinations, and often do. 47 ts: contemporary art takes from its viewers some of the same times, but also offers many other different kinds of time: this is why, for instance, the installation has become so prevalent, and so varied as a format. at the same time, contemporary art is also giving back many and varied kinds of time. encounter, exchange, participation — these are becoming increasingly evident. this is just one of the senses in which, i believe, contemporaneity is contemporary art’s core subject, its main purpose, its definitive form. 46 t. j. clark, the sight of death: an experiment in art writing (new haven: yale university press, 2006). 47 jacques derrida, memoirs of the blind: the self-portrait and other ruins (chicago: university of chicago press, 1993). http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/� 3 4 c o n t e mp o r ane i t y i n t h e h i s t o r y o f a r t contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 1 (2011) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2011.32 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-noncommercial-no derivative works 3.0 united states license. this journal is operated by the university library system of the university of pittsburgh as part of its d-scribe digital publishing program, and is co-sponsored by the university of pittsburgh press. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/� http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/� http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/� http://www.pitt.edu/� http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/� http://www.upress.pitt.edu/upressindex.aspx� key themes papers and discussions session 1 — what is contemporaneity? terry smith — introduction: contemporaneity and contemporary art anne wagner — intersections between art history and contemporaneity: the everyday session 2 — contemporaneity with the west, other contemporaneities (1960s, 1989 to now) andrea giunta — argentina around 2000: some implications session 3 — contemporaneity within the modern, in the west, mostly peter galison — time in modern and contemporary physics caroline jones — blind epistemology in confrontation with contemporaneity joshua shannon — the contemporary art historian david summers — real spaces and contemporary art keith moxey — do we need another renaissance? public conversation (stone hill center) << /ascii85encodepages false /allowtransparency false /autopositionepsfiles true /autorotatepages /none /binding /left /calgrayprofile (dot gain 20%) 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<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> /enu (use these settings to create adobe pdf documents best suited for high-quality prepress printing. created pdf documents can be opened with acrobat and adobe reader 5.0 and later.) >> /namespace [ (adobe) (common) (1.0) ] /othernamespaces [ << /asreaderspreads false /cropimagestoframes true /errorcontrol /warnandcontinue /flattenerignorespreadoverrides false /includeguidesgrids false /includenonprinting false /includeslug false /namespace [ (adobe) (indesign) (4.0) ] /omitplacedbitmaps false /omitplacedeps false /omitplacedpdf false /simulateoverprint /legacy >> << /addbleedmarks false /addcolorbars false /addcropmarks false /addpageinfo false /addregmarks false /convertcolors /converttocmyk /destinationprofilename () /destinationprofileselector /documentcmyk /downsample16bitimages true /flattenerpreset << /presetselector /mediumresolution >> /formelements false /generatestructure false /includebookmarks false /includehyperlinks false /includeinteractive false /includelayers false /includeprofiles false /multimediahandling /useobjectsettings /namespace [ (adobe) (creativesuite) (2.0) ] /pdfxoutputintentprofileselector /documentcmyk /preserveediting true /untaggedcmykhandling /leaveuntagged /untaggedrgbhandling /usedocumentprofile /usedocumentbleed false >> ] >> setdistillerparams << /hwresolution [2400 2400] /pagesize [612.000 792.000] >> setpagedevice contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture vol 1 (2011) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2011.5 http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu transcultured architecture: mudéjar’s epic journey reinterpreted ila nicole sheren abstract the mudéjar phenomenon is unparalleled in the history of architecture. this style of architecture and ornamentation originated with arab craftsmen living in reconquered medieval spain. embraced by spanish christians, mudéjar traveled over the course of the next four centuries, becoming part of the architectural history of latin america, especially present-day mexico and peru. the style’s transmission across different religions and cultures attests to its ability to unify disparate groups of people under a common visual language. how, then, did mudejar managto gain popularity across reconquered spain, so much so that it spread to the new world colonies? in this article, i argue that art and architecture move more fluidly than ideologies across boundaries, physical and political. the theory of transculturation makes it possible to understand how an architectural style such as mudéjar can be generated from a cultural clash and move to an entirely different context. developed in 1947 by cuban scholar and theorist fernando ortíz, transculturation posited means by which cultures mix to create something entirely new. this process is often violent, the result of intense conflict and persecution, and one culture is almost always defeated in the process. the contributions of both societies, however, coexist in the final product, whether technological, artistic, or even agricultural. i argue that mudejar in latin america is a product of two separate transculturations: the adoption of arab design and ornamentation by spanish christians, and the subsequent transference of these forms to the new world through the work of indigenous laborers. about the author ila nicole sheren received her phd from mit's department of architecture in may 2011 and will be a mellon postdoctoral fellow at the university of toronto's jackman humanities institute. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/� contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 1 (2011) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2011.5 the mudéjar phenomenon is unparalleled in the history of architecture. this style of architecture and ornamentation originated with arab craftsmen living in reconquered medieval spain. embraced by spanish christians, mudéjar traveled over the course of the next four centuries, becoming part of the architectural history of latin america, especially present-day mexico and peru. the style’s transmission across different religions and cultures attests to its ability to unify disparate groups of people under a common visual language. to complicate matters further, mudéjar is an architectural style with no internal cohesion or governing theory, a term that, for some, fails to qualify as a “style” in itself. art and architectural historians speak of mudéjar “fragments” and “reminiscences,” describing wooden geometric ceilings or patterns of ornamentation rather than entire structures or building programs. how, then, did mudéjar manage to gain popularity across reconquered spain, so much so that it spread to the new world colonies? in this case, art and architecture move more fluidly than ideologies across boundaries, physical and political. the theory of transculturation makes it possible to understand how an architectural style such as mudéjar can be generated from a cultural clash and move to an entirely different context. developed by cuban scholar and theorist fernando ortíz in 1947, transculturation, as opposed to the then-prevalent theory of acculturation, posited means by which cultures mix to create something entirely new.1 mudéjar originated in medieval spain, shortly after the reconquista. this process is often violent, the result of intense conflict and persecution, and one culture is almost always defeated in the process. the contributions of both societies, however, coexist in the final product, whether technological, artistic, or even agricultural. i would argue that mudéjar in latin america is a product of two separate transculturations: the adoption of arab design and ornamentation by spanish christians, and the subsequent transference of these forms to the new world through the work of indigenous laborers. 2 during the moorish occupation of spain, many arab craftsmen were relocated to the territory, creating such iconic islamic structures as the great mosque of cordoba (784-987) and the fourteenth century alhambra palace in granada. after the spanish recaptured the territory in 1492, many of these muslims, now christianized, were allowed to stay and work in spain. the spanish themselves encouraged this dynamic to different ends, guaranteeing degrees of freedom for muslims. in 1267, the king of valencia issued a proclamation declaring that any muslim coming to the city would “remain there under protection…[and] ‘practice his craft.’”3 1 acculturation was first defined in the 1930s by the anthropological team of redfield, linton, and kerskovits; it “comprehends those phenomena which result when groups of individuals having different cultures come into continuous firsthand contact, with subsequent changes in the original cultural patterns of either or both groups.” robert redfield, ralph linton, melville j. herskovitz, “memorandum for the study of acculturation”american anthropologist 38, 1936: 149. 2 the spanish reconquista took several centuries, from the capture of toledo in 1085, seville in 1248, and finally, the capture of grenada in 1492. (see gonzalo m. borrás gualis, “mudéjar: an alternative architectural system in the castilian urban repopulation model” medieval encounters 12, 2006: 329-340). 3 robert ignatius burns, islam under the crusaders: colonial survival in the thirteenth-century kingdom of valencia (princeton: princeton university press, 1973), 98. transcultured architecture: mudéjar’s epic journey reinterpreted ila nicole sheren http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/� 1 3 9 i l a n i c o l e s he r e n contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 1 (2011) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2011.5 in toledo, the intention of king alfonso vi in his pact of 1085 was that the muslims would remain in the city following the conquest, their rights to retain property and worship publicly in their mosques guaranteed.4 it is important to note, however, that these rights and religious freedoms were granted only after the perception of a muslim threat had subsided. according to art historian david raizman, mudéjar “emerged not at the moment of conquest but more than a century later, when political and economic circumstances were more favorable to building, and when the incorporation or integration of islamic forms could be seen as the visible counterpart to the image of a cosmopolitan christian capital.”5 the term mudéjar comes from the arabic word mudayyan, literally “one permitted to remain.” the mudayyan, comprised largely of woodand stoneworkers, continued to exert their influence on the gothic and baroque styles under spanish rule. in spain, the adoption of mudéjar was a conscious display of power on the part of the ruling establishment. only when power was secured was tolerance extended toward muslims in the reconquered lands. 6 design elements such as muqarnas, islamicized horseshoe arches and geometrically patterned ceilings were often paired with baroque columns and gothic altarpieces within the same building. the term mudéjar began to be used, along with the terms “hispano-arabic art,” “hispano-muslim art,” and “moorish art,” to describe this style of ornamentation found in spain.7 coined in 1859 by the spanish scholar josé amador de los rios, mudéjar replaced “moor” and “arab” only after the religious and cultural heterogeneity of the islamic world became evident to those studying it. in 1990, the spanish architectural historian josé maria azcárate attempted to do away with the term “mudéjar” altogether, coining the phrase “arquitectura cristiana islamizada” (christianized islamic architecture) to replace it.8 the phrase was never fully accepted, but the term’s unwieldiness was not the only issue at hand; art historians argued that the new phrase served as a cultural reference while “mudéjar” functions to describe the visual arts.9 4 david raizman, “the church of santa cruz and the beginnings of mudéjar architecture in toledo,” gesta 38 (1999), 128-141. although azcárate’s term quickly faded into obscurity, the need for 5 raizman, “the church of santa cruz and the beginnings of mudéjar architecture in toledo,” 138. 6 although mudéjar ornamentation was originally attributed to muslim craftsmen, it is now known that christians, muslims and jews all worked on structures now considered to be mudéjar. 7 leon r. zahar, “los nombres del arte del islam,” artes de mexico 55 (2001), 38. “arab,” “muslim,” or “moor” became inadequate to describe this category of christianized muslims, and the earlier terms were gradually replaced by “mudéjar” in the scholarship. the result is that mudéjar can be used to describe a style of architecture and the people who originated it. today, “morisco/moor” and “mudéjar” are often used interchangeably, but there is disagreement on this distinction or lack thereof. 8 gonzalo m. borrás gualis, “introducción,” arte mudéjar (zaragoza: unesco & ibercaja, 1995), 19. this failed attempt to rename the style is also discussed in borrás gualis’ chapter “el arte mudéjar: estado actual de la cuestion.” in the book mudéjar iberoamericano: un expresión cultural de dos mundos (ignacio henares cuellar and rafael lópez guzmán, eds). 9 it may seem contradictory that an architectural historian proposed a cultural term to define an artistic style and thereby accrued criticism from the art and architectural history community. josé maria azcárate, however, is an architectural historian specializing in the spanish gothic and does not consider mudéjar an autonomous style. in any event, the attempt at changing the name did not succeed; “mudéjar” is still the term used today by spanish and latin american scholars. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/� 1 4 0 t r a n s c u l t u r e d a r c h i t e c t u r e contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 1 (2011) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2011.5 terminological clarification continued, raising questions as to mudéjar’s cultural and aesthetic origins. mudéjar was first characterized as a style in 1888, when the spanish art historian pedro de madrazo distinguished it as a widespread phenomenon, not just the signature work of certain artists or craftsmen.10 in calling it a style, de madrazo claimed for mudéjar the same significance that had previously been given to the baroque or the rococo. in the majority of examples, however, this autonomy was simply not observable. the greatest problem of this claim for stylistic independence was that mudéjar could co-exist with other styles in the same building. in this vein, it is possible to find examples of baroque structures with mudéjar ceilings and renaissance buildings with islamicized geometric ornament. from this perspective, it seems that mudéjar is not a style of its own, but rather certain elements of design that can coexist with the architecture of an established period. for spanish art historian gonzalo m. borrás gualis, mudéjar “always existed at the margins of western european architectural styles, which were reserved for cathedrals.”11 the question remains, though, as to what extent mudéjar can be considered islamic architecture. according to oleg grabar, the word “islamic” implies religion; it “misrepresents the values of an artistic creativity which was much richer than whatever is involved in religious thought…and which included aspects of life and forms of behavior incompatible with the precepts of the faith.” this description of mudéjar “at the margins” is not limited to europe; mudéjar existed on the periphery of spain in its new world colonies, as well as on the frontier of islamic architecture. 12 following this point, it is conceivable that islamic art could cover structures built by and for non-muslims, including the churches of the newly reconquered spanish cities. grabar, in an earlier work on islamic art, outlined three themes common to all art labeled “islamic”: social meaning, abstract ornament, and the tension between unity and plurality.13 mudéjar ornament engages the second two themes, albeit on a smaller scale than more traditional islamic art. by “social meaning,” however, grabar refers to islamic art and its tendency to monumentalize “more settings for social activities” than any other civilization since ancient rome.14 this function is absent from most mudéjar structures, which are primarily religious. grabar himself is unable to decide on mudéjar’s status, citing the “paradoxical ethos in which intense identification of differences between groups and allegiances…coexisted with open-minded cohabitation and creative inventiveness” on the spanish “frontier.”15 10 borrás gualis, “introducción,” 16. mudéjar architecture was originally considered to be the architecture (or crafts) of the moriscos, thus limited to a specific group of people. by the 1930s, however, ample evidence of christian artisans involved with the production of mudéjar works had been found in spain, and the term came to designate the moorish forms rather than the craftsmen themselves. for a fuller discussion of this, see david raizman, “the church of santa cruz and the beginnings of mudéjar architecture in toledo” in gesta 38(2), 1999, pages 128-141. in other words, mudéjar is the product of two conflicting interests 11 gonzalo m. borrás gualis, “mudéjar: an alternative architectural system in the castilian urban repopulation model,” medieval encounters 12 (2006), 336. 12 oleg grabar, “the aesthetics of islamic art,” islamic art and beyond: constructing the study of islamic art, vol. 3 (burlington, vt: ashgate, 2006), 335. the article was originally published in 1993. 13 oleg grabar, “what makes islamic art islamic?” islamic art and beyond: constructing the study of islamic art, vol. 3 (burlington, vt: ashgate, 2006), 248. in an essay published originally in 1976, grabar attempts to find the commonalities in all islamic art that fall outside the purview of religion. 14 ibid. 15 oleg grabar, “two paradoxes in the islamic art of the spanish peninsula,” the legacy of muslim spain, ed. salma khadra jayyusi (new york: e.j. brill, 1992), 590. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/� 1 4 1 i l a n i c o l e s he r e n contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 1 (2011) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2011.5 working together: spanish christians and conquered muslim workers. this “creative inventiveness” found on the frontier is not entirely different from literary theorist walter d. mignolo’s concept of “border thinking” – the specialized knowledge generated from the periphery or borderlands.16 transculturation is the process most accurately used to describe this movement of art and design across cultures. this term was coined by the cuban essayist, ethnomusicologist and scholar fernando ortíz, who dedicated his career to understanding all aspects of indigenous cuban culture. although mudéjar comes from the border zone of islamic art and architecture, it contributes another layer of meaning to islamic art as a whole. mudéjar and its process of transmission across cultures demonstrates how certain key features of islamic art transcend religion, culture and ideology. the resulting art belongs as much to the originating culture as it does the receiving one. following this argument, one can conclude that mudéjar may be claimed to be both islamic and european art. 17 in general, transculturation implies a natural tendency of people to resolve, rather than exacerbate, conflicts over time.18 with the rise of communication and technological innovation, the forces bringing cultures together are stronger than those pushing them apart.19 this kind of integrationism was intertwined with cuba’s political situation at the time, conceived as “the articulation of a republican citizenry, with equal civil, social, and political rights, freely manifesting its cultural heterogeneity.”20 as described in 2005 by felipe hernández, the process is multi-directional and endless, a series of interactions between cultural systems that is in opposition to unidirectional and hierarchical structures associated with claims to cultural authority.21 in his 1947 book cuban counterpoint: tobacco and sugar, ortíz laid out two examples of transculturation as it applied to cuban agriculture. tobacco, a crop native to the island but soon demanded by white settlers for its “medicinal properties,” underwent a transculturation of its own in moving from the new world to europe. 22 16 walter d. mignolo, local histories/global designs: coloniality, subaltern knowledges and border thinking (princeton: princeton university press, 2000), 5. in order to increase governmental revenue through taxation, european authorities justified smoking through a number of measures including exploiting its so-called health benefits. the end result was a product used in different ways (and for different purposes) according to the local customs. sugar, on the 17 july 16, 1881 april 10, 1969. although transculturation was coined to refer specifically to cuba and its indigenous people, the term has since been used to refer to the process of knowledge transmission between any two cultures. 18 “ethnoconvergence” is another term used in tandem with transculturation, referring to situations in which transculturation impacts ethnic issues. 19 fernando ortíz, cuban counterpoint: tobacco and sugar (new york: knopf, 1947), 102-103. 20 in 1947, cuba was in-between the two batista regimes and some manifestations of the popular will were allowed to take place. the cuban peoples’ party was formed that year, and fidel castro participated in the bogotazo uprising. rafael rojas, “fernando ortíz: transculturation and nationalism,” essays in cuban intellectual history (new york, palgrave macmillan, 2008). while rojas is making a nationalist claim rather than an aesthetic one, the connection between transculturation and the political system it has come out of is something not to be ignored. 21 felipe hernández. “introduction,” transculturation: cities, spaces and architectures in latin america (new york: rodopi, 2005), xi. 22 ortíz, cuban counterpoint: tobacco and sugar, 198. the european emphasis on the purported medicinal qualities of tobacco was an attempt to justify the act of smoking according to the prevailing renaissance morality. until then, smoking tobacco had been viewed as a pastime for criminals and the lower rungs of society. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/� 1 4 2 t r a n s c u l t u r e d a r c h i t e c t u r e contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 1 (2011) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2011.5 other hand, is found all over the world, but european colonists optimized its growing conditions in cuba, reapportioning large tracts of land for cultivation and relying on a large slave population for labor. the sugar-based economy on the island is a result of a three-way transculturation between europeans, africans, and native cubans. ortíz argued that in each of these cases, the end product belonged to no culture exclusively, but to all of them in part. the process he described is twofold: deculturation, the “loss or uprooting” of a previous culture, followed by neoculturation, the “consequent creation of new cultural phenomena.”23 to return to the example of mudéjar in spain, transculturation began as an attempt to re-appropriate islamic religious structures to christian purposes. rather than the wholesale destruction of mosques, the spanish rulers encouraged conversion of the buildings to churches. although the forms of worship taking place in mosques are vastly different from christian religious ceremonies, the basic plans of the buildings were retained. these “new phenomena” owe their existence to the original cultural conflict. 24 as stated earlier, the islamic design elements in mudéjar are geometric and abstract ornament, surface patterning, and the concept of unity, but what were the spanish contributions? the most visible contribution is that these islamic design elements can coexist with christian decoration and themes. mudéjar structures also boast a greater number of carved inscriptions than do christian buildings throughout the rest of europe, a direct result of islamic influence. on a much broader level, however, spain is integral to the development of mudéjar; similar architectural combinations failed to occur in other formerly islamic regions, such as sicily, the balkans, or even russia. as a result, each reconquered city in spain boasted several former mosques, as well as a number of secular buildings that provided a template for islamic ornamentation and design. the process of transculturation begins when one considers the interaction between the spanish and islamic contributions, and how they work together to create a new style. 25 the story of mudéjar is further complicated by its adoption in latin america. as stated earlier, josé amador de los rios originally defined mudéjar as limited to the architectural elements first developed by christianized muslims living in spain after the reconquista. for mudéjar to develop, the spanish had to be particularly receptive to outside influence. the prevailing christian architectural style at the time, the gothic, stressed height, light, and abstracted figuration. while spain adopted the gothic immediately following the reconquest, the recently converted mosques did not lend themselves to this style. with the abundance of pre-existing structures and workers trained in islamic ornamentation, the spanish were able to adopt the new forms once their power had been consolidated. the end product of this transculturation process is mudéjar – built by muslims, christians and jews for religious and secular purposes alike – a true hybrid architecture. 26 23 ortíz, cuban counterpoint, 102-3. the complexity of his argument is opposed to the simplicity of the dominant term at the time, acculturation, which referred to the complete submission of one culture to another. in his example, ortíz claimed that the acculturation model completely ignores the contributions of africans and cuban natives, not to mention the island of cuba itself. this fact is noteworthy because mudéjar was identified only in relation to the bodies of the workers who executed the work, rather than geographic location or patronage. in the 24 the spanish constructed entirely new buildings in the gothic style for the cathedral in each city. reconverted mosques were used primarily as subsidiary or parish churches. 25 grabar, “two paradoxes in the islamic art of the spanish peninsula,” 588. these regions had much stronger local culture, art and design than spain had prior to the muslim occupation. 26 borrás gualis, “introducción,” 16. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/� 1 4 3 i l a n i c o l e s he r e n contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 1 (2011) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2011.5 discussion of latin american mudéjar, the workers’ bodies (this time indigenous) once again define the style. with the capture of grenada in 1492, the reconquest of spain was complete, coinciding with columbus’ first voyage across the atlantic. at the same time that mudéjar emerged in europe, spain spread its influence to the new world. in its colonies in the americas, the spanish empire began a vast building program that included the construction of new cities. mudéjar, then gaining traction in spain, was one of the major styles exported to the colonies. with the addition of latin america to the story of mudéjar, new questions arise – how is latin american mudéjar related to the original in spain? how does it fit under the greater umbrella of “islamic” art and architecture? the church of san miguel in sucre, bolivia, provides an example of latin american mudéjar in situ. the open floor plan of this chapel is derived from spanish mosques and typical of mudéjar in latin america. its octagonal form and patterned wooden ceiling, or cubierta (covering) reflect the islamic preoccupation with geometry.27 many scholars, equating latin american mudéjar with that of spain, choose to use the same term when describing both regions. this terminological similarity fails to distinguish the islamic elements present in spain that differ from those appearing in the architecture of its former colonies. to differentiate the two phenomena, borrás gualis uses the term “pervivencias mudéjares,” (mudéjar survivals) stating that “it is impossible to apply the definition of mudéjar to the new world and other spanish territories.” the undersides of the supporting arches are carved with a vegetal motif that recalls the arabesque. around the octagonal dome are more wooden ceiling panels, each carved with a larger version of the dome’s cubierta. the expansion and multiplication of an initial pattern is a theme found throughout islamic art and architecture; san miguel is a direct inheritor of this tradition. these mudéjar elements are situated within a larger baroque framework. plain white stucco walls stand in direct contrast to the highly decorative woodwork, while the elaborate gilded altarpiece seems to provide a visual counterpoint. mudéjar and baroque coexist uneasily within the structure; white space and undulating masses compete with the intricate patterning, while the overall spectacle defies easy classification. 28 this discrepancy raises the issue of whether the story of mudéjar’s transplantation across the atlantic is one of artistic survival or of cultural memory. at stake here is a reinterpretation of the narrative of conquest, this time envisioned through the context of architectural style. although the words “reminiscences” and “survival” refer to the same phenomenon – the presence of mudéjar decorative elements in latin american architecture – they imply fundamentally different processes of change, one passive, the other active, one dominated by the conquerors, the other by the conquered. other scholars, including mexican art historian manuel toussaint, have pushed for usage of the term “reminisencias mudéjares” (mudéjar reminiscences) instead. it is not an accident that these two phrases have been chosen to describe the style. 27 the ceilings of many latin american churches have two shells, an outer and inner. for aesthetic effect, the inner shell was often intricately carved from wood. for a detailed mathematical investigation of islamic design, see chapter 2 of john r. moffitt’s, the islamic design module in latin america (2004). the book itself is an argument for pythagorean triangulation in hispano-islamic design “modules.” 28 borrás gualis, “introducción,” 28. this attitude reflects not only perceived architectural autonomy from spain, but also underscores the political distinctions as well. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/� 1 4 4 t r a n s c u l t u r e d a r c h i t e c t u r e contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 1 (2011) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2011.5 from a survey of the written material on latin american mudéjar, two distinct trajectories emerge from separate disciplinary foundations.29 the main focus of these narratives is the transmission of architectural forms from one culture to another. in the case of this style, origins and identity are inextricably linked to the methods of transmission between cultures. the first approach, typical of art historians, deals with the visual forms of mudéjar and the question of whether or not it constitutes an autonomous architectural style in latin america. the confusion of mudéjar’s origins and status in spain were only compounded by the journey across the atlantic. in general, art and architectural historians refer to mudéjar as it applies to the art forms, not the culture or the people that produced it. this school of thought is the one that deals most thoroughly with building types, materials, and classification of ornament.30 art historians also seek to contextualize latin american mudéjar within the established canon. the periods and dates involved are those specific to latin america, for the transmission of styles across the atlantic could take as long as fifty years to accomplish. 31 in spain, mudéjar coincided with the gothic, renaissance, and baroque, and mudéjar elements are found on buildings from each of these styles. officially, mudéjar ended with the expulsion of converted muslim craftsmen in the seventeenth century. in latin america, the style can be categorized as coexisting with the baroque,32 which generally falls into the colonial period (1492-1820), but because it was not tied to a particular ethnic group mudéjar has lasted well past the 18th century, even turning up in some present-day buildings as “neo-mudéjar.”33 the baroque was the main architectural style exported from spain at the height of its conquest, and consequently the majority of architecture and urban space fits into this period. the question remains, however, as to whether latin american mudéjar is a subcategory of the islamic art, european baroque34 29 for reference, see the artes de mexico issues devoted to mudéjar (#54 & 55, 2001) which contain articles related to the transmission debate, and also mudéjar iberoamericano: una expresión cultural de dos mundos, ed.ignacio henares cuellar and rafael lópez guzmán (granada: universidad de granada, 1993); arte mudéjar (zaragoza: unesco & ibercaja, 1995) contains country-specific articles detailing the differences in mudéjar throughout central america, south america, and the caribbean. for a site-specific study of mudéjar remains in latin america, see pablo c. de tante, “mudéjar reminiscences in queretaro,” mexican art and life, 5 (1939); for a more archaeological perspective, see t. b. irving, “mudéjar architectural remains in the americas,” muslim and arab perspectives 1 (1994); for an especially detailed survey of mudéjar’s history from spain to its arrival in latin america, see rafael lópez guzmán, arquitectura mudéjar: del sincretismo medieval a las alternatives hispanoamericas (madrid: ediciones cátedra, 2000). or whether it constitutes a style of its own. with latin 30 at this early point in the study of latin american mudéjar, however, the writing on this subject consists mainly of monographs rather than more theoretical works. art historians dealing with latin american mudéjar are still surveying the available material and attempting to catalogue and ultimately characterize the style. 31 rafael lópez guzmán, arquitectura mudéjar: del sincretismo medieval a las alternatives hispanoamericas (madrid: ediciones cátedra, 2000), 425. 32 1600-1720 are the generally accepted dates for european baroque; latin american baroque continued well into the 19th century, until the time of the major independence movements. 33 neo-mudéjar is both an extension of the mudéjar style in latin america and also a product of the revival movement that began in the late 19th century. it is telling that mudéjar was by then so accepted into local architectural history that it was considered among the “national” styles to be revived. 34 art historians developed the term “baroco-mudéjar” to describe the hybrid style. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/� 1 4 5 i l a n i c o l e s he r e n contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 1 (2011) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2011.5 american mudéjar, i would argue that rather than a single style, mudéjar of this region represents a hybrid of european, islamic and indigenous art. aside from the art historical debate as to the stylistic nature and categorization of mudéjar, cultural anthropologists and historians alike have dealt with the narrative of its origins in latin america. this narrative of mudéjar’s journey across the atlantic characterizes the cultural clash rather than simply describing the style’s visual qualities. the major latin american cultural contact theories of the twentieth century play a significant role, specifically fernando ortíz’ theory of transculturation and néstor garcía canclini’s work on hybrid cultures. these contact theories have helped to recast the story of mudéjar within the larger sphere of cultural contact and the transmission of ideas. transculturation looks at two sides: spain’s role as agent of artistic transmission and the style’s reception by indigenous peoples. the unique cultural interactions form the second step in the movement of islamic design elements and ornamentation to spanish architecture and, after conquest, to its colonies. in 1995, the theory of transculturation was updated to reflect the status of latin america as engendering a new kind of postmodernity. that year, néstor garcía canclini, in his influential study hybrid cultures, embraced the combinations of european and indigenous elements found in late twentieth-century latin american culture.35 that same year, ramon gutiérrez of the instituto de investigaciones geohistoricas de resistencia in argentina, in an article written for unesco, applied the transculturation theory to the origins of mudéjar. he described a process by which certain elements of the dominant culture are transferred to the occupied one. according to garcía canclini, the end result of transculturation is cultural hybridity, with disparate elements coexisting and uniting to form a distinct society. although this theory is a product of latetwentieth century postmodern thinking, it is a logical extension of ortíz’ transculturation, which was based on nineteenth-century observations. it is therefore not a stretch to apply the theory of transculturation to the transmission of mudéjar to latin america and even construe the early spanish colonial period as a precursor to the “hybrid cultures” model that exists today. 36 the process is not linear, and must be distinguished from simple transmission.37 gutiérrez traces the method of transculturation from spain to latin america and gives special agency to the institutions of the state and religion, which were the two most powerful spanish influences in the colonies.38 35 néstor garcía canclini, hybrid cultures: strategies for entering and leaving modernity, trans. christopher l. chiappari and silvia l. lópez (minneapolis: university of minnesota press, 1995). garcía canclini’s theory, especially his insistence that latin america and postmodern hybridity are inextricably linked, is one of the most widely accepted today. the process, as he describes it, is still poorly defined when applied to latin american mudéjar. a brief account of the mechanism is that certain elements of government, society, and art are better suited for the new territory and more readily adopted by the occupied culture. rather than engage in a struggle to regain dominance, the occupied culture accepts these elements, absorbing and appropriating them. eventually, these foreign elements are considered to be 36 ramon gutiérrez “transferencia y presencia de la cultura islamica en america latina a traves de la peninsula iberica.” arte mudéjar (zaragoza: unesco & ibercaja, 1995), 151. 37 ibid. 155. for ortíz’ initial theory of transculturation and how it differs from linear transmission, see his seminal work cuban counterpoint: tobacco and sugar, duke university press, 1995. 38 ramon gutiérrez “transferencia y presencia,” 156. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/� 1 4 6 t r a n s c u l t u r e d a r c h i t e c t u r e contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 1 (2011) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2011.5 an integral part of the culture, as if they had always been a part of it.39 the case of carpentry provides a concrete example of how this theory deals with mudéjar. carpentry was the most prominent medium for the style in latin america, for the vast majority of ceilingand balcony-work was made of wood. in the case of architecture, specifically, there is no way to predict which elements will survive the process of transculturation. to complicate matters further, mudéjar’s transculturation in latin america was already its second time passing through the mechanism. initially, islamic art and architecture had undergone the same process during the reconquista with the forced conversion of muslims and the adoption of islamic art into christian structures. 40 historian enrique capablanca traced the specific situation in cuba, where indigenous architecture was “practically naked” – a blank slate for spanish influence.41 mudéjar ceilings had already undergone the transculturation process from islamic architecture to that of spain. when the spanish settled in cuba their religious structures necessitated the kind of ornamentation and detail that, according to capablanca, was ill-suited to the austere nature of the indigenous structures.42 the dominant spanish culture stepped in to fill this void in the occupied culture. the natural abundance of wood in the caribbean, along with the suitability of mudéjar forms to this medium, allowed for the development of elaborate wooden ceilings. over time, the wooden ceilings “lost all the ideology carried with [them] from spain.”43 the previous narrative centered on the spanish side of transculturation, but there exists another approach – an indigenous-centered theory of the origins and transference of this building style. in other words, what did the native craftsmen in the americas add to latin american mudéjar? the most prominent theorist from this perspective, rafael lópez guzmán, a prominent spanish historian at the university of granada, writes of the “medieval syncretism between islam and hispanoamerica.” this claim by capablanca addresses the cuban appropriation of these previously spanish forms, although in reality the patterned ceilings have never lost the connotation with either spain or the islamic world. the ceilings are inextricably linked to the story of their transmission – the intricate ornamentation carries its history in the details. 44 39 gutiérrez, “transferencia y presencia de la cultura islamica en america latina a traves de la peninsula iberica,” 156-7. he and other scholars writing along these lines portray the indigenous craftsmen as the driving force behind the development of 40 rafael lópez guzmán, “mudéjar iberoamericano: una expresión cultural de dos mundos,” mudéjar iberoamericano: una expresión cultural de dos mundos, eds. ignacio henares cuellar and rafael lópez guzmán, (granada: universidad de granada, 1993), 191. for a detailed treatment of mudéjar carpentry see enrique nuere’s article “la carpinteria en españa y america a traves de los tratados,” mudéjar iberoamericano: una expresión cultural de dos mundos, eds. ignacio henares cuellar and rafael lópez guzmán (granada: universidad de granada, 1993). nuere stresses the importance of carpentry for the mudéjar while trying (and failing) to discover a link between the medium itself and the muslim religion. 41 enrique capablanca, “la carpinteria mudéjar en cuba.” mudéjar iberoamericano: una expresión cultural de dos mundos, eds. ignacio henares cuellar and rafael lópez guzmán (granada: universidad de granada, 1993), 233. here, the phrase “practically naked” (practicamente desnuda) is used to refer to the undecorated character of indigenous architecture and not as a derogatory comment on its quality. 42 ibid, 233. these structures were also impermanent, lavishing such ephemeral buildings with excessive detail would have been impractical at best. 43 ibid, 246. carpentry became not just a profession for white spaniards, but also a form of expression for native cubans. 44 rafael lópez guzmán, arquitectura mudéjar: del sincretismo medieval a las alternatives hispanoamericas (madrid: ediciones cátedra, 2000), 425. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/� 1 4 7 i l a n i c o l e s he r e n contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 1 (2011) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2011.5 mudéjar in this region. instead of focusing primarily on the continuance between spain and the new world, this approach deals with the stylistic changes that took place and the distinctions that separate latin american mudéjar from that of spain. according to lópez guzmán, the process of artistic transference was a two-way street, rather than the simple imposition of spanish art and culture on a receptive native people. as he states, “the indigenous craftsmen did not only dominate a series of techniques that were adapted to the necessities of the spaniards, but also knew perfectly the distinct species of trees and their construction possibilities.”45 in the case of this scholarly approach, specified knowledge grants agency to the occupied culture, not the conquering one. if knowledge is power, then the traditional roles become reversed, with the conquered craftsmen holding the keys to successful building in their environment, rather than having a building style imposed completely upon them.46 in the example of carpentry, the indigenous-centered approach would treat the same observation – the prevalence of wooden ceiling covers in mudéjar buildings – from an entirely different perspective. it would argue that the spaniards arrived in their colonies with certain ideas about architectural aesthetics, derived from their native architecture. when faced with the specifics of latin american climate and available building materials, the spanish had to access that specialized knowledge in order to build successfully. mudéjar ceilings were, as a result, constructed of wood, leading carpentry to become synonymous with latin american mudéjar. the problem is best stated by enrique nuere, professor of the history of construction at the escuela tecnica superior de arquitectura in madrid. he writes “carpentry may appear to be obviously mudéjar, but there is no apparent link to the environment of islam.” basically, carpentry’s association with islam in latin america is purely a function of its presence in mudéjar structures, rather than any inherent religious attributions to the properties of wood. 47 identification of the indigenous contribution to latin american mudéjar began as early as 1948 with alfred neumeyer’s attempts to define a true “mestizo” style. it has been argued that local woodcarvers in latin america, with their knowledge of native trees, would have adapted their indigenous woodworking techniques to the specific requests of the spaniards. 48 according to neumeyer, its roots were not to be sought primarily “in an adaptation of islamic-spanish mudéjar, or any other art style, but in that psychological situation created by the meeting of european christianity with indian paganism that must lead to specific visual concepts.”49 45 ibid, 455. indigenous people had access to information about the terrain and climate as well, factors that drastically affected the architectural outcome. 46 this is not a complete reversal of the power structure, since the style is still imported through the conquering culture, but it does grant the indigenous craftsmen a degree of agency not traditionally allotted to them in the other transmission theories. 47 enrique nuere, “la carpinteria en españa y america a traves de los tratados.” mudéjar iberoamericano: una expresión cultural de dos mundos, ed. ignacio henares cuellar and rafael lópez guzmán (granada: universidad de granada, 1993), 173. meaning there is nothing specifically “islamic” about carpentry. this is neither new nor groundbreaking. there are few, if any, architectural forms or elements that are considered to be fundamentally “islamic.” for the canonical work on this subject, see oleg grabar’s detailed analysis, the formation of islamic art (yale university press, 1978). 48 alfred neumeyer, “the indian contribution to architectural decoration in spanish colonial america,” the art bulletin 30 (1948), 104-121. see josé vasconcelos’ la raza cosmica (1925) for the original theory and definition of mestizaje, or the idea that all races would eventually blend into a single cosmic race to be located in latin america. 49 ibid, 108. native techniques and mudéjar form only provided basic patterns, while the final form was caused by new ideological configurations. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/� 1 4 8 t r a n s c u l t u r e d a r c h i t e c t u r e contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 1 (2011) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2011.5 indigenous workers could relate to spanish-islamic mudéjar ornament, as their own cultures had made use of geometric and abstract patterning. in many cases, such as the church of san miguel mentioned earlier, the woodcarving is flatter than similar patterns found in spain. the difference is in the execution of the forms and the aesthetic preferences of the workers themselves. vegetal ornament, such as flowers and leaves, also resembles its more abstract counterparts on indigenous temples and other building complexes.50 clearly, the issue here is one of agency; this indigenous-centered approach deals with questions of identity, both national and cultural. what are the relative roles of muslim, spanish, and indigenous workers, and how has it been possible for mudéjar to belong to all three cultures? more problematically, the separation of these distinct cultural identities is a shift away from the latin american ideological tendency to view the region as an undifferentiated mix of previously distinct cultures. it is now necessary to contend with these distinct identities, assessing the contributions of each when related to the whole of a style or movement. applying these approaches to the terminological confusion – reminisencias mudéjares versus pervivencias mudéjares – it is possible to examine how each of these labels can function as an appropriate characterization. the basic forms of islamic ornamentation survive the process of transculturation not once, but twice in order to exist in their latin american forms. reminiscencia (reminiscence) implies a passive process, while pervivencia (survival) refers to something more active. the word survival is a charged term, implying a struggle between cultures and, ultimately, the superiority of those artistic elements that remain. mudéjar is then the allegory of conquest played out in architectural forms. in this case, the mudéjar elements are reminders of the spanish past reinterpreted by indigenous builders and craftsmen through the agency of memory. for reminiscencia, however, the case could be argued instead that the fragments that survive are part of an inherited spanish cultural memory interpreted through the work of the indigenous culture. although reminiscence connotes a mostly passive process, it is the physical work of the indigenous craftsmen that remains, granting greater agency to the occupied culture. for the larger realm of art history, both terms seem too abstracted for the task at hand. in both cases – survival and reminiscence – the descriptive terms are more suited to a cultural understanding rather than a purely visual/art historical one. another major question arises when considering mudéjar as a process of transculturation, namely, the application of this ostensibly cuban theory to completely different cultures. some theorists have argued that transculturation was never intended to move beyond the cuban context, and that it must be continually redefined in order to apply to other situations.51 50 ibid, 113-115. such a narrow definition of transculturation, however, ignores ortíz’ original purpose with his theory – a more accurate description of the dynamics of cultural contact. the previous acculturation model granted no agency to the conquered or defeated culture, assuming that the conqueror completely absorbs the conquered. transculturation added much-need nuance to the field, and allowed an explanation for the new knowledge produced from the clash of cultures. when redefined for the current context – the transmission of architectural forms across different cultures and religions – this model accounts for the initial development of mudéjar and its transmission to the colonies. 51 silvia spitta, between two waters: narratives of transculturation in latin america (houston: rice university press, 1995), p. 6. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/� 1 4 9 i l a n i c o l e s he r e n contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 1 (2011) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2011.5 at this stage in the discourse a certain degree of fragmentation is inevitable. mudéjar, although a subject of serious study for well over a century, has only become a subject of importance in latin america over the last thirty years. this is in contrast to spain, where a serious discussion of mudéjar has been in place since the nineteenth century. the origins of mudéjar in spain open up the political and cultural issues pertaining to the reconquista and the forced conversion of muslims. research into its origins focuses on the moorish presence, the politics of conquest, and the assimilation of islamic subjects into spanish society.52 in the case of spain, mudéjar has been equated with the moorish craftsmen themselves; their presence within christian spain parallels the persistence of islamic design elements in the built environment. according to historians of mudéjar in spain, the resulting mudéjar style was more a product of political maneuvering than a mix of two cultures. the decision to allow the conquered muslims to remain in the country, coupled with reliance upon them for crafts and design, resulted in the mix of islamic and christian design forms. the bodies of the laborers are granted agency, as if the physical presence of muslim workers guarantees that the resulting structure is indeed “islamic.” confusing the subject further is the addition of christians and jews to the story of spanish mudéjar. only after the signatures of nonmuslim artisans were discovered on mudéjar woodcarvings was the term broadened to its present extent.53 in the case of the relationship between spain and its former colonies, mudéjar has had to navigate postcolonial discourses as well as the various approaches that have served islamic art history and spanish national history. theories of cultural contact have arisen to explain the architectural forms that developed in the wake of the conquest. transculturation, the complex intermingling of disparate cultural elements, has had a significant impact on the way that mudéjar’s journey from post-muslim spain to latin america has been reinterpreted. the words that have come to describe the distinct approaches, survival and reminiscence, reflect the end products of these processes. the fundamental question raised by the terminological distinction is more than the traditional one of agency – either of the conquering culture or the occupied one. it is also one of origins and the artistic nature of the mudéjar fragments themselves. mudéjar can be read as a record of the interactions between different cultures and a model for how cultural conflict can generate new knowledge. if the body of the worker determines the culture of an architectural style, then what culture can claim mudéjar? after the term was expanded past the strictly religious definition, it was possible for it to be recognized in latin america, where all mudéjar structures were built by non-muslims. this new knowledge, generated from the border, frontier, or periphery, illustrates how visual language – ornamentation and design – can be transmitted from one culture to another. the end result of such a journey is a connection between otherwise entirely disparate groups of people. in this case, mudéjar connects the architecture of the islamic world with that of latin america, two cultures that have little else in common. ortíz’ theory of transculturation allows for an understanding of how a style of art and architecture could adapt in the face of cultural conflict. islamic design and ornamentation survived religious persecution in europe and mass extinction in the new world colonies, becoming the style known throughout the spanish-speaking world as mudéjar. although it is possible to misuse the term transculturation, especially as it was originated to describe a specific cuban 52 see david raizman’s “the church of santa cruz and the beginnings of mudéjar architecture in toledo” (gesta, 1999) and katrin kogman-appel’s “hebrew manuscript painting in late medieval spain: signs of a culture in transition” (the art bulletin, 2002) for two good analyses of the origins of islamic design in spain. 53 raizman, “the church of santa cruz and the beginnings of mudéjar architecture in toledo,” 137. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/� 1 5 0 t r a n s c u l t u r e d a r c h i t e c t u r e contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 1 (2011) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2011.5 context, i would argue that the process is at the root of any extended clash of cultures. the result of transculturation is a hybrid product – tobacco and sugar in the case of cuba – that retains something of the originals. the give-and-take process that transformed agriculture on the caribbean island is fundamentally the same as that which produced mudéjar architecture in spain and latin america. transculturation is, in a sense, a precursor to late twentieth-century globalization. by understanding how this process worked historically, it is possible for us to gain new insight into the transcultural dynamics in progress today. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/� 1 5 1 i l a n i c o l e s he r e n contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 1 (2011) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2011.5 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-noncommercial-no derivative works 3.0 united states license. this journal is operated by the university library system of the university of pittsburgh as part of its d-scribe digital publishing program, and is co-sponsored by the university of pittsburgh press. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/� http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/� http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/� http://www.pitt.edu/� http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/� http://www.upress.pitt.edu/upressindex.aspx� << /ascii85encodepages false /allowtransparency false /autopositionepsfiles true /autorotatepages /none /binding /left /calgrayprofile (dot gain 20%) /calrgbprofile (srgb iec61966-2.1) /calcmykprofile (u.s. web coated 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/hrv (za stvaranje adobe pdf dokumenata najpogodnijih za visokokvalitetni ispis prije tiskanja koristite ove postavke. stvoreni pdf dokumenti mogu se otvoriti acrobat i adobe reader 5.0 i kasnijim verzijama.) /hun 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/pdfxoutputintentprofileselector /documentcmyk /preserveediting true /untaggedcmykhandling /leaveuntagged /untaggedrgbhandling /usedocumentprofile /usedocumentbleed false >> ] >> setdistillerparams << /hwresolution [2400 2400] /pagesize [612.000 792.000] >> setpagedevice vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.87 http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu on the coevalities of the contemporary in cambodia review: sampot: the collection of small things by chan dany roger nelson abstract a review of visual artist chan dany’s solo exhibition sampot: the collection of small things, held at sa sa bassac gallery in phnom penh from may 23 to july 28, 2013, incorporating some reflections on contemporaneity in cambodia. about the author roger nelson is an independent curator and a phd candidate at the university of melbourne, australia researching contemporaneity and recent cambodian art. he is based in phnom penh, cambodia. contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2014.87 chan dany’s second solo exhibition in phnom penh, sampot: the collection of small things, was a testament to the artist’s avowal that he is “very interested in anything that is very beautiful (ស្អាត sa’aat), anything that is wanted by people.”1 chan’s finely detailed and alluringly sparkling works embody an aesthetic of playful exuberance popular among (or “wanted by”) many urban young people in cambodia. i view chan’s exhibition as an articulation of contemporaneity in cambodia that reveals at once the country’s rapidly changing relationship to global markets, as well its deep links with history, particularly of the colonial period.2 in this essay, i will draw extensively on conversations with chan,3 as well as advance some tentative propositions on the nature of the contemporary in the cambodian context. chan was born in 1984 in prey veng, a province east of phnom penh, and has lived and worked in the capital since 1999. he has exhibited nationally since 2003 and internationally since 2008, including in historically significant cambodian exhibitions such as in transition at reyum institute in 2006, as well as in strategies from within, curated by i acknowledge the continuing sovereignty of the wurundjeri people of the kulin nations as the indigenous owners of the land, in melbourne, australia, where this paper was written. as is customary, i offer my respects to the wurundjeri elders, past and present. i am grateful to the artists and curators chan dany (!ន់  !នី), khvay samnang (ៃខ#  សំ#ង), lim sokchanlina (លីម  សុខ$ន់លី)), erin gleeson and vuth lyno (វុធ  លីណ$) for conversations during 2012, 2013 and 2014 that have assisted in the development of many of the ideas i articulate here. thanks also to vuth lyno for advice on some translations, and to chum chanveasna (ជុំ  ច័ន$%ស')  at sa sa bassac for access to gallery archives, and for kindly supplying the images reproduced here. an earlier version of this essay was presented in 2013 as a paper at the 4th annual international siem reap conference on special topics in khmer studies, titled don’t abandon the indirect road: divergent approaches to cambodian visual culture, convened by the centre for khmer studies, the friends of khmer culture incorporated, the university of sydney, the école française d’extrême-orient, and the apsara national authority. i am grateful to the conference organizers and for comments offered by conference attendees. i would also like to thank the anonymous contemporaneity reviewer for invaluable contributions. in this essay, cambodian family names precede first names. 1 chan dany, conversation with the author, july 2013. all references to chan dany are from conversations with the author in phnom penh during 2012, 2013 and 2014. unless otherwise noted, all translations from khmer to english are by the author. 2 by contemporaneity, i refer broadly to the nature of current conditions, especially as compared to past historical epochs, and also to attitudes and approaches toward the experience of the present time. defining contemporaneity is a particularly complex task, which may explain why so many critics and scholars use the term without any attempt at explanation. i offer this short sentence as a gesture at minimizing misunderstanding, while also recognizing that—in the words of geeta kapur—”the term contemporary gives a definitional ambiguity to the present.” geeta kapur, when was modernism: essays on contemporary cultural practice in india (new delhi: tulika books, 2007 [2000]), 276. 3 for a discussion of the importance of the testimony of the artist in settings that largely lack written archives, see: nora a. taylor, “the southeast asian art historian as ethnographer?”, third text 25, no. 4 (2011): 475-488. on the coevalities of the contemporary in cambodia review: sampot: the collection of small things by chan dany roger nelson 1 9 5 r o g e r n e l s o n contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.87 biljana ciric in shanghai in 2008, and in 2013’s art basel hong kong.4 chan is one of very few exhibiting cambodian artists born since the 1979 fall of the khmer rouge regime to consistently utilize “traditional” cambodian imagery: that is, forms of ornamentation that have been continuously in use for centuries. a significant contributor to chan’s interest in cambodian traditions is his education at phnom penh’s important but now-defunct reyum institute. as will be discussed below, this education provided chan with a locally unique opportunity to explore a variety of styles including cambodian traditions, drawing from life, and “free” experimentation. in neighboring vietnam and thailand, as elsewhere in southeast asia and asia more broadly, contemporary artists—including of chan’s generation—regularly draw on inherited visual languages and traditions.5 the comparative rarity of such practices in cambodia is a rich site for future discussion, beyond the scope of this essay. the unusual nature of colonial policies in cambodia (as compared to elsewhere in former indochina), as well as more recent ruptures in the narrative of modernity (most notably pol pot’s declaration of “year zero” in 1975), are surely key contributors to this comparative rarity, as is the nature of systems of patronage that have developed in recent decades, both for practices termed “contemporary art” and for those deemed “traditional crafts.” 4 chan was selected by the website cool hunting as a highlight of “the asian component.” see josh rubin, “art basel hong kong: east. highlights from the asian component of the recent fair,” cool hunting, may 30, 2013, http://www.coolhunting.com/culture/art-basel-hong-kong-east.php. 5 for a broader discussion of what is termed “neotraditonalism” in asian art (although without consideration of the case of cambodia), see john clark, modern asian art (sydney: craftsman house, 1998), 71-87. see also john clark, asian modernities: chinese and thai art compared, 1980 to 1999 (sydney: power publications, 2010), 89-93 and 140-43. for a discussion of the shifting ideological functions of “tradition” in the contemporary context, see kapur when was modernism, esp. 267-282. figure 1 chan dany, sampot: the collection of small things, sa sa bassac, phnom penh. installation view. photograph by lim sokchanlina. courtesy of the artist and sa sa bassac. 1 9 6 o n t h e c o e v a l i t i e s o f t h e c o n t e m p o r a r y i n c a m b o d i a contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.87 most regularly exhibiting artists of chan’s generation (and there are presently a few dozen) work with photography, video, performance or participatory practice, or else make paintings that are usually figurative and reminiscent of expressionism and surrealism. by contrast, chan’s practice, in various media, is consistently based in designs drawn from the khmer kbach (ក្បាច់), a codified system of design and ornamentation found throughout cambodia and in neighboring areas. the khmer kbach originated more than a millennium ago, and its dozens of design forms are still in regular use today in architecture, painting, carving and textiles.6 although closely associated with the decoration of temples, the kbach is not strictly a religious form. as shall be seen below, kbach designs are today used to embellish all manner of surfaces, including paving tiles. chan’s detailed knowledge of and near-exclusive use of kbach, as well as his non-fluency in english and his disinclination to travel, make him unusual among his generation of exhibiting artists in cambodia. most are generally more cosmopolitan in outlook, and well-networked with artists and spaces internationally, particularly in southeast and east asia, north america and (to a lesser degree) europe. in sampot: the collection of small things, ten equally sized works were evenly spaced in the white cube of sa sa bassac, a gallery and resource center in central phnom penh 6 chan vitharin and preap chanmara, kbach: a study of khmer ornament, ed. ly daravuth and ingrid muan, trans. ingrid muan (phnom penh: reyum, 2005), i-v. figure 2 chan dany, sampot: the collection of small things (diamond in the flower), 2013. lycra, lace, plastic beads, sequins, cotton thread. 100 x 150 cm. photograph by lim sokchanlina. courtesy of the artist and sa sa bassac. 1 9 7 r o g e r n e l s o n contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.87 that operates on both a non-profit and commercial basis.7 nine works hung in portrait orientation along the gallery walls, and one lay flat on a low platform on the floor (fig. 1). as suggested by the exhibition’s title, the works were based on the form of the sampot, a rectangular cloth worn by men and women throughout much of south and southeast asia. according to a short catalogue produced by the gallery for the exhibition, the “common sampot hol has over 200 codified patterns, which vary by region in terms of their geometric and organic lines, lattices, stars and dots, flora and fauna motifs.”8 a sampot is always more intricately patterned along its bottom edge, nearest to the wearer’s feet. with this in mind, chan has embellished the lower section of each of the ten works exhibited. the sole horizontally oriented piece, sampot: the collection of small things (diamond in the flower) (2013), is decorated along its longer edge: the artist explains that it can thus be thought of as a kind of short skirt, of the style he observes are now worn by more “modern” (ទំនើប tomnerb) young women (fig. 2). chan’s interest in habits of dress is symptomatic of a larger issue: the coevality of ancient and new cultural forms.9 in contemporary cambodia, most young men and women tend to dress in what they generally refer to as “foreign/western” (!"ំង  barang) or “modern” styles of clothing, except for at special occasions such as weddings. many older women, though, continue to wear the sampot daily (as well as other traditional garments, such as the krama checkered scarf). this concurrence of old and new ways of dressing is a small but revealing example of the multiplicity of experiences comprising contemporaneity in cambodia.10 the convergence of influences is complicated by the relationship between older generations and those born after the fall of the khmer rouge, as well as by the marked divide between urban and rural lifestyles, and the growing gap between rich and poor. in inviting his audiences to look closely at and think deeply about the sampot, chan prompts a meditation on clothing as an emblem of shifting attitudes and aesthetics, which in turn will lead some viewers to ponder the larger changes to which it points.11 of course, the artist is also proudly celebrating the rich tradition of textile designs in his country, which continues to be a source of pride for young people, and of inspiration for the country’s fast-growing fashion industry.12 7 an eleventh work was created for the series, but not included in the exhibition. its title is sampot: the collection of small things (diamond in the flower ii), 2013. 8 sa sa bassac [erin gleeson], sampot: the collection of small things, exh. cat., phnom penh: sa sa bassac, 2013, n.p. also available online, <http://sasabassac.com/exhibitions/20_sampot/sampot.htm>. 9 one possible inspiration for chan’s interest in clothing, and in what it can tell about history and culture, is a publication by reyum publishing, which was affiliated with the reyum institute, where chan studied. likely the only monograph on this topic, it is: chea narin, chea sopheary, kem sonine and preap chanmara, seams of change: clothing and the care of the self in late 19th and 20th century cambodia, ed. ly daravuth and ingrid muan, trans. ingrid muan (phnom penh: reyum publishing, 2003). 10 for a broader discussion of the ways in which dress reflects and articulates historical and especially political contexts, see mina roces and louise edwards, “trans-national flows and the politics of dress in asia and the americas,” in the politics of dress in asia and the americas, ed. mina roces and louise edwards (eastbourne, uk and portland, or: sussex academic press, 2010 [2007]), 1-18. 11 interestingly, the sole khmer language review of the exhibition opens with a lengthy discussion of the place of the sampot in present-day dress. េ"ក  សុរ$%  [laok sorita],  “គំនូរស'ីពីសំពត់ែខ.រ/ត0វ2ន3ំងប67ញ”   [“komnuu sdey pi sampot khmer trew baan tang bonghaan” “paintings about khmer sampot were shown”], khmer daily, 17 july 2013. 12 for example, from 2014, national fashion festivals will be held three times; previously there was only one annually. 1 9 8 o n t h e c o e v a l i t i e s o f t h e c o n t e m p o r a r y i n c a m b o d i a contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.87 the artist’s choice of materials is revealing of cambodia’s rapidly transforming yet still volatile relationship to the globalized economy. the works shown in sampot: the collection of small things are all made with brightly colored fabric stretched over a rectangular frame, and each is adorned with sequins, beads and thread, as well as lace and other fabrics in some works. the alluring sparkle of the works recalls the jeweled and gold-encrusted costumes traditionally worn by dancers in cambodia’s royal ballet. yet the glittering appearance of the works can also be seen as reflecting a kind of aesthetic of exuberance and even excess, typical of newer trends popular among urban cambodians of chan’s generation. born in the aftermath of war, many have experienced a recent and rapid increase in access to new products and technologies, as well as disposable income, engendering myriad cultural changes in cambodia’s cities that are closely watched by many young artists.13 while many artists are roundly critical of transformations in urban environments, in conversation chan prefers to stress that “in many cases, new development is a positive thing;” an enthusiasm seemingly shared by many of his age in phnom penh.14 13 little sustained scholarly attention has been paid to this phenomenon to date, despite a growing body of journalistic coverage. it is artists, especially in phnom penh, who are among the most active in charting unfolding changes in youth culture. early examples include the performance and photography series my motorbike and me (2009) by lim sokchanlina and the painting series in the club (2011) by ouk sochivy (អ៊ុក  សុជីវ&).  more recently, photographs by kim hak  (គឹម  !ក់)  and lim sokchanlina depict new fashions and recreational activities observed at koh pich (diamond island), a popular youth hangout in phnom penh. 14 roger nelson, “interview: chan dany,” in phnom penh: rescue archaeology. contemporary art and urban change in cambodia, ed. erin gleeson (berlin: ifa [institut für ausländsbeziehungen], 2013), 27. translation by vuth lyno. figure 3 chan dany, kbach phni vois (wooden door), 2008. colored pencil shavings, wood, glue. 200 x 100 x 3 cm. collection of richard w. rouse. courtesy of the artist and sa sa bassac. 1 9 9 r o g e r n e l s o n contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.87 the use of fabrics and embroidery in sampot: the collection of small things marks a shift from chan’s prior solo exhibition—consisting of small gouache paintings on paper—and also from his ongoing use of pencil shavings pasted on wood as a medium for kbach designs (fig. 3).15 chan’s pause from working with pencil shavings was prompted in part by a problem with supply. he prefers to use pencils with flat-edged wooden cylinders, as the shavings from these form an agreeably crinkled pattern. but for several months during 2012, chan’s preferred kind of pencils was not available anywhere in phnom penh. this is a common predicament. although large supermarkets and malls have become more prevalent in the last half-decade or so, offering an unprecedented array of consumer items sourced from all over the world, chan’s temporary inability to find quality hexagonal pencils is somehow still unsurprising.16 cambodia lacks a dedicated supplier of fine art materials, delivery of mail is often unreliable, and supply of specialty items is unpredictable. although contemporary cambodia’s participation in the neoliberal global economy is unmistakably increasing, its integration into international markets remains partial and inconsistent, a situation that is reflected in the materials available for chan to use. 15 one of the only published reviews of chan’s work has suggested that the artist’s use of pencil shavings was an “idea…born [sic] of thrift” (rebecca catching, “earth, water and fire,” review of accumulations, a group exhibition curated by erin gleeson, art slant, november 18, 2009. <http://www.artslant.com/ew/articles/show/11594>). in conversation with me, the artist has insisted that in fact his use of pencil shavings was an idea borne of a desire to innovate, and thereby to please his teachers at the reyum institute. 16 lucky market was the first supermarket in cambodia, opening in phnom penh in 1993. see http://www.luckymarketgroup.com/home.html. for further discussion of the rapid changes in conditions and availability of goods in phnom penh, see milton osborne, phnom penh: a cultural and literary history (oxford, uk: signal books, 2008). for a discussion of changes in the appearance of cambodian shops and marketplaces, see ingrid muan, “selling space: socialism and signage in phnom penh after the khmer rouge,” udaya. journal of khmer studies 6 (2005): 69-82. figure 4 chan dany, sampot: the collection of small things (raindrops on the wave), 2012. lycra, lace, plastic beads, sequins, cotton thread. 100cm x 150cm. detail. photograph by lim sokchanlina. courtey of the artist and sa sa bassac. 2 0 0 o n t h e c o e v a l i t i e s o f t h e c o n t e m p o r a r y i n c a m b o d i a contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.87 with an increased availability of consumer goods come both opportunities and challenges. this familiar tension is reflected in the glittering surfaces of chan’s works. the gem-like plastic beads, sparkling sequins, brightly colored synthetic fabrics, and fine laces that chan favors are now widely available in local open-air markets in phnom penh, and at affordable prices; according to my conversations with market sellers, most are imported from elsewhere in asia. but just a few years ago, such goods were hard to find in cambodia, and harder still for an artist like chan to afford. yet alongside the expansion in this popular market comes a surge in investment from high-end luxury goods manufacturers. in 2013, the multi-billion dollar us-based jewelry company, tiffany & co, announced that it was constructing a diamond-polishing factory in cambodia. manufacturing bosses predictably insisted that the renewed interest from high-end companies is further reason to keep factory workers’ wages low.17 contemporary cambodia (like countless other places, but perhaps more so than many) is caught between at times sharply opposing interests. chan’s use of newly available imported fabrics—including synthetic versions of european-style lace (fig. 4)—to create forms of kbach known in cambodia for centuries is a visual manifestation of this conflicted and contradictory contemporaneity, albeit a quiet and indirect one. after all, for centuries kbach were rendered by hand through laborious processes using mostly precious and/or permanent materials. chan’s process remains laborious and his designs follow ancient 17 keith bradsher, “hello, cambodia,” the new york times, april 9, 2013, b1. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/09/business/global/wary-of-events-in-china-foreign-investors-head-tocambodia.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0> figure 5 designer unknown, unnamed khlaong twie (pagoda entrance gate), koh pich (diamond island), phnom penh, 2013. photograph by roger nelson. 2 0 1 r o g e r n e l s o n contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.87 codified patterns, yet his materials are mass-produced and foreign in design and manufacture. the artist’s attitude, which seems widely shared, is that the mass-production of a material does not necessarily diminish its value or appeal. the exhibition’s aesthetic is at once transnational and uniquely cambodian; perhaps sampot: the collection of small things can be understood as an expression of what has been termed “cosmopatriotism.”18 this hybrid quality is popular among young cambodians and prized by chan. for example, on phnom penh’s koh pich (diamond island), a favorite destination for teenagers and 20somethings, reinventions of ancient khmer temples stand alongside a grecian-style columned city hall that is a reproduction of similar buildings in the us, themselves modeled on european antecedents. nearby, a newly erected khlaong twie (pagoda entrance gate) glows brightly: it is made from illuminated plastic and colored electric lights, in a manner that is popular in neighboring thailand, yet previously unknown in cambodia. traditionally, such structures are built from concrete or stone. yet despite its novel use of materials, this new khlaong twie faithfully reproduces the ancient khmer kbach designs. it looks perfectly at home in a privately owned but publicly accessible space that is variously decorated with french-style statuary and a polystyrene model of the preah vihear temple (located on the contested border with thailand), all standing on cambodian paving tiles bearing kbach designs (fig. 5)19. this is a place that chan enthusiastically enjoys and visits often. chan’s exhibition can be seen as a comparable expression of hybrid contemporaneity, utilizing both novel materials and ancient designs.20 it is important to remember, though, that this blending of traditional khmer forms, including kbach, with new materials and designs is by no means a recent development. scholars of the postcolonial sometimes tend to overstate the novelty of hybridity; while it is an important and revealing phenomenon, it is certainly not a new condition, nor one limited to the postcolonial era. in her detailed study of the french colonial period in cambodia, penny edwards describes numerous cases of collaborative exchange between the colonizers and the colonized. one particularly memorable example is in the joint planning of the royal palace in phnom penh. according to edwards, the french insisted on a more solid method of construction than the traditional wood, while the cambodians adapted new materials to suit their own preferences and requirements.21 and it is not only in architecture that a transnational and intercultural exchange can be observed, dating back to the colonial era and beyond. many of the performing arts, widely held to be uniquely khmer, can also be seen to be of mixed origins, and deeply interconnected with comparable forms in neighboring 18 jeroen de kloet and edwin jurriëns, “introduction” to cosmopatriots: on distant belongings and close encounters, ed. jeroen de kloet and edwin jurriëns (amsterdam and new york: rodopi, 2007): 9-18. 19 the space is not fenced, and is visited by hundreds of people daily, much like a public park. yet when photographing this structure, i was approached by a private security guard and ordered to put away my camera and move on. 20 my conception of hybridity is informed in part by nikos papastergiadis’s notion that “the concept of hybridity can be used to illuminate three levels of cultural transformation: effects, processes, and critical consciousness.” that is, contemporary culture itself can be seen to be hybrid, as can the practices of artists such as chan who engage with that cultural hybridity. see nikos papastergiadis, cosmopolitanism and culture (cambridge, uk and maiden, ma: polity press, 2012), 117. 21 penny edwards, cambodge: cultivation of a nation, 1860-1945 (honolulu: university of hawai’i press, 2007): 40-64. 2 0 2 o n t h e c o e v a l i t i e s o f t h e c o n t e m p o r a r y i n c a m b o d i a contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.87 countries.22 moreover, approaches to textiles can be seen to share numerous similarities across national borders within southeast asia (and beyond).23 chan’s blending of khmer kbach forms with imported decorative fabrics reflects the increasingly globalized nature of the contemporary marketplace in cambodia, while also continuing a long-standing tradition of transnational transaction. chan’s exhibition displays further connections with the colonial era in the artist’s method of composition. the artist plans each work in its totality, as a whole image, before then filling in the often intricate detailing within the frame. because he is working with industrially produced materials, many of which have their own pre-existing patterning, the final form of chan’s works is ultimately determined by the interplay between the artist's initial design, and the patterning on the fabrics he is using. crucially, chan explains that this mode of composition is derived not from the codified traditions for working with khmer kbach, but rather from his classes in “modern drawing” (គំនូរេមើលេឃើញ   komnuu merl-khern, as it was termed at his school24): that is, drawing from life. and so, chan is using a compositional method that he regards as “modern” and “western”—derived from drawing from life—in order to create an artwork that uses both new and ancient design forms from cambodian and other sources. this is a quintessentially hybrid mode of practice. drawing from life is a compositional method that was first introduced to cambodia by the french, who also strictly controlled its use by cambodian artists, in a manner that sharply distinguished cambodia from the rest of indochina under colonial rule. this dynamic is detailed in the late ingrid muan’s rich study of the establishment of formal art education during the colonial period. the french authorities displayed a marked anxiety about the “destruction” of “traditional” cambodian art by introduced forms, and as such forbade their intermixing.25 chan’s use of a colonially introduced method of composition to plan an image based on ancient khmer kbach forms can thus be read as constituting both a deep link with and an implicit challenge to the colonial art education system in cambodia. in planning his works as he was taught to plan a drawing from life, and then filling in details with forms he was taught in classes on kbach, chan’s hybrid approach transgresses the rules established by the french colonizers and still often enforced in the cambodian university system today. the implied continuity between the colonial era and the present, discernable in chan’s use of “modern drawing” compositional techniques for working with kbach forms, is noteworthy in two ways. firstly, it serves as a counter to the pervasive tendency to regard the contemporary as having emerged either from euro-american modernism or else almost out of nowhere, or to blindly accept that—in the at once truistic and arguably ahistorical words of terry smith (although any number of similar examples from other scholars could 22 this is the case throughout southeast asia. see matthew isaac cohen and laura noszlopy, “introduction: the transnational dynamic in southeast asian performance,” in contemporary southeast asian performance: transnational perspectives, ed. matthew isaac cohen and laura noszlopy (newcastle upon tyne, uk: cambridge scholars publishing, 2010), 1-24. 23 see jane puranananda, ed., the secrets of southeast asian textiles: myth, status and the supernatural: the james h.w. thompson foundation symposium papers (bangkok: the james h.w. thompson foundation, 2007). 24 ingrid muan, in her detailed study of the establishment of formal art education under the french protectorate, contends that គំនូរេមើលេឃើញ  komnuu merl-khern (usually translated as “modern drawing” or “modern painting,” although a more literal translation would be “painting look and see”) is a term that was first developed in the mid-20th century. see ingrid muan, “citing angkor: the ‘cambodian arts’ in the age of restoration 1918-2000” (phd diss., columbia university, 2001), 273-275.   25 ibid., 20-28. 2 0 3 r o g e r n e l s o n contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.87 have been chosen)—“things really are different than they were before.”26 it should be noted that elsewhere smith argues convincingly for a more nuanced sense of the multiplicity of the contemporary, noting the persistence of modes of being from the past, and suggesting that “distinctive temporalities coexist in their distinctive otherness.”27 the apparent incongruity between these two attitudes—one of sweeping generalization, and the other of sensitivity to difference—is by no means limited to smith. indeed, he is far more alert to the continuing presence and importance of the past within the present than many commentators on contemporaneity. but the notion that the present is somehow so radically novel as to be disconnected from the past is insidiously rife in experiences of and commentary on contemporary life and contemporary art. it is a notion that chan’s exhibition elegantly unsettles. careful attention to important but overlooked historical continuities can mitigate against this sense of rupture. more specifically, though, to discern a suppressed continuity between the colonial and the contemporary eras is of particular significance in cambodia, given the near-complete annihilation of known culture during the khmer rouge’s 1975-79 regime. it is widely believed that 90 per cent of all artists and intellectuals were killed or exiled during those years. this throws into stark relief the latent progressivist eurocentrism of smith’s repeated assertion that “the shift…from modern to contemporary art” was “nascent during the 1950s, emergent in the 1960s, contested during the 1970s, but unmistakable since the 1980s.”28 such a statement elides the significant extent to which the experience of those decades was radically different in different parts of the world. the 1970s in cambodia were “contested” in a tragically singular manner. and despite the global economy’s “unmistakable” incursions during the 1990s and 2000s, there is much in cambodian art and culture that remains unchanged, alongside and in inter-animating relationship with those “things” that “really are different than they were before.” the serious flaws in smith’s periodization when applied to cambodia (and many other locations in the “postcolonial constellation”) suggest that the relationship of the modern to the contemporary is more usefully conceived in paradigmatic terms.29 indeed, smith himself has elsewhere succinctly observed that the “worldwide shift from modern to contemporary” has definitively not “occurred in the same way, much less at the same time, in each cultural region and in each art-producing locality across the world,” arguing instead that this shift “occurred—and continues to occur—in different ways and to varying degrees.”30 such a conception is infinitely preferable to smith’s sweeping periodization, quoted above. notably, in the article in which smith proposes this more modulated view that emphasizes “different ways and . . . varying degrees,” he also modifies his periodization. in this article, he argues that the “worldwide shift from modern to contemporary . . . was prefigured in some late 26 terry smith, thinking contemporary curating (new york: independent curators international, 2012), 179. 27 terry smith, “currents of world-making in contemporary art,” world art 1, no. 2 (september 2011): 175. 28 terry smith, what is contemporary art? (chicago: university of chicago press, 2009), 5. smith repeats this assertion, word for word, in terry smith, “the state of art history: contemporary art,” art bulletin 92, no. 4 (2010): 369. 29the term is borrowed from okwui enwezor, “the postcolonial constellation: contemporary art in a state of permanent transition,” in antinomies of art and culture: modernity, postmodernity, contemporaneity, ed. terry smith, okwui enwezor and nancy condee (durham and london: duke university press, 2008): 207-245. 30 smith, “currents of world-making,” 177. 2 0 4 o n t h e c o e v a l i t i e s o f t h e c o n t e m p o r a r y i n c a m b o d i a contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.87 modern art during the 1950s, took definitive shape in the 1980s and . . . continues to unfold through the present.”31 the addition of the qualifying determiner “some” is small but significant, and allows for a more discursive and less linear understanding of contemporaneity, one in which chan’s work, with its commingling of old and new (as well as specifically khmer as well as transnational forms) can more comfortably be accommodated. so, contemporaneity is more helpfully conceived of as an attitude rather than an epoch. when not proposing broad periodizations, smith generally shares this paradigmatic view. he has insightfully proposed that “an alertness to contemporaneity” has been “always available to art and often taken up…with show-stopping brilliance;”32 with this in mind, we might imagine that chan’s discernment of the present-ness of kbach can also be found in earlier usages of the khmer ornamentation, including during cambodia’s colonial period. indeed, in many parts of southeast asia the modern and the contemporary have been imagined to be coexisting; moreover peter osborne has controversially proposed that it is in fact only from the vantage point of the contemporary that the notion of multiple modernities can be conceived.33 chan’s exhibition may be a collection of small things but those “small things”— including a sustained consideration of dress, of the marketplace, and of compositional techniques derived from the colonial era—point to very big issues in cambodian contemporaneity indeed. chan’s method of composition is sometimes evident in faint pencil lines visible on the image surface, which the artist has used in plotting the position of the various components. these sketch marks resemble those made during a drawing from life: notably, they demonstrate that these works were composed without the aid of a grid. chan embellishes some sketch marks with sequins, at once obscuring and drawing attention to these features. the gallery catalogue for the exhibition perceptively observes that chan’s “attention to detail is both obvious and questionable” since “sketch marks are present, straight lines seem unachievable, complete and incomplete sections of embroidery are juxtaposed.” the catalogue author proposes that these qualities “encourag[e] reflection on perfection and imperfection.”34 i would add that this aspect of chan’s work invites a reconsideration of the connections between contemporary art-making practices and colonial art education structures, again suggesting a suppressed continuity in cambodian art and art education. chan’s school, unlike the royal university of fine arts established by the french, was a nurturing place that encouraged experimentation and included art history classes. by contrast, the royal university of fine arts curriculum in 2014 remains almost wholly unchanged from that implemented by the french. there is no schooling in new media or art history, and experimentation is strictly proscribed within media and disciplines.35 that chan was able (and indeed encouraged) to study kbach as well as drawing from life, and also the more experimental activities that were called “free drawing,” is an historical novelty in 31 smith, “currents of world-making,” 177. emphasis added. 32 ibid. 33 peter osborne, anywhere or not at all: philosophy of contemporary art (london and new york: verso, 2013), 25-26. this is a provocative and arguably eurocentric statement that i will address in a future discussion. 34 sa sa bassac [gleeson], sampot, exh. cat., n.p. 35 for a more detailed discussion of visual arts education in contemporary cambodia, including at the royal university of fine arts, see vuth lyno’s contribution in the 2014 issue of udaya: journal of khmer studies (forthcoming). 2 0 5 r o g e r n e l s o n contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.87 cambodia that did not exist in any systematic sense before the establishment of the reyum institute, and has not existed since the discontinuation of classes there. according to chan vitharin and preap chanmara’s authoritative study on kbach, “students trying to learn kbach tend to simply copy from these examples, replicating complex ornaments without understanding the system through which they are formed.” as a result, the authors contend, these students “generally do not have the ability to create new compositions of ornaments, or to use the existing ornamental language for their own purposes.”36 common techniques of reproduction compound this situation. the use of the grid to aid in copying, introduced by the french and identified by muan as endemic ever since, is one contributing factor. another is the growing use of molds and concrete to make kbach forms for architectural purposes, replacing more laborious carving techniques. chan’s innovative treatment of kbach forms is unusual, and is the aspect of his work most commonly remared on by local audiences. in sampot: the collection of small things (more dok chan flowers), (2013) (fig. 6), twelve kbach dok chan (ក"#ច់  ដកច័ន) forms (also called kbach pkaa chan  ក"#ច់  !"ច័ន), all pink in color, are spread across a red background. although the name of this kbach design means “chan flower,” the form is in fact derived from the skin of a fruit—not a flower. the chan is a soft, round fruit, and must be peeled to be eaten. after the sweet flesh has been scooped out, the skin resembles the shape of a flower: hence the kbach design is named “chan flower.” the artist plays on the origin of this design by surrounding each large kbach dok chan design with many smaller flowers, all of them prefabricated by the producers of the fabric he has used. other works from the exhibition exhibit a similar playfulness, using the form of the kbach chakachan (ក"#ច់   ច័ក$ច័ន). this design form is based on the shape of a glutinous rice dessert called the chakachan cake, which is served in diamond-shaped pieces. several works on show, including sampot: the collection of small things 36 chan and preap, kbach, i. figure 6 chan dany, sampot: the collection of small things (more dok chan flowers), 2012. lycra, lace, plastic beads, sequins, cotton thread. 100 x 150cm. photograph by lim sokchanlina. coutesy of the artist and sa sa bassac. 2 0 6 o n t h e c o e v a l i t i e s o f t h e c o n t e m p o r a r y i n c a m b o d i a contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.87 (the light of color) (2013), feature the kbach chakachan form. in this work, chan has stretched a prefabricated piece of lace across the entire picture surface. the lace is not recognizably cambodian in design. yet by embellishing its evenly spread circular pattern with plastic jewels and sequins of three different colors carefully placed in alternating order, chan superimposes on this unremarkable, vaguely european-seeming lace a pattern that, while perhaps universally familiar, is also specifically khmer: that of the diamond, which for the artist is in fact the kbach chakachan. to viewers more familiar with euro-american modernism, sampot: the collection of small things (the light of color) (fig. 7) may appear as a kind of grid. yet chan has playfully embedded in its simple yet carefully structured surface the shape of a cambodian chakachan cake, codified over centuries into the kbach chakachan design form. the artist’s composition here—as well as its reception by local audiences—may be considered an example of a particularly cambodian way of seeing.37 it is broadly appealing, yet also culturally specific. in chan’s exhibition, a vision of cambodia emerges that is at once old and new, local and global. this articulation of contemporaneity refuses the dominant narrative about the nation, centered on the temples of angkor wat and the traumas of the khmer rouge. yet it also resists the tendency to overlook or downplay historical continuities. in his attention to the sampot and manners of dress, his use of newly available imported materials, his employment of compositional methods derived from drawing from life to plan works that utilize ancient khmer kbach forms, and his inventive superimpositions of those design forms on prefabricated laces, chan reveals the multiplicity of contemporaneity in cambodia. his glittering works illuminate the coevality of influences and interests that make this artist so fascinating, and his context so crucial to a nuanced understanding of the world today. 37 the editors of udaya: journal of khmer studies helpfully characterize the late ingrid muan’s scholarly work as having asked: “what and how do cambodians see?” they also note “the concomitance of her scholarly research” into french colonial “revival” of kbach and her involvement in the publication of chan and preap’s monograph on the topic, a “complex exchange” indeed, the complexities of which are continued in chan’s exhibition, and indeed in this review essay. see ang chouléan and ashley thompson, “from the editors,” udaya: journal of khmer studies 6 (2005): 7-10. figure 7 chan dany, sampot: the collection of small things (the light of color), 2013. lycra, plastic lace, beads, cotton thread, 100cm x 150cm. photograph by lim sokchanlina. courtesy of the artist and sa sa bassac. 2 0 7 r o g e r n e l s o n contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.87 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-noncommercial-no derivative works 3.0 united states license. this journal is operated by the university library system of the university of pittsburgh as part of its d-scribe digital publishing program, and is co-sponsored by the university of pittsburgh press. contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture vol 5, no 1 “agency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2016.182 http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu curator—curatorial studies towards co-creation and multiple agencies erin a. peters abstract erin a. peters reflects on her objectives as a curator and educator, and the agency of museum visitors as co-creators. about the author erin peters is joint lecturer in curatorial studies at the university of pittsburgh and assistant curator in science and research at the carnegie museum of natural history. peters holds a ma in egyptology, a ma in museum professions, and a phd in art history, for which her dissertation, “egypt in empire: augustan temple art and architecture at karnak, philae, kalabsha, dendur, and alexandria,” won the 2015 university of iowa d.c. spriestersbach dissertation prize in the humanities and the fine arts. while completing dissertation research, peters was a metropolitan museum of art chester dale fellow in the department of egyptian art where she was the primary researcher for the digital department’s medialab and egyptian art collaboration, “color the temple.” the collaboration (re)colored the augustan temple of dendur using projection mapping technology to engage museum visitors by showing the temple in a way it had yet to be seen at the met—in (virtual) color. the met’s project is an example of the kind of collaborative work that peters hopes to build on in working towards a robust museum profession for the future. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.182 when asked to contribute an essay about the agency of curatorial practice i thought the timing was ideal for a reflective exercise to inform my own practice and teaching. i recently completed the first academic year of my post as joint lecturer in curatorial studies in history of art and architecture’s (haa) museum studies program at the university of pittsburgh and assistant curator in science and research at the carnegie museum of natural history (cmnh). my position was created as part of a larger project to build a robust collaboration between haa and pittsburgh’s rich cultural institutions funded by an andrew w. mellon foundation grant awarded to haa. my charge within this larger project is to continue to develop my practice as a museum curator in the carnegie museums of pittsburgh (cmp) so that i can be best prepared to teach museum studies students about curator ial practice and the museum field overall.1 the particulars of my placement in cmp, my explorations of the current state of the museum field in preparation for teaching, the run of my spring 2016 course “introduction to museum studies in the carnegie museums of pittsburgh,” and reading the transcript of the 2014 panel “curatorial practice as production of visual and spatial knowledge,” published in contemporaneity edition 4, put me at a perfect prospect to reflect and forecast hopes for my own curatorial practice and teaching curatorial studies.2 beginning with the panel discussion will be a productive start to the exercise. the panel brought together curators of art, science, and digital data for a conversation about how curating creates visual and spatial knowledge in general and in specific disciplines.3 the conversation showed general themes, in which curator of contemporary art dan byers and theorist of curatorial practice terry smith both emphasized the importance of exhibi tion making in curatorial practice.4 curator of the hall of botany, cynthia morton, descr ibed her role as a scientific researcher nominally separated from the exhibit process, instead making her information available in academic/scientific publications.5 thinking through the idea of “digital curation,” alison langmead talked about how making digital data (images) available is “exhibiting” within a digital space.6 i’ll add my own perspective to the mix here. my academic training in egyptology, art history, museum studies, and museum practice as a fellow in the department of egyptian art at the metropolitan museum of art prepared me to be a curator of material culture from egypt as a specialist in which exhibit-making is one part of the job, on equal footing with carrying out an active research agenda as a steward of 1 the c arnegie museums of p ittsburgh is comprised of four dis tinct museums: c arnegie museum of a rt, c arnegie museum of natural h istory, c arnegie science center, and t he a ndy warhol museum. 2 nicole scalissi, et al., “c uratorial p ractice as p roduction of v isual and spatial knowledge: p anel discussion, o ctober 4 , 2014,” contemporaneity: his torical presence in visual culture 4 , no. 1 (2015): 144-163. the panel was part of debating visual knowledge, a sympos ium organized by graduate students in information sc ience and h istory of a rt and a rchitecture departments at the university of p ittsburgh, o c tober 3 -5, 2014. 3 scalissi et al., 144. 4 ibid., 145 and 147. 5 ibid., 145. 6 ibid., 149. curator—curatorial studies towards co-creation and multiple agencies erin a. peters http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 1 2 4 c u r a to r— c ur ato r i a l s tu d i e s c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.182 collections. in my experience, a curator of ancient art (or other historic art) is s ignif icantly different from a curator of contemporary art, and seems to blend practices of art and science curators. in looking for commonalities across curators of contemporary art, science, digita l data, and ancient material culture from the information here, perhaps it can be said a curator generally uses research, knowledge, and opinion to select and collect, and combine elements (objects and ideas) into a different thing than the thing was alone before being collected and combined (in a museum collection, an exhibition, a research publication). in this vein, and in simpler terms, a curator selects a thing as important through research and expertise, cares for and preserves it, interprets it, and makes it available and viewable. two things immediately strike me as missing in such a curatorial practice: the agency of people (audiences) and of objects/things. if looking to reception theory, and agency of material culture, a more nuanced and holistic picture can come into view.7 when looking for the agency of people in the 2014 panel publication, there were few positive a llusions, and panelists were more generally disparaging towards audience participation. for instance, in his published reflection on the panel, dan byers commented that the public remains the most vital voice within any museum, and differentiates it from the academy. knowledge and experience is shared, and in the sharing, culture is made. but as the emphasis is placed on spectacle, and on audience ‘development,’ ‘engagement,’ and ‘participation,’ (all concepts which are very easily bastardized today towards lowest common denominator ends), art museums could benefit from curators who have also spent long years in conversation with artists and researching in private.8 but if we go beyond seeing audience participation in museums as solely something to seek, entice, and therefore control, and also take participation as a given through reception, more productive practices of curator-audience co-creation could be developed. in reception/viewer theory, meaning is made through individual reception and perception, as well as social interaction.9 this meaning-making happens parallel to or apart from constructed meaning imposed through curatorial messages. if we were to appreciate audience self-made meaning as equally valuable as our specialist meaning, and to solicit it in 7 for ins tance, wolfgang kemp adds to reception theories and describes the “beholder” with “preconditions” like specific gender, presence, and his tory, which intrinsically inform an experience with a work of art (which has its own set of preconditions). in kemp’s methodology of reception aesthetics, beholders ac tively converse/participate with a work of art (or an exhibition, etc .), and bring innate meaning that comes from the particularities of a beholder’s and an artwork ’s contexts. wolfgang kemp, “the work of a rt and its beholder: the methodology of the a esthetics of reception,” in the subjects of art his tory: his torical subjects in contemporary practice, ed. m .a . c heetham et. al. (c ambridge: c ambridge university p ress, 1998), 180-96. a lfred gell, art and agency: an anthropological theory (o xford: c larendon press, 1998) remains the primary source for the agency of material culture. 8 a lison langmead, dan byers, c ynthia morton, “c uratorial p ractice as p roduction of v isual and spatial knowledge: p anelists respond,” contemporaneity: his torical presence in visual culture 4 , no. 1 (2015): 161. 9 e .g. c hris tian heath and dirk v om lehn, "c onfiguring reception (dis-) regarding the ‘spec tator’ in museums and galleries," theory, culture & society 21, no. 6 (2004): 43-65; fred myers, "social agency and the c ultural value(s) of the a rt o bjec t," journal of material culture 9, no. 2 (2004): 203-11; rolf steier, p almyre pierroux, and ingeborg krange, "embodied interpretation: gesture, so c ial interaction, and meaning making in a national a rt museum," learning, culture and social interaction 7 (2015): 28 -42. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 1 2 5 e r i n a . p e te r s c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.182 an active process of co-creation, audience participation could be more nuanced than “spectacle.”10 i could not detect the agency of objects/things in the 2014 panel discussion, which is likely a reflection of the curatorial tendency to privilege the “original” context (or life) of an object or idea. indeed, we generally go to great pains to “reenact” the context of the original moment of creation through research and interpretation; this is especially the case for myself and other curators of ancient material culture. this is true across different t ypes of institutions, from anthropology, archaeology and natural history, to art museums. even with different intentions of interpretation and display—i.e. between a didactic presentation that values knowledge and an aesthetic presentation that values the aura of an object— information about the original context (as we understand it) is usually conveyed through reconstruction, recreation, or label data. this kind of reenactment disregards an object’s presence and agency through time, and particularly its contemporary context as a museum object. going forward, if we recognize our understanding of the original context of an object or idea as one story, and present an object as a museum object by using mater ia lity as a museological theory, we can be transparent and egalitarian in our presentation of objects and ideas.11 through transparency and exposure of an object’s lives (a multiplicity of interpretations), we can participate in critical curating,12 and also move beyond institutional critique to become a post-critical and reflexive museum profession by uniting theory and practice.13 in striving to unite theory and practice, and looking back at different understandings of curators and curatorial practice discussed here, i find it important to ask: what does this mean for me as a curator, and for the kind of curating i teach students so they can be best prepared for what curating will look like in the future? towards this question, i will cast the net wider to think how curators function within their larger institutions, communities, and the larger museum field. for this task, museum studies—a fast developing f ie ld of study that looks at the whole of the museum profession, from daily tasks to the overarching theoretica l principles of museum practice and operation in and relation to society—can be useful. trends in museum studies can help neutralize and contextualize a curator’s practice to be holistic rather than isolationist. for instance, the trend towards the democratization of museum professions and tasks places curators as one force in a larger interconnected picture, in which exhibitions are one task. but does democratization mean doing away with specialty and rigor? i would say no; in my practice, rigorous scholarly training and practice is the core of what i can contribute. indeed, i see specialist scholarship and research as necessary to the core of museum work so that we can be accountable for the information and experiences that we present. at the same time, i realize my perspective is only one in a web of interwoven and interdependent ones, which, in addition to a vast array of colleagues and publics, also involves objects’ and audiences’ agency. 10 a s in janna graham and shadya yasin, "reframing participation in the museum: a syncopated discussion," in museums after modernism, edited by g. p ollock and j. zemans (blackwell publishing ltd, 2008), 157-72; c atherine evans, “the impact of the p articipatory, v isitor-centered model on c uratorial p rac tice,” journal of museum education 39 , no. 2 (2014): 152-61. 11 p eter h. welsh, "re-configuring museums," museum management and curatorship 20, no. 2 (2005): 116. 12 dorothee richter and rein wolfs , "institution as medium: c urating as institutional critique?" oncurating 8 (2011): 3 . 13 v ic toria walsh, "the context and p ractice of p ost-critical museology," in from museum critique to critical museum, ed. k. murawska-muthesius and p . p iortrowski (burlington, v t: a shgate, 2015), 195-214. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 1 2 6 c u r a to r— c ur ato r i a l s tu d i e s c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.182 through the process of reflection for this essay, i’ve identified a number of e lements that i will strive to make a part of my own work as assistant curator and lecturer of curatorial studies. i will base my practice in rigorous scholar ly research with a research program in which i can participate actively in the fields relevant to ancient material culture in order to be a capable steward for the collections at the cmp. i will relate my research to the collections and also with the larger societal picture of our contemporary world, so that my work is in dialogue with a broad range of people and circumstances. i will be an advocate for the mission-driven model, while supporting missions to be nimble, in dialogue with the past, participating in the present, and with an eye to the future, in order to avoid the entrenched mantra: “we do things this way/don’t do things that way.” i will be transparent, and use difficult information and stories as productive points of dialogue, which may encourage us to take on blame and actively combat the colonial notion that we are here to make people better with art/knowledge by bringing them into contact with objects/ideas that we think are important. i will avoid educating people and interpreting objects, but instead acknowledge and encourage the agency of people and objects as part of curatorial work. rather than seeing myself as a collector/caretaker for objects, space, and ideas, and then creating visual, sensory, scientific knowledge, i will aim to be a facilitator in complexity and practice curation that is ever evolving, seeks many stories, and appreciates a wide range of value systems and expertise. i hope to do this by combining my curator (specialist) authority with object and people/audience agency, both solicited and unsolicited; seeking out the least familiar and the “lowest common denominator” to shock my learned practice from comfortable process, which will ideally generate new methods of approach; and striving for true diversity that is beyond cultural, racial, or ethnic, forcing interaction with ideas i believe to be wrong in order to promote genuine freedom of thought. this kind of curatorial practice may help me prepare the next generation of curators and museum professionals for whatever the future may bring. erin peters in discussion with annika johnson, co-editor-in-chief erin peters’s vantage point at the intersection of multiple disciplines and institutions provides a unique opportunity to consider the ever-changing role of curator. when and how does curatorial agency come into play amidst the thicket of institutional visions, initiatives and everyday operations? how might curators soften disciplinary and institutional borders? peters’ personal mission statement that emerges centers on approach and action, and curatorial agency is here distributed among objects and their lives, and audience participants, who emerge as key co-creators in the mix. to follow up, i asked her a few questions about her experiences enacting this curatorial thinking (annika johnson). aj: how does the physical space of the museum factor in as an agent amidst (and litera lly housing) the tangle of viewer, curatorial, and object agencies? i’m curious specifically about your research on space in ancient egypt and how this has influenced your think ing about museum space and audience agency. ep: excellent question—generally, i see the physical space (specifically the built environment) of the museum as part of object/thing agency, as it is in the realm of the physical/material. just as objects housed within museums are actively charged with a myriad of stories, perspectives, and ways of communicating, so too is the space around them. through this active agency, museum space controls and communicates. your question about physical space makes me think about non-physical space and its agency. of course there is virtual space, but also social space, mental space, ritual space, etc. i am interested in how http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 1 2 7 e r i n a . p e te r s c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.182 these spaces intersect with the physical space of the museum, and ways curatorial practice can engage with them. aj: you mention that we need to move beyond institutional critique, which struck me because self-reflexivity is now pretty standard within museum practice. within the method of curatorial practice you envision, and in your experience working with ancient art, where is institutional critique productive and where does it fall short? ep: you are right, institutional critique/self-reflexivity is a standard in much of today’s museum work and curatorial practice. i see it as continually necessary because we are far from shedding our colonial 18th/19th century roots where museums and “art” are society conditioners, but we seem to be stuck in critique. i would say institutional critique falls short in the forever deconstructing of the museum/the market/the art world. i do think it is important to continue to expose the conditionality of art/knowledge in its economic, political, religious contexts and realities, but i don’t see that critiquing the systems are enough to overcome ingrained structures or renew institutions. rather, to move forw ard, we need to start constructing, which is where i see post-critical museum and curatorial practice as beneficial, as it calls for the development of metadisciplinary views and collaboration. the curatorial practice i hope for (and for our larger world-view) will continue to deconstruct, but also construct, ideally in some way not tied to our modern (enlightenment) western mindset. aj: after reading your innovation studio post “students + staff: moving from experiment to practice,” it seems that your students responded positively to the idea of a curator as an agent rather that the agent in interpreting objects.14 as students of a totally digital generation, did this seem natural to them, or was their some resistance to this idea? what excited them most about the future of museums? ep: indeed, my students not only responded positively to the idea of a curator as an agent, it seemed completely familiar to them, and being the agent seemed foreign. as you note, it is likely that this comes much from their presence in a digital generation, which has democratized and pluralized access and authority through the internet. it seemed what excited them most about the future of museums is where museums can be active and positive participants in societies—as connectors of objects, people, time, and space. in many ways, my students struck me as leagues ahead in thinking about museum work and curatorial practice, and i’m excited to see them as not only future museum professionals, but integral in current and present museum work, by taking experience and moving to exploration, they can help us bring about necessary evolution. 14 erin p eters, “students + staff: moving from experiment to p ractice,” innovation studio (blog), june 30, 2016, http://s tudio.carnegiemuseums.org/students-staff-4/. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ http://studio.carnegiemuseums.org/students-staff-4/ 1 2 8 c u r a to r— c ur ato r i a l s tu d i e s c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.182 new articles in this journal are licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 united states license. this journal is operated by the university library system of the university of p ittsburgh as part of its d-scribe digital p ublishing p rogram, and is co-sponsored by the university of p ittsburgh press. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/ http://www.pitt.edu/ http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/ http://www.upress.pitt.edu/upressindex.aspx http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ 98-328-10-le vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.98 http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu trying to live now chronotopic figures in jenny watson’s a painted page series chris mcauliffe abstract between late 1979 and early 1980, australian artist jenny watson painted a sequence of six works, each with the title a painted page. combining gridded, painted reproductions of photographs, newspapers and department store catalogues with roughly painted fields of color, the series brought together a range of recent styles and painterly idioms: pop, photorealism, and non-objective abstraction. watson’s evocation of styles considered dated, corrupted or redundant by contemporary critics was read as a sign of the decline of modernism and the emergence of a postmodernism inflected with irony and a cool, “new wave” sensibility. an examination of the painted pages in the context of watson’s interest in autobiography and her association with the women’s art movement, however, reveals the works to be subjective, highly personal reflections on memory, self and artistic aspiration. drawing on bahktin’s model of the chronotope, this paper argues for a spatio-temporal reading of watson’s painted pages rather than the crude model of stylistic redundancy and succession. watson’s source images register temporal orders ranging across the daily, the seasonal and the epochal. her paintings transpose bahktin’s typology of quotidian, provincial and “adventuristic” time into autobiographical paintings of teenage memories, the vicissitudes of the art world and punk subcultures. collectively, the painted pages established a chronotopic field; neither an aggregation of moments nor a collaged evocation of a period but a point at which watson closed off one kind of time (an art critical time of currency and succession) and opened up another (of subjectivity and affective experience). about the author chris mcauliffe is an independent scholar based in melbourne, australia. a graduate of the university of melbourne and of harvard university, he was director of the ian potter museum of art, the university of melbourne, from 2000–2013. in 2011–12 he was the gough whitlam and malcolm fraser visiting professor of australian studies at harvard university. contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.98 it’s the end, the end of the seventies. it’s the end, the end of the century. the ramones, “do you remember rock ‘n’ roll radio?” (1980) between december 1979 and june 1980, australian artist jenny watson made a series of six paintings, each with the primary title a painted page. based on printed pages from newspapers, books and department store catalogues, with sources and their dates of publication specified in subsidiary title components, watson’s painted pages offered a snapshot of life and events in the southern hemisphere summer of 1979/80. newspaper headlines reported cold war tension (u.s. president carter’s response to the soviet intervention in afghanistan), a transportation catastrophe (the death of 257 people in an aviation accident in antarctica) and local politics (a municipal planning controversy in brisbane). reassuring seasonal activities also registered: there were christmas gifts to purchase from the myer store catalogue, bikini-clad women were visiting beaches and men were competing in cricket matches. in parallel, the artist’s personal interests were revealed: she was reading books on mod and punk fashion.1 1 in order of execution, the series consisted of: a painted page 1: twiggy by richard avedon 1979, oil on canvas, 105 x 153 cm. national gallery of victoria, melbourne, michell endowment, 1982, (fig. 4). a painted page: pages 52 and 53 of “in the gutter” (the ears), 1979, oil on canvas, 163 x 178 cm. collection of the university of queensland. purchased with the assistance of the visual arts board of the australia council, 1981. identified in an inscription on rear of canvas as #2, (fig. 5). a painted page: myer christmas catalogue 1979, 1979, oil on canvas, 163 x 178 cm. gold coast city art gallery. identified as #3 in paul taylor, “jenny watson’s ‘mod’ernism,” art international 24, no.1–2 (september–october 1980), 216, (fig. 7). a painted page: the herald 21/11/79, 1979, oil on cotton duck, 60 x 76 cm, collection of the artist. newspaper source published november 29, 1979, (fig. 1). a painted page: the sun jezza will stay, blues, [1980], oil on cotton duck, 58 x 67.6 cm. collection of the artist. newspaper source published 25 january 1980. (fig. 3). a painted page: the telegraph, [1980], oil on cotton duck, 66 x 52 cm. private collection, brisbane. newspaper source published april 9, 1980, (fig. 2). in the past, all the works watson’s a painted page series have typically been dated to 1979. however, the identification of a publication date of 1980 for some printed sources means that later works must have been made later than 1979. in these cases, an amended date of 1980 is given in square brackets. trying to live now chronotopic figures in jenny watson’s a painted page series chris mcauliffe 3 c h r i s m c a u l i f f e contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.98 figure 1 jenny watson, a painted page: the herald 21/11/79, 1979, oil on cotton duck, 60 x 76 cm. collection of the artist, courtesy of anna schwartz gallery. copyright jenny watson. 4 t r y i n g t o l i v e n o w : c h r o n o t o p i c f i g u r e s i n j e n n y w a t s o n ’ s a p a i n t e d p a g e s e r i e s contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.98 common structural elements established the format of each painting. a gridded, loosely-painted copy of a printed page was butted into a corner of the canvas, anchoring two of its sides to a vertical and horizontal perimeter of the support. across the series, each of the four possible corners of a canvas was used, implying a systematic exploration of positional options. the space between the remaining two edges of the painted page and the limit of the canvas—which watson termed the “off border”—was filled with thick, vigorously applied paint, using a single color in all but two cases.2 in each case, the essential architecture of the painting schematised the deductive structure of high modernist painting. a master quadrilateral (the canvas itself), held a second within it (the copied page). inside this was nested a further set (the square cells of the enlargement grid). while the l-shaped off border was a remnant space determined by the proportions of the source pages, it too stood as an internal echo of edges of the canvas. watson also tabled constitutive elements of high modernist painting in the frontal orientation and spatial compression of the paintings.3 the flatness of the support, along with its shape and edge, were declared insistently. the risk of spatial illusion, arising from the very application of paint to the support, was held in check. each of the enlargement squares was treated as an isolated painterly unit rather than melding fluidly into an object, figure or scene. the newspaper page of a painted page: the herald 21/11/79, for example, remains visibly the concatenation of 96 subsidiary squares (fig. 1). while the source page offered crude examples of painting’s traditional genres (a landscape, a portrait, a still life), watson refused to bring any of these to fruition in her copy. but aspects of that high modernism were also resisted. although watson hardly delivered the meticulous illusionism of a trompe l’oeil rack painting, her pages were still readable as such. her contained palette and restrained brush stroke prevented the total fragmentation of the enlargement squares into disconnected painterly elements. and with this came effects typically abandoned in high modernist painting, such as a distinction between figure and ground (the page before the surface of the canvas), figuration (the human forms on the pages) and narrative (the printed word). as a result, the painted pages exemplify a version of contemporary art that was becoming increasingly common at the end of the 1970s. here was an artist invoking, yet resisting, high modernism while also hinting at a nascent post-modernism. in the painted pages, watson pursued what leo steinberg had recently identified as a harbinger of postmodernism: the flatbed effect—an emulation of the all-over textual and pictorial field of the printing plate. her sources melded daily news and fashion photography, image and caption, and even included mastheads and page numbers. they corrupted the terrain of high modernist painting by introducing illusion, figuration and narrative text. staging a confrontation between modernist autonomy and everyday print media, between abstraction and representation, between the painterly and the mechanically reproduced, the painted pages mapped the “shake-up” that, steinberg suggested, “contaminates all purified categories.”4 2 jenny watson statement in sally brand, “learning to paint” (ba hons thesis, university of sydney, 2005): 30–31. 3 here i use michael fried, “shape as form: frank stella’s irregular polygons,” artforum 5, no.3 (november 1966): 18-27, as an archetypal definition of high modernist parameters. reprinted in michael fried art and objecthood (chiago: university of chicago press, 1998), 77–99. 4 leo steinberg, “reflections on the state of criticism,” artforum 10, no.7 (march 1972): 49. 5 c h r i s m c a u l i f f e contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.98 figure 2 jenny watson, a painted page: the telegraph, [1980], oil on cotton duck, 66 x 52 cm. private collection, brisbane, courtesy josh milani gallery, brisbane. copyright jenny watson. watson, who had been active in the women’s art movement since 1975, shook things up further by couching her challenge to high modernism in personal as well as formal terms. for her, the painted pages were a riposte to the monolithic, masculinist language of high modernism. the colors she chose for the off borders of the paintings (pinks, lavenders, ochres) were, she said, “girly” decorator’s colours rather than “official serious art colours.”5 for australian audiences, the “official serious” art watson had in mind would have been obvious; her mottled fields of color, especially the ragged-edged shapes in a painted page: the telegraph, [1980], were a clear allusion to the work of acclaimed abstract painter david aspden, who had represented australia at the sao paulo biennale of 1971 (fig. 2). 5 jenny watson statement in sally brand, “learning to paint,” 30–31. 6 t r y i n g t o l i v e n o w : c h r o n o t o p i c f i g u r e s i n j e n n y w a t s o n ’ s a p a i n t e d p a g e s e r i e s contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.98 a further challenge to “official serious” art came in watson’s eclectic fusion of styles recently dominant in contemporary art: lyrical abstraction, pop and photorealism. this combined and contaminated categories whose merits were being questioned by australian art critics. watson’s newspaper pages, alluding to andy warhol’s tabloid headline works of 1961–62, must have appeared a little dated at the end of the 1970s. more to the point, it was a critical commonplace that pop art had not emerged, or had any real consequence, among australian artists.6 the patchwork fields of color in watson’s off borders evoked the so-called lyrical abstraction of the early 1970s, a style whose high status as the legitimate heir to hard-edge color painting fell dramatically as it was increasingly dismissed as the decorative last gasp of american-style formalist painting. while super realism or photorealism was, as late as 1977, identified as contemporary australian art’s strongest link with international developments,7 it had never escaped the intimation that it was a faddish, even gimmicky, idiom. watson’s multiple stylistic references within her painted pages hint at a 1970s mood. a skeptical regard towards a singular modernist narrative was manifested in figures of pluralism, redundancy, and illegitimacy. the sense that modernism was in decline was coupled with a concern that australian art was not in a position to compel conviction (to use the high modernist yardstick). in 1974, surveying the state of play in a provincial art scene, terry smith noted the pluralism of the moment, remarking that “the stylistic diversity of international art during the past 15 years reverberates throughout recent australian art.”8 but he added that the “last local movement of any strength” had been the color painting of the late 1960s. in the painted pages, watson seemed to map both this diversity of idioms and a national inability to develop a forceful local voice. in a provincial context, her flatbed effect signalled a melancholic response to an imported, entropic modernism. this sense of impotence and lack of an emphatic forward momentum reflected the dominant biological metaphors through which art’s temporality was articulated. this temporality was mapped in the narration of the germination, efflorescence and withering of styles. in fertile metropolitan soil, spores spread, flourished and engendered further growth. in a harsh provincial terrain, this momentum stalled; modernism’s seed was spilled on barren soil. but other temporal figures in the painted pages suggest that watson wanted to do more than simply declare, with the ramones, that 20th century modernism was grinding to a halt two decades early. in the copied daily newspapers, she introduced solar time, with its diurnal and seasonal rhythms, and social-historical time, with its news events and political crises. book pages presented a variant of social-historical time: the recent past of sixties fashion and the looming present of seventies punk style. these were linked to the fluid, synthetic temporalities of memory and desire, central motifs in the australian women’s art movement of the second half of the 1970s. exploring these modes of the temporal—from the ground zero of the quotidian through the unanchored time of memory—watson was able to break 6 the first edition of bernard smith’s standard survey australian painting (melbourne: oxford university press, 1962, reprinted 1965) made no mention of pop art; later editions declared that “pop art did not make ground readily in australia,” where it “lacked an important raison d’être,” 2001 edition, 87-88. gary catalano’s the years of hope: australian art and criticism 1959–68 (melbourne: oxford university press, 1981), addressed pop in a chapter headed “the absence of pop.” 7 a claim made by curator john stringer in his introduction the exhibition catalogue of a global survey exhibition of super realism, which included watson’s yellow painting: john, 1974. australian gallery directors council (agdc), illusion and reality, agdc, north sydney, 1977. 8 terry smith, “the provincialism problem,” artforum 13, no.1, (september 1974): 54-9, reprinted in anything goes: art in australia 1970–1980, ed. paul taylor (south yarra: art & text, 1984), 49. 7 c h r i s m c a u l i f f e contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.98 figure 3 jenny watson, a painted page: the sun jezza will stay, blues, [1980], oil on cotton duck, 58 x 67.6 cm. collection of the artist, courtesy of anna schwartz gallery. copyright jenny watson. out of art critical time, with its biological metaphors of evolution and succession, and establish affective time as the foundation of her practice. the principal temporal figures in the painted pages are these: i) the daily the newspapers in a painted page: the herald 21/11/79 (1979), a painted page: the sun jezza will stay, blues, [1980] and a painted page: the telegraph, [1980] chronicle 24hour event cycles (fig. 3). aside from being evident in the declared date of a newspaper, this immediacy is reinforced in the identification in bold red type of the updated editions issued over the course of a day: the sun was a morning newspaper, the herald copied was the afternoon “city” edition, while the selected edition of the telegraph was an evening “final”. 8 t r y i n g t o l i v e n o w : c h r o n o t o p i c f i g u r e s i n j e n n y w a t s o n ’ s a p a i n t e d p a g e s e r i e s contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.98 figure 4 jenny watson, a painted page 1: twiggy by richard avedon, 1979, oil on canvas, 105 x 153 cm, national gallery of victoria, melbourne, michell endowment, 1982. copyright jenny watson. ii) the seasonal embodied in social and cultural behaviours structured around summer (bathing, sport) and christmas (shopping, holidaying, gift-giving, watson’s selected newspapers and department store catalogue were typical of the seasonal format. daily newspapers featured page after page of gift advertising as well as seasonal foods for both the traditional christmas dinner and summer feasting. a heat wave in the summer of 1979–80 was the pretext for numerous photographs of young female bathers, of the kind adjacent to the front-page headline of a painted page: the sun. iii) the event the event is manifest in the short-lived dramas of local news stories and scandals that begin on the front page, before their eventual resolution or exile into the back pages sees them disappear from view. in a painted page: the sun, watson entered mid-way through the unfolding of a boardroom scuffle at the carlton australian rules football club (the “blues”) in which the over-throw of the club’s chairman led to the resignation of champion coach alex jesaulenko (“jezza”). iv) the epochal the sun’s report that “carter gets tougher” (the u.s. president has reintroduced registration for the draft for the first time since the vietnam war), reproduced in a painted page: the sun, marked the latest chapter in the thirty-five-year cold war. v) the recent past a painted page 1: twiggy by richard avedon (for paul taylor) (1979), invokes the historical moment of swinging london and american youthquakers, with a richard avedon photograph from a 1967 vogue fashion spread (fig. 4). that past, of 12 years before, spoke of the artist’s own youth (she was born in 1951) as well as of the fleeting cycles of fashion. 9 c h r i s m c a u l i f f e contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.98 figure 5 jenny watson, a painted page: pages 52 and 53 of "in the gutter" (the ears) 1979, oil on canvas, 163 x 187 cm, collection of the university of queensland. purchased with the assistance of the visual arts board of the australia council, 1981. copyright jenny watson. 1 0 t r y i n g t o l i v e n o w : c h r o n o t o p i c f i g u r e s i n j e n n y w a t s o n ’ s a p a i n t e d p a g e s e r i e s contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.98 vi) the transhistorical a painted page: pages 52 and 53 of “in the gutter” (the ears) bridged the present (the pages were from a 1978 publication on current punk fashion) and the deep past (the book compared punk body piercing with tribal body decoration), threading the two together with an anthropological universalism (fig. 5). watson’s painted pages series thus constructed a typology of the temporal, from day, to season, to year, to era and beyond. within all of these are embedded the figures of supersession and redundancy; the early newspaper edition is succeeded by the final, today’s newspaper by tomorrow’s; the current president by the next (1980 being an election year); yesterday’s fashion by today’s and then tomorrow’s. the prevalent critical interpretation of the painted page series is shaped by these figures; stylistic eclecticism was read as evidence of a late-seventies art-world malaise, a disillusionment with modernism that heralded a nascent postmodernism. but rather than simply acting out the biological metaphor of generational succession, watson plotted the multiple temporalities of bakhtin’s “chronotope.” coined in bakhtin’s 1937–38 essay, “forms of time and of the chronotope in the novel,” the chronotope refers to “the intrinsic connectedness of temporal and spatial relationships that are artistically expressed in literature.”9 reflection on the character, ratio and interdependence of time and space allowed bakhtin to map the narrative components of the modern novel. several of these forms emerged in the temporal elements of watson’s painted pages, especially those that bakhtin associated with stendahl, balzac and flaubert. at its most stolid, theirs was a provincial time in which “there are no events, only ‘doings’ that constantly repeat themselves.” this is the seasonal space—the realm of “doings”—that watson’s newspapers documented; a space in which “a day is just a day, a year is just a year.”10 it is a temporality that is also registered in the thickly painted grounds upon which watson placed her pages. the chronotope of the parlor and salon, bakhtin wrote, is “a viscous and sticky time that drags itself slowly through space . . . it often serves as the contrasting background for temporal sequences that are more charged with energy and event.” a chronotopic reading of watson’s series, then, would begin by recognizing the abstract grounds of her paintings as a kind of spatio-temporal zero degree. her echoes of the language of lyrical abstraction were not merely pastiches of a soon-to-be-redundant modernism but a painterly evocation of “commonplace, philistine cyclical everyday time.”11 upon this ground, the newspaper pages acted as what bakhtin dubbed “the chronotope of threshold . . . a chronotope of the crisis or break in a life.”12 this was the trigger for the unfolding of what he called the “adventure novel.”13 the forms that watson discovered can be found in painted page: the sun: those of global conflict (the crisis in afghanistan, triggered by the soviet troop deployment of december 24, 1979, after she had commenced the series); boardroom drama (the quasi-operatic narrative of a football club’s alienation of 9 mikhail bakhtin, “forms of time and of the chronotope in the novel,” in his the dialogic imagination, trans caryl emerson and michael holquist (austin: university of texas press, 1981), 84. 10 ibid., 247–248. 11 ibid., 248 12 ibid., 248. 13 ibid., 86. 1 1 c h r i s m c a u l i f f e contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.98 figure 6 installation view, jenny watson: six paintings 1979–80, institute of modern art, brisbane, june 1980. left to right: a painted page 3: myer christmas catalogue; an original oil painting; a painted page 1: twiggy; a painted page: the herald. its favored son); and even romance (in a photograph of a carlton footballer embracing his wife before departing on a team trip). in a painted page: pages 52 and 53 of “in the gutter” (the ears), the effect is more general; the sartorial antics of london punks could be considered “moments of adventuristic time,” bohemian irruptions into the everyday.14 in themselves, watson’s reproduced pages appear to be found chronotopes; incidental, perhaps even random material excerpted from the flow of the quotidian and inserted into paintings. however the series as a whole established a chronotopic field; not an aggregation of moments, nor even a collaged evocation of the summer but a point at which watson closed off one kind of time (an art critical time of currency and succession) and opened up another (a subjective and affective autobiographical time). this transition was made clear in the artist’s june 1980 exhibition of the painted pages. sandwiched between two of the painted pages was a work entitled an original oil painting (1980). as its generic title suggested, the painting was just that; a canvas board divided into a black rectangle and an abutting white off border, across which the title/caption was painted (fig. 6). the rhetoric of high modernism—flatness, deductive structure and the self-presence of painting—was rendered as a generic convention. adjacent to it, the first of the painted page series, a painted page 1: twiggy, announced an art that was propelled by watson’s memories of teenage fandom, her love of fashion and her ongoing passion for youth culture. watson’s fusion of sixties pop culture, a moribund high modernism and stylistic iconoclasm appealed to emerging critics and curators determined to narrate australian art’s transition out of the entropic moment of the seventies and into the new, postmodern eighties. while watson was making a painted page 1: twiggy, paul taylor, a young critic, visited her studio. he was so enamored with the painting that he asked her to dedicate it to him.15 it was a remarkably bold request given his brief acquaintance with the artist but one 14 mikhail bakhtin, “forms of time and of the chronotope in the novel,” 94. 15 jenny watson recalls the visit and request in “personality portraits: jenny watson interviewed by kelly fliedner,” in impresario: paul taylor, the melbourne years, 1981–1984, eds. helen hughes and nicholas croggan (melbourne: surpluss/monash university museum of art, 2013), 250. 1 2 t r y i n g t o l i v e n o w : c h r o n o t o p i c f i g u r e s i n j e n n y w a t s o n ’ s a p a i n t e d p a g e s e r i e s contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.98 that suggested that the painting was so significant for him that he desired a public and permanent affiliation with it. taylor identified the work as a pivotal registration of a new sensibility in australian art, that of a younger generation “born during the fifties and matured alongside television and the expansion of the mass-media.”16 as taylor carved out a niche as the young turk of the australian art scene, a painted page 1: twiggy, figured in his first published art criticism, in the inaugural issue of his journal art & text, and in his provocative 1982 exhibition popism at the national gallery of victoria. for taylor, the painted page series embodied the classical figures of stylistic and generational succession. watson, he suggested, left behind the impasse of seventies pluralism by reflecting “lightheartedly on her background, and that of her contemporaries, remembering the authoritative procession of ‘mainstream’ styles of pop, ‘op’, hard-edge, minimal, conceptual, photorealist . . . into australia.”17 in taylor’s reading, paintings such as twiggy were meta-discursive reflections on a visual field encompassing received art styles and consumed mass media imagery. twiggy, “a feature of the 60s pop culture,”18 represented the ideas of mass media reproduction and pop cultural convention; this “is not a painting of a figure, it is a painting of a photograph.”19 in his position piece in the first issue of art & text, entitled “australian new wave and the ‘second degree,’” taylor saw the painted pages as essays in textual play, they were “wryly sophisticated” quotations from “the recent past,”20 making for a subjectivity highly attuned to the multivalent pleasures of connotation rather than the putative transparency of denotation. for taylor, watson’s citations heralded a barthesian “aesthetic of the second degree.”21 the pleasure of the second degree was a sophisticated “pleasure in dislocation;”22 a critical ploy separating younger artists from the parent generation and making a virtue of australian artists’ isolation from the metropolitan mainstream. taylor had told watson that “there’s a bunch of you who are making images from your experience having grown up with television, which makes you different to generations before, and i’m going to do something about that.”23 what he did—in his criticism, curating and editorship—reoriented the temporal and affective character of the painted pages. for taylor, twiggy became evidence of “pop nostalgia;”24 not only an icon of a sixties childhood but also evidence that, as critic adrian martin declared in a lecture at the popism exhibition, 16 paul taylor, “jenny watson’s ‘mod’ernism,” art international 24, no.1–2 (september–october 1980), 218, note 1. 17 ibid., 217. 18 paul taylor, “australian new wave and the ‘second degree’,” art & text 1 (autumn 1981): 23-32, reprinted in paul taylor ed. anything goes: art in australia 1970–1980, 159. 19 taylor, “jenny watson’s ‘mod’ernism,” 216. 20 taylor, “australian new wave and the ‘second degree’,” 159. 21 roland barthes, roland barthes by roland barthes, trans. richard howard (new york: hill and wang, 1977), cited by taylor in “australian new wave and the ‘second degree’,” 159. 22 taylor, “australian new wave and the ‘second degree’,” 159. 23 “personality portraits: jenny watson interviewed by kelly fliedner,” 250. this is watson’s paraphrase of taylor’s remark. note that television was introduced in australia in 1956, the year watson turned 5. 24 taylor, “jenny watson’s ‘mod’ernism,” 216. 1 3 c h r i s m c a u l i f f e contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.98 “we have learnt to love warhol all over again.”25 taylor’s popism trafficked in gestures associated with an emerging rhetoric of postmodernism in the visual arts. it was, as martin observed, “about style, surface, appearance … where new only ever means different, not original or unique.”26 surface, martin admitted, received bad press; it was shallow, flat, lacking in the depth of genuine culture. nevertheless, he argued, the pop sensibility of the early 1980s entailed “not only living on the surface, but living as a surface.”27 in this art critical temporality, new generational sensibilities succeeded the old while new styles declared the redundancy of previously dominant practices. elbowing aside australia’s powerful figurative and expressionist tradition, martin declared affect—“minds, feelings, emotions, attachments”—passé; the time for expressionism, with its “touching inclusion in the artwork of autobiographical scraps,” had passed.28 yet it is affect, and the autobiographical, that drove a painted page 1: twiggy, in spite of efforts to make it a pin-up for life lived on the surface. there was far more to twiggy than pop nostalgia. for a moment, between 1966–67, twiggy enjoyed global celebrity as the epitome of swinging london. in the mass media and popular imagination, she represented not only youth, mod fashion and english style but also brash entrepreneurship. twiggy was admired as both this year’s girl and as twiggy enterprises ltd. journalists were confused by her slight frame and boyish haircut, or disturbed by her fusion of the infantile and the commercial. however, for suburban girls like jenny watson, twiggy was their point of engagement with the spirit of the 1960s. reading about twiggy in newspapers and magazines, buying her line of clothing and accessories, a teenager could experience a pop epiphany involving, as linda benn delibero suggested: fashion as a powerful mode of expression, style as a means to another life, the sense of possibility in a purchase—the connection between clothes and the politics of liberation hadn’t been so pronounced since the twenties. for a girl on the verge of adolescence, that convergence proved heady. vogue called it “youthquake.”29 twiggy’s moment was one in which politics, especially gender politics, was transformed into something articulated through forms of symbolic consumption. the twiggy story, told and re-told in the popular media, was one of the “transformative properties not of politics and of social consciousness, but of fashion and style.”30 it was also the story of a fashion model who repeatedly dismissed the ideas of beauty and an ideal female form: “with twiggy, for a brief time, girls were free to invest in a spectatorial position which made a virtue of everything deemed undesirable in male eyes. not only could you transcend your class and be a star, you could transcend the limitations of femininity itself.”31 25 adrian martin, “living on the surface,” [lecture, 23 june 1982, national gallery of victoria] reprinted in hughes and croggan, eds. impresario: paul taylor, the melbourne years, 1981–1984, 168. martin was a regular contributor to taylor’s art & text. 26 ibid., 169. 27 ibid.,171. 28 ibid.,171. 29 linda benn delibero, “this year’s girl: a personal/critical history of twiggy,” in on fashion, ed. shari benstock (new brunswick: rutgers university press, 1994), 43. 30 ibid.,46. 31 ibid.,55–56. 1 4 t r y i n g t o l i v e n o w : c h r o n o t o p i c f i g u r e s i n j e n n y w a t s o n ’ s a p a i n t e d p a g e s e r i e s contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.98 in august 1967, twiggy and richard avedon came together in vogue, a magazine edited by the legendary diana vreeland and dedicated to fashionable contemporaneity. avedon, then regarded as the world’s greatest fashion photographer, had been poached from harper’s bazaar by vreeland in 1966. his role, in chronotopic terms, was to compress time and space into utter contemporaneity. he was the guru of “nowness”; as guest editor of the april 1965 issue of bazaar, he had offered readers a “partial passport to the off-beat side of now.”32 vogue was explicit about the temporal imperatives of fashion; the cover of the august 1967 issue promised “55 new looks to own right now.” the only thing better was being ahead of the game; the cover of the july 1967 issue offered a “fashion forecast: your next best looks.” within this strategically manufactured environment of hyper-contemporaneity, twiggy was the embodiment of now. life magazine reported that she had been declared the “face of 1967.”33 for vogue, twiggy was “a heroine for her time, which is now.”34 in april 1967 she blitzed new york with all the trappings of mod celebrity—airport press conferences, a cockney bodyguard, a wide-boy manager and spreads in look, newsweek and the new yorker. it was during this visit that the avedon shoot took place, the “now” in fashion terms being a breathless declaration masking some six months of media pre-production.35 avedon’s photographs of twiggy for vogue accompanied an article declaring a new look, a new physicality and a new spirit for young women: “delicious-looking creatures, healthy, welldressed, living at the top of their zest. they’re the romantic young girls of today.”36 in watson’s painting, richard avedon’s twiggy is an historical artifact; a visual document of a recent mod past since over-written by a succession of fashions and subcultures. in just over a decade, the face of 1967 had been superseded by the hippies, glam rock, disco, punk and new wave. but twiggy also represented powerful memories of the artist’s own youth. watson still owns a work made when she was a teenager, in which news clippings of the rolling stones are interwoven with hand drawn mary quant-style dolly birds (with flowers painted on their cheeks, in emulation of avedon’s cover image of twiggy for vogue july 1967). given watson’s involvement with the women’s art movement, it is likely that twiggy remained for her, in the 1970s, an empowering figure, representing confidence, independence and professional acumen to an artist conscious that, in the australian art world, such attributes were resented by the male old guard.37 32 magazine copy cited by vince aletti, “in vogue and after,” in richard avedon, avedon fashion (new york: abrams, 2009), 263. 33 anon., “the arrival of twiggy,” life, february 3,1967, 33. 34 anon., “the daring young romantics,” vogue [american edition], august 1967, not pag. 35 richard avedon, avedon: photographs 1947–77 (london: thames and hudson, 1978), 107. 36 anon., “the daring young romantics,” not pag. 37 in an august 1975 interview, watson identified herself as a feminist artist and wryly noted that a woman artist’s role was constituted as “nurturing a man’s ego by not threatening him.” geoffrey de groen, interviews with australian artists (melbourne: quartet, 1978), 25. 1 5 c h r i s m c a u l i f f e contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.98 figure 7 jenny watson, a painted page 3: myer christmas catalogue 1979, 1979, oil on canvas, 163 x 178 cm. gold coast city art gallery. copyright jenny watson. 1 6 t r y i n g t o l i v e n o w : c h r o n o t o p i c f i g u r e s i n j e n n y w a t s o n ’ s a p a i n t e d p a g e s e r i e s contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.98 figure 8 jenny watson, yellow painting: john, 1974, synthetic polymer on canvas, 182.5 x 380.5 cm. monash university collection, melbourne. copyright jenny watson. dominating the first painting of the painted pages series, watson’s copy of avedon’s twiggy is neither a quotidian news image nor a superficial exercize in nostalgia, but a recovered memory, a totemic image of youth, ambition, and vitality. the source is historicized and canonical; watson’s page was unearthed from a coffee table book surveying fashion photography rather than the original vogue magazine. but twiggy’s presence is visceral; she remained the embodiment of the transformative properties of fashion and style. here, in the meeting of the artist’s teenage years and her professional adulthood, “time becomes,” as bakhtin remarked, “palpable and visible; the chronotope makes narrative events concrete, makes them take on flesh, cause blood to flow in their veins.”38 the chronotopy of autobiography is more fleshy and less stable than that of the novel. bakhtin noted that the author of fiction “does his observing from his own unresolved and still evolving contemporaneity, in all its complexity and fullness, insofar as he himself is located as it were tangentially to the reality he describes.”39 in the case of autobiography, the irresolution of the authorial position is even more pronounced; the author is not tangential to the reality represented but thoroughly and subjectively invested in it. in a painted page 1: twiggy, watson introduced a suite of variables that could only result in a wild chronotopy— memory, youth and fashion—all of which orbit around fantasy. in a preface to a 1978 monograph on avedon’s fashion photography, harold brodkey grasped the richness and threat of these variables. “no one can tell us what time is,” he said, “each of us is born into a private envelope of time.”40 the time of a life story, he suggested, was one invented by “our dreaming minds,” its duration “has only to do with stories we tell ourselves.” the time of fashion, its contemporaneity, was of a piece with this private, dreamed time; “fashion, as a noun, means things that have been made for us to use as we try to live now. fashion is us— trying to live.” 38 bakhtin, “forms of time and of the chronotope in the novel,” 250. 39 ibid.,255. 40 harold brodkey, [introduction], in richard avedon, avedon: photographs 1947–1977, not pag. 1 7 c h r i s m c a u l i f f e contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.98 figure 9 jenny watson, self portrait: tiger lounge version, 1979, gouache and pencil on paper, 56.2 x 76cm. maryvale art foundation collection, latrobe regional gallery, morwell, victoria. copyright jenny watson. it was this mercurial goal—trying to live now—that distinguished the painted pages from the autobiographical elements of watson’s earlier work. in a 1974 series of portraits of friends, watson had used a deadpan, photorealist approach to mute the affective element of personal imagery. figures were clinically pinned down on uninflected fields of color, as if mimicking barnett newman’s “zips” and morris louis’s “pours” (fig. 8). watson’s subsequent 1975–77 “house painting” series was a sequence of diptychs portraying each of the houses in which she had lived to date. while each pair could be read as a chapter in a life story, the paired representations of her homes—one a small photorealist image, the other a larger, disintegrated painterly grid—suggested that what was being hunted down was the margin between abstraction and representation rather than autobiography. in the painted page series, the autobiographical references were less directly stated although the temporal registers became overt. watson coupled what bakhtin called “socio-public” time (the events of the newspaper pages), and affective, autobiographical time (memories of twiggy, an affiliation with punk). the former, as the world of “doings,” was objective and material in character. the latter, a fantasy of “adventuristic” time, was the realm of dreaming and becoming. but the chronotopic strategies within the painted page series suggest that watson was seeking a way out of such conventions. a painted page 1: twiggy was not, as taylor 1 8 t r y i n g t o l i v e n o w : c h r o n o t o p i c f i g u r e s i n j e n n y w a t s o n ’ s a p a i n t e d p a g e s e r i e s contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.98 would have it, a disinterested “painting of a photograph” nor an exercise in “dislocation.”41 instead, watson was reinvesting in the stories that she had told herself in her youth. twiggy was a powerful evocation of an exciting, entrepreneurial young woman, made by an artist who had just completed her first decade of professional practice in a masculinist art world. watson’s new wave sensibility was more about brodkey’s dreaming mind than barthes’s second degree. it had something of the desire for self-invention, independent of classical stylistic narratives, identified by music critic simon reynolds, “there’ll be no more next big things, just an ever-after of pick’n’mix plundering from the past … instead, on each of us descends the freedom (or burden?) of being the author of our own identity, making stylistic choices to express not so much our inner selves as our allegiances and our fantasies about who we’d rather be.”42 with the completion of her painted page series, emerging postmodern criticism offered watson a lead role in a new version of the narrative of australian contemporary art. in the eyes of critics like taylor and martin, she represented a new, post-pop generation dispensing with modernist notions of expression, depth and originality. but for watson, the series marked out a different, very personal narrative. it commenced with a talismanic figure, twiggy, anchored in the artist’s formative teenage fantasies. the second painting, invoking punk style and dedicated to melbourne post-punk band the ears, declared watson’s affiliation with melbourne’s inner-city underground.43 the next three works (myer christmas catalogue, the herald and the sun) were rooted in concerns that watson had earlier articulated in the context of the women’s art movement; the pages charted the popular articulation of conventional gender roles (dolls for girls and trucks for boys, sunbathing for women and athleticism for men), and alluded to the dominance of a masculinist abstraction in late modernist art (fig. 7). the final work, which marked watson’s relocation from melbourne to brisbane when her then-partner john nixon took up the directorship of the institute of modern art, combined both the themes of youth subculture (an english skinhead) and the status of women (the nomination of the first female member of queensland’s state cabinet). far from being coolly ironic, the painted pages are insistently affective in character, with the figures of memory, subjectivity and autobiography dominating. the paintings show watson considering who she’d rather be, a representative of a new, postmodern style (new wave, the “second degree,” “popism”) or an inheritor of the legacy of twiggy, who had transcended the limitations of femininity with style, energy and independence. twiggy—the epitome of the “dolly bird”—represented, for watson, not merely memories of swinging london but also a persona still relevant to the melbourne art and music scenes of the late 1970s. beginning in the mid-1950s, fashion designer mary quant had expertly promoted a look combining chelsea bohemianism—“finely-judged stylizations of art student outrage,”44 in christopher breward’s evocative phrase—with the go-ahead, confident mobility of young women. the dolly bird, according to contemporary observer colin macinnes, had a “general 41 taylor, “australian new wave and the ‘second degree’,” 159-60. 42 simon reynolds, melody maker, (september 1986). cited in simon frith and howard horne, art into pop (london: methuen, 1987), 177. 43 watson also made portraits of members of melbourne band, the boys next door; a portrait of sam sejavka, singer for the ears; followed by portraits of members of brisbane’s go-betweens between 1979– 80. her an original oil painting was used by the boys next door in a 1979 performance at melbourne’s crystal ballroom. for more on watson’s post-punk connections see my “let’s talk about art: art and punk in melbourne,” art and australia 34 no. 4 (1997), 502–12. 44 christopher breward, fashioning london (oxford: berg, 2004), 154. 1 9 c h r i s m c a u l i f f e contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.98 figure 10 jenny watson, 60s dolly bird, 2014, japanese pigment tinted gesso and acrylic on 10gsm cotton duck, 160 × 95cm. courtesy roslyn oxley gallery. copyright: jenny watson. air . . . of formidable self-possession.”45 in her, breward identified “youthful energy, emotional independence, economic self-sufficiency and especially unfettered mobility.”46 like the dolly birds she dressed, quant was “innocent and tough,” exhibiting “chaotic creativity underpinned by a steely acumen.”47 all of these were qualities watson sought in her professional practice, initially in a male-dominated art scene within which the conjunction of “woman” and “professional practice” was oxymoronic at best, threatening at worst. watson’s subsequent oeuvre would focus almost exclusively on autobiography and allegorical self-portraiture, charting a determined woman’s passage through the institutional and discursive territories of contemporary art. a modest self-portrait, also made in 1979, marks the beginning of this trajectory. self portrait: tiger lounge version (1979) shows the artist as a denizen of one of melbourne’s earliest punk venues at the royal oak hotel, richmond (fig. 9). a painting from watson’s most recent exhibition, 60s dolly bird (2014) once again declares the model of the worldly, confident woman rooted in teenage fantasies of swinging london (fig. 10). in the figures of twiggy, the dolly bird and the new wave fan, we find watson tracing the process within which time—as moment, memory and life history—“thickens, takes on flesh, becomes artistically visible.”48 45 colin macinnes, england, half english cited in breward, fashioning london, 168. 46 breward, fashioning london, 172. 47 ibid., 155 and 159. 48 bakhtin, “forms of time and of the chronotope in the novel,” 84. 2 0 t r y i n g t o l i v e n o w : c h r o n o t o p i c f i g u r e s i n j e n n y w a t s o n ’ s a p a i n t e d p a g e s e r i e s contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.98 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-noncommercial-no derivative works 3.0 united states license. this journal is operated by the university library system of the university of pittsburgh as part of its d-scribe digital publishing program, and is co-sponsored by the university of pittsburgh press. contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture vol 6, no 1 “boundless” (2017) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2017.215 http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu synaxis julia lambright about the artist julia lambright was born and raised in russia. she received an mfa with distinction in painting from the university of new mexico in 2015. having worked primarily in oil in the past, her focus over the last decade has been rooted in traditional egg-tempera painting, a technique that she learned from masters in russia and the united states. while searching for a personal spiritual experience, lambright began exploring iconographic canons, formulas, and techniques of seventeenth-century icon painting. being influenced by the icon’s visual aesthetics, with the images rooted in symbols and signs, lambright integrates and transforms its principles and technical construction into a contemporary form of art making. her work can be found at http://www.julialambright.com/ currently, lambright is a visiting lecturer at the university of new mexico, valencia campus, department of business, technology, and fine arts. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ http://www.julialambright.com/ contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 6, no 1 “boundless” (2017) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2017.215 having emigrated from russia to the united states in 2003, i recognized new possibilities for myself while strengthening my connection to american culture. my exposure to the american way of life allowed me to re-envision the cultural, social, and political climate of present-day russia, as well as to reflect, learn, and analyze the interplay of ethnic and geographical influences. in many ways, american culture has shaped my ideas for developing the concept of the “other.” for me, “othering” became a mental classification for losing some of my spiritual and physical connection with russian society. yet, in the united states, i am also regarded as “the other.” and so, what should “home” signify to and for me? for me, “home” is now a dialogue and negotiated space; it is a process by which i am constantly constructing, defining, and redefining my own cultural identity. searching for communion and internal revelation, i felt a growing need to explore the sacred art of russian icons. being compared to the “gate” between a believer and god, icons represent a dogmatic truth that aims to intimately connect with the viewer. engaging with this world of sign and symbols, “synaxis” stands as a metaphor for a borderline (both physical and spiritual) that simultaneously separates and connects all of us in this global community. observing the complexity of cultural codes, i want to awaken a range of human emotions, encourage a visual recognition and a dialogue of looking, seeing, and realizing that there is no “other.” figure 1 installation view of synaxis, south broadway cultural center, albuquerque, photograph by julia lambright, 2015. synaxis julia lambright http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 7 5 j u l i a l amb r i g h t contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 6, no 1 “boundless” (2017) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2017.215 figure 2 julia lambright, tetris, 2013, egg tempera, oil, and gold leaf on panel, 36.5 x 36 x 0.5 in. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 7 6 s yna x i s contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 6, no 1 “boundless” (2017) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2017.215 figure 3 julia lambright, 700,000 in one, 2014, egg tempera and gold leaf on panel, 36.5 x 36 x 0.5 in. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 7 7 j u l i a l amb r i g h t contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 6, no 1 “boundless” (2017) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2017.215 figure 4 julia lambright, desert crossing, 2015, egg tempera and gold leaf on panel, 28.5 x 30 x 0.5 in. new articles in this journal are licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 united states license. this journal is operated by the university library system of the university of pittsburgh as part of its d-scribe digital publishing program, and is co-sponsored by the university of pittsburgh press. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/ http://www.pitt.edu/ http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/ http://www.upress.pitt.edu/upressindex.aspx http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ microsoft word 177-189 no name group 7-27 (1).docx vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.155 http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu the round table 02圆桌 a conversation with the no name painting group gao minglu, madeline eschenburg, ellen larson, and dong li hui abstract the following is a transcript of a conversation between three members of the no name painting group, as well as gao minglu, madeline eschenburg, ellen larson, and dong li hui. this interview was originally conducted in chinese and has been edited for clarity. about the artists li shan, ma kelu, and zhang wei were all members of the no name group. the no name group was a beijing-based group of largely self-taught artists active from the early 1960s through the early 1980s. they were noteworthy for their active rejection of soviet socialist realism promoted throughout the cultural revolution by the government. rather, they upheld the notion of art for art’s sake. their work, however, must also be considered as a purposeful negation of official ideology and is important because of its unique position as the only underground, self-organized, avant-garde art group during the cultural revolution. it took some time for this group to be recognized as an important aspect of contemporary chinese art partially because, while they did not conform to governmental standards, their work also did not contain overtly political themes, like some of the works by another early avant-garde art group in china, the stars. rather, their works tended to be landscapes or street scenes executed in a traditional chinese, impressionistic or post-impressionistic styles. their first official exhibition was held in 1979. contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.155 dong li hui: what are your personal thoughts on your art? have your thoughts changed over time? 董丽慧：您们个人对艺术有什么看法？从七十年代到现在 您的这些看法有没有改变？ zhang hui: actually, i am still pretty confused myself! 张伟: 其实我一个人糊里糊涂的，基本差不多了 dlh: how about with regards to your work? did any changes occur in your work? 董: 那，对您的艺术作品来讲，作品有没有被改变？ zh: yes! i always wanted to paint well, but i actually think that the more i paint, the worse i paint! now i am faced with obstacles, a kind of hardship, because even though i want to paint what no one has painted before, i can’t seem to paint this kind of painting. i think it’s really hard to express this sort of feeling. recently, it’s gotten a little better because i have started to explore new materials. i want to use things other than (conventional) canvas or paper. these new (unconventional) materials are much more interesting. this makes me feel like my paintings have changed. i have started to use tools that construction workers would use, like shovels or wall plastering. i am trying to find other things to paint on. as long as these objects have a planar surface, i can paint on them. these objects change the relationship between me and my paintings and this form of “canvas.” i think using a piece of paper or flat canvas is too limiting. but take a shovel, for example. i bought a pile of shovel heads. the backs of these shovels look a little like the shapes of human faces, with a pointed shape on top. 张: 是，我是想画好啊， 很想画好画，其实我觉得越画越不好。很想画，真的很想画，但是呢，我现在有 一个障碍，一个困难，我想画的好像别人没这么画过，可是还画不出来，怎么画的会类似于什么，所以我觉 得有一点很难很难再画下出的这种感觉，最近稍微好一点是突然改变画画的这个材料。我想用一些不是画布 或者不是纸，然后画这些东西还挺有意思。这个给我一个改变画画的感觉。我用的是建筑工人的工具，铁锹 或者是那个墙上抹的，然后我现在还在找一些其他的东西可以在上边画画，只要接近是个平面我就想可以用 来画画。它可以改变我跟这个画之间的关系和我和这个画布，如果是一张纸或者平面的画布，我会觉得太会 受限制，但是比如说一个铁锹，铁锹没有这个把儿我买了一堆铁锹头铁锹的背面呢也有点像人脸的形状红起 来的然后它是方的，但是有一点形状，有那个很特别的造型 ma kelu: you didn’t tell the truth 马可鲁:你没有告诉我实情。 zh: then, after i applied the color it looked a little like a peking opera mask. after i showed it to people, they all agreed that it looked like a painted mask, particularly like a peking opera mask. i used really simple colors. it was just what i wanted to paint. i think that changing my materials in this way is really interesting. if i take this table (that we are sitting at) and paint it, it could be really interesting. but if i was painting the same painting on canvas, i would be really bored with it. i wouldn’t achieve anything by painting in this way. painting on this chair (i am sitting on) wouldn’t be bad, either. painting on its front or back would both be really interesting. this is how i feel about my painting now. (to ma kelu:) how about you? the round table 02圆桌 a conversation with the no name painting group gao minglu, madeline eschenburg, ellen larson, and dong li hui 1 7 9 g a o m i n g l u , m a d e l i n e e s c h e n b u r g , e l l e n l a r s o n , a n d d o n g l i h u i contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.155 张: 然后呢，我画上颜色以后，它就有点像那个京剧花脸，我给别人看也说，啊！那个有点像花脸的感觉， 特别京剧，颜色用的很简单，那它就是我想要画的别人看也有这样的感觉。我觉得改变这个东西去画就挺有 意思。如果说我拿着桌子画可能很好玩，很有意思。但是如果同样画大布我会觉得很无聊或者觉得画不出什 么特别的名堂？如果要是这个椅子也不错。画的椅子面上，画的椅子背上，也挺好的。我现在在想这些事情 ，（对 马可鲁）那你说： from left to right: gao minglu, ellen larson, zhang wei, li shan, and ma kelu (photo: courtesy of gao minglu contemporary art center)。 mk: i would first like to add a little to what you just said. don’t get mad at me, ok? changes you’ve made in terms of certain things aren’t that big, but overall, you’ve changed quite a lot. she (li hui) asked what the changes have been from the 1970s to today. just now, i said you didn’t tell the truth because your works, how do you say, have a lot of simple or essential (elements), ok? that shovel looks like a butt (laughs). (zhang wei) is an extremely relaxed artist. his paintings say that he isn’t really concerned with the paintings’ surface. even though your composition and color sense are both really good, the work lacks mature language. to solve this problem, you have started to experiment with different media (like the shovel). your new work is not that large in size, i’ve seen it. i think it’s all really good. now i will talk about myself. my change might be a little bigger than (zhang wei’s), as the concept is not really the same. i am a little more conservative than him to a certain point. in terms of form, i am more conservative because of the limits i have created for myself. in the nineties, i used different (unconventional) materials, but i saw too many people working in this way, so i went back to using conventional materials, just pigment and brush. even today, i don’t think these materials create any sort of limitations for me. i am using them to change my oil paintings, allowing me to go deeper. (by working in this way,) i never get tired of painting. never. this aspect makes me very different from zhang wei. 马可鲁：我是的意思是你补充，先不说我啊。你的变化在某一点上是不大，但是呢，变化也挺大，她(丽慧) 说什么七十年代到现在。 刚才我说的你 didn’t tell the truth是因为你的作品和这个怎么说，这个作品这个 有很多 simple or essential，ok? 那个铁锹更像屁股（ 张伟 ）是一个非常放松的画家。（ 张伟）画说他 1 8 0 t h e r o u n d t a b l e 0 2 圆 桌 contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.155 不太关注实际上也不太进入到画面的表面。你是一个不管构图也好，color sense 也非常好，但是你不太进 入到这个 mature 这个层次语言。所以呢你产生这个困惑， 你要找不同实践来解决这些问题他的新的那些 size 不太大，我都看了，我觉得也非常好。 下面，我也说我自己。我的变化可能要比他大一些，但是观念也不太一样。我要比他在某点上要保守。就是 在形式上很保守，因为我给我自己的限定，我在九十年代用什么其他的材料但是我看太多人去做那个所以我 回到那这种 conventional materials,这种用颜料只是刷只是画这些到现在并没给我什么限制我是用在变化 油画可以在 go deeper然后所以我对绘画 never get tired, never. 这点我可能跟你很不一样。 dlh: so just now, you spoke about changes in style. but, what about your thoughts on art. have they changed at all? for example, when you first started painting, what did art mean to you? were those thoughts different from your thoughts on art today? 董：所以您们刚刚说的就是风格的改变，但是您们对艺术的看法有没有受改变？比如说您们觉得艺术那个时 候是什么，然后现在是什么？ mk: of course my thoughts about art changed, how could they not change? but in the midst of this, there are some things that you might want to change, but cannot. regardless of your views on art, the concept of art isn’t like a moveable property, it’s not like a piece of real estate. it grows and adapts with your own maturity. its composition slowly develops as you change. but i don’t think that one’s qizhi (artistic temperament) changes. qizhi is most important. it is even more important than your own knowledge. qizhi penetrates through even your earliest work up through today, regardless of your perceptional or rational understanding. so, actually, i think qizhi is incredibly important. i think i am constantly changing even though i still use a planar surface to paint. even though i have painted on three-dimensional forms, i don’t concern myself with those things anymore. i have only given myself this one limitation, but at the same time, i have never stopped changing. from the beginning, you all know that no name painters fundamentally emerged from a rather classic point of view, concerned with nature, and a completely expressionistic condition. after 1978 or 1979, there were more and more international exhibitions. there were also more and more modern exhibits. 马：肯定是有改变，不可能没有改变。但是其中有一点点你想改变也改变不了，就你不管你的观念，艺术的 观念不是不动产，不是房地产。它是随着人的成长，这是结构的开拓漫漫你会产生得变化，但是变不了我觉 得是气质，气质这个东西其实是最重要的。甚至比你知识还重要，这点贯穿到一开始的作品，到现在的作品 ，不管你是增加了很多，感性的理性的或者是知识上的，但实际上我对那点是非常重要的。对我自己来说一 直是在变的，虽然我一直在平面，平面，立体装置，虽然我做过，但是我不算那种东西。我只把自己其实有 一个限定，但是一直在变的。 从一开始你们知道《无名》的时候基本你的对艺术切入点从一种比较古典的角 度切入，对于自然，对于这个事务那种全是那种表现是一种状态。达到了七九年以后，七八年以后这个国外 的展览越来越多了。现代的展品也越来越多了。 li shan: i’m not like (zhang wei and ma kelu). i’m rather simple. i make art because i am not satisfied with certain parts of my life. i think that this dissatisfaction is interesting, so i continue painting (to express these things). that’s all i have to say about that. ma kelu, please continue. 李珊: 我可能不象他们一样，我比较简单的，我觉得艺术对我来说就是没好生活的一部分,还是因为没好生 活的一部分所以我觉得有意思，我愿意现在还画画。说完了。马老师，你们说吧。 mk: you put it best. 马：你说得最好 ls: i am pretty simple. i think that during that time, i didn’t have a good life. i still feel this way today. if my life was better, i think i would stop painting. but i still feel bored with my life. so i continue to paint. 1 8 1 g a o m i n g l u , m a d e l i n e e s c h e n b u r g , e l l e n l a r s o n , a n d d o n g l i h u i contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.155 李：我很简单。我一贯如此。所以我觉得那个时候是没好生活是有意思的，现在是一样的呗。我的现在不没 好了我不愿意停画画。现在还是无聊的。 dlh: let’s continue. i have a second question. what sorts of influence did your time abroad have on your work? 董: 那咱们继续吧。第二个问题。您们在国外的经验对您的作品有什么影响。 ls: let them answer. this question doesn’t concern me. 李：让他们俩说，跟我没什么关系。 zh: the most important thing i learned from my time in the united states was the idea of personal worth. before, i wasn’t very clear about what this meant. for example, when i was in the us, i and my other painter friends all painted together. at this time, i continued to seek new ways to change myself, and the appearance of my own work. but in terms of the essence of my work, in terms of the rational nature of my work, the reasoning behind my work became clear to me. after i arrived in the us, the american way of life, the people i came in contact with everyday, and my understanding of aspects of american culture all deepened my impression of the essence of individual worth. we once set up a stall on the street to sell paintings in new york. this experience emphasized my own value and made me respect my personal spirit. i learned to believe in my own work and to stick with what i was doing. these ideas i learned during my experience in the us had the greatest influence on me. in terms of culture, we went to art museums every day, we’d look at work, we’d read books, or we’d watch tv. all of these things had a great influence on me. but the deepest impression i felt was the value of one’s personal experience. sometimes, i discuss the concept of freedom with people (here in china). i often get made fun of. they feel like freedom doesn’t really exist. it’s just a relative term. but i think you only know what the true meaning of freedom is when you don’t have it. they don’t think about freedom in the same way as you (americans) do. they don’t think that freedom was something understood only after one finally gains independence. but people in the us really understand this concept. this is very different from china. of course, if i didn’t spend so many years in the united states, i wouldn’t have this understanding. 张: 美国对我来书最重要的给我的理解一个人价值，过去我不清楚这个。比如说我在中国的时候，我们都在 一直画画。我自己也在不停的寻找新的改变，改变我自己作品的面貌，但是在精神上，在理性上我清楚就是 什么原因造成的促成的。到美国以后我觉得美国的生活和美国的每天接触的人和了解的美国文化方面真正有 意思对我影响深刻的就是个人精神价值的重视.包括后来我们因为在街上，摆摊儿卖画在纽约的街头摆摊卖 画儿， 你越�调自己的精神价值，你越是尊重个人精神，相信自己做对，你就坚持做下去，这个想法，在 美国这是给我印象最深刻的。至于文化的方面都是每天去美术馆啊，看什么人作品，读什么书，或者在电视 上看什么节目都会影响到我。但是真正深刻的影响是个人精神。偶尔我会跟某些人谈到自由这个概念的时候 我也觉得常常会被别人嘲笑，自由是不存在的。自由是相对的。自由是在你被约束的时候，你才知道自由是 什么，他们不认为这个自由在你明白。他们不认为这个自由是被独立意的去关注。但是在美国是很明白，但 是跟中国都不一样。当然如果我不去美国生活那么多年我不会有这些认识。 mk: so i think up until today, meeting so many international artists in paris and then in new york left the biggest impression on me. meeting all of these different kinds of people made me more aware of how important the concept of regionalism is. each individual had his or her own cultural understanding. i think understanding this relationship is most important. in new york, as an artist, regardless of whether or not you belong to the mainstream or are marginalized as an outsider artist, it doesn’t matter. i’ve seen so many artists, including myself, whose mentalities improved a great deal based on their experiences in new york. the work became much deeper. every artist and his or her relationship to art became much more individualistic. this is most basic as you start to look at yourself and what you can do. so, gradually, more and more work comes from oneself, rather than from an ideology. this is 1 8 2 t h e r o u n d t a b l e 0 2 圆 桌 contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.155 meaningful, as work can transform into a form of power or criticism. my time in new york made this all very clear to me, which is something i really treasure. 马：在纽约作为一个艺术家不管你在这个艺术的这个主流里面或者你是 marginalized 在边检 it doesn’t matter.我看很多艺术家包括我的工作很多很多艺术家心态要好得多，然后做得作品要非常的深入。然后每 个人和艺术间关系艺术家之间的这种关系，怎么说，这种 individualism. 这个是一个最 basic 的一个关注 自己能做什么所以逐渐的很多这个作品更多的是从这个作品本身而不是从很多很多的意识形态里的，很多这 样的意义来作为一个权势，或者一个评判，批评啊这个角度。在那边比较清楚的意识到这点，这点也是我很 珍惜的。 ellen larson: li shan, what about you? why didn’t you choose to spend time in the united states? ellen larson：那李老师，您为什么也不选去美国生活一段时间？ ls: it was the us that didn’t choose me! the us wouldn’t allow me to go! 李: 是美国不选我啊。美国不让我去啊。 mk: four times. 马： 4 次 el: really?! el: 是吗？！ ls: it was so easy for them to go! for example, zhang wei. it was so easy for him to leave. later, i wrote on my visa application that i wanted to go to the us to be with him, but they told me i filled out my application incorrectly. you see, every time i filled out my visa application, i had a different reason to leave china. one reason was to go to the us to study english, see relatives, travel, etc. (to zhang wei:) so, i think that after you left, you gave me all your hardships! 李: 他们出去了太容易了。比如说张伟老师吧， 特别容易让他出去然后我签证写了我去找他，然后他们说 我写了不对了。你看吧，我的签证每次有不同的理由，去美国学英语，看亲,旅游，（对张伟）所以我觉得你 去了之后把你的困难都给我了。 el: then why did you two decide to go to the us? el：那您们俩为什么选去美国。 zh: me? i liked the american way of life. i liked american culture. i was really interested in the united states in the 1980s. even now, i think the united states is a good place because americans are generally not narrow-minded. typically, they are very open-minded. also, everyone is entitled to his or her own ideas and can speak freely about them. 张：我吗？我喜欢美国的生活方式，喜欢美国的文化。我对美国所有的东西都感兴趣。在八十年代的时候。 现在我也觉得美国是一个很好的地方因为它的，美国人都一般不狭隘，一般都很开放的形态，也包容给别人 存在的权利，你有你的看法没关系，你说你的看法啊 el: i mean, many artists went to europe, like paris for example. so, why did you choose new york? el：就是不少的艺术家其欧洲，巴黎啊，所以你为什么选择纽约呢？ 1 8 3 g a o m i n g l u , m a d e l i n e e s c h e n b u r g , e l l e n l a r s o n , a n d d o n g l i h u i contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.155 zh: i was invited to go to new york to participate in an exhibition called chinese avant-garde art. there were ten artists in all who participated in this exhibition. they were all from beijing. at the time, i thought this was a great opportunity to go to the us. otherwise, i wouldn’t have had an opportunity to go. 张：我就开始被拿邀请一下去纽约做一个展览叫《中国前卫艺术》其实有十个艺术家都是北京的我是其中的 一个，然后我觉得对我也是一个机会可以去美国，不然的话没有机会去。 ls: if you could have gone to europe, for example, germany, you would have gone there, too. right? 李: 如果让你去欧洲，比如说德国你都会去。 zh: i would have gone anywhere. but i really wanted to go to the us. i didn’t really know a lot about germany or france, and i wasn’t as interested in these places. 张：我都去，但是我真的是最喜欢美国。德国，或者是法国我也了解不是很多，而且兴趣不是很大。 gao minglu: the stars seemed to all go to france, right? 高名潞：星星都好像去欧洲啊。 zh: yes. 张：是 ls: in the 1980s, i think everyone really wanted to leave china. they wanted to free themselves from that environment. 李: 八十年代的时候我觉得大家都是特别愿意出国，愿意摆脱当时的环境。 zh: they said that china at that time was a sinking ship. people all wanted to find another ship that would be safer for them. 张：他们说中国是一个快要就要沉下去的船，然后船上的人都喜欢到另外的船上更安全。 ls: then i was this ship’s bravest person. 李: 我是这船最勇敢的人 zh: other countries were all other ships. everyone wanted to run away to them. 张：其他的国家是另外的船，当时大家都在逃跑 mk: i left two years after (other artists). i had a lot of friends who came back to china that asked me, “what are you still doing here?” in the 1980s our reason for leaving china was not really to study abroad. the thought on everyone’s mind was if you could find a way to leave, you would leave. therefore, some went to study, but we didn’t. we left to see the world. at that time, we would go wherever we could. when i finally left, i first went to germany. after that, i went to sweden. at that time, i didn’t know if i could go to the us because of the visa issue. i would really go anywhere. i brought a little money, but i really couldn’t move around because having a chinese passport was as good as waste paper. i had to always return to china to apply for a visa. when i was still in china, i met a former deputy ambassador to the united states. he 1 8 4 t h e r o u n d t a b l e 0 2 圆 桌 contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.155 told me if i ran into any problems, i should let him know. when i was in sweden i remembered this and wrote him. later, my friend told me that i was granted a visa. so, this all happened by chance. i really didn’t know where i was going to end up. before i left china, i thought i understood the mentality of most chinese people. before i left china i studied chinese classics. my teacher was zhang zhixin’s brother. so after i got my visa and was applying for my passport, it got held up. the security bureau wouldn’t give me my passport. they came to my home six times to talk with me. but finally, they gave me my passport. but then they wanted to take advantage of me and rejected my application. finally, after i received the visa, i quickly left. before i left, my teacher told me, “leave and don’t ever come back to this place.” at that time, a lot of people, in fact, had this same idea. if you could go, you’d go and never come back. so despairing. 马：我呢是比他们晚出去两年，我有很多朋友出去再回来都问“你怎么还在这儿呢？”八十年代的时候我在这 儿呢我们那个时候并没有说出去是上学，他也是，我也是。所以就是基本中国人的精神状态就是能够走的就 走，然后呢，有的是出去攻读，我们没有这个读书的这个，就是出去看世界。然后走到哪儿就是哪儿。 我 才出去的时候先到德国，到德国然后我也去瑞典，那个时候我不知道能到美国只不过那时因为有签证的问题 ，我还到什么地方都想去，带了点儿钱，但是呢走不动因为中国的护照像一个废纸一样。我要回中国再去请。 所以呢，正好我在国内的时候，见到这个原来的美国副大使在我出国之前然后这个跟我说了，就是你要遇到 什么问题，然后给我写信。然后我就想起来了，想起来了以后我就写信，我在瑞典收到了他的信。我的朋友 说你拿不到签证。 所以都是不知道的都是未知的，能走到哪儿，就走到哪儿，因为我出国之前我觉得中国 人普遍形态啊从一点可以看出来啊。我出国之前我学古典的。那么我的老师是谁呢？是张知新的哥哥。然后 我在拿签证我在申请护照的时候，耽误了八个月，治安局就是不给我护照，六次到家里去，找我谈话，但是 到最后呢，他们还是把护照给了我了。然后他们想利用我，最后我也被我拒绝了。最后呢，就是我拿了签证 以后，我想赶紧走掉了，这个时候我的老师呢去跟我说，说”你出去，永远不要在回这个地方来。”就是他那 个时候 88 年我出的时候。张知新的哥哥。他那个想法实际上都很多当时的中国人的想法。就是能走就走。 不要再回来这个地方。是非常绝望的。 el: what about you? at that time, did you think you wouldn’t return to china? el：那您呢？您当时出国之后也觉得不要再回来妈？ mk: i never had that thought. no, really, never. because of my situation, i never thought i would not return. i had a wife and child in china. at that time, i didn’t think i had the ability to move them abroad. also, i didn’t know where i would end up. later, i gave myself a fixed number of years. i wasn’t like some artists who said we were like poets in lifelong exile. i never felt this way. i thought that i would give myself twenty years. i actually came back after nineteen years. but after i left china, i felt that i would go wherever i could go. i first went to the netherlands where i had a friend. he said, “it doesn’t matter! you can come in my car!” he was from paris, but worked in holland. he was a come-and-go kind of guy. he said that i could just go with him in his car, but i thought that if i was ever arrested, he might also get in trouble, so i finally decided not to go. 马：我并没有那么想。没有。真的没有。我的情况，我没有，我有爱人孩子在，我这时候还没想到我有能力 把他们搬出去，我也不知道我最后能够在什么地方。后来我还给我自己一个年限，跟自己说过，不象有的艺 术家说我们是这个诗人，我就终身流亡了，我从来没有这个想法。我是曾经想过二十年的想法。结果我十九 刚年以后回来的。但是出去就是能够走哪儿，就到哪儿。我在荷兰的时候有一个朋友，他说“没关系，你坐 在我车的后面。他是巴黎人。但是他呢在法兰副西的银行工作。他总是来来去去，他说你在我车就可以，可 是我说如果我被抓，会对你有影响，后来就没了。没有去。 madeline eschenburg: when you were young, none of you attended the academy, right? so, i would like to know if this had any influence on your work. do you think not studying within the academy had a positive or negative influence on you? madeline eschenburg: 我有一个关于你年轻的时候，都没在艺术学院上学，对吧。所以我想知道对您的 艺术有什么影响，好处还是坏处？ 1 8 5 g a o m i n g l u , m a d e l i n e e s c h e n b u r g , e l l e n l a r s o n , a n d d o n g l i h u i contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.155 zh: not studying within the academy is great! before, they called us outsiders. we all accepted this identity. as an artist, this outsider position can bring you more opportunities and good fortune. belonging to the mainstream is not as interesting. in the mainstream, you are confronted with more interference and outside influence. with this (mainstream) identity comes a sense of responsibility. when an artist takes on this kind of responsibility, he commits himself to society and is not free. he only serves society. he only works for others. when you look within your heart and do things for yourself, soon you discover that society matters less and less. to answer your question about whether studying in the academy is good or bad, from my heart, i am very glad that i didn’t study art within the academy. 张：不上大学是非常好。以前他说我们是边缘的。我们都认可这个身份。作为一个艺术家如果能是边缘是你 的机会你的幸运。如果你是主流的，就没意思了。就会受到很多的干扰和影响。和你自己会对这个身份的认 同之后你会一种责任感。我认为作艺术家承担的社会责任感的时候它就不自由了。它就是为社会做。为了别 人做了。发自内心做自己的事情往往跟社会没什么关系。还有就是你说的这种去艺术学院对你好还是不好。 我从心理始终认为我很庆幸没有到学院学艺术。 zh: i think that art is actually something that you cannot study. even if your teacher is a big famous artist, he cannot teach you the trueness of art. if you do not possess this ability yourself, you will not become a successful artist. also, i believe that the word “artist” really sounds bad. i don’t like this title. i like how americans use the term 画家 (painter) to describe someone who paints. my friend, another abstract painter, likes to be reffered to as a painter, or simply put, 一个画画的人（a person who paints paintings). also, another friend who passed away said that being called an artist was really annoying. therefore, i call myself a 画画 (literally, paint painting). i think this is the most appropriate. in this most natural state, you are able to do the things you like best. being called an artist is a real headache. it’s really annoying. things that involve the term 家 (specialist) are really foolish. but if you want to talk about the difference between 画画 (paint painting) and 画家 (painter), artists are really annoying, but 画 画 (paint painting) is good. one of no name painting group’s teaching figures talked about 画画儿 (paint painting) adding that beijing “er” (儿) sound. this sound adds 玩儿 (fun or playful) meaning. he said that if painting was a serious or somber job, you won’t ever be able to paint anything. if you become a student of the academy, you will become an art student. after you graduate and begin some sort of art related job, you will find it very boring. with our outsider status, of course we have encountered a lot of hardships; many opportunities have not been made available to us. but we have always been free. today we may sell paintings. but tomorrow if we don’t have money, we can borrow some from a friend. we do what we can to survive. but we have never racked our brains to force ourselves into the market. now all of the paintings we sell are earlier paintings. people are interested in these paintings because they have a very unrestrained spirit. the new paintings are hard to sell, which is very likely because they have been influenced by the market. today i paint to make money, as a way to make my livelihood. so you will definitely see these motivations in (my paintings). possibly some people may be able to see this in my works, too. 张：我觉得就是艺术实际上不能学的，不管是你的老师是什么大艺术家他没有办法把艺术真正的东西教给你 。你要是自己没有这个能力你做不成艺术家。而且我也觉得首先这个艺术家这个说法挺不好听的。我不喜欢 艺术家这个名称。我喜欢美国人说英文这个 painter 就是画画的，我的朋友说的比较强调这点，另外一个抽 象画家，他喜欢被别人，他自己也说他是一个画者，简单说就是一个画画的人。还有过去有一个好朋友他去 世了,他说他要说我也是一个画家觉得很烦。我宁愿说我就是一个画画我觉得这个最好。你在一个最自然的 状态做自己最喜欢的事情。一个艺术家就挺头疼的。挺烦人的。什么东西一有家我觉得挺无聊啊。但是如果 要说画画和这个画家有区别,画家也挺烦人的。就是画画挺好的。 《无名画会》的一个老师,人物,他说画画儿。北京话要加一个儿子。这个儿音带有玩儿的这个意思。他说这个 画画如果是很严肃的是一个工作，你画不出好东西来，但你要是去学院里你就变成艺术学生。艺术学生毕业 以后去做什么艺术相关的工作，艺术工作者都是挺无聊的事。我们那种边缘的状态当然生活遇到很多困难， 好多机会可能也不属于我们。但是我们从来都是自由的。今天会卖画的生活好一点。明天没钱了就想办法让 朋友借了，或者怎么样，都是度过了。都还是走过来了。但是从来没有为了别人为了生存,挖空心思去挤在 市场里面。现在我们卖画都是卖过去的画。这些画是被人认可是因为这些画里有非常自由的精神。而新的画 1 8 6 t h e r o u n d t a b l e 0 2 圆 桌 contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.155 都比较不好卖那很可能这些新的画都有这些市场的影响。那我自己今天画的画里边很可能有这些为了赚钱， 为了生活。难免会带有这些东西在里边。很有可能有眼力的人能看出来。 ls: ah! i don’t believe that’s completely correct. i think when we were painting back then, we didn’t sell paintings. no one was interested in them. people didn’t say these paintings were any good. they said, “what is this? the color is all wrong. this composition is wrong.” people said these things because we were not part of the mainstream. also, it took a long time before we were even recognized, so paintings were not sold immediately. 李: 哎呀！我觉得也不是完全是。我觉得你看你当时咱们那个时候画画不但别说卖了,连说好都不会有人说。 不会说你的画好,人说这是什么呀,这个颜色不对吧。什么对结构不对吧。都这样被说,因为咱们不主流,您卖 的若干年以前的画也是经过了那么长时间。也是过了很长很长时间才逐步被认可。不是说立刻就卖出去。 zh: i have a friend who wants to make a documentary about the 1970s. i asked him why he wants to make this documentary. he said that he thinks it’s interesting that in those years, he rode a worn-out bike, carrying a worn-out bag with rolled up paintings all sandwiched together. he never thought that he could sell these paintings or that they would receive any sort of notoriety. at that time we were simply concerned with painting and its own spiritual sustenance. we weren’t concerned with any other elements. our paintings never included a signature because we didn’t feel we needed to sign them. after you finished a painting, you kept it yourself. there weren’t other people who liked them or wanted them, and there definitely weren’t people who wanted to buy them. 张：我有一个朋友他说他要做一个纪录片七十年代。那我说为什么你要做这个。他说有意思就是当时骑个破 自行车，然后背一破包，里面呢夹着一卷画，从来没有觉得这个画可以卖钱或者被认可。被关注能怎么样， 纯粹就是为了画画，为了自己的这种精神寄托，没有任何别的因素。我们画画都没签名，所有的画都没有签 名。因为没有必要签名。你画完了只能在自己手里也没人喜欢也没人要。更不用说卖。 mk: i think signing one’s painting just isn’t appropriate. too sensitive. 马：还有就是签名我觉得不合适，太敏感。 zh: we painted for ourselves or to share with our friends. we never thought that we needed to sign our paintings. but after we entered the market, we found that if we didn’t sign them, people wouldn’t want to buy them, so we were begged to sign our paintings. now, we will only sign the backs of paintings before we give them to people. but when we are painting we don’t sign the front of the paintings because we think that they are already complete. they don’t need a signature. adding a signature would be too much. when zhao wenliang paints, he uses thumbtacks. this creates small holes in his paintings, so he spends several hours repairing these holes because he wants to preserve the original integrity of the painting. for us, signing our paintings would ruin the integrity of our paintings. we were not willing to become students of the academy, not willing to become 艺术家 (professional artists), not willing to sign our paintings, and not willing to enter the mainstream. we don’t have those abilities. actually, entering the mainstream is not freeing at all. 张：都是为了给自己看，或者朋友看一看。没有想到过从来画画我们想到需要签名。但是自从有了市场以后 ，你不签名就没有人买你的画，都会要求你签名。现在我们只好签在画的背面才卖给别人。但是都不能在画 的正面去签因为这个画面的感觉已经很完整的。多一个签名就很多余。赵文亮的画因为画画时需要用图钉， 会给画面造成缺口，他要用好几个小时来补这个缺口，因为他要保持画面的完整性。我们的签名也会破坏画 面的完整性。 我们不愿意作艺术学生也不愿意去做艺术家也不愿意在画上签名也不愿意进入社会的主流，我们也没那能力 ，确实进入主流不是什么很自在的事情。 1 8 7 g a o m i n g l u , m a d e l i n e e s c h e n b u r g , e l l e n l a r s o n , a n d d o n g l i h u i contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.155 mk: if you have a certain kind of temperament, your paintings will reflect that temperament. you can say that studying within the academy is good, tradition is good, knowledge is good, but without this kind of temperament, it can all go to hell. this is one part. another part is, i think that after forty plus years of painting experience, i have realized that i have never stopped studying. this is a very conscious effort. there is no other push. this “teachers are good, everything is great” attitude is impossible. this has already formed into a work pattern. a good aspect of not attending the academy is that i don’t remember experiencing any kind of process for studying painting. of course, there is a process. at the very beginning, you want to encounter a kind of condition towards art making, but this condition should always be independent. you don’t want this to be a type of homework. when we were making en plein air paintings, our most fundamental motivation wasn’t to go study, but to connect, a kind of exercise. 马：如果你有非常好的那种气质，那你做下去就能成个样子，最后的结论是，所有的学院也好，传统也好， 或者知识也好，见鬼去吧。这是一个，另外的呢，我觉得在到四十多年画画的过程始终是一个自我不断必须 学习。 这是一个非常自觉的事情。没有任何这个其他的 push，老师也好，什么也好，不可能的。这点已经 养成了这种工作方式。好处就是说我不记得我有什么学画的过程，当然有，你在最初学画的时候你想进入一 种做艺术的状态，这种状态始终是自主的，不是去做功课。在做那个 plein air painting的时候，这个最基 本的这种motivation也不是去学习，联系，一个习作。 ls: i started painting with my cousin. she painted according to early chinese painting thought, which incorporated line drawing. we would go and sketch together, but i was very disinterested in this way of working. my line drawings were so time consuming, i could never finish them. this was so exhausting. i couldn’t paint like this. later, i just painted with color. i remember in january of 1971, the first time i went to purple bamboo park (in beijing). it was then that i first met other no name painters. then, i was only painting color without first making any sketches. to this day i don’t make sketches. before, i thought this way of working wasn’t that good. but then, after chatting with some friends, i realized this was a great way of working. why? these friends were all really good students with professional experience. they all graduated from the central academy of fine arts, all really great students. studying in the academy, it was really painful for them to rid themselves of so many years of academic training by their teachers in the academy. it was difficult for them to get rid of these things because they practiced them day after day. they wanted to free themselves from everything their teachers taught them, but this was incredibly difficult. my friends told me i painted very well. i asked them why. they said it was because i didn’t paint lines on the surface of the paintings. after that, i felt that the central academy couldn’t teach you because their set of conventions required you to copy others. the academy absolutely wasn’t for you to develop your own specialty, your own talent, or for you to develop your individuality. i have a friend who taught in germany. he said that for the first year, students are not allowed to paint physical things. teachers all critique students’ personal work. they don’t allow students to copy others’ work. this allows students to become their own people. this makes me glad with myself. recently, i had some friends who wanted to paint. they asked me how to paint. so i told them that painting is actually quite simple. if you want to paint, just paint. number one: you shouldn’t care whether or not your painting resembles anything. of course it won’t look like a photograph. if you care about this, just take up photography. don’t bother painting. number two: disregard others’ comments or critiques. you should just paint to make yourself happy. if you are happy while you are painting, you’ve already achieved your goal. doing something without professional training is a really freeing experience. 李：我呢是一开始跟我表姐一起画画。她按照中国人以前的那种思维然后画素描的，然后我跟她一起画素描 ，但是我觉得这极无趣的事情。一张素描还没画完，然后就画了夜里面，特别困。我画不了了。然后就画颜 色了。我记得我是七一年十一月，去画第一张写生在紫竹院公园。后来那个我就跟《无名画会》认识了，只 要一开始画颜色，我就不会画素描了，我到今天我看素描，我就画不了。我以前觉得这样是不是不太好啊。 1 8 8 t h e r o u n d t a b l e 0 2 圆 桌 contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.155 后来我跟几个朋友聊过以后我发现特别好，为什么特别好？他们都是非常不错的学生。或者说专业的学过， 美院毕业，就是一个特别好的学生。他们在那儿特别痛苦要摆脱老师那么多年训练他们这套东西。他们特别 难摆脱，因为天天练的就是那个。他就想不要那个了。他想挣脱老师给他们的那些东西。特别难，然后就跟 他们聊，他们说我画得特别好，我说为什么，他说因为我不画点面线块 。后来呢，我的感受就是在美院专 业系统里面它不可能教给你，因为它的一套东西是一个模式的东西。它根本没有为你的特长，为你的天才， 为你的能力去发挥你的最个人的东西。我有一个朋友在德国教过学生，说在德国教学生第一年，老师不允许 你画有形的东西。老师在那儿批评的都是个人的东西。不让你去按照一种模式，最后变成一种人。所以我特 庆幸我自己。 然后我最近有很多朋友，他们一要画画。就问我怎么画啊？后来我跟他们说画画其实特别简单，你想画你就 画。第一：你不用介意像不像。肯定没有你照相机像。如果你要介意像不像那就拍照吧。就别画画呗。我说 第二：不要别人怎么评论。你就是为了你自己高兴。你画就什么样你高兴了，这个目的就达到了。没有受过 专业训练是一件特别自由的事儿。 gm: during that time, i was a teacher. in inner mongolia i taught painting beginning in 1973. i taught art history and a little line drawing. i believe toward the end of the cultural revolution, art academies started paying attention to more of these techniques, this type of training. but in inner mongolia, this teaching academy that i taught at was not a mainstream school. there was relative freedom with few rules. 高：我那个时候当老师。我在内蒙古当老师教画画。七三年开始。因为我教艺术史也教点素描。好像文革后 期有点开始学校里面注重一些技巧啊，一些这方面的训练，但是我那个算是内蒙古的一个师范学校不是那种 主流的大学，相对自由一些也没那么多规矩 zh: you were reeducated (during the cultural revolution) in inner mongolia, right? 张：你在内蒙古插队，对吧。 gm: yes. so at that time, my paintings were all influenced by soviet realism. this is what all painting was in china at that time. however, (li shan) studied herself. she studied her own inherent nature, very innate. (to li shan:) your creative elements use your own sensitivity. so the things that you paint are all your own. 高：我在内蒙古插队。所以我当时我画的那种东西都是俄国的学院派的传统下来的。中国的都是这样的。她 (李珊)的就是学自己。她学个人那种天生的。先天的。你的天才因素也有你的那种敏感啊。所以你画的东西 都是自己的。 zh: after all these years of being outsiders, we are all pretty relaxed. if we had other interests at hand, we would not paint this way. now i understand more and more that it is only when you are relaxed that your paintings will truly be free and unrestrained. the more you see these intense things from before, the more you cannot free yourself from them. if you always paint like you did then, your paintings will be no different from before. 张：《无名》的这么多年都是比较边缘，比较放松。如果要是为了利益的话，我们画不出这样的画来。现在 更多都越来越明白你只有放轻松的时候你的画才自由。你越是看过去的那些很紧张的话，越离不开那个。老 是在那里面画。画的跟那个原来一样。 1 8 9 g a o m i n g l u , m a d e l i n e e s c h e n b u r g , e l l e n l a r s o n , a n d d o n g l i h u i contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.155 new articles in this journal are licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 united states license. this journal is operated by the university library system of the university of pittsburgh as part of its d-scribe digital publishing program, and is co-sponsored by the university of pittsburgh press. contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture vol 1 (2011) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2011.27 http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu “the man of these infinite possibilities” max ernst’s cinematic collages abigail susik abstract on more than one occasion in his critical writings of the 1920’s, surrealist leader andré breton compared max ernst’s collages to cinema. in his first essay on the artist in 1921, breton aligned ernst’s collages with cinematic special effects such as slow and accelerated motion, and spoke of the illusionistic ‘transformation from within’ that characterized ernst’s constructed scenes. for breton, ernst’s collages employing found commercial, scientific and journalistic images approximated the naturalistic movement of film, and thereby contributed to the radical obsolescence of traditional two-dimensional media such as painting and drawing, which remained frozen in stillness. thus, ernst’s images were provocative witnesses to the way in which modern technology fundamentally altered the perspectivally-ordered picture plane. but at the same time that ernst’s collages rendered painting obsolete, they likewise depended upon fragments of outmoded popular culture themselves. for breton, ernst was a magician, “the man of these infinite possibilities,” comparable to cinematic prestidigators like turn-of-the-century filmmaker georges méliès. by drawing on the influence of recently outmoded popular culture such as early trick films, ernst provides a crucial early example of the post-war fixation on counter-temporalities and anti-production. at once technologically advanced and culturally archeological, ernst’s collages cannily defy strict categorization as “modernist.” about the author abigail susik is the 2009-2011 postdoctoral teaching fellow in art history at millsaps college in jackson, mississippi. her 2009 dissertation, “the vertigo of the modern: surrealism and the outmoded” (columbia university) performed a comparative analysis of literature, art and popular culture in early french surrealism, in relation to the theory of walter benjamin. she has recently published in rebus, wreck, thresholds and secac review. forthcoming work will appear in public and the great divide? high and low culture in the avant-garde and modernism, european avant-garde and modernism studies, vol. 2, among other publications. beginning fall of 2011, she will be assistant professor of 20th century art history at willamette university in salem, or. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/� contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 1 (2011) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2011.27 max ernst’s collages were nothing short of a revelation for parisian dadaists andré breton and louis aragon when they arrived in a shipment of crates from germany in the spring of 1921 and were eagerly unpacked by a small cohort of associates. the general sentiment toward ernst’s work that day among this discerning audience was, in breton’s words, one of “unparalleled admiration.”1 like treasure hunters who stumbled across their coveted bounty by chance, there was the sense breton and friends had discovered something unique in the ernst works unpacked at picabia’s house — something at once unknown and long sought after. the increasingly alienated picabia, breton reported in a letter to painter andré derain a few months later, was visibly envious of ernst as a result of this episode. perhaps partly in answer to this favorable reception, picabia soon diverged away from the pursuits of dada. for breton’s part, he stated with rare enthusiasm in the same letter that ernst, whom he had not even met in person yet, was “one of the most remarkable minds of the age.”2 the magnitude of this first encounter is notable, and raises questions as to the precise nature of the aesthetic rapport between ernst’s collages and the parisian dadaists. it seems likely that the profound impact of ernst’s work upon this facet of french avant-garde that day and long thereafter was not so much a question of the importation of novel representational modes to paris, such as those that might have been conveyed by the aggressive montage tactics of berlin dada, for instance. rather, it is more probable that what was so appealing was the fortuitous intersection of ernst’s works with ideas and interests breton, aragon, and philippe soupault were already fostering for a few years since their return from service in world war i. these cultivated predilections were impressively diverse but also highly specific. along with their research on forgotten or neglected eighteenthand nineteenth-century novelists and poets, their interest in crime and radical politics, and their taste for the shabbier districts of vieux paris, among myriad other strands of intrigue regarding their urban environment — these war veterans were avid consumers of popular entertainment of diverse kinds. between the risqué theater houses on the right bank, the swankier dance halls on the left, and the colorful café life that informed nearly all moments in-between, breton and friends knew the gamut of available diversions intimately. thus, when confronted with ernst’s playful collages early in 1921, the group collectively recognized the seemingly predetermined relevance of those works. ernst’s images engaged the viewer aggressively, performed for the eye — and even entertained the onlooker in some ambiguous fashion that was ultimately revelatory. the diverse collage tactics employed by ernst created a distinct kind of illusionism that seemed entirely modern to breton and friends, but at the same time unmistakably familiar in a provocative way. this recognition of the popular culture import of ernst’s work was clearly sounded by breton in subsequent texts written throughout the 1920s. in particular, i will 1andré breton, le surréalisme et la peinture, 2nd ed. (paris: gallimard, 1965), 64. this book has been translated as, andré breton, surrealism and painting, trans. simon watson taylor (boston: mfa publications, 2002), 64. 2breton letter to andré derain, october 3, 1921. this letter was first translated in werner spies, max ernst collages: the invention of the surrealist universe, trans. john william gabriel (new york: harry n. abrams, 1991), 67 and n. 333. “the man of these infinite possibilities” max ernst’s cinematic collages abigail susik http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/� 6 3 a b i g a i l s u s i k contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 1 (2011) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2011.27 argue that one of the main features of breton’s reception of ernst’s work at this time was the correlation he drew between the collages and popular cinema, that form of modern media which was so highly favored by the circle of avant-garde writers and artists gathered under the masthead of the journal littérature during the early 1920s. conspicuously however, it was not the popular serial and feature films of the contemporaneous post-war moment that ernst’s fatagaga collages called to mind for breton. instead, breton explains that these hybrid works recalled already outmoded turn-of-the-century cinematic illusions and tricks familiar from his childhood. therefore, breton’s reception of ernst in 1921 is important because on the one hand it ties collage specifically to popular culture, and with that, cinema. on the other hand, it is an early example of the impulse that would later evolve into the theoretical and aesthetic category of the surrealist outmoded. as i have argued extensively elsewhere, the critical paradigm of the outmoded became a central theory of the parisian avant-garde in the immediate post-world war i period and throughout the 1920s.3 in this context, the outmoded served as a canny signifier of opposition to various modernist ideologies with which these young veterans took issue. these polemical social narratives included among other things the cultural retour á l’ordre so prominent in france at this time, widespread values of progressivism and rationalism, the increasing pressure of a capitalist economic imperative, and the material and psychological destruction wrought by the long war. german critic and philosopher walter benjamin was the first to give name to this unique form of alter-modernity in surrealism. although his notion of das veraltete was explored only in limited fashion in direct correlation to surrealism, it took on epic proportions as a key leitmotif in the rest of his oeuvre, where it gained added significance as a marker for the condition of modernity as a whole.4 recently this theme has been expanded in an art historical context by prominent scholars such as rosalind krauss and hal foster, among others.5 without reviewing the full history of the surrealist engagement with this theme, or for that matter the legacy of theoretical dialogues resulting from this field of aesthetic experimentation, i would like to pursue here a single example of one early manifestation of the avant-garde outmoded via andré breton’s first encounter with ernst’s collages in 1921. what such a reception reveals is, to begin with, the important awareness that outmoded themes were fomenting in the parisian avant-garde not long after the conclusion of world war i in a dadaist context — which in turn eventually informed a much more developed currently, the relevance of issues related to overproduction and planned obsolescence has rendered the outmoded a central term in millennial dialogues about the interdependency of technology, commercial production, and art today. 3abigail susik, “the vertigo of the modern: surrealism and the outmoded.” phd diss., columbia university, 2009. 4benjamin wrote about the surrealist outmoded in diverse texts starting in 1925, most notably in his 1929 essay, “der sürrealismus: die letzte momentaufnahme der europäischen intelligenz” [“surrealism: the latest snapshot of the european intelligentsia”]. my translation of the title of this essay differs slightly from that of edmund jephcott. see his translation, “surrealism: the last snapshot of the european intelligentsia,” in vol. 2 of, walter benjamin, "selected writings," ed. michael william jennings (cambridge: belknap press of harvard university press, 1996), 207-21. for the original german see walter benjamin, gesammelte schriften, eds. rolf tiedemann and hermann schweppenhäuser (frankfurt am main: suhrkamp, 1972-1989). richard wolin also argues that “latest” is more appropriate than “last” in the title of benjamin’s essay. see note 66 in, richard wolin, walter benjamin, an aesthetic of redemption (berkeley: university of california press, 1994), 292. 5see: “outmoded spaces” in, hal foster, compulsive beauty (cambridge: mit press, 1993), 157-91. also see rosalind e. krauss, the optical unconscious (cambridge: mit press, 1994), 33-35. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/� 6 4 “ t h e ma n o f t h e s e i n f i n i t e p o s s i b i l i t i e s ” contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 1 (2011) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2011.27 surrealist praxis of the outmoded in subsequent years. as i hypothesized in my dissertation of 2009, the fixation that breton and aragon in particular had upon cultural entities dating from their own childhood or their parents’ and grandparents’ generation was certainly a major factor in the movement away from tzara’s largely presentist dadaist program. in contrast to dada, the surrealists favored a paradigm of modernity that evinced great concern for the literary, artistic, and popular culture production of the previous century. second, the appearance of outmoded themes amongst the littérature group as early as 1921 also communicates something of the fundamentally pivotal nature of world war i as a violent historical marker for the end of an era in the eyes of veterans like breton and aragon. following the social and historical rupture caused by the war, the acclaimed modernity of the early twentieth-century belle époque definitively became a thing of the distant and almost unapproachable past, no matter how recently certain technological advances had appeared. yet, at the same time, these haunting memories from the turn-of-the-century and preceding decades still held an allure and promise that seemed to fly in the face of what the parisian avant-gardists saw as the supreme ‘farce’ of the war. accordingly, the outmoded overtly resisted the modern even while it was itself a byproduct of modern systems. in the immediate post-war period, the parisian avant-garde would have been highly aware of the renewed public rhetoric of progressivism and optimism meant to pull france out of the aftermath of the war crisis in more ways than one. thus, the defeatist position of the outmoded that andré breton so readily perceived in ernst’s collages in 1921 is an important early example of a proto-surrealist fixation on critical revisions of modernist paradigms of temporality. this critical position with regard to historical time and modern materiality would later become a crucial component of the systematic surrealist attack on hegemonic discourses descended from enlightenment narratives of rationalism and progressivism, as well as a complement to their marxist-influenced resistance to capitalist drives and imperatives. in order to begin to unravel some of these issues, let us now turn toward an examination of breton’s landmark 1921 essay on ernst in conjunction with some of the works shown at the au sans pareil exhibition in paris that year. parisian dada was in full swing in 1920 and 1921 when the romanian-born provocateur tristan tzara began to manipulate his prodigious german connections in order to arrange a solo exhibition for cologne artist max ernst in the french capital. due to increasing tensions with breton and others, the already over-extended tzara began to waver in his commitment to this endeavor, and soon breton became the organizer of ernst’s first parisian exhibition. this was so despite the fact that breton still had not met ernst and had only seen two collages firsthand, as well as a handful of works in reproduction.6 6william a. camfield, werner spies, and walter hopps, max ernst: dada and the dawn of surrealism (houston: the menil collection, 1993), 96. the works that made up ernst’s first paris exhibition consisted of diverse types of collage, photographic montage, overpaintings, and other types of media. due to the fact that most of these works included paper elements and drawn elements in addition to photographic fragments, i will here call them collectively “collage” for the sake of ease. the ernst exhibition was just one of a number of eyebrow-raising events planned for the dada roster in the spring of 1921. this program included field trips to venerable parisian monuments, mock trials, vaudeville-type salons, fresh-air banquets, nonsensical operas, and the like. the spectacle that occurred at the vernissage or opening for the ernst exhibition at the au sans pareil gallery found its appropriate place within this variegated dadaist agenda. ernst himself was not present, having been denied a passport by authorities in his hometown of cologne. nevertheless, the parisian dadaists spared no effort in their demonstrations of support for their german compatriot at the exhibition opening. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/� 6 5 a b i g a i l s u s i k contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 1 (2011) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2011.27 standing at the door, jacques rigaut loudly announced the number of automobiles and pearls possessed by the incoming guests. soupault and tzara played hide and seek in the midst of the reception. breton lit matches one after another. peret and charchoune repeatedly shook hands. meanwhile, aragon meowed loudly in a corner. this display of solidarity with ernst at the vernissage of his au sans pareil exhibition in 1921 no doubt constitutes one of the more memorable legends in circulation concerning parisian dada’s reception of ernst. however, rather than dwell on the significance of this dada display, which in itself evokes the profound similarities between the avant-garde and variety show culture at this time, it is rather the explicit nature of the collective shock generated during breton and aragon’s first viewing of ernst’s collages that i wish to investigate. in breton’s case, this shock was specifically tied to the notion that collage was akin to turn-of-the-century cinematic illusionism. ernst had mailed breton two of his collages a few months in advance of the exhibition, including crochet relief of 1921, which is now lost. yet the astonishment that occurred when tzara, aragon, breton, soupault, and picabia unpacked the shipment of works that arrived at picabia’s house just one day in advance of the exhibition was in no way diminished by these earlier arrivals. years later, breton wrote that in 1921 surrealism “was already fully in evidence” in ernst’s constructions of this period, such as massacre of the innocents of 1920 (fig. 1).7 this bald enthusiasm for ernst’s unique brand of collages was immediately reflected in the brief essay “max ernst” that breton wrote for the exhibition following the unpacking of ernst’s crate of collages.8 although completed in a great hurry, indeed overnight, this last-minute essay is remarkable from a historical standpoint in a number of ways. in particular it is notable because it compares avant-garde visual art to recent advances in science and technology. most notably this includes cinema, as stated above. however, as far as i have been able to determine in my research, the comparison of ernst’s collages to cinema in breton’s 1921 essay has not yet been commented upon in scholarship, nor for that matter has the marked presence of this allusion in his later writings on the artist been noted — such as breton’s foreword to ernst’s first collage novel of 1929, la femme 100 têtes, which dwells upon related themes. in this light, breton’s 1921 essay on ernst encompasses significant implications regarding proto-surrealist theories of the interaction between popular visual culture and the traditional fine arts, a theme which has become so central for surrealism studies of late. breton’s 1921 essay establishes the avant-garde medium of collage as a response to what he viewed as the obsolescence of old artistic modes of representation. collage is seen as displacing the hegemonic dominance of what might be called mimeticism or naturalism in the fine arts, the “look” of the “real” — and in particular, such valences as they played out in the medium of painting. although it is well known that a few years after this initial essay on ernst in 1921, breton formulated a defense of the medium of painting in his tract surrealism and painting (written 1925-1928), it is arguable that even while breton envisioned a continued role for painting in the twentieth-century, he likewise understood this survival to be predicated upon a thorough restructuring of conventional avenues of representation and 7 andré breton, surrealism and painting, 64. 8 this short essay first appeared in the catalog for the 1921 au sans pareil bookstore exhibition in paris (3 may-3 june 1921) and was then republished in breton’s collection of essays, les pas perdus of 1924 (gallimard, nouvelle revue français). for a reprint, see “max ernst” in andré breton, les pas perdus (paris: gallimard, 1969), 81-83. for the english translation see, “max ernst” in, andré breton, the lost steps = les pas perdus, trans. mark polizzotti (lincoln: university of nebraska press, 1996), 60-61. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/� 6 6 “ t h e ma n o f t h e s e i n f i n i t e p o s s i b i l i t i e s ” contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 1 (2011) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2011.27 figure 1 max ernst. massacre of the innocents. circa 1920. collage: cut printed reproductions, stencils, gouache, watercolor, and ink on photographic reproduction mounted on paperboard. 8 1/2 x 11 7/16 in. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/� 6 7 a b i g a i l s u s i k contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 1 (2011) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2011.27 viewing within modernity.9 namely, if painting survives on in surrealism and painting, it is in a thoroughly expanded and transformed guise from the traditional praxis of representational painting with its normatively delimited social import and function. as part of a “total revision of real values,” breton writes in surrealism and painting, “the plastic work of art will either refer to a purely internal model or will cease to exist.”10 however, even after breton’s defense of painting in the face of pierre naville’s claim in april of 1925 that there was “no such thing as surrealist painting,” breton continued to focus upon the way in which ernst’s practice augmented and updated traditional artistic media. the nature of this later bretonian model for the “plastic work of art” is of course extremely complex, as is the role of the “real” in this insular aesthetic sphere. in 1921, however, breton was more or less still in the thrall of tzara’s dadaist iconoclasm, and therefore his essay on ernst takes a much more incendiary stance toward traditional artistic media than is the case in breton’s later writings on the artist. therefore, ernst’s importation of an innovative kind of collage to paris in 1921 struck breton as the perfect avenue for an exploration of new aesthetic possibilities and representational strategies. 11 indeed, the obsolescence of venerable models of representation in modernity is a theme that became the defining characteristic of both breton’s and aragon’s reception of ernst, and with that, a central part of ernst’s own self-presentation in later years as an artist who went “beyond painting.” likewise, the 1921 essay provides the first glimpse of a proto-surrealist conception of the infiltration of traditional artistic media with new modes of representation — modes which cycle back and forth between cutting-edge technologies and recently outmoded technologies of the late nineteenthand early twentieth-century, thereby creating an interpenetration of old and new, traditional and innovative. in a somewhat bewildering fashion, therefore, breton’s 1921 essay juggles themes of obsolescent and outmoded, pitting vaunted methods of traditional representational arts against the already fading popular culture of the turn of the century.12 according to breton, ernst’s collages are at the forefront of a new form of representation that manifested in the face of the recent obsolescence of a naturalistic discourse in the fine arts. breton explains that it was the invention of photography and automatic writing in the nineteenthcentury which “dealt a mortal blow to old means of expression” [“a porté un coup mortel aux vieux modes d’expression”] by allowing artists to break from the mundane task of mimetic representation. 13 artists could dispense with empiricism and depart for unknown representational territory: abstraction, or as breton obliquely describes it, “a landscape in which nothing terrestrial figures.”14 9ibid., 23-32. despite these recent developments in aesthetics, he argues, even symbolism and cubism remained confined by various “limitations” of representation. therefore, breton believes it is up to dadaism to fully come to terms with the obsolescence of old representational hierarchies still lingering on in society. in an early expression of the program of cultural revolution that would later come to define 10ibid., 4. 11pierre naville, “beaux-arts,” la révolution surréaliste 3 (april 15, 1925): 27. 12breton, the lost steps = les pas perdus, 60-61. 13 breton, the lost steps = les pas perdus, 60. the editors of breton’s complete workscomment that breton probably refers to rimbaud and lautréamont when he speaks of the invention of automatic writing in the nineteenth century. see note 1 in vol. 1 of, andré breton, œuvres complètes, ed. marguerite bonnet, et al., 4 vols. (paris: gallimard, 1988-1999), 1266. 14breton, the lost steps = les pas perdus, 60. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/� 6 8 “ t h e ma n o f t h e s e i n f i n i t e p o s s i b i l i t i e s ” contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 1 (2011) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2011.27 surrealism under his guidance, breton comments, “we must pass beyond these meanings, so as then to distribute them, grouping them in whatever arrangements we please.”15 in breton’s eyes, ernst’s collages for the au sans pareil exhibition serve as the template for this implanting of old signifiers with fresh signifieds. the collages — and here is the sole allusion to the necessary operation of the retainment of outmoded contexts in the construction of the new — “disorient us within our own memories” [“nous dépayser en notre proper souvenir”] by “removing our systems of reference.” for breton it is not enough to simply “rejuvenate” stale cultural meanings. rather, it is necessary to supply new definitions for the old words, things, and categories altogether if a collective revelation, as a form of utopian progress, is to be achieved. 16 in such a paradigm, the standard framework of an image or message is purposefully preserved, with all its attendant associations intact, in order to internally explode the former content or “system of reference.” this then creates a compound of novelty within the zone of the familiar. breton states that this is a “marvelous ability” [“la faculté merveilleuse”], to be able to “reach out, without leaving the field of our experience, to two distinct realities and bring them together to create a spark.”17 such a discourse, based in part upon the examples of french authors pierre reverdy and the comte de lautréamont, found an echo three years later in breton’s first surrealist manifesto of 1924 (among many later surrealist documents), when the luminous spark is posed as the primary goal of the surrealist artist who marries “distant realities.” 18 15ibid. of course, this aspect of breton’s poetic theory as it applies to both surrealism and collage has already been extensively addressed in contemporary scholarship. readers are by now familiar with the “spark” of metaphoric and metonymic slippage, which provides the necessary electricity to drive even the most unlikely surrealist comparisons and juxtapositions. however, breton’s brief but remarkable essay of 1921 reveals there were also other strands of culture beyond poetic references that he was thinking of when he spoke of such a disorientation “within our own memories.” indeed, quite suddenly in the midst of his elocution, breton ties ernst’s collages and the new modes of representation that they reflect to the recent invention of cinema. somehow for breton, ernst’s collage methods, as a juxtaposition of distinct realities that create a spark, resemble the projected and continuous images of the filmic apparatus. 16ibid. 17ibid. 18 the early publication history of the first manifesto is complex and i will bypass it here. for a stillaccessible french reprint, see, andré breton, manifestes du surréalisme, collection folio/essais (paris: gallimard, 1988), 48. for the english translation see, andré breton, manifestoes of surrealism, trans. richard seaver and helen r. lane (ann arbor: university of michigan press, 1969), 36. in suzanne guerlac’s discussion of breton’s 1921 essay on ernst, she points out that that breton discovered lautréamont’s poésies in the bibliothèque nationale roughly a year before he saw ernst’s collages for the first time. thus she relates breton’s discussion of “disorientation from within” in the 1921 essay to his evolving understanding of what lautréamont called “plagiarism” during this period. guerlac argues that breton was intrigued by the way in which lautréamont’s poésies borrowed from or “cited” an “anterior idiom” or “parole” but did not involve a “systematic negation of the original.” she then applies this observation to an interpretation of ernst’s collages of outmoded materials as a deracination of signs from their original referents, to the extent that there is no plane of reference at all in ernst’s collages, which become an “entirely synthetic space,” and a “space of pure fiction.” see, suzanne guerlac, "breton: angelic truth," in literary polemics: bataille, sartre, valéry, breton (stanford: stanford university press, 1997), 132-36. in contrast to guerlac’s ambitious thesis, i argue that the references of the outmoded material are retained in order to render the clash between old and new meanings all the more striking. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/� 6 9 a b i g a i l s u s i k contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 1 (2011) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2011.27 recall that film was still a fairly fresh innovation at this time. as is commonly known, this modern media technology appeared initially in a form similar to that which we know today in the screenings held by the lumière brothers in paris during 1895, although several related models of projected visual entertainment or sequenced images set in motion had preceded film in the nineteenth century. indeed, it is arguable breton refers specifically to one of the most famous lumière films in his discussion: the arrival of a train at la ciotat station, which was first screened to a paying audience in paris on january 6, 1896, about a month before breton himself was born. breton comments, “today, thanks to the cinema, we know how to make a locomotive arrive on canvas.”19 in particular among cinematographic effects, breton refers to the techniques of slow and accelerated cinematography as popular indicators of the “relative time” einstein’s theories posed for this new medium. the techniques of overcranking (slowed motion) and undercranking (accelerated motion) during filming had been known since the early days of cinema at the turn of the century, when they were used among other things to compensate for the changing natural light of many film sets that did not yet have the benefit of electric illumination. comparing the projection screen to a painter’s canvas, breton renders painting dynamic with his metaphor. film far surpasses painting in its incredible mimeticism — it displays photographically-rendered motion. therefore, like the inventions of photography and automatic writing, the advancement of film administered a further blow to the traditional fine arts according to breton, particularly with regard to the inescapably static nature of painterly mediums. similar to albert einstein’s recently publicized relativity theories that revolutionized science, another contemporary event breton names in this essay, film contributed greatly to the reordering of systems of representation in the early twentieth-century. in contrast to the obsolescent representational language of naturalistic painting, therefore, cinema was a novelty — even though breton cites a foundational event in cinema history occurring as much as twenty-five years earlier. 20 however, the best-known director in france to widely use slowed and accelerated motion as an entertainment feature or special effect in his films was georges méliès, the famous “cinémagician.” 21 breton’s generation had grown up watching the extremely popular méliès films, but by 1921, méliès had not produced a film in nearly a decade. in 1917, méliès’s office in the passage de l’opéra (itself another important site of the surrealist outmoded) was seized by the army, and many of his films were melted down for their valuable raw materials, much needed in the war. after that, his work was largely forgotten until the early 1930s.22 although breton does not mention méliès specifically in his essay, his allusion to the fantastic effects of slow and accelerated motion evokes just the types of cinematic stunts performed by this filmmaker. while the lumière brothers also used various cinematic tricks 19 breton, the lost steps = les pas perdus, 60 [his italics]. 20 paul hammond discusses the general use of fast and slow cranking in méliès films. paul hammond, marvellous méliès (new york: st. martin's press, 1975), 31. 21 john frazer lists two méliès films that included accelerated motion as an entertainment feature: the apparition (1903) and untamable whiskers (1904), although it is likely that there were earlier examples of this effect in méliès’s films, many of which were lost by the 1920s. see, john frazer, artificially arranged scenes: the films of georges méliès (boston: g. k. hall, 1979), 121-22, 136-37. carrefour de l'opera (1897) also utilized accelerated motion. 22 for an overview of the decline of méliès’s career as a film director, see, elizabeth ezra, georges méliès: the birth of the auteur (manchester: manchester university press, 2000), 18-20. also see the books by frazer and hammond. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/� 7 0 “ t h e ma n o f t h e s e i n f i n i t e p o s s i b i l i t i e s ” contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 1 (2011) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2011.27 on occasion, méliès made a successful career out of it for over a decade (fig. 2).23 breton writes, “as the use of slow and accelerated motion devices [des appareils ralentisseur et accélérateur] spreads, people should get used to seeing oak trees surge up and antelopes soar.”24 moreover, breton refers to ernst in a manner that particularly recalls méliès, who was a great favorite of the surrealists by the early 1930s, if not earlier. antelopes “soar” via the effects of slow motion, while oak trees “surge up” instantaneously under the pressure of accelerated film. given this description of accelerated motion, breton’s words could also feasibly describe the more extreme acceleration of timelapse cinematography developed by the austrian scientist august musger in 1904-1907, and debuted in popular film around the time of breton’s writing in the early 1920s. however, it seems more likely given the aforementioned allusion to the lumière brothers that breton was referring to an earlier cinematic tradition that appeared around the turn of the twentieth-century via popular filmmakers like méliès. 25 like méliès, who attempted to create “living pictures” with a performer’s smile ever affixed upon his face, ernst is according to breton, “the man of these infinite possibilities” (fig. 3).26 this is so because: “resolved to do away with still-life mystic-charlatanism [mysticism-escroquerie à la nature morte], he projects before our eyes the most captivating film in the world [le film le plus captivant du monde], without losing the grace of smiling even as he illuminates the 23hammond, marvellous méliès, 30. 24 breton, the lost steps = les pas perdus, 61. i have modified this translation slightly. 25 it is quite possible that, apart from the early introduction that the surrealists had to méliès’s fanciful films during their childhood, aragon and breton were also aware that méliès’s office was formerly located in their favorite haunt, the passage de l’opéra. the earliest reference to méliès in surrealist writings that i have been able to find is an essay by salvador dali from 1932 entitled, “abstract of a critical history of the cinema.” see, paul hammond, ed., the shadow and its shadow: surrealist writings on the cinema, 3rd ed. (san francisco: city lights books, 2000), 63. in “some surrealist advice” from the journal l’âge du cinema in 1951, méliès is honored while the lumières are debunked. see, ibid., 46. the filmmaker and critic ado kyrou did much to popularize méliès as the founding father of surrealist film in his book, le surréalisme au cinéma (1952). see, ado kyrou, le surréalisme au cinéma (paris: ramsay, 1985). the former surrealist georges sadoul also wrote an important early study of méliès: georges sadoul, georges méliès (paris: éditions seghers, 1961). elizabeth ezra states that the surrealists favored méliès in the 1920s when he was still out of fashion, and also that several surrealists visited him after he was “rediscovered” in 1926. she does not name any surrealists in particular. see, ezra, georges méliès: the birth of the auteur, 20. hammond mentions breton, ernst, péret, and surrealism in general in relation to méliès, but he does not provide any specific citations of a surrealist interest in méliès before 1935. see in particular, hammond, marvellous méliès, 7, 62, 93. perhaps the surrealists knew of apollinaire’s auspicious comment about méliès. apocryphal lore has it that apollinaire asked méliès about how he made one of his trick films, the eruption of mount pelée. when méliès replied that he achieved the eruption by “photographing cinders and chalk,” apollinaire commented, “monsieur and i have the same occupation, we enchant ordinary materials.” frazer, artificially arranged scenes: the films of georges méliès, 95. frazer takes this comment from, pierre leprohon, histoire du cinéma (paris: éditions du cerf, 1961), 36. for an analysis of the ties between méliès and italian futurism, see, wanda strauven, "l'art de georges méliès et le futurisme italien," in georges méliès, l'illusionniste fin de siècle?: actes du colloque de cerisy-la-salle, 13-22 août 1996, ed. jacques malthête and michel marie (paris: presses de la sorbonne nouvelle, 1997), 331-56. 26 breton, the lost steps = les pas perdus, 61. spies briefly mentions méliès and his predecessor, the magician robert houdin (whose theater méliès purchased) in relation the surrealist interest in tricks and ernst’s use of source material depicting sleight of hand. see, spies, max ernst collages: the invention of the surrealist universe, 71-74. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/� 7 1 a b i g a i l s u s i k contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 1 (2011) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2011.27 figure 2 film still from georges méliès, a mysterious portrait. 1899. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/� 7 2 “ t h e ma n o f t h e s e i n f i n i t e p o s s i b i l i t i e s ” contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 1 (2011) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2011.27 figure 3 frame enlargements from georges méliès, the man with the rubber head. 1902. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/� 7 3 a b i g a i l s u s i k contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 1 (2011) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2011.27 innermost depths of our internal life with an unparalleled light…”27 again, possibly suggesting a connection with méliès, who was a successful variety show prestidigator and illusionist before he became a filmmaker, breton poses ernst as one who manipulates the newest technologies to overcome the “charlatanism” of perspectival representation and naturalistic rendering, thereby divining a new and improved form of illusion. these academic modes of representation are false for breton not because they fool the eye into seeing depth or volume in a trompe l’œil fashion, but rather, because they are “still,” depicting a “dead nature.” the old virtuality of painterly perspective is simply inferior to the riveting optical illusionism of cinematic effects. this is, then, largely a question of technological advancement for breton. the virtual “projection” that illusionistic paintings achieve with their imposition of threedimensional space upon a two-dimensional surface is certainly one of the earliest forms of technological projection. yet, even the most sophisticated form of pre-cinematic projection, that of linear perspective, was rendered obsolete in the face of photographic reproduction. the sleight of hand that is “realistic” painting is therefore a weak hoax compared to the extraordinary feats accomplished by the apparatus of film. for breton, film makes one “aware of infinitesimal variations” just as it enables the perception of the complete life cycle “without a single blink of an eye.”28 in contrast to the false paralysis of traditional representational modes which vainly strive for illusion, ernst’s collages are dynamic and machinic like films for breton. 29 27breton, the lost steps = les pas perdus, 61. as a side note, such a comparison of ernst as a montage artist to a magician intercepts intriguingly with benjamin’s well-known metaphor of the painter as magician and the cinematographer as surgeon. however, in a peculiar reversal of benjamin's equation of the magician and the surgeon, ernst's collages generate shock by employing the magician's techniques of conservation of the whole: instead of extracting the collage fragments that he uses from their original context, ernst creates an illusion of totality by retaining the page as a preserved structure. the shock, therefore, is not a shock of the disjuncture of the similar, as exemplified by the photomontages of the berlin dada group, but rather the shock caused by the juncture of the dissimilar. benjamin states in this essay, however, that it was dadaism rather than surrealism that tried to “produce with the means of painting (or literature) the effects which the public today seeks in film” [his italics]. see, “the work of art in the age of its reproducibility” in vol. 3 of, walter benjamin, selected writings, ed. michael william jennings (cambridge: belknap press of harvard university press, 1996), 115-16, 118-19. yet, within his brief essay for the max ernst exhibition of 1921, breton does not spell out the precise way in which he perceives a filmic-type movement or projection activated in these diverse types of collages, thus leaving many questions unanswered in the wake of his suggestive meditation. certainly, the issue of depicted movement in painting was prominent in the decade before world war i, when the cubists considered new modalities of space-time, the futurists in italy fell in love with speed, and marcel duchamp played with the effects of duration from his studios in paris and new york. even more importantly than these trends for the sake of this discussion, the topic of cinema was a favorite one at this time in general for the littérature group, all of whom were avid film-goers. both soupault and aragon had already published 28breton, the lost steps = les pas perdus, 61. 29looming in the background of this discussion for the contemporary reader is adorno’s contrasting claim that ernst’s collage novels of the late 1920s and early 1930s are the epitome of nature morte, a kind of fossilized remnant of a once-living collective history. see, theodor w. adorno, "looking back on surrealism," in the idea of the modern in literature and the arts, ed. irving howe (new york: horizon press, 1968), 223. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/� 7 4 “ t h e ma n o f t h e s e i n f i n i t e p o s s i b i l i t i e s ” contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 1 (2011) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2011.27 important early essays on film before 1920.30 breton, who cultivated his cinematic tastes while in the company of jacques vaché during the war, published his first essay on the subject a year later than his friends. this was the 1921 exhibition text on ernst. 31 it is well known that as young soldiers breton and vaché were in the habit of creating their own kind of cinematic collages by dropping in and out of multiple films at random over the course of a given night, using the least sign of boredom as their only criteria for cutting the viewing short and moving onto another feature. although breton writes about this omnivorous viewing experience with vaché as late as the 1950s in the essay, “as in a wood,” it is important i think that he employs some of the same words featured in the 1921 essay on ernst to describe the chimerical effect of this cinematic wandering. the young breton had “never experienced anything quite as magnetizing” as this artificial film sequencing, and the two emerged “charged” for a few days after the experience. their version of film became as “captivating” as that thin cuticle of experience between sleeping and waking. not surprisingly therefore, his meditations on ernst reveal just how much those viewing experiences with vaché influenced his understanding of the ramifications of cinema for the avant-garde. 32 encountered in this peripatetic manner, film was a “marvel” and “the only absolutely modern mystery.”33 breton writes, “what we saw in movies, whichever they were, was only a lyrical substance that had to be mixed and stirred in bulk and haphazardly. i think what we prized most in them, to the point of being indifferent to anything else, was this capacity to transport the mind elsewhere.”34 30see soupault’s “note i sur le cinéma” and also “poème cinématographique” in sic no. 25 (1919). this essay is reprinted in, pierre albert-birot, sic (sons idées coulers formes) (1916-19) (paris: jean-michel place, 1980). also see aragon’s “du décor” published in le film (sept. 15, 1918). it is tempting to undertake a digression to review this essay at length here, given aragon’s analysis of the filmic close-up as a novel kind of illusionism that transports the viewer into a state of dreamlike enchantment. however, i will leave that strand of thinking for another article. aragon’s essay is reprinted in, aragon, chroniques, 1918-1932, ed. bernard leuilliot (paris: stock, 1998), 23-38. aragon’s essay has also been translated as “on décor” in, hammond, ed., the shadow and its shadow: surrealist writings on the cinema, 50-54. also translated in this volume is a 1924 essay by soupault, “cinema u.s.a.,” as well as other early surrealist writings on film. i have not provided here an exhaustive list of the proto-surrealist writings on film. aragon and desnos wrote other relevant essays before 1925 that i do not list here for the sake of brevity, and salvador dali also wrote on film during the 1920s before and after his contact with the surrealists. some of these writings are gathered in translation in, salvador dalí, oui: the paranoid-critical revolution: writings by salvador dali, 1927-1933, ed. robert descharnes (boston: exact change, 1998). on surrealism and film in general, see in particular three recent texts, listed alphabetically: graeme harper and rob stone, the unsilvered screen: surrealism on film (london: wallflower press, 2007). michael richardson, surrealism and cinema (oxford: berg, 2006). robert short, the age of gold: surrealist cinema (london: creation, 2003). eschewing all narrative fixation and the extended sequencing of longer-length feature films, trends only just becoming palpable in france in the years following world war i, breton and vaché instead return to the “short” 31breton writes about his youthful love of cinema in his sole essay devoted to film, “comme dans un bois,” published in la clé des champs (1953). see vol. 3 of, breton, œuvres complètes, 294-300. this essay has been translated as, “as in a wood” in, andré breton, free rein = la clé des champs, trans. michel parmentier and jacqueline d'amboise (lincoln: university of nebraska press, 1996), 235-40. for breton in this essay, cinema is placed squarely in the realm of surrealist marvels and dépaysment. however, at the end of the essay, breton also notes with disappointment that cinema has not lived up to its full poetic potential. 32breton, free rein = la clé des champs, 236-37 [his italics]. 33ibid., [his italics]. 34ibid., 236. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/� 7 5 a b i g a i l s u s i k contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 1 (2011) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2011.27 format of earlier novelty films by enforcing this roving form of spectacular consumption. likewise, they engage in their own kind of montage editing by stringing various films together over the span of an evening. only certain comic films and older serialized films already out of favor with the general populace could hold their attention for longer periods of duration, such as louis feuillade’s wartime les vampires. otherwise, it is helpful to recall breton’s love of low-budget pulp films such as the now nearly forgotten serial, the trail of the octopus, as detailed in the 1928 novella nadja. considering this account, it is key to recognize that breton and vaché did not revere film in general but instead took quite aggressive means to reshuffle and undermine the rise of the feature-length movie in order to extract that carefully cultivated spark of poetic energy. arguably, breton recognized a similar effect in ernst’s curious collages. these works certainly employed rigorous montage tactics, but also conspicuously evoked cinematic entertainment forms lying largely outside the mainstream feature-length film market, such as pulp and lowbudget productions. however, the allusion must nevertheless be unraveled somewhat further if its relevance for an art historical reading of ernst’s collages of this period is to be distilled — or for that matter, if its significance for a surrealist theory of the outmoded is to be apprehended at all. arguably, breton’s comparison of ernst’s collages to film was more than just a question of recent trends in aesthetics, or for that matter breton’s bald enthusiasm for many brands of cinema. nor was this assessment merely tied to the presence of the many photographic source materials in ernst’s collages for the au sans pareil exhibition. importantly, the filmic metaphor would remain a staple of breton’s other writings on ernst during the 1920s, which discussed ernst’s collage novels of outmoded materials as well as his paintings.35 in this regard, the most striking aspect of breton’s filmic metaphor is the ascription of some kind of movement to ernst’s collages. this assessment of breton’s is rather easy to entertain when a selection of the works displayed at au sans pareil are surveyed, for most of the collages feature depictions of different kinds of bodies in motion. or rather, motion is suggested through the presence of gesturing limbs, dynamic poses, and the close succession of nearly identical figures. specifically, this recurrence of figures across the image space in many of these collages resembles photographic if not cinematic effects. for instance, a work like dada degas (1920-1921), with its cascading jockeys on horses, recalls the photographic experiments of eadweard muybridge with horses during the last quarter of the nineteenthcentury (fig. 4). along with the contemporaneous findings of the french chronophotographer, étienne-jules marey, muybridge’s photography revolutionized the perception of movement (fig.5). however, like the painterly tropes of gesticulation and dynamism of posture, even these last techniques involving the repetition of figures were tricks employed in works of art in various mediums for centuries to convey animation or time passing (think of early renaissance frescoes which depict one individual repeated in several different scenes, thus read as “time” and “movement”). therefore, this assembly-line type succession of figures demonstrated in a collage like dada degas hardly seems to fulfill breton’s claims of the “marvelous ability” of these new, “captivating” forms of representation, even if this tautological framework did pantomime the distinctively gridded contact sheets of still photography. 35i refer in particular to breton’s foreword for ernst’s first collage novel in 1929, “avis au lecteur pour la femme 100 têtes de max ernst,” in vol. 2 of breton, œuvres complètes, 302-306. this essay has been translated as, “notice to the reader of the hundred headless woman” in, andré breton, break of day = point du jour, trans. mark polizzotti and mary ann caws (lincoln: university of nebraska press, 1999), 4550. also see breton’s extended discussion of ernst in passim in surrealism and painting. i discuss both of these texts in relation to ernst and the filmic metaphor in my dissertation of 2009. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/� 7 6 “ t h e ma n o f t h e s e i n f i n i t e p o s s i b i l i t i e s ” contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 1 (2011) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2011.27 figure 4 max ernst. dada degas... 1920-1921. gouache and ink on printed reproduction mounted on paperboard. 18 7/8 x 12 1/4 in. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/� 7 7 a b i g a i l s u s i k contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 1 (2011) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2011.27 figure 5 eadweard muybridge. gravures made from his sequence of photographs of the trot and the gallop. published in la nature (dec. 1878). http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/� 7 8 “ t h e ma n o f t h e s e i n f i n i t e p o s s i b i l i t i e s ” contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 1 (2011) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2011.27 rather than these more predictable representational measures of naturalistic movement, breton probably refers to the metaphorical movement suggested by ernst’s baffling operations of photocollage, several examples of which appeared in the au sans pareil show. in particular, breton’s reference to antelopes that “soar” via the cinematographic effect of slow motion may have been inspired by the work breton himself obtained from the 1921 exhibit for his personal collection: the dog who shits…the song of the flesh (c. 1920) (fig. 6). in this photocollage, ernst takes a printed photograph of greyhounds racing as his ground image and adds various montage elements, such as the airborne animal carcass and onearmed sphere. he also fashions matching fields of blue gouache and draws various lines in pencil which lend a false sense of continuity to the constructed scene. the speed suggested by the hunched posture and blurred legs of the greyhounds, who barely seem to touch the ground in their race toward the other side of the frame, contrasts with the comparable “slowness” of the gliding animal carcass and the poise of the gesturing sphere, thereby creating the clashing illusionism of slow-versus-accelerated motion referred to by breton. thus, it seems likely that one way in which ernst’s collages suggested cinematic movement for breton was through more or less seamless techniques of jarring juxtaposition, which allowed for contrasts not previously permissible in mimetically-oriented painting. more than just the depiction of movement, or rather the utilization of found elements that depicted movement, the juxtapositions posed in ernst’s collages enforced movement through the violent confrontation of disparate images. in other words, movement was made via superimposition of disparate elements which were then concealed into the overall framework of the image. this inevitable image collision creates a static form of sequencing not unlike the continuous linearity of projected film, when slowed down to a halt. the dog who shits…the song of the flesh is a consummately airless and impossible scene, and yet one perceives a certain pulse of flashing movement within the frame. while this last collage was one of the most visibly “cinematic” in the au sans pareil exhibition due to the dramatic movement instigated by its source images and also its striking superimpositions, other collages such as the fatagaga construction, the chinese nightingale, of 1920, may have also approximated filmic effects through other means besides suggested movement, such as the clever tactics of reproductive illusionism (fig. 7).36 in a distinctly different mode from the greyhound photocollage owned by breton, the chinese nightingale combines collage techniques and photographic indexicality in order to create a mock semblance of documentary reality, a seamless montage. here, ernst extracted a photographic illustration of an english aviation bomb from world war i as a whole, and collaged into the space of this maquette page a handful of photographic elements gleaned from elsewhere, such as the women’s akimbo arms and the splayed fan. then, ernst rephotographed the collage so that the seams of his incisions and unwanted gradations in light and saturation were concealed and homogenized by the unified surface of the chemically-fixed paper. thus, ernst aimed to create what could be termed after roland barthes a highly seductive “reality effect:” an illusion that occurs via the smooth and glossy surface of emulsion, thereby submerging the entire image in “a lustral bath of innocence.” 37 36i use “illusionism” here, rather than trompe-l’œil, due the fact that trompe-l’œil is a method by which painting employs illusionistic tricks to make a depicted object appear real, i.e. three-dimensional, whereas the “illusionism” of ernst’s collages is not one of three-dimensionality, but rather of surface coherence and authorial integrity on the strictly two-dimensional representational plane. 37see, "rhetoric of the image" in, roland barthes, image, music, text, trans. stephen heath (new york: hill and wang, 1977), 51. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/� 7 9 a b i g a i l s u s i k contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 1 (2011) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2011.27 figure 6 max ernst. the dog who shits...the song of the flesh. circa 1920. collage: cut printed reproductions, gouache, and pencil on photographic reproduction mounted on paperboard. 4 3/4 x 8 1/4 in. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/� 8 0 “ t h e ma n o f t h e s e i n f i n i t e p o s s i b i l i t i e s ” contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 1 (2011) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2011.27 figure 7 max ernst. the chinese nightingale. 1920. collage: cut printed reproductions and ink on paper mounted on paperboard. 4 13/16 x 3 1/2 in. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/� 8 1 a b i g a i l s u s i k contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 1 (2011) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2011.27 along with this unified, denotative surface, the photocollage played with the concept of the “real” through a manipulation of the indexical connotations of photography, just as had been successfully done before by many earlier incarnations of trick photography. therefore, collages such as these render traditional representational modes obsolescent because they employ illusionism precisely to render fantastic rather than lifelike scenes more believable, a trait that perhaps causes breton to wonder in his essay whether, “we are not preparing to someday escape the principle of identity?”38 ernst’s collages of 1919-1921 are radically innovative for breton because they abandon as their main focus the old game of naturalism via perspective and pursue instead a blatantly filmic brand of illusionism. their aim is not to give the two-dimensional surface of the picture plane the semblance of depth. other issues of artifice, such as the concealment of the massproduced nature of many of the materials and the suggestion of cinematic motion, have instead become the new concern in the collages. in particular, the “reproduction effects” of photographic and printing processes, as anonymous mechanical operations, have replaced methods such as perspective, chiaroscuro, and foreshortening as the machine for believability. indeed, the various collage practices ernst debuted at the au sans pareil exhibition can be encapsulated by the word illusion. despite differences in technique and materials, almost all of ernst’s collages at the exhibition were constructed toward the goal of cohesion and believability in the face of the naturalistically impossible. 39 ernst was explicitly interested in fooling his viewers into thinking all of the elements of his works were “handmade.” this was so whether illusion was achieved through the concealment of collage cuts with gouache, line drawings, or rephotographing — as well as various other means. the pointed nature of these illusionistic aims is confirmed in ernst’s correspondence of this period. in a letter of 1920 in which ernst sent a selection of fatagaga collages to tristan tzara for publication in the journal dadaglobe, ernst writes, "i am enclosing a photo…the sensational thing about it is that it is done without any work. that's my mystery!"40 likewise, in another letter to tzara of the same month, ernst queries, "can you show the engraver how to hide the seams in the reproductions of the pasted pieces (so as to keep the fatagaga secret a secret)?"41 this covert operational credo is one of the distinguishing features of ernst’s collage work, as many scholars have noted, and it arguably inspired much of the specificity of surrealist collage in general. for, in contrast to other avant-garde collage practices, most of which tended to emphasize the destructive nature of the cut and the violent emptiness of the flat, white ground of the sheet underneath, the surrealist trend of collage almost always eschewed such overt fragmentation. for example, compared with a berlin dada photomontage like hannah höch’s cut with a kitchen knife of 1919-1920 (fig. 8) — ernst’s collages meld into compositions more akin to traditional painterly representations of figure and ground. this is not to imply that ernst’s collages depicting fantastic anthropomorphic objects and impossible hybrid humans were veristic even in a remote sense. instead, illusionism was most often employed in a starkly naked manner by ernst. it was illusionism 38breton, the lost steps = les pas perdus, 61. 39spies’s words for this effect are “plausibility” and “integration.” werner spies and karin von maur, max ernst, a retrospective (munich: prestel, 1991), 20, 82, 104. spies, max ernst collages: the invention of the surrealist universe, 71-74. 40max ernst, letter to tristan tzara, november 2, 1920. translated in, spies, max ernst collages: the invention of the surrealist universe, 270. 41max ernst, letter to tzara, undated, ca. november 27, 1920. translated in ibid., 271. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/� 8 2 “ t h e ma n o f t h e s e i n f i n i t e p o s s i b i l i t i e s ” contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 1 (2011) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2011.27 figure 8 hannah höch. cut with the kitchen knife. 1919-1920. photomontage. 44 7/8 x 35 7/16 in. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/� 8 3 a b i g a i l s u s i k contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 1 (2011) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2011.27 and “effect” as an end in itself, and therefore reminiscent of various types of pulp shows that sought to provoke shock and wonder in the viewer. following breton’s line of thought, it can be said that these collages evoke cinema largely because they resort to the kinds of visual tricks that had long characterized different forms of spectacular entertainment and print culture in the nineteenth-century, culminating in the invention of film.42 the invention of film at the end of the century was closely related to these earlier trends which allowed still images to become dynamic or vice versa (and the reversible or chiasmic quality of this trend of illusionism is arguably key to the effectiveness of the visual interest provoked). thus it is not unusual that the earliest film directors found themselves in a similar slot with prestidigators and variety show acts, which in themselves often played with montage-like techniques (as is clearly shown here in this poster for a late-nineteenth-century british magic show, which is not unlike the montage formats of the later avant-garde) (fig. 9). perhaps the most common place to view films in the first five years of the medium’s existence was at forains, or traveling fairs, which featured any number of entertaining spectacles. this turn toward a new form of visual trickery was a progressive replacement of the traditional representational apparatus of painterly illusionism. perhaps this focus on optical illusion or legerdemain is why breton refers to the earliest episodes in film history in his essay rather than more recent cinematic innovations such as the extensive use of “cuts” or montage, or even camera pans, which first appeared well after the advent of cinema. instead, he most likely alludes to the urban legend of the lumière brothers’ train that “arrived” on screen and purportedly made its spectators scream and run to the back of the room — because it was in the first decade of cinematography that this medium was most closely tied to a popular tradition of spectacular illusionism that had thrived during the latter half of the nineteenth-century. various mechanical devices and toys such as the zootrope and thaumatrope appeared in the middle of the nineteenth-century as part of a new category of prefabricated images which were both still and moving, depending upon their manipulation. likewise, lantern slide shows, phantasmagorias, and other media such as charles émile reynaud’s théâtre optique of 1892 presented illuminated images to audiences. only reynaud’s images actually moved, however, while other media may have incorporated moving light to simulate the effect of shifting imagery, much in the way earlier static spectacles of large-scale dioramas and theatrical tableaux vivants relied upon gradated lighting to achieve their miraculous techniques. indeed, the genre of the tableau vivant, which posed costumed actors or models within the context of a suspended narrative for a set duration, is of particular interested in this context. its popularity during the nineteenthcentury belies the continuum of interest in both still images that moved impossibly as well as animate beings frozen into picturesque immobility. 43 multiple exposures this was particularly so in the case of méliès, for whom cinema was an outgrowth of the musical and magical theater he had loved for so long. méliès was widely known as one of the first cinematographers to frequently employ filmic tricks in the first few years of cinema’s existence, such as , miniaturization, reverse motion, 42for instance, another realm of pre-world war i popular culture pertinent here is the popularity of amateur collage and photomontage during the second half of the nineteenth century, which manifested on personal calling cards and other non-professional media, as well as in select areas of commercial postcard production. after the turn of the century, commercial postcards became a major site of collage and montage in europe. many surrealists, including andré breton, aragon and paul éluard, collected fantasy postcards. on this subject, see, clément chéroux and ute eskildsen, the stamp of fantasy: the visual inventiveness of photographic postcards: from the collections of postcards of gérard lévy, peter weiss (göttingen: steidl, 2007). 43on this subject, see in particular frazer, artificially arranged scenes: the films of georges méliès, 1-21. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/� http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/double_exposure� 8 4 “ t h e ma n o f t h e s e i n f i n i t e p o s s i b i l i t i e s ” contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 1 (2011) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2011.27 figure 9 poster for a magic theater show by john nevil maskelyne and george alfred cooke, a spirit case or mrs. daffodil downey’s light and dark séance. egyptian hall, london. circa 1880’s. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/� 8 5 a b i g a i l s u s i k contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 1 (2011) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2011.27 dissolves, suspension in mid-air, and so on — and he did so specifically in the context of the type of illusionistic entertainment inspired by magic shows. through these techniques méliès pioneered a brand of filmic legerdemain based on transformations taking place within the bounds of a single, stationary proscenium frame, several years before film editing through “cuts” was conceived and widely used. this area of cinematic manipulation resembles the metamorphosis or “disorientation from within” to which breton refers in his discussion of ernst’s collages, wherein the framework of a given paradigm is retained as meaning and renovated internally and gradually. the single image appears to transform in identity and thus “moves” in a manner of speaking, by subtly changing its own shape and metamorphosizing — thereby doing away with the old-fashioned “mystico-charlatanism” of painterly still-life as nature morte. though all film had the characteristics of movement and projected light that breton cites as the heart of the new medium’s dominance over obsolescent representational modes, the optical trickery he celebrates seems to suggest the first decade of french cinema in particular, when the animated nature of film nevertheless maintained some “still” components. at the turn of the century the main “attraction” of film, as the younger relative of magic shows and other illusionistic theatrical genres, was precisely its ability to make inanimate objects “move” or “morph” in ways that confounded logic and understanding, all the while retaining a continuous and anchored frame of reference. in many regards, therefore, the earliest manifestation of cinema was considered at least in part merely an aggressively updated and improved means of achieving the same kinds of illusionistic ends sought through many diverse popular culture spectacles in earlier periods, through both more recent “projected” technologies as well as theatrical and painterly ones. however, by the time of breton’s writing in 1921, the innovations of méliès and the lumière brothers were a thing of the recent past, and the prevalence of feature-length narrative films confirmed the broad cultural dispersion, assumption, and adaptation of what tom gunning has called the “cinema of attractions” — a cinema based upon brief moments of display and novelty rather than the duration of narrative.44 yet, it is clearly to this earlier tradition of cinema as a momentary display of optical trickery that breton refers in his analysis of ernst, “the man of these infinite possibilities.” athough breton is bound up in a dialogue of progress and innovation in his essay on ernst, therefore, in many ways, the kind of filmic illusion to which breton refers in his essay was anachronistic from the standpoint of the post-world war i years, excepting its digested and subsumed presence in select moments of popular films and its sustained life in certain demonstrations of avantgarde cinema. although stop tricks and other such “special effects” were still employed in post-war cinema, the old proscenium frame aesthetic with its emphasis on the atomized and spectacular “moment” of trickery was a vanishing form of independently fashioned entertainment. such displays were eventually woven into the fabric of much longer narrative films and were thus less conspicuous as moments of spectacular consumption in themselves. cinema was soon to leave behind its formerly blatant connection to nineteenth-century traditions of lantern shows, variety act prestidigitation, circus entertainment, and so on. 44gunning’s concept of the “cinema of attractions” has a long and multifaceted history as does the reception of the term in cinema studies. for an excellent series of commentaries on this concept, as well as reprints of the earliest essays by cinema historians, including gunning, that discuss this concept, see the book: wanda strauven, the cinema of attractions reloaded (amsterdam: amsterdam university press, 2006). i also consulted essays in, thomas elsässer and adam barker, early cinema: space-framenarrative (london: bfi publishing, 1990). more tangentially, see the related essay, tom gunning, "the exterior as intérieur: benjamin's optical detective," boundary 2 30, no. 1 (2003), 105-30. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/� http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/dissolve_%28film%29� 8 6 “ t h e ma n o f t h e s e i n f i n i t e p o s s i b i l i t i e s ” contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 1 (2011) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2011.27 he refers to the old advancements of his own childhood, and no doubt purposefully so. “dada does not claim to be modern,” he states at one point in his essay.45 whether a matter of cinematic taste for breton or rather a question of montage tactics, late nineteenthand early twentieth-century film traditions (and arguably their popular entertainment counterparts such as the magic show or the earlier phantasmagoria) held the key to the “disorientation from within” breton felt could still revolutionize culture. he was siding with an older entertainment tradition that focused on visual trickery and optical illusion as a feature fully independent of narrative. although the relatively “new” discoveries of slow and accelerated motion had already been displaced in popularity by other filmic techniques, breton demonstrates that these slightly dated filmic methods offer a more convincing dépaysment of the senses and memories than do traditional representational methods and the recent cinematic developments of rapid montage and feature length duration.46 in this regard it is perhaps feasible to conjecture, knowing the operations of the outmoded as defined by walter benjamin and subsequent scholars, that breton was explicitly interested in employing the paradoxical capabilities of novelty and surprise couched within the category of the outmoded. by comparing ernst’s collages to the oxymoronic category of recently outmoded filmic innovations, breton secured the perfect model by which the “old references” could be maintained in order to acquire “new” meanings out from under culture’s existing framework all the more unsuspectingly. likewise, on a double level, early cinematic trickery was largely founded upon the retainment of a given familiar context (most often the proscenium frame) as the scene gradually changed or renewed from within. 47 therefore, by employing the reverse-logic of the outmoded, breton utilizes recently outdated cinematic parlance to battle venerable modes of representation, and also to place the avant-garde securely in the realm of both the popular-technological and the alter-modern. 45breton, the lost steps = les pas perdus, 60. 46some critics, such as robert short, have argued that surrealism was more closely allied with documentary film than special effects films. short speaks of the surrealist “scorn for special effects so dear to the rest of the avant-garde: their distorting lenses, stop motion, superimpositions, eccentric camera angles…” short, the age of gold: surrealist cinema, 13. this is an argument which i am largely in agreement with, excepting man ray’s purposefully blurry, l’étoile de mer (1928). however, whether or not surrealist film is closest to documentary film is another question. does such an eschewal of special effects in surrealist film necessarily preclude a possible interest on breton’s part in the transposition of such effects into the realm of the ‘fine arts’— dependent for so long upon a predictable and limiting bag of tricks, so to speak? based upon his two essays about ernst’s collages, i argue that during the 1920s some surrealists such as breton saw immense possibilities in the effects of illusion that early trick film in particular had introduced and updated from older spectacular traditions. 47thus, breton’s discussion of “disorientation from within” is a prefiguration of what aragon would later term détournement in his essay, “max ernst, painter of illusions,” which was written for aragon’s patron and employer jacques doucet in 1923. i discuss aragon’s prescient usage of this word in my dissertation, “the vertigo 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can be opened with acrobat and adobe reader 5.0 and later.) >> /namespace [ (adobe) (common) (1.0) ] /othernamespaces [ << /asreaderspreads false /cropimagestoframes true /errorcontrol /warnandcontinue /flattenerignorespreadoverrides false /includeguidesgrids false /includenonprinting false /includeslug false /namespace [ (adobe) (indesign) (4.0) ] /omitplacedbitmaps false /omitplacedeps false /omitplacedpdf false /simulateoverprint /legacy >> << /addbleedmarks false /addcolorbars false /addcropmarks false /addpageinfo false /addregmarks false /convertcolors /converttocmyk /destinationprofilename () /destinationprofileselector /documentcmyk /downsample16bitimages true /flattenerpreset << /presetselector /mediumresolution >> /formelements false /generatestructure false /includebookmarks false /includehyperlinks false /includeinteractive false /includelayers false /includeprofiles false /multimediahandling /useobjectsettings /namespace [ (adobe) (creativesuite) (2.0) ] /pdfxoutputintentprofileselector /documentcmyk /preserveediting true /untaggedcmykhandling /leaveuntagged /untaggedrgbhandling /usedocumentprofile /usedocumentbleed false >> ] >> setdistillerparams << /hwresolution [2400 2400] /pagesize [612.000 792.000] >> setpagedevice chau vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.57 http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu kinetic systems jack burnham and hans haacke christina chau abstract the following paper argues that jack burnham’s antipathy for kineticism in “systems esthetics” and beyond modern sculpture has contributed to an assumption that kineticism is an obsolete practice “rooted in another age.” contrary to burnham, i argue that a focus on the kinetic movement in hans haacke’s sculptures is productive for establishing key understandings of systems theory in art. my interpretation of haacke’s art emphasizes that movement in time is a key aspect of the artist’s approach to sytems theory, and is useful for making viewers conscious of the systems of perception at play when confronted with ontologically unstable works of art. about the author christina chau is a lecturer at the university of western australia in the school of social sciences, and the department of architecture, landscape and visual arts. her ph.d. thesis is titled “the polemics of contemporary kinetic art history: duration, systems aesthetics and the virtual.” contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.57 this is a shift from being to becoming. kinetic works reflect this shift since kinetic works refute static space. they destroy lineal time. kinetic works do not occupy space, they create space. kinetic works do not contain time, they create time. kinetic works so not interpret reality, they are reality. willoughby sharp1 there has been a longstanding view that kinetic art is an antiquated practice that has little relevance to contemporary society. recent exhibitions such as ghosts in the museum at the new museum in new york (2012) was publicized as “an unsystematic archive” that displayed a “cabinet of curiosities” made by artists of past technological ages.2 here, the term “kinetic” is coded as a historical and formal experimentation with an industrial machine aesthetic in art, one that began as early as naum gabo’s kinetic construction: standing wave and laaszlo moholy-nagy’s light space modulator (1922-1930), and reached a climax in popularity in europe and the united states in the 1960s.3 kineticism is not, however, often nostalgically remembered as a trend “rooted in another age.”4 consequently, this view has contributed to what arnauld pierre has described as a “flagrant dearth” of critical and historical engagement with kinetic art.5 one of the first art historians to consider kineticism as an outdated practice was jack burnham in beyond modern sculpture: the effects of science and technology on the sculpture of this century. burnham argued that prior to 1968 kineticism had the potential to become a dominant artistic practice that intersected with science, art, and technology.6 according to burnham, artists were ultimately “unrequited” in their aims because many of them did not reflect on 1 jack burnham quoted in willoughby sharp, air art (new york: kineticism press, 1966), 4. 2 “ghosts in the museum,” the new museum, new york, accessed april 28, 2014, http://www.newmuseum.org/exhibitions/view/ghosts-in-the-machine. similarly, the exhibition force fields, phases of the kinetic (2000) at the museu d’art contemporani de barcelona (macba) was publicized as an an opportunity to “reintroduce us to an investigation of movement in art which in the mid-twentieth century became obscured.” see mark nash, “the art of movement,” in force fields: phases of the kinetic (london: hayward gallery, 2000), 313. 3 for historical analyses of gabo and moholy-nagy as seminal artists for kinetic art history see christina chau, “building new perceptions of duration through laszlo moholy-nagy’s light space modulator,” journal of arts theory and history 7, no. 3 (2013): 19-25; joyce tsai, “the sorcerer’s apprentice: lászló moholy-nagy and his light prop for an electircal stage,” the aesthetics of the total artwork: on borders and fragments, ed. anke finger and danielle follett (baltimore: john hopkins university press, 2011); frank popper, origins and developments of kinetic art (new york: new york graphic society, 1968). 4 alan riding, “arts abroad: retro or nostalgic, the work never stops moving,” newyork times, august 16, 2000, accessed, april 28, 2014, http://www.nytimes.com/2000/08/16/arts/arts-abroad-retro-ornostalgic-the-work-never-stops-moving.html 5 arnauld pierre, “instability: the visual/bodily perception of space in kinetic environments,” in the ‘doit-yourself’ artwork: participation from fluxus to new media, ed. anna dezeuze (manchester: manchester university press, 2010), 91. 6 jack burnham, beyond modern sculpture: the effects of science and technology on the sculpture of this century (new york: george braziller, 1968). kinetic systems jack burnham and hans haacke christina chau 6 4 k i n e t i c s y s t e m s contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.57 the emerging technological aesthetic at the time and became marginalized by emerging artistic practices, theory, and criticism.7 burnham’s disregard for kineticism continued in two seminal essays published in artforum: “systems esthetics” and “real time systems.”8 it is in the former that burnham explicitly declares kineticism to be an antiquated modern art practice. this is partly performed by burnham in the essay by deemphasizing the use of movement by hans haacke in his early systems art. while burnham’s argument uses systems theory to exclude the effect of movement from critical discourses, this paper argues that artists such as hans haacke—whose work burnham depended on to demonstrate the operation of systems aesthetics in art—also emphasised the form, function and movement of his early sculptural systems. contrary to burnham’s perspective, which defines kinetic sculpture solely according to the movement of mechanical form, haacke approaches kinesis as an orchestration of movement that is used to heighten the awareness of viewers who are positioned to seek the perceptual edge from actual and virtual movement in real time as an accumulation and release of intensity. 9 the popularity of burnham’s “systems esthetics” in art theory and history has strongly impacted on contemporary perspectives of kinetic art history, which is why his essay is a key focus in this paper.10 this paper will begin by unpacking the key understanding of burnham’s “systems esthetics” as an attempt to predict the future intersections between art, science, and technology as becoming increasingly based on systems and cybernetic theory. secondly, the paper will highlight burnham’s exclusion of kineticism from “systems esthetics,” “realtime systems,” and beyond modern sculpture, and argue that his position is dependent on works that use movement to explore conceptual and post-formalist objectives. burnham’s emphasis on automata, lumia, robotics and cybernetic art performs a reterritorialization that moves from kinetic movement towards the movement of system processes.11 this is most prominently addressed through hans haacke’s early systems art that was made during the 1960s and 1970s, and whose works i address as dependent on actual movement to signify, perform and process biological, political and natural weather systems. burnham’s emphasis on the movement of systems art, rather than the movement of kinesis, is more than a syntactical argument. as i will argue, burnham attempts to sequester the theory and practice of movement in art away from the postmodern aesthetics that were emerging at the time. the effects of burnham’s argument and the popularity of his views in contemporary scholarship has reified a regard for kinetic sculpture and installation as a modern mechanical 7 burnham, beyond modern sculpture, 218-221. 8 jack burnham, “systems esthetics,” artforum 7 no. 1 (september 1968): 30-35 and “real-time systems,” artforum 8, no. 1 (1969): 49-55. although burnham used the term “esthetic” in his “systems esthetics,” the term is more popularly used as “systems aesthetics” in contemporary discourse. considering this, this paper will use “aesthetics” except for instances where burnham’s paper “systems esthetics” is used. 9 burnham, beyond modern sculpture, 218-220. 10 see to caroline jones, “system symptoms,” artforum 51, no. 1 (2012): 113-114; nicholas luhmann, art as a social system (stanford california: stanford university press, 2000); edward shanken, “reprogramming systems esthetics: a strategic historiography” digital arts and culture (2009) accessed april 11, 2013, http://escholarship.org/uc/item/6bv363d4; francis halsall, systems of art: art, history and systems theory (oxford: peter lang, 2008); david joselit, american art since 1945 (london: thames and hudson, 2003); charissa terranova, “systems and automatisms: jack burnham, stanley cavell and the evolution of a neoliberal aesthetic,” leonardo 47, no. 1 (2014): 56-62. 11 burnham, beyond modern sculpture, 185-378. 6 5 c h r i s t i n a c h a u contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.57 and antiquated practice in art, and is therefore a central influence on contemporary reflections on the histories of kineticism. jack burnham’s “systems esthetics” during the 1960s, the term “systems” was utilised over a wide range of disciplines that called for an open theory of organisation and communication within scientific, biological and cultural analysis. many of the systems discourses, analyses and aesthetics were influenced by ludwig von bertalanffy’s general systems theory, which regarded biological processes of evolution and adaptation as a number of intersecting systems.12 outside the sciences, systems theory was appropriated to negotiate the flows of information within technological media in communications,13 and it was useful as a model for understanding patterns and processes within economics, chemistry, biology, engineering, sociology, physics and art.14 even though there were many interpretations and divergences from bertalanffy’s original theory, systems in general quickly became a rubric for understanding how modern society was organised.15 sanford kwinter has emphasised that this entailed a “shift in twentiethcentury thought toward a biological model.”16 fundamentally, a system can be thought of as a number of variables that have the capacity to relate to one another, and which form a larger, rationalized whole.17 what is unique about a system is not so much its actual components but the way they are organised. unlike chaos, systems are defined by the relationships between variables, each of which contributes to the unique form of the entire system. systems can be quite open—for instance, the entire world can be considered as a total system18—but there is a key set of criteria that defines them. a system must have one or more key identifiable functions, and each individual variable within the system must also genuinely contribute that system’s function.19 if one component is removed from the system, its function is consequently altered from its previous state. from this basic criteria, systems can be organised to take a wide variety of structures, including pattern, rhythm, or network.20 12 ludwig von bertalanffy, general systems theory: foundations, developments, applications (new york: g braziller, 1968/1969). 13 a key influence for considering information theory as a system in communications theory is claude shannon in 1948 at bell laboratory. see a later expanded version: claude shannon and warren weaver, the mathematical theory of communication (chicago: university of illinois press, 1963 [1998]). another key contributor that has influenced the theoretical discussion of systems is norbert wiener in his cybernetics or control and communication in the animal or machine (cambridge, ma: mit press, 1948). 14 for an example of a systems approach to scientific theory see gregory bateson, steps to an ecology of mind (new york: ballantine, 1972). 15 francis halsall, systems of art: art, history and systems theory (oxford: peter lang, 2008), 21-66. 16 sanford kwinter, architectures of time: toward a theory of the event in modernist culture (cambridge, massachusetts: the mit press, 2001), ix. 17 halsall, systems of art, 22-34. 18 ibid., 9. 19 ibid., 23-24. 20 kenneth boulding, the world as a total system (beverly hills, california: sage, 1985), 9. although there are entropic systems, these systems depend on the regular rate or probability of chaos as a constant. entropy, for instance, is a state of regular rate of chaos. 6 6 k i n e t i c s y s t e m s contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.57 burnham’s approach to systems theory was hinged on the interdisciplinary and applicability of bertalanffy’s general systems theory.21 if a system was defined as “a complex of components in interaction,”22 burnham considered art as a system that intersected with all areas of life, from which new subsystems would emerge. as he explained, systems theory ”‘is focused on the creation of stable, on-going relationships between organic and nonorganic systems, be these neighbourhoods, industrial complexes, farms, transportation systems, information centers, recreation centers, or any other matrixes of human activity. all living situations must be treated in the context of a systems hierarchy of values.”23 therefore, burnham’s use of systems theory was constructed as an open, porous and intersecting system that encompassed the behaviours, actions and tendencies within all artistic practices that relate to and affect society. influenced by lucy lippard’s reflection on the dematerialised object in the 1960s, and norbert wiener’s cybernetic theory, burnham’s argument depended on an anti-ontological focus on systems theory in art.24 as he described, “[t]he object denoted sculpture in its traditional physical form, whereas the system (an interacting assembly of varying complexity) is the means by which sculpture gradually departs from its object state and assumes some measure of lifelike activity.”25 by diminishing the distinction between art and life through systems theory, burnham’s perspective was a directed response and resistance to michael fried’s criticism of the theatricality of minimalist art.26 burnham’s approach to systems in art is centered on the felt but unseen entities of art objects: “[t]he specific function of modern didactic art has been to show that art does not reside in material entities but in relations between people and the components of their environment.”27 burnham, after bertalanffy, suggests an approach to art that moves away from a focus on the object and towards art as a component within the larger system of society. in doing so, he abandons an inclination towards media specificity because his systems are defined by a “conceptual focus rather than material limits.”28 burnham also privileges “systems esthetics” over the term “conceptual art,” in order to highlight the technological expansion and emerging interdisciplinary nature of art in the 1960s, which for burnham, fried had undermined.29 similarly to frank popper’s appropriation of demateriality in participatory art, burnham’s systems theory is an articulation of the relationships among viewers, and between viewers and the art.30 some of these relationships are engaged through real-time interactions, however, burnham also specifies that his take on systems theory can be applied to more 21 burnham, “systems esthetics,” 17. 22 ludwig von bertalanffy, robots, men and minds (new york: g. braziller, 1967), 69. 23 burnham, “systems esthetics,”16. 24lucy lippard, six years: the dematerialization of the art object from 1966-1972, 2nd ed. (berkeley: university of california press, 1997/1993); norbert wiener, cybernetics: or control and communication in the animal and the machine (cambridge, massachusetts: the mit press, 1961). 25 burnham, beyond modern sculpture, 10. 26 burnham, “systems esthetics,” 17. 27 ibid., 16. 28 ibid., 17. 29 ibid., 17. 30 frank popper, art, action and participation (london: studio vista, 1975), 1-12. 6 7 c h r i s t i n a c h a u contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.57 than the time-based, ephemeral staged environments and happenings. he argued that systems aesthetics “deals in a revolutionary fashion with the larger problem of boundary concepts. in systems perspective there are no contrived confines such as the theater proscenium or picture frame. conceptual focus rather than material limits define the systems.”31 because of this post-formalist approach, systems aesthetics is an expansive and non-representational approach to art that has the potential to be applied to interpretations of art across a variety of practices. as a quintessential exploration of systems theory in art, burnham’s argument drew upon german artist hans haacke’s recent physiological and biological installations that involved studies of ecological and biological movement, such as sky line (1967), a project involving hundreds of helium-filled balloons connected together and cast out into the sky from central park. another work, photo-electric viewer programmed coordinate system (1968), involved a series of photoelectric sensors installed in the gallery walls with infrared beams fitted above at eye level. when viewers entered the space, the light bulbs became active, and lit up in correspondence to the movement of each viewer, while also performing random patterns of light choreography. as haacke describes: a ‘sculpture’ that physically reacts to its environment is no longer to be regarded as an object. the range of outside factors affecting it, as well as its own radius of action, reach beyond the space it materially occupies. it thus merges with the environment in a relationship that is better understood as a ‘system’ of interdependent processes . . . a system is not imagined, it is real.32 however, for burnham, haacke’s work signifies a shift in technological art that moves away from modern industrial kinesis and towards increasingly intelligent systems, a tendency that burnham predicted to be an inevitable outcome for sculpture after modernity.33 systems theory is used by burnham as a key catalyst to regard kinetic art as an antiquated technological art that falls short from the emerging tendencies of conceptual, cybernetic and robotic art critiques and responds to the emerging technological age.34 to make this explicit, burnham also drew from a range of artists working alongside haacke to demonstrate that there was an emerging systems aesthetic in conceptual art in the 1960s. this included dan flavin’s fluorescent installations, and the minimalist sculptural works by robert morris, les levine, and donald judd. in many cases, burnham draws from systems and cybernetic theory to deconstruct the works. within the discourse of “systems esthetics,” judd is compared to a computer programmer, while carl andre is described as having created assemblages of “modular forms.”35 according to burhnam, these artists revealed an ongoing “technological endeavor” in an attempt to intersect the relationships between conceptual and technological experimentations in art.36 despite mention of flavin, morris, levine, and judd, haacke’s artwork was central to burnham’s understanding of systems-based art. this was admitted by burnham, who stated: “[a]s a close friend of hans haacke since 1962, i observed how the idea of allowing his ‘systems’ to take root in the real world began to fascinate him, more and more, almost to a 31 burnham, “systems esthetics,” 17. 32 hans haacke, hans haacke exh. cat. (new york: howard wise gallery, 1968) unpaginated. 33 burnham, beyond modern sculpture, 1-16. 34 ibid., 218-220. 35 ibid., 18 and 20. 36 ibid., 17 and 24. 6 8 k i n e t i c s y s t e m s contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.57 point of obsession.”37 haacke reciprocated with equal appreciation by acknowledging that burnham had introduced him to systems analysis, and was among the first to apply general systems theory to visual art.38 although burnham’s approach to systems theory is unique, it echoed norbert wiener’s approach to cybernetics.39 through wiener, systems theory became a way for negotiating the dematerialized work of art in computer, electronic and media art practices, by offering metaphors of software and hardware to describe the relationship between the concept and object in a work of art. the popularity of systems theory emerged concurrently with a number of complementary emerging theories in art theory and criticism. like systems theory, the dematerialized post-object aesthetics that were popularized by conceptual artists in the 1960s concentrated on the construction and organisation of concepts. for george dickie, this created a trend for emphsizing the way in which objects were organised and classified, rather than deconstructing the form of their physical properties.40 like dickie, arthur danto has likened the art world of the 1960s to an entire regulated system. the nature in which artists referred to art historical tendencies to inform their practice, and their emphasis on the conceptual properties of a work of art, contributed to danto’s description of the art world as a “style matrix” that is built and organised by artists and institutions.41 danto’s systematic approach to art theory, history, and criticism offered an approach to art that was determined not by form or expression but a classification and differentiation of ontological and conceptual objects. similarly, burnham used systems theory to consider art as something that is built from a matrix of components that were organised by artists and institutions, rather than approaching a work of art as an autonomous object from which meaning can be drawn. this view focuses on the communicative relations that exist among the work, its viewers and the historical context.42 norbert wiener’s theory of cybernetics also emphasized the connections among variables in technological information networks. for wiener, the “second industrial revolution,” which was propelled by the domestication of computing technologies, placed an emphasis on the input and feedback of information systems. like systems and post-object aesthetics, wiener related the information systems of computing technology as guided by processes, rather than objects, or as ross ashby has said, cybernetic theory emphasizes “not things, but ways of behaving.”43 as charlie gere has stated, wiener’s cybernetic theory was a rubric for approaching “biological, mechanic, and social processes across a number of 37 jeanne siegel, “an interview with hans haacke,” arts magazine, 46 (1971): 18. 38 hans haacke, “untitled statement,” in hans haacke, ed. john bird, walter grasskamp, molly nesbit (london: phaidon, 2004), 102. 39 for account of cybernetics, see norbert wiener, the human use of human beings: cybernetics and society (new york: eyre and spottiswoode, 1950); norbert wiener, cybernetics: or, control and communication in the animal and the machine (cambridge: massachusetts, 1948). 40 george dickie, art and the aesthetic: an institutional analysis (ithica: cornell university press, 1974). 41 arthur danto, “the artworld,” the journal of philosophy, 61 (1964): 571-584. see also, lawrence alloway, “network: the art world described as a system,” in network: art and the complex present (ann arbor, michigan: umi research press, 1984). 42 pamela lee, chronophobia: on time in the art of the 1960s (cambridge massachusetts: the mit press, 2004), 69. niklas luhmann has since reflected that, for many, art has become regarded as a social subsystem for society. see niklas luhmann, art as a social system (stanford, california: stanford university press, 2000). 43 richard ashby, an introduction to cybernetics (london: chapman hall, 1957), 1. 6 9 c h r i s t i n a c h a u contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.57 disciplines outside the sciences, including art.”44 although wiener and ashby were reflecting on information systems in the decades prior to the 1960s, both cybernetic and systems theory intersected on multiple occasions in the latter decade. a prominent example was burnham’s “sculpture as system” in beyond modern sculpture, which will be addressed later in this paper. first, however, burnham’s critique of kineticism in art needs to be addressed. a turbulent relationship with kineticism a problem with constructing a system, even one that is thought of as being open,45 is that there are always outliers to it.46 the exclusion of the study and orchestration of actual movement in art from contemporary criticism renders kinetic artists obsolete, and does not enable them to be considered contemporary. however, despite burnham’s de-emphasis of kinesis in art in “system esthetics” and beyond modern sculpture, systems theory is a key concern for artistis utilising kinesis in their work. for haacke, actual movement in art has been used as an effective tool for rendering visible the unseen relationships among variables. this means that movement is not necessarily used in a formalist sense by exploring the rhythms of movement on a purely visual basis, but can be a means for presenting how relations between components move within systems. burnham’s view on the emerging experiments with art and technology was also turbulent. a few short years after to the publication of “system esthetics,” burnham wrote damning reviews on the collaboration between artists and engineers in exhibitions such as los angeles county museum of art’s (lacma) art and technology (1971).47 in a review for the exhibition published in artforum burnham wrote: “[i]f presented five years ago, a&t would have been difficult to refute as an important event, posing some hard questions about the future of art. given the effects of a republican recession . . . few people are going to be seduced by three months of industry-sponsored art—no matter how laudable the initial motivation.”48 burnham’s frustrations with collectives such as experiments in art and technology (e.a.t), the exhibition cybernetic serendipity at the institute of contemporary arts in london (1968), the department at the massachusetts institute of technology, the center for advanced visual studies, and his own exhibition, software, at the jewish museum in new york (1969) are detailed in his essay “art and technology: the panacea that failed.”49 burnham criticized the above exhibitions and organizations for being run by elitists with compromised funding from corporate sponsors and inadequate financial support from artistic and educational institutions.50 burnham also criticised these institutions and the artists in the exhibitions for showing an overall technological incompetence and for failing to showcase emerging technologies in art.51 for burnham, these setbacks were the reasons why 44 charlie gere, digital culture (london: reaktion books, 2002), 52. 45 the definition of open system most notably refers to umberto eco’s the open work. see umberto eco, the open work (cambridge, massachusetts: harvard university press, 1989). eco also argues for a relationship between kinesis in art as a metaphor for open systems. 46 lee, chronophobia, 243-246. 47 jack burnham, “the panacea that failed” in the myths of information; technology and postindustrial culture, ed. kathleen woodward (london: routledge, 1980), 210. 48 ibid., 210. 49 ibid., 200-215. 50 ibid., 200-202. 7 0 k i n e t i c s y s t e m s contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.57 artists were so far unable to create ”socially acceptable art” that utilized the latest emerging technologies, because artists demonstrated an “esthetic incompetency,” as well as a lack of institutional and corporate support from sponsors.52 burnham’s criticisms of those working between science and technology within contemporary art were often directed at artists experimenting with kinesis. the popularity of kinetic art in the 1960s became, for burnham, a key reason why technological art was not being interpreted through general systems theory. in his words: by the fact that most systems move or are in some way dynamic, kinetic art should be one of the more radical alternatives to the prevailing formalist esthetic. yet this has hardly been the case. the best publicised kinetic sculpture is mainly a modification of static formalist sculpture composition. in most instances these have only the added bonus of motion, as in the case of tinguely, calder, bury, and rickey . . . all too often gallery kinetic art has trivialized the more graspable aspect of motion: this is motion internalized and experienced kinesthetically.53 for burnham, mechanical kinesis was too closely connected with formalist tendencies, which resulted in a continued desire to create motions purely from physical systems.54 as a former lumia and kinetic artist, burnham’s critique is largely cast by his disappointment with artists working with kinesis for resisting the emerging possibilities for incorporating technology into art at the time, such as robotic, cybernetic and virtual art. as he explained, “[t]he important thing is that the kineticist is trying to make himself relevant in a world which is continually being recreated.”55 burnham’s dissatisfaction with electromechanical sculpture was situated at the unrealized potential to assert kinesis within the emerging postmodern perspectives,56 and to re-engage with society as a dominant form of technological media art.57 despite burnham’s adamant exclusion of kineticism from systems aesthetics, in the same year burnham published “systems esthetics” in artforum, the director of kineticism press and curator of kineticism: systems sculpture in environmental situations, willoughby sharp referred to kinetic artists as the forerunners of systems aesthetics. sharp said that systems: [a]re defined by their energy input . . . they are a cohesive collection of components relating to a single set of systems equations. these systems deal with facts about our physical reality… one of the major functions of these sculptural systems is to plug us into the actual forces that configure contemporary reality.58 51 burnham, “the panacea that failed,” 211-215. 52 ibid., 200, 211, and 212. burnham goes on to explain that this is a “fundamental explanation” as to why he was disappointed by the efforts to explore technological solutions to visual art. 53 burnham, “systems esthetics,” 22. 54 burnham, beyond modern sculpture, 220. 55 ibid., 284. 56 ibid., 284. 57 burnham, “systems esthetics,” 22. 58 sharp, air art,10. 7 1 c h r i s t i n a c h a u contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.57 for sharp, kinetic art not only performs the rhythms of movement and energy that flow through daily life but also acts as manifestations for how reality is perceived and framed by society. sharp frames kinetic sculptural systems as a truly avant-garde practice that breaks down the boundaries between art and life: “[p]ainting and static sculpture are obsolete. they no longer relate to reality. they are anachronisms because they are irrelevant to our contemporary technological situation. it’s idiotic and immoral to make such objects as art now.”59 therefore, for sharp, whether kinetic art is made from mechanical, biological, pneumatic or electronic media, it has the capability to perform visual manifestations of life as a series of systems. despite burnham’s disappointment in technological experiments in art during the 1960s and 1970s, it cannot be ignored that a number of works by kinetic artists also strongly influenced his perspectives on the use of general systems theory in art. among these are works by len lye, otto piene and robert breer’s floats, and group de recherches d’art visue (grav) (a kinetic art collective that included julio le parc, françois morellet and yvaral),60 although he did not focus on their use of actual movement. while burnham argued that artists working with new technological media at the time were the forerunners of systems theory in art, and were developing new ways for visualizing and conceptualizing a systems approach to art in real-time, burnham did not include kineticism in the frontline.61 burnham’s criticism of kineticism is also addressed explicitly in beyond modern sculpture. he devotes an entire chapter to his argument that artists working with kinesis are inevitably unrequited by their aims because they failed to focus on new technological media.62 burnham’s intentions for systems theory in art was a way of understanding the emerging rubric of contemporary art in an increasingly technological society and also that art as a system would become the dominant framework for creating, experiencing, and distributing art in the future.63 this claim was explicit in his lecture at the guggenheim museum in 1969, “the aesthetics of intelligent systems,” when he said: although the art of the future could take any one of a number of directions, it seems to me that, with the steady evolution of information processing techniques in our society, an increasing amount of thought will be given to the aesthetic relationship between ourselves and our computer environments—whether or not this relationship falls into the scope of fine arts.64 using haacke as an example, burnham considered information processes as an effective way for communicating systems theory in art, to the point that “real-time information processing mode [was] rapidly becoming the routine style of handling information.”65 burnham continues: “[w]hat a few artists are beginning to give the public is real-time information, information with no hardware value, but with software significance for effecting awareness of events in the present.”66 this connection between concept as software and 59 sharp, air art, 4. 60 burnham, “systems esthetics,” 22. 61 burnham, “real time systems,” 27-37. 62 burnham, beyond modern sculpture, 218-284. 63 burnham, “systems esthetics,” 16. 64 cited in gere, art, time and technology (new york, london, sydney and delhi: bloomsbury publishing, 2006), 129 65 burnham, “real time systems,” 30. 66 ibid., 30. 7 2 k i n e t i c s y s t e m s contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.57 material as hardware contributes to a metaphor that compares art to processing systems and excludes an interpretation and discussion of the way these systems move. hans haacke’s kinetic systems burnham’s approach to systems theory in art developed with, and alongside, germanborn artist hans haacke’s. the artist’s interest in incorporating environmental systems in his art is used as one of burnham’s earlier examples of “systems esthetics” at play. according to brunham, hans haacke’s work highlights a significant shift in art that moves from technological art towards the orchestrations of cybernetic sytems.67 burnham, however, fails to acknowledge that haacke’s early systems works performed kinetic dynamism to examine systems processes.68 rather than discussing haacke’s use of movement to signify and perform information systems, burnham instead describes haacke’s work with a vocabulary that spatializes the temporal movements of kinetic dynamism. luke skrebowski has argued that these early sculptures emphasized the movement of physiological, physical and biological processes and are central to haacke’s application of general systems theory that have persisted throughout his artistic career.69 in his analysis, skrebowski problematizes benjamin buchloh’s attempt to create a division between the artist’s biological kinetic works and his more politically engaged art. skrebowski argues that drawing such a distinction is a reductive binarism that patronizes the complexity of haacke’s early practice.70 skewbowski’s emphasis on haacke’s early sculptural works also problematizes burnham’s antipathy towards the intersection between kinetic dynamism and systems art. burnham’s argument overlooks haacke’s emphasis on ontological function and form as referrants for conceptual systems in his art in his attempt to exempt kinesis from postmodern interpretation. rather, for haacke, it was essential that the real-time processes and conceptual systems that were signified in his art, performed on a material level. as haacke said, “i was primarily what you might call job-oriented. even in the ’60s, i wanted things to function, in a very literal, physical sense.”71 it is these material kinetic systems that i would like to bring attention to, rather than haacke’s later socio-political systems art. this is because haacke’s emphasis on the movement of form as a referent for material and conceptual systems can also be used to problematize burnham’s regard for kineticism. for instance, early installations such as haacke’s, blue sail (1964-65), condensation cube (1963-65) and sky line (1967) have often been dismissed by benjamin buchloh as experiments in “positivistic scientivism” all too preoccupied with technological rather than 67 jack burnham, “real time systems,” artforum 8, no. 1 (1969): 49-55. 68 benjamin buchloh has also previously delineated two distinct phases in haacke’s artistic career: his early kinetic systems and exploration of political systems. see, buchloh, “hans haacke: memory and instrumental reason,” art in america 76 (1988): 203-241. 69 luke skrebowski, “all systems go: recovering hack burnham’s ‘systems aesthetics’” tate papers 5 (spring, 2006), accessed online may 17, 2014, http://www.tate.org.uk/research/publications/tatepapers/all-systems-go-recovering-jack-burnhams-systems-aesthetics. 70 luke skrebowski, “all systems go: recovering hans haacke’s systems art,” grey room, no. 30 (winter, 2008): 77. 71 yve-alain bois, douglas crimp and rosalind krauss “a conversation with hans haacke,” october 30 (1984): 47. 7 3 c h r i s t i n a c h a u contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.57 conceptual experimentation.72 contemporary art history usually presents haacke’s systems art by privileging such as moma poll news (1969), shapolsky et al. manhattan real estate holdings, a real-time social system, as of may 1971 (1971), which are works that each collate and display data over the duration of the exhibition. each work materializes the invisible systems that traverse the everyday, such as a constant influx of political news, the hierarchical structure of real estate in new york, or the demographics of attendees at haacke’s exhibitions. yet much of the systems art by haacke in the 1960s and early 1970s was created with an emphasis on the unstable nature of material through durational kinetic installation. for example, condensation cube (1963-65), ice stick (1966), ice table (1967), and high voltage discharge traveling (1968) are all sculptures in which haacke prioritizes the movement of natural-process energy systems like condensation, precipitation, evaporation, and the expansion and contraction in temperature change. haacke also explored the movement of evolution, reproduction, birth and death in such works as grass cube (1967), live airborne system, november 30, 1968 (1968), grass grows (1969), chickens hatching (1969), transplanted moss supported in an artificial climate (1970), bowery seeds, (1970), goat feeding in woods (1970), directed growth (1970-72) and rhine water purification plant (1972). as with haacke’s data-processing systems art addressed earlier, these works are “event containers” that render visible the unseen movements of natural elements in the gallery setting.73 haacke was concerned with rendering visible the ordinarily invisible facets of motion and energy and collapsing the distinction between life and art by performing actual motions in life, including the life cycle, metabolism, and the transfer of energy. take for instance, haacke’s chickens hatching (1969), an installation that consists of fertilized chicken eggs, incubators, a lamp and a thermostat, which is both an exploration of kinetic movement and biological systems in art. for burnham, chickens hatching presents “information [that] is derived from the normal activities of animals, in their environments.”74 this is an example of “real-time information, information with no hardware value, but with software significance for effecting awareness of events in the present.”75 while there is little specific hardware value to the installation in that time and place, the actual movements and behaviors of the chickens are the material processes, which perform the conceptual systems within the work. it is important to note that these 1960s and early 1970s kinetic systems works were created at precisely the same time that haacke was creating works that processed the information of social and political systems. haacke’s early artistic career did not move away from kinetic dynamism and towards systems art in a clean transition. rather, kineticism was used early on to perform and experiment with biological and technological transformation of energy. this understanding renews a connection between kinetic and conceptual art and, as i have suggested, also problematizes burnham’s regard for kineticism as a practice that is inherently connected to the modern industrial revolution. to quote haacke, these works “make something which experiences, reacts to its environment, changes, is non-stable . . . something which the ‘spectator’ handles, with which 72 buchloh, “hans haacke: memory and instrumental reason,” 212. 73 walter grasskamp, “real time: the work of hans haacke” in hans haacke (new york and london: phaidon, 2004), 36. 74 burnham, “real time systems,” 30. 75 ibid., 28. 7 4 k i n e t i c s y s t e m s contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.57 he plays and thus animates . . . something which lived in time and makes the ‘spectator’ experience time.”76 haacke turns to a bergsonian stance on the perception of duration, as a means of experiencing time, while concentrating on duration as a process of constant change. as time-pieces, haacke therefore presents constructions of “natural” time in the sterile environments of artistic institutions, to present society in an age of technological expansion. although there were moments when haacke resisted the term “kinetic” to describe his works, the use of movement within many of his works during the 1960s was a focal aspect to his practice. 77 for haacke, movement is used to “merge with the environment in a relationship that is better understood as a ‘system’ of interdependent processes.”78 to isolate the movement of a body of water into a perspex container works exactly to demonstrate that movement, even when it is enclosed, refers to and affects other movements (in this case the movements of haacke’s spectators interacting with the piece). haacke’s blue sail (1964-65) is a simple movement study consisting of a sheet of blue chiffon, approximately 3.4 metres long and 3.2 metres wide, suspended horizontally in the air from the ceiling, and weighed down with fishing weights. underneath the blue sail stands a small domestic fan pointed up towards the sail and panning across it. the sail is porous enough to form the shape of the wind created by the fan without entirely billowing and rising upward. the movement of the fan is made visible by the sail; it creates a wave that hovers in constant equilibrium. blue sail is one of haacke’s closed environmental “sculptural” systems works from the early 1960s.79 his focus on creating sculptures that produce their own weather systems, like other participatory art at the time, highlighted what fried would call the duration of its objecthood. blue sail presents a movement that is perpetual and independent of viewers. the chiffon moves in front of its viewers, as well as when it is alone in the exhibition space. as haacke explains: a ‘sculpture’ that physically reacts to its environment is no longer to be regarded as an object. the range of outside factors affecting it, as well as its own radius of action, reach beyond the space it materially occupies. it thus merges with the environment in a relationship that is better understood as a ‘system’ of interdependent processes. these processes evolve without the viewer’s empathy. he becomes a witness. a system is not imagined, it is real.80 movement and time are important elements of haacke’s exploration of systems theory in art. works like blue sail alter and work within the interior climate of the gallery space and function in time. in this way, motion is orchestrated to resist a modern definition of art as autonomous, finite and dependent on its crafted form.81 the components of blue sail each “physically communicate to one another.”82 that is, the movement of one object (a fan) 76 hans haacke, quoted in obra social: hans haacke. barcelona: fundación antoni tápies, 1995. exhibition catalogue, 49. 77 caroline jones, hans haacke 1967 (cambridge: massachusetts, mit list visual arts center, 2011), 9. 78 hans haacke, quoted in burnham "systems esthetics," 35. 79 haacke’s rain tower (1962) is a clear acrylic container that is divided into sections. each section is perforated enough to enable water to pass through each division in trickles. when turned upside down, the water rains down to the bottom, “turning the grid from a visual into an operative structure.” see grasskamp, real time: the work of hans haacke, 36. 80 burnham, “systems esthetics,” 22. 81 walter grasskamp, “real time: the work of hans haacke” in hans haacke, eds. by walter grasskamp, jon bird, molly nesbit (london, phaidon, 2004), 38. 82 peter mechsler, “hans haacke to exhibit kinetic art,” the tech, october 17, 1967, 5, quoted in caroline a. jones, hans haacke 1967 (cambridge, ma: mit list visual arts center, 2011), 9. 7 5 c h r i s t i n a c h a u contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.57 causes an effect of movement to another (the sail), which also interacts with and is affected by the space and the viewers within it. the unstable or sensitive relationship that blue sail has with its environment emphasizes movement as an unfolding process that is not contained but open to its environment. it is a work that, like many of haacke’s early systems, “evolve[s] in time and [is] affected by time,”83 that is an objective temporality rather than the phenomenological “shifting experience of the viewer.”84 haacke created blue sail in order to bring the “spectator’s” attention to the experience of time.85 the sculpture’s movement is independent of its viewers; it moves in time and also affects time and performs haacke’s attempt to emphasize the transformation and process of energy movement systems. it is important that works such as blue sail and photoelectric viewer-controlled coordinate system perform haacke’s approach to systems theory rather than create a database or visualization of them, unlike socio-political systems such as those written about in news, moma poll and gallery-goers’ birthplace and residence profile. providing a visualization of these systems would create an abstraction that distorts the unfolding nature of temporality. kinesis is, therefore, a central tool for illuminating and performing the specific temporal arrangements in haacke’s systems art. conclusion burnham dismisses kineticism in “systems esthetics,” “real time systems,” and beyond modern sculpture. the influence of burnham’s scholarship on systems theory in art consequently has contributed to the “flagrant dearth” of critical and historical discussions of kineticism today.86 in these publications, burnham argued that art in the late 1960s was increasingly moving away from an orientation of objects and towards a systems-based approach to creating and consuming art. the consequence, as burnham has argued, positions kinetic artists as unrequited in their aims to contribute a popular technological artistic practice.87 the popularity and influence of burnham’s argument in contemporary media art history has contributed to an understanding of kinetic sculpture as a practice solely associated with the industrial machine aesthetic and modern avant-garde movements. i have argued that burnham’s interpretation of kineticism misdirects haacke’s early sculptural systems art as early information-processing systems rather than experiments of movement systems. contrary to burnham, i argue that a sensitivity for, and discussion of, the actual kinetic movement in haacke’s works is a central aspect of the artist’s understanding of systems aesthetics in art. while burnham’s antipathy towards kineticism separated kinesis from the emerging systems aesthetics in art, artists such as haacke explicitly emphasized the importance of movement and form to connect media with specific conceptual messages. haacke created works that were ontologically unstable in order to highlight the unfolding entropic nature within systems theory. rather than a deference to actual movement, haacke used motion to highlight it as a tool that is both material and immaterial, as well as actual and virtual. 83 peter mechsler, “hans haacke to exhibit kinetic art,” 9. 84 ibid. 85 haacke, quoted in obra social: hans haacke, 49. 86 pierre, “instability: the visual/bodily perception of space in kinetic environments,” 91. 87 burnham, beyond modern sculpture, 218-284. 7 6 k i n e t i c s y s t e m s contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.57 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-noncommercial-no derivative works 3.0 united states license. this journal is operated by the university library system of the university of pittsburgh as part of its d-scribe digital publishing program, and is co-sponsored by the university of pittsburgh press. microsoft word 201-207 the round table xu bing 7-27.docx vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.157 http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu the round table 03 圆桌 a conversation with xu bing madeline eschenburg and ellen larson abstract the following is an excerpt from a conversation between contemporary chinese artist xu bing, madeline eschenburg, and ellen larson. xu bing curated an exhibition at the central academy of fine arts titled the second cafam future exhibition, observer-creator: the reality representation of chinese young art, on display through march 2015. our conversation centered around his thoughts on a new generation of young chinese artists as well as reflection on his own early career and time in new york. the conversation was conducted in chinese and has been translated into english. about the artist xu bing was born in 1955 in chongqing. after the cultural revolution ended in 1976, he enrolled in the central academy of fine arts in beijing, focusing his studies on printmaking. in 1989, he participated in the groundbreaking china/avant garde exhibition curated by gao minglu. xu bing moved to the united states in 1990 and stayed there until his return to china in 2008. xu bing is one of the foremost contemporary artists working today, investigating meaning and language, informed by social and cultural conditions. his works aim to “make art serve the people,” shaped by both personal and shared histories. xu bing currently lives and works in beijing and new york. contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.157 question: how do you see young artists today? 访：您现在对今天年轻艺术家有什么看法？ xu bing: right now we are working on “the second cafam (central academy of fine arts museum) future exhibition, observer-creator: the reality representation of chinese young art,” which is really great. but, do you mean how i feel about young artists, or what? 徐冰: 我们正在搞这个未来展第二次。都挺好的。你问我对年轻艺术家的感觉还是怎么样？
 q: yes, i mean, how do you feel about their notions in terms of the creation of their work? 访:对，就是您对他们创作艺术的概念?
 xb: i think young people have a lot of conveniences. for example, young people today, their thinking is actually quite open because no matter what, information channels and a large part of culture have been flattened out, or brought to the same level. so the things that they think about and come in contact with are actually in step with one another. also, because of china’s various characteristics, it possesses even more of this kind of information. even though government control might be a little tight, it can’t control young peoples’ access to this information. (young people) can use software to breach china’s firewall, so essentially, young people have access to anything they want. this is not as easy for us. of course, at the same time, they are filled with a kind of government ideology or influence, creating conflict, or what appears to be conflict between things they have access to from the rest of the world. but young artists are actually enriched by these things that exist within china. in other places, young people don’t have this sort of information. therefore, chinese young people are able to see things within a much wider span. this sort of breadth of thinking is very unusual. i think chinese young people are very thoughtful, actually. so, work by young people can be really interesting. their modes of thinking, which are channeled in terms of the relationship between technology used in society and their peripheral status, is different from when we were young, very different. also, these young people don’t have as many burdens to carry. another aspect is that they have their own individual personalities. but at the same time, they lack in terms of judgment and independence, and their influence from the west is very profound, really very profound. all of china is deeply influenced by the west. so, the relationship between young people today and the west isn’t like the relationship my generation had with the west in the 1980s. at that time, many of us artists were very open. we studied the west. we studied new culture. we studied new thinking. young people today have become more aware of the value of chinese culture. they want to represent eastern thinking or attitudes that are different from the west. but a great portion of young people cannot really do this. so while you’re using eastern materials, your artistic concepts are, in fact, still extremely western. so, young people today are a really rich phenomenon. 徐冰：我都是觉得他们都是挺方便的。比如说，现在年轻人他们确实思维挺开阔的因为不管怎么样这个信息 渠道和这个整个的这种文化被扁平化被拉平了。所以他们想的事情和接触到东西我觉得实际上是同步的。而 且中国这个地方还是由于各种各样的特殊性它真的还是有更多的这种信息。虽然是政府可能管这个有点严， 但是实际上控制不住这些年轻人对这些信息获取的方式, 翻墙软件等等。基本他们要的东西都可以去拿到。 这我可能没有那么方便。当然他同时有补充的政府的一种意识形态的一种影响力吧。和这个东西确实很冲突 的，或者说跟这个全球的东西看起来是很冲突的。但是这个东西确实给这些年轻人补充了。其他的地方年轻 人没有的一种元素。那这些年轻人可以在一个很大的跨度之间想事情。他这种思维的跨度都很怪异。 the round table 03 圆桌 january 29, 2015 madeline eschenburg and ellen larson 2 0 3 m a d e l i n e e s c h e n b u r g a n d e l l e n l a r s o n contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.157 这边我是觉得大陆的年轻人还有一个很充分的一个思维的资源其实是。他们思维的方式，对科技的社会和他 的周边的发生关系的渠道跟我们以前的人不一样，很不一样。而且你会觉得这些年轻人没有太多负担啦其实 。可是另外的方面就是说他确实有个性，但是缺少这种正身的这种判断力和这种自主性,实际上还是受西方 的这种影响很深，真的很深。因为整体中国就是受西方的影响很深。每一个人其实都是受西方影响非常之深 。所以，比如说现在这些年轻人其实跟西方的关系，他们不像我们八十年代的时候。当时我们很多艺术家都 很开放，学习西方，学习新的文化，新的思想。现在年轻人开始意识到中国的文化很有价值。他们想表达东 方的思想或者和西方不同的这种态度。可是呢实际上很深的一部分他又无法 摆脱这个。所以你用的东西是 东方的材料或者怎么样但实际上那个在艺术概念和方法上还是非常西方的。所以年轻人其实（是）很丰富的 现象。
 q: i’ve read the letter that you wrote to the young artist. 访：我看过你给一个年轻艺术家写的一封信。 xb: this was in the 1990s. i wrote this letter after arriving in new york. 徐冰：这是 90十年代的时候，我到纽约之后写（的）这一封信。
 q: right, so i’d like to ask, from the time you wrote that letter until now, have your thoughts changed at all? 访：对啊。所以我就想问一下，从当时写这一封信的时候到现在您是否被概念改变？ 
 xb: actually, the ideas i wrote in the letter haven’t really changed much, but my own thoughts have changed. why? for example, when i first went to the united states, i really hoped to integrate into american culture, to be accepted by american culture. this was my attitude at the time. but now, when i reflect on my attitude during that time, i find it problematic. now, i think that completely integrating yourself into another system is wrong. if you do so, you lose yourself. if you lose yourself by integrating into another system, you don’t exist. integration makes you become one of them, you know? this is definitely an issue. only now do i really understand that a place doesn’t need what it already has. so where do these things come from? they come from outside of the system. for example, every person who went to new york brought his or her own special qualities, based on family background or personality. so, you have to see whether or not you can use art to share what you have with the art world. but you also have to decide whether or not this place needs what you have to offer. you must give a place what it does not already have itself. but at that time, my works emerged naturally, reflecting the things that i carried with me. when i went to new york, i brought a lot of artworks, but i didn’t show them to anyone because i thought they were too old. 徐冰：其实和信上本身没有实质的改变吧。但是观念上其实有变化。比如说什么？比如说我刚去美国的时候 我们会希望让自己融入美国的文化，被那个地方接受。当时这是我的态度。但是现在反省那个时候的态度呢 我觉得有问题的。有问题就是说你如果融入那个系统，就是你这个态度就不对的。融入就把自己就没有了。 你自己都没有了你才融入到那个里面，你就不存在。融入就是要融进去和他们一样,是吧？一定有问题。 那 我现在我才能够认识到，那个地方它不需要一个和他们一样的东西。 那这里面有的东西从哪儿来的？一定 是从这个系统外面来的。比如说每个人到纽约去，实际上每个人都带自己特殊的,这种文化的背景或者特殊 的性格的东西。但是就看你能不能用艺术把你的这一部分特殊性的东西给带入艺术界，但是还要看这个东西 是不是这个地方需要的？你必须给那个地方本身就没有的。但是当时我一个人在艺术的创作上它就是自然而 然地就把你身上携带的东西给反映出来。 我去纽约的时候带来了很多艺术的作品，但是我当时没拿出来给 别人看因为我觉得太旧了。 2 0 4 t h e r o u n d t a b l e 0 3 圆 桌 contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.157 from left to right: madeline eschenburg, ellen larson, gao minglu, xu bing, and kuang liping. q: what period were these works from? 访:您是说的那个时代的作品？ xb: they were prints that i made when i was at the central academy. these works were exemplary of chinese socialism. but at that time, i didn’t show them to people because i wanted them to think i was a contemporary artist, an innately contemporary artist. but in fact, after you become a good artist and people start to pay attention to your work, they start to become interested in your own history. (they asked) why i made this kind of work. so i showed them these prints so they could see my history. really, these (older works) helped me. for one, at the time, they represented socialist works. another aspect is that your family or background was carried through with this chinese cultural tradition. both of these things were of help to me. in other words, even though at that time i really wanted my work to be seen as international or contemporary, in fact, the things that i carried were translated into my work. maybe because i am really sincere, i am able to translate the most real parts of me into my work. even though i thought i should get rid of all these old things, these things all helped me bring new things into my art, or things that did not exist before. for example, my past work and my current work are not any different conceptually, but at that time, it was unconscious or passive. 徐冰：就是过去的做的很多版画，就是在美术学院。就是特别中国的社会主义痕迹的作品。但是我当时没拿 让别人看看因为我想让人觉得我是当代艺术家，天生的当代艺术家。但实际上你后来做得好大家关注你的作 品最后就跟你的历史感兴趣。（他们问）我为什么做这样的作品。所以我也拿给别人看这样的历史。实际上 这些东西都帮助我了。它一方面是当时那样的社会主义创作的那种模式，另外一方面你的家庭或者你的背景 带这个中国文化传统的这种东西。那这两个东西其实都帮助我。就是说，我虽然当时很想让自己的作品非常 国际化或者当代化可是实际上你自己带的东西它就是要反映在你的作品里。也许我这人对艺术挺真诚的,所 以我的东西都能够反映我的真实的部分。虽然我认识到我要取消我过去的东西但是实际上过去的东西同时帮 2 0 5 m a d e l i n e e s c h e n b u r g a n d e l l e n l a r s o n contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.157 助我，反倒帮助了我给艺术中带去新的东西，或者过去没有的东西。那现在就是比起那时候,由于这么长时 间的实践你就有意识和清除这个东西。比如说，我过去的时候我的艺术和现在的艺术没有什么概念上的不同 ，可是当时是无意识或者被动的。
 q: have your thoughts on the relationship between art and society changed in any way? 访: 然后您对艺术与社会的关系是否被改变？ xb: at that time, our understanding of the relationship between art and society was formed by our chinese education. this was the concept that art originated from life. it was something that chairman mao discussed during his yan’an talks. actually, this language was really political, yet really simple. our understanding of the relationship between art and society came from this. but, this concept was later simplified, or stylized. for example, at that time, when we were in school “plunging into the thick of life” was emphasized. what does this mean? at that time, it meant going to the countryside, to the border regions, factories, etc. by going to these kinds of places, we could plunge into the thick of life, living together with our fellow countrymen. we lived together, painted, things like that, but i later discovered that these things and what was really the core of life during that time had no relationship to one another. so now, i myself think that art, without a doubt, comes from our life and experiences. but the problem is that the words we use are said without feeling, but actually, their truths still remain the truth. for example, with my own experiences, i think that you must not separate yourself from the period in which you live if you want to become an excellent artist. for example, for chinese artists, you could say that this place has a lot of ignorance, control, or is extremely politicized. but of course, it’s really a kind of special energy, continuously transmitted to artists. for example, i have found that china produces an incredible amount of this kind of energy. from 1949 to the cultural revolution, then after the cultural revolution to the time we left china, every period in history actually produced huge amounts of energy. but energy is sometimes used in the wrong way. after reform and the opening up of china, i think this energy was honed in the right ways, allowing china to develop so rapidly. regardless of what kind of system, this place has developed at unprecedented levels. i have become aware that this is all the result of china’s own capabilities, something that would not be possible in other places. so an artist is like this. he takes the special energy from a place and transforms it into his artworks. it is only when you understand this that you can become a rather outstanding artist. sometimes when i will go to biennales to look at work, i see a lot of work that is actually kind of boring. so then why, after creating work in the united states or around the world and then returning to china, do i think these tastes haven’t changed? before, artistic methods and tastes were all discussed. but at that time, a lot of friends and curators were extremely interested in discussing these things. of course they held the threads to this work, but for me, these things weren’t enough. my acquaintance with the customs here in china has strengthened my pursuit of insightful understanding of the relationship between art and society. i think that this is greater here than in other places, for example, new york. i think that if i stayed in new york, my thinking wouldn’t be as strong as it is today. but, with my work phoenix, i think that if i didn’t spend time living in new york, i wouldn’t have made this kind of work. this is an example of the relationship between artist and the period in which he lives and works. i returned to china to serve as the vice president of cafa for seven years. a lot of people say that during these seven years, i wasted a lot of time, but i think that (this experience) really strengthened my own thinking. my work is different because i now understand this country. when you work within the system, you know what this country is really like; what things propel it forward. in terms of time, each period has its own turning point. people have their own turning points. in terms of my own personal turning point, i think each brings its own aggregation and blossoming of new energy. 徐冰：当时呢其实艺术和社会的关系其实最可信的来自于我们在中国接受教育的，一个艺术源于生活的概念 。其实就是毛泽东的讲话，延安会议的概念。其实这句话说得很政治，很简单。那我们这个对艺术和社会理 解的关系其实源自于这个东西。可是这个东西呢又被后来的艺术界给它简单化或样式化。比如说我们那个时 候上学的时候或者学习特别强调深入生活深入生活，什么叫深入生活？当时深入生活就是去农村，去边远的 ，去工厂，这些地方去深入生活和老乡住在一块儿。生活在一块儿画画什么的,但是我后来发现这个东西和 2 0 6 t h e r o u n d t a b l e 0 3 圆 桌 contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.157 当时的中国的真正的这个时代的核心都没关系。那个东西其实是一种和这个现实生活核心的命脉是没关系的 。它是一种田园采风式的方式。就是像现在你看中央政府又提倡要深入生活，到什么边疆去，去农村去。但 是现在这个东西是不是生活的？时代的核心？它可能不是。你知道我的意思吧？所以现在我自己对艺术,我 是觉得毫无疑问艺术源自于生活那确实是这样的。但是问题是话都是被说的没什么感觉，可是实际上它的道 理还是这个道理,比如说我自己的经验，我就感觉你必须要跟这个时代发生很紧密的关系你才能成为一个很 优秀艺术家。比如说中国艺术家，在中国这个地方你要说它是愚昧或者控制得很多，非常政治化。当然它有 它特殊的一种能量，不断地给艺术家做补充。比如说我发现中国这个地方其实产生巨大能量的一个地方。你 从这个49年以后到文革，到文革以后，到后来我们出国，这个每一个阶段其实都是有巨大的能量。只是能量 有时候用得不对。但是改革开放以后这能量我觉得用对地儿了，所以中国能够发展那么快。你不管这个制度 怎么样, 可是这个地方它就是发展的，而且实际上是发展得最快的,前所未有的。我只是意识到不管怎么样 这都是在中国这个地方出现的能量。这个能量可是别的地方不容易有的东西。那作为艺术家呢，他就是这个 。怎么样懂的，把这个地方特殊能量的能量转换到艺术的创作上。你懂这个东西你才能成为一个比较优秀的 艺术家。比如说我有的时候会去双年展看作品，我有时候会觉得有很多作品其实有点无聊。那我为什么会觉 得比如说二十年前，十五年前，十年前在美国或者在世界各地参与创作,现在后来回去了以后感觉这个趣味 没有变化。当代艺术的手段和趣味还是被讨论。但是当时有很多朋友策展人还是特别兴趣在讨论这些东西。 当然它有一个学术的一个线索，可是对我来说我就感觉这些东西对我不够。我在中国这个地方接的地气和我 的艺术和社会之间的关系的这种思维的密度。我觉得比在其他的地方的艺术家或者至少比我在纽约，如果我 现在仍然在纽约我想可能不会像我现在的这种思维的这种力度。比如说我作那个《大风》那个作品，我觉得 如果在纽约生活不会有这样的作品。那这就是艺术家和时代的关系。所以我个人说我回到美院做副院长，但 是现在我不做，是吧，但是我做的七年，这七年大家会说浪费很多时间，但是对我来说真的我的思维力度了 ，所以我的工作是不一样，因为我了解这个国家。你在这个系统中里知道这个国家是怎么样的，是什么东西 在推动这个国家走的。对时代来说，时代有时代的转折，个人有个人的转折。那我的个人的转折,我是觉得 每一个转折都会聚集和晕染新的能量。 2 0 7 m a d e l i n e e s c h e n b u r g a n d e l l e n l a r s o n contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.157 new articles in this journal are licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 united states license. this journal is operated by the university library system of the university of pittsburgh as part of its d-scribe digital publishing program, and is co-sponsored by the university of pittsburgh press. microsoft word 95-107 nostalgia and la jetee 7-27.docx vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.132 http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu nostalgia and la jetée karla huebner abstract this essay contemplates chris marker’s film la jetée (1962) via svetlana boym’s conceptualization of “restorative” versus “reflective” nostalgia. it looks in part at the film’s presentation of the protagonist’s restorative nostalgia, but unlike previous examinations of nostalgia’s role in la jetée, this essay foregrounds the viewer’s own experience of a reflective nostalgia for the film. the author considers her personal and subjective, and historically specific, encounters with la jetée in relation to how the film may produce a similar nostalgia in others through its storytelling and unusual combination of photographic and cinematic form. drawing also on réda bensmaïa’s semiotic and psychoanalytic analysis of the film’s “pictogrammatic” quality, the essay further considers the possible roles of trauma and masochism in the film and for its viewers, and relates the experience of watching la jetée to that of watching an occurrence at owl creek bridge (also 1962). the essay therefore situates both films in the context of historically situated yet ever-changing lived experience. about the author karla huebner is associate professor of art history and affiliate faculty in women, gender, and sexuality studies at wright state university in dayton, ohio. she received her ph.d. in the history of art and architecture from the university of pittsburgh and her m.a. from american university in washington, dc. her research areas include surrealism, women artists, the history of gender and sexuality, and czech modernism from 1890-1950. contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.132 once upon a time, in the school year of 1968-69 to be precise, a group of children were sent from their own classroom to join another class for a film. they were going to see a film about harriet tubman, who as everyone knew or ought to have known was a famous conductor on the underground railroad. and so they saw the film on harriet tubman, which depicted her bravely stealing her charges away to freedom despite episodes of narcolepsy caused by a mysterious star-shaped wound on her forehead. harriet tubman was tough and did whatever she had to to save her runaway slaves; if necessary, she drugged babies to keep them from crying. but for some reason a second film had been sent along with the tubman film. had it been requested, or was it an odd sort of bonus from the film company? if there was any explanation by either of the teachers, it went out the window and was lost on the playground; perhaps the explanation floated out across the asphalt and twined itself around the wooden fort where certain children in the group spent lunch-hours pretending to be castaways bitten by poisonous snakes, or knights on horseback, or researchers of magic and spirits. in any case, the teachers put on the second film. black-and-white, like tubman. that was normal enough for school films in those days. only animated films arrived in color. thus: first came a long gray shot of parked airplanes; there was a curious buzzing that could gradually be identified as the whine of engines. then, ever so gradually, the buzzing was overlaid with the sound of a chorus: the russian liturgy of the good saturday, not that anyone in the room could have named this piece. a man’s voice began to speak calmly in french—was there more than one child in attendance who recognized the sound of french?— and words came onto a black screen: “this is the story of a man, marked by an image from his childhood. the violent scene that upset him, and whose meaning he was to grasp only years later, happened on the main jetty at orly, the paris airport, sometime before the outbreak of world war iii.” quite some time later, in the school year of 1980-81 to be more precise (we could even be so precise as to specify fall quarter of 1980, although not, from our vantage point in the twenty-first century, the exact day), a pair of college students stood talking outside the remarkably ugly concrete building in which their film class met. they were taking the class because it was required of all theater majors—they had put it off until their senior year—but they confessed that they liked it. and as they stood talking, one of them grew strangely nostalgic. there was a film she had seen in school, she said, back when she was in fourth grade. it had been a very peculiar film, not the kind of thing one normally saw in grade school, but a sort of a science fiction film about a man in the future who was haunted by an incomprehensible childhood memory. for some reason it had always stuck in her mind as her own kind of incomprehensible childhood memory; she had always wondered if she would ever see it again. her companion said it sounded interesting and that she probably would get to see it again someday, if she watched enough movies. she was less certain; the world was full of movies and how would she identify it? as it happened, the next film they saw in class was la jetée. nostalgia is not usually so promptly—what? answered? cured? resolved? as one could argue happened in this case. a psychoanalyst would probably suggest that the title la jetée had always lurked in the student’s subconscious and that the sight of it on the syllabus had prompted renewed nostalgia for the film, but while this is probably true, it merely explains the synchronicity of that particular moment of longing for la jetée, not the fact of twelve nostalgia and la jetée karla huebner 9 7 k a r l a h u e b n e r contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.132 years’ worth of intermittently remembering and longing for a film about trauma, memory, desire, and death. nostalgia, as svetlana boym reminds us, “is a longing for a home that no longer exists or has never existed.”1 boym has proposed that there are two forms of nostalgia: the first, restorative nostalgia, “attempts a transhistorical reconstruction of the lost home” and “does not think of itself as nostalgia” (she focuses on the postcommunist experience), while reflective nostalgia thrives in the longing itself.2 in this essay, i ponder both in relation to la jetée. perhaps it was absurdly precocious of me to experience a nostalgic longing (a reflective one, in boym’s typology) when i wasn’t even an adult, and for a film that most people wouldn’t have thought to screen for a room of seven-to-ten year olds. but i did, and while la jetée certainly wasn’t the only thing that provoked for me a prematurely proustian sense of longing, loss, wonder, and temps perdus, it prompted a different variety of this than did memories of things i had done or eaten or even watched on tv. the nostalgia i could or might even now experience at the recollection of watching reruns of my friend flicka or lassie (or even, heaven forbid, the dismally didactic dramas on the lutheran hour) is qualitatively different than the haunting nostalgia of recollecting la jetée, even if we rightly distinguish between the mystic and unsatisfied nostalgia for an unknown film incompletely recalled, and the later nostalgia for a known quantity which can be seen in film classes or even at will on bad videotapes or dvds. the ache for a film, story, or work of music may be simple or complex, mild or intense; it may be easily sated by reacquaintance, or it may not. and here i argue that the complex, intense variety of nostalgia prompted by la jetée is prompted by the inherent qualities of the film itself. a nostalgia for watching episodes of lassie would doubtless be indicative of a personal attachment to the dog, or to the show’s place in one’s childhood routine, but probably not to anything inherent in the show’s story or structure (despite the fact that lassie always rescued someone). la jetée, on the other hand, presents a story of trauma, memory, longing, and loss in a quiet and understated format that catalyzes the viewer in a way that a more active presentation might not. as réda bensmaïa puts it, the experience of the film goes beyond its formal qualities; “something comes over us that goes above and beyond any representation, something perhaps on the order of the subliminal.”3 but why? something strange occurs when a film about a man haunted by memory can itself haunt the memory of its viewers, for surely not every story on this theme causes its readers or viewers to react thus. for that matter, perhaps not every era encourages such a reaction. just as nostalgia itself has arisen differently and been treated differently at different times (boym notes that it was once treated as a disease),4 so perhaps the type of story told here provokes different reactions among viewers who first see it at different historical moments. people who, like me, first saw la jetée during the cold war tend to share a deep fondness for it. yet a friend of mine who enjoys science fiction and philosophical topics, and who like me grew up during the cold war, saw la jetée for the first time in the early 2000s and 1 svetlana boym, the future of nostalgia (new york: basic books, 2001), xiii. 2 ibid., xviii. 3 réda bensmaïa, "from the photogram to the pictogram: on chris marker's la jetée," camera obscura 24 (1990): 144. emphasis original. 4 boym, the future of nostalgia, xviii; 3-18. 9 8 n o s t a l g i a a n d l a j e t é e contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.132 described it as merely “okay.” was this just him or is this typical of people who encounter the film in the twenty-first century? (i have no answer for that, i merely pose the question.) boym observes that “[t]he twentieth century began with a futuristic utopia and ended with nostalgia.” optimism about the future was “discarded… sometime in the 1960s.”5 we see this loss of optimism clearly in la jetée; while it was hardly the first dystopian view of the future, we cannot help but note that it presents not only the post-world war iii future as grim (who during the cold war didn’t envision an unlivable existence after world war iii?) but also the “pacified” future. the protagonist cannot desire the future even when it is offered to him as a means of survival, for his nostalgia is too strong. he refuses to see anything desirable about the future, for he sees it entirely as a product of the hideous postcatastrophic time from which he time-travels. at the time la jetée was made, cold war anxiety was surely at its height. children might feel excitement at the idea of living like the jetsons and going to the moon, but adults experienced a world in which american couples honeymooned in backyard fallout shelters, magazines like time and life discussed whether the fallout-shelter haves would shoot the have-nots in time of need, and the cuban missile crisis was the news of the day. by the time i first saw la jetée, anxiety about nuclear war had partly given way to a more generalized angst prompted by vietnam, biafra, assassinations, hijackings, and demonstrations. fears about the nature of the modern world and the future obsessed much of the globe. the protagonist of la jetée might reject the future, but viewers of his story could simultaneously understand his desire for the past and find the calm, serious-but-faintly-smiling faces from the future appealing, almost godlike. to the viewer, the beings from the future might be rejectable not for being “pacified” but for possessing that godlike calm and certainty and knowledge that make mere humans feel abashed and imperfect—especially humans from the turbulent 1960s. sander lee, in his platonic approach to la jetée, observes that until we meet the inhabitants of the future, our protagonist is “the wisest person we’ve encountered.” now, he is “inferior” and must wear sunglasses “in the bright light of their wisdom” while they wear marks suggesting the hindu third eye of contemplation and self-discovery.6 marker in fact filmed la jetée after experiencing two incidents of censorship by the french government. in 1953, the marker-resnais film les statues meurent aussi offended for its references to french colonialism, while the film immediately preceding la jetée, the 1961 cuba, si! was banned for its sympathetic view of the cuban revolution. thus lee hilliker connects la jetée not just to cold war bomb fears, but also to french colonial torture, and suggests that the assassin can be read as the censor.7 but let us return to boym and nostalgia. boym points to nostalgia as the “yearning for a different time—the time of our childhood, the slower rhythms of our dreams.”8 the protagonist of la jetée desires the moment from his childhood at orly, for despite its traumatic violence, it is sweeter and more wonderful than anything else he knows. though he saw a man (himself!) killed, he recalls the pleasure of the outing to the airport and the beauty of the woman’s face. indeed, had the trauma of seeing the killing not fixed the 5 svetlana boym, the future of nostalgia, xiv. 6 sander lee, "platonic themes in chris marker's la jetée." senses of cinema, march, 2000, accessed june 20, 2015, http://sensesofcinema.com/2000/feature-articles/jetee/ 7 lee hilliker, "the history of the future in paris: chris marker and jean-luc godard in the 1960s," film criticism 24, (2000): 7, 11. 8 boym, the future of nostalgia, xv. 9 9 k a r l a h u e b n e r contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.132 moment in his mind, he might not remember the outing or the woman; no doubt there were other outings and other attractive faces in his childhood. though we are nostalgic for happier times, we often best recall those that were bittersweet. would i have remembered la jetée with such poignant intensity had it been a cheery film or one like all the others we saw at school? even the harriet tubman film was memorable in part because of its somber theme and gritty imagery. for boym, nostalgia is a “rebellion against the modern idea of time, the time of history and progress.” she suggests that “[t]he nostalgic desires to obliterate history and turn it into private or collective mythology, to revisit time like space….”9 certainly, la jetée rebels against optimistic notions of history and progress; rather than the improvement of all things through progress (“better living through science”), la jetée suggests that all “progress” brings is annihilation tempered by random cruel survivals. our protagonist, the nostalgic, has every reason to want to obliterate history. history has rendered his past so limited that all it can be for him is a kind of private mythology. further, when boym suggests that nostalgia itself, with its “mourning of displacement and temporal irreversibility, is at the very core of the modern condition” (“a historical emotion,” “coeval with modernity itself”),10 we can easily see la jetée’s protagonist as the modern everyman who longs (in an extreme form) for les temps perdus. again as if writing with la jetée in mind, boym states that “[o]utbreaks of nostalgia often follow revolutions.” while the world war iii of the film is not a revolution, it produces an upheaval in which at least part of the population can only long for the past. and, of course, long “for the unrealized dreams of the past and visions of the future that became obsolete.”11 anything that our protagonist longed for as a child has been obliterated; the possibilities inherent in desires for love, toys, wisdom, growing-up-to-be-a, have all been destroyed. and here, when boym proposes that “nostalgia is about the relationship between individual biography and the biography of groups or nations, between personal and collective memory,”12 we find that this is starkly illustrated by la jetée, which tells the story of an individual in light of and contrasted with his group or nation (we cannot be sure who his fellow survivors are), in which his individual memory may not be wholly alien to the collective memory, yet is entirely personal and far stronger than the memory of any other individual within the collective. he has shared the experience of world war iii with his fellows, and therefore is representative of them, yet his individual memory of an earlier time means much more to him and therefore gives his captors the opportunity to use him for their own ostensibly altruistic purposes. as hilliker observes, the technocrats use the imagemaker’s understanding of the past to build their pacified future, first using the image, then killing it when it has served its purpose.13 but what of the film’s effect on us? the recent growth of critical literature on la jetée (and on marker’s work generally) suggests that the film continues to compel viewers, some 9 ibid., xv. 10 ibid., xvi. 11 ibid., xvi. 12 ibid., xvi. 13 hilliker, "the history of the future in paris,” 12. 1 0 0 n o s t a l g i a a n d l a j e t é e contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.132 of whom were surely born well after it was made.14 how does it affect its audience and why does it subsequently provoke a nostalgic longing in some of us? for bensmaïa, some of la jetée’s capacity to produce intense emotion in the viewer resides in the “hallucinatory fascination” of the film’s images,15 but also in the film’s lacunae: in its wordless images, its fades to black, and the things that are not shown (such as the corpses of world war iii). bensmaïa speaks of “the experience… this film continues to produce even after we have seen it again and again.” he inquires how we deal “with the extraordinary uncanniness—with the uneasiness and the fascination that continue to occupy our thoughts….”16 here bensmaïa illustrates boym’s idea of nostalgia as fundamentally ambivalent, “about the repetition of the unrepeatable, materialization of the immaterial,”17 for like me, he reacts to his nostalgia about the film by watching it repeatedly and attempting to find the source or at least the mechanism of his fascination, and like me he observes the “striking… coalescence” between the representation (images) and the experience (affect) in this film.18 bensmaïa separates the effects of the visual and auditory upon us, suggesting that at one level “we find ourselves with two narratives that are like one.” to get “closer to what in la jetée produces an enduring uneasiness”—to account for what “continues,” in his opinion despite the narration, “to irradiate the almost ‘mystical’ atmosphere that emanates from this film”—he proposes approaching la jetée via piera aulagnier’s concept of the “pictogram.” according to aulagnier, “the space and the activity of the originary are different for us from the unconscious and from the primary processes. this activity has the property of metabolizing any affective experience present in the psyche into a pictogram that is, indissociably, representation of the affect and affect of the representation.” this theory, bensmaïa suggests, can help us understand how we respond to la jetée’s story yet are simultaneously kept “completely removed from it.”19 in his strongly semiotic examination of la jetée, bensmaïa points to the “absence of indexing,” in which “[i]mages escape from the text and no words are able to name them (for us).” he finds that “these images resemble ‘confessions,’ images that have more the look and the power of aborted actions than of speech.”20 the nature of the extended dissolves and fades are of vital significance to him, as he argues that “the dissolves and the fades show us this thing we must blind ourselves to in order to be able to see,” which is our repressed “representative core.”21 at the same time, bensmaïa believes that “one can go beyond the paradox of saying that in the dissolves and fades it is possible to ‘say’ the 14 see for example victor burgin, the remembered film (london: reaktion, 2004); catherine lupton, chris marker: memories of the future (london: reaktion, 2005); nora m. alter, chris marker (urbana and chicago: university of illinois press, 2006); sarah cooper, chris marker (manchester and new york: manchester university press, 2008); janet harbord, chris marker, la jetée (london: afterall books, 2009), and various studies by raymond bellour. 15 bensmaïa, "from the photogram to the pictogram,” 147. 16 ibid., 142. emphasis original. 17 boym, the future of nostalgia, xvii. 18 bensmaïa, "from the photogram to the pictogram,” 144. 19 ibid., 143-144, quoting piera aulagnier, la violence de l’interprétation : du pictoramme à l’énoncé, 2nd ed. (paris : p.u.f., 1981), 77. emphasis original. 20 ibid., 144. emphasis original. 21 ibid., 145. emphasis original. 1 0 1 k a r l a h u e b n e r contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.132 unspeakable and to ‘see’ the unrepresentable.”22 one photographed body becomes another photographed body, or part of a body, or part of an object; in the absence of direct representations of human suffering, “these moments of intense fusion and/or tearing apart” are displaced onto the dissolves.23 that is, in these dissolves and fades, “these pictogrammatic signals-signs,” images slowly merge and pull apart, providing us with metaphoric images of decomposition that combine with the explicit scenes of the ruined landscape to provide us with a complex imagery of pain and destruction. this displacement of violence onto the dissolves and fades, says bensmaïa, is why these transitions are so lengthy—duration makes them legible.24 laura mulvey, who suggests that “the reality of the photograph as index becomes entwined with the problem of time,”25 elaborates that “[t]he still photograph represents an unattached instant” while the moving image “cannot escape from duration, or from beginnings and ends….”26 it is worth noting that the sole moving image in the film, the grainy shot in which the woman opens her eyes,27 becomes obscured by the complexity of these transitions in the blurry video version, while its considerable length is ruthlessly condensed in the ciné-roman version, which presents it as two straightforward photos. bensmaïa suggests that image after image, along with voice and music, merge in a “surplus of information,” to form a pictogram reflecting an unspeakable scene. he observes, “like the film’s protagonist, the spectator is not yet delirious, but s/he does experience ‘the conflict which results from the desire for fusion and the desire for annihilation, love and hate, the activity of representation as a desire for the pleasure of being and a hate of having to desire.’”28 he concludes that through the film’s “pictogrammic montage” we experience a lacanian “fading of the subject”—the dissipation of the subject, “the original nondifferentiation at the heart of psychosis.”29 perhaps, but whether this constitutes the true core of our engagement with la jetée is another question. what is it that we are drawn to repeat and perhaps master about a movie? are we traumatized by the fades and dissolves and indeed the skillful pacing of the transitions, or do we respond more to the story itself, which bensmaïa largely discounts as a separate and almost unrelated parallel narrative? catherine lupton points out that unlike most avant-garde films, la jetée doesn’t deny viewers the traditional pleasures of storytelling, fantasy, and “projected fulfillment of desire.”30 22 ibid., 144. 23 ibid., 149. 24 ibid., 149, 152. 25 laura mulvey, death 24x a second: stillness and the moving image (london: reaktion, 2006), 44. 26 mulvey, death 24x a second, 13. 27 this is explored in bruce kawin, “time and stasis in la jetée,” film quarterly 36 (fall 1982): 15-20. 28 ibid., 156, quoting piera aulagnier, la violence de l’interprétation: du pictogramme à l’énoncé, 2nd ed. (paris: p.u.f., 1981), 79. emphasis original. 29 ibid., 157. claudine frank notes lacan’s debt to roger caillois; see roger caillois, “mimicry and legendary psychasthenia,” in the edge of surrealism: a roger caillois reader, ed. claudine frank, trans. claudine frank and camille naish (duke university press, 2003), 89-103. 30 lupton, chris marker, 94. 1 0 2 n o s t a l g i a a n d l a j e t é e contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.132 several scholars have noted that marker called la jetée a remake of hitchcock’s vertigo; victor burgin calls our attention to the hitchcock film’s (and likewise la jetée’s) staging of freud’s dictum that “[t]he finding of an object is in fact a refinding of it.” burgin observes that not only are both films retellings of the orpheus myth, but that la jetée inverts the myth’s above/below-ground placement of seeker and sought; instead of visiting hades from the sunlit world, la jetée’s protagonist visits the sunlit world of the dead past from the hellish cave of the present.31 burgin further connects la jetée with george du maurier’s novel peter ibbetson (1891; filmed in 1935), in which a prisoner reunites with his beloved in shared lucid dreams.32 burgin comments, however, that (unlike the active beloved in peter ibbetson) la jetée’s woman in the remembered image is “pure function,” purely “that with which the man seeks to be (re)united;” the object in a poignant fort/da game.33 as the narrator tells us, “this face, which was to be the only image of peacetime to traverse the time of war, he long asked himself if he had really seen it; or if he had created this moment of gentleness to support the moment of madness which was to come.” and here, i can’t help being reminded of an image i once saw across the waiting area in an airport around the time i first saw la jetée, of a beautiful, carefree young woman striding toward me. while the airport woman—in full color and lifesize or close to it—is not the only image of a lovely sixties lass to inhabit my memory, the model’s untroubled face and gait, so briefly glimpsed, had a very different effect than (for instance) the magazine breck girl ads with which i decorated my childhood bedroom. the airport photograph was in a sense my gradiva (another literary figure that burgin connects to the woman glimpsed in la jetée34)—always young, always beautiful in walking, always a potent symbol of the promise rather than the devastations of the 1960s. did personal trauma prompt my attachment to la jetée? while i can’t say i ever considered myself to have been traumatized at the age of nine, it is true that my grandfather had just died and my family had then moved two thousand miles from everyone i knew. perhaps this was more traumatic than i realized and i was able to recognize in a film my own buried loss. or did i, unknowing, share the collective trauma of a bomb fear i barely knew existed? while my school years were largely devoid of nuclear angst, i had seen an unsettling television program about fallout shelters, which repeated all morning while i played on the floor and wondered what was going on—why were these people scurrying to the buildings with the familiar funny sign? anxiety and trauma, even though not our own, are always memorable. thus, we return to boym. in boym’s theorization of restorative versus reflective nostalgia, we must put our protagonist in the restorative camp. after all, he can hardly be called the wistful, ironic, homecoming-delaying creature of reflective nostalgia, although boym so clearly prefers reflective to the often-nationalistic restorative nostalgia that she associates with “recent national and religious revivals.”35 but how could our protagonist ever be a reflective nostalgic? unlike boym and the rest of us (at least, those in a position to read and watch films, not those displaced and starving in refugee camps), our protagonist does 31 burgin, the remembered film, 93, quoting freud, 3 essays, standard edition 7, 222. 32 ibid., 100. burgin also notes andré breton’s attachment to peter ibbetson; i will add that the exiled czech surrealist toyen produced an altar to peter ibbetson for the 1947 surrealist exhibition. 33 ibid., 99. 34 ibid., 92-93. 35 boym, the future of nostalgia, xviii. 1 0 3 k a r l a h u e b n e r contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.132 not live in a world filled with commercialized nostalgia, where people buy and sell kewpie dolls, victorian and fake-victorian postcards, other people’s family photos, soviet army caps, and so-called “east german kitsch.” our protagonist hasn’t fled russia or bosnia or rwanda (all of which still exist), but survives a nuclear holocaust and lives in an underground prison camp with only one prewar memory to comfort himself (if comfort is a suitable concept for the memory of an assassination). while in day to day life we may prefer boym’s reflective nostalgia to restorative nostalgia, we can grant that the protagonist of la jetée has no room to choose. how can his nostalgia be ironic? how can he be enamored of the distance between present and past?36 he is lucky to have his nostalgia, restorative though it is, for it is clear that by possessing his one intense memory and a powerful nostalgia, he has more than most of the other survivors (viewers, on the other hand, can claim reflective nostalgia, exploring “ways of inhabiting many places at once and imagining different time zones”).37 at the same time, we should not discount the conclusion arrived at by sander lee in his platonic interpretation of la jetée, which is that the reason the man rejects the future and can be killed in the past (which has heretofore been posited as representing the platonic realm of the real, which he alone can enter from the post-holocaust cave) is that the “pacified” future is a platonic realm of intellect cleansed of emotion and action, whereas the man is ultimately driven by passion and chooses instead to go to the realm of the appetites, a place readily accessible to the other inhabitants of the cave (the assassin). for lee, the story’s poignancy lies in the protagonist’s fatal flaw: “in the end he reduces himself to the level of his enemies when he chooses to discard the noble path offered to him by the future in order to wallow in a nostalgic illusion of adolescent romantic love.”38 perhaps the illusion of love is indeed part of why he chooses the past, but it does not explain how or why the film haunts its viewers. boym remarks that for freud, “nostalgia was not a specific disease but a fundamental structure of human desire linked to the death drive”—that for him, one could only return home “through analysis and recognition of early traumas.”39 prompted by freud’s observation that “the pleasure principle seems actually to serve the death instincts,” leo bersani asks whether the death instinct might be “erotogenic masochism.”40 if the death instinct involves a desire to return from stimulation to stasis, then it’s possible that the protagonist’s “endless return to the scene of a suspended death”41 is both a repetitive response to trauma and a masochistic pleasure that builds and releases. but are we then masochistic? is watching la jetée a form of pleasurable torment? i’m not sure that it is, at least not in the colloquial sense. trauma need not lead to masochism, nor need masochism originate in trauma. but at this point i recall yet another childhood punctum (to steal a word from barthes): the grade-school pleasure of watching an occurrence at owl creek bridge in reverse. i don’t suppose i have ever repressed the recollection of our juvenile delight at watching the hanged man spring back to life and run 36 ibid., 50. 37 ibid., xviii. 38 lee, "platonic themes in chris marker's la jetée." 39 boym, the future of nostalgia, 53-54. 40 leo bersani, baudelaire and freud (berkeley: university of california press, 1977), 84 with reference to freud, beyond the pleasure principle in standard edition, 18; 63. 41 thanks are due to one of the anonymous reviewers for this formulation. 1 0 4 n o s t a l g i a a n d l a j e t é e contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.132 backwards through the woods as the film rewound; we were filled with joy and laughed heartily at this comic effect. but what i had forgotten until now was that this was not my first encounter with the film (which i now—not being a film scholar but an art historian—discover to my surprise was based on an ambrose bierce story and filmed in france in the very same year as la jetée). i had first seen occurrence at owl creek bridge during the same year that i first saw la jetée—probably even on the same day. while i recognized occurrence at owl creek bridge when i saw it again the next year at a different school, the fact of the repeat fell out of my conscious memory, to be replaced by the recollection of its entertaining reversal. was the initial recollection repressed or merely less memorable? was the experience made re-memorable by reversing the film? was occurrence at owl creek bridge—a story about a soldier executed in the civil war—more traumatic viewing than la jetée in a school year that began with the warsaw pact nations’ invasion of czechoslovakia and that continued with the immolations of jan palach and jan zajíc? mulvey has characterized freudian trauma as “an event or experience that arouses too much psychic excitement for the subject to be able to translate its significance into words.” she further suggests that trauma’s marking of the unconscious produces “a kind of index of the psyche that parallels the photographic trace of an original event.”42 she then considers the possibility, theorized by peter brooks, of narrative closure’s parallel to the death drive, saying “of all the means of achieving narrative stasis, death has a particular tautological appeal, a doubling of structure and content.”43 both la jetée and occurrence at owl creek bridge provide this kind of fatal doubling. when we add repeated viewings to the mix, whether nostalgic or simply unexpected, the doublings multiply, perhaps multiplying trauma for the viewer or conversely perhaps providing mastery of trauma. boym states, appositely, “a cinematic image of nostalgia is a double exposure, or a superimposition of two images—of home and abroad, past and present, dream and everyday life.”44 while i’ve always thought occurrence at owl creek bridge was haunting in its own way, i’ve never yearned for it, and have recalled it most clearly in reverse—a form of repetition that bruce kawin rightly suggests breaks a spell.45 a hanged man who runs in reverse from the arms of his wife, dashing backwards through the woods only to submerge himself and be jerked from the water to the bridge-gallows like a fish on a fishing pole, especially at a speed slightly faster than 24 frames per second, can hardly be traumatic— laughter dispels the tension created by his execution. in comparing photography and film, mulvey posits that the “freezing of reality” that occurs in a still photograph “marks a transition from …life to death” whereas “cinema reverses the process.”46 in this formulation, owl creek bridge reverses direction more than once even without, but especially with, the intervention of the film run backwards. certainly, in this respect owl creek bridge differs dramatically from la jetée despite the two films’ similarly fatal endings. owl creek bridge run in either direction has the “elusive,” “insubstantial and irretrievable” quality mulvey attributes to the medium of film, but la jetée, though it somehow (despite its static images) shares these attributes when run normally, would be incomprehensible, not comic, run 42 mulvey, death 24x a second, 65. 43 ibid., 70-72. 44 boym, xiii-xiv. 45 bruce f. kawin, telling it again and again: repetition in literature and film, reprint, 1972 (champaign, il: dalkey archive press, 2015), 82. 46 mulvey, death 24x a second, 15. 1 0 5 k a r l a h u e b n e r contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.132 backward and it possesses, in part though its use of still photographs, what mulvey calls their “heavy presence of passing time.”47 owl creek bridge also relies on cuts rather than on fades and dissolves—there is one apparent fade, significantly during the underwater sequence, but i believe there is only that one until the film’s closing fade. thus owl creek bridge refuses or nearly refuses to displace death onto the screen’s darkness except for at that crucial moment after the bound prisoner seemingly plummets deep into owl creek but actually drops toward death. both films encourage us to be “pensive spectators” who reflect on “the visibility of time in the cinema.”48 they also encourage repeated viewing, which even if not tied to nostalgia is the mark of a good film and perhaps especially a “cult film.”49 indeed, kawin calls repetition “fundamental to human experience.” it can be compulsive and neurotic or spontaneous and freeing;50 it can even be “key to our expression of experience.”51 kawin proclaims that “so long as we do not falsify our past with possession and fear and remembering, we can in the instants of repetition live both in the ordinary ‘now’ and in the ‘then made now’— transcending our life in space by discovering our freedom in time.”52 for kawin, the proustian sensory and emotional recall of fragments is “an answer to death.”53 was, then, my attachment to la jetée solely a result of the film’s genius? or did it stick in my mind for darker reasons, resonating with personal trauma? how can we know? we can only speculate. as the film tells us, “[n]othing distinguishes memories from other moments: it is only later that they make themselves recognized by their scars.” in any case, la jetée has always presented me with strange synchronicities: in the year 2002 a friend who didn’t yet know i had ever seen it decided to give me his copy of la jetée: ciné-roman. and as andré breton wrote in nadja, “[w]ho am i? if for this once i were to rely on a proverb, then perhaps everything would amount to knowing whom i ‘haunt.’”54 47 ibid., 66. 48 ibid., 11. 49 burgin notes in the remembered film that marker called vertigo “a cult film” and that so is la jetée. why is it important to state this? because “a cult film is one that is viewed repeatedly” (108). 50 kawin, telling it again and again, 5. 51 ibid., 7-8. 52 ibid., 85. emphasis original. 53 ibid., 86. 54 andré breton, nadja, trans. richard howard (new york: grove press, 1960), 12. 1 0 6 n o s t a l g i a a n d l a j e t é e contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.132 acknowledgements: thanks are due, chronologically, to the faculty of eldorado school for the gifted in orange, california and to mrs. baker of wagner elementary in placentia, california; to bruce kawin for teaching la jetée during his year at ucsc; to lucy fischer at university of pittsburgh for assigning the paper on nostalgia that became this essay; to john smalley for the copy of la jetée: ciné-roman; and to the anonymous reviewers for their suggestions. 1 0 7 k a r l a h u e b n e r contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.132 new articles in this journal are licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 united states license. this journal is operated by the university library system of the university of pittsburgh as part of its d-scribe digital publishing program, and is co-sponsored by the university of pittsburgh press. contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture vol 5, no 1 “agency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2016.177 http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu superqueeroes – our lgbti* comic book heroes and heroines schwules museum*, january 22-june 26, 2016 carlos kong exhibition review superqueeroes our lgbti* comic book heroes and heroines at the schwules museum*, berlin, january 22-june 26, 2016. about the author carlos kong is a postgraduate student at the courtauld institute of art, london. he researches questions of sexuality, historical memory, and intercultura l encounter across contemporary art, literature, and media. he received his ba from cornell university, and was previously the baden-württemberg foundation fellow at universität heidelberg, germany. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.177 superqueeroes – our lgbti* comic book heroes and heroines at the schwules museum* in berlin (january 22, 2016-june 26, 2016) presents the first major exhibition of queer comics in europe. 1 comprised of works by nearly one hundred comics artists and organized by seven curators, superqueeroes provides a comprehensive survey of comics with lgbti characters and narratives, primarily from europe and the united states.2 the exhibition illustrates the inventiveness and plurality of nonnormative sexual cultures to which comics graphically testify (fig. 1). as a foundational endeavor, superqueeroes raises a two-fold fundamental challenge—narrating sexual diversity through the disparate histories of its literary and visual representation; and curating comics in attunement to the ir histor ica l and material specificity. a critical examination of superqueeroes’s moments of insight and inconsistency is relevant for the future scholarly and artistic work on queer comics that the exhibition will likely inspire. once relegated to the realms of the low and the vernacular within the mass cultural industry, comics have recently and continue to emerge within academic, curatorial, and archival contexts, redefining the scope and methodologies of cultural inquiry. through the ir serial interrelation of images and texts, the manual and the mechanically reproduced, and the autobiographical and the fantastical, comics remain an elusive medium in spite of the ir quotidian ubiquity. while comics share affinities of genre with pop art, diy practices, illuminated manuscripts, serial literature, and filmstrips, they remain graphically unique in literary and visual stylization. in both their industrial norms and depicted content, comics have conventionally reflected and imagined hegemonically heteronormative worlds, particularly through the figure of “the superhero” and its implicit heroization of heterosexuality, male dominance, physical strength, and idealized bodies (superman remains a pr ime example). however, recent comics and their scholarly reception have attenuated this dominant convention, in turn producing and describing the relation between comics and minoritarian historical representation. as literary and comics scholar hillary chute contends, “[c]omics—as a form that relies on space to represent time—becomes structurally equipped to challenge dominant modes of storytelling and history writing.”3 the contestation of dominant historical narration 1 superqueeroes defines “queer comics” as “comics that include lgbti characters and tell lgbti s tories.” this definition elides “queer” and “lgbt i” and uses “queer” as an umbrella s ignifier for “lgbti.” this prefigures my forthcoming comments on the terminological and hi s torical tension between specifically gay politic s and queer as a politic s, evident in the exhibition’s section on mains tream comics. for the purposes of my review, i will continue to use the term “queer comics.” see http://www.schwulesmuseum.de/en/exhibit ions/view/superqueeroes-our-lgbti-comic-book-heroes-andheroines/ 2 while the geographic scope of superqueeroes is europe and the united states, the exhibition includes a sec tion on the important work of gengoroh tagame, a leading japanese artist whose work features gay charac ters and homoerotic, and often violent, graphic narratives in the manga comics tradition. 3 hillary c hute, “c omics as literature? reading graphic narrative,” pmla 123, no. 2 (march 2008): 456. superqueeroes our lgbti* comic book heroes and heroines schwules museum*, january 22-june 26, 2016 carlos kong http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 1 3 1 c a r l o s k o n g c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.177 within the discursive and representational space of comics is most compellingly rehearsed in the exhibition’s transposition of superheroes into the eponymous superqueeroes , positing the figures in comics as sites of heroic queer reimagining and the medium of comics as its privileged form. figure 1 ins tallation view, entrance (from right), superqueeroes – our lgbti* comic book heroes and heroines , schwules museum*, berlin, curated by m ichael bregel, kevin clarke, natasha gross, hannes hacke, justin hall, markus p falzgraf, mario russo. p hotograph courtesy robert m berlin/schwules* museum. in opening wall texts, the curators set the historical parameters of superqueeroes as the late 1960s through the present, encapsulating a period beginning with the stonewall riots of 1969 through the consequent and varied formations of sexual politics in recent history. as the apotheosis of the gay liberation struggles of the 1960s, stonewall symbolically ushered in a new era marked by the personalization of politics, specifica lly the public urgencies of gay and lesbian visibility, gender and sexual self-identification, and communal solidarity. despite the american (us) focus of this narrative, the historical framework of the late 1960s through the present productively structures superqueeroes without feeling reductive or prescriptive, since the exhibition is grouped around various themes—independent queer comics from the united states, independent queer comics from europe, mainstream comics, everyday heroes, the comics author as hero, queer approaches to comics genres (cowboys, cops, adventurers), comics and aids, and the censorship of comics.4 4 superqueeroes also inc ludes a small section on tom of finland (touko laaksonen), whose preand pos t-stonewall homoerotic drawings influenced the exhibition’s post-stonewall comics artists. for an important s tudy on gay graphic arts before stonewall, see thomas waugh, out/lines: underground gay graphics from before stonewall (v ancouver: a rsenal p ulp press, 2002). http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 1 3 2 s u p e r q u eer o es – o u r lg b t i * c o m i c b o o k he r o e s a n d he r o i n es c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.177 the post-stonewall time frame is signified by the exhibition’s displays of the proliferating queer comics culture in the united states, wherein the work of many nowrenowned independent practitioners beginning their careers in the 1970-80s—like mary wings, alison bechdel, jennifer camper, and roberta gregory—was streamlined and published under howard cruse’s gay comix series (1980-1998). in contrast to this linear development in american queer comics history, the european comics presented prov ide an instructive counterpoint to the exhibition’s chronology. created under varying cultural and geopolitical circumstances, the work of the european artists featured, such as ralf könig (germany), nazario (spain), luca enoch (italy), helena janecic (croatia), and beata “beatrix” cymerman (poland), evinces a multitude of queer experience against a s ingular historical narrative. their works emerged autonomously and precariously in loca lly specif ic contexts, often with neither formal networks of queer exchange nor social landscapes of queer acceptance. both american and european independent queer comics challenge dominant histor ies by bearing witness to an astonishing plurality of queer experience—the curators’ most captivating statement. from the quotidian to the spectacular, the asexual to the pornographic, the disabled to the fat to the dressed in drag, the exhibition testifies a politics rooted in a heterogeneity of sexual intersections and erotic encounters that queer comics artists actively reimagine in graphic narrative form. rupert kinnard’s b.b. and the diva (1979) depicts the first gay and lesbian-identified african-american protagonists in comics, while justin hall’s glamazonia (2010) portrays the adventures of the eponymous “uncanny super-tranny.” gaye mae kincaid’s sapphowoman and the greater belfast dykes (1980) references literary history by reinventing sappho, the ancient greek homoerotic poet, as a lesbian superhero of northern ireland. a central section on the aids crisis further articulates the didacticism of independent comics as instruments of safe sex education and stigma fighting.5 these depictions of sexual plurality within the representational and social spaces of independent comics materialize many political worlds of queer life, pleasure, and activism, which superqueeroes convincingly advocates against cultural norms of invisibility and erasure. a section on mainstream comics proves to be less successful (fig. 2). the introductory wall text argues that social progress is evincible through the increased visibility of nonnormative sexualities in mainstream comics. various depictions of lgbti characters and narratives in mainstream comics are presented, yet the central display of the x -men comic books featuring the superhero northstar exemplifies the section’s broader oversights. in 1992, marvel expanded the scope of sexual representation in mainstream comics when writers determined that northstar would come out as gay. twenty years later following the legalization of same-sex marriage in new york, marvel depicted “the first gay wedding” in comics when northstar married his long-term partner kyle.6 superqueeroes celebrates northstar’s narrative as a prime example of cultural acceptance and social change on behalf of marvel comics and its audience. 5 for more information on sex educational comics and censorship during the a i ds c r i s is , s e e d oug la s c rimp, “how to have p romiscuity in an epidemic,” in “a ids: c ultural analy s is /c u lt u r a l a c ti v ism,” e d . douglas crimp, special issue, october 43 (winter 1987): 237-271. 6 for details see matthew p erpetua, “marvel c omics hosts first gay wedding in 'astonishing x -men',” rolling stone, may 22, 2012, http://www.rollings tone.com/culture/news/marvel-comics-hosts-first-gaywedding-in-astonishing-x-men-20120522. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 1 3 3 c a r l o s k o n g c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.177 figure 2 ins tallation view, “mains tream” section, superqueeroes – our lgbti* comic book heroes and heroines , schwules museum*, berlin, curated by m ichael bregel, kevin clarke, natasha gross, hannes hacke, justin hall, markus p falzgraf, mario russo. p hotograph courtesy robert m berlin/schwules* museum. northstar’s story, among others, reflects the departure of mainstream comics from their heteronormative industrial moorings, as well as productively expands the sphere of representations rendered legitimate, both within and beyond comics. nevertheless, one must question whether narratives like northstar’s simply react to a dominant teleology of mainstream gay politics, rather than actively envisioning a politics rooted in the heterogeneity of queer experience.7 while the independent comics presented testify a diversity of desires through affective and imaginative representations derived from lived realities, the mainstream comics section compounds the pragmatic reduction of queer politics into gay visibility.8 this instance counterproductively risks advocating a “homonormative time line,” where linear gay expectations either hegemonically s ingular ize queer lives or further pathologize ones that fail to conform.9 moreover, the challenges raised by the 7 the exhibition does not consider the economic dimension of comic books as commodities, though the inc lus ion of lgbti characters in mains tream comics nonetheless suggests the opening of the comics indus try to new consumer demographics. 8 for a compelling c ritique of the “gay pragmatism” of the marriage agenda as well as an articulation of a utopian hermeneutics of queer representation, see josé esteban muñoz, cruis ing utopia: the then and there of queer futurity (new york: nyu press, 2009), 19 -32. 9 see nguyen tan hoang’s response in c arolyn dinshaw et al, “theorizing q ueer temporalities : a roundtable discussion,” glq: a journal of gay and lesbian studies 13 , no. 2 -3 (2007): 182-185. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 1 3 4 s u p e r q u eer o es – o u r lg b t i * c o m i c b o o k he r o e s a n d he r o i n es c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.177 normatively “progressive” narratives of mainstream comics reflect the exhibition’s broader elision of “queer comics” with “lgbti stories,” whereby queer is conflated with the individual (and unequally distributed) politics of sexuality and gender assumed under “lgbti.” thus in contradistinction to a mainstream gay politics of acceptance and assimilation, which too often stands in for “lgbti,” “queer” antagonistically emerged as a sexual politics of world-building against normativity—both projects being necessary, historically contingent, and irreducible. nonetheless what superqueeroes makes clear, and fails to question, is that mainstream comics follow from mainstream gay politics. beyond the productive questions of sexual representation that surface throughout superqueeroes, one technical limitation of the exhibition lies in the challenges of curating in accordance to the multifaceted medium-specificities of comics. affixed to the gallery walls painted with black frames and yellow backgrounds to imitate a comic strip’s graphic structure, most comic books were represented solely by their covers or were opened to a singular narrative moment, reducing longer stories to their most str iking images (f ig. 2). while comics are at once verbal and visual, they are fundamentally a tactile medium to be flipped through and read closely. moreover, the affective and identificatory power of comics lie in their narrative temporality as well as in the intimate and embodied re lation of comic book to the reader. by excluding the possibility of holding and reading the comics on display, superqueeroes unintentionally undermined both the narrative and tactile dimension of comics as a book form. instead, the exhibition privileged optical exper ience, images over text, and a selective narrative interpretation, and further necessitated a strong re liance on explanatory wall texts for curatorial cohesion. this could have been easily rectif ied with a small sample of comics available to be actually read, underscoring their circulatory potential as a mechanically reproduced medium designed for reading, sharing, and the building of community and solidarity. the final section on censorship deftly frames the rhetoric of heroization that runs throughout superqueeroes. on display is frederic wertham’s 1954 study seduction of the innocent, where the german-american psychiatrist maintained that comics lead to juvenile delinquency and homosexuality. from his earlier writings through seduction of the innocent, wertham’s work both reflected and contributed to the postwar milieu of public paranoia and fear of external contamination. its exposition and critique of the supposed negative effects of reading comics proffered a stricter revision of the comics code—the industry’s standards implemented by comic book publishers—in addition to further establishing a norm of se lfcensorship among comics artists.10 through an archival mapping of documentary photographs and newspaper articles, superqueeroes visualizes the widespread institutionally organized burnings of comics throughout the united states and europe following wertham’s publication and the tightening of the comics code. the censorship, sexual pathologization, and mass burning of comics that superqueeroes presents, as well as the exhibition’s contextual interpolation into the cultural fabric of berlin, draw an implicit and unsettling twofold parallel to specters of german history—the persecution of homosexuals in nazi germany and the nation-wide book burnings of 1933. while implicating an open and reflective relation to national history, superqueeroes reorients and compounds the courage of recreating queer life in comics—the medium that, as hillary chute argues, makes “vis ible the site of one’s inscriptional effacement.”11 against the inscriptional effacements of censorship, persecution 10 for a detailed his tory of the c omics book c ode, see amy kiste nyberg, seal of approval: the his tory of the comics code (jackson: university of m ississippi press, 1998). 11 hillary c hute, “the texture of retracing in marjane satrapi’s ‘p ersepolis’,” women’s studi es quart er l y 36 , no. 1/2 (spring-summer 2008): 106. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 1 3 5 c a r l o s k o n g c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.177 histories, and heteronormative cultural narratives, superqueeroes illustrates the exhilarating plurality of queer comics and the durability of the lives that they heroically testify. new articles in this journal are licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 united states license. this journal is operated by the university library system of the university of p ittsburgh as part of its d-scribe digital p ublishing p rogram, and is co-sponsored by the university of p ittsburgh press. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/ http://www.pitt.edu/ http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/ http://www.upress.pitt.edu/upressindex.aspx http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ microsoft word decoding double desire 7-27.docx vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.158 http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu decoding double desire a conversation with ian mclean marina tyquiengco abstract ian mclean, editor of double desire: transculturation and indigenous contemporary art, discusses his book with marina tyquiengco. about the author ian mclean is currently the senior research professor of contemporary art the university of wollongong in wollongong, australia and adjunct professor at the university of western australia. he has published extensively on the subject of australian aboriginal art with a particular emphasis on contemporary art. his books include, white aborigines: identity politics in australian art, how aborigines invented the idea of contemporary art, and the art of gordon bennett, with a chapter contributed by the artist. marina tyquiengco is currently a ph.d. student at the university of pittsburgh. her research explores the reuse of ethnographic photography by aboriginal artists. prior to beginning her ph.d. in 2014, she served as collections assistant at the kluge-ruhe aboriginal art museum, the only museum in the united states focused solely on aboriginal art. contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.158 double desire: transculturation and indigenous contemporary art explores the emerging field of indigenous contemporary art through the process of transculturation. transculturation is the complex process by which traditions are appropriated, shared, or negotiated between indigenous and non-indigenous cultures. this book is the result of the continuing research and conversation between art historians following the 2013 college art association conference session, “engagements between indigenous and contemporary art.”1 the title “double desire” is shared by an article by mclean concerning the dichotomies in aboriginal contemporary art.2 the “double desire” mclean refers to is the often contrary desires of indigenous and non-indigenous peoples, which have not been dissipated by repeated iterations or contemporary times. mclean references the “doubling and re-doubling of desire” that results from the strong legacies of colonial and indigenous cultures.3 the fourteen contributors to the volume are experts in the fields of anthropology or art history, as the study of indigenous art involves constant interactions between these two distinct fields. rather than present any overarching narrative of transculturation or the indigenous contemporary, the essays provide specific glimpses, narratives that work with ian mclean’s introduction to highlight important issues and questions in the field. the book is separated into four parts, “rules of the game,” “relational agencies,” “contact histories,” and “artworld.” the “relational agencies” section is comprised of essays on collaboration, with particular emphasis on individuals’ roles in collaborative projects. the “contact histories” section focuses on specific artists and movements, the descriptor of these histories suggesting clashing or confrontational (rather than collaborative) interactions. the final section, “artworld” concerns reception, politics, and criticism of art, as well as the institutions of the artworld. ian mclean’s “part 1: the rules of the game” highlights the major issues involved with the study of contemporary indigenous art. this section has two chapters: “names,” and “theories.” “names” considers the history of the term “indigenous” as well as related terms such as indigenism and modernism and how they apply specifically to contemporary art. “theories” questions their usage and what if any role existing art theory can hold in their consideration. the interview questions concern mostly this section, which serves to outline and problematize rather than simply define indigenous contemporary art. the following interview provides some insight into ian mclean’s double desire: transculturation and contemporary art. marina tyquiengco: the contributions in this book focus on indigenous art from many different countries and peoples, which seems to support a broad or inclusive definition of the term. david garneau’s “indigenous art: from appreciation to art criticism” provides a more 1 ian mclean, “introduction,” double desire: transculturation and indigenous contemporary art (newcaste upon tyne: cambridge scholars publishing), 1. 2 ian mclean, “double desire: becoming aboriginal,” broadsheet 42 (2014): 65-71. 3 mclean, “double desire,” 66. decoding double desire a conversation with ian mclean marina tyquiengco 2 1 0 d e c o d i n g d o u b l e d e s i r e contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.158 limited definition, an actual short-list of artists and curators engaged with a very specific set of concerns. is all art created today by indigenous artists contemporary indigenous art? ian mclean: the short answer is no. when some critics and curators define all art created today by indigenous artists as contemporary art they are not just being lazy conceptually, they also miss the opportunity to engage with the artworld discourse of contemporary art found in museums of contemporary art and biennales, which does not define contemporary art as simply all art produced today. in this discourse “contemporary” is a critical term, just as “modernism” is. to make this point i tend to use the term “indigenous contemporary art” (i.e. indigenous art that aims to be part of this discourse of contemporary art), rather than the more usual expression “contemporary indigenous art.” the focus of this book is not indigenous art but contemporary art that happens to be made by indigenous artists. also, all the essays in the book, and not just david’s, focus on a limited number of players. the book is not a comprehensive account of indigenous contemporary art. mt: your definition mentions art “from ceremonial, to folk, tourist and high art”4 as types of indigenous art, but many of the examples would perhaps fit the category of high art, art exhibited in museums, private collections or performances at international festivals. why are there not parameters placed on indigenous contemporary art that are placed on other contemporary art genres? or are the parameters simply not visible? im: like western and indeed all types of art, there are indigenous artists making art across the whole range of genres and for many different markets. it is a good time to be an indigenous artist in australia because the idea of indigenous being contemporary art is relatively new. for this reason, the definition of what comprises indigenous contemporary art is still wide open, especially since curators of indigenous art (who generally are indigenous) tend to define any indigenous art as contemporary. in defense of these curators, the discourse of contemporary art is one that challenges the limited parameters and genres that have generally been inherited from modernism: thus its post-western character. so, biennales like to flout the conventional genres and even chronology. it is not unusual to see art made a long time ago in exhibitions of contemporary art, as in the last documenta. besides, these genres are artificial categories that reflect certain ideological agendas. one of the aims of the book is to interrogate the ideological imperatives of these categories, which are still used to sideline indigenous art from contemporary art discourse. mt: there are several mentions of artists who are indigenous but do not wish for their art to be understood that way, tracey moffatt for example. there is also a quote from lowitja o’donoghue wishing to be called aboriginal not indigenous. does this term only serve when speaking broadly about arts, as an overarching category, or could there perhaps be a time when it overtook local general terms such as aboriginal or native american? and people could be referred to by this international indigenous or the local potawatomi etc.? im: lowitja o’donoghue lived most of her life being called an aboriginal, so it came as a shock to learn she was now indigenous. but as you suggest many indigenous people prefer indigenous tribal names. even though these are often also modern conventions, they have the advantage of seemingly refusing to acknowledge the sovereignty of the nation state. as i outline in the introduction to the book, the term “indigenous” emerged as part of un discourse and was largely driven by indigenous activists responding to globalization—the same globalization that characterizes contemporary art discourse. thus it is the most appropriate general term to use in connection to contemporary art made by aboriginal, 4 ian mclean, “introduction,” 7. 2 1 1 m a r i n a t y q u i e n g c o contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.158 native american or potawatomi artists. tracey moffatt is ahead of the pack in that she realized a long time ago that these categories are used to keep certain artists out of the discourse of contemporary art. tracey doesn’t deny her indigenous heritage. she claims, like other artists such as gordon bennett, that she makes contemporary not indigenous art. this is similar to jackson pollock saying he is a modern not american artist. tracey’s position might be savvy, but in my opinion it tends to close down the discussion that needs to occur to break the ghettoization of indigenous art, which still renders it invisible in the powerhouses of contemporary art in the usa and europe. so in a sense tracey is protecting her international profile. i found that gordon bennett was to some extent willing to have his art included in the indigenous category if it was in the context of opening up the discussion, but not so tracey. she maintains a very hard line. tracey is very approachable and friendly, but she won’t even discuss this issue with me. mt: an earlier writing of yours “aboriginal modernism in central australia,” posits that the concept of modernism is a useful framework to consider aboriginal art. in double desire, indigenous modernism is contrasted with western indigenism. is this indigenous modernism one particular type of indigenous contemporary art? im: the main reason modernism is a useful concept with which to think about aboriginal art is that it has so long been used to exclude it. thus, it is useful as a deconstructive term in both the discourses of aboriginal and modernist art, as each was defined against the other. however, it is most useful in respect to aboriginal art made before 1970—just as the concept of modernism is most useful in respect to western art before this period. more recent aboriginal art is, i think, better understood in terms of contemporary art rather than modernism, as terry smith has done in his book on contemporary art, though i admit the relationships between contemporary art, modernism and modernity are far from settled. mt: western indigenism as a category is interesting, considering that many elements of modern art were borrowed or appropriated from then so-called primitive arts. how is western indigenism different? how does a style of art become ‘indigenous’ without appropriation? im: the main reason i adopted the notion of western indigenism as a mirror image of indigenous modernism is because it illuminates the ideological issues at stake in what okwui enwezor has called westernism. since the first contact between indigenous and western societies, indigenous artists have been as interested in western art as western artists have been in indigenous art. perhaps their interest was framed differently, but this interest, as evident in the modern as contemporary times is the currency of transculturation. how does a style of art become ‘indigenous’ without appropriation? how does any style become what it is without appropriation? appropriation and mimicry are such universal strategies. the problem with the question, like many questions about indigenous art, is that it aims to create a point of distinction between indigenous and other art. my aim as an art historian has been to question and deconstruct these distinctions, as their purpose is invariably to other indigenous artists. 2 1 2 d e c o d i n g d o u b l e d e s i r e contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.158 new articles in this journal are licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 united states license. this journal is operated by the university library system of the university of pittsburgh as part of its d-scribe digital publishing program, and is co-sponsored by the university of pittsburgh press. contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture vol 6, no 1 “boundless” (2017) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2017.227 http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu multiple temporalities, layered histories steven pearson about the artist steven pearson is a painter and professor of studio art in the art and art history department at mcdaniel college in westminster, maryland, where he has been teaching studio art courses since 2004. he also serves as the director of the college’s esther prangley rice gallery, an exhibition space for mcdaniel students and other emerging contemporary artists from the mid-atlantic region and beyond. pearson was born in johnstown, ny. upon graduation from high school, he served honorably in the united states navy. pearson then received his bachelor of science in studio art from the college of saint rose in albany, ny, and his master of fine arts in painting from the leroy e. hoffberger school of painting at the maryland institute college of art in baltimore, md. during his training at both the undergraduate and graduate levels, pearson’s work focused primarily on narrative figuration. after graduation, he painted still lifes, investigating the formal and conceptual nature of everyday objects. by appropriating formal compositional devices explored by modern and contemporary artists—such as kazimir malevich, ad reinhardt, donald judd, and jules olitski—pearson constructed still lifes using commonplace objects, including cardboard boxes and paper lunch bags. while pearson was a resident at the vermont studio center in 2003, his work became increasingly abstract, while remaining committed to exploring the still life genre. during a residency at the ragdale foundation in illinois in 2005, pearson’s work further evolved to become, essentially, nonobjective. throughout the various shifts in pearson’s painting styles, order and structure provide the connecting thread in his development, echoing his early experiences in the navy. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 6, no 1 “boundless” (2017) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2017.227 in quotational practices: repeating the future in contemporary art, patrick greaney asserts, “the past matters not only because of what actually happened but also because of the possibilities that were not realized and that still could be. quotation evokes those possibilities. by repeating the past, artists and writers may be attempting to repeat that past’s unrealized futures.”1 in the information age, the internet, for instance, provides us an expanded collection of visual information—quite literally available at our fingertips—summoning together aspects of the past and possibilities of the future into a boundless present. sketchbook revisions (2014–2015), a series of mixed-media paintings, represents my attempt to communicate the ways in which i experience my contemporary moment constructed from multiple temporalities excavated from my past. this body of work combines fragments of representational paintings created between 1995 and 2003 and nonrepresentational renderings produced between 2003 and 2014. using traditional tracing paper and graphic color, i randomly select moments of my previous work to transfer and layer over selected areas of already-filled pages of a sketchbook i used from 2003 to 2004. these sketches depict objects i encountered in studio art classrooms and iconic architecture on the campus of mcdaniel college, and often incorporate teaching notes. the final renditions of fragmented and layered histories enact the ways that we collectively experience multiple temporalities in the present. quoting my various bodies of work, sketchbook revisions challenges both material and conceptual boundaries that determine fixed notions of artistic identity. figure 1 steven pearson, sketchbook revisions: woodwing and scribble, 2014, graphite and acrylic on rives bfk, 12 x 9 in. 1 patrick greaney, quotational practices: repeating the future in contemporary art (minneapolis, mn: university of minnesota press, 2014), x. multiple temporalities, layered histories steven pearson http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 8 5 s t e v e n p e a r s o n contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 6, no 1 “boundless” (2017) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2017.227 figure 2 steven pearson, sketchbook revisions: plaster model (vertical), 2014, charcoal, graphite, and acrylic on rives bfk, 12 x 9 in. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 8 6 m u l t i p l e t e mp o r a l i t i e s , l a y e r e d h i s t o r i e s contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 6, no 1 “boundless” (2017) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2017.227 figure 3 steven pearson, sketchbook revisions: the arch, 2014, graphite and acrylic on rives bfk, 12 x 9 in. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 8 7 s t e v e n p e a r s o n contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 6, no 1 “boundless” (2017) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2017.227 figure 4 steven pearson, sketchbook revisions: plaster model (vertical), 2014, charcoal, graphite, and acrylic on rives bfk, 12 x 9 in. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 8 8 m u l t i p l e t e mp o r a l i t i e s , l a y e r e d h i s t o r i e s contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 6, no 1 “boundless” (2017) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2017.227 figure 5 steven pearson, sketchbook revisions: space needle, 2014, charcoal, graphite, and acrylic on rives bfk, 12 x 9 in. new articles in this journal are licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 united states license. this journal is operated by the university library system of the university of pittsburgh as part of its d-scribe digital publishing program, and is co-sponsored by the university of pittsburgh press. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/ http://www.pitt.edu/ http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/ http://www.upress.pitt.edu/upressindex.aspx http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture vol 6, no 1 “boundless” (2017) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2017.233 http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu boundless art and identification across borders rae di cicco about the editor-in-chief rae di cicco is a phd candidate in the history of art and architecture department at the university of pittsburgh. she specializes in the modern art, design, and cultural history of central europe, with a focus on issues of identity and politics faced in the region during the transition from imperial to national organization after world war i. she received her ba in art history from the university of washington in 2010, and an ma in history of art and architecture from the university of pittsburgh in 2015. she has been awarded a botstiber fellowship in austrian-american studies, a travel fellowship from the center for italian modern art, a german academic exchange service (daad) grant for intensive german language acquisition at the geothe institute in freiburg, germany, and a k. leroy irvis fellowship for diversity in graduate education at the university of pittsburgh. di cicco’s master’s thesis explores the incorporation of signifiers of national artistic styles into kineticist artist erika giovanna klien’s artistic production as a kind of cosmopolitan imagination, visualizing – literally making visual – hybrid and shifting identity and multiple belonging. her dissertation, titled “the kosmos, the body, and the other: the cosmopolitan imagination of erika giovanna klien,” will trace klien’s career from her beginnings as a member of the vienna-based modernist movement kinetismus to her immigration to the united states and subsequent work with indigenous groups of the american southwest. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 6, no 1 “boundless” (2017) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2017.233 editorial statement cultures have deployed visual means to record, define, interrogate, and delimit individual and collective identities; their historical context; and their presence in time and space. identity must be articulated before it exists, and so art and artists enact, create, resist, and reify individual and collective identities, often challenging both material borders and conceptual boundaries that inexorably seek to determine identity in contrast to the other. interrogating circumscribed concepts of identity in the visual world opens new avenues for understanding social and aesthetic interactions and their relationships to constructed geographical, ideological, and temporal limits. in its sixth volume, titled “boundless: art and identification across borders,” contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture assembles articles, curatorial statements, artist interviews and portfolios, and book and exhibition reviews that cover a wide range of issues with an emphasis on the complexity of art and identification in time and space. in these pages, authors explore how concepts, categories, and limits of identity have been constructed in different historical moments either through the arts or about artists. indeed, as seen in this volume, border crossings often serve as a means of explicating acts of inclusion and exclusion of not just bodies and materials, but also ideologies and cultures. while this volume focuses on concepts of identity and identity-making in the arts, several thematic constellations manifested in the process of collecting the articles: pushing against boundaries within sub-disciplines, collective identities beyond national borders, self-identification as hybrid or migrant, and tensions between individuals and the state. information scientist chelsea gunn and film historian benjamin ogrodnik address how certain roles in artand knowledge-making push at the boundaries of genres conventionally regarded as discrete. in contrast to the oft-perceived divide between the book as tangible object and the seemingly ephemeral digital, gunn lauds the editors of fantasies of the library for exploring how the physical and digital are interconnected through the dynamic work of information professionals. editors anna-sophie springer and etienne turpin encourage readers to experience the book—and libraries—as curatorial, and therefore, socially constructed spaces with new possibilities for organizing, accessing, and disseminating knowledge. like the hybrid roles of reader-viewer and librarian-curator found in fantasies of the library, ogrodnik applauds curator chrissie iles for her conception of the “cyborgian” moving-image artist in his review of the whitney museum of american art’s exhibition dreamlands: immersive cinema and art, 1905–2016. iles’s cyborgian artist bridges the divide between the two dominant modes of critiquing film as either art or entertainment. as artists in dreamlands toggle between diverse forms and formats, ogrodnik argues that such problematic conceptual divisions fail to account for the work on display and thus figures the exhibition as a call for new frameworks through which to understand our “current media ecology” (110). contributions by thorsten wilhelm, madeline eschenburg, daniel pabst, and marina tyquiengco investigate how individuals and groups connect to transnational, transregional, transcultural, even transtemporal collective identities. wilhelm’s article, “historical contemporaneity and contemporaneous historicity: creation of meaning and identity in postwar trauma narratives,” contrasts the ways in which first-, second-, and third-generation holocaust survivors engage with collective trauma to establish links to a common jewish identity. wilhelm ultimately concludes that these incidents of traumatic history, as told by survivors and their descendants, are themselves constitutive of the collective identity. the exhibition review by eschenburg similarly addresses “artists in a time of turbulence and transformation,” as indicated by the subtitle of the exhibition bentu, held at the louis vuitton boundless art and identification across borders rae di cicco http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ i i i r a e d i c i c c o contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 6, no 1 “boundless” (2017) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2017.233 foundation in paris. the exhibition conceptualizes contemporary chinese art in relation to bentu, variously translated as “one’s native land” or “the local,” but not reducible to national or regional identity. as illustrated in eschenburg’s critique, the curators use bentu to more deeply fathom the ways artists have recently addressed china’s uneasy relationship with globalization and its own past. pabst’s photography looks at the legacy of an earlier expression of globalization—or, at least transnationalism—when modern european architectural design aimed to reduce architectural structures to basic geometries meant to be intelligible across cultures. this attempt to produce spaces for cultivating commonality resonates with the aims of the third national indigenous art triennial, reviewed by aboriginal art specialist marina tyquiengco. the exhibition aimed to bring together artists from different indigenous groups, both rural and urban artists, and those working in more traditional forms, such as dot and bark painting, with installation and new media artists. the breadth of the exhibition itself, tyquiengco suggests, achieves curator tina baum’s goal of showing that indigeneity is but one of the identities felt by contemporary aboriginal artists. such multifaceted identities appear in contributions addressing artists’ selfidentification—their own hybridity, migrant or diasporic status, or their own past selves—as well as identities assigned to them. steven pearson’s self-reflexive sketchbook revisions imbricate past and present artistic production as a meditation on the development of the self. his work unites layered histories and future possibilities materially, conjuring up a “boundless present” (84). while migrant artist julia lambright’s works reference traditional russian iconography, she also evokes the present-as-potential with ever-renewing opportunities to reconstruct and redefine her cultural identity. dominican/haitian-american artist firelei báez’s first major solo exhibition in the united states, reviewed by nicole f. scalissi, traces her career through the theme of bloodlines—both the literal genealogy of caribbean-americans and the metaphorical lineages connecting resistance movements of people of color in the americas. scalissi demonstrates how báez’s work explicitly addresses the intersections of race and gender in self-portraits of her changing skin tone over the course of a month and images that mark female bodies as caribbean by filling silhouettes with regional flora. firelei báez’s critiques of colonial relationships in the caribbean, as described by scalissi, resonate with the remaining pieces in “boundless,” which all investigate moments when the individual is at odds with the state. ellen larson reviews the art institute of chicago’s retrospective of zhang peili, widely accepted as the first chinese video artist. larson argues that peili’s slow-paced videos of monotonous tasks critique the role of images in society and subtly condemn government overreach in china. alison langmead and paulina pardo gaviria’s exhibition, data (after)lives, looked at the ways in which humans quantify data about our identities that can then be (mis)used to control human behavior. the exhibition emerged from departmental interest in visual knowledge broadly construed, and specific research into bertillonnage, a system of measuring bodies, and recording and organizing the resulting measurements, developed by alphonse bertillon in the nineteenth century to assist law enforcement and judicial systems in tracking repeat offenders. the exhibition paired bertillon cards containing mugshots and measurements with pardo gaviria’s recreation of brazilian artist letícia parente’s interactive 1976 installation at the museu de arte moderna in rio de janeiro. in her curatorial statement, pardo gaviria discusses parente’s stations in which viewers measured themselves and contributed data to notebook databases as a critique of dictatorial governments’ invasion of privacy as a means to control a population. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ i v b o u nd l e s s contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 6, no 1 “boundless” (2017) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2017.233 figure 1 alphonse bertillon, adnet. clotilde. 19 ans, née en décembre 74 à argentant (orne). brodeuse. anarchiste. fichée le 7/1/94, 1894, albumen silver print from glass negative, 10.5 x 7 x 0.5 cm, gilman collection, metropolitan museum of art, new york (2005.100.375.1). much in the same way, artist kasia ozga uses the material byproduct of border crossings— x-ray images of immigrant’s chests—to evidence the intrusiveness of immigration policies that ask long-term visa applicants to submit an intimate atlas of their inner anatomy or be denied entry. ozga’s essay details her process of cutting away representations evocative of volatile border zones, producing an absence in the body of the immigrant and the material of the artwork. artist juan de dios mora, interviewed for contemporaneity by art historian adriana olivas miramontes also registers dissent regarding immigration through his artwork. the interview addresses mora’s printmaking, its connections to a long history of mexican graphic art, and the migrant experiences of mexican-americans. the focus of this thematic volume of contemporaneity was born of my research interests in multiple, shifting, and hybrid identities in interwar central europe, my personal experiences of hybridity as a caucasian-cherokee woman, as well as the current political moment. when drafting the call for papers for volume six in 2016, the struggle over the dakota access pipeline on lakota lands laid bare the permeability of territorial borders of indigenous sovereign nations to corporate and federal forces. issues of representation, identity, and borders thus seemed pressing. i could not have imagined how relevant these issues would become by the time of publication, however. since commissioning an artist’s interview addressing mexican, central, and south american immigration to the united states, immigrants have faced increased immigration and customs enforcement raids, discussions of disbanding deferred action for childhood arrivals, and the increasing realization of a proposed border wall with mexico. since accepting an article examining holocaust narratives, “nazism” has become a term we use to discuss current political agents, not solely those of the past. while one of my associate editors dealt with the possibilities of a travel ban against citizens of her home country of iran, she assisted on editing of ozga’s work on invasive immigration policies. as advocates of the http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ v r a e d i c i c c o contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 6, no 1 “boundless” (2017) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2017.233 removal of confederate monuments called attention to issues of racism and representation in public sculpture across the united states, pittsburgh too held a public hearing on the stephen foster memorial statue (figure 2)—after years of appeals to have the statue moved by community groups and activists, such as the late florence bridges. located just off campus from contemporaneity’s home institution, the university of pittsburgh, the statue features a stereotypical representation of a barefoot black man strumming a banjo at the feet of the benevolent composer. these and other recent political debates concerning issues of race, class, gender, sexuality, disability, and other forms of identity have been felt on a local level at contemporaneity’s headquarters. as evidenced by the abundance of articles, reviews, and artist portfolios that address such political divides between governments and citizens, the importance of visual culture in these political discussions cannot be understated. figure 2 guiseppe moretti, stephen foster, 1900, bronze, 10 ft high, originally highland park, now: schenley plaza, oakland, pittsburgh, pennsylvania. photo by rae di cicco. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ v i b o u nd l e s s contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 6, no 1 “boundless” (2017) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2017.233 in these divisive times, there is a growing sense among many scholars that the scholarly work of art history can and ought to be socially engaged. the expanding domain of digital publishing promises to facilitate this cultural shift in the discipline. digital publishing has been a democratizing force in the exchange of information and ideas, radically transforming authorship and readership in the twenty-first century. as information circulates and is seen by more and ever-changing populations, the call for socially engaged art and art history has never been greater. scholars and artists have seized this opportunity in myriad ways, often subverting the traditional, hierarchical structures that have driven academe and the art market for the past two centuries. for these reasons, the editorial board recognized the need to address what role online, open-access publications, such as ours, have in publishing and otherwise supporting socially critical art and art history. we, therefore, organized a roundtable on the topic to take place at the 106th annual conference of the college art association in 2018. this panel will convene scholars, artists, and editors who actively pursue digital publishing as a means of scholarly, artistic, or pedagogical dissent: gelare khoshgozaran, an independent artist who disseminates socially critical performance and video art via digital means; paul schmelzer of the walker art center, an institution that uses its online presence to engage new audiences and re-envision the museum-going experience; pedagogical innovators renee mcgarry of art history teaching resources and michelle millar fisher of art history pedagogy and practice, who have made didactic materials and criticism available online; and allison mccann and nicole f. scalissi, former editors-in-chief of contemporaneity who will discuss our scholarly publishing strategies and flexible digital platform as a space for emerging and established voices that further our critical reassessment of the field of visual and material culture. we hope our readers will join us at caa 2018 to continue the conversation about digital publishing, dissent, and socially engaged art history began by the editorial board of volume six of contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture. the support and collaboration of many individuals made it possible for contemporaneity to participate in the increasingly urgent academic conversation about identity. my sincerest gratitude goes to the previous editors-in-chief, nicole f. scalissi, annika johnson, and meredith north, for their guidance and hard work to professionalize and sustain the journal, to copyeditors and proofreaders annalisa zox-weaver and daniel giraldo, for their keen and critical eyes, and to the editorial and advisory boards for their unending support and intellectual contributions to this volume: reviews editors sarah reiff conell and emily mazzola; associate editors lily brewer, clarisse fava-piz, jacqueline m. lombard, alan london, allison mccann, elizabeth morrissey, paulina pardo gaviria, golnar touski, marina tyquiengco, and carolyn wargula; faculty sponsor, christopher j. nygren; and advisory board members terry smith, josh ellenbogen, jennifer josten, shirin fozi, alex j. taylor, kathryn joranson, and barbara mccloskey. without the volunteer labor of such dedicated academics, contemporaneity would not have been able to share the important work of the authors and artists published herein. we hope the content of this volume contributes to not only the academic discourse surrounding identity and borders but also to broader social, political, and artistic conversations about these issues. new articles in this journal are licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 united states license. this journal is operated by the university library system of the university of pittsburgh as part of its d-scribe digital publishing program, and is co-sponsored by the university of pittsburgh press. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/ http://www.pitt.edu/ http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/ http://www.upress.pitt.edu/upressindex.aspx http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ microsoft word 164-167 open ground forward 7-27.docx vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.153 http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu foreword �� � � � gao minglu ��� abstract an introduction to the open ground blog interviews included in this issue of contemporaneity. about the author gao minglu is a critic, curator, and research professor of contemporary chinese art in the department of the history of art and architecture at the university of pittsburgh. contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.153 madeline eschenburg and ellen larson have been involved in many events taking place in beijing since the summer of 2014. the four papers included in this issue of contemporaneity are selected from madeline and ellen’s blog. i am very glad to read their essays and interviews, which provide various perspectives of chinese contemporary art. the figures discussed in the papers represent four groups of people from different generations in the chinese contemporary art world. the no name group began their art activities in the 1970s, xu bing was from the 1980s avant-garde movement, xing danwen from 1990s video and photography, and finally, hua er, lihui dong, antonie angerer and emma karasz are from different professional backgrounds but all working in art institutions as curators, gallery owners, etc. in the chinese contemporary world of the twenty-first century. 2014 .'*�;y� ok<wmadeline eschenburgx # wellen larsonx%�� ��2(1� , antonie angerer # emma karasz the four papers, it seems to me, cover three major issues. the first is about the individualism that very much concerned the first generation of contemporary chinese artists, such as the stars and the no name groups from the 1970s, during and after the cultural revolution. their individualism, however, should not be viewed as the same thing that people from euro-america are familiar with. rather, this chinese individualism, appearing in the late 1970s as well as in the 1980s, was very much a relevant term associated with humanism, liquidating class struggle, and searching for a kind of universalism in the particular social context at the time. therefore, early chinese individualism seems inseparable from a certain collectivism popular at the time. “�� ”d , “�� ”dr@�=k$,d�� 1 ��s ”:�, � ��0� the second issue is chinese feminist art. is there chinese feminist art, which either consists of a variety of female individuals or is defined as a movement and group? one may argue that the name “women’s art” perhaps is more suitable than feminist art, since there has never been a feminist movement in either a political or artistic sense in the context of contemporary china. although the early 1990s saw a peak of active chinese women’s art when western feminist theory, along with postmodernism, encountered chinese experimental art, especially in apartment art. but how to put chinese women’s art into a broader, not only domestic, but also global context to examine its nature is a complicated topic. g�� u�y� 7 y $�/:a:)3 “) ”�9�)3 e>d�)3 ”q & foreword �� gao minglu ��� 1 6 6 f o r e w o r d � p contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.153 the third issue is the relationship between art and society. xu bing discussed the relationship within the context of his career over the last three decades. what is the relationship represented in an artist’s work? it is a good understanding of a period? as xu said, “an artist must not separate himself from the period.” but what does the “period” mean? it is a historical term or metaphysical concept, such as historical spirit. to my understanding, however, “period” here is not just a time period, but a complex system of energy produced by different social forces from the same time. the unification as well as conflict of this energy can make the society change and develop. the duty of an excellent artist is to discover and represent this social energy. g�� “ ”�cmy “ ”8��z+8�� nt� �jy d of course, all of these issues may be associated with the notion of contemporaneity in art. the contemporaneity, however, always responds to a particular period and specific cultural area: individualism in the 1970s, feminist art that started in early 1990s, and the relationship between art and society, which has confused generations of chinese artists who have continually pursued a better understanding and judgment of what contemporaneity is for their particular historical moment. since in china there has never been a linear historical progression from modern art to postmodern art to contemporary art, contemporaneity perhaps can be interpreted as a feature of the period. although its meaning changes over time, it has created a consciousness of being permanently modern, permanently contemporary, or, simply a permanent novelty (sometimes, old as new) in the creation of art since the early twentieth century in china. 1cy6: $��.�d� “�� ”� �.��;d“)3 ”# “ ”� jh —" —1�3w51� 6�y“1�3” 5 5l y-iy �f?4d � 1 6 7 g a o m i n g l u v ! b contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.153 new articles in this journal are licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 united states license. this journal is operated by the university library system of the university of pittsburgh as part of its d-scribe digital publishing program, and is co-sponsored by the university of pittsburgh press. contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture vol 6, no 1 “boundless” (2017) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2017.228 http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu bentu – chinese artists in a time of turbulence and transformation suzanne pagé, laurence bossé, philip tinari, and claire staebler, eds. madeline eschenburg book review pagé, suzanne, laurence bossé, philip tinari, and claire staebler, eds. bentu chinese artists in a time of turbulence and transformation: cao fei, hao liang, hu xiangqian, liu chuang, liu shiyuan, liu wei, liu xiaodong, qiu zhijie, tao hui, xu qu, xu zhen, yang fudong, exh. cat. paris: fondation louis vuitton, 2016. texts by suzanne pagé, laurence bossé, philip tinari, pierre haski, lu minjun, nikita yingqian cai, sun dongdong, claire staebler, venus lau, sasha zhao, robin peckham, jerome sans, liu tian, yang zi, zhang xiyuan, philip tinari, and aimee lin. 179 pp., 83 color ills., paperback €35 (978 0 300 22238 8) about the author madeline eschenburg is a phd candidate in the history of art and architecture department at the university of pittsburgh. she researches chinese contemporary art with a special focus on artistic engagement with marginalized communities since the 1990s. she splits her time between writing in pittsburgh, pa, and researching in beijing, china. she has published articles in yishu: journal of contemporary chinese art and contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 6, no 1 “boundless” (2017) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2017.228 the exhibition catalog bentu: chinese artists in a time of turbulence and transformation was published in conjunction with the exhibition of the same name held from january 2 to may 2, 2016. it took place at the louis vuitton foundation in paris and was co-organized by the ullens center for contemporary art in beijing. the curators were philip tinari, director of the ullens center, and laurence bossé, curator of the louis vuitton foundation. this exhibition and catalog are organized around the central theme of bentu, a common term in postcolonial chinese studies, literally translated as “one’s native country,” or “the local.” it is often characterized as a rediscovery of the roots of chinese culture after a period of colonization and globalization. providing a conceptual entry into the catalog and exhibition, suzanne pagé, artistic director of the foundation, writes: “bentu: native soil. in chinese art, this term does not connote nationalism. rather, it represents a dialectical concept that aims to reconcile the ‘local’ and the ‘global’ in a universalist and critical rediscovery of identity” (10). the curators chose multiple generations, media, and styles that reflect the variety of ways chinese artists have utilized bentu as a strategy for understanding their identities in a globalized world. the chosen works can generally be divided into one of three themes: urbanization, environmental degradation, and, more broadly, global flows of information and capital. in a country at once developed and developing, socialist and capitalist, its people acutely experience the effects of such trends daily. for example, liu chuang’s work no. 1 of blossom bud restrainer (2015) is a semidocumentary video about the enormous number of catkins released by poplars that line the streets of beijing, creating serious respiratory problems for city dwellers. first planted as part of a city beautifying project in the 1960s, during the cultural revolution, the government recently created a contraceptive for the female trees, meant to alleviate the situation. liu’s video, a montage of clips from the internet and official governmental propaganda invites reflection on the origins of environmental pollution, which, in this case, is both man-made and natural, and a direct result of poor urban planning. it should be noted that while this work is described in detail in the included essays, the catalog only contains two stills (each filling an entire page), which do little to convey the content of the work and may lead readers to overlook its importance. xu zhen’s featured work, eternity-the soldier of marathon announcing victory, dying gaul (2014), builds on his previous projects that juxtapose ancient chinese buddhist sculptures with western classical sculptures, one balancing upside-down atop the other, both headless. for this marble sculptural series, xu followed a similar schema, but this time combined a replica of jean-pierre cortot’s 1834 the soldier of marathon announcing victory, who seems to be catapulting himself, using his left hand, off the head of a replica of the first-century roman dying gaul. the installation includes five repetitions of the same sculpture, all displayed on monumental marble bases. although chinese imagery does not have an explicit visual presence here, the seriality recalls china’s reputation as an imitator of western artistic trends as well as the numerous factories producing copies of famous masterpieces throughout the country. xu’s clever approach calls into question the western modernist value of creative originality. in resisting the simplistic dialectics of east/west or tradition/modernity that have tended to frame exhibitions of chinese contemporary art abroad since the turn of the century, the chosen works add a nuanced brevity to the concept of bentu. the essays included in the catalog provide a thorough background for understanding the complex issues addressed in these works, including foundational knowledge of the economic, political, and art history of china since its opening up to global markets at the end of the bentu – chinese artists in a time of turbulence and transformation suzanne pagé, laurence bossé, philip tinari, and claire staebler, eds. madeline eschenburg http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 9 5 m ad e l i n e e s c he nb u r g contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 6, no 1 “boundless” (2017) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2017.228 1970s. in her preface, suzanne pagé provides a general definition of bentu and an overview of each artist’s work, drawing attention to the global mobility of chinese artists today (as opposed to ten or fifteen years ago) and the ease with which the included artists “move through ‘turbulence and transformation’” (11). laurence bossé provides a short introduction to the history of the internationalization of chinese contemporary art, historicizing the current situation as a time when artists have begun “unearthing and revisiting the indigenous knowledge, philosophies, customs, techniques and skills that they are now combining into a revivified cultural corpus” (21). philip tinari also summarizes each work in the exhibition, pointing out their unique approaches rather than mapping out a simplistic over-arching theme. pierre haski outlines the history of economic development in china since the 1980s and its effect on younger generations of chinese citizens. elucidating the tendency of the chinese to deny tradition in the earlier years of modernization, he argues that artists, writers, filmmakers, and designers are at the interpretive forefront at a time when development has slowed and multiple meaning-making systems still co-exist within one country (34). lastly, lu mingjun analyzes these works using the yardstick of “made in chinaglobalization,” representing a praxis in which china remains in an alienated relationship to globalization. he argues that, while the work of older artists continues to self-consciously address this power dynamic, younger artists with more global experiences have been freed from its influence. he further claims that internet art (a medium common to young chinese artists), in which forms of production and consumption have undergone a radical shift, can be seen as a “de-bentuisation” (42). here, the assumption is that the strategy of bentu is only viable in parts of the world that are disenfranchised by global capitalism. in her introduction, lauren bossé recalls the words of gao shimin, a chinese critic and researcher who is the most active theorizer of bentu in contemporary art. she quotes gao’s statement that the notion of cultural origin inherent in the concept of bentu is “an attempt to re-envision contemporary chinese art not as an expression of essential national-cultural identity but instead as the outcome of a process of historical return and re-discovery involving cultural dissolution and reconstruction” (21).1 what she does not mention is that gao shimin has argued extensively about the double-edged nature of bentu. while it can be viewed as a strategy for globe-trotting chinese artists to explore their identities, gao argues, bentu has been used as a tool by the chinese government and commercial enterprises to promote the neoliberal market economy and a shallow multiculturalism. he has called for a re-envisioning of bentu that would allow chinese artists to define themselves on their own terms rather than within the ideological praxis of post-colonialism, which he argues is an imperialistic discourse forced onto non-western countries. by glossing over this darker side of bentu, the authors in the catalog missed an opportunity to more deeply engage with the works, many of which capture the contradictions that make this concept so compelling in our present global context. still, the catalog’s many high-quality color photographs are rich resources that themselves speak of the malleability, complexity, and depth of this concept. the choice of bentu as a theme is incredibly timely and appropriate in a world that is being drawn together by technological developments even as ideological polarities are tearing it apart. the curators’ choice of artworks does justice to the chosen theme, none of which shy from the intricacies of global access to information and capital, cause and effect of environmental degradation, or the impact of rapid urbanization on both rural and urban inhabitants. this commitment is especially evident in liu chuang’s video work, which focuses 1 page 21, quoting paul gladston, “somewhere (and nowhere) between modernity and tradition: towards a critique of international and indigenous perspectives on the significance of contemporary chinese art,” tate papers issue 21. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 9 6 b e n t u – c h i n e s e a r t i s t s i n a t i me o f t u r b u l e n c e a nd t r an s f o r ma t i o n contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 6, no 1 “boundless” (2017) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2017.228 on a very local and current problem, but inspires contemplation of a wide range of globally relevant issues and their historical roots. well-organized, visually pleasing, and informative, this catalog is an important resource for anyone wishing to gain a deep understanding of a specifically chinese response to issues stemming from globalization. new articles in this journal are licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 united states license. this journal is operated by the university library system of the university of pittsburgh as part of its d-scribe digital publishing program, and is co-sponsored by the university of pittsburgh press. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/ http://www.pitt.edu/ http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/ http://www.upress.pitt.edu/upressindex.aspx http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture vol 6, no 1 “boundless” (2017) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2017.220 http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu data (after)lives at the university of pittsburgh a constellations exhibition in the university art gallery alison langmead and paulina pardo gaviria abstract this brief essay presents the exhibition data (after)lives, which was held in the university art gallery at the university of pittsburgh from september 8 to october 14, 2016. this show was the culmination of a year’s work between the department of history of art and architecture (haa) and several outside collaborators. it was produced within the constellations model of research and teaching that is fundamental to the workings of the haa department as well as to the visual media workshop, the digital humanities lab directed by alison langmead (https://haa.pitt.edu/visual-media-workshop), the lead curator of data (after)lives. this essay gathers together a few texts produced for the exhibition and presents the experience of working on the show, which was produced by an exceptional group of people, all of whom brought fantastic insight and energy to the project. the online exhibition of data (after)lives: the persistence of encoded identity is currently on view at the university art gallery website (http://uag.pitt.edu). about the authors dr. alison langmead is the director of the visual media workshop (vmw) in the department of history of art and architecture and associate professor in the school of computing and information. the mission of the vmw is to develop and encourage the creation of innovative methods for producing, disseminating, and preserving academic work using digital technologies as a fundamental component of the scholarly toolkit. paulina pardo gaviria is a phd candidate in the university of pittsburgh’s history of art and architecture department specializing in art from latin america. examining the development of contemporary art from brazil, her dissertation project is the first monographic approach to the work of brazilian artist letícia parente (1930-1991). http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ https://haa.pitt.edu/visual-media-workshop http://uag.pitt.edu/ contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 6, no 1 “boundless” (2017) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2017.220 lead curator’s statement the ideas for data (after)lives grew out of—and well beyond—conversations surrounding the visual media workshop's digital humanities project decomposing bodies (http://sites.haa.pitt.edu/db). decomposing bodies focuses on the records of the bertillon system of measurement, a french police protocol used in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in, among other places around the world, the ohio penitentiary and the ohio state reformatory. for this project, the team digitized over 12,500 bertillon cards from these local american collections, and is working to transcribe the measurement data both manually, using labor here at the university of pittsburgh, and automatically, with the help of the national supercomputing infrastructure. faculty and students alike are considering the implications of this use of bertillonnage in ohio, as well as using the information on the cards to delve into the lives and crimes of the men and women represented by the system. it was during one of many productive brainstorming sessions focused on the possible outputs of this work that the notion of creating an exhibition was brought to the table. the fascinating ways that the brute materiality of bertillonnage intersected with its systematic, abstract data management principles ended up being the core principle behind the creation of data (after)lives. once the idea of the exhibition was settled, and we had secured a spot on the university art gallery's schedule, josh ellenbogen and myself, the two lead faculty members for decomposing bodies, quickly reached out to richard pell, director of the center for postnatural history and associate professor at the school of art, carnegie mellon university. we had known rich from previous interactions in the department of history of art and architecture at the university of pittsburgh, and felt that his research interests would productively intersect with the ideas at the heart of this new show, and rich kindly agreed to join in. he brought us an expanded view of what we could do with our core notion that humans create externalized data about our identities that is then applied back onto our lives to control our behavior. adding objects of his own from the american eugenics archive, as well as pieces from his colleagues and collaborators, rich transformed what began as a focused piece on historical materialism into a much broader, expansive universe of ideas. paulina pardo gaviria, a scholar who is currently a phd student in the department of history of art and architecture, generously offered her time to attend the initial meetings for data (after)lives, which were hosted by the department’s visual knowledge constellations working group. she quickly found that the material she was preparing on letícia parente for her comprehensive examinations perfectly suited the themes and concepts behind the show. after she presented her material to the data (after)lives group, we could not have been more in alignment with her assessment, and happily agreed to her participation in the show. in a fantastic display of support, her graduate advisors allowed her work on the exhibition to serve in partial fulfillment of her comprehensive exams. with paulina’s inclusion, the curatorial team was assembled, and the show—with a great deal of additional assistance from numerous talented individuals—was produced. data (after)lives at the university of pittsburgh a constellations exhibition in the university art gallery alison langmead and paulina pardo gaviria http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ http://sites.haa.pitt.edu/db) 3 8 d a t a ( a f t e r ) l i v e s a t t h e u n i v e r s i t y o f p i t t s b u r g h contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 6, no 1 “boundless” (2017) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2017.220 figure 1 bertillon card for john r. seymour, inmate no. 6596, 1916, national archives atlanta (series: inmate case files, 1902 – 1921, record group 129: records of the bureau of prisons, 1870 – 2009, identifier: 646361). introductory text from the exhibition material technologies such as dna testing, computerized facial recognition, fingerprint matching, government-issued photo identification practices, and aptitude tests have long established a data-driven landscape onto which humans have inscribed notions of identity. while each of these technical procedures is generally tailor-made to accomplish something highly specific, the information that they bring into being can often enjoy a “data afterlife,” one that extends, interrogates, or even betrays its original context and function. data (after)lives investigates the relationship between human perceptions of the self and these tangible procedures that produce alternative, externalized, and malleable representations of the human experience. it illuminates how sometimes humble material practices can create convincing narratives that define a framework within which we produce theories and assumptions about the workings of our world. the diversity of objects found in the show testify to the impressive variety of technologies that have been used in modern history to create and augment notions of human identity. at times, as in the case of traditional portrait painting and the physiognotrace, the procedures strive to individuate by directly recording a person’s appearance, thus producing an artifact that matches how we visually perceive our fellow human beings. at other times, as in the case of alphonse bertillon’s nineteenth-century system of anthropometry and current-day computerized facial recognition, the technique might seem to take its force from creating artifacts that match everyday reality, but instead does something quite different—it replaces the original, perceptual object with a numerical or digital counterpart that can be more easily stored and manipulated. in still other cases, any pretense to a match with a perceptual original vanishes, and we confront techniques whose data appear to be independent of anything we see in everyday reality—as in the case of visualizing our dna. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 3 9 a l i s o n l ang me ad a nd p a u l i n a p a r d o g av i r i a contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 6, no 1 “boundless” (2017) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2017.220 all of these practices and technologies can be used by governmental or private institutional entities to study or manage populations—quite literally so in the case of eugenics and its techniques for asserting identity—or they can be repurposed by artists to interrogate their function. a number of artists found in this show, from heather dewey-hagborg to paul vanouse to letícia parente, have sought to examine and even undercut the smooth application of identity procedures such as those surveyed by data (after)lives. figure 2 installation view of data (after)lives with landscapes of human identity in the university of pittsburgh art gallery, pittsburgh, 2016. photo by lily brewer. figure 3 installation view of data (after)lives with reconstruction of the bertillon machine, bertillon cards, and artistic interpretations of bertillonnage by aaron henderson, alison langmead, and sam nosenzo, 2016. photo by lily brewer. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 4 0 d a t a ( a f t e r ) l i v e s a t t h e u n i v e r s i t y o f p i t t s b u r g h contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 6, no 1 “boundless” (2017) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2017.220 recreating letícia parente’s medida: a graduate student’s perspective of data (after)lives early on, the main concept of the exhibition of the visual knowledge constellation working group resonated with the subject of my doctoral research—the oeuvre of brazilian artist letícia parente (1930–1991). at the heart of data (after)lives was bertillonnage and, within it, a replica of the bertillon measurement apparatus [fig. 3]. echoing its guiding principle, i recreated parente’s installation medida (measurement, 1976) grounded in the notion that data collection has a long-lasting impact on shaping individual identity. at first glance, alphonse bertillon’s police protocol developed in the 1890s in france, and letícia parente’s artwork from mid-1970s brazil may not seem convergent histories. however, the application of bertillonnage at the ohio penitentiary and the ohio state reformatory as presented in data (after)lives brought to light the ways in which artistic modes of display used by parente in medida pointed to governmental means of control at a time when her country was under military dictatorship. medida is an art installation containing several tools with which to measure a person’s body, believed to determine his/her identity. by recreating individual data collection processes and encouraging the audience to be critical of those processes, medida questions the objective accuracy of any given measurement as well as the use of personal data in contemporary life. figure 4 installation view of data (after)lives with letícia parente, medida. reconstruction at the university of pittsburgh art gallery, pittsburgh, 2016 of the exhibition at the museu de arte moderna, rio de janeiro, 1976. courtesy of andré parente. photo by paulina pardo gaviria. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 4 1 a l i s o n l ang me ad a nd p a u l i n a p a r d o g av i r i a contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 6, no 1 “boundless” (2017) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2017.220 the installation is divided into two parts; the first devoted to gathering data from the audience, while the second illustrates startling, even preternatural body measurements featured in the guinness book of world records. eight stations divide up this first section, where sets of instructions and tools are provided to gallery visitors to measure traits such as facial shape, respiratory capacity, blood type, visual acuity, and taste, to name a few. together, the instructions, tools, and analog databases, which take the form of notebooks filled in by exhibition visitors, evidence the imprecision underlining the measurement of human identities, as well as the controlled situations designed for individual data gathering and further use. medida’s third station, station c, for example, records individual identity by delimiting the sensitivity of the body. in this station, participants are directed to measure their pain resistance by testing the sensitivity of their skin with a seven-arm chandelier and provided matches. here, they are instructed to first light all seven candles, keep track of passing time aided by the installation audio that announces every five seconds, and, with two fingers, start snuffing out candle after candle. once they can no longer stand the pain caused to their fingers, they are asked to record the number of extinguished candles, multiply it by ten, and divide this number by the seconds passed. the resulting number (3.75, according to the example on the instructions sheet) determines one’s resistance to pain. experiencing medida as part of data (after)lives invites visitors to ask what this number reveals about one’s identity. moreover, it induces one to ask why one would need to know, with a precise number, one’s physical resistance to pain. figure 5 letícia parente, medida (station c). reconstruction at the university of pittsburgh art gallery, pittsburgh, 2016 of the exhibition at the museu de arte moderna, rio de janeiro, 1976. courtesy of andré parente. photo by rae di cicco. with instructions on how to inflict pain upon the body and provide tools to do so, it is important to consider the political context of brazil in the mid-1970s. although neither mentioned in parente’s installation nor discussed in the public sphere at the time, the exercise of physical torture in the hands of the state was a common practice under the dictatorship in brazil (1964–1985). violent practices were well known to many in the country but only discussed in the private realm. in station c, parente uses domestic items—candles, chandelier, and matches—as a strategy to address a contemporary political situation touching directly on civil rights aggressively violated by brazil’s military government (especially through the 1968 decree institutional act n.5), while simply presenting them as an experimental work of art that mixed aesthetics appearances and scientific procedures. medida, as station c demonstrates, sets the stage for the individual yet public recording of the limits of one’s own body. this installation does so as an artistic strategy to provoke a critical reflection on the significance of translating individuals into commensurable, quantitative, and collectible data. unlike the practical application of bertillonnage, the data gathered in medida are not intended for further use, thus reinforcing the artistic qualities of parente’s installation, as well as its intellectual contributions. in 1976, medida was presented as one room-sized installation and the unique work in parente’s solo homonymous exhibition at the museu de arte moderna in rio de janeiro. for http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 4 2 d a t a ( a f t e r ) l i v e s a t t h e u n i v e r s i t y o f p i t t s b u r g h contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 6, no 1 “boundless” (2017) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2017.220 its iteration at the university of pittsburgh art gallery, we decided to faithfully recreate medida as it was displayed forty years ago, thus maintaining the unity and complexity of the original work, following recent curatorial models for conceptual art, of which the most prominent is when attitudes become form: bern 1969/venice 2013 (fondazione prada, venice, 2013).1 to recreate medida in 2016 and include it in data (after)lives, i conducted in-depth archival research in brazil to determine the installation’s original layout, parente’s designs for her original measuring tools, and the specific aesthetics of the room, among other characteristics of the work. during the months leading up to the installation of data (after)lives, i undertook research at the museu de arte moderna’s exhibition archives and interviewed parente’s sons and daughters, who were not only present at the 1976 exhibition but also collaborated with the artist in the construction and manipulation of some of the exhibited measuring tools. during my time in brazil, i also gathered objects to recreate each station of medida, such as measuring tapes and notebooks like those used by parente and still available at brazilian stores. in pittsburgh, close collaboration with isabelle chartier, curator of the university art gallery, brought to fruition the plans envisaged for medida’s recreation. overcoming practical challenges, such as turning all the white walls of the room black without painting them, the installation process transformed one of the gallery’s rooms in a matter of weeks, bringing to pittsburgh what once was an installation of experimental art in the third floor of the museu de arte moderna in rio de janeiro. as a result, (re)contextualizing medida within data (after)lives—as opposed to presenting it in a solo show—evidenced the historical and crossgeographical relevance of data-gathering processes intended to visualize individual identities. through the measuring experiences presented to exhibition visitors, this unique perspective also engaged participants in methodological data management principles and forms of control present both in parente’s medida and in bertillon’s system as applied in the united states. in doing so, they experienced different visual strategies that have been used to determine one’s identity and regulate a person’s behavior, pointing to a global range of specific historical situations. without the collaboration of scholars at the university of pittsburgh’s history of art and architecture constellations model, curatorial projects such as data (after)lives and, within it, medida, would never have opened its doors to the public. paulina pardo gaviria new articles in this journal are licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 united states license. this journal is operated by the university library system of the university of pittsburgh as part of its d-scribe digital publishing program, and is co-sponsored by the university of pittsburgh press. 1 see germano celant, ed., when attitudes become form: bern 1969/venice 2013 (milan: fondazione prada, ca’ corner della regina, 2013), exhibition catalogue; and germano celant in conversation with terry smith in terry smith, talking contemporary curating (new york: independent curators international, 2012). http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/ http://www.pitt.edu/ http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/ http://www.upress.pitt.edu/upressindex.aspx http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture vol 6, no 1 “boundless” (2017) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2017.223 http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu untitled (architectural photography) daniel pabst about the artist daniel pabst was born in 1971 in vienna. he began working as a photographer at his father’s gallery, galerie michael pabst, in munich. he has shown work at photomonth london (2015); photo::vienna at the museum of applied arts vienna (2015), eyeem-awards in new york city (2015); lange nacht der museen in klagenfurt, austria (2014); in der kubatur des kabinetts, der kunstsalon im fluc, vienna, among others. as an eyeem award finalist in 2015, pabst’s work was shown among the top 10 for the category “the architect,” accordingly exhibited in new york city. pabst received honorable mentions for the moscow international foto award (mifa) in 2015 and for the tokyo international foto award (tifa) in 2016. pabst also studies jazz guitar and jazz composition. he is the singer and songwriter of pabst. additional bands in which pabst participated were noisy town groove, with drummer and composer lukas ligeti, trafo (an electric guitar quartet), and tricsson, an electronica band. pabst has also collaborated with dezibel 6 to 6 string and bella angora, a performance artist (production for the donaufestival 2013). he works as the producer and founder of the record label 212 recordspabst and co-composed the opera “der automatische teufel,” with jury everhartz. he has performed concerts for twenty years in europe and the united states at venues such as the wiener konzerthaus, porgy and bess, austrian cultural forum nyc, the stone, ancienne bélgique in brussels, b-flat in berlin, among others. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 6, no 1 “boundless” (2017) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2017.223 daniel pabst’s architectural photography often highlights the tension between site-specificity and the legacy of early twentieth-century international style. in photographs of diverse sites across the globe, such as dallas, texas, st. petersburg, russia, and vienna, austria, pabst draws attention to the formal qualities of such architecture hailed for its ability to communicate internationally but inherently tied to particular locations—as reflected in pabst’s titular conventions. as such, his photographs of buildings, whose functions range from public offices to private residences, and everything between, reveal moments where placeless meets place. rae di cicco figure 1 daniel pabst, pulkovo airport (saint petersburg), 2015, digital photograph. untitled (architectural photography) daniel pabst http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 8 0 un t i t l e d a r c h i t ec t u r a l p h o t og r a p h y contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 6, no 1 “boundless” (2017) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2017.223 figure 2 daniel pabst, gables republic tower dallas, 2016, digital photograph. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 8 1 d a n i e l p a b s t contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 6, no 1 “boundless” (2017) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2017.223 figure 3 daniel pabst, public office for finance vienna, 2015, digital photograph. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 8 2 un t i t l e d a r c h i t ec t u r a l p h o t og r a p h y contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 6, no 1 “boundless” (2017) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2017.223 figure 4 daniel pabst, academy of sciences moscow, 2017, digital photograph. new articles in this journal are licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 united states license. this journal is operated by the university library system of the university of pittsburgh as part of its d-scribe digital publishing program, and is co-sponsored by the university of pittsburgh press. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/ http://www.pitt.edu/ http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/ http://www.upress.pitt.edu/upressindex.aspx http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (architectural photography) contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture vol 5, no 1 “agency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2016.161 http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu documenting the invisible political agency in trevor paglen’s limit telephotography gary kafer abstract taken from up to forty miles away, trevor paglen's limit telephotography images of covert military bases in the american southwest are blurred by dense atmopshere, dust and debris. in effect, his photographs are highly illegible, and thus the military bases escape any sort of revelation. following this logic, if one cannot see these top secret locations, then these images are in fact not politically effective at disclosing confidential federal information. rather, paglen asserts that the political agency of his can be located not in the image, but in the practice of performing limit telephotography—standing on public land and excercising the right to photograph. in turn, paglen relocates the documentarian potential of his images into an agency formulated by a relational aesthetic, one in which the communal effects of creating the image and interpreting it generate the possibilities of enacting further practices of political resistance. about the author gary kafer is phd student in the department of cinema and media studies at the university of chicago, where he received his ma in 2015. his research examines issues of surveillance art practices in our post-privacy culture, as well as questions surrounding digital media aesthetics and contemporary visuality. he graduated phi beta kappa from the univer sity of pennsylvania in 2014 with a ba in cinema studies and visual studies, wherein he concentrated in visual neuroscience and perceptual psychology. his honors ba thesis examined stan brakhage's plastic montage by using models of motion perception to understand how he generates a type of cinematic illusionism. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.161 ”there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. we also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are things we do not know. but there are also unknown unknowns—the ones we don’t know we don’t know. donald rumsfeld1 more often than not, there is nothing to see in trevor paglen’s limit telephotography series, photographs which attempt to document the “black sites” of the united states militaryindustrial complex. top secret and highly confidential military bases far removed from populated areas, such black sites are typically buried deep in the extreme recesses of the american southwest, and thus inaccessible and indiscernible to the naked eye and even state-of-the-art cameras. manipulating technology conventionally used for photographing astrological phenomena, paglen developed a unique lens system to capture these black sites by mounting his standard-issue canon digital slr with telescope lenses ranging in focal length from 1,300 mm to 7,000 mm.2 armed with this image-making apparatus, paglen is able to capture subjects at incredibly long distances, usually up to s ix ty -five miles away. there is, however, an inverse relationship between distance and clarity: using increasingly powerful equipment to see further and further magnifies and distorts large spans of air, dust, and smog that linger in the humid atmosphere. such optical interference renders his photographs blurry and nondescript, thus precluding full study of the targeted military bases. yet, at times paglen’s work is surprisingly detailed; small jets, hangar bays, and reaper drones appear palpably close, as men can be seen dismounting planes holding cell phones to their ears and briefcases to their sides. however, most other photographs are far more unintelligible, merely depicting blurred shapes of architectural structures and vehicles disappearing beneath a haze of atmospheric and desert debris. in his own writing, paglen argues that rather than documenting military bases, his artistic practice in fact attempts to document the limitations of using photography for revealing hidden truths in federal and military confidentiality. insisting on this point, paglen remarks, “[m]y images are not produced in order to be evidence of some kind, or to reveal any kind of information at all. these are art photos.”3 here, paglen expresses a certain anxiety over the limitation of using images to produce knowledge about c lassif ied federa l information. instead of claiming that his photographs can in fact operate as evidence in his documentary practice, paglen seems to suggest that limit-telephotography does not document military sites, but rather epistemic boundaries. 1 infamous s tatement given by the secretary of defense donald rumsfeld in response to a ques tion about the lack of evidence linking the i raqi government with weapons of mass des truction at the department of defense news briefing in february 2002. donald rumsfeld, "department of defense briefing," (p ress c onference, white house, february 12, 2002), c -span, http://www.c -span.org/video/?1686461/defense-department-briefing. 2 a typical telephoto lens for this camera model has a focal length of about 300 mm. 3 mark p ritchard, “t revor p aglen reveals the ‘blank spots on the map’,” the rumpus , a pril 7 , 2009, http://therumpus .net/2009/04/trevor-paglen-reveals-the-blank-spots-on-the-map/. documenting the invisible political agency in trevor paglen’s limit telephotography gary kafer http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 5 5 g a r y k a f e r c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.161 one might question, then, the possibilities for political agency in paglen’s documentation, and whether or not it is belied by the representational limits of his image making practice. if one cannot legibly read the spaces that paglen attempts to document in his work, are these photographs in fact resistive, in the sense that they might expose t opsecret military operations? further, even if one is able to detect such bases and hangar bays in his photographs, are these images revealing any information that might jeopardize such federal activities? and perhaps more generally, is it the case that rather than contributing to his political agenda, paglen’s aesthetic register in fact neutralizes it? however, such questions narrow the agential possibilities in paglen’s work by reinforcing the binary between aesthetics and evidence in the documentary tradition— namely, that highly aestheticized objects have difficulty serving as forms of evidence. rather, paglen remarks that it is his practice of limit-telephotography that constitutes a form of resistance: “i have always conceived of this photography in terms of performance. the act of taking a photograph of a black site is just as important, if not more, than the photograph itself. to take a photograph is to insist on the right to photograph.”4 paglen thus not only locates the political agency of his limit-telephotography in the images, but also in their production. here, the process of creating his work, from collaborating with amateur astronomers to turning his camera on classified terrain, becomes inflected with a political intonation. by emphasizing the practice of limit-telephotography, it may be possible to conceive of a model of resistance that operates through a visual aesthetic, as well as a relational one. in order to advance this claim, i will consider the potential for limit-telephotography to mobilize resistive agency through conversations around the politics of relational art practices between nicolas bourriaud and jacques rancière. at the intersection of the two, attention will be given to the ways in which the dialectics of political demonstration can be understood as a spatial discourse, which for paglen registers his work as an “experimental geography.”5 such a practice rearticulates the documentation of material space along alternative perceptual systems, while also gesturing to a spatial understanding of knowledge production. in this way, paglen’s limit telephotography series attempts to understand how political effects can be located at the site of production, rather than purely in the image. at the same time, as a relational aesthetic, limit-telephotography reconsiders how documentation can contribute to political agency at the site of encounter with the image. understanding how collaborative art practice can function as a form of documentation relieves the image from political responsibility, and gestures outwards to the ways in which limit-telephotography can mobilize different processes of civic engagement against the black world. the black world: democracy, visibility, and secrecy targeting confidential military facilities, paglen’s limit-telephotography emerges within a set of concerted discourses crystallized upon the power and violence of secrecy in the federal system. in her introductory essay to paglen’s photographic monograph inv isible: covert operations and classified landscapes, rebecca solnit observes how paglen 4 t revor p aglen, “the expeditions: landscape as p erformance,” tdr: the drama review 55 , no. 2 (2011): 3 . 5 t revor p aglen, “experimental geography: from c ultural p roduction to the p roduction of space,” experimental geography: radical approaches to landscape, cartography, and urbanism, ed. nato thompson and independent c urators international (brooklyn, ny : melville house publishing, 2008), 31. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 5 6 d o c u m e n t i ng th e i n v i s i b l e c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.161 interrogates the precarious necessity for invisibility within democratic regimes, particularly as a defense mechanism, or “shield,” for military procedures.6 not only does invisibility prevent outsider access to top-secret information, thus rendering foreign organizations unable to predict actions and plan counterattacks, but it also protects such classified knowledge, placing it beyond the scope of popular criticism and dissent. invisibility and secrecy then, as solnit concludes, are not only a “strategy or a mode of operation for the military and the cia for the past six decades; they have been its essence.”7 figure 1 t revor p aglen, reaper drone (indian springs , nv, dis tance ~ 2 miles ), from the limit telephotography series, 2010. c -print, 30 x 36 in. c opyright t revor p aglen, courtesy the artist and metro pictures, new york; a ltman siegel, san franc isco. 6 rebecca solnit, “the invisibility wars ,” in invisible: covert operations and class ified landscapes , ed. t revor p aglen (new york: a perture, 2010), 10. invisible not only explores p aglen’s limit telephotography, but also his work tracking top secret satellites (the other night sky series), manipulating the passports and aliases of c ia operatives, and collecting uniform patches affiliated with c lassified military programs and intelligence-industry activities (symbology series). 7 ibid. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 5 7 g a r y k a f e r c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.161 ironically, the military can be said to violate the very fundamental values of democratic discourse and rhetoric—freedom, transparency, and security—that it claims to protect. such a hypocrisy has only been magnified in the wake of the terrorist attacks of september 11, 2001, wherein new policies in surveillance, military technologies, and intelligence programs have opened up space for what it known as the ‘safety state,’ an agenda of public policy and cultural production centered upon information and communication management. within this context, the development of post-9/11 military and intelligence operations resolves to maintain standard levels of public security while at the same time protecting classified federal interests. whereas civilians are becoming increasingly transparent under state surveillance and military espionage, the executive branch of government has extended its claims to power with top secret programs and agencies, many of which are not subject to democratic regulation.8 consequently, contemporary procedures of state security ironically generate forms of insecurity, which david lyon notes is “an insecurity felt keenly by the very people that security measures are supposed to protect.”9 despite the fact that the public has grown increasingly wary of domestic surveillance programs, it is precisely these feelings of insecurity that justify the classified status of military and federal operations. for rancière, in the post-9/11 era, maintaining a community of feeling constellated around fear generates productive modes of civic participation in the state of advanced plutocratic consensus. “insecurity is not a set of facts,” as he claims, but rather “it is a mode of management of collective life; and one that is likely to persist even if our polities and institutions end up agreeing on an acceptable mode of life-in-common.”10 importantly, insecurity is an imagined horizon of affects that the military-industrial complex mobilizes in order to determine the qualities of civic experience. reversing the message proclaimed by media outlets and officia l federal sources concerning the ostensive weapons of mass destruction in iraq in 2003, rancière contends that “imagined feelings of insecurity did not necessitate the war; instead the war was necessary to impose feelings of insecurity.”11 former vice president dick cheney gestured to such a paradox in his remarks on post9/11 federal activities during an interview with nbc’s tim russert on september 16, 2001: we also have to work, though, sort of the dark side, if you will. we've got to spend time in the shadows in the intelligence world. a lot of what needs to be done here will have to be done quietly, without any discussion, using sources and methods that are available to our intelligence agencies, if we're going to be successful. that's the world these folks operate in, and so it's going to be vital for us to use any means at our disposal, basically, to achieve our objective.12 here, invisibility in the “dark side” is not only a method for democratic policy, but rather it is an essential component to the legal and economic dimensions of the federal infrastructure, 8 ina zwerger and a rmin medosch, “goodbye p rivacy! hello p ublicity?,” in ars electronica 2007: goodbye privacy, ed. gerfried stocker and c hristine schöpf, trans . mel greenwald (berlin: hatje c antz, 2007), 1920. 9 david lyon and zygmunt bauman, liquid surveillance: a conversation (c ambridge: p olity press, 2013), 101. 10 jacques rancière, dissensus: on politics and aes thetics (london: c ontinuum, 2010), 108. 11 ibid., 106. 12 “meet the p ress with t im russert: dick c heney,” meet the press , nbc , washington d.c.: nbc news p roduc tions, september 16, 2001; emphas is added. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 5 8 d o c u m e n t i ng th e i n v i s i b l e c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.161 as the standard level of national security. and because this dark side—which includes anything funded by congress’ “black budget,”13 such as planes, space, shuttles, satellites, and drones, as well as radioactive, biological, and chemical technologies — lies beyond the limits of common knowledge, it is largely unacknowledged and uncontested by the public, despite the obvious issue that such measures of invisibility contradict what many would declare to be democratic values. the feelings of insecurity produced by such classified activities thus override and make possible any feelings of threat that might be produced were this dark side not in place.14 as solnit observes: “on purely theoretical grounds, you can argue that invisibility is . . . undemocratic; practically, it is ferociously so, again and again.”15 in his limit telephotography series, paglen attempts to render visible geographic locations associated with the dark side of federal activity, terrain and facilities known as the “black world” or “black sites” of classified defense activity. these facilities are dedicated to anything from special force and cia combat training centers to testing grounds for missiles, manned aircraft, drones, and electronic warfare systems. certainly such black sites are present as actual locations, yet they are simultaneously absent from official forms of documentation and public discourse, thus forming what paglen terms in the title of his 2009 book “blank spots on the map.”16 it is paglen’s project to make visible precisely these locations that resist visibility and in fact require invisibility to maintain standard operating procedures. through his limit-telephotography, paglen not only gestures to the limits of trying to make these sites visible, but also to the limits of translating their presence into forms of knowledge which can then circulate in public discourse. an image with limits this translation performed by paglen’s camera is mired by noise from the surrounding atmosphere, as the high degree of magnification on paglen’s unique camera lens stretches the limitations of the photographic index to a point of abstraction. his practice of limittelephotography thus turns the representational potential of his images, as well as their appeals as documentary evidence, into nonfigurative fields of color, form, and line. associations between paglen’s work and the visual register of abstract expressionism are no doubt apparent. yet, certainly while paglen’s images are abstract, one might question if they are intentionally expressive in the same manner as the layered drips of joan mitchell’s landscapes or mark rothko’s meditative color fields. when encountering surveillance images, blurriness, pixilation, low resolution, scan lines, and glitches are often inflected as markers of a realist aesthetic. specifically in paglen’s work, the hazy veneer that obscures and obliterates representational forms into grainy pastel swaths denotes a particular distance, geography, and climate, which paglen typically articulates in the precise, a lmost c lini ca l, titles reading with the exactitude expected of scientific inquiry and archival research—such as chemical and biological proving ground #2 (2006) and detachment 3, a ir force flight test center (2008). such titles insist on the veracity of the photographs and their fidelity to 13 paglen, “the expeditions,” 3 . 14 solnit notes: “we do not debate the development of new sys tems of killing, the militarization of space, or the cos t of our military budget, and most of us know nothing about the programs in ques tion,” 10. 15 solnit, “the invisibility wars ,” 12. 16 t revor p aglen, blank spots on the map: the dark geography of the pentagon's secret world (new york: dutton, 2009). http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 5 9 g a r y k a f e r c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.161 the surrounding environment and photographic conditions, despite the fact that such a degree of veracity is belied by the representational limits of limit-telephotography. figure 2 t revor p aglen, chemical and biological weapons proving ground/dugway; ut/dis tance approx. 42 miles ; 11:17 a.m., from the limit telephotography series, 2006. c -print, 40 x 40 in. c opyright trevor p aglen, courtesy the artist and metro p ictures, new york; a ltman siegel, san francisco. perhaps then the visual abstraction emergent from paglen’s image-making practice is less expressive than it is indexical. in this sense, it is possible to reconsider the aesthetic of paglen’s limit-telephotography as necessarily indexing the very practice of photographing black sites from extreme distances. here, the visual register of these images do not preclude documentation, but rather makes it possible, thus constituting his images as forms of evidence of the process of limit-telephotography itself. the “limit” in paglen’s photography is negotiated through the unavoidable visual abstraction, which sets boundaries and restrictions on how his practice is able to perform a documentarian function under the guise of a surveillance aesthetic. with abstraction invited into his images, paglen’s practice of limit-telephotography crystallizes a paradox of using photography to reveal certain types of truth about the government’s dark side; he constructs a dual signification of what precise ly is ‘ l imited’ in these images. on the one hand, paglen’s interests lie in making visible those spaces that are http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 6 0 d o c u m e n t i ng th e i n v i s i b l e c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.161 invisible to the naked eye, thus exposing the black sites that are just beyond perceptual limits at extreme distances. as paglen remarks, “these photographs capture not only images of hidden places but images of what it looks like when the physical properties of v is ion are pushed to their limit, and light itself collapses into a jumbled mess.”17 on the other hand, paglen is also confronting the limitations of our epistemic frameworks within the documentary genre. the tension between the unintelligibil ity of the photograph and the image’s claims to indexicality reinforces the inherent paradox of documentation, one in which aesthetic modes of representation are expected to convey and analyze material realities without distortion or alteration. for paglen, this paradox articulates “a negative dialectic”18 in the ways in which his limit-telephotography can function as both representation and documentation of the black world, such that his images “both make claims to represent, and at the same time dialectically undermine, the very claims they seem to put forth.”19 in conversation with julian stallabrass regarding his aesthetic vocabulary, paglen maintains a certain fidelity to the documentary potential of his limit-telephotography (“here’s x secret satellite moving through x constellation”) at the same time that he reflexively foregrounds their limitations as representational works (“your believing that this white streak against a starry backdrop is actually a secret satellite instead of a scratch on the film negative is a matter of belief”).20 the dialectic nature of this aesthetic system is not one that inevitably produces truth claims, but rather one that internally challenges, destabilizes, and contradicts its own appeals to knowledge production. paglen’s apparent failure of visualizing these sites due to certain abstractions via environmental mediation then simultaneously gestures to the impossibility of acquiring unequivocal truth from documentary practices, as well as the material and immaterial barriers that prevent access to information about the black world. here, paglen extends such skepticism about his limit-telephotography within the documentary genre to certain discourses that have shaped contemporary u.s. involvement in militarized espionage, drone bombing, and war crimes. concerning the infamous video of the apache helicopter airstrike on iraqi civilians that chelsea manning shared with wikileaks on july 6, 2010, paglen states in his interview with stallabrass: “i definitely agree with you that the wikileaks gunship footage is as good as we could reasonably want. but if there were a wrongful death lawsuit with that video as the prime piece of evidence, i wonder whether it would hold up in a courtroom.”21 further referencing the video recording used in the rodney king trial, which failed to testify as a form of evidence, and the photographs from abu ghraib, which donald rumsfeld dismissed as unrepresentative of the larger mil itaryprison system, paglen’s suspicion of representation informs his approach to the documentary image. as he claims: “documentary media can still become social facts, regardless of how faithfully it reproduces reality [but] there’s no magic image or documentation that ex ists outside or beyond the limits of representation.”22 in this sense, it is not the case that paglen 17 t revor p aglen, “sources and methods,” invisible: covert operations and class ified landscapes , ed. t revor p aglen (new york: a perture, 2010), 146. 18 paglen, “sources and methods,” 151. 19 in conversation with stallabrass, p aglen contends: “in terms of art -making, i sympathize with a revised form of negative dialectics as a response to an image-saturated society.” julian stallabrass, “negative dialectics in the google e ra: a n interview with t revor p aglen,” october 138 (fall 2011): 9 . 20 ibid., 11 . 21 ibid., 10 . 22 ibid.; italic s in the original. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 6 1 g a r y k a f e r c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.161 doubts the fidelity of such declassified materials or their unique possibilities to intercept and mobilize political action. rather, paglen asserts that the horizons of knowledge that emerge from any such encounter with the black world is rife with questions of representation, particularly how to represent what federal powers render unrepresentable—what stallabrass refers to as “the limits of democracy, secrecy, visibility and what can be known.”23 yet, for paglen, attempting to photograph these black sites is not mere ly an artistic gesture, but also a form of resistance. his project has political concern at the same time that it invests in a particular aesthetic relationship to the black world. in conversation with the dark side of the federal infrastructure, such resistance often takes the form of visualizing the invisibility of the black world. one way that this form of political agency has historically taken shape is through revealing secret activities and disclosing classified documents—what is commonly regarded as whistleblowing, but constitutionally regarded as treason. in many of these cases, sharing top-secret intelligence constitutes a political opposition to federal power, thus resulting in violent state measures. in 1953, ethel and julius rosenberg were executed for passing on atomic weapons secrets to the soviet union.24 in 1971, daniel ellsberg was tried under the 1917 espionage act for disclosing the united states department of defense history of the nation’s involvement in vietnam from 1945 to 1967, known as the pentagon papers. such allegations of treason have likewise continued in response to individuals who have shared top secret information related to the increase of post-9/11 political-military activity; both whistleblowers chelsea manning and edward snowden were tried under the espionage act as well for disclosing classified federal documents to the public. snowden’s case, due to its engagement with issues of surveillance, is particularly interesting in relation to paglen’s work, as it emphasizes the paradoxical relationship of visibility and invisibility within the democratic discourse on secrecy. among the many top secret activities that snowden disclosed in the leak of national security agency (nsa) documents in june 2013 is prism, a program which allows the nsa to gain direct access to the servers of the world’s top telecommunications companies, including google, facebook, microsoft, yahoo!, apple, and skype, among others. despite federal concern for public security, the type of surveillance observed in prism was made possible by the precise laws implemented in the wake of 9/11 that were designed to protect national security u nder the guise of democratic ideology, specifically the patriot act of 2001. according to journalist glenn greenwald, who collaborated with snowden and documentarian laura poitras on the nsa leak, the underlying insidious nature of surveillance impinges on the r ight to pr ivacy, which he claims is the “core condition of being a free person.”25 in this context, greenwald argues that snowden’s resistance should demonstrate the need to reverse the federal power structure: since the government consists of public servants working in the public sector, federal officials should be subject to complete visibility, while invisibility should be reserved for the private law-abiding individual.26 however, such a position is often contested by more conservative factions. as indicated in cheney’s remarks on the dark side of federal activities, 23 stallabrass, “negative dialectics,” 3. 24 section 2 of the espionage act of 1917, 50 u .s. c ode 32 (now 18 u .s. c ode 794), prohibits transmitting or attempting to transmit to foreign governments information "relating to the national defense." 25 glenn greenwald, no place to hide: edward snowden, the nsa, and the u.s. surveillance state (new york: metropolitan books, 2014), 172. 26 ibid., 209. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 6 2 d o c u m e n t i ng th e i n v i s i b l e c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.161 such forms of invisibility, which justified the passing of the patriot act, are necessary for the economic and legal architecture of post-9/11 national security. like snowden, paglen invests himself through his limit-telephotography in a k ind of resistance based on seeking out and exposing information embedded deep within the network of federal invisibility. for solnit, paglen situates his work as a form of resistance by locating his practice within a critical discourse that maintains the camera as a technology for revealing hidden realities. drawing upon a rich history of photographic journalism, such as robert frank’s the americans and richard misrach’s photographs of remote and classified military sites in the 1980s and 1990s, she underscores the camera as an agent for illuminating unknown phenomena, making familiar those things that are otherwise “unseen in plain view.”27 while photojournalism does not de facto constitute a form of resistance, within the context of the dark side of federal and military activity, paglen’s artistic practice articulates a potential to expose certain forms of knowledge that are otherwise invis ible to the public eye. for solnit, paglen’s work underscores the inherent paradox of the surveillance paradigm: “to see and to make visible is itself often a protracted process of education, research, investigation, and often trespassing and lawbreaking, a counter-spying on the intelligence complex.”28 at close distances, paglen does indeed capture certain kinds of information. yet as a negative dialectic, this kind of resistance upends itself. rather than actually revealing hidden realities, paglen instead metaphorizes the veils of secrecy surrounding the black world by pushing the visual index to its abstracted limits. at extreme lengths, paglen’s images mirror the discourse of federal invisibility; through the index of surveillance aesthetics, information is not disclosed, but made more obscure. as jonah weiner of the new yorker writes, “paglen welcomes distortion in his images because his aim is not to expose and edify so much as to confound and unsettle.”29 in this regard, paglen understands the truth-telling function of the camera merely as a pretense for examining the double-edged sword of counter-intelligence production, one in which surveillance can be used against itself in order to reconfigure the perceptual hor izons of federal invisibility. by using advanced lens technologies to capture classified territory from miles away, paglen introduces a diametric practice of enacting surveillance on precisely those black sites which themselves exercise espionage under a veil of invisibility, thus engaging in his own form of surveillance to observe sites of military espionage. his limit-telephotography thus turns military technologies of surveillance against themselves, exposing surveillance at the same time that it reproduces it. and as surveillance images, paglen’s work enacts a critique of surveillance by way of its own rhetoric. in this sense, the telescope lens, as nie ls van tomme observes, “becomes a device embedded within the very v io lence it seeks to investigate, as such tools of vision are inextricably entwined with the history of, as well as ongoing standard developments within, the military industrial complex.” 30 arguably then, paglen interrogates discourses of power in military operations of surveillance, thus prompting a reconsideration of the perceived objectivity of lens-based media within the context of 27 solnit, “the invisibility wars ,” 10. 28 ibid. 29 jonah weiner, “p rying eyes,” the new yorker. o c tober 22, 2012. http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2012/10/22/prying-eyes. 30 niels van tomme, “the image as machine” in vis ibility machines: harun farocki and trevor paglen, exh. cat., (c hicago: gallery 400, 2015), 4 . http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 6 3 g a r y k a f e r c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.161 military operations, as well as the limitations of deploying surveillance to document our environment. the politics of relational aesthetics yet such a critique of surveillance does not automatically register a resistance to surveillance. if limit-telephotography does not disclose declassified information or reveal hidden realities, then the question for paglen becomes: “how do i situate [a given] project in a productive situation, a political situation, and a discursive situation. or, more tactica lly, how can i position [it] closely to a site of instability in power as possible such that [it] has real effects?”31 as opposed to the type of materials leaked by whistleblowers, it is doubtful as to whether or not paglen’s images could be used as evidence to mobilize politica l action or legislative response. however, while paglen makes explicit that his photographs are “useless as evidence,” he insists that limit-telephotography maintains a specific “politics of production.”32 he develops this term, emphasizing the various important practices that contribute to the production of his images: in the vast majority of my artwork, the research, methods, and processes happening “outside the frame” are just as important (and often more) a s what ends up being shown in a particular image or installation. all of [my] work . . . is the product of countless hours spent in libraries, sifting through documents, conducting interviews, repeated site visits, careful planning and project management, and personal relations developed over years of dedication to the material.33 here, paglen suggests that beyond his images there is a politic by which meaning is produced, a meaning which might be generative of alternative modes of engaging with the geopolitics of the black world infrastructure and its epistemic territories. paglen expands on this politic in a number of ways. on the one hand, he emphasizes the performance of limit-telephotography as a generative site of resistance—namely, on the right to stand in public land outside of the borders of the black world and turn his camera on the hidden realities of military activities. as paglen argues, “[p]hotographing a secret military base means insisting on the right to do it, and enacting that right. thus, we have a sort of political performance.”34 interestingly, then, paglen’s performance of limit-telephotography conceives of this politic as a particular relation to the black world by reversing the very legal terms promoted by state order. on the other hand, he also speculates on the importance of relationships and networked practices that allow for his work to confront the perceptual limits of the black world. in addition to offering expeditions each year for individuals interested in exercising their right to photograph these bases35, he writes: 31 emily e liza scott, “‘invis ible-5’s ’ i llumination of p eripheral geographies,” art journal 69 no.4 (winter 2010): 44. 32 weiner, “p rying eyes”; stallabrass, “negative dialectics,” 6 . 33 paglen, “sources and methods,” 144. 34 stallabras, “negative dialectics,” 6 . 35“i led several desert expeditions each year. these expeditions further developed the overall project, engaging partic ipants as witnesses/spectators in an enac tment of the right to see and to photograph. ins tead of c reating two-dimensional landscapes for galleries and museums, i was bringing people to the ac tual landscapes.” p aglen, “the expeditions,” 3 . http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 6 4 d o c u m e n t i ng th e i n v i s i b l e c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.161 i might be camping out on a mountaintop taking photos of a secret military base, or determining the location of cia “black sites” so i can go photograph them. maybe researching front-companies used in covert operations, or working with amateur astronomers to track classified spacecraft in earth orbit. these are all relational practices and they all have various sorts of politics to them.36 in his emphasis on the possibilities to inspire and organize geopolitical activism through relational practices, paglen invokes nicolas bourriaud’s description of relational aesthetics: “an art taking as its theoretical horizon the realm of human interactions and its social context, rather than the assertion of an independent and priva te symbolic space.”37 in bourriaud’s wake, paglen’s practices can be read as relational in that such performances and relationships relocate the political agency from the image to the production process of l imit telephotography. for bourriaud, such practices lie in opposition to hegemonic capitalist regimes of commodity exchange, such that the relational artwork—which is less an object and more a form of social relation—essentially rejects subjugation into a market value system. the artist rather catalyzes sites of experience for collective encounters, bringing to bear new meanings and perceptual experiences as the art form. unlike the passive optic encounter of an object, relational art is able to generate productive human relations, which, for bourriaud, lays the seeds for political action through its emancipatory effects. yet, it is not quite clear that any and all relational practices will lead to political potentials. in bourriaud’s writing, sites of dialogue register forms of interactivity as democratic microtopias. here, claire bishop has called into question the ways in which bourriaud ties the structure of a relational work—its form as social relation—to its ethicopolitical effects while ignoring the veils of power and exclusivity that institutional systems use to acknowledge the communal experience as aesthetically valuable. 38 for bishop, participatory art should not be judged based on ethical standards of “consensual collaboration” between artist and audience during the production process.39 rather, the political effects of participatory art emerge from its confrontation with audiences free from ethical fixations. opposed to bishop, grant kester in his 2004 book conversation pieces contends that the ethical framework is imperative to the political effects of participatory work, wherein dialogue between artists and non-artists constitute a consensual space for transformative experience.40 at the nexus of bishop and kester’s writings on the political agency of relational practices lies an impasse between aesthetic autonomy and socio-political concerns. for kim charnley, such a paradox boils down to neutralization of political effects, such that both bishop and kester aim “to erase contradiction in order to maintain a consistent account of the political—and it is in the attempt to be consistent that the political is erased.”41 here, 36 stallabrass, “negative dialectics,” 6; emphas is added. 37 n icolas bourriaud, relational aes thetics , trans . simon p leasance and fronza woods (dijon: les presses du réel, 2002), 14. 38 c laire bishop, “a ntagonism and relational a esthetics,” october 110 (fall 2004): 65. 39 c laire bishop, artificial hells : participatory art and the politics of spectatorship (london: v erso, 2012), 19-20. 40 grant kes ter, conversation pieces: community and communication in modern art (berkeley: university of c alifornia press, 2013). 41 kim c harnley, “dissensus and the politics of collaborative practice,” art & the public sphere 1 , no. 1 (2011): 49. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 6 5 g a r y k a f e r c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.161 politics can only emerge in a critical negotiation between the exclusivity of the artist a long supporting institutional powers and democratic forms of social relations between artists and non-artists. in advancing this claim, charnley draws from rancière’s writings on dissensus, wherein if “dissensus is not viewed as the vital element of socially engaged art then even the most rigorous ethics [via kester] or carefully guarded autonomy [via b ishop] becomes an extension of consensus.”42 important for this claim is the political nature of dissensus. according to rancière, politics should not be thought of as the “exercise of power,” but rather as an intervention in the normative relationship between actions, or ways of doing, and a possible horizon of affects, an aesthetic order that he terms the distribution of the sensible.43 this structural law delineates the general and common modes of participation in the social and the modes of perception that shape the experience of the social order. politics, then, is a re-distribution of the sensible, such that political actions are those that disturb and expose gaps in the rationale underpinning the social body’s implicit perceptual frameworks. political demonstration then, as a dissensus, disrupts the sensible—what is visible and sayable—and brings about a change in the perception of social space, thus making “visible that which had no reason to be seen.”44 it is important to note, however, that rancière is not proclaiming that politics brings to bear new perceptual possibilities in the sense that materials, people, and places, which were previously hidden, are suddenly made visible. this might too easily line up with a model of resistance to the black world based on disclosure of classified information, which paglen’s images in fact do not do. rather, rancière’s interests rest in the ways that certain communities that had previously been denied subjectivity within the common socia l order might emerge, be recognized, and vocalize their perspectives. in his words: politics . . . consists in transforming [the policed public] space of ‘moving-along’, of circulation, into a space for the appearance of a subject: the people, the workers, the citizens. it consists in re-figuring space, that is in what is to be done, to be seen and to be named in it. it is the instituting of a dispute over the distribution of the sensible . . . it consists in making what was unseen visible; in making what was audible as mere noise heard as speech and in demonstrating that what appeared as mere expression of pleasure and pain is a shared feeling of a good or an evil.45 the core of political demonstration then is not just a reorganization of the social order’s perceptual limits; it is also a question of space, of asserting that the communal experiences in private spaces of such unrecognized communities are valid alongside the public policed space of the common social order. it is the production of new spaces in which the previously unheard and unseen are recognized, in which the sensible is redistributed to a llow for new meanings to generated and understood from previously insignificant materials, affects, and sensory experiences. understanding politics as a spatial discourse opens up new resistive possibil ities for paglen’s limit-telephotography. it is thus not the case that paglen’s images are resistive in 42 c harnley, “dissensus and the politics of collaborative practice,” 50. 43 ranc ière, dissensus: on politics and aes thetics , 36 . 44 ibid., 39 . 45 ibid., 37-38. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 6 6 d o c u m e n t i ng th e i n v i s i b l e c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.161 that they reveal information previously kept hidden by federal powers. rather, in attempting to render the black world visible, paglen interrogates the limits of what can be made sensible, forcing recognition of those things that federal powers hold beyond the boundaries of what can currently be perceived. he thus relocates the resistive agency of limittelephotography from the aesthetic register of the image to a spatial discourse of its political effects: interrogating the structural invisibility of militarized sites, the dimensional l imits of representation through lens-based media, and the territories of knowledge about the black world that is continually rendered inaccessible by mechanisms of secrecy. resistance: experimental geography as dissensus in order to understand the production of limit-telephotography as a spatia l practice, paglen adopts what he refers to as a “critical geographic perspective.”46 under this framework, he examines the two main theoretical underpinnings of geographic study: first, materialism, which employs an analytic approach to the idea that the world is made out o f spatial interactions of materials; and second, the production of space, which refers to the dialectical ways in which space is actively constructed by human activity, and human activity is defined by space. geography for paglen “is not just a method of inquiry, but necessarily entails the production of a space of inquiry.”47 with these two theoretical bases, paglen understands the cultural production of limit-telephotography as necessarily a spatial practice, wherein he not only attempts to represent space by visually acknowledging the materiality of the black sites, but also contributes to the production of the space of inquiry, knowledge, and discourse about covert military operations and federal secrecy.48 by incorporating this approach into his practice, paglen works through what he terms an “experimental geography”: practices that recognize that cultural production and the production of space cannot be separated from each another, and that cultural and intellectual production is a spatial practice. moreover, experimental geography means not only seeing the production of space as an ontological condition, but actively experimenting with the production of space as an integral part of one’s own practice. 49 as a work of experimental geography, paglen’s limit-telephotography sets into relief the two theoretical frameworks of geographic inquiry. on the one hand, paglen complicates the fieldbased perceptions of the landscape’s material dimensions through its intentional abstracted 46 paglen, “experimental geography,” 37. 47 ibid., 31 . p aglen comes to this conclusion by way of the theories of marx and lefebvre. here, he accepts marx’s argument that a fundamental characteristic of human exis tence is “the production of material life itself,” that humans produce their existence in a dialec tical relation to the res t of the world. likewise, following lefebvre, he also accepts that produc tion is a fundamentally spatial practice, that humans c reate the world around them and are in turn c reated by the world around them. thus , in light of both of these arguments , p aglen concludes that “cultural production (like all produc tion) is a spatial prac tice.” 48 p aglen alludes to this analysis in his interview with the rumpus : “i t’s helpful to think about s tate secrecy as a landscape, as a set of ins titutions and fac ts on the ground, in addition to a series of bureaucratic operations. in traditional social s ciences, the way that you think about sec recy is in terms of bureaucracy and culture. i think that if you add geography to that, you can explain how secrecy works in a more robus t way. a nd that also explains some of the failures of overs ight [of] the sec ret s tate, his torically.” 49 paglen, “experimental geography,” 31. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 6 7 g a r y k a f e r c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.161 visual register. on the other hand, he also aims to produce new spaces of knowledge about that black world by questioning and reconfiguring their perceptual limits. through mater ial, perceptual, and epistemic spaces, he exposes gaps in the experiential horizons of the black world, and brings to bear new modes of participation with the black world that are technically legal, yet certainly disapproved. accordingly, paglen’s experimental geography begins to gesture to the ways in which the space of knowledge about the black world that is opened up by limit-telephotography can be inflected with political agency. as paglen remarks, “[i]f human activities are inextr icably spatial, then new forms of freedom and democracy can only emerge in dialectical relation to the production of new spaces.”50 in framing his understanding of artistic production within geopolitics as a spatial discourse, particularly one that is dialectical, paglen seems to echo rancière’s analysis of a dissensual politics. for the latter, politic demonstration registers a dialectical confrontation between the perceptual space of the sensible and imperceptible space of the political body—the result of which “is the construction of a paradoxica l world that put together two separate worlds.”51 for paglen, such a dialectical reading of a spatialized politics allows us to locate the resistive potentials of his work neither in the physical spaces that paglen occupies in order to take his photographs nor the spaces in which one may encounter his works, but rather in the discursive space that critically situates the civic body against the geography of secrecy and invisibility of the black world. this is a dialectical space that emerges from a coming together of public knowledge and federal secrecy when the imperceptible is forced into recognition through a play of spatial discourses (whether in the image, its production, or in critical encounters). as emily eliza scott contends, we might then approach the resistive potential of experimental geography “not in terms of their production of new images, objects, or experiences, but in terms of their production of potentially new spatial-political configurations.”52 alan ingram joins scott in chorus, arguing that geopolitical art functions “not just as a form of resistance, refusal or critique but . . . [as] an index of and contributor to political and spatial transformation.”53 he asserts that while it cannot be assumed that such creative interventions generate critical or radical results, they can produce the potential to represent the ways in whic h discourses shaping social and political life might be reproduced, changed, or disrupted. here, ingram grants particular emphasis to the potential for artistic practices to assume agency in mobilizing other kinds of action, rather than fully encompass the entire possible range of critical intervention or political resistance. citing rancière, ingram continues: “the (geo)political effects of any particular artistic intervention cannot be assumed or inferred, only corroborated by corresponding actions. the question then becomes less what such art works mean than what critical approaches to geopolitics might do with them.”54 adopting a “relational way of thinking” into the spatial discourse of experimental geography insists on the ways in which paglen negotiates and reconfigures the re lations of production involved in creating cultural work about the geography of the government’s black world, and further how that practice of reconfiguration can reveal new political horizons. paglen remarks in this vein that “experimental geography takes for granted the fact that 50 paglen, “experimental geography,” 31. 51 ranc ière, dissensus: on politics and aes thetics , 39 . 52 scott, “‘invis ible-5’s’ i llumination of p eripheral geographies,” 44. 53 a lan ingram, “making geopolitics otherwise: artistic interventions in global political space,” the geographical journal 177, no.3 (sept 2011): 218. 54 ibid., 221. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 6 8 d o c u m e n t i ng th e i n v i s i b l e c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.161 there can be no ‘outside’ of politics, because there can be no ‘outside’ to the production of space (and the production of space is ipso facto political).”55 it is then not the case that paglen’s images contain the radical potential to subvert the discourses of secrecy operative in the black world, but rather that his practice of limit-telephotography produces the very political spaces from which these aesthetic objects may emerge. and because paglen locates the possibilities for a resistive agency in the production of spaces for new human relations, he sets into relief the material and spatial concerns of an experimental geographic approach to the lived experience of producing limit-telephotography—from collaboration with field guides to occupying territory. accordingly, paglen is not attempting to breach federal secrecy by photographing black sites, nor is he exclusively concerned with negating the secrecy that manages black sites, as even the aesthetic register of his images reproduces the veil of invisibility that obscures access to seeing and understanding these spaces. rather, l imit telephotography emerges from a new system of relationships with the black world, one that provokes alternative and radical perceptions of the networks and representations of people, spaces, and power in the military-industrial complex. paglen’s documentary practice is one that negotiates the possibilities for rescuing material landscapes and geographic space from the black world in order to inspire the potential for critical engagements in the public sphere, or as margarida carvalho remarks in her work on geopoetics, “to inhabit [space] and make it communal.” 56 towards a new documentation as a collaborative art practice of experimental geography, paglen’s limit telephotography series questions itself on the grounds of how well these images serve as forms of documentation of the black world. just as paglen is skeptical about claiming that his photographs are documents of anything, the visual abstraction likewise prevents normative modes of knowledge production at work in the documentary genre. arguably, these images can only serve to index paglen’s physical presence at a particular location proximal to the military facility under investigation, which perhaps is mostly attributable to the precision of the titles of each photograph. in this sense, one might reason that paglen’s work is not only invested in documenting the black world, but also the process of occupying territory, or perhaps even the politics of production of limit-telephotography. yet, such a thesis fails to account for the inability to read this type of documentation in the images themselves. first and foremost, paglen photographs classified military bases in the remotes recesses of the american southwest, and not his own process of creating these images in the form of photographs of expeditions and meetings with astronomers. he does not turn the camera on himself. perhaps then the question becomes not how to documen t a collaborative art practice, but rather how a collaborative art practice can function as a form of documentation. here, paglen remarks that the process of creating these images—from the project planning to the expedition—opens up the critical space from which these images appear: “i try to immerse myself in the ‘world’ of my research to the point where the 55 paglen, “experimental geography,” 32. 56 margarida c arvalho, “a ffective territories,” inflexions journal 3 (2009), 17. c arvalho defines geopoetics as “a dynamic cartography in which localization and route are combined into subversive maps that highlight the c reation of experimental, communal and c reative s trategies for appropriation and trans formation of both media and new technologies—namely those that are central to the current ‘surveillance society’—as a means to enhance the sharing, c reation and free flux of s ignals, things , people, ac tions, and affec tions,” 15. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 6 9 g a r y k a f e r c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.161 materials virtually ‘tell’ me how they want to be expressed.”57 limit-te lephotography thus emerges from the politics of production, not the other way around. yet, to what extent do the politics of production of limit-telephotography—or further, the dialectical dissensus of experimental geographies—apply to other sites of encounter? in many ways, paglen’s consideration of that spatial discourse of relational aesthetics seems bounded to the artist and his creative process rather than extend beyond the production to the viewer who considers his work in a book, website, or exhibition. in these contexts, particular framing devices allow for these images to be located within a political agenda, such as gallery text, paglen’s artist biography, critical publications, and other kinds of paratextual information. yet, at the same time that these devices identify the political potentials of paglen’s experimental geography, they also nullify such effects by situating the vital dissensual properties of limit-telephotography within a consensual critical discourse—that is to say, such images are political because they are proclaimed to be so. figure 3 t revor p aglen, detachment 3, air force flight tes t center, groom lake, nv dis tance approx. 26 miles , from the limit telephotography series , 2008. c -print, 40 x 50 in. c opyright t revor p aglen, courtesy the artis t and metro p ictures, new york; a ltman siegel, san franc isco. 57 paglen, “sources and methods,” 144. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 7 0 d o c u m e n t i ng th e i n v i s i b l e c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.161 perhaps here we approach another ‘limit’ to paglen’s limit-telephotography: the limit of political agency itself. in reflecting on the relationship between dissensus and collaborative art practices, charnley takes special note of rancière’s skepticism of collaborative works that confess themselves to be political “because it confuses the boundary between art and the social.”58 charnley continues: as [rancière] puts it: ‘ . . . the more [art] goes out into the streets and professes to be engaging in a form of social intervention, the more it anticipates and mimics its own effects. art thus risks becoming a parody of its alleged efficacy.’ there is something disappointing about th is avoidance of questions that are raised when art is confronted by a limit, in the moment of attempting to transgress it. at this moment the dissensus is a radical one, in as much as it is a disjuncture between art’s self-understanding and its social reality.59 this limit, however, is not a deficit to paglen’s political aspirations, but rather an important nodal point for locating the resistive possibilities for a dissensual agency, which for paglen, operates through his confrontation with the documentary genre. if the photographs are forms of documentation, then they confront the limit of political demonstration, but fa il to surpass it. because the images obscure evidence of the black world by metaphorizing the discourse of secrecy through the abstract visual register, they can only be political if they are labeled as such and qualified by paratextual information. yet, if we reconsider the collaborative art practice itself as the documentation of paglen’s encounter with the black world, then the visual register of limit-telephotography, which obscures evidentiary claims of the photographic index, should prompt viewers to turn away from thinking about the images as documentation in order to consider how the politics of production of limit-telephotography are attended by a multiplicity of effects, both in terms of their inception and reception, which may suggest or potentiate other kinds of agency. in this case, the encounter with limit-telephotography images would be a kind of partic ipation in paglen’s collaborative network alongside those astronomers and fellow researchers that contributed to their production. the goal of this form of documentation becomes political when it negates the premise of its own appeals to knowledge formation. paglen certa inly doesn’t illuminate anything about the black world, but perhaps he doesn’t have to. when encountering his images, such sites suddenly become palpable, allowing for geographic material to enter into critical discourse. even the most uninformed viewer who takes a sudden interest in the black world can gain political agency in seeking information, questioning sources of data, and joining others in protesting federal operations. thus, while the political agency of paglen’s project cannot be located in the images themse lves, it is possible to rethink how certain forms of engagement with limit-telephotography can reinscribe alternative modes of civic participation with the black world into the field of spatio political meanings articulated by the official aesthetic, legal, and constitutional forms of state power. 58 c harnley, “dissensus and the politics of collaborative practice,” 51. 59 ibid., 5; emphas is added. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 7 1 g a r y k a f e r c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.161 new articles in this journal are licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 united states license. this journal is operated by the university library system of the university of p ittsburgh as part of its d-scribe digital p ublishing p rogram, and is co-sponsored by the university of p ittsburgh press. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/ http://www.pitt.edu/ http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/ http://www.upress.pitt.edu/upressindex.aspx http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ microsoft word 71-94 cold war moderns 7-27.docx vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.144 http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu spinifex people as cold war moderns greg castillo abstract aboriginal australian contemporary artists create works that express indigenous traditions as well as the unprecedented conditions of global modernity. this is especially true for the founders of the spinifex arts project, a collective established in 1997 to create so-called “government paintings”: the large-scale canvases produced as documents of land tenure used in negotiations with the government of western australia to reclaim expropriated desert homelands. british and australian nuclear testing in the 1950s displaced the anangu juta pila nguru, now known to us as the spinifex people, from their nomadic lifeworld. exodus and the subsequent struggle to regain lost homelands through paintings created as corroborating evidence for native title claims make spinifex canvases not simply expressions of tjukurpa, or “dreamings,” but also artifacts of the atomic age and its impact on a culture seemingly far from the front lines of cold war conflict. about the author greg castillo, an architectural and design historian, is an associate professor at the college of environmental design at the university of california, berkley, and a research associate at the united states studies centre at the university of sydney, australia. his work has focused on design politics in the early cold war era and the counterculture moment of the late ‘60s and early ‘70s. he has delivered public lectures at the new york museum of modern art, london’s victoria and albert museum, the national gallery of denmark and universities internationally. he is the author of numerous articles, anthology chapters, and the monograph cold war on the home front: the soft power of midcentury design (2010). contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.144 in early october 1986, a desert-dwelling family of a community known as the anagu tjuta pila nguru, or “people from the land of the spinifex” became the last aboriginal australians to abandon traditional nomadic life.1 a male elder who had escaped from the warburton mission with his young wife and stepdaughter twenty-five years earlier headed the family of seven.2 returning to the red-earth landscape of spinifex grass and mulga, they raised their children, remaining in the wilderness as family and friends departed for mission life. the family walked from rock hole to rock hole spearing kangaroo, emu, goanna, blue-tongued lizard and mallee hen: the last of five hundred generations to pursue this nomadic way of life across a stretch of remote country now stripped of all other residents. seeing the glint and streaks of aircraft in desert sky, they threw magical objects at them and sang protective songs. white people were ghosts traveling above them and across the land. they found clothes and pieces of metal left behind by desert visitors, studied tire track imprints, and carefully obscured their own tracks to avoid detection. the couple told their children that distant trains were roaring wati wanampi, venomous water-snake beings. from a hill overlooking the blackstone mission settlement (today, papulankutja) the children witnessed what they believed was a pitched battle between legendary warmala or warriors. the frightening vista was of an amateur football skirmish.3 it would be the family’s closest brush with the outside world until 1986. exiles living at the coonana settlement for those displaced by the maralinga nuclear tests of the 1950s believed their lost desert relatives dead. they were called kunmanara rather than by name, as required by aboriginal law. stories about the family’s survival continued to circulate, however, fueled by intermittent sightings of tracks and abandoned 1 “after the desert, an aboriginal faces the 20th century—and is frightened,” sydney morning herald, october 14, 1986, 3. protected by their relatives from contact by reporters and anthropologists, the family of seven largely have been forgotten as the last aboriginal australians to abandon nomadic life: a distinction usually given to the so-called “pintupi nine” retrieved from the desert in 1984, whom the australian broadcasting corporation celebrated thirty years later as “the last remaining group of indigenous australians to make contact with white australia” see alan mahony, “pintupi nine mark 30th anniversary of first contact with white australia,” abc news, november 4, 2014, accessed february 5, 2015, http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-10-24/pintupi-mark-anniversary-of-contact-with-white-australia/5840812. see also richard guilliatt, “whatever happened to the pintupi nine?” the australian, october 25, 2014. the self-designation “spinifex people” reflects the precedence of land-tenure identity over language-based classification systems favored by earlier anthropologists. scott cane, pila nguru: the spinifex people (fremantle: fremantle arts centre press, 2002), 189-190; 6063. for a summary history of western desert first contacts, see: philip batty, ed., colliding worlds: first contact in the western desert 1932-1984 (melbourne: museum victoria, 2006). 2 initial newspaper reports about the family mistakenly identified the clan’s male elder as the only member of the group to have had previous contact with euro-australian society, a fact corrected in a subsequent account, “the ‘lost tribe’ was right at home,” sydney morning herald, 10 november 1986, 6. newspaper accounts variously estimated the family’s desert stay at twenty-five to thirty-five years, and glen rictor as sixty to seventy years old. ethnographer scott cane’s version of events states that glen rictor left the warburton mission with his wife and her daughter from another partnership. estimates on the amount of time the family spent in the desert range from twenty-five to thirty-five years, depending on the news source. remarkably, no ethnographic study was ever done documenting the experience of this last aboriginal family to abandon pre-contact traditions of nomadic life. 3 “the ‘lost tribe’ was right at home”; “‘lost tribe’ now faces threat of white man’s diseases,” the age, october 14, 1986, 3; cane, pila nguru, 198, 188-89. spinifex people as cold war moderns greg castillo 7 3 g r e g c a s t i l l o contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.144 wiltja (windbreaks) across a two hundred kilometer expanse of the great victoria desert. in 1967, one of coonana’s expert trackers, jerome anderson, found footprints in the spinifex homeland that might have been those of the desert family. nearly twenty years later, a group from coonana set off in vehicles for a ceremonial visit to native land. they discovered fresh footprints and followed the trail for two days.4 one member of the party, fred grant, set off on foot one morning before dawn, using a torch of burning wood to light his way (fig. 1). hours later, he sighted the family. encamped in a wiltja, carrying wooden spears and implements, they were still painted with red, yellow and white ochre in preparation for the ritual reburial of a deceased relative.5 the three brothers fled. their adult half-sister approached, speaking an archaic dialect uninflected by the mixing of indigenous languages produced by life at resettlement missions.6 “they spoke really quickly, like a bird twittering,” recalled ian baird, a white aboriginal studies graduate from adelaide who accompanied the expedition and would become the community’s coordinator. “when they moved it was like they were moonwalking.”7 that night, the search party made camp and clothed the people they had once called kunmanara. reunited with kin, the husband and wife recognized relatives among the searchers. the male elder wept quietly upon hearing news of people he had not seen in decades. the newly extended clan set off the next morning. as the four-wheel drive lurched across rough terrain, the male elder became distressed and carsick. when the vehicle bogged down in sand, he leapt out and stripped off his newly acquired clothes. he was going home, and he ordered his kin not to follow. in the ensuing commotion he punished his stepdaughter, the first of his nomadic clan to speak to the strangers, by spearing her in the leg, and walked back into the desert. while his three oldest sons, aided by members of the search party, set off to find their father, the two women and the youngest boy were taken to coonana. within days the family was reunited at the mission. the former nomads took a new surname, rictor, based on that given to kin by missionaries. the brothers became ian, mick and willy; their parents, glen and dulcie rictor; the stepdaughter, angelina; and her son, damian. these euro-australian designations mediated the family’s contact with the outside world, with pitjatjantjara names now reserved for use by friends and kin. as news of the “lost tribe” spread, the community banned visits by reporters and eager anthropologists. it safeguarded members of the desert family at yakudunya, a remote outstation, to protect them from contact trauma and the threat of communicable diseases. angelina, today known as tjaruwa, instead chose to take damian north to begin a new life with relatives at blackstone (fig. 2).8 4 cane, pila nguru, 197-98. in 1983, while spinifex people were living at cundeelee, an earlier settlement for those displaced by the maralinga tests, an anthropologist brought a group of elders back to their ancestral lands for the first time in a generation, a trip that apparently catalyzed a renewed determination to resume custodial obligations. “elders blaze a trail back to yakudunya,” sydney morning herald, november 10, 1987, 6. 5 cane, pila nguru, 188-90. 6 “lost tribe walks into the world of ‘white ghosts,’” the courier mail, october 13, 1987, 3; cane, pila nguru, 63. 7 ian baird, quoted in chester quentin, “the spinifex people,” australian geographic 116 (sept./oct. 2013): 90. 8 “the ‘lost tribe’ was right at home,” 6. i am grateful to amanda dent and ian baird for correcting the inaccuracies embedded within newspaper reports of the 1980s. today, angelina paints under the name tjaruwa woods; ian rictor and nolie (or noley) rictor are also painters. 7 4 s p i n i f e x p e o p l e a s c o l d w a r m o d e r n s contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.144 figure 1 fred grant and carlene west, ukatjatjara, 2006. acrylic on linen, 183 x 137 cm. private collection (photo: courtesy spinifex arts project). grant and west worked together as husband and wife on this depiction of a northern section of spinifex country where grant grew up. the painting spans a large area of soaks and rockhole formations; major sites noted are ukatjatjara, tjutjala, pirapi, miramratjara, karnka, urtjul, yaltapii, tjitjjiti, puyuu, pinkatjara, muti-muti, and muntamatja. a tjitji (young boy) is shown camping near muti-muti. over the course of a year, media reports about the rictors percolated out of western australia. a barrage of time-worn tropes depicted the family as “the lost people,” “the forgotten nomads,” and “the last desert tribe.” the sydney morning herald reported: “the three sons, the younger woman and her little boy had never seen the modern world before.”9 newspaper readers remained blissfully ignorant of a facet of modernity to which the “last hunter-gatherers on earth” had been, quite literally, exposed. a thundering shudder glen rictor had felt while in the wilderness was that of a nuclear weapons test. he had hidden by digging a hole, climbing in, and covering himself with sand for protection. the same newspaper report noted that roy underwood and simon hogan, men who would become major spinifex painters a decade later, had also witnessed atomic tests at maralinga (fig. 3).10 at the 1984 royal commission into british nuclear tests in australia, carlene west and 9 ibid. 10 cane, pila nguru, 198, 189; “after the desert, an aboriginal faces the 20th century – and is frightened,” 3; “elders blaze a trail back to yakudunya,” 6. 7 5 g r e g c a s t i l l o contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.144 myrtle pennington testified that they had heard explosions, felt the earth tremble, and seen strange clouds that had “destroyed” sacred sites (fig. 4). given the revelations of the royal commission, which established that the boundaries of the nuclear test zone had never been secure, and that by 1960 authorities had accepted the fact that indigenous people were traversing the western edge of the prohibited area, these aboriginal women and men were by no means alone in having experienced a technological breakthrough that the vast majority of australians knew only from the safe distance of media abstractions.11 far from having “experienced modern living for the first time in twenty five years” at the time of his retrieval, glen rictor, as it turned out, was part of an avant-garde. cast as a human subject in an uncontrolled experiment in nuclear technology and displaced from his homelands by its radioactive contaminants, “old man” rictor and his spinifex kin were custodians of an ancient culture and, simultaneously, cold war moderns. it is impossible to know just what characterized cold war subjectivity for spinifex people. “modernity” and “cold war” are exogenous constructs, forged to give meaning to a vortex of historical events unleashed in places far from australia’s western desert, but which upended the lives of aboriginal nomads. like the subjects of the chernobyl catastrophe studied by anthropologist adriana petryna, spinifex people forged new individual and collective identities from their experience of displacement from “poisoned” lands, struggled with insecurity and a sense of injustice, and constructed from these realities new modes of citizenship and, eventually, novel covenants with government.12 the spinifex people’s cold war diaspora became a matter of legal record in their native title claim. it was memorialized in the theatre production career highlights of the mamu, which toured australia and took elder roy underwood and eight other spinifex people to hamburg in 2002 for the play’s international debut (fig. 4). in the apt words of a theater critic, “fission fused the spinifex folk.”13 as an american historian of cold war culture, i can only chronicle events associated with this indigenous contact with modernity, not the subjective responses it engendered. in any case, my goal lies elsewhere. this essay provides a context for understanding spinifex painting as what curator philip batty has called “intercultural debris”: products of a collision of lifeworlds (fig. 5).14 spinifex canvases—ranging from “government paintings,” as the artists call collective works created as documents of land tenure for native title tribunal proceedings (fig. 6), to works that have graced gallery walls in australia, europe and america—breathe life into endangered cultural traditions and convey their existence to inhabitants of an alternate reality that, time and again, has revealed its enormous power and capacity for indifference. within that realm, aboriginal cultural artifacts can be stripped of their complex origins, transformed into commodities, and circulated in market transactions between galleries and collectors. this essay is an intervention into that process. it is an attempt to inscribe into spinifex paintings a set of potent “dreamings”—not those of the aboriginal artists, but of a cold war society bent on mastering the dark arts of thermonuclear annihilation, no matter what the cost, in an illusive quest for security. the double entendre 11 tom gara, “walter macdougall and the emu and maralinga nuclear tests,” (undated conference paper), accessed 27 april 2009, www.history.sa.gov.au/history/conference/tom_gara2.pdf. 12 adriana petryna, life exposed: biological citizens after chernobyl (princeton: princeton university press, 2002). 13 ron banks, “how fission fused the spinifex folk,” the west australian (13 may 2002). 14 philip batty, “intercultural debris,” in philip batty, ed., colliding worlds first contact in the western desert 1932-1984 (melbourne: museum victoria, 2006), 2. 7 6 s p i n i f e x p e o p l e a s c o l d w a r m o d e r n s contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.144 nested in the title of the 2015 british museum blockbuster aboriginal australia: enduring civilization—an exhibition featuring works by ned grant, kunmanara (anne ngantiri) hogan, estelle hogan, simon hogan, myrtle pennington, ian rictor, ngalpingka simms, yarangka thomas, roy underwood, lennard walker, and tjaruwa woods—conveys the perplexing nature of our relationship as cultural contemporaries. with the exception of a set of historically significant works in the spinifex arts community collection, the artists’ entire production has left the desert destined for accession in private and institutional collections. just as spinifex people reclaimed responsibility for the custodianship of their desert homelands, custodianship of their artistic output is passed to those who purchase it, whether as impassioned collector, enlightened curator, or calculating investor. what follows is a narrative of events that entangle recent western history with that of the spinifex people. it is knowledge that can—and i believe should—transform our perception of the works of art entrusted to our care, and which serve as implicit memento mori of the cold war era. figure 2 tjaruwa woods, kamanti, 2009. acrylic on canvas, 109 x 135.5 cm. the lepley collection (photo: courtesy spinifex arts project). when she was a baby, the artist lived at kamanti. with its twin rockholes, kamanti has a double catchment of the water essential to survival under extremely harsh conditions. the wati kutjara (lizard men) songline, sometimes referred to as “two men dreaming,” runs through kamanti, making it an important site for tjukurpa. this painting, a dynamic virtual map of country, references many geographic sites bearing the presence of the tjukurpa fundamental to an understanding of country in its spiritual sense. 7 7 g r e g c a s t i l l o contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.144 figure 3 roy underwood, marutjinya, 2006. acrylic on linen, 105 x 161 cm. private collection (photo: courtesy spinifex arts project). the area of country described in this painting corresponds to underwood’s birthplace. four major sites are depicted: kalapi, marutjinya, tjutatjara, and mirukurtja: all surrounded by sandhills that are miil-miilpa (dangerously sacred). water in these sandhills is protected by a particularly powerful presence that can only be named or spoken about among senior, initiated, spinifex men. 7 8 s p i n i f e x p e o p l e a s c o l d w a r m o d e r n s contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.144 figure 4 carlene west, tjitjjiti, 2014, acrylic on linen, 200 x 137 cm. private collection (photo: courtesy spinifex arts project). from west’s account: “this painting represents tjitjjiti, a large salt lake. it is the site of the creation story of two women. this story involves two women walking across the big salt lake with a child. a stranger hails them, a quoll (a marsupial species) man, who tells them to hand over the child. the ladies ran, but the quoll man threw a spear that impaled the two women together with the child. this is a sad story. today those two women can still be seen standing at tjitjjiti.” a home of many hearths invariably, humans produce debris, intercultural or otherwise. residue scattered around waterholes in the great victoria desert attests to long-term occupation of a landscape considered uninhabitable by non-aboriginal australians. discarded artifacts fanning out several kilometers from water sources pepper the ground at a density of up to seven hundred pieces per square meter. a single site can contain as many as five hundred million fragments, according to anthropologist scott cane. to account for this density of debris, “fifty people would have to make and discard at least one hundred thousand artifacts a year over a ten thousand year period.”15 in fact, evidence suggests occupation of the spinifex homelands for the last forty thousand years, its pattern of habitation varying with shifts in climate. groups of nomads foraged within a radius of about twenty kilometers from permanent waterholes. temporary encampments punctuated the roving course of hunting 15 cane, pila nguru, 163. 7 9 g r e g c a s t i l l o contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.144 and food gathering. longer treks across drier landscapes moved from rock hole to rock hole to collect ochres and valuable raw materials or to visit ritual sites like those distributed through the expanse that in 1947 would become the “prohibited area” of the woomera rocket range. scouting locations for radiation-detecting sensors, a group of surveyors stumbled across one such totemic site in 1952, east of the spinifex homelands. range reconnaissance officer len beadell dubbed the find a “mysterious aboriginal ‘stonehenge.’” geometric arrangements of upended shale slabs stretching for sixty meters prompted him to photograph the stones “from every angle” and collect charcoal samples for carbon dating. in his memoirs, beadell wrote: there was an ironic clash of old and new here, as only a few short miles away the first mighty atomic bomb ever to be brought to the mainland of australia was to be blasted into immediate oblivion in several weeks’ time, and it was the by-products of this very weapon which could be used for determining the age of the charcoal from these prehistoric fires…. i couldn’t help asking myself what these people, had they still been here, would have imagined if they had witnessed the glow from our atomic upheaval followed by earth tremors and shock waves.16 beadell’s presumption that the aboriginal debris was “prehistoric” reflected a euro-australian conviction that the woomera range was long unoccupied, accounting as well for his matterof-fact attitude regarding the radioactive particles that were about to be strewn across the land. figure 5 spinifex community members with trevor jamieson in a performance of career highlights of the mamu at the adelaide festival, 2002 (photo: courtesy black swan theater company). 16 len beadell, blast the bush (willoughby: weldon, 1967), 172-176. 8 0 s p i n i f e x p e o p l e a s c o l d w a r m o d e r n s contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.144 as with their archaeological past, the spinifex people’s postwar fate can be interpreted from debris. weapons-grade plutonium is one of the most toxic substances on earth. a speck the size of the period at the end of this sentence, if inhaled, will cause cancer. the vixen “safety assessment tests” of 1959, two of approximately seven hundred “minor trials” conducted in secret between 1952 and 1963, involved setting plutonium ablaze in a simulated aircraft crash. another trial, code named taranaki, released a plume of plutonium detected in soil sampled more than thirty kilometers from the testing grounds. remediation entailed plowing contaminants into the surface and covering them with a thin layer of soil likely to be blown away by desert winds.17 plutonium has a half-life of twenty-four thousand years, meaning that in forty thousand years—the total duration of aboriginal land tenure in australia—plutonium dispersed within the woomera range (and, perhaps, beyond it) will retain more than one-quarter of its fatal radioactivity. 17 the 1985 royal commission revealed australia’s distinction as the only postwar western nation “where plutonium is dispersed without precise knowledge of how much is above and below the ground.” robert milliken, no conceivable injury (harmondsworth: penguin, 1986), 238-243. figure 6 kunmanara (bill) anderson, kunmanara (mark) anderson, byron brooks, kunmanara (cyril) brown, fred grant, ned grant, lawrence pennington, ian rictor, lennard walker, untitled (men’s native title painting), 1998. acrylic on canvas, 194.7 x 127.9 cm. spinifex arts community collection (photo: courtesy spinifex arts project). the men’s native title painting (and its women’s counterpart) documents traditional custodianship over lands from which spinifex people had been dispossessed. it served as evidence in the native title claim, negotiated between 1992 and 1998, which secured the rights of spinifex people as “traditional owners” of a 55,000 square kilometer homeland stretching across the great victoria desert. 8 1 g r e g c a s t i l l o contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.144 millennial land routes through the woomera rocket range linked spinifex homelands with the ooldea soak hole, located three hundred and fifty kilometers to the southeast, at the edge of the nullarbor plain. as the area’s sole permanent water source, ooldea held enormous importance both as a crossroads of trade-related travel, and as a ceremonial center at the junction of paths traversed by ancestral beings in the infinite past made present in the dreaming. over a decade before atomic testing began at woomera, ethnographer t.h. johnson reported the significance of its “great north-south route” in the proceedings of the royal geographical society. the aridity of the lands bisected by the route meant that travel was seasonal, with water along some stretches available only from plant roots.18 while incapable of supporting permanent habitation, the inhospitable corridors linking sacred waterholes with homelands were irreducible components of the nomadic landscape: a model of territorial occupancy that australian officials seemed incapable of comprehending. the reliable soak hole at ooldea also attracted the builders of the australian transcontinental railway, completed in 1917. ooldea served as a watering depot for steam engines, bringing indigenous nomads into contact with railway workers and travelers, with troubling consequences. forced to wear clothing, encouraged by the presence of tourists to beg for offerings, and loathe to resume a life of desert scarcity, aboriginal people at ooldea embarked upon the trajectory that anthropologists called “detribalization.” concerned for the welfare of indigenous people increasingly dependent upon exogenous foods and goods, daisy bates, an irish adventurer and philanthropist, set up camp at ooldea in 1919. established, in the words of historian ray acaster, “with the aim of helping the people she believed to be doomed to extinction to live out their final days with dignity,” bates’ camp was the site of the first recorded reference to “spinifex natives”: the term used in a 1934 ethnographic study by norman tindale.19 eight years later, anthropologists ronald and catherine berndt observed: ooldea may be their “home camp” now, but their spiritual camps are those at which they were born “way back spinifex” in their horde countries....[m]any of the sacred sites are far distant from ooldea, and although the myths with their ancestral tracks are in country not now visited by the majority, each physiographical characteristic is remembered by the initiated men.20 in 1951, tindale was shown a set of ritual objects at the aboriginal mission that had succeeded bates’ camp. he recorded the origin of the artifacts as “the native place of wayakula…in the vicinity of or west from the lake wyola of our maps.”21 in correlating a pitjatjantjara place name with a site in south australia, tindale had unwittingly revealed that spinifex homelands extended one hundred and forty kilometers within the woomera rocket testing range.22 his discovery, however, was of purely academic interest. geopolitical imperatives impelled policies portraying woomera as a wasteland where nuclear weapons 18 ray acaster, “worlds apart: atom bombs and traditional land use in south australia,” limina 1 (1995): 57-58. 19 cane, pila nguru, 68. 20 ronald and catherine berndt, quoted in acaster, “worlds apart,” 60. 21 norman tindale, quoted in cane, pila nguru, 72. 22 david nash, “pila nguru: the spinifex people” (book review), australian aboriginal studies 2 (2002): 97. tindale’s discovery calls into question acaster’s assertion that “there is no evidence to suggest that any aboriginal people lived in the test areas at the time of weapons testing,” a claim that is misleading given documentation of forced relocations just prior to the tests and concerted efforts by authorities to disseminate disinformation about test safety in order to preempt “the usual howl from the ‘ban the h bomb’ section of the community—communist and otherwise,” as stated by the australian defense minister in a confidential memorandum (milliken, no conceivable injury, 247). 8 2 s p i n i f e x p e o p l e a s c o l d w a r m o d e r n s contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.144 could be tested with “no conceivable injury to life, limb or property,” as pledged by australian prime minister robert menzies in 1953.23 terra nullius for the atomic age a final episode in the dispossession of australia’s first inhabitants unfolded halfway around the world during the late-1940s. with cold war hostilities escalating in europe, the british labour government no longer considered economic failure the nation’s primary threat, but rather a potential war with the communist east. rearmament became a priority, and the atomic bomb its weapon of choice. america’s proving grounds in nevada, with their access to us nuclear know-how, were the logical site for a british bomb test. however, information sharing on weapons development had ended along with world war ii. the first successful soviet atomic bomb test in 1949 provided humiliating proof that great britain had joined the ranks of postwar minor powers. production of a british plutonium implosion device similar to those detonated above hiroshima and nagasaki progressed behind a shield of secrecy. australia, which had signed a 1946 agreement for the cooperative development of a rockettesting range, would serve as the ground zero of last resort. when british military authorities arrived in australia to conduct their first test blast in the monte bello islands, eight kilometers off the northwest coast, the only information source they had consulted about the aboriginal population was the encylopaedia britannica.24 responsibility for insuring the safety of natives, indigenous and otherwise, fell to australian officials. the scope of their task expanded enormously when menzies authorized atomic testing within the woomera range. the decision, taken without cabinet discussion or public debate, effectively condemned the traditional land route linking ooldea to the spinifex homelands.25 coincidences aided and abetted the government decree. an extended drought had discouraged movement across the parched lands north of ooldea over the course of the 1940s. and in 1952, a year before the first test detonation at woomera, the united aboriginal mission at ooldea closed, a victim of internal administrative bickering. in any case, the ritual soak had vanished into the sand, destroyed when railroad operators attempting to extract more water than the source could provide punctured its underground clay pan. facing a forced move two hundred kilometers south to a lutheran mission at yalata, ooldea’s aboriginal tenants wailed with anguish. life on the grey soils of the nullarbor plain proved alienating; the red sands of the spinifex exerted an irresistible pull. when the secretary of the aboriginal protection board notified authorities at woomera of his intention to allow unhappy interns to depart for the north, he received a brusque response: “return of abos to ooldea would be undesirable in their own interests and could be a serious embarrassment to us.”26 two issues—nuclear ambition and public relations anxiety—would dominate australian policies affecting spinifex people for the next decade. to patrol a 100,000 square kilometer area, the weapons research establishment (wre) at woomera employed two men: walter macdougall, who had worked at missions in the kimberley and central australia, and robert macaulay, who had just received his degree in anthropology from the university of sydney. it was a hopeless task, given its gargantuan 23 milliken, no conceivable injury, 58. 24 ibid., 94-95. 25 ibid., 56. 26 ibid., 99-100. 8 3 g r e g c a s t i l l o contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.144 scope and laughable resources (fig. 7). macdougall in particular felt profound empathy for the people he was hired to safeguard. the same cannot be said of the wre, which in a classified document described his post as “an insurance policy ensuring that the department does not come under public criticism for interfering with the tribal natives.”27 in a 1955 adelaide newspaper interview, macdougall infuriated his employers by denouncing the weapons program’s impact upon aboriginal people as “contrary to the declaration of human rights in the united nations charter.”28 the accusation prompted the wre to marginalize his position, creating further difficulties in fulfilling its duties. torn by conflicting allegiances to his indigenous wards and the mandates of his job, macdougall ultimately served the latter, “proving himself ready on a number of occasions to interfere substantially and persistently in aboriginal lifestyles and wishes, when he believed government policy and need so dictated,” as stated in the report of the 1984 royal commission.29 figure 7 a signposted notice (in a language unintelligible to aboriginal nomads) warns of seven years imprisonment for trespassing the bounds of the maralinga nuclear test site at the woomera prohibited area in south australia. [source: australian national archive, series: a6457 (“photographs relating to atomic tests”), p042]. 27 ibid., 106. 28 ibid., 103. 29 g.m. eames and a.c. collert, “final submission by counsel on behalf of aboriginal organizations and individuals to the royal commission into british nuclear tests in australia,” quoted in maggie brady, “the politics of space and mobility: controlling the ooldea/yalata aborigines, 1952-1982,” aboriginal history 23 (1999): 4. 8 4 s p i n i f e x p e o p l e a s c o l d w a r m o d e r n s contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.144 confronted with the challenge of controlling hundreds of highly mobile desert people, macdougall developed a three-pronged strategy, identified by historian maggie brady as withholding rations, intercepting movement, and manipulating indigenous beliefs. the first two are fairly self-explanatory; the last had consequences perhaps more insidious than macdougall ever imagined. to curtail nomadic travel and alienate aboriginals from familiar lands, he revised indigenous myths, in his words: “using their own beliefs and fears of invisible spirits and invisible avengers [to] convince them that the area is no longer safe for them.”30 macdougall intervened when, in may 1957, workers at woomera discovered an aboriginal family of four camped at piling waterhole: a site associated with ritual ceremony and desert survival, and located five kilometers from the marcoo bomb crater blasted six months earlier. after technicians decontaminated the family and shot their dogs, macdougall told the adults that they had stumbled onto the site of a taboo “whitefella” corroboree. they were sworn to secrecy before being shipped off to yalata.31 far more destructive was macdougall’s manipulation of aboriginal myths regarding venomous wanampi serpents and the evil spirits called mamu. he informed nomads encountered in the desert and interned in missions that the bombs had released a deadly mamu poison across the woomera landscape. at yalata, where according to brady “radioactivity became known universally…as the ‘poison,’” interviews in the mid-1980s documented a continued belief that wanampi ran rampant at the weapons testing site, making travel there a fatal proposition.32 in formulating his warning in the tenets of another worldview, macdougall added an ontological contaminant to the radioactive fallout polluting their homelands. during the ensuing exodus, some refugees traveling died of thirst because, fearing “the poison” pervading ancestral lands, they refused to venture away from the safety of familiar tracks to obtain water sequestered in known locations beneath the desert surface. at the royal commission hearings, an aboriginal elder testified: “piling [rock hole] no good, kapi [water] no good. wiluna rock-hole, we can’t trust him, we can’t trust water near maralinga…. the bomb finished it.”33 it is, of course, possible that nomads eventually would have framed the poisoning of country in native terms. in any case, especially when writing for a non-aboriginal audience, it is impossible to overstate the cataclysm that this confluence of technological and supernatural toxins represented to spinifex people. among aboriginal nomads, personal identity from ritual rights to land tenure literally was defined by one’s umbilical relationship to country—that is, by the specific place where an infant shed its umbilical cord. the geographic site of conception determined which tjukurpa, or ancestral dreamings, entered a developing life.34 at the world’s first atomic detonation in the new mexico desert in 1945, a line from an ancient hindu text, the bhagavad-gita, occurred to physicist robert oppenheimer: “now i am become death, the destroyer of worlds.” it summarized perfectly the impact nuclear testing had upon an indigenous landscape saturated with meaning. 30 brady, “the politics of space and mobility,” 6. 31 acaster, “worlds apart,” 64; gara, “walter macdougall,” 2. 32 brady, “the politics of space and mobility,” 6. 33 scott cane, “sun and shadow,” in spinifex: people of the sun and shadow (bentley: john curtin university, 2012), 21; evidence given at the royal commission into the british nuclear tests in australia, quoted in acaster, “worlds apart,” 64. 34 individual custodianship of a desert site and its attendant dreamings is determined among nomads by their location in the landscape at the moment their umbilical cord detaches in infancy. for a discussion of land tenure and identity among spinifex people, see cane, pila nguru, 64-68. 8 5 g r e g c a s t i l l o contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.144 macdougall focused his efforts upon nomads at yalata, having dismissed “the possibility of aboriginal people entering the danger areas from the west, from the spinifex,” as historian tom gara notes. however, in 1956—the year that saw the first of seven atomic test detonations at maralinga—macdougall happened upon fifty-four nomads near the kulkapin rock hole, a collection point from which missionaries from cundeelee evacuated desert dwellers. none had ever encountered a non-indigenous person before. a sweep made in 1959 found thirty-four people living beside shell lakes, more than half of whom were making hunting trips to the east, many crossing into the weapons testing area. macdougall informed authorities at woomera: “there are natives living on the fringe of the maralinga prohibited zone and in the zone itself. natives travel through the area and reach a point at least halfway from the border to the forward area [the nuclear testing grounds].”35 in the same year, carlene anderson arrived in cundeelee, the western australian mission that collected many of the spinifex exiles. she had been with a large group of her people at the ilkurlka rock hole when intruders arrived in the company of a clothed aboriginal guide. “there were two white men with him who told us to move on,” anderson recalled decades later. the group, given clothing, walked on to rock holes at pauipya and iltun where a missionary in a jeep approached. “everyone was looking down. we were ashamed.” he told them to proceed to a collection point from which they were evacuated. “we were frightened about the bomb,” anderson confessed, “and didn’t go back.”36 in 1960, with jerome anderson as guide, patrols of the kulkapin, pirapi and pitjrinya soak holes found fifty-one desert residents. in the same year, a group of nomads encountered by a constable at serpentine lake, bordering the prohibited zone, “said they heard the atomic bomb at maralinga and were very frightened.”37 told by wre officials and indigenous guides that the land had been “poisoned” by nuclear testing, spinifex people left their homelands for mission life in ever-greater numbers. those who remained felt increasingly isolated and insecure in the desert, having lost the youths needed to parent new generations and the elders whose sacred knowledge provided protection in a landscape teeming with spiritual forces. as acaster notes, the diaspora from lands that “the bomb finished,” as dispossessed inhabitants believed, culminated a “process of lifestyle disintegration” that had begun generations earlier.38 homeward bound for spinifex people consigned to missions, nomadic mobility took new forms. at yalata, another manipulation of indigenous tradition curtailed the impulse to wander, particularly northward to ooldea and the test area beyond. responding to attempts by indigenous residents to leave the mission, macdougall devised a plan to keep aboriginals on the move within its boundaries instead. lutheran missionaries, anxious to remain in the good graces of woomera officials tracking the status of new interns, established multiple campsites on mission grounds. twenty years later, anthropologist sally white marveled at yalata’s unique pattern of internal migration, in which residents decamped several times a year to a different part of the reserve, never realizing that this nomadic tradition had been invented in the 1950s to keep an interned population away from the weapons range. “they were penned in,” 35 gara, “walter macdougall,” 2. 36 cane, pila nguru, 183. 37 ibid., 177, 180. 38 acaster, “worlds apart,” 65. 8 6 s p i n i f e x p e o p l e a s c o l d w a r m o d e r n s contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.144 maggie brady observed in 1999, “not by fences, but by the need for water supplies, their dependence on european rations, and the surveillance of the missionaries.”39 cundeelee mission, a government ration depot and the repository for many nomads removed from spinifex homelands, also reprised older patterns of movement. located two hundred kilometers east of kalgoorlie in western australia, cundeelee inadvertently preserved indigenous culture due to a meager level of subsidy. insufficient food rations impelled residents to maintain hunting and foraging skills. inadequate shelter encouraged the construction of traditional windbreaks. reliance on firewood for fuel compelled nomadic residency patterns as resources at a given site became exhausted. to supplement the pittance earned through the mission business of harvesting sandalwood, men at cundeelee sold boomerangs crafted with stone tools, and were declared the world’s last users of this paleolithic technology by american anthropologist brian hayden. after a stinging federal indictment of the settlement facilities, in the mid-1970s the australian evangelical mission withdrew, turning cundeelee over to department of aboriginal affairs (daa) administrators. they, in turn, closed the settlement within a few years due to deficiencies in its water supply, spreading dismay among wards of state subjected to yet another forced removal.40 residents were relocated to coonana, a former pastoral station transformed into a multi-million dollar daa settlement, and again situated in a landscape completely alien to the community it served. the multiple relocations of spinifex exiles occurred just as aboriginal australians elsewhere were mobilizing to reclaim their indigenous heritage and homelands. in 1972, a collective comprised of different desert peoples resettled at the federally operated papunya community in the northern territory established papunya tula artists pty. ltd., an aboriginal owned and operated artists’ cooperative. on the heels of a cultural renaissance that used industrially produced paints and surfaces to express ancestral narratives of territorial custodianship, the northern territory’s 1976 aboriginal land rights act provided legal recourse for indigenous australians wishing to claim traditional ownership of country through evidence of longstanding association. across the desert during the course of the 1970s, thousands of aboriginal people, encouraged by new government policies of selfdetermination, abandoned government relocation settlements (along with their underlying rationale of assimilation) to return “back to country” in an epoch-defining outstation movement. for spinifex people, a return to ancestral lands had life-or-death implications. while youths living in government or mission settlements may have enjoyed their proximity to mining towns, elders feared the disastrous consequences, particularly in regard to alcohol consumption. in a 1987 interview, senior spokesman mark anderson explained: “a mamu (evil spirit) got hold of our people at cundeelee and led them into town to die. we were drinking.” reginald anderson concurred: “we hung around kalgoorlie. we were drinking and many of us passed away…. we lost our country. we lost our country.” pointing to his head, he added: “we kept it in here.”41 (fig. 8) 39 brady, “the politics of space and mobility,” 8-9. brady’s account contains this remarkable footnote: “lutherans of the time believed that aborigines were ‘communists’ in that they had no individual property ownership.” 40 cane, pila nguru, 190-96. 41 “the ‘lost tribe’ was right at home,” 6. 8 7 g r e g c a s t i l l o contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.144 figure 8 kunmanara (mark) anderson and kunmanara (ester) rice, paltju, 2005. acrylic on linen, 140 x 83 cm. private collection (photo: courtesy spinifex arts project). centered on paltju, an important water soak in the western portion of spinifex country, this painting represents an expanse of approximately one hundred square kilometers. as people moved across this area, extensive and precise knowledge about the location and reliability of water sources was essential. anderson and rice, a husband and wife team, depict an array of water-retaining rock hole formations bounded by numerous small soaks found in the surrounding sandhill terrain. the artists have included the watering sites of paramanti, pakar, kaltjumurtja, tjaning, tjampirngka, umpun kurli, tjirukuna, putumuturatjara, waru, tjuntjun, tarantjara, wanupi, ilkurlka, ilkurlka-mama, wakarnurma, mamutu, tjata, tjata-pulka, and paltju. elders fomented an exodus from cundeelee. in 1983, daa officials relented and acquired a sixteen thousand acre lease at the yakatunya rock hole, a site charged with cultural significance, unlike coonana. with a compensation award from the royal commission, the community built their road back home. elder simon hogan, a “walking encyclopedia” of indigenous tradition, trekked three hundred kilometers from yakatunya to the northern margin of spinifex country, blazing a path from rock hole to rock hole as his son followed behind driving a road grader.42 the new route permitted access to what would become the most remote outstation settlement in australia. located in the southeastern corner of the spinifex homelands, tjuntjunjara comprised a group of canvas windbreaks arrayed around permanent structures including a store, clinic, community office and school. life there quickly conformed to seasonal rhythms, with sojourns for ceremonial “business,” and cross-country travel to hunt, harvest medicinal plants, and collect the ochre, feathers and stones used in ceremonies. the move to tjuntjunjara brought full circle the spinifex people’s “long days,” as they call their recent history. their cold war peregrinations ended with a return to country while it was still possible, guided by elders with living memories of the homeland and its spiritual 42 cane, pila nguru, 196-98. 8 8 s p i n i f e x p e o p l e a s c o l d w a r m o d e r n s contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.144 forces. elders also assumed the functions of a political and artistic avant-garde. in 1992, a landmark decision by the australian high court to recognize native title in the mabo v. queensland suit overturned the legal doctrine of terra nullius. within a year, spinifex people launched their own claim process. their first visit to the national native title tribunal marked the first time the body had met directly with aboriginal petitioners, rather than their legal and anthropological representatives. spinifex seniors disclosed their intentions to mining company executives, securing an agreement to withdraw all mineral exploration applications. talks with aboriginal kinsmen to the north and east of spinifex country yielded an agreement on territorial boundaries, permitting formal submission of a native title application in october 1994.43 in 1997, with their native title application well underway, community members whose birthplace in spinifex country would constitute grounds for the claim of traditional ownership began painting. the new practice took the encampment at tjuntjuntjara by storm, with up to a third of its residents working first on cardboard, then on canvas boards, and finally on canvas. discussions of places of origin and their associated tjukurpa preoccupied the new artists as they worked through the day and often into the night.44 the resulting series of small experimental works, now in the spinifex arts community collection under the denomination of “government paintings,” provided the skills necessary to produce a collaborative painting that would document the responsibilities and embodied knowledge implicit in the native title claim. with assistance from community arts coordinator louise allerton, elders created a map of birthplaces as preparation for a large canvas that would serve as legal evidence of traditional land ownership. the process and its proposed product, an artifact crafted explicitly for the public disclosure of the birthrights associated with sacred places—some ascribed with extreme ontological peril—had no historical precedent for spinifex people or their culture. negotiations soon revealed that men and women would not be able to share their ritual knowledge on the same collective canvas: neither wanted the other group present while marking out gender-specific secrets.45 the pair of large untitled compositions that emerged from group consultation, enshrined as the women’s and men’s native title paintings of 1998, established the guidelines for spinifex painting as a contemporary practice, recently glossed by curators ross chadwick, john cruthers, and carly lane as follows: “unless married, men and women usually work separately; each gender owns and paints their own ancestral narratives; and within that gender division, collaboration is encouraged—indeed, it is an essential element of practice.”46 the first two collective paintings were unveiled at the signing of a native title framework agreement in july 1998 at miramiratjara, an oasis in a remote northeastern corner of spinifex country, and a site so charged with metaphysical dangers that elders entered in advance to introduce the place to its new visitors. when he arrived by helicopter, the premier of western australia, richard court, was only the third white australian to ever see the sacred water source.47 the event encapsulated a tension permeating spinifex painting: a representational practice that encodes traditionally guarded 43 cane, “sun and shadow,” 21-22. 44 luise allerton, “recollections of the spinifex arts project,” in spinifex: people of the sun and shadow (bentley: john curtin university, 2012), 26. 45 ibid., 28. 46 ross chadwick, john cruthers, and carly lane, “the exhibition,” in spinifex: people of the sun and shadow (bentley: john curtin university, 2012), 12. 47 cane, “sun and shadow,” 22. 8 9 g r e g c a s t i l l o contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.144 knowledge on permanent materials created for broad circulation (rather than as an ephemeral pattern, destined for erasure after ritual use, on a surface of sand or skin) in order to make ancestral land tenure publically and politically explicit. a market for spinifex works emerged between 1999 and 2000 when a traveling exhibition featuring the native title and government paintings toured half a dozen australian cities. coincident with a moment of ebullient expansion in aboriginal art sales, the debut of a new cohort of indigenous painters excited gallery owners as well as the artists themselves, who eagerly embraced the affirmation of their traditional ownership of country and its cosmologies, and the novel offer of remuneration for documenting their custodial authority.48 as the anthropologist john carty points out: “painting, spinifex style, is a form of evidence.”49 the spinifex arts project, with its inherently political goals, anteceded the commercial market for its aesthetic production, which has consequently charted a somewhat different course than that of other western desert “schools.” with public disclosure of the carefully guarded stories and sites of ancestral dreamings made a priority by the native title process, the imperative to render visible the unspeakable continues to dominate spinifex painting. a vivid iconography depicting the footprints, pathways, and animal silhouettes of specific tjukurpa, purged from the output of more circumspect aboriginal art collectives, remains a feature of spinifex works.50 while making collective paintings, artists often sing the songlines being committed to canvas (fig. 9 and 10).51 their ability to depict dreaming narratives while safeguarding restricted content may be related to the exogenous materials of contemporary painting. when allerton asked spinifex men why they tended to mark out the overall design of paintings in red, wondering if the choice of color was related to the ceremonial uses of natural ochre, their reaction quickly let her know that the topic “was an absolute no-go zone.” since spinifex artists, unlike contemporaries farther north, have avoided painting with natural ochres, it is possible, as allerton suggests, that modern materials like synthetic acrylic paints insulate aesthetic production from ritual ceremony, making the results “safe” for viewing by the uninitiated.52 48 allerton, “recollections of the spinifex arts project,” 30. on the growth and nature of the market for aboriginal contemporary art, see: meaghan wilson-anastasios, “joining the dots: analysing the sustainability of the australian aboriginal art market,” diogenes 58 (2011): 22-34. 49 john carty, “seeing the desert for the trees: the gift of spinifex art,” in spinifex: people of the sun and shadow (bentley: john curtin university, 2012), 43. 50 in particular, the punu ngura project initiated by hector burton and a group of amata men at tjala arts represented an attempt among senior male artists to limit the acceptable subject matter for painting to representations of trees. maintaining that aboriginal contemporary art had exposed too much sacrosanct content in return for cash, burton and his allies used trees to “build a fence” around their culture. his allegations reached their flashpoint in the delayed opening of the 2014 ngintaka (seven sisters songline) exhibition at the south australian museum in adelaide. burton’s accusations are presented in nicolas rothwell, “songlines project sparks indigenous culture war,” the australian, march 22, 2014. a dissenting opinion is presented by bob gosford in “for shame, nicolas rothwell,” crikey, march 31, 2014. accessed february 21, 2105, http://blogs.crikey.com.au/northern/2014/03/31/why-nicolas-rothwell-should-be-ashamed/. 51 carty, “seeing the desert for the trees,” 42. 52 allerton, “recollections of the spinifex arts project,” 32. 9 0 s p i n i f e x p e o p l e a s c o l d w a r m o d e r n s contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.144 figure 9 spinifex arts project members kunmanara (anne ngantiri) hogan, tjaruwa woods, yarangka thomas, ngalpingka simms, and myrtle pennington painting the womens’ collective canvas kungkarangkalpa, featured in the 2015 british museum exhibition indigenous australia: enduring civilization. (photo: courtesy of the spinifex arts project and redot gallery). the custodianship of ancestral country central to spinifex artists and their work prompts the art historian ian mclean to characterize their oeuvre as “neo-traditional.” this is not to say anti-modern: the processes of modernity that have touched indigenous australian lives have been used as opportunities to revive older relationships with the land and its songlines. “neo-traditionalism is not a return to how things were (i.e. traditionalism), or a nostalgia for what once was (i.e. conservatism),” mclean writes, “but the use of traditions to reinvigorate and give direction to contemporary life.” 53 one of these is inherent in the use of the term anagu tjuta pila nguru, or “people from the land of the spinifex”: an elective identity that implicitly rejects the western ethnographic practice of identifying australian aboriginal people not by territory, but by language group; for example, pitjatjantjara, arrernte, lurtja, warlpiri, etc. the embrace of tradition is also visible in the visual language to which spinifex artists adhere. while the medium of acrylic paint on canvas or linen is contemporary, as is the vibrant palette that the spinifex women adopted right from the start of their career as painters, the iconography that they employ remains consistent with that long used throughout the western desert to communicate by drawing in sand. curators and collectors use terms like “old worldliness” or “unmistakably spinifex” to describe the artists’ 53 ian mclean, “spinifex art: the aesthetic politics of neo-traditionalism,” in tupun nguranguru: people of the sandhill country (melbourne: vivien anderson gallery, 2012), 5. 9 1 g r e g c a s t i l l o contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.144 loyalty to formal legacies no longer in fashion at the top rung of the aboriginal contemporary art market.54 angelina tjaruwa woods, the youngest and most experimental of first generation spinifex artists, has come closest to the abstraction highly prized in the marketplace. she created a cluster of paintings in 2009 and 2010 that explored the technique of dissolving traditional iconography in clotted pools of dots that alternately obscured and revealed the familiar forms of concentric rock holes and their connecting pathways. the most radical of these works, kamanti (fig. 2), now in the lepley collection, proved irresistible to collectors: “i could have sold that painting five times,” recalls gallery manager mirri leven.55 shortly after this experiment with an unorthodox mode of expression, woods’ work moved back toward clarity of form, featuring legible symbols immured in fields of color. her most recent compositions are consistent with the distaste for expressionistic dotting asserted by her senior peers.56 just as with other works of contemporary art, spinifex paintings are now produced as a commodity; however, their neotraditional representational imperative remains potent enough to resist compromise by market influences. with respect to their own community, artists paint homeland narratives to allow family who may not have visited their country to view and understand its tjukurpa through its visual iconography, according to richard brookes, a senior spinifex traditional landowner.57 the indigenous didactic function of a process that also yields works of art for external consumption establishes the cultural limits of the critique of the market for nostalgic “primitivism” made by the aboriginal artist and activist richard bell in 2003, now known as bell’s theorem: “aboriginal art – it’s a white thing.”58 on the contrary, in adopting an exogenous art medium and its materials, spinifex elders, the bearers and guardians of cultural tradition, have elected to transform it in ways of their choosing. in particular, contemporary art has fundamentally altered traditional attitudes about the disposition of objects belonging to the deceased. among western desert peoples, the elimination of all traces of the departed by burning former possessions, even wiping way footprints, accompanies an intense early phase of mourning. the senior painter lennard walker, however, affirms the revolutionary transformation initiated by contemporary creative practice: “when i die my paintings will keep going. they will stay around forever and keep telling the story of kamanti, where i was born.”59 the ability to fashion permanent representations of an individual’s connection to place and its tjukurpa has not only imparted a sense of pride, but also inaugurated a profound shift in the temporality inherent in artifacts of aboriginal material culture intended for unrestricted viewing in everyday settings. 54 allerton, “recollections of the spinifex arts project,” 30, 33. 55 mirri leven, conversation with author, bondi beach, july 2013. 56 carty, “seeing the desert for the trees,” 50. 57 louise allerton, “walka tjukurpa wirutjara: painting good stories,” in tupun nguranguru: people of the sandhill country (melbourne: vivien anderson gallery, 2012), 3. 58 the aphorism appears on bell’s painting scientia e metaphysica (bell’s theorem), which won the 2003 telstra national aboriginal & torres strait islander art award. 59 lennard walker quoted in allerton, “walka tjukurpa wirutjara: painting good stories,” 3. 9 2 s p i n i f e x p e o p l e a s c o l d w a r m o d e r n s contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.144 figure 10 kunmanara (anne ngantiri) hogan, tjaruwa woods, yarangka thomas, estelle hogan, ngalpingka simms and myrtle pennington, kungkarangkalpa, 2013, acrylic on linen, 197 x 223 cm. british museum (photo: courtesy spinifex arts project and redot gallery). six senior spinifex women have painted country associated with their birthplaces as well as the kungkarangkalpa (seven sisters) songline. this is an epic tjukurpa which covers the vast tracts of land in the spinifex claim area depicted here (although the seven sisters songline in fact extends much further afield). while elements of this story are highly sacred and secret, covering aspects of sexual life and women’s rights of passage, the outline of the story is public knowledge. it chronicles the travels of the women through country as they attempt to avoid the unwanted attention of a lustful man named nyiiru. these creation beings left existing land forms in the wake of their travels and adventures; the seven sisters story also accounts for the formation of the pleiades constellation in the southern hemisphere’s night sky. spinifex paintings, as mclean observes, are “not just documents of ownership but also the pretext for reoccupying county and in a literal sense refiguring it for the modern revival of traditional cosmology.”60 today, toyota land cruisers return the artists to country for 60 mclean, “spinifex art,” 5. 9 3 g r e g c a s t i l l o contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.144 plein air painting camps where, for example, a group of senior women might stake out a spot on a sand dune at a salt lake to sing and paint its seven sisters dreaming into life.61 the vital bond with country, like its expression in art, has endured the fluctuations of political regimes and art markets because it is nothing less than the lived truth of spinifex people. one of its most eloquent spokesmen remains “old man” glen rictor, who in 1986, after ending his desert isolation, explained his relationship to the land and its sacred law to a reporter from the sydney morning herald: “it was good out there. good country. always water out there…. i looked after my country.” without its people, the land had been left “an orphan,” roaming and lost “without parents to go to.” with resettlement at tjuntjuntjara and the resumption of custodial rituals, the land had recovered its caretakers, and the caretakers their lifeworld. a newspaper account of the elder rictor’s first visit to his homeland after abandoning nomadic life for the company of spinifex kin conveys the sense of reunion with country for one of its custodians: “he galloped up the sandhills with ease and began to exude a happiness that his people had never seen before.”62 acknowledgements: the author owes a debt of gratitude to ian baird, amanda dent, robyn and mattias kelch, fred myers, and terry smith for their comments and corrections; and to the redot gallery and the spinifex arts project for the generous provision of illustration images. 61 allerton, “recollections of the spinifex arts project,” 34. 62 “the ‘lost tribe’ was right at home,” 6. 9 4 s p i n i f e x p e o p l e a s c o l d w a r m o d e r n s contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.144 new articles in this journal are licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 united states license. this journal is operated by the university library system of the university of pittsburgh as part of its d-scribe digital publishing program, and is co-sponsored by the university of pittsburgh press. 6 kim review vol 2, no 1 (2012) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2012.46 http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu review the new woman international: representations in photography and film from the 1870s through the 1960s edited by elizabeth otto and vanessa rocco gyewon kim abstract a review of elizabeth otto and vanessa rocco’s edited volume the new woman international: representations in photography and film from the 1870s through the 1960s, published in 2011 by the university of michigan press. about the author gyewon kim is the robert and lisa sainsbury fellow at the university of london/east anglia. contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 1, no 1 (2011) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2012.46 there have been many books and discussions centered on modern femininity in the field of literature. in the course of the 1990s, the “new woman” began to be presented as an important object of analysis in various fields of studies from literary criticism and history to cultural and feminist studies and political science. in these studies, the new woman has been dealt with as a mode of address, through which modernity and modernism can be rethought from the different perspectives of gender and sexuality. such explorations are surely correct to call attention to the importance of other aspects of modernity, entailing provoking questions about the body, sexuality, and representation in conjunction with the formations of massive material culture at the turn of the twentieth century. yet because of this, their emphasis easily falls on a sort of a western-centered modern, tending to remove different pictures taken from different geographies across the world. in this context, a recently published volume of essays on the new woman, the new woman international, is especially interesting and meaningful. its essays derive from a symposium held at the international center of photography in new york in 2007 and were collected into a rather inclusive volume on the international dimension of new womanhood. the essays in this book thus precede the contemporary scholarly interests in globalism, building on and responding to the new woman as a gendered paradigm that was masstargeted and disseminated in the process of late-nineteenth globalization. in other words, the most remarkable challenge of this book comes from its attempt to broaden the scope in which modern femininity has been discussed. its ambition is to illuminate the transnational dimension of new womanhood, which has received only limited attention in the previous scholarship. its expansive angle then reaches various cases of euro-america, india, east asia, south america and other countries, just as the “new woman” herself developed as a global and international phenomenon. such a wider perspective is proper and timely, especially when considering the contested idea of globalism and modernization that has been challenged by critical theories and postcolonial discourses.1 this approach seems similar to that of an anthology published in 2008, entitled the modern girl around the world, which calls attention to the “modern girl” as heuristic device and method of connective comparison.2 and yet the essays of the new woman international merits consideration both as whole and separately, given their broader attentions to multiple ways of displaying new womanhood, rather than particular traits that were used to define 1 for the contested notion of modernity and its colonial root, see timothy mitchell, “the state of modernity,” questions of modernity, ed. timothy mitchell (minneapolis: university of minnesota press, 2000), 1-34; depesh chakrabarty, provincializing europe (new jersey: princeton university press, 2000); tani e. barlow, ed., formations of colonial modernity, (durham: duke university press, 1997); and thomas lamarre, “introduction: impact of modernities.” traces 3: a multilingual series of cultural theory and translation, ed. thomas lamarre and kang nae-hui (hong kong: hong kong university press, 1994), 1-35. 2 tani e. barlow, ed., the modern girl around the world: consumption, modernity, and globalization (durham and london: duke university press, 2008), 2. review the new woman international: representations in photography and film from the 1870s through the 1960s edited by elizabeth otto and vanessa rocco gyewon kim 9 7 g y e w o n k i m contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 2, no 1 (2012) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2012.46 modern girl – bobbed hair, painted lips, provocative clothing, elongated body, etc.3 with larger concerns about modern femininity, the essays anticipate basic questions about the politics of gendered identity in relation to the visual economy of modernity, in which the new woman appeared, was represented, and circulated. the emphasis on the visual is then not only to introduce the overarching principles that incorporate different practices in different locales, but concurrently to pose critical questions of where and how new womanhood was formulated, performed, and embodied. while seeking to track modern femininity across the world, the new woman international thus draws upon its specific aspects of femininity that inhabit the visual. as the editors clearly point out, the new woman is an inherently visual phenomenon, most deeply rooted in, and debated through, images and representations.4 the questions of identity are then addressed via questions of vision and media, especially photography and film, which operated as catalysis in the process of self-determination, mass production, and global reproduction of new womanhood. for example, melody davis attempts to associate the ambiguous identities of the american new woman with the parallax view of stereoscope, both of which embody oscillation between different genders and fields of vision. gianna carotenuto points out that the new woman based on victorian virtues co-opted, depended on, and disseminated in colonial india the visual trope of harem photography rather than excluding it. at the same time, colonial imaginary was circulated in a reverse way, as brett m. van hosen indicates, in european metropoles like germany, since its exotic icons could support and supplement a still fragile identity of the weimar new woman. on the other hand, other essays suggest that film-based technologies were not only the main locus wherein new woman figures were represented, but also spaces where those figures could perform themselves, prominently featuring their freedom, mobility, and artistic sensibility. elizabeth otto, among others, traces the artistic trajectories of marianne brandt, a bauhaus female artist, in conjunction with the shifting trajectories of her gender identities. in the same vein, clare rogan explores in depth how germaine krull’s photographs of lesbian scenes set up a table upon which to play with different gazes, sexualities, and powers. by highlighting the active visual engagement of the new woman, this book invites us to the yet uncharted territory of “feminine modernism,” shaped and reshaped as a parallel to the emergence of new visual technologies, democracy, and urban culture.5 ultimately, the new woman international attempts to move beyond the general historiography of modernism that has tended to place the male viewer and creator at the center of culture. certainly, the somehow universal claims – the global and the visual – introduce to us multiple histories from multiple geographies, especially when they come into local specificity. interestingly enough, the cosmopolitan vision embedded in new womanhood did not necessarily result in homogeneous practices, just as modern global capitalism could not level different cultural and political forces behind the different formations of modernity. its radical diversity, conversely, led to the relationship of the new woman to other social issues, such as class and race, nationalism and colonialism, and war and fascism. by putting the local in dialogue with the global, the essays of the new woman international address the diverse conditions and multiple interactions of images and ideas of the new woman. 3 elizabeth otto and vanessa rocco, eds. the new woman international: representations in photography and film from the 1870s through the 1960s (ann arbor: university of michigan press: 2011), 6. 4 ibid., 2. 5 ibid., 4. 9 8 r e v i e w contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 1, no 1 (2011) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2012.46 despite the volume’s contributions, what is not entirely clear to me is how such a dialogue works out in the critique of absolute and one-directional modernity. surely this anthology gives us an expansive picture of modern femininity, but it does not radicalize the question of the synchronicity or contemporaneity of new womanhood.6 how does the book, as a whole, reveal the linkage between the coincidental developments of female images and representations in different geographies? what vision and perspective does this book provide regarding the relationship between empires and peripheries? for example, how can we consider the almost simultaneous appearance of the american new woman and japanese geisha in american stereoscopic views? what are the parameters of comparing and contrasting the radical differences in visuality that exist in photographs taken in colonial india and colonial korea? why were such visual differences produced, despite the common ideas, figurations, and backdrops of new womanhood they shared? while each essay conveys rich sources and stories that urge us to think of diversity, still unclear to me is what perspective this book, as a whole project, suggests that we take in order to readdress the problem of modernity through the very notion of multiplicity. was new womanhood a mutual formation from heterogeneous geographies? what is at stake in the comparisonism and collectivism? miriam silverberg, in her recent work published in the modern girl around the world, attempts to expand the discursive boundary of the modern girl, by looking closely at the “girls” outside the metropole – daughters of the colonizers and the colonized, collaborators and adventurers. this is not to add the issue of periphery as an appendix to the main narrative of modernity, but to bring up the very problem of the concept of “global” underlying the emergence of the modern girl, which she calls “modern fantasies of universality” prevalent in early phases of globalization. silverberg points out that the analogy between japanese and european girls that appeared in japanese ads does not merely illustrate the cosmopolitan nature of the modern girl, but more importantly shows how ideologies of universalism could be quickly displaced by female references to racial phantoms – that is, one extreme could follow the other.7 for silverberg, then, the modern girl as a globalized phenomenon is not a given history, but a heuristic device, through which one complicates the abstracted norms of modernization and racialization, which prioritize the west as an origin as well as a model of modernity. following from silverberg’s discussion, it seems to me that the diversification of modern femininity would only take on theoretical force, if it is posed as a challenge to specific modalities of unification, and particularly to histories of modernity as geopolitical as well as gendered paradigms. in other words, the goal of multiplicity would be to excavate the contingency of the emergence of a modern form of absolutism, which would also make it possible to imagine other outcomes, other political possibilities, than what we call the modern. the new woman international provides us a standpoint from which we can contemplate modern femininity from a panoramic perspective, and i hope this expansive vision will serve as a means of reflecting the larger capitalist world system and the geopolitically charged power that staged and was staged by modernity. 6 conversely, we may want to come to mind here johannes fabian’s critique of modernity and its structure of “temporal othering.” he points out that it is the very habit of the modern that projects its others into the past. within this temporal schema, synchronicity or contemporaneity is a mere fantasy of modernity itself, unless we begin with the coevalness of the other. see johannes fabian, time and the other: how anthropology makes its object (new york: columbia university press, 2002). 7 see miriam silverberg, “after the grand tour: the modern girl, the new woman, and the colonial maiden,” the modern girl around the world: consumption, modernity, and globalization, alys eve weinbaum et al., eds. (chapel hill: duke university press, 2008), 360. 9 9 g y e w o n k i m contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 2, no 1 (2012) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2012.46 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-noncommercial-no derivative works 3.0 united states license. this journal is operated by the university library system of the university of pittsburgh as part of its d-scribe digital publishing program, and is co-sponsored by the university of pittsburgh press. microsoft word 24-44 taboo icons 7-27.docx vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.141 http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu taboo icons the bodily photography of andres serrano tyler shine abstract andres serrano’s photography is often dismissed as being shocking for the sake of being shocking. his infamous photograph piss christ (1987) is the oft-cited example at the center of the national endowment for the arts controversies during the culture wars of the 1980s and 1990s. i return to piss christ as a way to expand the interpretative scope of serrano’s early photographs, which i call “taboo icons” because of their ambiguity and ability to crisscross symbolic boundaries in the unstable space between sacred and profane, thus making his images both powerful and potentially dangerous. building upon previous scholarship that draws connections between modern and early modern aesthetic practices, i look to the material practices of christianity in medieval europe characterized by a sophisticated visual culture that mixed both the physical and the spiritual. the intensifying rejection and reverence of matter resulted in divergent responses, yet the contradictory nature of matter remained central to the ideological beliefs of christianity where the doctrines of creation, incarnation, and resurrection are at its core. serrano’s visceral photographs are emphatically material and can productively be read vis-à-vis medieval visual culture. in doing so, this reading changes the narrow perception of serrano’s early photographs and provides an alternative understanding of his artistic project that reinserts religion into contemporary american art discourse. about the author tyler shine is a recent graduate of the university of maryland, college park where he received his ma in art history. during summer 2015 he will be assisting with exhibition research in the department of photographs at the national gallery of art in washington, d.c. he plans to pursue a phd in art history focusing on modern and contemporary art. contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.141 “to me they’re icons…i’ve never felt that i destroy icons, i just feel as if i’m developing new ones.” andres serrano1 two decades ago a photograph of a small wooden and plastic crucifix immersed in a plexiglas tank of urine prompted a maelstrom of responses ranging from fascination to disgust. suspended in an ethereal mist of red and orange hues and surrounded by constellations of tiny bubbles, this tiny crucifix appears to emit a mesmerizing and radiant yellow light that sutures the viewer’s gaze to the image (fig. 1). andres serrano’s infamous 1987 photograph, piss christ, in addition to his early photographs depicting bodily fluids, are often framed solely within the context of the national endowment for the arts (nea) controversies during the culture wars of the late 1980s and early 1990s. i return to piss christ as a way into a discussion that expands the interpretative scope of serrano’s early photographs, which i would like to call “taboo icons” because of their ambiguity and ability to crisscross symbolic boundaries. taboo icons are in a dialectical relationship in which two seemingly antithetical elements are entangled in the unstable spaces of the sacred and profane, creating images that are simultaneously traditional, polarizing, and can be perceived as dangerous. numerous studies have examined the relationships between “modern” and “early modern” artistic practices, which suggest an ongoing fascination with temporalities and the social biography of objects moving across time in a variety of ways.2 however, serrano is usually mentioned briefly or not at all in these studies. for example, in medieval modern: art out of time, alexander nagel imaginatively discusses the ways in which modern and contemporary artists have deliberately and, at other times, unintentionally “put preenlightenment modalities back into operation.”3 nagel wants to “steer clear of loudly iconographic medievalism” and instead focuses on what he identifies as the “deeper structural analogies” shared between medieval and modern art, such as “questions regarding the generation and dissemination of images; site-specificity and mobility; fetishism and iconoclasm; memory and anachronism; and authorship and authority.”4 serrano would probably be excluded from this conversation for the “loud iconographic medievalism” of his early photographs, yet this is a missed opportunity to examine serrano’s abstract bodily fluids photographs outside of the nea controversies. mieke bal, eleanor heartney and alexander nagel’s works are instructive examples offering possible strategies to liberate serrano’s photographs from the straightjacket of the culture wars. in quoting caravaggio: contemporary art, preposterous history, bal proposes a way of dealing with “the past today” in what she terms “preposterous history,” which “puts 1 linda weintraub, art on the edge and over: searching for art's meaning in contemporary society, 1970s-1990s (litchfield, ct: art insights, inc., 1996), 162. 2 for example, mieke bal, quoting caravaggio: contemporary art, preposterous history (chicago: university of chicago press, 1999); amy powell, depositions: scenes from the late medieval church and the modern museum (new york: zone books, 2012); alexander nagel, medieval modern: art out of time (new york: thames & hudson, 2012). 3 nagel, medieval modern, 9-10. 4 ibid., 10. taboo icons the bodily photography of andres serrano tyler shine 2 6 t a b o o i c o n s contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.141 what came chronological first (‘pre-‘) as an aftereffect behind (‘post-‘) its later recycling.”5 the recycling of ideas is helpful in avoiding linear accounts of art which presuppose that tradition is unified and stable. in her discussion of serrano, bal briefly touches upon piss christ and focuses predominately on the morgue (cause of the death) series. however, the other abstract bodily fluid photographs are consistently overlooked by commentators. building on these scholars’ writings, i take serrano’s early bodily photographs as the center of my study. i will contextualize piss christ within serrano’s other bodily photographs from his early tableau images to photographs of the artist’s own ejaculation and finally his series of cadavers in the morgue (cause of death). figure 1 andres serano, piss christ, 1987. cibachrome print, 45 1/4 x 32 3/4 in. (114.9 x 83.2 cm.) courtesy of edward tyler nahem fine art, new york city. 5 bal, quoting caravaggio, 7. 2 7 t y l e r s h i n e contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.141 although several commentators have made reference to the baroque elements in serrano’s photography,6 i consider his images in relation to christian ideas about the body and its traces in medieval europe. the visceral and seductive qualities of serrano’s practice positions his photographs in dialogue with a longer and polemical tradition regarding experiencing christianity through the body. scholar of medieval culture caroline walker bynum writes that it was the materiality of religious experiences that was significant to faith during the middle ages. a sophisticated visual culture characterized the religious and daily life practices of medieval christians that mixed both the physical and the spiritual.7 this intensifying rejection and reverence of matter resulted in divergent responses to the body, yet the contradictory nature of matter remained central to the ideological beliefs of christianity, where the doctrines of creation, incarnation, and resurrection are at its core. 8 i emphasize the physicality of serrano’s photographs because it is their polarized reception that illustrates the passionate and bodily experiences viewers have with his works, which i believe find a counterpoint in medieval visual culture with its stress on the comingling and separation of the material and immaterial in the individualized spiritual experience. although serrano does not make explicit reference to medieval christian visual culture, i will argue that the mediation of images through bodily experiences unite serrano’s photography with medieval images, thus blurring the periodizing distinctions between “modern” and “medieval” understandings of the material and intangible. in order to understand in a fuller sense what work serrano’s photographs can do aesthetically and conceptually it is necessary to reconsider piss christ in relation to his wide ranging interests in christian imagery and photographic representation. the power of offensive images it is perhaps incidental that the initial reception of piss christ was actually favorable. however, i briefly return to this moment because it is illustrative of how piss christ largely appeared in the public imagination which prompted much of the critical literature on serrano’s photography. during this period an increased anxiety surrounded the body and the dissemination of its internal fluids, transforming the body into a politically charged site. deeply imbedded in these anxieties were the fears of transgressing established social and moral boundaries that were central to efforts to define and maintain an “appropriate” american culture.9 first exhibited at the stux gallery in new york city, piss christ was then selected for inclusion in the 1989 group exhibition awards in the visual arts 7 organized by the southeastern center for contemporary art (seeca) in winston-salem, north carolina. the juried exhibition was partially funded by the nea with a committee consisting of tom sokolowski, ned rifkin, howardena pindell, donald kuspit, howard fox, and marcia tucker. the committee selected ten artists, including serrano, from a pool of five hundred ninetynine applicants and each artist received a monetary fellowship and would participate in the 6 mieke bal connects serrano’s dramatic use of light to baroque aesthetics in quoting caravaggio, while amelia arenas describes serrano’s photographs as conjuring up a baroque theatricality for aesthetic overload in her essay “the revelations of andres serrano,” in andres serrano: body and soul, ed. brian wallis (new york: takarajima books, 1995), 114-119. 7 caroline walker bynum, christian materiality: an essay on religion in late medieval europe (new york: zone books, 2011), 19. 8 bynum, christian materiality, 285. 9 james davison hunter, culture wars: the struggle to define america (new york: basic books, 1991), 39. 2 8 t a b o o i c o n s contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.141 group exhibition. the exhibition traveled to ten cities from los angeles to pittsburgh without scandal and it was not until the exhibition reached the virginia museum of fine arts (vmfa) that serrano’s photograph was perceived as problematic. the first public critique of piss christ, which would be replicated for the next few decades, appeared about two months after the closing of the awards in the visual arts 7 exhibition on january 29, 1989 when the richmond times-dispatch printed phillip l. smith’s letter to the editor. smith wrote: the virginia museum should not be in the business of promoting and subsidizing hatred and intolerance. would they pay the kkk to do a work defaming blacks? would they display a jewish symbol under urine? has christianity become fair game in our society for any kind of blasphemy and slander?10 vmfa director paul n. perrot replied with a statement in the richmond times-dispatch responding to mr. smith’s letter where he claimed that serrano’s intentions were “to use natural fluids as being part of the essence of life and to either exploit their coloristic beauty or use their luminous effects.”11 it is probable that the controversy surrounding piss christ would have ended with this simple exchange if methodist minister reverend david e. wildmon had not introduced serrano’s photograph as a blasphemous gesture into the national spotlight. reverend wildmon – founder of the national federation for decency in 1977, later renamed in 1987 the american family association (afa) – sent one million letters of protest along with serrano’s photograph to members of congress and within a few months, the piss christ controversy was born.12 this series of events is interesting because it raises a set of questions not only about what is defined as being offensive or indecent and who gets to make these judgments, but also largely ignores the fact that the various artists, like serrano, who came under attack during the culture wars were in fact catholic.13 serrano was raised roman catholic in the predominately italian section of williamsburg, brooklyn and although he is no longer a practicing catholic he is not opposed to being identified as christian.14 in postmodern heretics: the catholic imagination in contemporary art, eleanor heartney attempts to answer how we might account for this paradox by thinking of the diverse practices of these “blasphemous” artists as working through an “incarnational consciousness” that repudiates the commonplace assumption that art and religion are necessarily mutually exclusive categories.15 however, not all of the critics of the culture wars were catholic. as sociologist james davison hunter has shown in his study on the period, the unlikely alliance of christian fundamentalists, orthodox jews, and conservative catholics against their liberal counterparts to influence the direction of mainstream american culture troubles our understanding of the nature of cultural conflict. hunter argues that the many instances of cultural tension did not 10 robert hobbs, “andres serrano: the body politic,” in robert hobbs, wendy steiner, and marcia tucker, andres serrano: works 1983-1993, exh. cat. (philadelphia: institute of contemporary art, university of pennsylvania, 1994), 31. 11 hobbs, “the body politic,” 32. 12 richard meyer, “the jesse helms theory of art,” october 104 (spring, 2003): 135. 13 eleanor heartney, postmodern heretics: catholic imagination in contemporary art (new york: midmarch arts press, 2004), 5. heartney discusses serrano along with other artists who identify at varying degrees with their catholic heritages such as renée cox, chris ofili, kiki smith, karen finely, robert mapplethorpe and david wojnarowicz among others. 14 karen lipson, “the now-notorious andres serrano,” new york newsday, may 21, 1990, 2-3. 15 heartney, postmodern heretics, 23. 2 9 t y l e r s h i n e contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.141 arise “simply from academic disagreement over the proper form of ecclesiastical structures or a theoretical argument over doctrinal truths. rather, america’s uneasy pluralism implied a confrontation of a deeper nature—a competition to define social reality.”16 w. j. t. mitchell proposes that there are two beliefs at play when people are offended by images which are helpful when thinking about the controversies that often accompany serrano’s photographs.17 first, there is the notion that the image is somehow transparently and immediately connected to what it represents and second, it is believed that the image possess some kind of vitality. the latter view is a “magical” and “superstitious” attitude towards images and mitchell argues that modern viewers are not exempted from this way of thinking. he aptly writes, “far from being defanged in the modern era, images are one of the last bastions of magical thinking and therefore one of the most difficult things to regulate with laws and rationally constructed policies.”18 serrano’s ambiguous pictures complicate the relationship between signifier and signified, highlighting the promiscuous nature of meanings that are too mobile to be confined to an inflexible system or contained by an artist’s intentions. 19 negotiating medievalisms one of the difficulties of understanding cultural conflicts in the united states is, as hunter explains, that “the predominant images of contemporary cultural conflict focus on religious and cultural hostilities played out in other parts of the world.”20 the suppression of the kurds in iraq, sikh nationalists struggling to establish a homeland in northwest india, or the hindu tamil minority in sri lanka, are religious and cultural conflicts positioned by us media, popular culture, and film as conflicts not only geographically distant from the us but also temporally separated from its culture. the evocation of the “medieval” becomes a categorizing device that is utilized for a variety of ends to describe these events and places. kathleen davis and nadia altschul suggest in the introduction to their edited volume, medievalisms in the postcolonial world, that the narrative of medievalism has supported the “national, racial, and religious identities within europe” and the contrast between the past and forms of progress.21 as the various scholars ask in the volume, “what happens to the idea of the medieval when considered from perspectives outside europe?”22 the functions of medievalism are not only relevant to the narratives of nationalism, but are intimately connected to the project of colonialism. like the writers in medievalisms in the postcolonial world, serrano’s photographs blur the distinctions between the medieval/modern binary. serrano combines the supposedly “irrational” beliefs of religion with the presumed objective 16 hunter, culture wars, 39. 17 w. j. t. mitchell, what do pictures want?: the lives and loves of images (chicago: university of chicago press, 2006), 127. 18 mitchell, what do pictures want?, 128. see also jane garnett and gervase rosser, spectacular miracles: transforming images in italy from the renaissance to the present (london: reaktion books, 2013). 19 amy powell, depositions: scenes from the late medieval church and the modern museum (new york: zone books, 2012), 15. amelia arenas, “the revelations of andres serrano,” 119. 20 hunter, culture wars, 34. 21 kathleen davis and nadia altschul, medievalisms in the postcolonial world (baltimore: johns hopkins university press, 2009), 1. 22 ibid., 1-2. 3 0 t a b o o i c o n s contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.141 veracity of the photograph. this confusion between language, representation, and the material in serrano’s photographs demonstrate the elusive power images hold over viewers. the fragility of the medieval-modern binary, in dipesh chakrabarty’s words, “invite[s] us to ponder the nature of historical time and what may be at stake in such criticism of periodization in the age…of ‘globalization.’”23 the fragile limits between the sacred and profane art paradoxically occupies a virtual space that is neither identical to reality nor fully removed from it, wendy steiner aptly writes, but connected to the world through “acts of interpretation.”24 meanings are negotiated through a process of interpretation, and the assumption of what art is, its value, and its purpose are inextricably bound up in a particular symbolic system. art objects that challenge, or more precisely, those objects that are perceived to challenge established assumptions can be ignored, distorted, or condemned, thus evacuating the challenging object from the system. on the other hand the challenging object can be controlled or modified in order to be assimilated into a pre-existing pattern that does not disturb the system.25 located within a symbolic system, taboos are established to manage bodily relationships between substances and actions. numerous scholars in a variety of disciplines have written about the ways in which taboos have functioned in western culture. for example, sociologist steven dubin thinks of taboos as means to regulate encounters between the sacred and profane.26 post-structuralist philosopher julia kristeva sees abjection as forms of exclusions or taboos in monotheistic religions that then are applied to secondary forms like the transgression of the law.27 similarly, anthropologist mary douglas argues in her study of pollution and its connection to danger that wherever social or cultural lines are precarious, pollution ideas are not far behind.28 the “physical crossing of the social barrier is treated as a dangerous pollution…the polluter becomes a doubly wicked object of reprobation, first because he [or she] crossed the line and second because he [or she] endangered others.”29 with this in mind i think of “taboo icons” as provocations to the structural logic behind a symbolic system. the power of taboo icons comes from the way they can shift meanings of specific iconography. serrano’s photographs are taboo icons because they present a tension between literalism and symbolism. the pairing of language and image produces the polarizing responses associated with serrano’s photographs and it is this ability to make “traditional symbols run amok” that subverts the desire to control meanings.30 23 dipesh chakrabarty, “response: historicism and its supplements: a note on a predicament shared by medieval and postcolonial studies,” in medievalisms in the postcolonial world: the idea of "the middle ages" outside europe, ed. kathleen davis and nadia altschul (baltimore: johns hopkins university press, 2009), 109. 24 wendy steiner, the scandal of pleasure: art in an age of fundamentalism (chicago: university of chicago press, 1995), 8. 25 mary douglas, purity and danger: an analysis of the concepts of pollution and taboo (london: routledge & kegan paul ltd, 1978), 38. 26 steven dubin, arresting images: impolitic art and uncivil actions (london; new york: routledge, 1999), 22. 27 julia kristeva, powers of horror: an essay on abjection (new york: columbia university press, 1982), 17. 28 douglas, purity and danger, 139. 29 ibid, 139. 30 arenas, “the revelations of andres serrano,” 116 3 1 t y l e r s h i n e contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.141 in their ambiguity, taboo icons are deviant and, as dubin explains, deviance has a dual character: it can signal something gone awry in a system and also enables that system to become more flexible. 31 it is possible then that there is a redemptive quality in transgression. douglas echoes this sentiment when she states that disorder is “unlimited, no pattern has been realized in it, but its potential for patterning is indefinite…it is destructive to existing patterns…it symbolizes both danger and power.32 serrano has suggested the infinite potentiality of his photographs and has said in the past, “i like to think in terms of raising more questions than answers,”33 and one “can be subversive just by asking too many questions.”34 these questions concern the extent of our knowledge of the material and metaphysical dimensions of our existence in the world. one of the elements of christian medieval devotion and theology was an understanding of the behavior of matter in ordinary and miraculous states when in contact with, as bynum describes, the “infinitely powerful and ultimately unknowable god.”35 serrano is concerned with the relationship between what is visible and therefore known and that which is unknowable. his photographs reveal in their seductive surfaces and contents the illusory connection to reality. a shocking and uncomfortable friction between language and image the friction between the language used in the title piss christ and what is represented in the photograph contribute to the unsettling quality of the image. it has been suggested that if serrano titled piss christ something more innocuous there would not have been any controversy.36 further, materials such as ginger ale, honey, or tinted resin, amongst others could have produced the same ethereal effect as urine without inciting scandal. but serrano made the conscious decision to announce in the title his use of the body fluid and used the charged slang word “piss” instead of the clinical “urine.” the juxtaposition of the two words “piss” and “christ” are equivocal depending on whether “piss” is used such as a noun, adjective, interjection, or verb. for instance, to be “pissed’’ or to be “pissed upon” are vernacular phrases linked to anger and insult.37 in conversation with steven dubin, serrano explained that, “as a photographer it’s just important to me to be descriptive or literal…i could just use piss for the beautiful light that it gives me and not let people know what they’re looking at. but i do like for people to know what they’re looking at because the work is intended to operate on more than one level.”38 the element of shock is important to piss christ’s power, but unlike what some commentators would have one believe, the work is not solely about shocking people. there is almost a pleasure in the revelatory moment of discovering what the luminous material is. this uncertainty and moment of discovery reoccurs with the other bodily fluids and morgue photographs. without reading the title of 31 dubin, arresting images, 80. 32 douglas, purity and danger, 94. 33 hobbs, “the body politic,” 20. 34 anna blume, “andres serrano,” 40. 35 bynum, christian materiality, 17. 36for example, bruce ferguson, “andres serrano: invisible power,” in andres serrano: body and soul, ed. brian wallis (new york: takarajima books, 1995), 7-11; weintraub, art on the edge and over, 161. 37 weintraub, art on the edge and over, 161. jorge garcia and ilan stavans, thirteen ways of looking at latino art (durham: duke university press, 2014), 51-52. 38dubin, arresting images, 83. emphasis added. 3 2 t a b o o i c o n s contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.141 piss christ it is impossible to identify that urine is the material being used to create the luminous effect that is so reminiscent of other sacred images. the precarious nature of language, with its alternative meanings depending on comprehension and context paired with instability of the photographic image that can shift between signifier and signified, sustains an ambiguous and uncomfortable friction. piss christ as linchpin piss christ connects two different parts of serrano’s practice together into a single image: the tableau images using specific religious iconography and the abstract images of bodily fluids.39 beginning in 1983, serrano’s earlier tableau photographs focused primarily on religious imagery depicting individuals dressed in costumes and posed in his studio with meats and fish. the later bodily fluid photographs were the result of studio experiments on how to use photography to mimic abstract painting. while the presentation of reality in painting is mediated by the artist, the same was not true for photography, because it is the camera and not the photographer that is believed to guarantee an objective vision of truth. by mimicking painting serrano subverts photography’s axiomatic claim to record reality objectively. serrano believed these abstract works were “still tableau, but the distinction between the prop and the background has been eliminated many times.”40 this dissolution of perceptual space is seen in milk, blood (1987) (fig. 2), the first photograph where serrano relied solely on bodily fluids to create the image.41 two tanks containing milk and blood were butted together so all that remained visible was the line separating the two tanks. serrano then lit the plexiglas tanks from the sides and photographed the ensemble from above. the solid planes of color in this photographic diptych are a red herring that denies what we believe to be reproduced – milk and blood. perception is neither a passive activity nor merely remembering past impressions, but requires the active participation of the viewer. our impressions, mary douglas argues, “are schematically determined from the start. as perceivers we select from all the stimuli falling on our senses only those which interest us, and out interests are governed by a pattern-making tendency….”42 serrano’s photographs disrupt our tendency to make patterns, disavowing the viewer from attempts to construct a stable world where objects are recognizable. when viewing milk, blood in a new york gallery steven dubin described his own visceral response in the following way: as the grandson of a kosher butcher, my immediate reaction was ‘you don’t do this; you don’t mix milk and meat. it just isn’t done!’ once again this reaction startled me, for although i do not observe kosher laws, this image struck me as a violation of a very basic sort. categories which i long ago rejected intellectually, i suddenly desired to uphold emotionally; they seemed natural and inviolable. but not only had they been juxtaposed, they seemed to bleed into one another down the middle of the photo. unthinkable, and yet here was the record of this transgression.43 39 wuthnow, creative spirituality, 171. 40 hobbs, “the body politic,” 25. 41 ibid., 25. 42 douglas, purity and danger, 36. 43 dubin, arresting images, 5. emphasis added. 3 3 t y l e r s h i n e contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.141 figure 2 andres serano, milk, blood, 1987. cibachrome print, 40 x 60in. (101.6 x 152.4 cm.) courtesy of edward tyler nahem fine art, new york city. dubin’s comment here is illuminating because it speaks to a central issue regarding cultural conflicts. as defined by james davison hunter, a cultural conflict is a “political and social hostility rooted in different systems of moral understanding.”44 moral principles are often incorrigible and provide communities a source of identity and purpose which is why much of the rhetoric and political actions stemming from these moral stances are so passionate. these stances operate in a system of ultimate moral authority that “determine[s] whether something is good or bad, right, or wrong, acceptable or unacceptable.”45 even for dubin, who acknowledges that he does not observe kosher laws, he had a strong visceral and emotional reaction with the photograph which seemed to be a basic violation of a belief he no longer practiced. to emphasize the material qualities of the bodily fluids, serrano made three monochrome photographs devoted to each liquid: the first was blood, the second milk, and finally piss. in each image, serrano photographed a single bodily fluid in its own individual tank, dramatically lit, highlighting the luxurious and saturated flat planes of red, white, and yellow. serrano felt that this was a decisive step stating, “photography is normally concerned 44 hunter, culture wars, 42. 45 ibid., 42. 3 4 t a b o o i c o n s contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.141 with spatial relationships, with perspective, with subjects, with backgrounds, foregrounds.”46 serrano places the mundane bodily fluids of blood, milk, and urine into his photographs connecting abstract representation to the concreteness of the material world.47 serrano says he “always [had] seen the bodily fluids as basically a very human component of life” and that he did not associate particular fluids with a moral judgment, but rather “used them much like an artist using paint.”48 however, serrano was aware that his use of bodily fluids would “have more far-reaching implications than if it was just paint” yet he was comfortable “with the fact that it’s loaded imagery.”49 for serrano, urine is “as human as you can get, it’s a necessary bodily function.”50 his later “immersion” series serve as a literal and metaphoric reminder of the centrality of the incarnation to christianity’s focus on the body and blood of christ. materiality and bodily aesthetics the body’s place in christianity stems from the doctrine of incarnation officially established in 325 a.d. at the council of nicaea.51,52 the doctrine of incarnation answered theologians’ struggles of how to explain the ontological status of christ by declaring that he was both fully man and fully divine. the perfect and sinless body of christ is perpetually absent, but is reasserted and made legible through the architecture of the church and the objects such as altarpieces and tabernacles placed within its architectural settings. the micro-architectures of tabernacles reinforce the notion of the virgin mary as a container that housed christ. the interplay between the exterior and interior of containers or bodies is paralleled in serrano’s “immersion series” where he took small, cheap, mass-produced figurines and literally placed these figures inside tanks filled with various liquids. the shrine of the virgin in the metropolitan museum of art also illustrates this idea of a container within a container (fig. 3). this devotional work – a combination of statuette, altarpiece, and shrine – is a sculptural representation that makes manifest the miracle of the incarnation. when closed this little statue shows an enthroned virgin nursing the christ child and when opened shows a representation of the holy trinity. william d. wixom writes that “the intimacy between this schreinmadonna and the individual praying before it was intended to elicit an emotional and empathetic response and the possibility of personal salvation.53 thus, the sculpture through its material form and images acted as a visual aid for spirituality and the contemplation of god. 46 andres serrano, personal interview, march 14, 2013. 47 steiner, scandal of pleasure, 15. 48 wuthnow, creative spirituality, 173-174. 49 ibid., 173-174. 50 ibid., 174. 51 it is necessary to acknowledge that meanings for the female and male body in christianity both in medieval europe and the united states at the end of twentieth century have different implications. i do not have the adequate space to rehearse the vast literature on the topic, but i attempt to briefly address the issue of gender in the lines that follow. it is my hope that this is generative for future gendered readings of serrano’s photographs. 52 heartney, postmodern heretics, 9. 53 william d. wixom, "medieval sculpture at the metropolitan, 800 to 1400," the metropolitan museum of art bulletin 62 (2005): 46. 3 5 t y l e r s h i n e contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.141 figure 3 shrine of the virgin, germany, rhine valley, c. 1300. oak, linen covering, paint, gilding, gesso. open: 14 1/2 x 13 5/8 in. (36.8 x 34.6 cm), closed: 14 1/2 x 5 in. (36.8 x 12.7 cm.) metropolitan museum of art, new york city. the simultaneous humanity and divinity of christ was expressed in the metabolizing metaphor of the eucharist and this analogy of worshippers consuming christ was not just rhetorical, but taken literally. it was not just belief that the bread of the eucharist on the altar became the body of christ at the moment of consecration; there are accounts of people experiencing miracles in which the bread turned into bloody flesh on the paten or even inside the recipient’s mouth. in this way, the reception of the eucharist becomes a kind of symbolic cannibalism.54 bynum writes that “women regularly speak of tasting god, of kissing him deeply, of going into his heart or entrails, of being covered by his blood.”55 the physicality and rawness of these sensorial descriptions blur the lines between spiritual, psychological, and sexual states and experiences paralleling serrano’s immersion photographs. the belief in the incarnation is mirrored in medieval scientific ideas which tended to associate flesh with women. however, bynum cautions against a reading that simply connects the body with woman; instead she suggests that the tendency to associate woman with the physicality of body in fact gave women a privileged position. according to medieval scientists and theologians, who held the aristotelian theory of conception, it was the mother who provided the matter of the fetus and the father who provided the fetus its form, life, or spirit in his seed. conversely, the second-century greek physician and philosopher galen suggested that two seeds, one from the father and one from the mother, were necessary. in galen’s theory both the mother and father are connected to matter, but “the mother is the oven or vessel in which the fetus cooks, and her body feeds the growing child, providing its stuff as it matures.”56 bynum writes, “all medieval biologists thought the mother’s blood fed 54 bynum, fragmentation and redemption, 185. 55 ibid., 190. 56 galen quoted in caroline walker bynum, fragmentation and redemption: essays on gender and the human body in medieval religion (new york: zone books, 1991), 214. 3 6 t a b o o i c o n s contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.141 the child in the womb and then, transmuted into breast milk, fed the baby outside the womb.”57 the feminine biological characteristics of bleeding and feeding were attributed to the body of christ and equated his side wound to a vaginal-like opening. christ’s ultimate sacrifice in the passion is seen as analogous to the blood that women shed when giving birth. “not only was christ enfleshed with flesh from a woman,” bynum explains, “his own flesh did womanly things: it bled food and gave birth to new life.”58 it is through christ’s death that all humanity is given birth and able to achieve redemption. the shedding of blood was a purifying action, so much so that some medieval physiologists spoke of males “menstruating,” which presumably meant hemorrhoidal bleeding, and even recommended bloodletting with leeches as a substitute.59 the interchangeability between the sexes is seen in many aspects of medieval physiological theory, in which, as bynum notes, “all human exudings—menstruation, sweating, lactation, emission of semen and so on—were seen as bleedings; and all bleedings—lactation, menstruation, nosebleeds, hemorrhoidal bleeding and so on—were taken to be analogous.”60 in this scheme, piss, milk, tears, and semen would be considered another form of blood. serrano’s series of photographs entitled untitled (ejaculate in trajectory) depict the artist’s own ejaculation and are multivalent images about the notions of sexuality and creation. to create the images serrano added a motor to his camera, used a plain black vertical background and began photographing a few seconds before he felt an oncoming orgasm.61 untitled vii (ejaculate in trajectory), like serrano’s other bodily fluid images, is a genderspecific abstraction of human sexuality (fig. 4). the gestural sweeps and twisting forms of semen in the photographs are magnified and suspended in midair. the photograph arrests a moment in time and comments on the tension between the visible and invisible of creation and life. the ejaculate photographs, as art historian rune gade suggests, resemble “the thin steaks of light surrounded by a great dark surface may well refer to the biblical account of the creation in which god creates light over an earth that is ‘empty’ and ‘dark’.”62 however, by representing semen visually serrano signifies pleasurable, not theologically-sanctioned procreative sex. semen within the act of christian heterosexual coitus is necessarily unseen, and in the context of the late-twentieth century the hiv/aids epidemic the visibility of bodily fluids illustrated the destructive aspects of sexuality. it was impossible to distinguish between “healthy” and “infected” fluids and as a result all fluids were potentially dangerous.63 yet the presentation of semen, whether “healthy” or “infected,” remains abject within christianity precisely because the fluid is seen, thus making serrano’s aestheticization of this repugnant substance both striking and unsettling. 57 bynum, fragmentation and redemption, 214. 58 ibid., 215. 59 ibid., 215. 60 ibid., 220. 61 hobbs, “the body politic,” 34. 62 runde gade, “the ejaculation motif: a discussion of its iconology in the light of works by andres serrano,” in symbolic imprints: essays on photography and visual culture, ed. lars kiel bertelsen, rune gade, and mette sandbye (aarhus: aarhus university press, 1999), 123. 63 shooting semen became synonymous with safe sex and has been associated with the porn industry's climactic shots. see g. roger denson, “how andres serrano's piss christ reconciles nature and civilization,” the huffington post, april 22, 2011. 3 7 t y l e r s h i n e contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.141 figure 4 andres serano, untitled vii (ejaculate in trajectory), 1989. cibachrome print, 40 x 60 in. (101.6 x 152.4 cm). courtesy of edward tyler nahem fine art, new york city in defiance of matter: the morgue (cause of death) describing serrano’s photography, curator and art historian marcia tucker said his photographs cause discomfort because they indicate “the extent to which we’re unable to deal with our humanity.”64 unable to deal with these signifiers of the human body, the dead body is the ultimate source of anxiety with its associations with uncleanliness and disease. julia kristeva writes that the corpse is the utmost of abjection, but it is “not the lack of cleanliness or health that causes objection, but what disturbs identity, system, and order…what does not respect boundaries, positions, or roles…the in-between, the ambiguous, the composite.”65 serrano’s series of photographs entitled the morgue (cause of death) disregard ordered boundaries and heighten the ambiguous spaces between material, form, and content. after obtaining special authorization to photograph in a morgue from a forensic pathologist, serrano was free to work with the cadavers provided that he disguised the individual and did not identify him or her. depicting a variety of deaths ranging from murder to suicide, serrano focused on details of the body, taking dramatic close-ups, extremely foreshortened, and tightly cropped shots against a black ground. the close-up shot abstracts the body into pieces and disrupts the viewer’s attempts to construct a complete and legible 64 quoted in hobbs, “the body politic,” 31. 65 kristeva, powers of horror, 4. 3 8 t a b o o i c o n s contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.141 narrative. serrano’s close-up, rather than revealing information through detail, only provides an illegible fragment that increases the viewer’s desire to create a unified whole. simplifying the body through close-ups, serrano’s fragmentation of the body and his attention to its orifices (ears, eyes, mouths, and wounds) inspire mixed connotations that speak to what wendy steiner calls “our primal fears” that the form of our bodies “will spring a leak, letting the insides—fluids, organs, life—spill out, to become visible and, in the process deathly. the flawlessness of bodily form is a reassurance of mortal safety and a denial of death.”66 mary douglas considered the body a useful model to represent a bounded system because in its intricate form, the body can be translated to reflect complex structures.67 by the simple fact that when bodily fluids leave the body, they have traversed its fragile boundaries making the margins of a system its most vulnerable location. the danger of crossing the boundaries of the body and exposing its interior carried significant weight in the late twentieth-century when the united states was responding to the transmission of hiv and aids. when asked in an interview what he was trying to achieve with the morgue photographs, serrano replied: “the morgue is a secret temple where few people are allowed. paradoxically, we will all be let in one day. i think you’re upset and confused that i’ve brought you there prematurely. my intention is only to take you to this sacred place. the rest is entirely up to you.”68 death in contemporary society is at once ubiquitous in such diverse forms as news media, videogames, and movies, but also unpresentable. it is actively separated in the private spaces of our homes and daily lives. instead of the active division between the dead and the living that fuels current anxieties about death, for medieval christians it was a fear of decay. historian and anthropologist piero camporesi writes, “human existence, tenuous and precarious, developed in an unsure, unstable, fluctuating equilibrium, ever on the verge of unraveling, constantly about to slip into corruption, to begin the journey to putrefaction.”69 it was the inevitable decay of matter, which occurs over time due to its material nature, that was troubling. art historian paul binski explains that christian death was a sacral process. the death rituals were seen as acts of healing the sick and the soul.70 for medieval christians the temporal body was a signifier for the condition of the eternal soul, thus curing the soul of sins in the death rites was a way to also cleanse the body. while the finality of death was acknowledged, faith paired with the christian view of personhood as progressive enabled the medieval christian to view death as prospective. the rituals reinforced this view, as binski succinctly writes, “we leave the world as we enter it, naked, needy, and vulnerable, and so the rites of departure can resemble the rites of entry.”71 to the medieval christian the body was divided metaphysically into a body a soul. bodies could be further divided, but it was only the bodies of holy individuals that were perceived by laymen to have a synecdochical relationship and believed to act and feel like the living. holy figures such as saints were 66 wendy steiner, “introduction: skin deep,” in robert hobbs, wendy steiner, and marcia tucker, andres serrano: works 1983-1993, exh. cat. (philadelphia: institute of contemporary art, university of pennsylvania, 1994), 11. 67 douglas, purity and danger, 115. 68 blume, “andres serrano,” 38. 69 piero camporesi, juice of life: the symbolic and magic significance of blood (new york: continuum, 1995), 32. 70 paul binski, medieval death: ritual and representation (ithaca, ny: cornell university press, 1996), 30. 71 ibid., 30. 3 9 t y l e r s h i n e contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.141 exemplars for ordinary christians. their divided bodies were signs of a triumph over death, and close proximity to their fragmented bodies was thought to offer protection after death or to miraculously heal the sick.72 thus, the mortal christian body was a sign of the postlapsarian human condition that strove throughout its earthly life to overcome iniquity and achieve salvation after death. death was conceptualized as the gateway to heaven, and accounts of the excruciating deaths of christian saints and martyrs—the special dead—were viewed as heroic gestures that brought them closer to the divine. “decay was feared, repressed, denied; partition was sublimated,” bynum writes, “yet fragmentation was central to the christian cult of holy matter. however much christians might disclaim or obfuscate the disintegration brought by putrefaction and partition, they were busy dividing bodies for religious purposes.”73 hagiographers in the late-middle ages claimed that the bodies or parts of bodies of holy people defied corruption. paradoxically this “miraculous return of wholeness and miraculous division are signs of resistance to violation and decay”74 but such miracles are not to be only understood as resisting decay but also a manifestation of life. reliquaries from the midmiddle ages onwards displayed the pieces of holy bodies in death and also elevated these pieces to eternal life by placing the objects in incorruptible metal and gems. medieval reliquaries and serrano’s photographs, with their glossy and glowing surfaces, remove their objects from the flow of, thus time allowing these fragmented pieces of the body to simultaneously transcend the material world through matter itself. while reliquaries presented what was believed to be the actual pieces of the body that defied putrefaction, serrano’s photographs re-present pieces of the body. in both instances, reliquaries and photographs defy the finality of death. cibachrome photographs, because of their luminous quality in tandem with their association with advertising, invoke a sense of distance and commodification. it is not surprising, then, that serrano has been criticized as trivializing death and having an excessive predilection to aestheticize everything.75 yet, it is exactly this strange position that serrano throws viewers into when confronted unexpectedly with images from the morgue. aesthetics are just one component of serrano’s photography. in response to accusations of the pictures being exploitive, serrano replied, “maybe it’s easier to dismiss the work when you know you’re turned off by it completely, as opposed to when you’re seduced by it.”76 the photographs can be said to have, as mitchell calls it, “the medusa effect.” he argues that an image first wants to attract the viewer, then arrests the gaze, and finally enthralls the viewer.77 ultimately, the photograph’s desire is to trade places with the viewer, “to transfix or paralyze the beholder, turning him or her into an image for the gaze of the picture.”78 serrano’s morgue series demonstrates mitchell’s claim by injecting the monumentalized images of horrific deaths with personality, which makes the images’ clinical and direct titles 72 ibid., 14. 73 bynum, christian materiality, 192. see also binski, medieval death, 29-69. 74 ibid., 184. 75 see for example michael kimmelman, “serrano focuses on death,” new york times, february 5 1993, c3; peter schjeldahl, “art after death,” the village voice, february 16 1993, 91; andrea d. fitzpatrick, “reconsidering the dead in andres serrano’s the morgue: identity, agency, subjectivity,” canadian art review (2008), 33. 76 hobbs, “the body politic,” 20. 77 mitchell, what do pictures want?, 36. 78 ibid., 36. 4 0 t a b o o i c o n s contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.141 even more unsettling. the confluence of content and form throws into doubt the seemingly transparent relationship between the photograph and reality. figure 5 andres serrano, the morgue (death by drowning ii), 1992. cibachrome print. 49 x 59 ½ in. (124.4 x 151 cm.) courtesy of edward tyler nahem fine art, new york city. in death by drowning ii, serrano depicts the bloated and discolored upper body, zooming in on the mandorla-shaped mouth (fig. 5). a human figure lying horizontally is sharply cropped above the upper lip leaving only the mouth, chin, and shoulders visible inside the pictorial frame. light falls on the lips and chin, drawing attention to the wrinkly surface of the skin. the mouth becomes like a gaping wound in the face and this same shape is reminiscent of the side wound as depicted in an illuminated manuscript at the bibliothèque nationale de france (fig. 6). divided into three registers, the arma christi shows the crucifixion at the top, christ’s side wound in the center, and the flagellation column at the bottom. in the center register the side wound is magnified, taking on its own physical bodily presence and transforming christ’s full body, as seen on the cross in the top register, into a giant wound. the faded appearance of the side wound in the manuscript is the result of 4 1 t y l e r s h i n e contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.141 being kissed or stroked by the devout.79 there is an intimate connection between worshipper and the divine via the mouth. representations of the side wound often serve as the measure of the length of christ and worshippers could feel “in contact with the actual body of christ when they prayed according to—or actually kissed—an image of the wound that exactly calculated his stature.”80 as an entry point into the body, the mouth is both a private and public margin of the symbolic system of the body. figure 6 arma christi, ms fr. 574 fol. 140v, 132, illuminated manuscript. bibliothèque nationale de france, paris. conclusion: taboo icons in the twenty-first century the debates that arose during the culture wars of the late-twentieth century in the united states are not over and we can still feel their reverberations. these discussions continue as we attempt to reconcile our various belief systems on a variety of social issues ranging from reproductive rights and education to same-sex marriage and multiculturalism. however, it would be a mistake to view the culture wars – then and now – as merely debates over social issues. while cultural conflict inevitably encompasses a variety of social issues, the actual challenge is how to negotiate those conflicting ideological visions of how society should approach them. 79 david areford, “the passion measured: a late-medieval diagram of the body of christ,” in the broken body: passion devotion in late-medieval culture, ed. a.a. macdonald, bernhard ridderbos, and r. m. schlusemann (groningen: egerbt forsten, 1998), 200. 80 ibid., 200. 4 2 t a b o o i c o n s contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.141 “i am drawn to subjects that border on the unacceptable,” serrano said “because i have lived an unacceptable life for so long.”81 in his work before 1987, serrano’s photographs dealt with what he calls his “unresolved feelings” about his catholic upbringing, and the photos helped him to redefine and personalize his relationship with god.82 he considered the church “oppressive, as far as dealing with women, blacks, minorities, gays, lesbians, and anyone else who doesn’t go along with their program.”83 in a way, marginalized groups are “taboo” because they disrupt the assumptions of an established system. but these “taboos” and cultural conflicts have material consequences for both majority and minority groups because the culture wars fundamentally impact the structures and individual relationship to the institutions of american society.84 the body in the late twentieth century, although confronted with a specific set of sociohistorical concerns, is not far removed from medieval preoccupations with the material. rigid dichotomies between life and death or the sacred and profane do not neatly fit into the complex schema of medieval thought, in which an endless fluidity characterized matter. this denial to be contained within a system is what i argue to be the strength of taboo icons that alternatively use the materials and images of christianity. serrano began his series of bodily fluid photographs at a moment in history when the mass media reported that our bodies could be dangerous because of their internal fluids. this new body contained vital yet potentially lethal substances. thus, the body became the politicized and social battleground over which debates were waged between differing political groups about aids, homosexuality, abortion, euthanasia, and drugs. in his discussion of the allusive power of pictures to offend us, w. j. t. mitchell writes that a picture is not a text that is simply read, but like a ventriloquist’s puppet into which the viewer inserts his or her own voice. he sardonically remarks if we are offended by what that picture “says” it is like the ventriloquist being insulted by his own puppet.85 serrano has made a similar analogy in that he thinks of his work as being like a mirror: “whoever looks at it will have a different reaction, and they’ll get from it what they give. if they give it a negative energy, that’s what they’ll get back. whereas, if you give it a positive energy, you’ll get a positive image, a reaffirmation rather than a negation.”86 serrano’s statement here encapsulates an important distinction about cultural conflict and the controversies that surround his photographs: it is the different moral visions of society that struggle to control the symbols of public life and how reality should be defined. complicating photography’s association with representation, serrano’s photographs, as hobbs explains, engage “the viewer in a dialogue that is difficult to escape.”87 this dialogue is not just about making us as viewers uncomfortable, but a reminder of the strange contradictions he is exploring between the material and immaterial. the photographs suspend these contradictions in a visually seductive language that leaves viewers in a dilemma of simultaneously being consumers, voyeurs, and willing participants. fraught with 81 hobbs, “the body politic,” 17 and lucy lippard, “andres serrano: the spirit and the letter,” art in america (april 1990), 240. 82 hobbs, “the body politic,” 18. 83 ibid., 18. 84 hunter, culture wars, 50. 85 mitchell, what do pictures want?, 140. 86 hobbs, “the body politic,” 20. 87 ibid., 20. 4 3 t y l e r s h i n e contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.141 political, religious, aesthetic, and social layers of meanings, serrano’s photography is never exclusive, but rather exponentially flexible as the photographs interact with different viewers. what implications might arise through other imaginative readings of serrano’s early photographs? serrano wants his work to be “accessible to more than just an art audience,” stressing that “the work is meant to be open to interpretation.”88 therefore, to relegate this early body of work to the easy descriptors of “controversial,” “blasphemous,” or “shocking” eliminates the possibility, in serrano’s words, of “asking too many questions.”89 in his photographs, serrano has created and sustained a perpetual tension that shifts between representation and abstraction that does not remove christianity or other religious traditions from the discussion, but demonstrates that they are a constitutive part of the conversation. he is creating taboo icons for our time. 88 ibid., 20. 89 anna blume, “andres serrano,” 40. 4 4 t a b o o i c o n s contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.141 new articles in this journal are licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 united states license. this journal is operated by the university library system of the university of pittsburgh as part of its d-scribe digital publishing program, and is co-sponsored by the university of pittsburgh press. contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture vol 1 (2011) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2011.34 http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu the temporalities of soviet and postcommunist visual culture boris groys and petre petrov in conversation robert bailey and cristina albu abstract this discussion took place on april 21, 2010 in the humanities center at the university of pittsburgh. over the course of two hours, we, robert bailey and cristina albu, posed to boris groys and petre petrov a series of questions about temporality and visual culture in the soviet union, contemporary russia, and other formerly communist countries in eastern europe. our hope was to identify the paradoxical instances when multiple temporalities coexist or compete for control of time, or where different forces impose their respective narratives, chronologies, or histories on the same moments and events. we are grateful to professors groys and petrov for their careful and considered answers to our questions. thanks are also due to professors jonathan arac and todd reeser at the humanities center for facilitating the discussion, as well as to contemporaneity editors heidi cook, amy cymbala, and rachel miller for their help with transcription. about the authors boris groys is global distinguished professor of russian and slavic studies at new york university. petre petrov is assistant professor of slavic languages and literatures at princeton university. robert bailey and cristina albu are editors of contemporaneity. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/� contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 1 (2011) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2011.34 this discussion took place on april 21, 2010 in the humanities center at the university of pittsburgh. over the course of two hours, we, robert bailey and cristina albu, posed to boris groys and petre petrov a series of questions about temporality and visual culture in the soviet union, contemporary russia, and other formerly communist countries in eastern europe. our hope was to identify the paradoxical instances when multiple temporalities coexist or compete for control of time, or where different forces impose their respective narratives, chronologies, or histories on the same moments and events. we are grateful to professors groys and petrov for their careful and considered answers to our questions. thanks are also due to professors jonathan arac and todd rieser at the humanities center for facilitating the discussion, as well as to contemporaneity editors heidi cook, amy cymbala, and rachel miller for their help with transcription. robert bailey: despite the avant-garde’s claim to a kind of vanguardism, few russian avant-garde artists actively participated in the russian revolution. there seems to have been a disconnection between the artistic and political vanguards in russia in 1917. why is this so? boris groys: the revolutionary organizations were all underground terrorist organizations and secret societies, so if you are an artist and you are part of one of these groups you are completely disconnected. maxim gorky had some connection to them, and a very famous example was boris savinkov. he was a writer and a terrorist at the same time, but these are fundamentally two exceptions. after the revolution, the whole thing became open and others joined. petre petrov: the question is a bit tautological. the avant-garde is vanguardist, of course, by virtue of its name, but it is a different kind of radicalism. it’s clear that, if the question is why didn’t the avant-garde artists storm the winter palace, then the answer is the one boris gave. not just in russia, but everywhere, these artists were not active participants in the political movements, which is not to say that later they did not hang their hopes on some of these movements. these stories are well known. in italy, germany, and russia, there were cultural radicals who saw hope in these large social upheavals and their consequences, and they saw, in some of them, the fulfillment of the projects that they envisioned; but clearly these are two completely different phenomena. and if you look from the perspective of the bolsheviks, as they saw the cultural vanguard, you will immediately understand why these two movements could not have had much in common. for the bolsheviks, this was simply the froth of what is essentially bourgeois or petit bourgeois life that rises to have imaginary revolts in an imaginary sphere of artistic experimentation. bg: i think the most interesting example is the example of italian futurism because italian futurism constituted itself in the beginning as a political movement and collaborated with the fascist movement from the beginning. they were preceding, in a certain way, mussolini’s movement, but we should not forget that italy was a chaotic and open society at the same time. russia was a very closed society where radical oppositional politics were a part of the underground. so this kind of collaboration was not possible, but in principle of the temporalities of soviet and postcommunist visual culture boris groys and petre petrov in conversation robert bailey and cristina albu http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/� 4 3 r o b e r t b a i l e y a nd c r i s t i n a a l b u contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 1 (2011) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2011.34 course you have some movements, and i think italian futurism is the best example of that, where aesthetic radicalism and political radicalism coincide, so that happens too. pp: a more interesting question is whether one can think of bolshevik radicalism and artistic radicalism as arising from some general situation, which feeds them both and yet occasions very different responses. this is quite possible to conceptualize. obviously, russia at the beginning of the twentieth century is a place of enormous social and economic upheavals, and that cannot but be the fuel both for political movements and for the rethinking of artistic means or the rethinking of art as such. but clearly these are vectors that move on different planes even if they have the same historical substratum, broadly speaking. cristina albu: so how do these two projects become tangential after the revolution? bg: after the revolution, the bolshevik party tried to initiate a large-scale communist cultural politics, and the whole traditional intelligentsia did not want to cooperate because the traditional russian intelligentsia was on the side of liberal movements of different kinds and did not accept bolsheviks. but at that time, the first period of development, the avantgarde was simply one exception, simply because people were ready to cooperate. it was a small part, but everybody else did not want to cooperate. pp: and on the side of the left avant-garde, clearly there was, for a while, the hope that these vectors will meet, that what has started as a very messy affair of bloodshed and repression may become spiritualized to a point where it meets the pursuit of new forms or even some kind of art beyond art. boris has written quite well about this: the politicization of aesthetics and the aestheticization of politics are two movements that in principle could find a meeting point, whether they do or not and how this happens, this is a complex question, but it is a fact of history that the avant-garde in russia did lend a hand to the political regime for most of the 1920s. they tried to represent to themselves and to their audiences the social movement as something that is in continuum with their pursuits in the artistic sphere. ca: so it is something that has very much to do with the internal dialectics of the avantgarde approach and the different positions that existed within the avant-garde? bg: there were different positions, but in general, you have a kind of vacuum, and you can project into this vacuum your dreams of a new beginning, a point zero. and from this point zero, you have the new perspective to move on. of course, every artist wants to erase history, to be the point of beginning, so it is a tautology of art. pp: the beginning is different for the people with the guns and the people with the easel and paintbrush. the first want to change reality per se. it begins with nationalization and the shooting of enemies of the people. for the people with the brushes, it begins with creating a kind of universal language, a kind of form that, from the ideal realm, will redeem the material realm. it is really a movement from two opposite directions that was seen, on the side of the artists, as one movement. but the people in power really never had any illusions about this, even if they did seek the support of leftist poets like vladimir mayakovsky or artists like pavel filonov or kasimir malevich. on the side of the rulers, this rapprochement was much more pragmatic, and they never embraced the radical imaginings (and imagings) of the left avant-garde. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/� 4 4 t he t e mp o r a l i t i e s o f s o v i e t a nd p o s t c o m mun i s t v i s u a l c u l t u r e contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 1 (2011) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2011.34 ca: perhaps we can move on to the next question. the avant-garde aims to realize a utopian fantasy in a dialectical manner by negating the past in order to bring about the future, much like the socialist project of stalin, and yet avant-garde art is deemed inappropriate for soviet socialism on the grounds that it is not accessible to a mass audience — precisely because the features it shares with socialism require explanation. except for the overly didactic aspects of socialist realism, what inherent qualities does socialism possess to explain itself? we have realism as form and socialism as content, but do we need a metatext to explain this? bg: first of all, it was the idea of clement greenberg that the avant-garde was rejected because it was not understood by the masses. the point was never raised in discussions of the 1920s or 1930s. it was invented by greenberg. so if you look at the literature of the time, you will not meet this point at all. and then, if you look at russian avant-garde movements at that time, for example lef, operating with very simple text, propaganda text; окна роста, rosta windows; gustav klutsis and alexander rodchenko with photography –– it was all absolutely obvious for everybody. it was also obvious for the masses. and if you look for example at the proletkult movement, they have a huge mass of visual and literary production, which was absolutely accessible to the people. so this explanation is completely wrong, simply wrong. a completely different point to do with art of the past. the demise of the avant-garde begins in the end of the 1920s, in terms of rescuing and appropriating the art of the past. that was a topic, and it was the only one, too. restoring the museums, restoring the hermitage, reediting the classics, making translations from the western classics, introducing these texts and introducing these images in the school process and the university process. so, this type of retribution, because in the 1920s you do not have that — the hermitage is closed. so you have this huge process of the reoccupation of the past, and this process was the starting point of the criticism of the avant-garde. a second point, interconnected with that, is that the soviet power wanted to be proud of its art, and they simply saw the russian avant-garde as art of low quality. it was simply like that. they did not believe that it was good art. these squares and triangles and unclear poetry and so on and so on –– they see that as low, low, low, low art, actually nearer to the masses. what they wanted to do is to compare their own art to the highest achievements, and that is stalin’s big point. time and again: “we have to create art at the level of the highest achievements of human history.” and that is of course rembrandt, that is verdi, that is this, that is that. it is tolstoy. it is not this avant-garde stuff because this stuff is simply bad. if you look internationally at this time, it was the same position with mussolini, who at a certain point in time decided that futurism was simply bad and we have to go back to neoclassicism. the return to order in france. the rise of neue sachlichkeit in germany. and when you look at the soviet magazines of that time, they quote all that. so they felt themselves completely justified by the international art situation at that time. they saw the avant-garde as a kind of a certain mistake that is actually over and the people who actually kept on with these ideas have become retrograde. if you look at publications of that time, they said, “such reactionary people as malevich, making art of the 1910s and 1920s, completely misunderstand the international art scene of today.” from the perspective of cultural politics in russia during the stalinist period of the 1920s and 1930s, they really wanted to create a great, true, high level art. and they accepted also people who were very problematic in terms of ideology like bulgakov, like pasternak, who wrote at that time. there are others; it is very complicated. and they introduced huge programs to educate the soviet population in listening to tchaikovsky, reading tolstoy, listening to verdi, looking at rembrandt. so it had nothing to do with respect for the masses. it is a complete illusion to think so. it was a reeducational program to put russian culture on an appropriate level believing that the avant-garde is simply low-level art, low-quality art. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/� 4 5 r o b e r t b a i l e y a nd c r i s t i n a a l b u contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 1 (2011) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2011.34 pp: the triangles did not strike them as comprehensible, that is for certain. they did want, of course, a kind of art that would be accessible, but this is not the only reason for the rejection of the avant-garde. much of what boris said is correct. i would have to take issue with the formulation of the question, which states that stalinism rejects the past. it does exactly the opposite. stalinism is the appropriation of the past; it is the museum of the past. without it the stalinist project is completely unthinkable. in light of this, the rejection of modernism becomes quite comprehensible. so modernism is rejected not only because it is incomprehensible. it is rejected because it is idealistic. from a socio-historical point of view, this is an art that corresponds to the moment of the rotting of the bourgeois order. bg: absolutely. it’s seen as decadent. pp: indeed, yes. and from that point of view, it has to be rejected because the art appropriate for where we are now, namely, the coming of socialism, is the art of a socialist world. the 1920s and much of the 1930s are spent in trying to figure out what is this form of creativity that would correspond to the advance of socialism, and the soviet leadership never had any illusions that modernism could somehow transform itself into that art of the very near future. let us look at this whole group of people who remained after the revolution and consented to one extent or another to serve the regime, let us look at them with the eyes of the regime. they were very much on the level of those so-called bourgeois specialists in industry, in science, and in administration, who were there to provide the skill, the skill divorced from any of the spiritual baggage that comes along with it. once the skill is there, once it is being taught, once it is being handed over, they become dispensable if they have not been transformed into true soviet citizens. the new cadres will come, take these skills, and put the new content into them. bg: that is precisely why the avant-garde failed: because there were no skills. they did not see the avant-garde as having any skills. stalin, if we speak about the arts and sciences, says we have to take everything that is best and that was created by human history and betray it by moving further. so, for them, the avant-garde was a bourgeois betrayal of the patrimony of humankind that should be saved by socialism. and already, in the russian revolution, trotsky says that the great mistake of the avant-garde is to think that the avantgarde is a break with the past. a revolutionary artist should always see himself as living through the revolutionary heritage because the revolution begins already in egypt and goes through the whole period of history. all the dreams of the oppressed people, all the dreams of liberation, go through thousands of years of human history, expressed by different kinds of art. all of them are actually our tradition. the revolution has its own tradition. it is not a break with tradition. and trotsky says that is the difference between art and the artistic avant-garde because the artistic avant-garde tries to initiate art by rejecting tradition, and he wants to fulfill it. we want to be at the end of the tradition, at the end of the revolutionary struggle for the life of humankind. pp: the word “fulfillment” should be heavily underlined every time you address the culture of stalinism. this is the key concept for understanding what happens from the early thirties on. it is this sense that history is being fulfilled, that here and now in the soviet union, some kind of moment of fruition for the entirety of human history is taking place. within that concept, every kind of fruition must take place, including in the artistic domain. therefore, as much of the past as is permissible has to be secured. ca: but there were certain things from the past that were selected and appropriated. of course, the artworks from the past that best matched the soviet project were the ones appropriated and their meaning was translated in socialist terms. yet, except for the fact that http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/� 4 6 t he t e mp o r a l i t i e s o f s o v i e t a nd p o s t c o m mun i s t v i s u a l c u l t u r e contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 1 (2011) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2011.34 the avant-garde was associated with a lack of skill as you mentioned, was it not also problematic to incorporate because it lacked content appropriate for the socialist project? bg: well, it is not a lack of content. the point is that ideology during stalin’s time was based on a short text of lenin’s about culture where he says that culture as such does not exist. there are two cultures: one for the oppressed classes and one for the oppressing classes. and looking at the past we have to decide what is the patrimony of the oppressed classes and what is the patrimony of the oppressing classes. now, if you look at the russian avant-garde, it appeared in the context of the oppressing classes. it does not differentiate itself from the art of the west and from the bourgeois art as it is practiced in paris and new york and other places. so it is quite clear that it is the art of oppression. if you look for example at the famous — i think it was the middle of the 1920s — the famous exhibition of modernist art — i think it was in the hermitage — under the title “art history in the world of capitalism” or something like that, you have two parts of it: the art of financial capitalism and it is impressionism and expressionism, and the art of industrial capitalism and there is constructivism. so if you look at that, then it is obvious that the avant-garde, and even the impressionists, were seen as the patrimony of the oppressive classes. so what kind of lesson do you draw from that? pp: and, of course, they were right. there is no denying that modernism participates in a particular dynamic that has to do with modernity and a particular moment in modernity when art becomes completely detached from whatever had been its social moorings before; now it has to realize that it is a commodity like anything else and it has to revolt against that. so modernism is very much a part of this critical phase in the life of art at the beginning of the twentieth century. it could have been understood in those terms, and the soviets very much saw it in that way: as a kind of infantile revolt within the bourgeois family, just as, for example, romanticism could be seen as an earlier revolt against the disappointments following the great revolution of the eighteenth century. soon after the great revolutionary upheaval, the prose of bourgeois life sets in, so certain hotheads begin to think of themselves as extremely radical artists and existential misfits, while in fact they are very much in the mainstream of bourgeois culture, as a leftist historian would write the history of that culture. something similar happens at the later juncture, when modernism begins its revolt against the bourgeois order. rb: let’s focus on the question of the stalinist present. stalinism relies on two temporalities both rooted in hegel: a dialectical movement towards the absolute, which is the socialist project of realizing socialism, but also the notion of an end of history, which names what happens after the absolute is realized. the latter is subject to a kind of an internal bifurcation. it’s always postponed into the distant future. we haven’t gotten there yet. it’s a project to be realized. and it has simultaneously already been realized in the revolutionary past. so between this kind of dialectical progressivism and the end of history, the stalinist present seems to disappear. it either becomes the past or it becomes the future. what happens to the present under stalinism? bg: the present is of course the point of struggle and conflict between the powers of the future and the powers of the past. our goal is to take the right position in the struggle. we have to punish people for taking the wrong position. so, it’s an area of conflict. pp: we can think of it in the following way. i am reminded of this thing that ilya ehrenburg said at the first congress of the union of soviet writers. he was addressing the audience, and there were of course all of those people who had come from abroad, famous writers of a leftist bent. he spoke of the soviet union. turning to them, he said, “you have http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/� 4 7 r o b e r t b a i l e y a nd c r i s t i n a a l b u contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 1 (2011) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2011.34 arrived in the future. you have been in a time machine.” the present of the soviet union is the future of the rest of the world, especially the communist movement. what i find extremely interesting is how, in ehrenburg’s words, time is plastered over space, so that space itself is temporalized into different zones. and it is not only on the international scale that we have spaces of the future and spaces of the past, or the not-yet-future. if we look at the soviet union itself, within the internal cultural geography, something like that happens as well: moscow is the future to which every other space looks. if we make sense of this spatialization of time, we could start thinking about what the present is within stalinism. again, i have to reemphasize the keyword of fulfillment. the present is a time of flowering and growth. it is a time when the past is collected — we spoke about this — and in which the fruits are already visible of that which for the 1920s was a distant future, but now it is not that distant. it is around the corner. already in the 1930s, socialism is essentially realized in its foundations. what we need to see is simply how these foundations naturally follow up to the roof. but all of that is already prefigured in the foundations. it is there. you only need to feel that it is there. with stalin’s idea of socialism in one country this whole vision is already implicitly in place. “socialism in one country” — meaning there is one place in the world where socialism has come to be. it has grown up and is flowering right now. if you look at it in the context of the third international, every other space is simply located in a progression towards what is here and now already happening in russia. bg: that is true, but at the same time, stalin has never considered the soviet union as a landscape or its space as being a landscape. he always considered it as a territory of extreme struggle, and stalin always said that, if we were moving towards communism, the class struggle intensifies. so this new world is there, but the old world is also there. it’s like how the place of satan is in the church. you have the church as a profane space. capitalism is a profane space. the profane space is profane for good and for satan. satan is not interested in the profane space. he is interested in seducing and diverting the saints and the priests toward the real vocation and turning their mass into black mass. and that is what precisely people like alexey rykov and nikolai bucharin did. if you do not understand this possibility, this duality, and this belief that precisely the soviet union is a place of the most radical anti-soviet temptation, then you cannot understand the whole repressive logic of the stalinist regime based on a nostalgic intuition that this place, being the best place, is at the same time the most endangered place. pp: i don’t think we are contradicting each other. the idea of the devil in the church is a clever one. a very effective way of putting it, definitely: the essential intuition for stalinism is that the devil is of course attracted to the most holy. the presence of the devil in a way confirms that we are in the presence of the most holy. the devil does not go into dilapidated parish churches. it goes to the kremlin. the presence of the enemy confirms that we are almost there. we have basically arrived. the doctrine of the intensification of class struggle is precisely this. it is that, exactly at the moment when the hostile classes are defeated, they become most hostile, most deleterious to the regime, because they are in a way already choked. the spasmodic reactions are most violent at that point. of course this manichean struggle is there, but it is interesting how this idea of the devil or the enemy within us, or the saboteur, or the kulak, or all those different vermin of stalinism — how that in itself is already an ideological tenet that reinforces the idea that socialism is essentially already constructed. ca: in your respective work, both of you privilege the power of language in the constitution of the stalinist project. but what is soviet language: how does the static structure of langue represented by soviet ideology relate to the dynamic praxis of parole? how can parole develop in the soviet context? moreover, does this emphasis on language obscure the role of the visual within stalinism? regardless of the power of language in http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/� 4 8 t he t e mp o r a l i t i e s o f s o v i e t a nd p o s t c o m mun i s t v i s u a l c u l t u r e contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 1 (2011) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2011.34 stalinist culture, the visual retains a significant role. what is the distinct power of the stalinist image, and how does it relate to language? bg: obviously, there is emancipation of the image in the west. in russia at the beginning of the twentieth century, that didn’t take place. so you don’t have the phenomenon of an autonomous image. the image is subjected to a certain kind of narrativity. this narrative is ideological. being powerful or not, under the stalinist regime, the image was never really autonomous in relationship to its content, to its narrative function. it was always in a certain way an illustration to something. it was never really completely liberated from this function. that is why stalinist culture remains ultimately language dominated. pp: definitely. you can easily trace from the late 1920s into the early 1930s this process whereby the text is installed as the central element of cinema, with the emphasis on the script. but also in painting with the return to the 19th century, to the narrative image, where the depiction will have to tell a story by way of the glance, by way of the gesture, by way of some kind of visible interaction between people, people and their environment, etc. everything is narrativized. and of course this has, apart from the effect of being more comprehensible, better understood by the people, has the effect of being better understood by the censor. besides the emphasis on script, the emphasis on narrative is also conditioned by the need to give the censor something to hold on to in order to review the ideological trustworthiness of the image or the film. you have then, throughout the entire period of stalinism, this enormous hypertrophy of the script committees in cinema. how many committees the script has to go through before it is even approved to begin to be filmed?! and then of course, once the film begins to be produced, there are additional controls along the way. as for the langue and parole in stalinism: this saussurian dichotomy, it’s always been suspect, from the very beginning. what i mean is that you would have, on the one side, clearly separated, just the pure basic elements and the rules of combining them, and on the other side you will have simply the very manifestations of different utterances — this distinction between speech and language — there is something artificial about it. and stalinism immediately shows why, when you get to the actual functioning of culture and language, it doesn’t quite work the way saussure schematized it. what is immediately clear, when you look at stalinist culture, is that you begin actually from parole. you begin from these utterances that are given canonical status. they are haloed and sanctified. eventually, these are simply the utterances of stalin, but initially there was a repertoire of these. then these are broken up, and they provide that inventory of elements that would be the langue. then they are recombined to produce new utterances that in one way or another imitate the original ones. this is, in a very general way, how it works. when you are dealing with actual culture, there is never this zero point that certain linguists try to imagine, where there are just pure paradigmatic elements before they are combined into this or that speech act. no, in stalinism, it is very clear that you have very rigid speech acts that come first. they are on the altar, and then you have to work with them to begin to compose some kind of language of your own. and this is not true only on the level of verbal language. every art has its own inventory of canonic texts, plots or images from the past. as time passes, they are accumulated, because now new exemplars are produced. you look at those, and you try to recombine their elements in order to produce you own individual version of socialist realism. bg: yes, that is correct, and it is also described by the notion of langage. if you look at french theory, langage as an ideological practice that defines its own position is widely used in the 1960s and 1970s. but going back to this domination by language: you can escape domination by language in art only if you have an art market. what is an autonomous image? it is an image that has no meaning beyond the fact that i like it, and i like it means http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/� 4 9 r o b e r t b a i l e y a nd c r i s t i n a a l b u contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 1 (2011) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2011.34 i’m ready to buy it. or i do not like it, so i’m not ready to buy. so you have this act of liking/buying or not-liking/not-buying that corresponds to the system of the art market and transcends any possible explanation. if i am asked as a spectator why i like it, there is no obligation to answer the question. this is a condition of the art market. this act of buying transcends any possible language. you like it and you buy it, and you do not have to justify yourself. if you don’t have art markets, then you have to justify it. you have to explain why it is good, why it is bad, was it progressive, was it reactionary. if you have to justify, you defer to language. you have two regimes possible for the image. either it functions as an ideological sign inside a certain kind of symbolic economy regulated by a certain langage as an ideological image, or you have an art market where the image circulates as a commodity. and if it circulates as a commodity, it circulates beyond language, beyond language’s control. i don’t see another option. there are only these two options. one option was realized in the united states, and the other option was realized in the soviet union. ca: doesn’t the art market and don’t art institutions in general use language to legitimize the value of the artworks that are being sold or are part of their collections? isn’t there still a need, even when you have an art market, to use language to legitimize art? bg: no, of course not. because if you tell people that it is wonderful, this is an advertisement. it is not a legitimization; it is an advertisement. the fate of the work is not decided through advertisement. the fate of the work is decided by how much money is paid at the auction. this decision to pay money is not necessarily the result of legitimization. you simply decide to pay this money, or you simply decide not to pay this money. you buy this artwork together with everything that was said about it. in the soviet union, you do not have this possibility. so, if some commission says the tendency of this work is reactionary, this work cannot be saved by the fact that somebody bought it for a million. that’s why the experience of sotheby’s was important for russian art. people came without any knowledge of russian art, any knowledge of context, any knowledge of the nation or artist, any knowledge of history. like when we go into a bazaar in a foreign place, we buy that because we like it and don’t buy that because we don’t like it — beyond any explanation. there is no explanation. there is no developed language to contextualize that. you simply did like it or you did not like it. and that was a good lesson in the trans-ideological and trans-linguistic sense of art, in art as a commodity that can be completely autonomous from any kind of justification, explanation, or contextualization. i know that people do not like it and intellectuals do not like it. even artists do not like it. but it is how things are going. and that is the ultimate source of the autonomy of art understood in relationship to language. so this autonomy of art in relationship to language is an illusion. you have only two different kinds of dependencies. you can depend on the art market or you can depend on ideological justifications. two competing kinds of dependencies. rb: stalinist visual culture is ambitiously universal. it presents itself as a universal culture. in the soviet union, an empire that encompasses a diverse range of cultures, nationalities, and ethnicities, in addition to spanning eleven different time zones, how do the tensions between the universalism of stalinist culture and local difference manifest themselves? bg: i can tell you exactly. it was after the war. the russian architects, they built beijing. and they made a project, and showed it to stalin. it was like moscow with the same structures and buildings. and he said, “well, i don’t like it. it looks very much like moscow. if moscow is going to be chinese, it must look chinese. so they put decorative elements on the roofs, and people said, “ok! now it is chinese!” http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/� 5 0 t he t e mp o r a l i t i e s o f s o v i e t a nd p o s t c o m m un i s t v i s u a l c u l t u r e contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 1 (2011) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2011.34 pp: of course stalin was, in the first soviet government, the commissar for the nationalities, so we are here at the very source of the problem of how to treat national differences within a universal project. that problem was there from the very beginning. it’s very well known that initially the politics of the soviet state were such that they gave the right to national self-determination to all of those peoples that happen to be within its orbit. that soon became impracticable, and a conflict developed between this kind of local nationalism and proletarian internationalism. in soviet ideology, these nationalistic aspirations became immediately interpreted as a sign of bourgeois attempts to hijack the revolution. therefore, you have on one side a politics of self-determination, national selfdetermination, but on the other side you have a resolve not to allow a restoration of the bourgeois order. so, of course, the second position wins, and trumps the first position. the first position remains only on the level of formula, and that formula then, in the cultural realm, is really well known; it’s the formula of “socialist in form, national in content.” so you, as an artist, are encouraged to have a roof like the one boris described as long as the main fundamental structure is that of commitment to socialism, but what this in practice means, especially within stalinism, is that — let’s say in painting — you have essentially the same situations reproduced everywhere. but, for example, in tajikistan there will be a recognizably tajik landscape, architecture, and faces, and clothing, but it would be more or less the same subject matter that is being depicted. bg: huge money was invested in its development of national culture. it was restored, it was taught, and it was investigated, so there was a huge, huge investment in national history and national culture. whenever they would organize something — it is like the european union now — it was always dancing. if people are invited to show their cultural identity, they always start to dance. pp: it’s the clearest eruption of national character. if you jump, then the national character has erupted. the moment that this national character begins to bleed onto the level of form — for example, if works from central asia begin to show in stalinist times some leanings towards, let’s say, ornamentalism or decorative treatment of their subject matter — of course then that becomes the same as nationalism on the political level. it becomes the medium for a bourgeois tendency, and essentially ornamentalism is then treated as formalism. bg: i think it is very important to look at the political side of it. every soviet citizen had his or her nationality, and you were identified in the first place by that nationality. there was no general citizenship. you were ascribed a certain nationality. how you were treated in this society was very much dependent on this point. and that, of course, was something that created a lot of national feelings because your experience was part of a national experience. a second point is that stalin kept a provision in the soviet constitution that gives the individual republics the possibility to leave the soviet union, and this is, of course, what happened when the soviet union dissolved. in the united states, you have the example of southern states wanting to leave the union, and you have a civil war. there is no state in history besides the soviet union that had this provision. this was an absolute exception, and this exception guaranteed the peaceful dissolution of the soviet union. for example, you didn’t have that in yugoslavia, and that is why you have wars there. this provision was in the stalinist constitution, and that is why you have no wars there. so the peaceful dissolution of the soviet union was actually made possible by stalin. ca: but tension was there. it’s not as though the individual republics felt that they had the freedom to leave the soviet union. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/� 5 1 r o b e r t b a i l e y a nd c r i s t i n a a l b u contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 1 (2011) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2011.34 bg: of course, but at the moment they could, they used this provision because the provision was there. so you had the legal framework for the dissolution of the soviet union at the moment you decide to do that. but there is no such framework for the dissolution of the united states government or india, for example, which is based on the same structure, and you don’t have legal frameworks for the dissolution of yugoslavia. and we know that, you don’t have this legal framework, you have a war. what is interesting about the soviet union is that it is still very much organized on the principle of ethnicity, and also legally organized in a way that, at the moment of moments, you reap with the sword. ca: after stalinism in the absence of its collective project, time takes on a different character. it comes out of joint. without the certainty of ideology as fate, the soviet subject finds itself confronted with the possibility that its promised utopian future will not come to be, that existence will not become essence. as part of this reformation, the present, particularly everyday life, emerges as a problematic theme in both official and unofficial cultures offer different accounts of it. how is the awareness of time during the thaw negotiated in visual culture? bg: i can remember that, at the beginning, there was a feeling that you can experiment in art and do something different from the socialist realist canon, but at some point in time, as you know, khrushchev took the side of the bureaucracy and the union of soviet artists, and the union of soviet artists was a very powerful organization. it was not only a decision of the state; the union of soviet artists had immense power to make decisions about art. that meant that everything that was not accepted but the union of soviet artists had to remain in the unofficial sphere, so perhaps this proliferation of non-official art, which was at the same time tolerated but had no access to greater public, so we have a kind of shared space, and all culture from the 1960s through the 1980s developed in this space. pp: the question is probably a little too strongly phrased if we talk about official soviet culture. it is perhaps difficult to speak of any radical dislocation of time or disorientation in regard to the common project. there are still people alive who remember the thaw and it’s very difficult to judge on the level of the common man what was the reaction. definitely, the trauma of stalinism was there and it was experienced, but, i think, at least in the west, this break between the thaw and stalinism has been overemphasized at the expense of seeing how much the thaw in fact is committed to repossessing what stalinism has tainted. in a way, i find it most useful to think of the thaw as a kind of moment of repetition, a project of repetition, of how we can have essentially the same project without its distortions, as they called them at the time. so it’s a time of purification. it does deal with the past and it does configure time differently. but what strikes me is how much it is still committed to that very same past. usually, when you think about the thaw, you think about the return to private life, to the intimate sphere, the return to feeling, sometimes syrupy feeling, sentimentalization, away from the big thoroughfares of history, away from the big gestures, the sloganizing, etc., etc. and all that is there, but we need to see how all that actually serves to reappropriate the same things that were in the slogans. if you look, for example, at films or paintings of the thaw, there is a great deal of emphasis on these private moments: to find the individual when he is not at work, when he is not storming something, or conquering records. i don’t know how many paintings of the thaw there are with people on smoking breaks. this is a favorite subject. a worker smoking a cigarette, when the tractor is stopped, when the machine is not working. i must have seen at least thirty of these paintings. why do we apprehend, why do we look for, the person in that moment? not in order to say that the furnace or the tractor don’t matter. no. we look for the person in that moment in order to discover that he is essentially genuine, a deeply beautiful human being, as a private person, and to find in him, and not in the machine, the guarantee that the project will be successful, that socialism has not come out of joint. so the trauma is there, http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/� 5 2 t he t e mp o r a l i t i e s o f s o v i e t a nd p o s t c o m mun i s t v i s u a l c u l t u r e contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 1 (2011) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2011.34 but there is also this counter-impulse to heal the trauma, to convince ourselves that things will go on just fine, as long as we discover our true values in the soviet people, who are still the same. regardless of what people on the top of the hierarchy did, the ordinary soviet person is still the moral standard. and you also have, along with this return to the personal, a return to russia as it always has been. you have, in painting, these portrayals of the countryside, the sleepy village, the wooden hut away from any industrial site or “labor front.” but what one searches for in a sleepy russian village or town that looks like it belongs in the 19th century, is that same old russian spirit, that spirit that will carry our socialist project forward. bg: i must say that the thaw was a huge break in one certain aspect. in stalin’s time, you had no other option to survive other than in the system. you were in the system; there was no other option. after the thaw, at the end of the 1950s and beginning of the 1960s, you were in a position to choose. you could go and make art in the official system, and then you produce something official. but you can also do abstract expressionism, and some people did that too. so after 1956, you have a different psychological makeup because you were aware of unofficial society. it was not kept from you, but you had to choose it under certain circumstances, and you took a certain responsibility for that. that was a huge point for personal decisions. and you have a parallel; the regime abandoned any communist claims. their only claim was, “we keep stability and we keep things going.” do not destroy the country — it’s as simple as that. i would say a lot of people shared this position. i was also not very happy about the possibility of a crash in the soviet union. i think there was a certain consensus about these things. at the same time, i was involved, as were a lot of other people, in movements and groups. there were buddhist or hinduist groups, radical zionist groups, communist groups, russian fascist groups, and so on and so on. there was a huge plurality of groups. all of these groups had their own system of supply, their own system of support, their own influx of money, their own area of influence. you could survive in these groups; you didn’t need the official soviet system. you had a completely different way of living at that time. rb: so within art, then, this is also the moment when it suddenly becomes possible to adopt western modernist styles from the past and to make them in the present in the soviet union. so you have cezanne mixing with de kooning mixing with surrealism all at once. there’s simultaneously different ways of either making art or of living in the social order. how is that negotiated then? how is that navigated? what makes you chose to paint like cezanne or to paint like de kooning? is it purely personal preference? how do you deal with the fact that these are things that western art history has digested already, but they’re suddenly new in the soviet context? bg: well, i think that it’s just like in other societies. a couple of days ago, i was in montreal and in my audience were two or three people who said that they are jewish and buddhist at the same time. and then i realized that there are a lot of people in montreal who have this combination. why this combination? because other people have this combination. so you have this opportunity, so if, a lot of other people are doing cezanne, you are doing de kooning because a lot of people are doing de kooning. so that’s point number one; that is a principle of the market. then, you have some friends that are interested in a certain kind of art. you know, it just has this complicated structure and then you just make your way. you look at what you like, and look at the groups that like you; that is also important. and the possibility to survive. the possibility to get money. the possibility to get a position, and so on and so on. so you have all this practical, psychological, ideological texture. and you begin to navigate and look for what comes out of that. of course, western culture is controlled by black market. everything can be bought. you have total access to anything. at the same time, everything is underground. so you have to look at how you organize your life http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/� 5 3 r o b e r t b a i l e y a nd c r i s t i n a a l b u contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 1 (2011) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2011.34 and the ways that you can get access to western publications. so you have all that. and of course it was completely different from stalin’s time. it was psychologically frightening. ca: so do you see a re-polarization of the present as a result of this kind of moment when you have this matter of choice in the immediate present? are artists making these choices individually even though they cannot really exhibit their works? bg: no, i don’t think so. that perspective changed, and i think that people had the feeling that they are in the past and capitalism is in the future. i think everybody more or less expected to become capitalists ultimately. maybe not so soon, maybe not. maybe not as soon as it happened. maybe just as soon as it happened. but the feeling was that the soviet union was a backwards country, that it is a country that is not modernized the way the western countries are modernized, that the soviet union is isolated from the general movement of ideas and information, and so on and so on. and that makes the country very provincial. and i think there was a complete reevaluation of the present. the present was not a point of transition to a communist future, but it was a point of private or collective accommodation to the modernization processes coming from the west. pp: private, especially. the way i always think about the present in the thaw or the way the present is rendered in thaw culture is this: the present is the moment of choice, and there is always a sense that you are in some kind of secular purgatory. and the choice is, on a political level, clear: do you stay with father stalin or do you go with grandfather lenin, who is once removed from you in the genealogical line? so, it’s about making the choice of which road to follow. there is also the choice of whether to go the soviet route or the route of western temptation, which is thematized in novels of the thaw period like ticket to the stars. bg: but it’s not so certain. brezhnev made a deep philosophical statement. he said, “our goal is to come to the present day.” he had the feeling that he does not live in the present. the question is, who is living in the present? it is of course the west. so it was for him as obvious as for others. it was obvious that the present has its place outside the soviet union, and that to become modern, to become present, to become contemporary, to become up-to-date, we have to look to the west. i’m not so subjective; i don’t think that to be present is to decide something. i’m not so subjective. i think it’s a paranoia. our relationship to the present is a paranoid relationship. we think that somebody, at the time we are sitting here and losing time, somebody will make an achievement that the next day will show itself as a present. maybe somebody in tokyo. maybe somebody else. we have in the present time a feeling of competition. we have a feeling of competition to be modern, competition to be up-to-date, competition to be fashionable. and we have a very good reason to think that the present is not ours. i think that the anxiety of contemporaneity, this feeling that contemporaneity does not belong to us, but maybe to somebody else, is a deep, deep feeling that infects and defines us and our cultures today. pp: i think that what you said is completely on the mark, except that it applies perhaps to the time after 1964 a little bit better. i didn’t live through the thaw, but it’s hard to deny that this very brief period of perhaps ten, perhaps only eight years, in soviet history still provided a lot of inspiration to keep people within a soviet frame of mind. the memories of the war were still fresh, and you had the gagarin flight and various achievements in science. by the end of that period, the soviet union loses the nuclear race and everything begins to fall into the pattern that you described of anxiety, cynicism, and the understanding that we have fallen behind, and that every new day takes them further ahead of us. but the thaw is still full of idealism. i think that the picture you painted is very relevant to the brezhnev http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/� 5 4 t he t e mp o r a l i t i e s o f s o v i e t a nd p o s t c o m mun i s t v i s u a l c u l t u r e contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 1 (2011) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2011.34 time, but during the thaw, there is certainly still a lot of energy on a mass scale to reappropriate the legacy of the revolution, which had been dragged through the mud in the intervening years. i always found the project of the virgin lands campaign so symbolic — this typical khrushchevian project of sending young people to kazakhstan to conquer inhospitable, barren lands. i always think of how the campaign functions as a symbolic compensation for the process of collectivization under stalinism. how can we do collectivized agriculture in a virginal way without the terror, without the masses of peasants who are unwilling and must be forced? we will do it with masses of young people who are enthusiastic and willing to go out into the wilderness and begin from zero. i always think of this as encapsulating the thaw — again, on the level of official culture — in its attempt to write on a new page, more or less, the same characters that stalin had inscribed in blood on his page. bg: it’s also a total americanization. it’s the idea of wild west and conquering. pp: certainly, this is the soviet wild west. bg: yeah, it’s completely america. at the point when khrushchev said that we have to compete with america, of course, we wouldn’t win. we couldn’t compete with america. this is the idea that never would occur to stalin because america was capitalist. there is no terrain of competition. at the moment you decide to compete with the west, you are going to lose. that was the decision khrushchev made, but didn’t believe it, yeah? but it was a program of americanization. rb: at some point, the socialist realist image loses its affective power. it no longer structures consciousness, stirs desire, or configures intellect. we’ve traced this a little bit, but perhaps we can go further. how is the socialist realist image recuperated, appropriated, translated or repurposed by the state during the thaw period and after. when does its original effect wear off, and what is the fate of the socialist realist image? bg: i would say the socialist realism was never very popular. i was raised in the soviet union. it’s very interesting that, as a child in school, i was never brought to look at socialist realist paintings — only nineteenth century russian art. i must say that soviet power itself didn’t trust socialist realism, and the people didn’t like it. there was much more nineteenth century culture. if you look at the contemporary russian population, they almost do not remember socialist realism. its major authors were never read. what they were brought up on was classical russian literature and classical russian art. that was very much in the minds of the people, not socialist art. ca: i am also wondering about what the situation with socialist realism is in states other than the soviet union. pp: my memories begin even later than those of boris, and they are even deeper in the same vein. i grew up in the moment when cynicism had already set in, and indeed you were made to study works of socialist realism, but only those select ones that can be put into a narrative of the great world literature or bulgarian literature or soviet literature. so this is my memory as well, but if we try to look for some point earlier in history, a juncture that we could point to and say, “well, this is where socialist realism loses its power” (either on the level of the image or of the text) — that would be an absolutely futile pursuit. you have to start with the question of whether it had power to begin with. it did. it certainly did. but it’s so hard to research. it is so difficult to even begin to solve this problem, because, of course, http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/� 5 5 r o b e r t b a i l e y a nd c r i s t i n a a l b u contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 1 (2011) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2011.34 if you go and you speak with intellectuals in the former soviet union, the kind of people with whom we mostly speak, of course they remember an intellectual environment in which socialist realism never had much reputation to begin with. it was always looked at with scorn and derision. but, in general, the question is a good one. it is perhaps the most important question in soviet studies. do ideology or ideological representations, or aesthetic products that are generated within an ideological environment, have a genuine grip on the people? bg: they did. pp: when does this grip loosen? all of these are relevant questions, but extremely hard to research and perhaps the way to ask is not when socialist realism had or when it didn’t have a grip on mentalities, but to look simply at this long life of socialist realism as a continuous attempt to reinvigorate the rigid official formulas, to give them life and to make them more relevant. and in that context, you can definitely look at the thaw, at socialist realism of the thaw, as an attempt to make art, in some way, less formulaic, less normative, and to make it appear as if it is truly a property of those people for whom it is made — through humanization, through sentimentalization, through the turn to the private. if you look at thaw painting, it’s not very different from stalinist art. it’s still very rhetorical; it’s still very theatrical. but now, we turn to family scenes in which the husband comes back home and is drunk, and this is something to which people at the time responded avidly. yet the technique of painting had not changed too much. bg: officially not, as i said. but you have different options at the same time. you have change. but i think what’s important is that you have different options. you have a flood of french movies. you have a flood of translations also from avant-garde. so you have simply different options. you do not look in the same direction anymore because you have different options. you didn’t have those options in stalin’s time. ca: since the fall of communism, a dominant temporality in russian culture has been a form of nostalgia, though there are many forms this nostalgia takes. for russia’s nouveau riche, it takes the form of the triumph palace in moscow, a massive apartment complex that, in a postmodern fashion, quotes stalinist architecture. for those whose fate has proved less fortunate since the fall of communism, it proves to be a form of melancholic longing for the securities of the communist past. for the genuinely revolutionary, it provokes a desire to restart the communist project. and another form of this would be ostalgie, the commodification of nostalgic objects from communist times for the sake of profit. how do these nostalgias compete in the postcommunist context, and how they are they situated in relation to one another? also, do we have ostalgie in countries other than the german democratic republic, with which the concept has been closely associated? bg: in russia, everything is all about money. it's really all about money. it’s through and through a capitalist country. people are thinking only about money. you have mass culture because mass culture satisfies people's tastes. it's not about nostalgia; it's about the taste of the huge masses of the russian population. people just like certain commodities and that kind of architecture or this kind of image. they like it because it's available. at the same time you have a luxury market. i don't know if you have been to moscow recently. the whole center of moscow is a huge boutique. and you have a lot of modernist architecture. you have everything that people are ready to pay for. you have a huge investment in contemporary art. every month there are new projects and new spaces for contemporary art. a certain stratum of the population is pouring millions and millions into contemporary art. everyone who was a dissident at one time is now an artist. you have this development, which is probably not characteristic of all eastern europe because people simply do not have this kind http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/� 5 6 t he t e mp o r a l i t i e s o f s o v i e t a nd p o s t c o m mun i s t v i s u a l c u l t u r e contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 1 (2011) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2011.34 of money. if you go to another eastern european country, i think the big difference is that they live on western money. the contemporary art scene lives through projects of the european union. if you look at the nostalgia in germany, the problem is that reification was a completely economical, political, and cultural takeover. in the other countries of eastern europe, the ruling class, the former ruling class, and also a big part of the russian population, profited immensely economically from the change to capitalism. this didn't happen in eastern germany because western germans took all the high-ranking positions. because of this, there is ressentiment and nostalgia that is very different in the eastern germany situation because it was like colonization. but in the other states like romania, poland, and all the former soviet republics, they developed a very ardent form of nationalism. whatever problems they have, economical problems and so on, they can compensate ideologically through their nationalist discourse: “even if we are suffering, we are independent and we are free from the russians,” so “we are happy even if we are poor.” we have a powerful new ideology for eastern europe. we don’t have that in russia because it is very capitalist; it is like china to a degree that i think you don't have otherwise in eastern europe. especially, you do not have this complete capitalistic change, like a complete shift. so, i think that's the cause. i think nationalism is a driving force of all the eastern european countries. ca: but nationalism existed within communist regimes in eastern europe even before all this. for example, communism in romania and nationalism were very strongly interlinked. i agree that there are strong nationalist tendencies in the postcommunist context, but nationalism was already part of the project of communism. bg: nationalism was part of the communist project. all the states like estonia were artificially created by communists who expelled germans. for example, the populations of the baltic states were actually rural populations; germans lived in the cities. so you have all these national states as long-term effects of eastern europe history. in recent decades, you have nationalism as the legitimization for economical problems. it is the explanation for why you have to endure problems, and that explanation was once a communist one: “you have to endure it because we are building the economy.” and now the explanation sounds like, “we are free from russian imperialism, and we are free to build our own national state and our cultural identity.” that is the explanation for why you have some temporary economic difficulties. pp: and as soon as that explanation is offered, then the time comes to join the european union, and new explanations are in order. it is no longer nationalism, but the need for integration. because we need to integrate, we need to accept the rules and strictures of the european union, so now you have the situation in which greece is basically blackmailed into starving its people in order to be in the european union. that's the upgrade to nationalism, or the next fate of nationalism. but regarding nostalgia, i would definitely say that it’s not the only or even the most important framework in which to think the past from the present, either in the soviet union or in eastern europe. there are definitely people still, despite the rule of capitalism in russia, in intellectual circles, though not only there, who are trying to take serious account of stalinism and to keep it, to preserve it as the trauma that it is, and to write it into history. these people do not get celebrity status and do not get the same exposure as pop stars, but they are there. this attempt is definitely not something you can call nostalgia. there is also the statist appropriation of the past, which is also in no way nostalgic. it is simply the reclaiming of a usable past that can be written into the history of great russian nationalism, and it is not very different from what stalin himself did in regard to previous pasts. we see now the rewriting of history, also not at all within the framework of nostalgia. then, there is http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/� 5 7 r o b e r t b a i l e y a nd c r i s t i n a a l b u contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 1 (2011) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2011.34 the commercial aspect boris was talking about: this rampant commodification of stalin, which again does not fit the rubric of nostalgia at all. it is simply making money, whether it is by having a restaurant in which you are treated rudely by soviet-looking waiters or whether it is by selling all sorts of stalinist-era tchotchkes. that also does not go under rubric of nostalgia, simply because there is no emotional investment at all. perhaps there is some emotional investment on the part of the consumer — obviously you buy posters of stalin and you hang them in your living room because there is something there that strikes you as cool — but that is hardly deserving of the name nostalgia. and also there is the sense in contemporary russian consciousness that, "yes, we did have a twentieth century that was very different from what most other modern nations had." and that feeds certain old ideas of exceptionalism, which are very deeply rooted in the national psychology. this gives them new fuel. on the brighter side of all this is the fact that there are many people in eastern europe who feel anxious about capitalism completely dominant and without any alternative, so the memory of a world that was a little different, whatever its defects and horrors, could have some energizing potential. but it is very hard to see how exactly such a potential could be utilized, how to shape it into anything useful for the left or how to make of it anything that would be a usable present. i personally don't see how this can be done. bg: i believe that the only kind of nostalgia that people have, and i agree with petre, is a kind of exceptionality. russians feel completely exceptional; they've always felt this way, and they feel this way still. of course, they are also irritated that other people treat them as being exceptional, so there is some ambiguity. you have this capitalism in moscow that resembles a "cheese for free" sign on a mousetrap. this is the capitalist heart, and it's very obvious to everyone. pp: clearly, this must be very depressing for a lot of people, but also especially for a lot of people for whom communism was their entire life. so, nostalgia is there, if you want to call it that; what kind of social or political effectiveness it has is hard to say. certainly some of the resentment is channeled to new imperial ambitions and neo-stalinist ideologies, but i personally would like to see some kind of actual radical use of that energy of resentment. bg: the art world is completely dominated by the left right at the moment. all the groups are radical and partisan. everybody is like that. pp: but that, in a sense, is also a depressing moment for marxists because it shows the commodification of left politics as well. bg: it's complete commodification. of course, it is complete commodification. but russia is always interesting because it's always radical. whatever is done is done one hundred percent. it is one hundred percent commodification. and you look at that, and it's fascinating! rb: perhaps we have time for one last question, which you've already gone a long way towards answering. the question is whether postcommunism is really the best term for periodizing the russian present. it seems clearly that it is not, particularly because this temporality of the post–, whether it is postmodern or postcolonial, ends up locking the present into a kind of retrospective gaze so that postcommunist countries are fixated on their past, the question is whether enough time has passed to situate communism in the past and therefore to move onward in some other way. as long as this question continues to be asked it can never really be answered in the affirmative; you’re trapped in the past. with so much attention devoted to the past and present the connection of the present to the possible futures is not really sufficiently examined. capitalism proceeds onwards, and absurd http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/� 5 8 t he t e mp o r a l i t i e s o f s o v i e t a nd p o s t c o m m un i s t v i s u a l c u l t u r e contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 1 (2011) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2011.34 fantasies proliferate. what kind of future does postcommunism or the russian situation at the present promise? bg: i don't think that postcommunism is not a good description because, if you want to export something, you have to export something. what do you export in the capitalist context right now? russian postcommunism. and the question is how long russia can export postcommunism, and that is a very open question. actually, at the moment, it can only sell that. germany sold it for 45 years, a very long period of time. but, in fact, germany still sells national socialism. if you have these historical resources, it is hard to escape them, hard not to use it, sell it, package it, and export it. russiannness as such is not interesting for foreigners, but people are interested in communism still. i don't see, in the foreseeable future, at least from my perspective, that this postcommunist condition can change. i simply don't see it. pp: we have to think of this “post–“ as the place of contest. are we going to push off the soviet past and start asking what it has done to us, or are we going to be locked into it, as you say in your question? this is the place of debate and there are people who don't want to let it go, and do not want to imagine a new future in which capitalism takes over and everything simply becomes a little bit more exotic version of the tourist attractions that you can find everywhere. there is no eastern european capital that does not have a communist tour, for example. so russia, in that sense, simply becomes the most authentic sort of a communist theme park. but of course there are people in russia who don't want it to be that. there are those who want to be postcommunist, and who want to make sense of the present in those terms. then, there is the objective situation, which simply by bringing up new generations and locking russia into the present-day global world make the past, with every day, less and less relevant. there are students now graduating from russian schools who couldn't care less about stalinism. bg: i don't see that as a russian problem. pp: no, no, it's not a just a russian problem. bg: i see that as a western problem. the west obviously does not want to integrate russia for many reasons. i don't think that the west is interested in expanding beyond eastern europe into russia. i don't think that the west is interested in debate with russia. it seems to me that this kind of military or political isolation that russia has in relation the west now will not be changed in the foreseeable future. that means that russia will reproduce its old form, all the structures that it has always had. because it has always been, since the eighteenth and nineteenth century, in the same position: it was not integrated in the international political and military system. maybe in the 19th century, but even then not really. if the basics remain the same, nothing changes. i don't see any fundamental change in the russian position in the world. pp: from the point of view of russia, i agree with you. i'm not sure whether there is something like complicity on the part of the west to not integrate russia. i am not sure about this, and i don't see how that argument could be made. to end in our own backyard: if you look at how russia is treated within american universities, you will definitely see that there are definite investments in keeping russia as other as possible, as different, as exotic as possible. and from that angle, there are obviously quite a few people who are making symbolic capital and making a living out of presenting russia in such a way. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/� 5 9 r o b e r t b a i l e y a nd c r i s t i n a a l b u contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 1 (2011) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2011.34 bg: look at mass culture; look at the episode of 24 that i saw yesterday. the bad guys seemed to be iranians, but the russian government was behind them; it only looks like the bad guys are muslim terrorists or whatever. ultimately, it is russia that the west fears. russia is still not part of the western military and political system. whoever is responsible for that is a separate question. i would say that, if a certain geopolitical reality is reproduced, then the reaction to the social and geopolitical reality is reproduced because this reaction is also a reaction to a fact that russia is de facto not part of the military and political alliance. it's not a problem of responsibility; it's simply the fact that certain basic realities didn't change, i would say. some change from communism to capitalism, so economic relations are different, but the political and military situation hasn't changed, and the military and political constellation is more important for culture than the economic one because if you have some kind of military and political isolation, you have to justify it in cultural terms. you have to deal with culture to create an identity. i don't believe very much in psychology. i am a marxist, i believe in the base and culture as superstructure. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/� 6 0 t he t e mp o r a l i t i e s o f s o v i e t a nd p o s t c o m mun i s t v i s u a l c u l t u r e contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 1 (2011) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2011.34 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-noncommercial-no derivative works 3.0 united states license. this journal is operated by the university library system of the university of pittsburgh as part of its d-scribe digital publishing program, and is co-sponsored by the university of pittsburgh press. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/� http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/� http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/� http://www.pitt.edu/� 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can be opened with acrobat and adobe reader 5.0 and later.) >> /namespace [ (adobe) (common) (1.0) ] /othernamespaces [ << /asreaderspreads false /cropimagestoframes true /errorcontrol /warnandcontinue /flattenerignorespreadoverrides false /includeguidesgrids false /includenonprinting false /includeslug false /namespace [ (adobe) (indesign) (4.0) ] /omitplacedbitmaps false /omitplacedeps false /omitplacedpdf false /simulateoverprint /legacy >> << /addbleedmarks false /addcolorbars false /addcropmarks false /addpageinfo false /addregmarks false /convertcolors /converttocmyk /destinationprofilename () /destinationprofileselector /documentcmyk /downsample16bitimages true /flattenerpreset << /presetselector /mediumresolution >> /formelements false /generatestructure false /includebookmarks false /includehyperlinks false /includeinteractive false /includelayers false /includeprofiles false /multimediahandling /useobjectsettings /namespace [ (adobe) (creativesuite) (2.0) ] /pdfxoutputintentprofileselector /documentcmyk /preserveediting true /untaggedcmykhandling /leaveuntagged /untaggedrgbhandling /usedocumentprofile /usedocumentbleed false >> ] >> setdistillerparams << /hwresolution [2400 2400] /pagesize [612.000 792.000] >> setpagedevice ogrodnik vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.101 http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu today’s cutting edge is tomorrow’s obsolete an interview with cory arcangel and tina kukielski benjamin ogrodnik abstract exhibited at the carnegie museum of art, pittsburgh from november 3, 2012 to january 27, 2013, cory arcangel: masters was a wide-ranging, multi-sensory survey of the artist’s major works to date. the following interviews with arcangel and the exhibition’s curator tina kukielski were conducted in february 2013, and discuss the conceptual, curatorial, and aesthetic issues raised by the exhibition. about the author benjamin ogrodnik’s research lies at the intersection of film and the visual arts. his dissertation investigates experimental filmmakers from western europe, latin america, and north america who have interrogated the "vérité" tradition of documentary film. he is interested in how contemporary artists and filmmakers have transformed documentary theory and technique through their practices within the broader sphere of "art cinema." contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.101 exhibited at the carnegie museum of art, pittsburgh, between november 3, 2012 and january 27, 2013, cory arcangel: masters brought to the fore the wide range of media forms and conceptual interests that have propelled arcangel’s career. the retrospective included many of the most innovative works of his idiosyncratic oeuvre. these ranged from the well-known super mario clouds (2002), a cartridge of the classic 8-bit nintendo game that cory hacked in order to remove everything except for the clouds, to newer work like drei klavierstücke, op. 11 (2009), which is made up of 170 video clips of cats playing pianos appropriated from youtube. the common thread running through all the artwork, however, was focused on our obsession with the very recent past, particularly on outmoded technologies and once-popular musical celebrities. arcangel’s show was, in this sense, an enchanting time capsule that at once explored our nostalgia for, as well as frustration with, modes of technology and media as they are quickly forgotten and replaced by more "innovative" forms. i spoke with arcangel shortly after his performance of selected single channel videos, which inaugurated the masters exhibition in pittsburgh. the interview reveals how reflective arcangel is about his artistic practice, but also how difficult it is for historians and critics to align him with any particular style or school of thought regarding his novel uses of media. perhaps what makes him so challenging for an interviewer is precisely what makes him so fascinating as a prominent contemporary artist: that is, he clearly hits upon many tendencies in the culture, presenting them to us without giving any comprehensive explanation of what he is doing or why. it is the task of the spectator to interface with cory's diverse body of work and negotiate the impact of its intervention upon what it means to be human. arcangel’s work signals new directions in the global media landscape, while also meticulously archiving its past. benjamin ogrodnik: on your website, you mention that it took a year to prepare for the masters show. i wonder if you could speak to the process that went into preparing, choosing, and curating the works that were eventually exhibited? how did you choose the specific works for the exhibition? were they inspired at all by pittsburgh? cory arcangel: the show was done in close collaboration with tina kukielski at the carnegie. she visited my studio a couple times and, you know, the first thing that we had to deal with was the space. we were lucky in that we had two really interesting spaces to work with. added to that was that tina wanted to do a kind of greatest hits sort of thing. so already we had to be creative: how to do a kinda small retrospective in only two spaces? so i proposed a bunch of different shows all utilizing the forum gallery, and video cube spaces at the museum, and we went back and forth and eventually we came up with the show. what we did was take my older videos and kind of put them inside of a newer sculpture. all the videos in the main gallery of the show were shown on flat screens that are actually part of a sculpture that i made about a year or two ago called volume management (2011), which is a sculpture that is just ten flat screens and their boxes and can be configured however. so the thought was that it was fun to have a kind of recursive use of artwork. artworks being displayed by other artworks, etc, etc, etc. as for which videos, they are kinda one video from every two years, and of course they also had to look good on flat screens. the work that is very specific to pittsburgh is the work i situated in the carnegie library, the audmcrs underground dance music collection of recorded sound (2011-2012). that today’s cutting edge is tomorrow’s obsolete an interview with cory arcangel and tina kukielski benjamin ogrodnik 1 8 6 t o d a y ’ s c u t t i n g e d g e i s t o m o r r o w ’ s o b s o l e t e : a n i n t e r v i e w w i t h c o r y a r c a n g e l a n d t i n a k u k i e l s k i contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.101 work, which is a collection of trance records, and related marc formatted database, was literally made for the show. though, in general, i would say my work “feels” good at the carnegie, as it has a lot of parallels with the culture there: computer science, engineering, etc, etc. plus, i have done a lot in the city over the years. it's just a place i feel comfortable, and also a place i have a lot of friends. bo: even though much of your artwork explores different kinds of abstraction, there is often a heavy presence of pop music and pop culture in your artwork, and humor especially. how do you negotiate the more analytical, cerebral, processoriented side of your art, alongside your unique sense of humor, irony, and playfulness? ca: sometimes i think there are two parts to this process. there is my intuitive self and my critical self. and they are in constant dialogue with each other and rubbing off on each other. so, for example, you know, if i read enough slamming texts that make an argument for some kind of theory—even though intuitively that theory might not be what i'm feeling— eventually that thought will probably bleed over into my intuition. and the same is true for the opposite: my intuition has the capability of bleeding over into my critical thought. it's always a back and forth. and in my case, in terms of creating the work, it's usually the intuition that pulls things along while it's the critical side of things that makes me check myself from doing things that are too bonkers. bo: in your description of data diaries (2003), you mention that the work was difficult to view back in 2003 because of technological limitations and the slower internet speeds for streaming video. i am really struck that you mentioned that detail because it adds a historical layer, almost like dating a fossilized artifact. it makes me remember how wild and frustrating earlier versions of the internet used to be. do you consider yourself to be a kind of historian or preservationist of online culture? ca: the whole thing about data diaries that was fun was that almost the entire work was dependent on the limitations of the early 2000s internet. for example, the actual data diaries videos are really, really, really tiny. they are, like, 50 x 25 pixels. that's super small! and the whole trick of that piece was that when i played them back in the browser i resized them to be, like, 100 times the size; almost the whole computer screen at the time. that's what gave it that pixel look. so it looked great, and played in real-time, but there was actually very little data being streamed. everything that determined how those movies looked—size and color—was determined by speed of a typical internet connection at the time. the idea was: how much color data could i get away with and still have the videos play in real-time on a super slow modem connection? tons of payoff for very little data. people hadn't seen real-time video online like that before so there was a whole element of surprise, as well as a kinda of wow factor. at the time, i didn't concern myself with being a preservationist or historian. though now i have to go back and fix these things. i had to fix the data diaries videos to show at the carnegie because the way computers resize videos is no longer the same. uuuuugh! so now i'm definitely on the side of the preservationist. 1 8 7 b e n j a m i n o g r o d n i k contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.101 bo: one of the interesting things about the time we're living in is that computer usage seems to alter, almost deform, our felt sense of time. for instance, i have a habit of opening too many tabs when i surf the net; i become overwhelmed and have to spend some time away from my computer until i feel ready to get back into it. i feel like i am not the only one who feels exhausted, bored, and overwhelmed by being connected, online 24/7. i think your more recent work is interesting in this regard because it tries to visualize how regular people engage with information and data processes online, which is experienced as an invisible, undifferentiated activity. is it challenging to make art about being "on the grid" and then having to represent it back to us in the form of images and installation artworks? ca: well i would probably want to back up a bit and say it's challenging to make anything. just making anything is a big deal. even when i see work by other people, i try never to be all hater, because just the fact that they said something was done and put something into the world is really kind of a powerful thing. in terms of the relationship between the on-screen world and off-screen world, i think that online culture is a part of everyday life now just as much as the irl. so i am not so sure that i would differentiate between the two conceptually. physically, it is a different issue! i am not sure how much longer i can spend my days in front of a screen! that's why i am trying to make more sculpture. i gotta get up and walk around! lol. bo: many of your well-known video artworks, such as super mario clouds and more recently sweet 16 (2006), seem to lie at the intersection of new media forms (electronic games, music videos, youtube) and more traditional modes of film/video experimentation. do you find inspiration in experimental film, or do you get ideas for video art from other sources? figure 1 cory arcangel, six single-channel monitors from masters. the carnegie museum of art, forum gallery, 2012. photo by tom little. courtesy of the carnegie museum of art. 1 8 8 t o d a y ’ s c u t t i n g e d g e i s t o m o r r o w ’ s o b s o l e t e : a n i n t e r v i e w w i t h c o r y a r c a n g e l a n d t i n a k u k i e l s k i contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.101 ca: today's cutting edge is tomorrow's obsolete, so i tend not to make a distinction between new media forms and traditional media. as for where inspiration comes from, it's hard to say, but what i can say is that it usually comes at the most bizarre moments. i can never predict it, and it's kinda something that i have to catch. like, i just have to be paying attention when i am going about my days, but it can come from any source. bo: i think, if you grew up in the 80's, and you were somebody who was just absolutely immersed in the electronic culture around that time, then there is something weirdly “validating” about seeing objects like game cartridges and cassette tapes and cd binders and images of photoshop gradients being placed in a gallery sort of context. it almost allows you to see them anew. i wonder if and how your relationship to these objects changes when you decide to make an artwork out of something like a cd collection that seems ordinary and sentimental, and very rooted in a specific place, and then give it a public life and visibility it otherwise wouldn't have? ca: i think we are just talking about the ready-made here. the thing that i think pulls them along, or at least what makes them feel different, is these objects have a kinda violent shelf life built into them. we are so programmed into thinking that they are of such little value that it tends to shock when they are pulled out of this cultural spiral, and “validated.” the only thing that i would think about when putting these things into a gallery is that i would hope that however i do it, or however the things are configured, they point to some bigger story. so it might just be a cassette, or might just be a cd binder, but hopefully it says something you know about what it means to be human or whatever. - bo: one of the most striking things about the forum gallery that featured arcangel’s work is that the space itself did not really resemble a white cube setting. the walls had a black-and-white pattern all over; it reminded me of a pixilated screen, or a close-up of a pixel. there was almost this sense that you weren't in a sacrosanct space of “high art.” can you explain the effect you and arcangel were going for? what sort of first impression was the viewer meant to experience when they entered the gallery? tina kukielski: in recent installations of cory arcangel’s work i would say that, in general, the look and feel of those shows was akin to walking into the showroom of a brookstone or radio shack in the mall. cory was playing with the devices of consumer electronics stores and enhancing a familiar, but also depersonalizing approach to technology. i remembered seeing some of cory’s first shows like welcome 2 my homepage artshow!!!!!!!!! at team gallery in 2005, or his collaboration with paper rad at deitch projects that same year. these shows were much more dense, less minimalist in a way. there was usually a carpet. they were a bit of a mess but very playful at the same time; you wanted to hang out there. during one of my visits to cory’s studio i asked him to show me some old flat files. he pulled out this black-and-white silkscreen print of a default digital pattern from mac paint, what cory refers to as infinite fill, based on the tool he used to create it. i remembered seeing this pattern covering a room at foxy production where cory and his sister curated a group show based on rudimentary pre-photoshop drawing tools. anyway, i encouraged cory to return to his original allover style of installation design and the infinite fill pattern covering all the walls of the gallery was an obvious way to tie together the disparate works of the show. beyond that, the gallery is a cube so the idea was to “infinitely fill” the space with visual information. the preparators who installed the wallpaper had a terrible time because the pixilated pattern made your eyes jump. once repurposing of older artworks was on the table for conversation, the idea of reusing the lcd flat-screens from his whitney exhibition (they were originally shown in their 1 8 9 b e n j a m i n o g r o d n i k contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.101 boxes unopened) was considered. the televisions sit six in a row facing the entrance resembling a best buy display, yet each monitor is showing a different work. we left space open on the backside so when you walked around the back of the televisions on their boxes, you could see that the display itself was propped up. we left the interior armatures that provided support to the heavy monitors and all of the wires and all the technology completely visible. bo: at the opening reception for the masters exhibition, arcangel performed selected single channel videos as a unique, one-time event. from a curatorial standpoint, how do you negotiate the challenges of time-based art that seems to present a degree of spontaneity or risk? tk: i saw cory do a performance of selected single channel videos at a club in new york years ago and it always stayed with me. it was a rare window into his working process at the time and because he changes the tone with every iteration it continues to change each time he performs it. in terms of the spontaneity of the event, what happens live in the room will be only for that audience (cory refuses to allow documentation of this particular performance so you cannot see it on video later). in that way, it is truly a snapshot of a moment in time. bo: i understand that before the exhibition, you had met arcangel previously and visited his studio several times. when did you realize that you wanted to work on this project with cory, and what did his work seem to offer for the carnegie museum? does his work offer anything in particular to pittsburgh audiences? tk: i had always thought i would work with cory one day and when i got to pittsburgh it seemed like the right opportunity. in my first few months in town i was reading about the film program operating out of the carnegie museum in the 1970s run by curator sally dixon. in dixon’s letters to the filmmakers she was working with, now well established figures like stan brakhage and hollis frampton, she would always offer to her artists the opportunity to make film work in pittsburgh, with the help of certain tech labs at carnegie mellon university (cmu). i thought this was a great idea and something unique to pittsburgh, where i already had the sense that people were open to collaboration. one of the first things we did when cory visited was meet with golan levin at the studio for creative inquiry at cmu. cory wanted to approach the warhol about doing a project with warhol’s amiga computers in the archive. a very natural collaboration is now ongoing between the carnegie museum, the warhol museum, cory and the cmu computer club dealing specifically with the preservation of drawings warhol made on the amiga in the 1980s. in my mind, this is a perfect confluence of the art and technology communities distinctive to pittsburgh. bo: i noticed that there was a very diverse group present at the masters exhibition opening. everyone from children to college students to senior citizens were present. when you curate, how much do you think about the audience? tk: that is funny, yes, it was a mixed crowd. i ran into a trustee that night and she left early because as she said she “felt too old.” i was expecting that the exhibition would attract a younger-than-average audience or at least the generation x-ers who might have grown up with the same cultural references. what i didn’t expect is that even young children seem to respond to cory’s work. i think this says something about fluency in technology. bo: the spatial relationships in the forum gallery were quite suggestive. for example, an arrangement of screens predominates in the center, but there is a glass case to the left side that contains artifacts of arcangel’s mental life and possibly even adolescence. do you feel that the object case is necessary for the viewer’s understanding and appreciation of arcangel’s work? 1 9 0 t o d a y ’ s c u t t i n g e d g e i s t o m o r r o w ’ s o b s o l e t e : a n i n t e r v i e w w i t h c o r y a r c a n g e l a n d t i n a k u k i e l s k i contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.101 figure 2. cory arcangel, the audmcrs underground dance music collection of recorded sound, 2011-12. a collection of trance and techno lps on vinyl. carnegie library of pittsburgh, pennsylvania. photo by tom little. courtesy of the carnegie museum of art. 1 9 1 b e n j a m i n o g r o d n i k contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.101 tk: the reason to show the two vitrines with artifacts from cory’s working process was one way for me as a curator to communicate an important aspect of the artist’s work that exists outside of the expected gallery context for artwork. i see cory as a cross-disciplinary artist and a cultural purveyor. a lot of what he does, for instance whether it is a live performance in a club, a web project, or a brand of artist-designed merchandise, does not so easily fit within the museum walls. we took the remnants from these finished or unfinished projects and assembled them together to suggest other modes of presentation. bo: your colleague daniel baumann recently visited a seminar in history of art at the university of pittsburgh, in order to discuss one of his mentors, harald szeemann, the famous swiss curator who is said to have been the first freelance curator and self-described “exhibition maker.” szeemann was extremely influential to a whole generation of european curators coming of age in the 1980s. he departed from the timeline as an organizing principle for curation, and promoted thematic approaches in shows such as when attitudes become form (1969) or documenta 5 (1972). since you began curating, have you found any similar curator-mentors who inspire you or test your assumptions about how to make an effective exhibition? tk: i have had the pleasure of working for two remarkable curators who both became mentors to me. the first was larry rinder, now director at the berkeley art museum. larry was and is incredibly generous. we would joke about this, but he was notorious for taking any appointment anyone requested with him (even when he was way too busy). larry also taught me to push the bounds of what art could be and to trust my instincts. he has a special interest in outsider art and has curated exhibitions with developmentally disabled artists. the other curator that i greatly admire is elisabeth sussman, curator at the whitney, and recipient of the 2013 award for curatorial excellence. from elisabeth i learned that the best way to learn everything is to act like you know nothing. of course she did know a lot, she’s been in the business of curating for over thirty years, but she taught me how to ask questions, how to be open and curious. she was also the first person to recognize my desire to be a curator and she nurtured that, which, in the context of a big institution like the whitney, was incredibly valuable to me. bo: looking toward the future, you are curating the 2013 carnegie international, along with daniel baumann and dan byers. daniel pointed out that it is becoming increasingly difficult to distinguish a recurring, temporary exhibition amongst the hundreds of such events happening every year across the world. how is the curatorial trio approaching the carnegie international in a new way? what current exhibitionary concepts are informing the 2013 edition? tk: daniel is right and we often talk about the globalizing field of art and the homogeneity that comes along with that. it is this global condition that ironically promotes a return to the local or let’s say contingent character of the mega-exhibition, and this is now being much talked about. in hindsight maybe we will see that we are simply the product of today’s trend. this is what agamben refers to as the “untimely” quality of the contemporary, right? but we did make a choice to think about an international exhibition from a local standpoint. that we all moved and now live in pittsburgh is one thing, but we made certain decisions to connect in our immediate environment as well. for instance, we rent an apartment in the lawrenceville neighborhood of pittsburgh where we host artist talks (despite popular belief, we do not all live there). one other important first principle was a decision we made together to choose artworks instead of themes, ideas, or even artists in some cases. we let those choices lead us through our conversations. 1 9 2 t o d a y ’ s c u t t i n g e d g e i s t o m o r r o w ’ s o b s o l e t e : a n i n t e r v i e w w i t h c o r y a r c a n g e l a n d t i n a k u k i e l s k i contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.101 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-noncommercial-no derivative works 3.0 united states license. this journal is operated by the university library system of the university of pittsburgh as part of its d-scribe digital publishing program, and is co-sponsored by the university of pittsburgh press. contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture vol 7, no 1 (2018) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2018.236 http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu hemispheric conversations exploring links between past and present, industrial and post-industrial through site-specific graffitti practice at the carrie furnaces caitlin frances bruce about the author caitlin frances bruce's research is in the area of visual studies, affect studies, and critical theory. she is currently investigating the relationships between public art in urban spaces in transition within a transnational milieu. largely focusing on graffiti and muralism, bruce argues that such public art creates spaces for encounter between different publics, and between publics and central, peripheral, or marginal spaces. her research takes her to philadelphia, chicago, new york, paris, perpignan, león guanajuato, and mexico city. she is currently working on a manuscript on transnational public art. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 7, no 1 (2018) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2018.236 in this article, i briefly discuss a project i coorganized this year in collaboration with oreen cohen, shane pilster, rivers of steel, the university of pittsburgh, pennsylvania partners in the arts, and the american studies association. for “hemispheric conversations: urban art project” (hcuap), we facilitated a collaboration among artists in chicago, pittsburgh, and león guanajuato, mexico, as a platform for conversation about how to reimagine our shared urban spaces. in a political moment that might be a cause for despair, collaborative art practice in urban spaces can serve as one way of reigniting a shared sense of possibility and energy.1 my central argument is that public art highlights the relationship between the fundamental fluidity and permeability of spaces and cultures and the possibility of creating spatial practices for encounters that allow us to imagine the city and our relation to it, and each other, anew. the carrie furnaces are a site of industrial patrimony. by industrial patrimony, i refer to the national historic landmark designation that protects abandoned industrial infrastructure in the name of maintaining and celebrating the region’s industrial history and identity. the furnaces are located in the borough of rankin, a short drive from pittsburgh. rising against an often slate grey sky abutting the monongahela river, just a turn off the highway, they offer a surprising landscape of ruin and might that contrast sharply with the smooth lines of the highway and the sheen of the big box stores at the nearby waterfront mall. the towering smoke stacks and the elongated funnel of the furnace creates an almost post-apocalyptic vision against vibrant green growth and blue or grey sky. in many ways, the furnaces are a synecdoche for pittsburgh. the site’s status as a ruin is part of the attraction it holds to tourists and commercial users who situate it as a romantic backdrop for music festivals, advertisements, and photo shoots. for those who come from multiple generations of steel workers who suffered extreme job loss, it is not a romantic ruin—it is a complex site of pride but also of loss and mourning (for lost jobs, for injuries sustained on the job, etc.). changing from a major center for metal casting in the 1940s and 1950s to a closed site for scrap metal collection in the 1980s, the dormant site became an unofficial center for urban explorers, guerilla artists, and graffiti writers. now, it is a national heritage site that combines industrial history with postindustrial culture to create an evolving relationship to the past and present.2 in this way, the furnaces can be perceived as a site where the fluidity and permeability of spaces and cultures to transformation is on display. modern graffiti culture also emerged during this postindustrial moment—in the 1960s in philadelphia and in the 1970s in new york city.3 in new york, urban denizens witnessed the decimation of places like the bronx. in response, youth took up spray cans to use the city as a canvas making the simple but powerful claim: “i am here.” “they make something out of 1 on the potential of public art, see w. j. t. mitchell, “the violence of public art: ‘do the right thing,’” critical inquiry 16, no. 4 (1990): 880–99; lucy r. lippard, the lure of the local: senses of place in a multicentered society (new york: new press, 1997); tom finkelpearl, dialogues in public art (cambridge, ma: mit press, 2001); greg dickinson, carole blair, and brian l. ott, eds., places of public memory: the rhetoric of museums and memorials (tuscaloosa, al: university of alabama press, 2010). 2 “rivers of steel,” rivers of steel website, accessed july 1, 2018, https://www.riversofsteel.com/. 3 roger gastman and caleb neelon, the history of american graffiti (new york: harper collins, 2011). hemispheric conversations exploring links between past and present, industrial and post-industrial through site-specific graffiti practice at the carrie furnaces caitlin frances bruce http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 1 9 ca i t l i n f r a n c e s b r u c e contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 7, no 1 (2018) | issn 2153-5194 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2018.236 nothing,” stef skills from chicago explained to youth, during one of her workshops at brashear high school. carrie furnaces: how an industrial site becomes a graffiti history display when the carrie furnaces were abandoned in the late 1980s and early 1990s, they were an informal gathering place for guerilla artists, urban explorers, and graffiti artists. because they are not within walking distance or on a bus line from pittsburgh, the works created by the artists from the 1990s to the early 2000s were largely left untouched—which is often impossible in more traditional graffiti ecologies where permanence is not an expectation and city-run graffiti squads routinely erase graffiti works. as a result, the furnaces have also organically become a regional graffiti museum showcasing evolutions in the style over the last three decades. in 1988, rivers of steel (ros) took over as caretakers and managers for the site, seeking to transform it from an urban ruin to one node in a larger network of industrial patrimony. adopting a fairly open perspective toward the present and the future, the goal of ros has not been to “freeze” the furnaces but make it a safe and significant part of an evolving process of pittsburgh’s identity. as a result, they not only offer tours about the process of producing steel, but also serve the site for music festivals, weddings, photo shoots, and a sculpture biennial. it was also the temporary home for the mobile sculpture workshop in 2017. in the late 2010s, under the leadership of shane pilster, the rivers of steel art program (directed by chris mcginnis) began to offer urban art tours and workshops. pilster, a graffiti artist from los angeles who relocated to pittsburgh eight years ago, is able to tell a nuanced story about the personalities and myths behind the markings on various parts of the furnace walls. he also offers workshop participants the opportunity to make their own works of art, familiarizing them with graffiti technique and practice and, in this way, challenging common preconceptions. as mentioned above, the site is a place for intense public feelings, memory, and identity. for many of the steel workers and their families who left pittsburgh with the collapse of the industry—or those who remained—the structure is part of their collective dna and, as a result, is simultaneously a source of intense pain and pride. due to this history, the site has different and sometimes competing meanings for its users. only over time and through ongoing conversation have the docents and stewards of the site come to understand and accept some of the graffiti, and the writers gone through permission processes with pilster to paint new works. hcuap objectives: conversations as noted above, the goal of hcuap was to foreground graffiti as a crucial means of civic communication, a form of cultural expression that has social, political, and cultural value. during fall 2016, hcuap focused on creating public events to showcase the history of the form, thinking about how to integrate graffiti into diverse curricula, and how to rethink or imagine new laws and practices around graffiti through a public debate. through these public conversations with artists, community leaders, and scholars, we sought to spotlight the pedagogical possibilities for graffiti with a curriculum-brainstorming session led by education graduate students paulette vincent ruz and øscar medina. this conversation highlighted histories of youth-driven social movements; aesthetic innovation; mathematic work with scale and design; and a way to create a playful context to reimagine urban spaces. hcuap objectives: youth street art workshops (yousaw) a number of individuals and organizations are using graffiti skill workshops as a form of youth empowerment. lavie raven in chicago, director of the university of hip hop, has directed youth graffiti workshops and murals over several years. miguel aguilar at the school of the art institute of chicago, peyton scott russel’s sprayfinger curriculum series in the twin http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 2 0 h e m i s p h e r i c c on v e r s a t i o n s contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 7, no 1 (2018) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2018.236 cities, words beats life in dc, and university of hip hop in chicago are other prominent examples. in pittsburgh, where there is only one legal wall (in homewood) and intense demonization of graffiti, we wanted to offer a more contextual narrative about the history of graffiti and its (legal) potential. in spring 2017, we invited local artists (jessica duvall, jerome charles, nick sardo, and danny devine) to conduct a set of free graffiti workshops at festivals (the center for latin american studies festival on pitt’s campus), afterschool arts programs (assemble in garfield), libraries (hazelwood public library), and in classrooms (manchester middle school and environmental charter school). four visiting artists, one from chicago (stephanie garland aka stef skills), and three from león guanajuato (wes, orion, and kif) also gave workshops at brashear high school in a spanish classroom. these workshops varied to some extent depending on the skills and backgrounds of particular teaching artists. in general, they introduced students (between seven and seventeen) to some of the history of graffiti and its social function and international scope, and to offer them the opportunity to use “graffiti style” practices including stencil work, sprayed paint, name writing, and imagining possible interventions using transparencies with works drawn onto them and then held up against different urban landscapes. the goals were to offer different ways of reimagining urban space; celebrating their names and identities; and experimenting with new artistic forms (stencils, transparencies, lettering forms). for all but the clas workshops, we offered students small canvases to work on so they could take their piece home. for one of the two artists who had been prosecuted and fined for doing illegal graffiti, giving the workshops served as community service hours that could be deducted from their sentence. one, jerome charles, used his experience as a message to explain to youth the risks of “doing bad stuff.” his short lecture was simply called “don’t do bad stuff,” and he even made little stickers and buttons for the students to take home with the “don’t” sign. the outcomes were largely experiential: pleasure in producing collaborative or individual works of art; playing with colors; developing nicknames that they felt were representative of themselves. hcuap objectives: collaborative murals our other goal included creating a collaborative mural at the furnaces in which the local artists and visiting artists, using archival material, would envision a project with a site-specific twist. to do so, kif and i consulted the archives looking for old photos of the current site and images of women workers, as kif and stef skills wanted to introduce themes of feminism and international exchange. in our first planning session, a the visiting artist, danny devine, went to cohen’s studio, and we went through different photos while cohen shared her knowledge of the furnaces’ history (she worked on a camera obscura project in 2016). looking at a number of photos of the furnaces’ prior landscape, almost a forest of metal and stone, and its current site, where deer and ducklings happily walk around a lush green set of fields, the artists observed how nature “comes back.” stephanie reflected on how even extreme changes to landscape can be slowly repaired by the march of nature. she connected this idea to larger indigenous movements to protect water and land (she had been part of protests at standing rock and camped in solidarity with the water protectors, integrating themes from her standing rock experience into a number of her previous pieces). wes and orion were more interested in the scale of the site, and the strength of the workers. danny, a more old-school style writer, was interested in the history of the trains passing by the site—as trains are a crucial surface for graffiti practice. stephanie suggested that we use the design of a series of train cars, and each artist would have his or her own “car,” but that there could still be some shared concepts. after our initial planning meeting, we went on a tour with one of the rivers of steel docents, adam taylor, who comes from multiple generations of steel workers, and walked us through the site explained the casting process, pointing out some elements of international exchange that were part of the labor history of the site. he noted that in the early nineteenth century, a number of mexican workers actually helped construct the furnaces, living in dormitories in homestead. he also spoke to the racial politics of labor, how higher-paying skilled jobs generally went to races and ethnicities seen as more powerful, and how women http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 2 1 ca i t l i n f r a n c e s b r u c e contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 7, no 1 (2018) | issn 2153-5194 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2018.236 also worked on the site but also experienced limits in terms of the range of jobs they could perform. the artists took videos and photos throughout the tour, explaining to the camera that they wished to “pay respect to the history.” figure 1 caitlin frances bruce, mural in progress, 1, aerosol paint on wall, 2017, rankin, pennsylvania. copyright: caitlin frances bruce. the painting process took about two days. pilster and the rivers of steel volunteers had already primed the wall and hacked away the significant growth covering it, preparing it for the artists to paint. the artists who painted the final mural at the furnaces were stef skills (chicago), kif (león), orion (león), wes (león), devine (pittsburgh), duvall (pittsburgh), pilster (pittsburgh), and charles (pittsburgh). orion chose to paint a portrait of a steel worker, and wes painted a landscape including the furnaces and a deer looking out at the viewer, its antlers ending at the top of the wall. wes placed two bricks about ten feet from the painting and told me to stand on the bricks: from that perspective the branches of a tree behind the wall completed the antlers. kif and stef did two freight train pieces with the theme of plants emerging from the cars, enlisting the idea of “nature coming back.” stef did a piece with her name made up of the smokestacks of the furnaces, but rusted and increasingly covered with vines. she also did a large character of a fictional haudenosaunee woman, including a purple wampum belt. pilster, devine, and duvall did burners (multicolored letter-based, graffiti-based pieces with a complementing character). charles painted a comic-style replica of the furnaces with his iconic “don’t do bad stuff” and his “chu” characters. to some extent, the artists integrated elements of both site and history into their works, offering a tentative image of hemispheric graffiti worlds. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 2 2 h e m i s p h e r i c c on v e r s a t i o n s contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 7, no 1 (2018) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2018.236 figure 2 caitlin frances bruce, orion, steel worker, aerosol paint on wall, 2017, rankin, pennsylvania. copyright: caitlin frances bruce. figure 3 caitlin frances bruce, the wall cry by wes, aerosol paint on wall, 2017, rankin, pennsylvania. copyright: caitlin frances bruce. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 2 3 c a i t l i n f r a n c e s b r u c e contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 7, no 1 (2018) | issn 2153-5194 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2018.236 figure 4 caitlin frances bruce, mural in progress 2, aerosol paint on wall, 2017, rankin, pennsylvania. copyright: caitlin frances bruce. conclusion: memory, evolution, and international collaboration in this brief experiment, the artists were able to point to resonant elements of public memory, historic evolutions, which were the products of international collaboration. stef’s international travels and longstanding solidarity with indigenous women activists meant that she brought a particular decolonial and ecological lens to her work, and her reading of the furnaces’ history. kif’s knowledge of international graffiti history, honed as the webmaster of her site, lady’s graff meant that she had a deep appreciation for the history of letter-based graffiti at the site and its location near freight trains, iconic components of graffiti culture that stef, too, represented.4 for wes, the size and scale of the furnaces offered an interesting and intriguing contrast with the industry of his home city, that of leather and tanning. as such, he was drawn to represent the massive size of the furnaces but juxtapose them with an even larger figure of nature, a deer, and present both elements in a site-specific way by formally putting the piece in conversation with its surroundings. for orion, the face of a worker was more important, a way to represent the power of laborers in international contexts and do a sort of homage to this figure. jerome’s “don’t do bad stuff” could be read as an extension of his anti-crime/awareness campaign, but also the “bad stuff” could be read as emissions and pollution that have been (somewhat) reduced, or, merely shifted to take different forms. in a patrimonial site with a flexible understanding of patrimony, the hcuap mural offered one vector of potential evolution, with greater ecological and international tendencies. such elements are not new but rather are part of the architecture of complicated public memory constructed through pittsburgh’s industry and the lives that made up its textured narratives. the networks and relationships activated through collaboration, influences that will continue 4 kif and stef skills, “lady’s graff,” lady’s graff (blog), may 8, 2018, http://ladysgraff.blogspot.com/. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ http://ladysgraff.blogspot.com/ 2 4 h e m i s p h e r i c c on v e r s a t i o n s contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 7, no 1 (2018) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2018.236 to be felt in distinct and ineffable ways, demonstrate that the fluidity and mobility of bodies and meaning around places of public memory can produce images that add another fold in the texture of physical spaces. the graffiti mural highlights ongoing tensions and possibilities between the physical and static and the ephemeral and mobile, demonstrating that the physical is not unchanging (the ruin becomes host to new aesthetic practices and ecological growth) and the ephemeral is not without duration (it enables lines of influence and understanding that inflect ongoing practices). figure 5 caitlin frances bruce, stef piece, aerosol paint on wall, 2017, rankin, pennsylvania. copyright: caitlin frances bruce. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 2 5 ca i t l i n f r a n c e s b r u c e contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 7, no 1 (2018) | issn 2153-5194 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2018.236 figure 6 caitlin frances bruce, kif piece, aerosol paint on wall, 2017, rankin, pennsylvania. copyright: caitlin frances bruce. bibliography dickinson, greg, carole blair, and brian l. ott, eds. places of public memory: the rhetoric of museums and memorials. tuscaloosa, al: university of alabama press, 2010. finkelpearl, tom. dialogues in public art. cambridge, ma: mit press, 2001. gastman, roger, and caleb neelon. the history of american graffiti. new york: harper collins, 2011. kif and stef skills. “lady’s graff.” lady’s graff. accessed may 8, 2018. http://ladysgraff.blogspot.com/. lippard, lucy r. the lure of the local: senses of place in a multicentered society. new york: new press, 1997. mitchell, w. j. t. “the violence of public art: ‘do the right thing.’” critical inquiry 16, no. 4 (1990): 880–99. “rivers of steel.” rivers of steel website. accessed july 1, 2018. https://www.riversofsteel.com/. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ http://ladysgraff.blogspot.com/ 2 6 h e m i s p h e r i c c on v e r s a t i o n s contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 7, no 1 (2018) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2018.236 new articles in this journal are licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 united states license. this journal is operated by the university library system of the university of pittsburgh as part of its d-scribe digital publishing program, and is co-sponsored by the university of pittsburgh press. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/ http://www.pitt.edu/ http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/ http://www.upress.pitt.edu/upressindex.aspx http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ hemispheric conversations exploring links between past and present, industrial and post-industrial through site-specific graffitti practice at the carrie furnaces hemispheric conversations exploring links between past and present, industrial and post-industrial through site-specific graffiti practice at the carrie furnaces contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture vol 7, no 1 (2018) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2018.250 http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu gringolandia jezabeth roca gonzalez about the artist jezabeth roca gonzalez is second-year student in an interdisciplinary mfa program at the university of south florida in tampa. currently, her work focuses on the impact on latinx identity within american culture as well as the discord between the two. the artist is interested in migration patterns that occur in latinx communities, issues of separation, and the family dynamics that develop with relocating. gonzales is originally from a rural town on the island of puerto rico, but she has resided in the united states for the last ten years. her work explores concepts of family, distance, nostalgia, and displacement. gonzales focuses on latinx identity—both personal and universal—by producing work that elaborates on the phenomenal experiences of any person who is bridging two cultures, both physically and philosophically. the artist has always been interested in collaborations of any type with her family. her work, often taking place at a distance, has always revolved around family and creating an emotional bridge between the artist and her home; this has contributed to a diverse perspective in creating art. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 7, no 1 (2018) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2018.250 “gringolandia” (2017–2018) is an ongoing collaborative project with my brother joshua roca gonzalez, an active duty marine stationed in camp pendleton, ca. our goal is to document heritage through the act of military enlistment. with photography, we explore some ramifications on culture. our generations of men perpetuate puerto rican machismo and are proud to adopt american citizenship, a position strengthened by their participation in the american military at the cost of their own cultural history. our work is a visual representation of the physical and psychological transitions in the development of latinx soldiers. we are interested in exposing how this process contributes to a cultural view and practice of machismo. this work also considers intersubjective relationships, which refers to a form of thinking by one or more conscious minds, while also exploring sibling dynamics, gender roles, and family intimacy. gringolandia jezabeth roca gonzalez http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 9 3 j e z a b e t h r o c a g on z a l e z contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 7, no 1 (2018) | issn 2153-5194 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2018.250 figure 1 jezabeth roca gonzalez, gringolandia, 2017-2018, photograph. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 9 4 g r i n g o l a n d i a contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 7, no 1 (2018) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2018.250 figure 2 jezabeth roca gonzalez, gringolandia, 2018, photograph. figure 3 jezabeth roca gonzalez, gringolandia, 2017-2018, photograph. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 9 5 j e z a b e t h r o c a g on z a l e z contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 7, no 1 (2018) | issn 2153-5194 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2018.250 figure 4 jezabeth roca gonzalez, gringolandia, 2017-2018, photograph. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 9 6 g r i n g o l a n d i a contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 7, no 1 (2018) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2018.250 figure 5 jezabeth roca gonzalez, gringolandia, 2017-2018, photograph. figure 6 jezabeth roca gonzalez, gringolandia, 2017-2018, photograph. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 9 7 j e z a b e t h r o c a g on z a l e z contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 7, no 1 (2018) | issn 2153-5194 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2018.250 new articles in this journal are licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 united states license. this journal is operated by the university library system of the university of pittsburgh as part of its d-scribe digital publishing program, and is co-sponsored by the university of pittsburgh press. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/ http://www.pitt.edu/ http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/ http://www.upress.pitt.edu/upressindex.aspx http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ gringolandia gringolandia contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture vol 6, no 1 “boundless” (2017) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2017.231 http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu dreamlands: immersive cinema and art, 1905 – 2016 whitney museum of american art, october 28, 2016 – february 5, 2017 benjamin ogrodnik exhibition review exhibition catalog: chrissie iles, dreamlands: immersive cinema and art, 1905–2016. new haven/london: yale university press, 2016. 256pp.; 300 color and 100 b/w ills. hardcover $65.00 (9780300221879) exhibition schedule: whitney museum of american art, new york, ny, october 28, 2016– february 5, 2017 about the author benjamin ogrodnik is a phd candidate with joint entry in history of art and architecture and film studies at the university of pittsburgh. his dissertation examines the individuals and institutions that transformed pittsburgh into a global center of avant-garde art and filmmaking in the 1970s and 1980s. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 6, no 1 “boundless” (2017) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2017.231 dreamlands: immersive cinema and art, 1905– 2016, is the first survey of moving image art at the new whitney museum of american art building in manhattan, new york. curated by noted film curator chrissie iles, dreamlands aims to rewrite the history of cinema with a focus on images of— and from—cyberspace, abstract animation, science fiction, and various situations of viewer immersion. the big question driving iles’s show is: how can we better understand the way artists engage with moving images today? how do artists make sense of digital technology, 3d images, and virtual reality? for anyone following film and media studies over the past several decades, these questions may not seem terribly original. what is original, however, is the breadth and comprehensiveness of the show. up until this point, moving-image exhibitions have been much smaller, or more concerned with tracking specific historical movements, regions, or tendencies within them, including the cinema effect: illusion, reality, and the moving image, 2008, at the hirschorn museum; le mouvement des images, 2006-7, at the pompidou center in paris; or the renegades: american avant-garde film, 1960–1973, at the walker art center, in 2012. dreamlands features over fifty artists from around the world. also noteworthy is the exhibition’s break away from the two dominant modes of historicizing experimental media artists. first, the film-as-art paradigm, which seeks to elevate film to the same terrain as sculpture and painting. this model privileges artists who pursue the essential technical properties of film, regarding them as singular poets and artisans rather than as workers in a collaborative industry. the second, complementary tendency of political modernism posits experimental media art as “countercinema,” a radically “other” space for producing authentic experiences outside the ideological apparatuses of late capitalism. both paradigms denigrate the black box of the movie theater and the commercial sphere in general, while affirming the artist as a romantic genius standing above the fray. iles rejects these well-established artistic classifications and curatorial models as unhelpful classifications for tracking moving-image artists working in our current age. today’s generation produces media for theatres as well as for museums and galleries, and draws from cultural reference points that are born digital, heavily commercial in nature, and not defined by a particular sphere of activity. a more or less random list of cultural/technical landmarks influencing them might include: michael bay’s transformers series, 3d hollywood films, vr (virtual reality) computer games, fruit ninja, kimojis, always-on social media, and netflix. thus, our current media ecology requires a new framework, one that does not put artists, audiences, or artworks into separate and reified spheres—abstract/realistic, video/celluloid, commercial/artistic, white cube gallery/black box theater, and so forth. “artists working across all mediums take the immateriality of digital technology as a given,” iles rightly points out in an interview. “binaries no longer feel useful as a way to rationalize what is happening” to the moving image, a problem that iles seeks to resolve through her visionary curatorial practice. in place of the filmmaker-poet or artist-activist, the protagonist of iles’s show is the cyborgian artist. iles adopts donna haraway’s term in her catalog essay, using it to designate a protean figure who manipulates the interpenetration of technology and nature, capitalism and revolutionary politics. in dreamlands, cyborgian artwork exists in multiple forms and formats, unconcerned with barriers of high and low culture or creative medium. dreamlands: immersive cinema and art, 1905-2016 whitney museum of american art, october 28, 2016 – february 5, 2017 benjamin ogrodnik http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 1 1 1 b e n j a m i n o g r od n i k contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 6, no 1 “boundless” (2017) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2017.231 with this conception in mind, the problematic conceptual divisions of the past disintegrate, as we witness such odd juxtapositions as mainstream hollywood film—blade runner storyboards—alongside sculptural high modernist para-cinema—anthony mccall’s line describing a cone, 1973. the cyborg greets us in multiple guises. from the whimsical, marionette-like dancers in a 1970 restaging of oskar schlemmer’s triadic ballet, 1922; to the tron-like computer generated avatars in hito steyerl's immersive screen installation, factory of the sun, 2015; to the neon-pink-illuminated viewing space of easternsports, 2014, a five-act video opera and installation by alex da corte and jayson musson, which slows down footage of operatic actors to a robotic, sputtering crawl. iles rejects traditional curatorial models and their attendant conception of filmic experience as necessarily involving a dark auditorium, large screen, movie projector, and rows of seats. instead, she transforms the whitney’s 18,000-square-foot fifth floor into a maze of luminous rooms. the viewer is not so much directed through the space, as invited to wander and discover objects of interest, half distractedly, as if in a dream. much of the audiovisual work on display is porous, fluid (ambient sounds and flickering light spill over from one room to the next); and much of it is interactive, requiring 360-degree movement on the part of the observer, emphasizing haptic rather than optic qualities of recent movingimage practice. such an all-surrounding media environment is best represented by stan vanderbeek’s movie mural, 1968, with its raucous web of newsreels, found films, slides, the artist's own films, and screens trapping the viewer like an insect under a jar. the museumgoer’s body often merges with an ensemble of architecture and pure, projective light, dissolving the boundaries among screen, image, and cinematic apparatus. while it reflects and enacts the major technical transformations of cinematic space in recent decades, this curatorial strategy recalls cinema’s beginnings, an age of magic lanterns, phantasmorgias, and shimmering light. in providing context for today’s cyborgian artist, dreamlands showcases young and emerging artists who work in both digital and analog forms. the show also provides a historical perspective with a heavy focus on activity from the 1920s and 1960s, two futuristic decades that iles believes have a direct relevance to the twenty-first century through an interest in machines and humans, and cybernetic visions of a society to come. one such proto-cyborgian artist whose work re-appears, specter-like, throughout the show is oskar fischinger. in the 1920s, fischinger married abstract painting with new techniques of cinematic motion (slow motion, reverse motion, stop-motion). he also completed several highly successful commercial projects, such as the 1934 muratti greift ein (muratti marches on) with its stop-motion dancing cigarettes, or, later, the 1952 advertisements for oklahoma gas, made in los angeles. dreamlands presents both aspects of fischinger’s career in one of his first-ever multimedia projections, raumlichtkunst (space light art), a recreation of his multiple-screen film events, first shown in germany in 1926. the cybernetic artist that sees the world rendered in blocks, grids, and geometric forms—first postulated by fischinger and his german compatriots—is mirrored nearly a hundred years later by a video work included in the exhibition, titled blade runner— autoencoded. artist terence broad built an artificial intelligence program to remember every single individual frame of the 1982 cult film and reconstruct each one as a memory. broad’s a.i.-assisted film reduces blade runner to a montage of blurry, abstract visuals, without legible people, places, or objects. only human dialogue faintly heard on the soundtrack, and slight variations in color tone and lighting serve to indicate where we are in the story, as we watch the film through the eyes of a computer. other contemporary cyborgian artists in the show are philippe parreno and pierre huyghe. in 1999, the artists purchased the copyright for a nondescript japanese character— a prepubescent teenage girl, with large eyes and no predeveloped story or personality—from a popular animation firm, kworks. they named her annlee, then hired a group of artists to produce a series of commissioned “artworks” emanating from the mysteriously empty http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 1 1 2 d r e a m l a n d s : im m e r s i v e c i n e m a a n d a r t , 1 905 – 2 016 contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 6, no 1 “boundless” (2017) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2017.231 intellectual property. these unassuming pieces, intended to establish the personality of annlee, take the form of a short animation, a music video, poster, and drawing. this project, no ghost just a shell, reveals the shadow protagonist of iles’s show to be the elusive and ever-changing nature of capitalist enterprise. adopting the role of the business manager or entrepreneur, parreno and huyghe demonstrate that the cyborgian artist, like the annlee character, is infinitely reproducible. forgoing traditional values once attached to experimental media—like technical virtuosity or handmade approaches to image-making— they instead utilize branding, marketing, business deals, and intellectual-property reproduction expertise, enabling new expansions of the moving image. considered a work of cyborgian moving-image art, no ghost just a shell typifies the show by asking not what cinema is, but where cinema is being taken by contemporary artists. the rise of “transmedia”—as seen in the boom in streaming movies and television, or children’s franchises that materialize as toys, costumes, and video games—suggests an exponential proliferation of the moving image, and a corresponding liberation of the visual from its technical support. dreamlands argues that, more important than focusing on a specific medium, artistic movement, or exhibition space, we should focus on how today’s artists have found new means to render images mobile and where, precisely, we encounter them. images no longer remain tied to a medium, but multiply across many different sorts of screens, virtualities, and real/imagined spaces. overall, the show downplays the ominous potential of cinema’s continuous transformation through digital technology and media industries, but does so successfully with its persuasive argument that film/media exhibitions should be moving toward a focus on how contemporary artists are mobilizing images. with the title “dreamland” borrowed from the early movie theatre that projected various amusements or “attractions” to largely immigrant or working class audiences for the price of a nickel, iles’s exhibition similarly represents a refreshingly optimistic and entertaining outlook on the evolution of the moving image. new articles in this journal are licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 united states license. this journal is operated by the university library system of the university of pittsburgh as part of its d-scribe digital publishing program, and is co-sponsored by the university of pittsburgh press. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/ http://www.pitt.edu/ http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/ http://www.upress.pitt.edu/upressindex.aspx http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ whitney museum of american art, october 28, 2016 – february 5, 2017 contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture vol 7, no 1 (2018) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2018.241 http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu reflections on race-ing the museum two years later shirin fozi and kirk savage about the authors shirin fozi is an assistant professor at the university of pittsburgh, where she teaches courses on medieval art and architecture and museum studies. her research is primarily focused on european sculpture in the tenth through twelfth centuries, including funerary monuments and crucifixes. she has also written several essays on modern collectors and curators of medieval art in the united states. kirk savage is the dietrich professor of history of art and architecture at the university of pittsburgh. he is the editor of the civil war in art and memory (2016), and the author of two books: standing soldiers, kneeling slaves: race, war and monument in nineteenth-century america (2nd ed. 2018), and monument wars: washington d.c., the national mall, and the transformation of the memorial landscape (2009). http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 7, no 1 (2018) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2018.241 in our far from post-racial world, museums are not immune to the pressures of demographic change and urgent new campaigns for racial justice. famous european museums are altering the titles of art works to eliminate demeaning terms; confederate monuments are being dismantled in public space and sent to history museums for storage; museums across the united states are scrambling to shed their image as bastions of privilege and to diversify their audiences and supporters. how have museums, as collections and as institutions, created, supported, or challenged constructions of race and racial identity? how are museums and their objects implicated in the history of slavery, indigenous peoples, and race relations? how have museums represented and interpreted these issues? how can and should their collections tell different stories? what can museums do to combat white privilege and become more diverse in their institutional structures and in their audiences? the text above was first circulated as the introduction to a call for participation for a workshop that took place in may 2016. looking back two years later, it is striking how much has changed, and yet how much is still the same. the opening of the smithsonian’s national museum of african american history and culture on september 24, just four short months after our workshop in pittsburgh, was a milestone of international significance, and its impact on the topic of museums and racial identity will surely be felt for generations to come. the sense of optimism and hope that accompanies this achievement, however, is tempered by the memory of two incidents that took place in may 2017. twice within the span of a single week, a noose was left on the smithsonian grounds—the second time inside the galleries of the nmaahc itself. even more painful were the events of august 2017, when the very same tensions surrounding confederate monuments that were mentioned in our call culminated in the death of a peaceful counter-protestor in charlottesville, virginia. the litany of racially motivated incidents that have taken place since the election of donald trump is too long to be inventoried here; but, as art historians, we remain struck by how frequently these episodes play out in the arena of visual culture: museums and monuments in particular carry the heavy burden of defining public identity, and thus occupy a particularly fraught position in contemporary conversations about race in the modern world. the scope of our workshop was local rather than global. lasting only five days, and limited to just twelve participants and two co-facilitators, our goal was simply to start a conversation and to engage with an infinitely complex topic across a varied selection of pittsburgh collections and art spaces. at the hunt institute for botanical documentation, we were invited to examine materials that had been written from the point of view of european and american “explorers” who were looking to exploit the natural resources of a world that was new to them. reading these accounts, we were struck by the constant presence of the people to whom these places were not new at all. the knowledge of geography, botany, and medicine that was gleaned by the newcomers relied so often on the expertise of indigenous communities, and yet these stories have rarely been acknowledged in later accounts of eighteenthand nineteenth-century history. we remain grateful for the expertise of the curators who helped us see these voices in the primary sources. as co-facilitators we are likewise indebted to the generosity of the curators at the carnegie museum of art, who arranged activities throughout the museum, including viewing a collection of african artifacts that had been brought to the united states by walter h. overs, fifth bishop of the episcopal diocese of liberia. on our own campus, the rare books curators and archivists of the university library system pulled materials for us to examine in the hillman library reading room. we were presented with an eclectic array of items to peruse, from nineteenth-century printings of reflections on race-ing the museum two years later shirin fozi and kirk savage http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 3 s h i r i n f o z i a n d k i r k s a v a g e contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 7, no 1 (2018) | issn 2153-5194 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2018.241 sheet music by stephen foster to issues of the black panther from the 1970s to the controversial 2016 children’s book titled a birthday cake for george washington; and we reveled in the rare opportunity to discuss the potential for teaching and research offered by these provocative resources. these visits to long-established institutions, managed by full-time, professional staff members highly trained in their respective fields were balanced with opportunities to explore other pittsburgh collections that have been organized by members of local communities, often without resources beyond personal initiative and the desire to engage with their neighbors. the transformazium, working in partnership with the braddock carnegie library in one of the most economically depressed municipalities in the region, offered a model of community engagement that recognizes and nurtures local skills and talents, which often remain invisible to educators and charities. we speed-curated tiny pop-up exhibitions in their powerful art lending library, built from donations by internationally acclaimed artists as well as local collectors, artists, and prison inmates. in the process, we learned about the collection from their full-time paid cultural facilitators recruited from the local area, and heard about how the space doubles as an information clearinghouse where members of the community share their expertise about navigating social-service agencies. across town, we saw the allegheny city historic gallery, a grassroots collection of donated photography as well as material salvaged from attics and even trash piles. dedicated to preserving and promoting the history of pittsburgh’s north side, this collection, along with the personal stories that came from local donors, offered rare insight into a neighborhood that has had a tumultuous history of displacement, racial integration, and swift gentrification over the past century. we were able to get a glimpse of the amazing if precarious work such places do when collection and interpretation rely almost entirely on local networks and knowledge. this itinerary connected us to public collections that exist beyond the oversight of watchful trustees and rich donors, and made more vivid the full range of audiences to be found in our city. we also witnessed how the gaps between elite institutions and local communities can be bridged. among the most effective examples of this was the teenie harris archive of the carnegie museum of art, where every effort is made not only to preserve the life’s work of pittsburgh’s most renowned photographer but also to engage with and document the african american community of the hill district that was the primary subject and audience of his pictures. started as a huge repository of photographs and negatives donated by harris himself, the archive has now become a significant oral history collection preserving the stories of community elders who lived in the neighborhood and sometimes even appear in his images. it is no surprise that this archive led to several projects by workshop participants. by the end of our five-day workshop, we were inspired and humbled by the collections and people we had encountered, and by the sincere and open engagement of our twelve participants. though we could hardly have anticipated the disheartening political changes of the two years that followed, we find ourselves looking back on this workshop as a rare and powerful chance to foster a micro-community that could actively confront our changing world and its upheavals. some of the lasting effects of that work can be found in the essays in the present volume. much of it remains in progress, however, and in many ways that is the best outcome we could hope to have achieved: to know that we are part of a larger conversation that keeps moving forward, even during the darker moments of our time. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 4 r e f l e c t i o n s o n r a c e i n g t h e m u s e u m contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 7, no 1 (2018) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2018.241 new articles in this journal are licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 united states license. this journal is operated by the university library system of the university of pittsburgh as part of its d-scribe digital publishing program, and is co-sponsored by the university of pittsburgh press. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/ http://www.pitt.edu/ http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/ http://www.upress.pitt.edu/upressindex.aspx http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ reflections on race-ing the museum two years later reflections on race-ing the museum two years later contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture vol 7, no 1 (2018) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2018.261 http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu blue ruins latoya ruby frazier in two parts benjamin ogrodnik exhibtion review exhibition schedule: the notion of family, latoya ruby frazier, the silver eye center for photography, september 21– november 18, 2017 exhibition schedule: on the making of steel genesis: sandra gould ford, latoya ruby frazier, the august wilson center, september 22– december 31, 2017 about the author benjamin ogrodnik is a phd candidate with joint entry in history of art and architecture and film studies at the university of pittsburgh. his dissertation examines films, photographs, and visual artworks responding to global deindustrialization. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 7, no 1 (2018) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2018.261 artists and sociologists have used photography to catalogue people and places in what are taken to be “dying” mill towns, freezing them in the flow of time before they “disappear.” corporations, fashion designers, and industrial heritage museums have similarly begun mining images of mills and workers in search of a lost authenticity, a shared narrative of progress and unity. the problem with much of this visual material is that it conceals the complex forms of time and life that coexist in industrial spaces. figure 1 on the making of steel genesis: sandra gould ford, latoya ruby frazier. august wilson center, pittsburgh, pa, september 22–december 31 2017. photo by sean carrol. courtesy of the silver eye center for photography. as a black resident of the deindustrialized mill town of braddock, pennsylvania, latoya ruby frazier’s career in art photography might be said to push back against the salvage impulse of the liberal documentarian, and the false visual plentitude peddled by this heritage industry. through a sophisticated awareness of photography as a means of forgetting and remembering, frazier challenges our simplistic myths and stories about the u.s. rust belt. in her work, she asks: what forms of time does the mill offer (or conceal), and to whom does the mill offer (or deny) value? in a recent two-part exhibition in pittsburgh, pennsylvania, frazier demonstrated the range of her subject matter and two distinct poles of her diverse practice. her photographic series the notion of family (2001–14) was the subject of a solo show at the silver eye center of photography. this selection of black-and-white 35mm prints displayed frazier’s well-known social documentary practice. in the photographs, frazier documents how her family—and the african american community at large—continues to be impacted by the ripple effects from the blue ruins latoya ruby frazier in two parts benjamin ogrodnik http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 1 2 5 b e n j a m i n o g r od n i k contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 7, no 1 (2018) | issn 2153-5194 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2018.261 loss of industrial manufacturing, with images focusing on crises within domestic, public, and institutional spaces. a concurrent exhibition of new work at pittsburgh’s august wilson center, on the making of steel genesis: sandra gould ford, evokes frazier’s longstanding (if less discussed) work of artistic collaboration and archival research, while expanding her focus on industrial spaces beyond braddock. the show picks up on the thread of collaboration seen in earlier pieces, such as if everybody’s work is equally important? (2010/17, with artist liz magic laser), and a human right to passage (2014, with liz ligon). building on these projects, the august wilson center show brings frazier into a rich dialogue with local black artist sandra gould ford. together, they highlight untold stories, perspectives, and experiences of the mythologized jones & laughlin steel company, once based along the monongahela river on pittsburgh’s south side. figure 2 the notion of family, latoya ruby frazier. the silver eye center for photography, pittsburgh, pa, september 21–november 18, 2017. photo by sean carrol. courtesy of the silver eye center for photography. in the notion of family, frazier’s photography is concerned with documenting at least three forms of time: personal time, institutional time, and environmental time. often, complex layers of time appear in a single picture. united states steel mon valley edgar thomson plant (2013) depicts the facility in an aerial shot, with belching smoke clouds. while it dominates the composition, this landmark coexists with the time of the residents’ houses in the foreground, small though they may appear. meanwhile, the grim monochromatic palette hints at the ongoing degradation of the natural landscape. in other instances, complex juxtapositions of time appear with immediate and arresting force. the diptych landscape of the body (epilepsy test) (2011) pairs a black woman’s body, glimpsed through a hospital gown, with the remnants of the demolished town hospital. frazier forges a connection between two things—a woman’s body and a building—ruptured by the velocity of capitalist “progress.” such pieces have a deeply personal, memorializing function: the loss of the upmc hospital in braddock in 2010 profoundly affected frazier’s family, such as her grandmother ruby, who died battling pancreatic cancer. frazier herself suffers from http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 1 2 6 b l u e r u i n s contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 7, no 1 (2018) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2018.261 attacks of lupus, and believes her illness stems from growing up near the mill. these photographs speak to the threats that black bodies have faced in deindustrialized towns like braddock, due to the poisonous effects of industrial pollution and, later on, the withdrawal of accessible healthcare. in on the making of steel genesis: sandra gould ford, frazier expands her metaarchiving project, further testifying to multiple forms of time. frazier learned by chance that she had lived in the same braddock apartment complex as artist and former steel-mill worker sandra gould ford. both multimedia artists and photographers, they make work that investigates the neglected histories of african american communities. in the show, ford’s works consist of small color photographs of the j&l mill, taken mainly in the 1980s. when ford worked there as an office clerk in the 1970s and 1980s, she collected papers and other materials from the office. once the mill closed, she made images of abandoned spaces filled with light, void of human presence, as though the mill were a broken cathedral. in other photographs—which depict the greek café, a refuge for tired steelworkers seeking nourishment in eggs and thick coffee, or a peach tree growing in poisoned soil—ford highlights the surprising forms of human and environmental resilience that can exist within the mill. figure 3 on the making of steel genesis: sandra gould ford, latoya ruby frazier. august wilson center, pittsburgh, pa, september 22 – december 31 2017. photo by sean carrol. courtesy of the silver eye center for photography. frazier complements these potent fragments with large-format black-and-white photographs of ford revisiting the j&l site, taken in 2017. the exhibition also includes various j&l documents—safety pamphlets, company magazines, contemporary photographs, diary writings, and architectural blue prints—that frazier reconstituted as blue-toned cyanotype prints. through these prints, frazier surfaces the historical injustices that occurred in the mill. she presents documents that embody the otherwise absent workers. it is through grievance reports—horrific descriptions of maimed limbs and near-death accidents—that minority workers feel present, almost as ghosts. the voices of elderly workers can be read only in their complaints that younger workers are taking their jobs. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 1 2 7 b e n j a m i n o g r od n i k contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 7, no 1 (2018) | issn 2153-5194 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2018.261 appearing in name only, on legal documents or in photographs of graffiti crying out “pensions, please,” the working masses must be summoned by an active spectator determined to put together these puzzle pieces. meanwhile, the actual steel mill is displayed only indirectly; it is represented through the flat space of floor plans, or through covers of men and steel magazine, which speak of steel in the profit-oriented, abstract tone of technoscience. it becomes obvious that one type of perspective—the white manager’s—is overrepresented, while others are not visualized at all: there are no african americans featured on men and steel magazine covers. frazier’s careful selection of materials draws attention to how historical documents, loaded with a presumed truth-telling authority, lead us into forgetting or overlooking certain experiences, unless we are willing to investigate the gaps. this results in what we might call a form of “archival portraiture,” speaking to the conflicts taking place over the symbolism of the mill and the identities it fosters and precludes. latoya ruby frazier and sandra gould ford’s collaboration helps us think through the temporalities of deindustrialization in two directions at once. while frazier counters the mythologies that exclude certain groups or hide injustices, ford maps out the sometimesundetectable forms of resilience and solidarity in rust belt communities, bringing nuance to a new story of the past. the main claim of both shows is clear: we must stitch the wounds of the mill, and loss itself, back into our imagination if we are to narrate stories of deindustrialization in a nondestructive, future-oriented way. new articles in this journal are licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 united states license. this journal is operated by the university library system of the university of pittsburgh as part of its d-scribe digital publishing program, and is co-sponsored by the university of pittsburgh press. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/ http://www.pitt.edu/ http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/ http://www.upress.pitt.edu/upressindex.aspx http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ blue ruins latoya ruby frazier in two parts blue ruins latoya ruby frazier in two parts contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture vol 6, no 1 “boundless” (2017) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2017.222 http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu exodus to the “promised land” of the devil and other monsters in juan de dios mora’s artworks introduction by deborah caplow adriana miramontes olivas in conversation with juan de dios mora translation by paulina pardo gaviria and adriana miramontes olivas edited by paulina pardo gaviria about the authors juan de dios mora is a printmaker and a senior lecturer at the university of texas at san antonio, where he began teaching painting, drawing, and printmaking in 2010. mora is a prolific artist whose prints have been published in numerous venues including the catalogs new arte nuevo: san antonio 2010 and new art/arte nuevo san antonio 2012. in 2017, his work was exhibited at several venues, including the mcnay art museum in san antonio, texas in juan mora: culture clash (june 8–august 13, 2017) and at the cole art center, reavley gallery in nacogdoches, texas, in juan de dios mora (organized by the art department at the stephen f. austin state university school of art, january 26–march 10, 2017). in 2016, mora participated in the group show los de abajo: garbage as an artistic source (from the bottom: garbage as an artistic source) at the guadalupe cultural arts center in san antonio (june 10–july 29, 2016). mora also curates the show print it up, which he organizes in the downtown area of san antonio, thereby granting unprecedented exposure to numerous artists. for this exhibition, mora mentors both students and alumni, guiding them through the exhibition process—from how to create a portfolio, frame and install artworks, to contracting with gallery owners, and selling artworks to the public. adriana miramontes olivas is a doctoral student in the department of the history of art and architecture at the university of pittsburgh. she earned her ba at the university of texas at el paso and her ma at the university of texas at san antonio. her research is in modern and contemporary global art with a focus on latin america, gender studies, sexuality, and national identity. dr. deborah caplow is an art historian and curator, and the author of a book about the mexican printmaker, leopoldo méndez (leopoldo méndez: revolutionary art and the mexican print, university of texas press). she teaches art history at the university of washington, bothell. areas of scholarship include twentieth-century mexican art, the intersections between art and politics, and the history of photography. currently, she is researching contemporary printmaking in oaxaca, mexico. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 6, no 1 “boundless” (2017) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2017.222 introduction juan de dios mora’s powerful prints present the intersecting cultures, visions, and realities experienced by migrants moving to the united states. his images locate the migrants thematically in the zone between life and death they all must cross on the journey—the border, the desert, the river, and the sea—always at their mortal peril, and always accompanied by hope and loss. mora layers his images with mexican and mexican-american history from ancient times to the present; they are deeply personal and autobiographical and, at the same time, stand for the lives and deaths of all migrants. in the tradition of the prints of josé guadalupe posada (1852-1913) and members of the taller de gráfica popular (tgp), mora’s works explore injustice and suffering, using a complex vocabulary of culturally specific signs and symbols, in his case, drawn from his profound relationship with mexico and the journey northward. and, like the contemporary printmaker artemio rodríguez (mexico, b. 1972), who works between michoacán and california, creating images with pointed social commentary, mora employs graphic techniques that have characterized political prints in mexico for more than a hundred years. his black-and-white block prints combine fantastic symbolism with sharp critiques of social conditions, in tightly packed compositions—humorous, sardonic, inventive images that mock the powerful and sympathize with the oppressed. and, like the work of oaxacan artist alejandro santiago (1964–2013), whose 2,501 ceramic sculptures (2501 migrantes) express the pain and sorrow of migration in twisted, expressionistic statues of women, men, and children, mora’s images operate at the levels of both the mind and the heart, so that a viewer comes to comprehend them through careful study that results in an emotional understanding. in the prints published here, mora often explores the theme of duality, ubiquitous in mexican art since its beginnings. in his abduction of the immigrant, the migrant seems to hover between life and death, heaven and earth, while the winged demon who carries him is both devil and angel, with an eagle’s talon and a snakelike tail with mayan glyphs at the end. small, surreal dogs surround them, floating in the air like the little devils in some of posada’s prints. according to the artist, the demon represents the u.s. immigration service (la migra), and the dogs are their german shepherds. at the same time, the print is filled with opposites: good and evil, life and death, light and dark, food and water, pre-columbian and catholic myth. the telephone poles can also be seen as crosses, marking a division that is both border and road, and evoking the graves that mark the way. the eagle, the cactus, and the snake represent the founding myth of tenochtitlán, present-day mexico city, and by extension the mexican nation. here, in abduction of the immigrant, they are fragmented, obscure references to national identity. these dualistic allusions also animate assumption of the immigrant, with the words “alma” (soul) and “cuerpo” (body) framing the main figure as he rises through the air, his arms raised in a manner reminiscent of the crucifixion. he is surrounded by a mandorla composed of a multitude of cherubim holding water bottles, an intricate grouping of angels, clouds, bottles, a rose, a bean, and limes, not as stereotypes, but as reminders of the migrants’ origins and the situations in which they find themselves. the limes, for example, are a daily part of the mexican diet, and, as mora explains, a humorous reference to the word the migrants use for the migra, who wear green uniforms. in addition, on one side, mora includes an eagle’s claws and on the other a donkey hoof, while at the top an elaborate crown, reminiscent of an aztec headdress, floats above the migrant’s head. the virgin of exodus to the “promised land:” of the devil and other monsters in juan de dios mora’s artworks adriana miramontes olivas and juan de dios mora http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 6 0 e x o d u s t o t h e “ p r o m i s e d l a nd ” contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 6, no 1 “boundless” (2017) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2017.222 guadalupe here is reduced to a partial sign in the lower corners, her cloak enveloping a cactus on one side and a water bottle on the other, a poignant reminder of the many migrants who perish of thirst in the desert in the attempt to cross into the united states. figure 1 juan de dios mora, assumption of the immigrant, 2009, linocut, 24 x 18 ⅛ in. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 6 1 a d r i a n a m i r amo n t e s o l i v a s a nd j u an d e d i o s mo r a contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 6, no 1 “boundless” (2017) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2017.222 mora’s attacked by fishes contains much of the same symbolism. here, a drowning man, surrounded by ferocious-looking fish, reaches for safety as though ascending—but the flimsy plastic bottles will not hold him, and he is weighed down by what seems to be a jar of holy water. the heart beside him is also sinking. his arms are raised, as though he were crucified, and the print also evokes an inevitable comparison to the biblical story of jonah, cast into the sea to begin a journey as his destiny. as in the other prints, the sense of despair and disaster is balanced by a promise of spiritual salvation. a coin for breakfast, though not about immigration, points to the poverty and deprivation that drive many migrants to leave their country in search of better living conditions. the struggle for daily survival is symbolized by the posters advertising the lucha libre, mexican wrestling, and the corrida, the bullfight. the presence of the wall shrine, with its lit candle, and the beggar’s upraised arms and eyes, give the impression of potential deliverance, while the dog and the accordion imply that life on earth has its compensations. as with all the prints discussed here, mora offers hope in the midst of adversity, suggesting a bond with a higher power, infused with the profound spirituality of mexican culture. now, more than ever before, these images have relevance and currency, as the world crisis in migration grows ever more dire, and the divide between wealth and poverty continues to drive people from their home countries into a dangerous and uncertain future. deborah caplow adriana miramontes olivas1: printmaking has a long history of activism and denunciatory art. in mexico city, the taller de gráfica popular (tgp), founded in 1937 and continuously active until 2010, emphasized the injustices committed toward the working class, political instability, social problems, as well as collective efforts and actions. the tgp focused on the daily life of the poor, and its artists demanded social change. juan, your work is also motivated by politics and is critical of the economy, unemployment, international trade agreements, border security, and language, to name a few issues. what is the purpose of representing such themes? juan de dios mora: something that interested me a lot when i came to the united states from mexico was discrimination and immigration. in mexico, immigration is a popular subject of conversation, whether it is from one place to the other, legal or illegal. but when i moved to laredo, texas, i was in a state of bewilderment. it all came to me in an unexpected manner because i was young, so i made those topics part of my artwork. how to relate this with the taller de gráfica popular? i really like to represent social issues, too: to speak of nuevo laredo, ciudad juárez, the violence, and immigration. a lot of people do not want to talk about these topics, but they are out there, it is noticeable. assumption of the immigrant (2009) represents an immigrant who died. what happens to the immigrants when they die crossing the border? what happens to their bodies and souls? in reference to the physical, either the body or the bones are recovered and taken to the morgue. there are attempts to identify the corpses and there is a waiting time for the retrieval of bodies, otherwise they are cremated. but many times, the authorities do not send the remains to their countries of 1 i also want to thank the collaboration and suggestions of my colleague rae di cicco and the editors of contemporaneity. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 6 2 e x o d u s t o t h e “ p r o m i s e d l a nd ” contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 6, no 1 “boundless” (2017) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2017.222 origin, because they do not know where the deceased come from. in my work, as in assumption of the immigrant, i try to give some credit to all the individuals who come to the united states, who move in search of jobs and better opportunities, and who leave everything behind including their land and their families in mexico and central and south america, but who often die in their attempts. assumption of the immigrant reflects a person who perished but whose soul goes to heaven. in other words, i am trying to acknowledge those events that many people ignore or neglect. amo: your artwork references multiple sources. in terms of themes, i think of guillermo gómez peña (b. 1955) and his “border art,” but concerning process and content, i can relate them to the aztecs and their “eagle warriors” from mesoamerica, to the virgin of guadalupe (1779) by sebastián salcedo, and to mexico during the war: the farmworkers leave to the united states (1982) by leopoldo méndez. however, your prints are completely different because they have not only numerous religious references and social criticism, but also imaginary beings such as the fish with claws or the dogs with horns. what are your sources? what do you read or see to inform yourself and get inspired? jdm: when i first entered college, i knew of neither frida kahlo nor diego rivera. in the farm, there is nothing; i did not know anything about art. even when i was already in the united states in high school, i was unaware of what the renaissance meant. once i enrolled in the core curriculum classes in college, i was taught about artworks by michelangelo, raphael, leonardo da vinci, and the prints of albrecht dürer. it called my attention how artists created the devil, especially in st. anthony tormented by demons (ca. 1470-1475) by martin schongauer, because there are numerous paintings and artworks about the battle between good and evil and the devil is always portrayed differently. what i liked was that saints were represented by artists as human beings, and they were glorified, but demons were always distinct; they were made to scare people. when i was in laredo, we made fun of the immigration authorities, we said they were monsters. i began to compare the migra (border patrol agents) to the demons of the renaissance by developing my own style, by creating hybrid figures. it is my interpretation of the devil, of how i saw and imagined it, and i hoped it would inspire fear. the print attacked by fishes (2009) is about an immigrant who is trying to cross the border and is drowning. this print has a funny story because allegedly some fishermen found crocodiles in the río grande, so there were rumors being spread among members of the community, they gossiped and made jokes. people talked about crocodiles in the river! later, it was said that some immigrants tried to cross from nuevo laredo, tamaulipas, to laredo, texas, but when they stepped into the water they began to feel as if they were being bitten, so they went back to mexico! the truth is that fishes were biting their skin, they were eating it. that is why i made the fish in a monster-like form, as demons, to reflect the innocence of numerous immigrants, but also to express their psychological state. there are several strategies that are used by the border patrol to prevent the passage of illegal immigrants. for instance, technology can assist them in capturing those who attempt to cross in an unlawful manner. also, agents take advantage of the immigrants’ psychological condition. migrants come from far away, they have been on the road for a lengthy time, and the border itself represents another challenge. i try to portray their lives and struggles during this journey from their lands in mexico and elsewhere, and then into the united states. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 6 3 a d r i a n a m i r amo n t e s o l i v a s a nd j u an d e d i o s mo r a contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 6, no 1 “boundless” (2017) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2017.222 figure 2 juan de dios mora, attacked by fishes, 2009, linocut, 24 ¾ x 12 in. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 6 4 e x o d u s t o t h e “ p r o m i s e d l a nd ” contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 6, no 1 “boundless” (2017) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2017.222 amo: regarding activism and protest, have you organized, participated, or have you planned to establish a politically active organization or workshop in san antonio, mexico, or elsewhere? jdm: not right now. from 2014 to 2015, andrei rentería and i were teaching art to the community. we went to the shelters of children who crossed illegally to the united states, who came from central and south america to search for their families or looking for better opportunities, and we taught them a little bit about the artistic process, of artists, and a few words in english. we donated our time to organize workshops, and we created artworks so that the children would learn about art. we were not allowed to ask them personal questions but they would share with us and would tell us about their experiences and what they had to go through. what they endured was really, really bad. in one way or another i could relate to them because i also come from mexico. amo: you explained that when you arrived in laredo you were young and the issue of immigration created quite an impression on you. how young were you, and why were you so affected by it? was it that you ignored the issue of immigration, or why were you in such a bewildered state? jdm: it was not that i ignored it, it was that in mexico, coming to the united states is idealized. over there the only thing one knows is that your dad, uncle, or cousin went to the united states and they are sending dollars for the family. that is wonderful! right? but once i moved to laredo, i realized how complicated issues really are; immigrants die, they are accused, and others go mad or become poor. thus, all of these problems created an impact on me and i tried to compare my own life with that of other immigrants, and it is very different. also, my experience of migrating from mexico to the united states was distinct even though my family and i also came here as working-class people. to learn about other people’s stories and about their experiences crossing the border helped inspire my artwork. amo: the united states is considered by many immigrants to be the promised land. in search of the so-called american dream, hundreds of men, women, and children attempt to cross the border each year. for undocumented immigrants, this journey is generally very expensive and dangerous. while it is difficult to provide specific statistics, due to the different countries of origin and the length of the journey, it is estimated that migrants pay the coyotes, or human traffickers, an estimated price of $429 dollars (only to reach the border) and end up paying up to $2,500 dollars to cross it.2 in this journey, migrants confront an endless number of dangers. immigrants are threatened, robbed, kidnapped, 2 these statistics are as of 2014. jeremy slack and howard campbell “on narco-coyotaje: illicit regimes and their impacts on the us-mexico border,” antipode 48, no. 5 (2016), 1393; joseph sorrentino, “mordiendo la mano que nos alimenta: trabajadores migrantes en nueva york sin gozar derechos básicos,” en rufino domínguez santos, “tiempos de obama: migración,” la jornada del campo no. 17, 13 febrero 2009, http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2009/02/13/migracion.html http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2009/02/13/migracion.html 6 5 a d r i a n a m i r amo n t e s o l i v a s a nd j u an d e d i o s mo r a contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 6, no 1 “boundless” (2017) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2017.222 raped, and/or tortured.3 in addition to these threats, once in the united states, for instance in the arizona desert, the immigrants are exposed to 120˚f temperatures during the summer and to freezing temperatures during the winter. your artworks, assumption of the immigrant, attacked by fishes, abduction of the immigrant (2009), and a coin for breakfast (2010) reflect concerns with immigration. in your opinion, why would hundreds of people attempt to cross the border each year despite the challenges and risks this implies? jdm: personally, my dad had numerous financial problems in mexico. he was in debt. in several countries, the issue of child labor is criticized, but since we were kids we worked and we considered it part of our lives. we assisted my dad on the farm during harvest. he would ask us to remove weeds and to grab the mattock. we worked really hard. we would work from one side of the farm to the other. but – how can i explain it – we were young and we did not realize that my dad was having numerous financial difficulties. then, there was a time in which, frankly, my dad could no longer handle the financial distress and the debt. he decided to leave it all in mexico to go to the united states. my dad recalls that the first time it was very difficult for him to cross the border because he had to find the coyote and also collect the money to pay him. he has admitted that he was really afraid about crossing the border. back then it was easier, but now, with modern technology, it is more complicated. to cross the border my dad had to walk for days. he arrived at a stable of horses where their drinking water was really dirty, but he was so thirsty that he cupped both hands to quench his thirst. my dad remembers it tasted like soda! (mora laughs). but the most important thing of this account is that immigrants move due to the economy. we were a large family, there were five siblings plus my mom made six. my dad was overwhelmed, he did not know what else to do. in mexico, on the farm everyone talked about the united states, the “north,” the “north,” the “north,” and the “american dream,” the money, the “dollars,” the “dollars.” my dad being a responsible family man filled himself with courage and came here to work and save money. he later returned to mexico for about a year. he went back and forth on several occasions. the third time that he crossed the border to the united states, an immigration reform was established and that is when he applied for our residency status. to live here was really hard for me and my family. the culture felt very different, but it was a nice experience. hence, my dad left his country due to the financial situation, other people move due to violence. amo: there have been numerous attempts to prevent the crossing of illegal immigrants to the united states on its border with mexico. this has created the so-called “funnel effect” in which migrants use alternative routes in remote areas to avoid being detected and detained, instead of the traditional urban crossing zones. this forces them into dangerous areas such as the deserts of southern arizona.4 as a result, risks related to border crossing have increased. even if the number of deaths on the u.s.-mexican border remains unknown, statistics from the border patrol demonstrate that from october 1, 1997, to september 30, 3 this is the case of the massacre that took place in august 2010, in san fernando in tamaulipas, mexico, which received international attention, and in which 72 migrants of diverse nationalities were found dead. 4 daniel e. martinez, robin c. reineke et al. “structural violence and migrant deaths in southern arizona: data from the pima county office of the medical examiner, 1990-2013,” journal on migration and human security 2, no. 4, (2014), 262. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 6 6 e x o d u s t o t h e “ p r o m i s e d l a nd ” contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 6, no 1 “boundless” (2017) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2017.222 figure 3 juan de dios mora, abduction of the immigrant, 2009, linocut, 22 x 30 in. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 6 7 a d r i a n a m i r amo n t e s o l i v a s a nd j u an d e d i o s mo r a contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 6, no 1 “boundless” (2017) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2017.222 2013, more than 6,029 people died.5 in your print abduction of the immigrant, we see a landscape bifurcated by a road. there is also a young man whose body is being perforated by barbed wire. in one hand, he holds a bottle of water; in the other, he holds a bag from soriana, the mexican supermarket chain, perhaps with food provisions. the young man appears in mid-air fighting a hybrid creature. despite the fight, he does not relinquish his water or his food. could you explain, where are they? and could you tell us about the different body parts that constitute this monster, such as the different furs, diverse feathers, horns, and claws? jdm: in the abduction of the immigrant, the demon is the border patrol and the dogs are the officers’ dogs, the german shepherd dogs. there is a corn in the sun and above it there is a bean. i use the corn as a symbol of fertility and it is a metaphor representing us, the immigrants, who move to the united states dreaming of a new life. when corn is planted, it provides food and it can also be used as money. so, this is a metaphor about those of us who move to a place where we can eat, make money, and also send it abroad so that our families can survive in mexico. therefore, this corn represents an idol and it has a circle, the halo. the bean inside it is a reference to the term frijolero, beaner, because i was called beaner. thus, by showing the bean i take a humorous approach, but it is also a political statement. the nickname does not bother me, i adopt it as a strategy of empowerment. we can take what people say to discriminate against us and change it into something positive, that is why i use the bean. in the abduction of the immigrant the hybrid figure is a representation of the devil, it is a demon, the border patrol. if you look closely, it has eagle claws, gazelle horns, and it also has four ears. it has a renaissance style as when artists dramatized monsters, representing them in such a way as to scare the public. so here i did that too: i exaggerated it. the devil has a pickaxe to make it terrifying. in the left hand, he has a baton representing those of the border patrol. in its right hand, the devil has barbed wire that is also tied to the immigrant, lifting him up. the barbed wire has some threads, and hanging from those are some beans, which are a representation of us, immigrants, beaners. the devil’s tail is a mayan hieroglyph, and it has also some beans hanging down. below that is the image of the virgin mary, an icon of ours for encouragement, for survival, for giving life’s full breath, a motivation for psychological wellbeing. underneath her is a candle and a figure in the shape of a pear. this is a plant that can be dried, cut from the top (as a sort of lid), and will serve to carry water in it, as if a bowl. on top of the virgin are two pieces of corn and those are like our seeds here in the united states. right next to them there are two flying corns and from them a third corn is hanging, this one is half broken. in the farm in mexico, we had to store the corn. when one harvests the product of an entire year and does not add some pills, it could go bad, since bugs and animals would get into it and eat all the corn. those pills would kill the weevil, which is a beetle that would eat all the corn. so, i did this as a metaphor: if we do not work hard and do our best here in the united states, we could get ruined. this is the reason for the corn to appear in such a deteriorated condition, as if bitten by an animal. on the lower right corner, there is a grain of corn with barbed wire reflecting how, on occasion, one can also stumble and die. the two dogs represent the border patrol dogs that are in checkpoints to sniff drugs and to perform other tasks. underneath the animals there is a lime; in laredo, we call the migra 5 cornelius, 1998, in daniel e. martinez, robin c. reineke et al., 258. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 6 8 e x o d u s t o t h e “ p r o m i s e d l a nd ” contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 6, no 1 “boundless” (2017) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2017.222 limes because they wear green, so i use limes a lot to represent the migra. here they are bringing an immigrant to the devil. he is almost nude, reflecting that, when traveling from their countries, immigrants generally come with many things, but when they get here, they arrive almost empty handed. this is also a metaphor that material things are of low value. soriana’s plastic bag, now also heb, gigante, all those supermarkets, reflect mexico’s economic state. i made a road on the bottom. that means that many times in the desert there are roads around, but they are for ranchers, or for the migra. if you look closely, there is nothing around other than telephone poles. many times, people walk on those roads, but if they do so they can leave their traces increasing their chances of being caught by the migra. nonetheless, the road can provide an opportunity for survival, because if immigrants are tired, they can sit on the road until somebody gets there and rescues or reports them. to reiterate, the road can be a lifesaver, but if immigrants get caught, the american dream would be out of reach. i want to emphasize that these roads are more for last chances, when immigrants are about to die. figure 4 juan de dios mora, a coin for breakfast, 2010, linocut, 26 x 27 ¼ in. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 6 9 a d r i a n a m i r amo n t e s o l i v a s a nd j u an d e d i o s mo r a contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 6, no 1 “boundless” (2017) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2017.222 amo: in your work a coin for breakfast we see a man that could be homeless. he is on the street asking for “a coin for breakfast” and, even if his location is ambiguous, on the back we can read a sign that says “pobres street” (“poor street”). is this a reference to the failed promise of the american dream? you have lived in both countries, mexico and the united states. you left your hometown to come to the promised land, as many others have. now that you have lived here for several years, do you still believe in the american dream? jdm: the american dream has indeed been realized for me, i cannot deny it. it has taken me where i wanted to be. a coin for breakfast is about the border between nuevo laredo in tamaulipas and laredo in texas. it is about countless people who stay right next to the international bridge asking for money to live each day, collect some dollars, pay the coyote, and cross from one side to the other. many times, at the international bridge in nuevo laredo, there were numerous people begging and they had their children with them, playing some sort of maracas or an accordion. it made me sad and i gave them money. what i did in this work was to partially reflect that. numerous times, families and their children stay at the border. on other occasions, the father crosses the border first, and sometimes, in doing so, he dies or goes to jail. fathers also come to the united states and initially send money to their families but they later forget about them because they find a new partner, or they simply forget their loved ones. so, i made a coin for breakfast to reflect that, and instead of a kid i added a dog and a hat to it, so he would entertain. i would not like to have a kid there, i want my work to have a political tone, but i do not want to make it too cruel. dogs are man’s friends, and many homeless people have dogs. on top of the image, there are two candles with a bean, and the bean has the shape of virgin mary’s veil. on the background there are some houses, like those in the united states, implying the american side. amo: juan, in your prints we can see the veil of the virgin of guadalupe, the angels, and candles. why does religion play such an important role in your work? jdm: religion is meant to aid in maintaining a positive attitude and to help one move forward every day, to make one forget about certain things that are remarkably dark, or for people who have lost their families. it is more about encouragement to keep living and looking forward. amo: in your prints, a cactus and a bean substitute the image of the virgin of guadalupe. although the reference to mexico and its people is obvious, do you think this can be offensive for certain religious audiences? jdm: yes, i grew up in a very religious home. when i started my education, i became more liberal, accepting other cultures and asking myself, where do i come from? what is this? why do they say that? religion has many positive things, but also many negative ones. religion maintains one’s positive thoughts, but if it is engrained very deep in the mind, it could be a poison instead of a source for help, and many times one must adopt other ideas to be able to stand out. my objective is not to be offensive. many times, i add a bean to reference the political situation, but i know that something will be shaken. amo: juan, do you think the use of this plant, the cactus, and this food, beans, as icons propagates stereotypes about mexico? http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 7 0 e x o d u s t o t h e “ p r o m i s e d l a nd ” contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 6, no 1 “boundless” (2017) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2017.222 jdm: yes, i cannot deny that, but as an artist one has to liberate oneself, i have to be expressive about how i feel. in my family, we always make fun of certain things. we have a very good sense of humor, and that has helped me to adopt wittiness in my work. in a way, i also do that to illustrate how gringos see us as beaners, as nopal cacti. i do this as a way of exemplifying how another demographic group perceives us. amo: the recently elected president of the united states, donald trump, has made several provocative declarations against mexico and its people. how do you think mexicans should respond to his discourse, and how do you think a country of immigrants, as the united states is, should react to his discourse? jdm: we should continue to work just as hard during these four years. we should not have a crazy reaction but rather, as all activists do, act peacefully, without any violence. in this country, there is still discrimination and hate. this is a time to realize that, and to be fully conscious of how hard the situation is here. we talked about the promised land, but there are also difficulties. here you come to earn dollars, but you also get discrimination. amo: juan, is there any way to stop immigration to the united states, or, rather, is the socalled “funnel effect” always present? is it possible to stop immigration with a wall? what would you like to tell scholars and legislators? jdm: no, there is no way, it cannot be stopped. the only thing that changes periodically is the process to cross from one side to the other, but it does not stop. people will keep crossing the border. technology makes it harder, but there are many ways to evade technology, one way or another people cross the border. what the united state likes to do is to spend money. they are like the romans who used to stage plays in theaters, have gladiators killing each other to keep their empire entertained, but also to keep the loyalty of their people. so, here in the united states, there is something similar. to those of us who are here, they offer us many, many things to stay calm. the wall is to keep people calm. but we are resilient. jokingly, i say that we are like nocturnal animals; we know how to get in and out from one place to another in search of better opportunities. amo: in your opinion, what should the role of the mexican state be in relation to immigration and to the mexico-u.s. border? jdm: the most clichéd solution would be to have more jobs, more employment, right? to get higher compensation for the crops of all mexican ranchers, to have more opportunities, just as here in the united states where all land workers receive better subsidies to be able to pay for industrial machinery, pesticides, and better taxes. in mexico, there might be some of that, but it is hard. i say there should be money distributed for workers to stand out and survive each day. amo: your work has paradoxical characteristics. it usually offers a strong message with a severe critique of contemporary politics and other events, but it also has a sense of humor. you provide unexpected details that modify a work’s serious tone, and provoke laughter and http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 7 1 a d r i a n a m i r amo n t e s o l i v a s a nd j u an d e d i o s mo r a contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 6, no 1 “boundless” (2017) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2017.222 entertainment. in fact, you said in a 2013 interview with sabrina alfaro, “i do not like to get political because there are many other artists doing so, i am funny and i try to be funny.” 6 however, in assumption of the immigrant, attacked by fishes, abduction of the immigrant, and a coin for breakfast, humor seems to have disappeared from your work. what happened to the irony in these prints and why is their tone so serious? jdm: these four works are from 2009–2010. since then my work has changed tremendously. sometimes i do not want to get involved in politics. however, we are all influenced by it, whether we like it or not, whether we are aware or unaware of it, we live with it. it is part of our lives. this is reflected in my prints, being funny or not. my artwork sometimes denounces a certain type of system or tries to educate the community about problems that are currently taking place and that we sometimes ignore or neglect. when i focus on politics, i do it to represent my culture and my community, to point to outrages, discrimination, and even the poverty that we sometimes overlook. amo: in your prints such as la dust demonia (the dust devil, 2011) and mi nave can fly! (my spacecraft can fly!, 2011) we see bilingualism or code switching from english to spanish, which is characteristic of chicano art. why and when do you use spanglish? why do you only use spanish, for example, in abduction of the immigrant or attacked by fishes? jdm: the audience is very important. if i want to get more political, i must address them straightforwardly. in attacked by fishes there are some ribbons and one of them says, “se me va la vida” (“my life goes by”) and the other one says, “el agua bendita de todos los días” (“every day’s holy water”). i made this as a sort of hidden message. it is funny when i start using words in english here and there, as if playing. i really like it. amo: how important is it for immigrants to maintain their language, religion, and cultural identity through different traditions, celebrations, food, music, dress, literature? jdm: it is very important, it is what informs our way of thinking, our daily life, and how we act. all this helps us psychologically to move forward. that helped me to shape my identity and to show myself in a unique way. our culture is very beautiful. it is very important to keep our culture and language alive and to transmit them to our children. amo: what are you currently working on? are you developing different themes? jdm: i am currently working on new prints called soy lo que soy (i am what i am). it is a new series of working people, of how they perform any job with a positive attitude regardless of how simple or humble it could be. i am trying to address it in a heroic way, symbolically, 6 interview with sabrina alfaro, october 2, 2013, presented at university of texas at san antonio on october 10, 2013. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 7 2 e x o d u s t o t h e “ p r o m i s e d l a nd ” contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 6, no 1 “boundless” (2017) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2017.222 grandiosely. for example, there is one of a street cleaner who is seated proudly on a pedestal. they are all on a pedestal. there is another one called la hormiga guerrerita (the little warrior ant). i made it when we went to the children’s refuges. it shows a child and a mountain. instead of a pen the kid has an ant, because ants are hard workers and are always following a straight path. there is an angel and a shield with a mayan calendar, and there is also a wrestler’s mask because in mexico we say, “fight for your dreams,” or “keep wrestling.” i would like to say that my work is to motivate others. i want to tell my people that it is possible! with a positive energy and attitude anything is possible, any path they want to follow: arts, media communications, anything that is good for this world is possible. and for the new generations, do not forget your culture because we are a working people; we are not from a lazy culture, as many people say. we must keep motivating younger generations, erasing old stereotypes, and moving forward. new articles in this journal are licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 united states license. this journal is operated by the university library system of the university of pittsburgh as part of its d-scribe digital publishing program, and is co-sponsored by the university of pittsburgh press. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/ http://www.pitt.edu/ http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/ http://www.upress.pitt.edu/upressindex.aspx http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ 106-323-7-le (1) vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.106 http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu counter-memory, heterochronia, and “history painting” (after géricault) dierk schmidt’s siev-x—on a case of intensified refugee politics veronica tello abstract this essay examines the disruption of linear time in experimental forms of “history painting” as represented by dierk schmidt’s siev-x—on a case of intensified refugee politics (20012005). it analyses how the aesthetics of heterochronoia—multiple temporalities—play a crucial role in the development of a new understanding of the politics of “history painting.” as schmidt’s work reveals, a radical conception of history exists outside the “singular moment,” and in dialogue with heterogenous visual cultures (news media, art history, advertising). in attempting to understand the import of schmidt’s work, this essay considers his methodologies for creating a heterochronous mode of history painting, particularly his anachronistic engagement with the work of theodore géricault and the iconic history painting, the raft of the medusa. unlike previous critical responses to schmidt’s work, this paper argues that (after géricault) the artist’s use of investigative “journalistic” methodologies for siev-x—on a case of intensified refugee politics do not generate an aesthetics of exposé but rather an aesthetics of “fictionalization.” this aesthetic is defined by the recalibration of documentary and speculative data as a means to reconceive the landscape of the perceptual. the findings of this research demonstrate that the use of disparate fragments—or data—to visualize otherwise diminishing historical events underpins contemporary history painting’s capacity for advancing a distinct economy of affect that circumvents the limitations of the news media and its “monopoly on reality.” about the author veronica tello is adjunct associate lecturer at the national institute for experimental arts, university of new south wales, australia and visiting fellow at the transforming cultures research centre, university of technology, sydney. her current research, funded by the australia council for the arts, focuses on experimental forms of memorialization and historiography in contemporary art, with a focus on experiences of migration and exile. she is currently developing a book on this topic entitled, counter-memorial aesthetics: contemporary art and refugee histories. contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.106 departing from the indonesian port of bandar lampung on october 19, 2001, a small, unseaworthy, and overcrowded ferry carrying 398 iraqi and afghani refugees sunk on its way to australia’s offshore territory, christmas island. over a period of 21 hours, 353 refugees drowned in the indian ocean, while 45 survived after being rescued by indonesian fishermen. the shipwreck occurred in australian waters—a point initially denied by the australian government—in an area heavily patrolled by the australian navy under the auspices of the nation’s border protection regime, “operation relex.” many survivors reported the “appearance of military type vessels which failed to rescue” them while in the water, yet the australian government claimed that the navy had not detected the ramshackle ferry or its shipwrecked remains. survivors also asserted that they were forced onto the boat at gunpoint by 30 armed indonesian police officers: during 2001 the indonesian government and police had worked in collaboration with the australian government to “stop the boats” arriving at christmas island. in turn, speculation arose that the australian government had intentionally orchestrated the maritime tragedy in order to deter boats from coming to australia.1 in the face of these accusations, the australian government consistently evaded any suggestion of responsibility towards the fate of the refugees. in its aftermath, many questions remained with regard to how history would record the maritime disaster. the australian government set limitations on what information would be released to the public. the names of the drowned refugees were suppressed and refused to family members, members of the australian community, and artists who wished to produce a memorial for those who had drowned.2 there was no publicly available photograph or rendering of the boat, even though claims that such material existed circulated in public discourse. what little was known about siev-x largely hinged on survivor accounts and the work of activists and journalists who sought to draw attention to the event.3 working to contest and reflect on the australian government’s control of information, in october 2001 the german, berlin-based artist dierk schmidt began work on the project siev-x—on a case of intensified refugee politics (2001-5). this project, which spanned four 1 see tony kevin, a certain maritime incident: the sinking of siev-x (melbourne, scribe publications 2004), 11-12. 2 see the collective, the boatpeople’s memorial for siev-x made in 2002, or the siev-x memorial project. for the latter see http://www.sievxmemorial.com/the-memorial.html 3 siev is an acronym for suspected irregular entry vessel, the operational term used by the australian defence force for maritime vessels that appear to be attempting to reach australia without authorization. dierk schmidt, “one cannot maintain this sort of policy while continuing to be a democracy,” in siev-x: on a case of intensified refugee politics, dierk schmidt, ed. (berlin: b_books, 2005), 12. counter-memory, heterochronia, and “history painting” (after géricault) dierk schmidt’s siev-x—on a case of intensified refugee politics veronica tello 2 3 v e r o n i c a t e l l o contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.106 years, would comprise a 19-part “history painting,” in the form of an image cycle, which would attend to the various official and unofficial reports on siev-x.4 a key influence on schmidt’s work on siev-x was géricault’s the raft of the medusa (1816–19). as the artist explains, the nineteenth century artwork would come to deeply mediate his perspective of the event: [in october 2001] i came across an item in the weekly paper ‘jungle world’ reporting on a boat accident that in terms of the way it was externally described bore a striking resemblance to the raft of géricault. the dimensions of the boat corresponded almost exactly to those of the raft géricault depicted, and the manner in which the people were forced onboard was also similar. it was shocking that this boat accident, despite its dimension, remained all but invisible in the media. the image that this cryptic newspaper produced described circumstances that seem[ed] to stem from the 19th century.5 the events of siev-x would recall the nineteenth century maritime disaster involving the frigate medusa. in 1816, the medusa ran aground in shallow waters near the west african coast before reaching its destination: the new french colony of senegal. government officials onboard attempted to save themselves by departing in the available lifeboats, briefly towing 150 french citizens on a makeshift raft, before cutting the ropes. banished out to sea, over a period of two weeks, the rafters were subjected to the violence of the sea, murder, and cannibalism before a passing ship rescued the sole 10 survivors. the french government unsuccessfully attempted to prevent news of the catastrophe reaching paris. but a frustrated government representative leaked a survivor’s account of the disaster to the antigovernment broadsheet journal de débats. the survivor account, written by the surgeon jean baptiste henri savigny, evoked a disturbing image of the government and its conduct and brought to the fore the traumatizing and brutal events of the raft. the government was quick to challenge savigny’s account, in particular his claim that the captain had cut the ropes towing the raft.6 in an attempt to discredit the surgeon, it emphasized savigny’s role in leading the rafters to commit murder and cannibalism. but with alexandre corréard, another survivor of the raft, savigny would eventually produce an independent account of his and corréard’s experiences and version of events in the book narrative of a voyage to senegal (1818). upon his encounter with the article in journal de débats in 1816 géricault immediately began work on constructing an image—a history painting—which reflected the survivors’ reports. over two years, géricault researched every minute detail of the shipwreck of the medusa, interviewing savigny and corréard, becoming involved in the anti-slavery movement tied to the authors’ bookshop, attending hospitals to study dying men and severed limbs and heads, visiting the ocean to study the waves, and commissioning a reconstruction of the raft to be built in his studio based on survivor accounts. via his extensive fieldwork, schmidt observes: 4 schmidt puts “history painting” in inverted commas to make plain that he is not engaging with a naïve form of this outmoded genre and is aware of the contentiousness of this term in contemporary art discourse. see for example: dierk schmidt, “what i am theoretically interested in is the connection between violence, traumatization and the loss of speech: conversation with philosopher and journalist carolin emcke, berlin, september 2004,” in schmidt, ed., on a case of intensified refugee politics, 45-56. 5 ibid., 45. 6 ibid., 52-53. 2 4 c o u n t e r -m e m o r y , h e t e r o c h r o n i a , a n d “h i s t o r y p a i n t i n g ” ( a f t e r g é r i c a u l t ) contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.106 figure 1 dierk schmidt, xenophobe—shipwreck scene, dedicated to the 353 drowned asylum seekers that died in the indian ocean on the morning of october 19, 2001, 2001-2002. from the series siev-x—on a case of intensified refugee politics, 2001-2005. oil on pvc, 176 x 229.6 cm. copyright vg bild kunst, courtesy the artist and städel museum, frankfurt/main. 2 5 v e r o n i c a t e l l o contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.106 [géricault stepped] outside of the so-called studio, out of the conditions of production customary at the time [… he] manoeuvred along the borders of the ‘institution of art’ in order to temporarily cooperate with—today one would say—an ngo [that is, corréard and savigny’s bookshop]. in some respects, he almost worked in a journalistic manner.7 the effect, as schmidt saw it, was the production of a critical mode of history painting— something akin to counter-memory—capable of addressing the “excess” of homogenous historical narratives. the raft completely excised the sovereign as its subject and stressed the survival of the disenfranchised. in the raft, argues schmidt, the rescuing ship appears no larger than a “butterfly” in the large-scale image. it de-emphasizes government action and the rescue operation.8 instead, it stresses the “state of emergency” that was opened up by way of the sinking of the frigate medusa and its commander’s actions, whereby the castaways came to occupy the status of “bare life.”9 the raft, in other words, proposes a dialectic between the ruled and rulers, the victors and the vanquished, allowing for a critical tension between the two groups. if the image produces “the non-existence of the government in the ‘government painting,’” or history painting, it also acts as a means to catalyze conflicting priorities and vantage points.10 for schmidt, the raft represented a means to make manifest the politics of memory—who is remembered and why—under the conditions of government repression, a timely project in light of the events of siev-x. for some critics, schmidt’s work would intervene in how history recorded siev-x, generating an exposé of the australian government’s misconduct. analyzing xenophobe— shipwreck scene (fig.1)—widely considered to be the most important of all the images in the cycle—hilde van gelder argues: “painting reconstructs something that really happened but that was not registered in any way at all by a photographic nor filmic camera.”11 similarly, angela lampe states: dierk schmidt is trying to find a contemporary language for a vivid disclosure of manipulated realities with the means of painting. this is preceded by arduous years of research—as in the case of the australian refugee tragedy—until finally bit-by-bit the cover-ups and involvements of the australian government came to light, which had made helpless people hostages of a refugee policy based on deterrence.12 7 schmidt, ed., on a case of intensified refugee politics, 46-47. 8 as schmidt observes, in a preliminary sketch, géricault had drawn an image of the crew of the argus assisting the raft survivors on board but decided not to use this image. ibid., 53. 9 ibid., 53-54. 10 ibid. 11 hilde van gelder, “allan sekula: the documenta 12 project (and beyond),” accessed feburay 10, 2012. http://www.academia.edu/1059343/allan_sekula_the_documenta_12_project_and_beyond. originally published in: hilde van gelder, “allan sekula: the documenta 12 project (and beyond),” a prior 15 (summer, 2007): 210-253. 12 angela, lampe, “dierk schmidt: geiseln,” kunstforum international 175 (april-may, 2005): 273. author’s copy translated by alex lauscheke. lampe’s argument reflects a common understanding of schmidt’s work: “schmidt’s painting is a result of an investigative process [the artist] focuses on a form of contemporary painting [based] on research and active participation.” städel museum, “press release: dierk schmidt’s siev-x—on a case of intensified refugee politics or géricault and the question concerning the construction of history: april 9 – september 6, 2009, städel museum, rotunda,” (frankfurt, städel museum, 2009), np. 2 6 c o u n t e r -m e m o r y , h e t e r o c h r o n i a , a n d “h i s t o r y p a i n t i n g ” ( a f t e r g é r i c a u l t ) contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.106 figure 2 installation view: dierk schmidt, siev-x—on a case of intensified refugee politics, 2001-2005, the artist’s studio, circa 2005. photograph by dierk schmidt. copyright vg bild kunst, courtesy the artist. schmidt’s supposed commitment to an aesthetics of exposé was hinged, such critics argued, on his adaptation of géricault’s “investigative-like” methods. as lars bang larsen argued: in his publication, we see [schmidt working] as an investigative reporter doggedly browsing archives, comparing sources and pursuing witnesses and experts through interviews and text production . . . the people he talks to and the facts he amasses, the texts he writes, the analyses he provides and the travels he undertakes—this is the work that must be done in order to get within reach of the real.13 certainly, in a publication schmidt released in 2005 entitled siev-x: on a case of intensified refugee politics, he would emphasize the vigor of his research (as a means of aligning his practice with géricault’s). in order to “come to new findings” on siev-x, argued schmidt, he would initiate conversations and interview personnel from the australian 13 lars bang larsen, “dierk schmidt: packing the hard potatoes,” afterall 29 (spring, 2012): 120. 2 7 v e r o n i c a t e l l o contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.106 embassy in germany and the unhrc in geneva.14 in the same publication he would also reproduce some of his archival research (for example, sketches of the siev-x boat he drafted based on survivor accounts, photographic sources of survivors from cnn and bbc reports) juxtaposing it with géricault’s research and sketches for the raft of the medusa (fig. 2). such juxtapositions would certainly have influenced critics’ perceptions that, after géricault, schmidt had adopted “investigatory” methods for his work on siev-x, and that, after géricault, he could expose “the cover-ups and involvements of the australian government.” but schmidt’s research was far from being an exposé of any kind. although barely acknowledge by critics, his attempts to contact the unhrc and the australian embassy produced no new information.15 in fact, his attempts to gather more information with regard to siev-x were generally unsuccesful. self-reflexive about the limited information that structure the public’s knowledge of siev-x, the artist argued: it was not my aim to achieve a “reconstruction” [of the sinking of the siev-x] in the sense of an illusionistic tv news image. whereby it was remarkable that a boat accident of this dimension— recorded as the one with the most deaths off the coast of australia as far as the news media reaches back—didn’t make it to a tv image.16 while the rise of “history painting” in contemporary art may well be aligned with a resistance toward government control of information, it is important to emphasize that artists such as schmidt do not intend to provide informational correctives to government misconduct.17 instead, drawing on the poetic and affective capacities of art and aesthetics, they evoke a far more ambiguous and elusive sense of what has been. in this light, schmidt’s work—which is, by the artist’s own admission, based on limited, mostly internetbased research and his own speculations about the events of siev-x—is not intended to generate an evidentiary or straightforward version of events.18 rather, it brings to the fore 14 schmidt, “introduction,” in siev-x: on a case of intensified refugee politics, 5. within the publication siev-x: on a case of intensified refugee politics, there are also numerous interviews with refugee activists such as tony kevin, carolin emcke and paolo cuttina. however, it’s crucial to observe that these interviews took place during mid 2004, almost three years after the sinking of siev-x and the commencement of schmidt’s corresponding project, and a year after schmidt’s final painting for the image-cycle. as such these interviews were a means to elaborate on the project’s concept, rather than a means for the artist to “gather information” for the image-cycle. 15 schmidt, “one cannot maintain this sort of policy while continuing to be a democracy,” 12; schmidt, “what i am theoretically interested in is the connection between violence, traumatization and the loss of speech,” 55; and clemens krümmel, “the raft of the historical image: dierk schmidt's painting against painting,” in siev-x – on a case of intensified refugee politics, 83. 16 schmidt, “what i am theoretically interested in is the connection between violence, traumatization and the loss of speech,” 55. it is not quite true that siev-x “didn’t make it to a tv image” because video reports of the survivors were documented and disseminated by the global news agencies bbc and cnn (of which the artists was well aware). moreover, footage of the siev-x survivors and their families were broadly disseminated in australia. thus when schmidt refers to the lack of television images for siev-x he is referring to the dearth of documentation related to the shipwreck, and the victims of this tragedy. 17 see t. j. demos, “moving images of globalization,” grey room 37 (fall, 2009): 10; carrie lambertbeatty, “make-believe: parafiction and plausibility.” october 129 (summer, 2009): 51-84; and jill bennett, practical aesthetics: events, affects and art after 9/11 (london and new york: i.b. tauris, 2012), 33. 18 see schmidt, “what i am theoretically interested in is the connection between violence, traumatization and the loss of speech,” 46-55; and clemens krümmel, “the raft of the historical image: dierk schmidt's painting against painting,” 83. 2 8 c o u n t e r -m e m o r y , h e t e r o c h r o n i a , a n d “h i s t o r y p a i n t i n g ” ( a f t e r g é r i c a u l t ) contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.106 the contingencies of his imagery of siev-x, while exploring the possibilities of an ambiguous and thoroughly fragmented history.19 it was not the artist’s intention to create an “illusionistic” or photographic-like image for an event marked by a lack of imagery and information.20 instead, he would thematize this “lack” by using black pond sheeting as the “ground” for xenophobe—shipwreck scene (fig. 1).21 a difficult medium to paint on, it would take several coats before any image began to appear on this ground.22 sparsely painted white lines would appear wherever schmidt could source witness statements and compare information (sourced from the internet) in order to, for example, estimate the shape of the boat, or to draw outlines of indonesian police officers carrying machine guns forcing refugees onto siev-x, as mentioned in survivor statements. 23 color would only be applied where photographic material could be located, such as portraits of some of the survivors that the artist sourced from a cnn and bbc online video report on siev-x.24 but even these images are schematically painted in xenophobe—shipwreck scene in a manner that emphasizes and exaggerates the pixelated, low-resolution, and mass distributed digital images from which the artist was working.25 by all accounts, while attempting to contest the void of information that marked siev-x, schmidt’s image of this event was self-reflexively incomplete and marked by absences. what is more, schmidt’s work is an explicit composite of multiple sources. in xenophobe—shipwreck scene, schmidt combines and visualizes found data in order to create an otherwise unavailable image of siev-x: an image that photography itself could not produce and which bears critical differences to photography. unlike photography, schmidt’s “history painting” condenses multiple temporalities that go, in the artist’s words, “beyond the snapshot.”26 such work refuses the singular moment and a synthetic analysis of information. its fragmentation renders the image an incomplete and open-ended surface.27 the rough 19 it is worth observing that schmidt intended to critically reflect on the limitations of his research. what would be the implications of schmidt’s engagement with internet-based research and subsequent construction of a history painting from the geographical distance of germany? as schmidt stated: “what does it mean to deal with the reconstruction of an event in the indian ocean from such a great distance seen from europe, exactly the opposite side of the globe? what does it mean to deal from here in europe with a boat accident that could have been prevented and with the tightened australian refugee policy? instead of christmas island, it could have been lampedusa in the mediterranean. completely different site-related research work would have been possible and necessary . . . can a spatial distance also bring advantages with it?” see schmidt, “introduction,” 5. 20 schmidt, “what i am theoretically interested in is the connection between violence, traumatization and the loss of speech,” 55. 21 “this black picture ground”, argued schmidt, “principally translates and forms the ground of the ‘lack’ [of knowledge] as a theme, as the motivation to replace with an image a situation where there was no image, where its existence was prevented.” schmidt, “what i am theoretically interested in is the connection between violence, traumatization and the loss of speech,” 55. 22 dierk schmidt, interview by author, berlin, july 20, 2009, audio and transcript on file with author. 23 schmidt, “what i am theoretically interested in is the connection between violence, traumatization and the loss of speech,” 55. 24 ibid. 25 accordingly, sabine vogel has claimed that there “is something sketch like about [schmidt’s] paintings” of siev-x. vogel, “dierk schmidt,” 182. 26 schmidt, “what i am theoretically interested in is the connection between violence, traumatization and the loss of speech,” 56. 27 ibid. 2 9 v e r o n i c a t e l l o contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.106 brushstrokes that structure the painting expose the seams that bind these sundry citations together. schmidt would intensify the aesthetics of fragmentation in on a case of intensified politics by juxtaposing numerous, and at times incongruous, citations throughout the image cycle (fig. 2). we see, for example, schematic portraits of the then australian prime minister john howard, news reports on other australian refugee histories, and impressionist-like seascapes referencing the site of the siev-x disaster. manifesting as a series of film stills, when hung on the gallery wall the cycle reflects a spatial arrangement not dissimilar to that found in the montages of experimental video historiographies such as jean-luc godard’s histoire(s) du cinéma (1989-98). if in histoire(s) we see a “chains of pictures” flowing not sequentially but projected simultaneously to produce a series of resonances and analogies— concatenations—then this aesthetic effect would be similarly embodied by schmidt’s nineteen-part “history painting.”28 through its montaging of disparate sources, schmidt’s fragmentary work reflects a nonlinear, experimental conception of a contested historical event: a strategy which resonates with the aesthetics of counter-memory.29 as michel foucault has argued, counter-memory offers a differential conception of time/history that brings together repressed archives and documents that correlate with power.30 as a dialectical structure, counter-memory critiques teleological notions of history, the notion of the singular monument born of a single origin. it maps our existence amongst myriad forgotten events, as opposed to a distinct “landmark,” splintering the monolithic into a thousand fragments. the fragmentary and heterogeneous notion of time that underpins foucault’s conception of counter-memory has largely been overlooked in visual culture studies. critics tend to reduce the notion of counter-memory down to a conflictual arrangement of dominant and marginalized historical narratives, with little attendance to concepts of fragmented time associated with this notion.31 in contrast, schmidt’s work reveals that the stakes and politics of counter-memory are contingent not only on a willingness to memorialize diminishing histories, but also on heterochronia, that is, the invocation of multiple, layered temporalities (or temporal fragments) as a means of refusing homogeneous, synthetic readings of the historical event.32 28 on godard see hito steyerl, “the articulation of protest,” in the wretched of the screen (berlin: stenberg press, 2012), 87. 29 michel foucault, “nietzsche, genealogy, history (1971),” in michel foucault: aesthetics, method, epistemology ed. james d. faubion (london: penguin, 1998), 369-392. also published in: michel foucault, language, counter-memory, practice: selected essays and interviews (oxford: blackwell, 1977). also see c. colwell, “deleuze and foucault: series, event, genealogy,” theory & event 1, no.2 (1997): 1-9. 30 foucault, “nietzsche, genealogy, history (1971),” 369-392. 31 see for example: joan gibbons, “revisions: the reassembling of ‘history’,” in contemporary art and memory: images of recollection and remembrance (london and new york: i.b. tauris 2009), 52-72; maria sturken, “the politics of video memory: electronic erasures and inscriptions,” in resolutions: contemporary video practices, ed. michael renov and erica suderburg, (minneapolis university of minnesota press 1996), 1-12; katherine dieckmann, “godard’s counter-memory,” art in america 81 (october, 1993): 65-67. 32 for an analysis of heterochronia in contemporary art, see mieke bal, “heterochrony in the act: the migratory politics of time,” in proceedings of the second encuentro murcia–amsterdam on migratory aesthetics, september 19-21, 2007, 203. 3 0 c o u n t e r -m e m o r y , h e t e r o c h r o n i a , a n d “h i s t o r y p a i n t i n g ” ( a f t e r g é r i c a u l t ) contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.106 the aesthetics of heterochronia (fragmented shards of time) that underpin schmidt’s work is a condition of the era out of which the work emerges. contemporaneity, argues terry smith, is marked by a disruption to beliefs in teleological time in the face of a range of antinomies: competing colonial and postcolonial discourses, narratives of modernity and counter-modernity, and narratives of globalization and counter-globalization.33 the sense that we are living with “many times” rather than “a time” is further intensified through asynchronous, often traumatic, historical events that occupy screen media, manifesting an unprecedented consciousness of the past in the present.34 with this in mind, it is perhaps no surprise that the by now deeply outmoded genre of history painting has seen a return in contemporary art practices.35 this is seen, for example, in the work of isaac julien, who, like schmidt, also adopts an experimental, heterochronous conception of time. julien’s ninechannel video installation ten thousand waves (2010) juxtaposes police search-and-rescue footage of chinese refugees missing at sea near the uk’s morecambe bay, documentary images of the rural landscapes of guangxi province, the urban-scapes of shanghai, archival footage from chinese cinematic history, and fictionalized images of a sixteenth-century chinese fable in which the goddess mazu saves fishermen in distress, leading them to the mythical island of yishan. like schmidt, julien does not visualize the historical event as a singular decisive moment, but rather as a network of intermingling temporalities and as a series of flows. we see two crucial precedents for the nexus of heterochronia and history painting in the work of warhol and richter. warhol memorializes the 1963 birmingham civil rights riots in red race riots (1963), invoking the aesthetics of the time-lapse by showing the climactic moment and the scenes both before and after to represent a pivotal historical era for american race relations.36 richter deploys the aesthetics of the image-cycle in october 18, 1977 (1988) to represent a series of interconnected fragments bound to the controversial events of and surrounding the deaths of the baader-meinhof group while in the custody of the german state.37 here, as in schmidt’s work, history appears as a field of fragments. however, the work of warhol and richter needs to be differentiated from the work of schmidt (and more broadly from contemporary artists engaged in historical representation) in one crucial way. hal foster has argued that in their engagement with experimental forms of history painting and archival processes, artists such as warhol and richter dwelled on the inevitable “anomie” of memory-making systems and the loss of affect in the era of mass media.38 in contrast, the contemporary history painter, or in foster’s terms archival artist, is 33 terry smith, what is contemporary art? (chicago: university of chicago press, 2009), 5-7. 34 see keith moxey, “contemporaneity’s heterochronicity,” visual time: the image in history (durham: duke university press, 2013), 37-50; and andreas huyssen, twilight memories: marking time in a culture of amnesia (new york: routledge, 1995), 5-9. 35 for analysis of “history painting” in contemporary art see, for example: robert bailey, “unknown knowns,” october 142 (fall, 2012), 144-161; jill bennett, empathic vision: affect, trauma, and contemporary art (stanford, calif: stanford university press, 2005), 124-148; and jill bennett, practical aesthetics: events, affects and art after 9/11, 33. 36 see anne wagner, “warhol paints history, or race in america,” in “race and representations: affirmative action,” special issue, representations 55 (summer, 1996): 100-101. 37 see benjamin buchloh, “a note on gerhard richter’s october 18, 1977,” october 48 (spring 1989): 97. also see david green, “from history painting to the history of painting and back again: reflections on the work of gerhard richter,” in history painting reassessed: the representation of history in contemporary art, eds. david green and peter seddon, (manchester: manchester university press, 2001), 31-49. 38 hal foster, “an archival impulse,” october 110 (fall, 2004), 21-22. 3 1 v e r o n i c a t e l l o contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.106 figure 3 dierk schmidt, “operation relex” . . . acting without perpetrators (i), 2003. oil on pvc, 23 x 30.5 cm. from the series siev-x—on a case of intensified refugee politics, 2001-2005. copyright vg bild kunst, courtesy the artist and städel museum, frankfurt/main. 3 2 c o u n t e r -m e m o r y , h e t e r o c h r o n i a , a n d “h i s t o r y p a i n t i n g ” ( a f t e r g é r i c a u l t ) contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.106 characterized by a desire to animate and construct new ways of seeing news media fragments, and invokes a differential account of history. for foster, a key strategy of such contemporary artists is montage. the archival artist, he argues, creates “tendentious, even preposterous” connections between documents, building “a matrix of citations,” so that something that would otherwise remain invisible or diminished becomes visible (and thinkable).39 in turn, the contemporary “archival impulse”— the will to collect and re-contextualize data in the digital era—is not only a form of countermemory, it is also a mode of paranoia: “for what is paranoia if not a practice of forced connections and bad combinations, of my own private archive, of my own notes from the underground, put on display.”40 the contemporary manifestation of the archival impulse is, then, marked by a desire to contest what is possible to see, say, and feel, driven by the artist’s generation of an affective field of unexpected associations, which open up new lines of enquiry. accordingly, schmidt produces tendentious, paranoid connections in his images for siev-x. in “operation relex”…acting without perpetrators (i) (2003), for example, schmidt crops and edits photographs sourced from the online media galleries of the australian government and stills from news outlets to create a fabricated scenario (fig. 3). the composite image situates former immigration minister phillip ruddock and prime minister john howard at a meeting (surrounded by anonymous figures who appear only as white outlines) that tentatively implicates them in the siev-x disaster. this is signified via the painting’s title and subtitle “operation relex”…acting without perpetrators, referencing the australian government’s policy (operation relex), which charged the navy with the task of patrolling the country’s borders and “turning back” any boats that entered without authorization. the painting’s subtitle, acting without perpetrators, brings into question the legality of the operation relex program amidst siev-x survivor statements that revealed “military type” vessels had drifted past and failed to rescue them while in the water. schmidt’s montaged images play a crucial role in attending to survivor statements and the implication of the australian government’s involvement in the sinking of siev-x. but they are nothing if not a result of paranoia that sees the artist piecing together, and at times intentionally displacing, available citations and data scraps in speculative configurations that allow what is otherwise invisible to enter the public domain via the aesthetic realm. “operation relex”…acting without perpetrators brings together, for example, a found portrait of then prime minister john howard and a 2002 press photograph of philip ruddock meeting indigenous leaders in the northern territory (the latter group completely omitted from schmidt’s image). painting here comes to conjoin and manipulate existing sources as means of working through the lack of imagery for the siev-x catastrophe and unacknowledged survivor reports which (however tendentiously and schematically) implicate the australian government in the event. to this extent, we may say that schmidt’s work reflects modes of paranoia consistent with the artist as archivist, but he also advances another related strategy: fictionalization. as jacques rancière has argued, fictionalizing “does not mean telling stories, it means constructing another sense of reality, another set of connections between spaces and times, between words and visual forms, spoken word and written words, between a here and an 39 foster, “an archival impulse.” 40 ibid., 21. 3 3 v e r o n i c a t e l l o contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.106 figure 4 dierk schmidt, freedom, 2001-2002. oil on pvc, 99.3 x 126 cm. from the series siev-x—on a case of intensified refugee politics, 2001-2005. copyright vg bild kunst, courtesy the artist and städel museum, frankfurt/main. figure 5 dierk schmidt, left to right, clockwise: franchising the border, 2001, supersymbol (iii), 2002, supersymbol (i), 2001, supersymbol (ii), 2001. from the series siev-x—on a case of intensified refugee politics, 2001-2005. copyright vg bild kunst, courtesy the artist and städel museum, frankfurt/main. 3 4 c o u n t e r -m e m o r y , h e t e r o c h r o n i a , a n d “h i s t o r y p a i n t i n g ” ( a f t e r g é r i c a u l t ) contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.106 figure 6 installation view: dierk schmidt, sievx—on a case of intensified refugee politics, 2001-2005. in hostages, galerie ursula walbröl, düsseldorf, germany, march 7 – april 19, 2003. photo: achim kukulies. courtesy the artist and galerie ursula walbröl. elsewhere, and a now and a then.”41 it gives way to new connections and semiosis, new flows and associations that diverge from the continuum of the “sensible,” allowing artists to negotiate the global news media’s and other dominant visual culture’s (e.g. advertising) presentation of “reality.”42 schmidt engages diverse visual cultures to offer a fictionalized account of siev-x, contextualizing the event in a richly layered network of affective signifiers. in freedom (and the interrelated fragments franchising the border and supersymbol (i-iii), we see schematic reproductions of stills from a 1998 nike television advertisement featuring the brazilian football team gliding in and out of airport security checkpoints and barriers (figs 4 and 5). juxtaposed with schmidt’s schematic construction of the sinking of siev-x in xenophobe— shipwreck scene (fig. 6), the unbounded gestures of the football players signify an idealized mode of global mobility, immune to the law, and ignorant of the intimidation of security checkpoints. meanwhile xenophobe—shipwreck scene relays the consequences of stymied refugee flows and the effective imposition of border protection regimes. hanging next to the latter, untitled (louvre) represents a schematic reproduction of géricault’s the raft of the medusa in situ at the 1819 salon and, less importantly, at the louvre in 2001 (figs 6 and 7). focusing on the former, schmidt depicts a gesticulating crowd—men in single and double breasted waistcoats and frockcoats, cravats, high collar shirts, pantaloons, top hats and canes—debating the events of and surrounding the shipwreck, while standing below the monumental and loftily hung image of the raft. the image directly reflects peter weiss’s account of the raft’s reception at the 1819 salon as found in his experimental novel, the aesthetics of resistance (1975-81): the moment depicted by the painter, in which the mast of the saving frigate appears on the horizon, was charged with such despair and such turmoil that the representatives of the bourbon restoration rightly interpreted it as a first step of a revolt against their regime [… géricault] stood unrecognized 41 jacques rancière, “what makes images unacceptable?,” (paper presented at pacific north west college of the arts, portland, oregon, february 29, 2008), accessed october 1, 2010. http://homeroom.pnca.edu/inline/46842.mov. see also jacques rancière, “documentary fiction: marker and the fiction of memory,” in film fables (new york; oxford: berg, 2006), 157-170. 42 rancière, “what makes images unacceptable?” here, “reality” means the language of politicians, and the images distributed by the mass media—as such, its recalibration or “fictionalization” is contingent on the re-assemblage of such images and texts. 3 5 v e r o n i c a t e l l o contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.106 in the salon care between the festively clad ladies and gents of the high society, the court, the crowd of critics. but when he heard the cries of dismay in face of the rough, unconcealed attacks against all tradition, when he saw how they were startled by this stark despair and heard the derogatory comments […] he was filled with satisfaction and pride.43 reflecting on the (much mythologized) impact of géricault’s work in the salon, schmidt argued that xenophobe—shipwreck scene would “take up” the place of the raft and intervene in public perceptions of a contemporary maritime disaster.44 it would do so, he would suggest, by placing this image within the australian parliament (rather than the salon): a notion he simply gestures to by schematically painting a border around xenophobe—shipwreck scene, which references the wooden paneling found in the offices of the australian parliament.45 aware of the shifting roles of history painting between the nineteenth century and today, schmidt’s strategies suggest that the politics of this genre rests on its capacity to fictionalize. that is, to draw unexpected flows between visual cultures as means to re-think the politics and aesthetics of art today. we may better understand the politics of fictionalization that underpin schmidt’s work by further considering contemporary art’s (heterochronous) relationship to outmoded and current visual and knowledge regimes. whereas in previous eras artists played a pivotal role in representing contemporary moral dilemmas and historical events, today the global news media is by far the more pervasive image and knowledge system. we do not wait for the heroic gestures of a géricault in order to moves us to witness acts of terror and government malaise.46 but we do wait for the artist to offer a different sense of reality, to open up new perspectives on political events, and map an alternative set of possibilities (however seemingly unthinkable). fictionalizing, in other words, offers something that is simultanouesly distinct from and in dialogue with a factual report on the state of events. in this light, the work of dierk schmidt, which emerges some two hundred years after géricault, must be seen as a vital turning point in discussions of the relevance of “history painting” to contemporary art. the conditions of government censorship and control of information today, alongside the circulation of alternative modes of information through the internet, have given rise to a particular dialectic. whereas the mass media and governments may repress or ignore contested historical narratives, the digital era is marked by resilient curiosity and a desire to counter and intervene in dominant visual and knowledge regimes. it does so, however, through fragmented images that reveal their contingency and limitations, and that embrace their schematic aberrations. at the same time, history, as the work of schmidt reveals, cannot be delimited to a singular event, a climactic and definitive moment, but is rather susceptible to a process of flows. contemporaneity, after all, is marked by 43 peter weiss, die äestheik des widerstands, (frankfurt, main: suhrkamp, 1983), 426 and 483; quoted in schmidt, siev-x – on a case of intensified refugee politics, np. 44 i say mythology because as thomas crow argues, by the time the image was shown, the government had punished those involved with the crime of the medusa and reform was already under way: “the scandal [as propagated by savigny and corrérad] had done its work: the captain had been disgraced, the governor and minister removed.” with this in mind, géricault had hoped that his image, which symbolised government reformation, would attract the state’s purchase. while to géricault’s disappointment this never manifested, “contrary to legend”, argues crow, the painting was highly ranked within the salon’s competition and granted a medal. crow, “classicism in crisis: gros to delacroix,” in nineteenth century art: a critical history, (new york, n.y and london: thames & hudson, 2002), 70-71. 45 schmidt, interview. 46 boris groys, “art and politic,” in where art worlds meet: multiple modernities and the global salon, ed. robert storr (venice: marsilio, 2005), 252. 3 6 c o u n t e r -m e m o r y , h e t e r o c h r o n i a , a n d “h i s t o r y p a i n t i n g ” ( a f t e r g é r i c a u l t ) contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.106 figure 7 dierk schmidt, untitled (louvre), 2001-2002. oil on canvas, 54 x 73 cm. from the series siev-x—on a case of intensified refugee politics, 2001-2005. copyright vg bild kunst, courtesy the artist and städel museum, frankfurt/main. heterochronia, by the sense that we live with “many times” (and engage with diverse visual cultures). this is why, as schmidt’s work suggests, contemporary modes of “history painting” may best be formulated as a series of fragments that overlap, clash and loop into each other, reflecting the relentless unfolding of past, present, and future temporalities and forms of knowledge that mark our current era. but the aesthetics of heterochronia in schmidt’s work bears another, crucial effect, too. it presents an innovative mode of counter-memory. more than just a means to contest eroded histories, counter-memory conjures multiple, dialogical temporalities and visual cultures which refuse a singular perspective of the past and open up the possibility of fictions—unexpected connections between disparate citations— as a means to contest any monopoly on reality. 3 7 v e r o n i c a t e l l o contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.106 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-noncommercial-no derivative works 3.0 united states license. this journal is operated by the university library system of the university of pittsburgh as part of its d-scribe digital publishing program, and is co-sponsored by the university of pittsburgh press. contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture vol 7, no 1 (2018) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2018.239 http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu gregg deal’s white indian (2016) the decolonial possibilities of museum performance christiana molldrem harkulich abstract gregg deal (pyramid lake paiute) is a performance and visual artist whose work deals explicitly in decolonizing the contemporary experience of indigenous peoples. an analysis of his performance of white indian in 2016 at the denver art museum opens the possibilities of performance as a method for museums to decolonize their spaces and curation. about the author christiana molldrem harkulich is a visiting assistant professor of theatre history at miami university of ohio where she teaches courses on contemporary indigenous plays, dramaturgy, and performance theory. her research focuses on the decolonial possibilities of indigenous performance for mixed audiences. she is co-editing a special edition for theatre histories on hemispheric historiography due out in 2020. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 7, no 1 (2018) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2018.239 on january 29, 2016, gregg deal (pyramid lake paiute, born 1975) performed white indian as the culmination of his three-month residency at the denver art museum (dam). dam has a substantial collection of art that portrays the ideals of the american west. indigenous narratives have been mostly told in history and natural history museums, and curation has changed tremendously in the past few decades by incorporating indigenous community members into the creation of both the narrative and display.1 in art museums, euroamerican artistic portrayals of indigenous people often echo the visuals of the “last of” trope, and they need additional context to dismantle the narrative, which many museums have done.2 the work of decolonization, the process of undoing the process of colonization and working with indigenous peoples to move forward, requires that museums engage with telling hard truths about the history of colonization—a push to remember and not forget the darker episodes of american history.3 across both visual and performance art, deal’s works focuses on the ways that indigenous people survive and resist the legacies of colonization that impact indigenous people in the united states. dam’s invitation to artists like gregg deal to perform within the galleries disrupts the colonial gaze inherent in the landscapes of the american west and the cupboarded cultural objects, changing the narrative of the space through the additional context of the performance.4 performance, while ephemeral, can be a decolonial act that offers an opportunity to change more than just the content within the exhibit but the very terms of the conversation within the museum space.5 white indian is a piece that interrogates indigenous belonging within u.s. american society. deal creates white indian as three movements—“the white indian”, “indian pop!”, and “indian pedigree”—that collectively scrutinize the cultural and political representations of indigenous people. according to deal, the entire performance leads to the third movement, “indian pedigree,” which confronts the u.s. policy of blood quantum.6 as kimberly tallbear explains in native american dna, blood quantum is a policy founded by the united states in 1 see case studies in ruth b. phillips, museum pieces: toward the indigenization of canadian museums, mcgill-queen’s/beaverbrook canadian foundation studies in art history (montréal: mcgill-queen’s university press, 2011), 7; amy lonetree, decolonizing museums: representing native america in national and tribal museums. first peoples: new directions in indigenous studies (chapel hill: university of north carolina press, 2012); and bryony onciul, museums, heritage and indigenous voice: decolonizing engagement. routledge research in museum studies (new york: routledge, 2015), 10. 2 the trope was initially made fashionable in fiction and drama in the early nineteenth century with works like james fenimore cooper’s 1826 the last of the mohicans and actor edwin forrest’s star role in metamora: or, the last of the wampanoag, which he performed from 1829 through the late nineteenth century. the novel’s popularity has endured, and it is often taught in literature courses influencing narratives about indigenous people. it has also been adapted for film and television numerous times. 3 lonetree, decolonizing museums. 6. 4 deal was invited back to dam in 2017 for a performance in conjunction with their exhibit on the western. 5 the idea that decolonizing is process that changes the terms of the conversation comes from walter mignolo, who writes about decolonial options as a shift in thinking, or rather, “that it is not enough to change the content; the terms of the conversation must be changed.” walter mignolo, the darker side of western modernity. global futures, decolonial options, latin america otherwise: languages, empires, nations. (durham, nc: (duke university press, 2011), 122 6 gregg deal. “indian pedigree.” greggdeal.com. january 2016, accessed february 2, 2018; http://greggdeal.com/indian-pedigree-1 gregg deal’s white indian (2016) the decolonial possibilities of museum performance christiana molldrem harkulich http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 4 7 ch r i s t i a n a m o l l d r e m h a r k u l i c h contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 7, no 1 (2018) | issn 2153-5194 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2018.239 order to delineate property and treaty rights during the dawes act of 1877, but that as populations intermarried the legal designation of quantifiable blood (from full to smaller percentages) that defined membership within tribal nations would become a complicated designation of belonging.7 from the government’s perspective, the quantification of blood limits the financial obligation the united states government has to each member of a tribal nation according to the different treaties and laws that congress had passed. when this law was passed, the u.s. government subscribed to a belief that intermarriage would eventually dilute blood quantum until no one met the requirements and financial obligations would therefore conclude. consequently, there is a capital gain to be had in marking and quantifying people, until they eventually disappear on paper, if not in reality. this legal policy, combined with the boarding school movement, was designed to make “last of” trope a reality, or as tallbear writes to “detribalitize” indigenous nations.8 as deal points out in his performance, blood quantum is a federal policy that polices indigenous belonging and dehumanizes through a legal quantifiable definition of racial identity. importantly, no ethnic group except native americans within the united states must still prove racial identity through blood.9 the flip side of this policy has meant that different tribal groups have had a language to establish citizenship and sovereignty for their nations. instead of erasing these nations, the policy in contemporary times makes a direct line of citizenship and belonging visible. deal strategically negotiates his narrative to confront both cultural myths about indigeneity and the legal reality in order to tell the truth about the trauma of erasure. blood quantum is tied to the history of colonization and land-grabs within the united states, when borders of treaty territory were unceremoniously shifted to favor the u.s. government. as amy lonetree writes in decolonizing museums, truth-telling is one of the tenets of the decolonizing process, and when museums do not reckon with the historical trauma of the past they perpetuate the trauma for indigenous patrons.10 it is impossible to heal from a trauma that is purposefully forgotten, and museums can be a space that actively engages with those hard truths. performance, specifically in a museum, offers an opportunity for the museum to differentiate representation and create new meanings in its educational space. a decolonial act challenges accepted narratives that are based on colonial logics, repositions indigenous narratives at the center of their own stories, and forges paths into the future. as lonetree articulates that change needs to be more than just an act of survivance.11 survivance stresses the importance of the continuation of stories that “create a sense of narrative resistance to absence, literary tragedy, nihility, and victimry. indigenous survivance is an active sense of presence in historical absence, the dominance of cultural simulations, and manifest manners.”12 while acts of survivance are important and necessary steps for indigenous cultures, the process of decolonization requires a foundational shift in the way narratives and relationships are formed, a change to the terms of the conversation and not just a change in the content. performance can help an audience imagine and understand that different way of being and recontextualize the entirety of the space around the performance. it is not just the performer but also the objects around the performer that gain new meaning. deal’s performance demonstrates how it can be a vital tool in decolonizing museum spaces and 7 for a full delineation of blood quantum history and critique, see kimberly tallbear, native american dna: tribal belonging and the false promise of genetic science (minneapolis: university of minnesota press. 2013), 55–61. 8 tallbear, native american dna, 47. 9 it is worth noting that, as different tribes embraced self-governance in the late twentieth century, the details of blood quantum have shifted with some tribes to direct descent. there is a wide variance in how membership is passed among the many different indigenous nations. see kim tallbear, native dna “chapter 1. racial science, blood, and dna” for further information about tribal membership and the evolution from blood to dna has shifted in recent decades. 10 lonetree, decolonizing museums, 5. 11 ernest stromberg, ed. american indian rhetorics of survivance: word medicine, word magic. pittsburgh series in composition, literacy, and culture (pittsburgh, pa: university of pittsburgh press, 2006); gerald vizenor, native liberty: natural reason and cultural survivance (lincoln, ne: bison books, 2009). 12 vizenor, native liberty, 1. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 4 8 g r e g g d e a l ’ s w h i t e i n d i a n ( 201 6 ) contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 7, no 1 (2018) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2018.239 creating space for truth telling. deal’s work is explicitly decolonial in the way that it grapples with historical traumas and pushes past acts of survivance. his performance of white indian is a vehicle for the truth-telling that lonetree calls for in decolonizing museums. figure 1 gregg deal, white indian. january 29, 2016. denver museum of art, denver, co. photos by kelsey huffer. courtesy of gregg deal. the performance the first movement of deal’s piece, “white indian,” is a cuttingly humorous taxonomy of the stereotypes and appropriation of indian-ness performed by white men (figure 1). with powerpoint-like images projected behind him, deal identifies the people who define indianness through stereotypical ideals, white men performing indian, such as the “the great white hope indian (kevin costner)” and “the quirky and probably crazy white indian (johnny depp).”13 in the piece, deal references and critiques the “last of” trope directly with visuals from the 1992 adaptation of the last of the mohicans starring daniel day-lewis. deal describes this specimen within his taxonomy of “white indians” as “the fervent self-assured white indian,” that is, the white man who is better at being an indian than an actual indigenous person.14 this critique from a living indigenous man troubles the trauma of the stereotype, and challenges representation. 13 gregg deal, “the white indian text,” greggdeal.com. accessed january 2016, http://greggdeal.com/the-white-indian-text. 14 gregg deal. “indian pop!text.” greggdeal.com. january 2016, accessed october 3, 2016; http://greggdeal.com/indian-pop-text. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 4 9 ch r i s t i a n a m o l l d r e m h a r k u l i c h contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 7, no 1 (2018) | issn 2153-5194 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2018.239 figure 2 gregg deal, white indian. january 29, 2016. denver museum of art, denver, co. photos by kelsey huffer. courtesy of gregg deal. figure 3 gregg deal, white indian. january 29, 2016. denver museum of art, denver, co. photos by kelsey huffer. courtesy of gregg deal. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 5 0 g r e g g d e a l ’ s w h i t e i n d i a n ( 201 6 ) contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 7, no 1 (2018) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2018.239 from this send-up and critique of white performance, deal moves to “indian pop!” a piece that critiques the continual appropriation of indigenous people and cultural symbols into consumable products, halloween costumes, and mascots. his critique is not just about cultural appropriation, but also concerns the way that the united states of america consumes indigeneity without regard for those who are consumed. deal finishes this piece with the assertion that “we all know honor is had through blond hair, blue-eyed, sexy white women in headdresses, and men of all color tackling each other in tights./this is indian pop.”15 in part, the first and second movement of white indian uses the traditional means of classification that museums have historically utilized for display as the dramaturgy and method of his performance; the critique is in form as well as in performance. figure 4 gregg deal, white indian, january 29, 2016. denver museum of art, denver, co. photos by kelsey huffer. courtesy of gregg deal. in the final piece, “indian pedigree”, deal confronts the realities of living with the legacy of reservations, broken treaties, and blood quantum policy while getting a tattoo of his own blood quantum designation (figures 3 and 4). his decision to mark his body while speaking of the marking of blood quantum is a powerful action, a performance of what deal calls his “critical thought and theory” that is not meant to be about identity but rather about what makes someone “indian enough.”16 toward the beginning of “indian pedigree,” deal speaks the following: and while this white man presses ink into my arm with the use of a needle, you may be saying to yourself that this is a bit dramatic get over it let it go that was the past but the weight and measure of being indigenous is a real thing. 15 gregg deal. “indian pop!text.” greggdeal.com. january 2016, accessed october 3, 2016; http://greggdeal.com/indian-pop-text. 16 deal, “indian pedigree.” http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 5 1 ch r i s t i a n a m o l l d r e m h a r k u l i c h contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 7, no 1 (2018) | issn 2153-5194 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2018.239 two planes flew into two buildings 15 years ago. never forget. but you, get over it loss of land loss of life loss of language loss of culture and now the loss of blood because the weight and measure of an indigenous person is a thing.17 deal calls up the national trauma of 9/11 to shock and to measure the continual trauma and treatment of indigenous lives. the theme of measurement, the thingification of human beings through racial classification, is explicit throughout the piece. deal’s decision to mark his body with his own blood quantum designation makes visible the trauma of slowly losing status as a citizen of an indigenous tribal nation. the tattoo makes the attempt at erasure visible and permanent. to perform these pieces in a museum surrounded by works of art, some of which, like edward s. curtis’s photograph the vanishing race, depict the disappearing indian trope, challenges culturally accepted notions of what it means to be indigenous in contemporary society. objects, both cultural and artistic, are curated within a museum to perform particular narratives. the ephemeral nature of white indian means that it cannot be contained within a case and displayed. indeed, it is not reproducible, as deal cannot get the tattoo a second time in the same place. however, performance art can be filmed (as deal has done), so that it can reach a wider audience. in both content and form, deal’s unreproducible performance is in many ways a rejection of western colonial influence on his identity and being. as a live action, it asserts that, as a pyramid lake paiute man, he is still here, without having to explicitly say as much. his critique of american culture’s consumption and representation of indigenous identities within the walls of the museum, a site of cultural authority, accrues that critique greater authority. the cultural authority that museums often possess can dictate what counts as culture, and the large amount of foot-traffic—from school-children through senior citizens— means that what they choose to display can have a wide-reaching effect. while deal does the work of decolonizing the audience’s perspective through his performance, that the denver art museum embraces and supports his art ultimately changes the terms of the conversation about who owns cultural authority within museum spaces. in 1990, the native american graves and repatriation act (nagpra) was passed into united states law, requiring museums and other institutions to return cultural items (ranging from human remains to sacred objects) to lineal descendants and culturally affiliated tribal nations. nagrpa caused many institutions to begin to reassess their curation while initiating the process of returning parts of their collections to their proper homes. as museums continue to grapple with the effects of nagpra, it is useful to look to the denver art museum and deal’s performances in it to think about what role the museum plays in telling the stories of indigenous people and how they can make space for indigenous people to tell their own stories. it takes a large influx of financial support to make large changes to curation in permanent exhibits, and as scholars like ruth b. phillips and amy lonetree have demonstrated, beyond financial strains, decolonizing museum curation involves developing trust and providing space for members of indigenous communities to shape their own narratives. as a longtime pittsburgh resident, i am reminded of alcoa hall in the carnegie museum of natural history (cmnh) in pittsburgh, and the contained nature of the displays when thinking of gregg deal’s practice. while alcoa hall in the carnegie museum does make an effort to 17 gregg deal, “indian pedigree-text,” greggdeal.com, october 31, 2016; http://greggdeal.com/indianpedigree-text http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 5 2 g r e g g d e a l ’ s w h i t e i n d i a n ( 201 6 ) contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 7, no 1 (2018) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2018.239 continue a narrative of indigenous people’s lives into the present, it has not been updated since its major reinstallation in the 1990s. pennsylvania is a state that does not contain any reservations, and the pittsburgh area, which borders with ohio and west virginia, also contains no sovereign indigenous land. since the early 1970s, an association of indigenous peoples, many from the seneca nation whose ancestors cared for land in the pittsburgh area, have come together as the council of three rivers american indian center. they have held an annual pow-wow in the pittsburgh area as part of their purpose “to maintain a sense of indianness, recapture roots and become more conscious of their rights as native americans.”18 outside of the pow-wow, for most people in the pittsburgh area who encounter alcoa hall, the museum is a major point of contact for representation of indigenous americans. the visitor encounters glass cabinets filled with sacred objects and dioramas, separated by regions. there are a few areas where the visitor can sit and listen to different prerecorded disembodied indigenous stories. due to the museum’s prominence, the narrative the museum presents is a critical form of representation that indigenous people have, and that representation effects many aspects of indigenous life, from cultural production and citizenship to policy. though alcoa hall could be updated, a more immediate intervention could be performances by indigenous artists. the hall contains several spaces that are ripe for performance that could begin to change the terms of the conversation, build strategic partnerships, and decolonize the display. the impact of performance means that the museum can begin to build partnerships with indigenous community members and begin to tell the “hard truths” that are both essential and difficult in the history of the americas.19 performance offers a way to change the terms of the space by privileging the voice and impact of the performer. for a museum like the carnegie in pittsburgh, it is easier to remember the narrative of the land as place where george washington surveyed and lewis and clark began their adventure. the museum—through performance—could begin to reshape that narrative and remind visitors of the history that is easy to forget, to remind visitors that they are standing on haudenosaunee confederacy (iroquois) and the osage land. it is perhaps even more important in museums located far from recognized indigenous centers to actively engage in decolonizing their museum spaces through performance art. new articles in this journal are licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 united states license. this journal is operated by the university library system of the university of pittsburgh as part of its d-scribe digital publishing program, and is co-sponsored by the university of pittsburgh press. 18 council of three rivers american indian, “home,” august 2016, accessed august 10, 2018; http://www.cotraic.org/. 19 onciul, museums, 195. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/ http://www.pitt.edu/ http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/ http://www.upress.pitt.edu/upressindex.aspx http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ gregg deal’s white indian (2016) the decolonial possibilities of museum performance gregg deal’s white indian (2016) the decolonial possibilities of museum performance contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture vol 7, no 1 (2018) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2018.245 http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu destruction and solution meghan kozal about the artist meghan kozal is an undergraduate at the university of notre dame, majoring in design and minoring in art history and computing and digital technologies. she is involved in various cultural clubs including the asian american association and the filipino american student organization as well as several faith communities on campus. her work has been exhibited in shows around the toledo area, including the northwest ohio community art exhibition as well as in south bend at the colfax gallery and the snite museum of art, and she looks forward to exhibiting a piece in grand rapids, michigan’s artprize 10 at the monroe community church. her work has also been featured in the juggler, a journal at the university of notre dame, and polaris, a journal from ohio northern university. meghan has been in the art and design field for years, working in local galleries and museums and doing graphic design work for many groups on campus. this coming year, she will be interning with campus ministry at the university of notre dame in communications and with the notre dame institute for global investment as a designer and web developer. she hopes to pursue a master of fine arts degree after graduation, so as to continue on the path to becoming an arts educator. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 7, no 1 (2018) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2018.245 art is made to challenge. in my work, i compose images that will confront viewers while also challenging me to see an issue differently. my work stems from a love of art history and a desire to present stories from the news in a new and intriguing way. in particular, i tend to focus on issues in the middle east, an area of the world i have seen constantly covered in the media since my childhood, and attempt to give a new voice to pervasive problems. education also plays a large role in my work, whether referred to directly or as a lens through which my work is composed. education is a natural focus for me as it is a field that i have grown up surrounded by. both of my parents are educators, and i hope also to pursue a job in that field. in combining all these areas of interest, i often use rather simple compositions with a regular presence of geometric shapes. i find that in breaking the ideas down to their essential elements, i am better able to convey a message and at the same time leave my work much more open, creating a space where viewers can place themselves and their experiences. this technique allows me to work with global issues in a wider capacity, linking issues to show how widespread they may appear and encouraging viewers to become actively involved in them no matter their viewing perspective. destruction and solution meghan kozal http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 8 3 m e g h a n k o z a l contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 7, no 1 (2018) | issn 2153-5194 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2018.245 figure 1 meghan kozal, persistence of memory, 2017, graphic design. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 8 4 d e s t r u c t i o n a n d s o l u t i o n contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 7, no 1 (2018) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2018.245 figure 2 megan kozal, expression/oppression, 2017, graphic design. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 8 5 m e g h a n k o z a l contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 7, no 1 (2018) | issn 2153-5194 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2018.245 figure 3 meghan kozal, destruction, 2017, graphic design. new articles in this journal are licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 united states license. this journal is operated by the university library system of the university of pittsburgh as part of its d-scribe digital publishing program, and is co-sponsored by the university of pittsburgh press. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/ http://www.pitt.edu/ http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/ http://www.upress.pitt.edu/upressindex.aspx http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ destruction and solution destruction and solution contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture vol 5, no 1 “agency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2016.176 http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu david lamelas’s the desert people: an odyssey for authentic representation hammer museum, january 30-june 5, 2016 loretta ramirez exhibition review david lamelas’s the desert people at ucla’s hammer museum, january 30-june 5, 2016. about the author loretta ramirez is a lecturer in the chicano & latino studies department at california state university, long beach (csulb). she is dedicated to the study of culture and cultural expression in its various written and visual forms. loretta earned her ba in anthropology from stanford, her ma in english from loyola marymount, and a second m.a. in art history at csulb. she is currently pursuing her phd in english with an emphasis on written and visual rhetoric at university of california, irvine. when loretta is not exploring the academic world, she enjoys promoting culture and art in her native los angeles at the j. paul getty center where she volunteers as a gallery docent. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5, no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.176 zooming in a brilliantly white gran torino sedan along an interstate, dissecting the surrounding desert, five travelers reflect on their five-week visit to the native american reservation of the papago people (tohono o’odham) in southeastern arizona (fig. 1).1 the testimonies of the trave lers (an anthropologist, hippie, journalist, liberal, and papago member) form the forty-four-minute narrative of david lamelas’s film, the desert people (1974), screened at ucla’s hammer museum january 30-june 5, 2016. figure 1 david lamelas, the desert people, 1974. still of title. 16mm film trans ferred to dvd, color, sound, 44:09 min. ins tallation view. hammer museum, los angeles. p urchased through the board of o verseers a cquisition fund. c opyright david lamelas, images courtesy of maccarone, sprüth magers, and jan mot. the accompanying soundtrack of funky beats and tangy electronics, shr iek ing tires, an d roaring engines, paired with a camera that caresses the gran tor ino’s glinting body as it 1 while the term “p apago” is no longer popularly used and the nation prefers the term tohono o’odham, i will be referring to the o ’odham represented in the desert people as “the p apago.” my choice of term is to remain cons istent with the film’s use of “p apago.” for more information about the tohono o’odham nation and how the o ’odham self-identify, see: http://www.tonation-nsn.gov. david lamelas’s the desert people: an odyssey for authentic representation hammer museum, january 30-june 5, 2016 loretta ramirez authorship box http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 1 3 8 e x h i b i t i o n r e v i e w : d a v i d l a m e la s’ s t h e de s e r t p e o p l e c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.176 speeds across scorching asphalt, imbue the film with seventies-era “road movie” ambiance. however, lamelas intercuts these features with documentary-style interview sequences, filmed uncomfortably up-close and from varying angles, making it impossible for the interviewees to escape the viewer’s scrutiny. shifting between flashy genre and seemingly candid study questions the veracity of the travelers’ testimonies. the concept thus at play in the film is an examination of both distortions and accuracies of cultural representations, presented from an outsider perspective after an encounter of differences. screened at the hammer in a black box room with six gray off ice ch airs lined r igidly against the back wall, the desert people was distanced from the single row of audience members by a long stretch of empty space. hammer curator aram moshayedi and curator ial assistant mackenzie stevens designed this rather clinical observational setting to re inforce the desert people’s documentary aspect. this curatorial choice aligned with lamelas’s vision of the screening since lamelas created his early films for museum settings. according to maria josé herrera, lamelas calls these films “movies made by a visual artist.” 2 thus, the hammer underplayed the cinematic value of the desert people while advancing its subject for critical analysis. this curatorial choice also limited the screening to six seated v iewers, giving a sense of exclusivity rather than community. accordingly, visitors might enter the exhibit with expectations to study the film as a documentary, which suggests that an interpretation of papago life as it existed during the 1970s is still relevant. the curators stated in a wall text that lamelas conceived the film in part as a fictional documentary, allowing audiences to wonder which parts are not fiction. this ambiguity is crucial to the viewing experience. i suggest that lamelas, in fact, uses such ambiguity to focus analy sis not on the state of the papago people so much as on the viewers’ awareness of the impact of western temporal and historical constructs on cultural representation. in lamelas’s forty-year career, he has taken up a wide spectrum of mediums, from object-based to light and space, and from film to installation. in these diverse works lamelas consistently constructs his pieces to partially de-stabilize and partially reinforce fragmented truths. this is seen in the desert people, as well as lamelas’s earlier non-filmic works, including office of information about the vietnam war at three levels (1968) in which lamelas featured a room packed with state-of-the-art office equipment, displaying the glamorization of war while exploring the dissemination of news. the luxury modern furniture indicates privilege, safety, and comfort at the receiving end of devastating news of war, thereby questioning the effect of environment on interpretations of current events. office of information dismantles the concept that truth can be disseminated objectively through media; its filtering through time, distance, and perspective alters the reception and further propagation of news. similarly, the desert people critiques dissemination of information via documentary film by offering eyewitness testimonies, the authenticity of which swiftly dissolves under the glamorization of a road movie narrative and the heightened awareness of the cultural distance between the road-trippers and the papago (fig. 2). in this way, lamelas analyzes the manner in which histories are constructed through detached testimony. here, as in many of lamelas’s works, he suggests that viewers consider the accuracy of perceptions. 2 maria josé herrera, “introduction,” in david lamelas: buenos aires (sáenz p eña: universidad nacional de t res de febrero, 2011), 23. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 1 3 9 lo r e t ta r a m i r e z c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.176 figure 2 david lamelas, the desert people, 1974. still of the travelers. 16mm film trans ferred to dvd, color, sound, 44:09 min. ins tallation view. hammer museum, los angeles. p urchased through the board of o verseers acquisition fund. c opyright david lamelas, images courtesy of maccarone, sprüth magers, and jan mot. this investigation into perception is also present in lamelas’s earliest film works. in film, lamelas immediately embraced the recording of time to demonstrate that time cannot, in fact, be captured. in time as activity (düsseldorf) (1969), lamelas filmed city life in three different locations in düsseldorf from a fixed camera angle with no sound or narrative. regarding this work, lamelas has stated, “i was consciously working with time in this piece. the concept was the structure, or deconstruction, of time in düsseldorf, where the f ilm was made and shown.”3 he designed the film’s screening in düsseldorf with the projector present in the room, functioning, according to lamelas, “as a time projector, projecting another time than the real time.”4 hence viewers witness the progress of time spreading across screen, as they consciously spend time, an awareness intensified by the sound and heat of a spinning projector. in this way, time fuses, implying that the past may never be fully regained because the present necessarily impedes our perception of the past. if time is not as s imply linear as broadly conceived in western tradition, might the structures of history be unsupportable? further, this melding of past and present fosters considerat ion of time’s relationship to our own reality and experiences, a consideration revisited five years later with the desert people. 3 a my c appellazzo, “david lamelas: t ime as activity (düsseldorf), 1969,” in making time: cons idering time as a material in c ontemporary video and film, ed. by a my c appellazzo (lake worth: p alm beach ins titute of c ontemporary art, 2000), 62 -63. 4 ibid, 63 . http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 1 4 0 e x h i b i t i o n r e v i e w : d a v i d l a m e la s’ s t h e de s e r t p e o p l e c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.176 here, lamelas addresses elusive pasts through overlapping and partially f ictionalized accounts, perhaps to provoke viewers to contemplate historical narratives and the ir impact on concepts of time and culture. in this way, lamelas moves from an analysis of the broad construction of western time in time as activity, to a consideration of time’s relationship to culture and representation in the desert people. at the same time, he moves from nonnarrative film to fictional documentary. assuming the role of preservationist, the first interviewee in the desert people is a white male anthropologist who shares his studied observations of the papago people (f ig. 3). he believes that, beyond himself, the papago have no champion to secure their history. thus, the film begins with testimony from a non-indigenous person who claims guardianship of the papago’s history. however, as the film progresses with each new interv iew, interspersed amongst interludes of moving cars, the testimonies falter in their consistencies and intent since they speak more of themselves than of the papago. figure 3 david lamelas, the desert people, 1974. still of the anthropologist’s tes timony. 16mm film trans ferred to dv d, color, sound, 44:09 min. ins tallation view. hammer museum, los angeles. p urchased through the board of o verseers acquisition fund. c opyright david lamelas, images courtesy of maccarone, sprüth magers , and jan mot. for example, the white female new york journalist is keen to discuss the reservation women whose community contributions humble the journalist, newly aware of her lesser impact on her own society. meanwhile, the white male californian liberal laments this same tightknit indigenous community, deeming it divisive against outsiders, thus thwarting his hopes to romance papago females. contrasting with these perspectives is the last interviewee, a papago man named manny, who perceives indigenous life as unraveling due to loss of language, tradition, and unity—himself displaced and living off-reservation (fig. 4). for manny, this is a desperate time, as he attests that “much of our culture has died and is dying now.” http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 1 4 1 lo r e t ta r a m i r e z c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.176 figure 4 david lamelas, the desert people, 1974. still of manny ’s monologue. 16mm film trans ferred to dv d, color, sound, 44:09 min. installation view. hammer museum, los angeles. p urchased through the board of o verseers acquisition fund. c opyright david lamelas, images courtesy of maccarone, sprüth magers, and jan mot. while saved for last as the papago’s “true” voice, manny ironically loses authenticity. his testimony is undermined by the film’s heightened dramatics, staged against the desert landscape and brimming with his poetic musings. this contrasts with the three other travelers’ faster-paced testimonies that express less organized ideas, filmed seemingly spontaneously inside a diner or along a busy street. manny is also the only subject to turn his back on the camera in a choreographed melancholic walk toward an empty horizon, rather than the frontal positioning to which the camera exposed the others. finally, with theatrical purpose his speaking is methodically precise, delivered from a carefully crafted script. hence, for audiences, the seemingly most authoritative voice is surprisingly the least convincing, albeit the most poignant. however, manny does not seem concerned with convincing anyone of truths. he is not attempting to inform; rather, his implied purpose is to raise awareness and maintain cultural survival. to achieve this, he considers the methods of his fellow travelers whose efforts he credits: “i suppose it is up to the people themselves to keep the culture—to pull it up. and the only way to pull it up is to listen to and talk to the old people that are left, the ones that really have some storage of what it was like. that’s what these people have done. and i feel it is up to those people, who want to preserve it, to do it.” in manny’s monologue, “truth” is secondary to “representation.” reality is less important than maintaining a story, even a fragmented and partially fictionalized one. manny continues, “[t]his is one way of doing it, i think—performing. perhaps i’m wrong, but my heart is in performing and that is where it’s going to stay.” in this moment, any illusion that the desert people is a documentary film dissipates. manny is a professional actor performing a story that might be related to his heritage—but even that is in question. is he really of the papago people? http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 1 4 2 e x h i b i t i o n r e v i e w : d a v i d l a m e la s’ s t h e de s e r t p e o p l e c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.176 does it matter? if manny’s goal is to keep alive through performance that which he, as a character in the film, views as a dying culture, then his authenticity as a papago person is not relevant. after all, viewers may now be wondering what, exactly, is the state of the papago. is the culture dying, as suggested by manny, the scripted voice of the papago? or, is the portrayal of the culture obscured by manny’s possible outsider assumptions? viewers may also notice that, besides the character of manny, the film includes no papago people and no footage of the reservation. the film is thus not necessarily about the papago, and it does not advance “vanishing race” rhetoric. rather, manny’s monologue about his dying culture invi tes criticism of such rhetoric by exposing a flawed and fictional narrative of cultural representation. accordingly, i propose that the film’s purpose is to undermine the documentary format’s authority to capture a specific reality. concurrently, the film stimulates the viewer’s curiosity and agency to more acutely process their observations, thus freeing them from traditional structures of historical and cultural narratives. such observations may spark future explorations into the papago or similarly underrepresented communities whose portrayals within western culture are also too faulty to believe, yet nonetheless inspire attempts of recovery. it is therefore fitting that lamelas borrows the road movie genre in its countercultural celebration of unbound, open-road freedom, exemplified in the films zabriskie point (1970) by michelangelo antonioni, and two-lane blacktop (1971) by monte hellman. the desert people was lamelas’s first professionally produced film in los angeles, and marks a union between his art and the culture industry.5 on the wall label of the exhibit, the hammer quotes lamelas, who defines this work as “a study on american film production”; thereby lamelas packages his art within a glossy road movie genre that embraces codes of mass culture, an attempt to use popular format to bridge concept with audience. by appropriating the aesthetic of this genre, lamelas underscores the theme of propulsion into new territories and new ways of living and thinking, mental explorations that are consistent w ith his four decades of work in which audience agency inhibits stagnancy and fosters mindfulness of the present. lamelas has expressed hope that his artworks live on, that they “leave me behind. i t’s not about me. it’s about itself . . . it’s not my piece. it’s itself. it evolves in time.”6 art has a life of its own, driven forward by audience interaction. if in the desert people culture becomes partially fictionalized, then culture as a broad concept becomes artistic performance. in lamelas’s vision, this is not an entirely negative fate, but rather a fragmented alternative to authoritative histories. truth is incomplete; authenticity is suspect, but perhaps a thread of the past survives when visual culture cultivates human relations and agency to explore. this, i believe, is the message of the desert people. 5 benjamin h. d. buchloh, “struc ture, sign, and reference in the work of david lamelas,” in david lamelas: extranjero, foreigner, étranger, aus länder (mexico, df: fundac ion olga y rufino tamayo, 2006), 139-142. 6 david lamelas, interview by c atha p aquette, long beach, march 10, 2016, recording by yukiko hole. this interview was arranged, in part, as a preparation for the september 2017 to january 2018 exhibition of lamelas ’s art at the c alifornia state university, long beach university a rt museum, sponsored by the j. p aul getty p acific standard time: la/la initiative. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 1 4 3 lo r e t ta r a m i r e z c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.176 new articles in this journal are licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 united states license. this journal is operated by the university library system of the university of p ittsburgh as part of its d-scribe digital p ublishing p rogram, and is co-sponsored by the university of p ittsburgh press. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/ http://www.pitt.edu/ http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/ http://www.upress.pitt.edu/upressindex.aspx http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4. contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture vol 7, no 1 (2018) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2018.238 http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu coming to confidence cecelia ivy price about the artist cecelia ivy price is a cleveland, oh–based artist. price is the recipient of multiple scholarships, including two that enabled her travel to italy for art history programs based in florence and rome and one for her work titled “halfrican,” relating to multicultural self-expression. her work explores the power of skeletons and vanitas (“vanity”), which demonstrate life's impermanence, the plausible insignificance of earthly life, and the transient nature of all earthly goods and pursuits. price channels the certainty of death and the imperative of not letting life pass one by. these ruminations grew deeper after the passing of the artist's mother in 2012. she spoke at the skeletons, stories, and social bodies conference at the university of southampton in 2018 on her works surrounding her mother’s death in “pins and needles,” which was featured in the series “grave expressions.” as part of the artist in residence program, she is creating works of art from reference photos she took while abroad. interested parties can find cecelia's creation of one these works, based on a roman cello player, on her nascent youtube channel, ivyartisticchaos. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 7, no 1 (2018) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2018.238 i am baffled by americans’ inability to see the nude form for what it is: raw, pure, natural; simply beautiful. my work addresses subjects such as body shaming and self-confidence issues. i see the nude form as perfection, even with all of its natural, individual flaws. i paint sensuous, undulating lines of fleshy human forms, often with faces cut off or nondescript. we should not be living in a society that forces an art teacher to glue pages of art history books together so the students do not see the same naked figures they should have learned about in biology class. i think the nudity and skulls in my work are reminders that we are all different and all the same, at once. we are all skeletons underneath, and we are all naked under our clothes; what is different is our personalities. this body of work also touches on sexual abuse, a nuance some viewers have not recognized. figure 1 cecelia ivy price, coming to confidence i, 2014, oil on canvas. coming to confidence cecelia ivy price http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 8 8 com i n g t o con f i d e n c e contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 7, no 1 (2018) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2018.238 figure 2 cecelia ivy price, coming to confidence ii, 2014, oil on canvas. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 8 9 ce c e l i a i v y p r i c e contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 7, no 1 (2018) | issn 2153-5194 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2018.238 figure 3 cecelia ivy price, coming to confidence iii, 2014, oil on canvas. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 9 0 com i n g t o con f i d e n c e contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 7, no 1 (2018) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2018.238 figure 4 cecelia ivy price, coming to confidence iv, 2014, oil on canvas. new articles in this journal are licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 united states license. this journal is operated by the university library system of the university of pittsburgh as part of its d-scribe digital publishing program, and is co-sponsored by the university of pittsburgh press. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/ http://www.pitt.edu/ http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/ http://www.upress.pitt.edu/upressindex.aspx http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ coming to confidence coming to confidence microsoft word 108-118 network ambivalence 7-27.docx vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.150 http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu network ambivalence patrick jagoda abstract the language of networks now describes everything from the internet to the economy to terrorist organizations. in distinction to a common view of networks as a universal, originary, or necessary form that promises to explain everything from neural structures to online traffic, this essay emphasizes the contingency of the network imaginary. network form, in its role as our current cultural dominant, makes scarcely imaginable the possibility of an alternative or an outside uninflected by networks. if so many things and relationships are figured as networks, however, then what is not a network? if a network points toward particular logics and qualities of relation in our historical present, what others might we envision in the future? in many ways, these questions are unanswerable from within the contemporary moment. instead of seeking an avant-garde approach (to move beyond networks) or opting out of networks (in some cases, to recover elements of pre-networked existence), this essay proposes a third orientation: one of ambivalence that operates as a mode of extreme presence. i propose the concept of “network aesthetics,” which can be tracked across artistic media and cultural forms, as a model, style, and pedagogy for approaching interconnection in the twenty-first century. the following essay is excerpted from network aesthetics (forthcoming from university of chicago press). about the author patrick jagoda is assistant professor of english and an affiliate of cinema and media studies at the university of chicago. he is also co-editor of critical inquiry and a co-founder of the game changer chicago design lab. his first monograph, network aesthetics, is forthcoming from university of chicago press. professor jagoda delivered the keynote address at the symposium, debating visual knowledge, university of pittsburgh, october 4, 2014. contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.150 after art comes the logic of networks where links can cross space, time, genre, and scale in surprising and multiple ways. david joselit after art1 myriad books written about networks, especially since the beginning of the twenty-first century, regularly naturalize their form. network scientist albert-lászló barabási celebrates that researchers are “shedding new light on our weblike universe” and “all the complex networks that surround us.”2 indeed, it is not only scientists who make such claims. manuel lima, a visual artist and information visualization designer, observes that networks “are, in essence, the fabric of life.” lima subsequently posits an even stronger version of this claim, speculating about what fields such as empirical aesthetics or neuroaesthetics might teach us about the essential nature of network form. he suggests, “perhaps we have a propensity for structures similar to our own brain—at its most basic cellular level—turning us into victims of a dopaminelike neurotransmitter every time we view systems that roughly resemble a neural network.”3 lima locates such intrinsic structures in the artistic movement of “networkism” that includes the paintings of sharon molloy and emma mcnally and installations pieces from tomás saraceno and chiharu shiota. these types of claims, whether coming from scientists or artists, demonstrate an indistinction between model and world, and between a sense of interconnection—an experience often conceived as belonging to the network imaginary — and a claim that reality itself is structured as a network. in contrast to a view of networks as the universal, originary, or necessary form that promises to explain everything from neural structures to collective animal behaviors to online traffic, my forthcoming book, network aesthetics, emphasizes the contingency of those imaginaries. knowledge, as foucault has demonstrated, always depends on a particular historical a priori, an episteme, which shapes it and makes it possible.4 networks are arguably a dominant episteme and ubiquitous form of our time, rather than an intrinsic property of the universe. there are, after all, formal precursors that signal an outside to networks. lima himself identifies the tree as a crucial epistemological form that predates networks and enables representations of complex systems. throughout the disciplines, trees have served as a basis for figures such as the tree of knowledge, classificatory metaphors such as the “branches of science,” and genealogical representation such as darwin’s diagram 1 david joselit, after art (princeton, nj: princeton university press, 2013), 89. 2 albert-lászló barabási, linked: the new science of networks (cambridge, mass: perseus, 2002), 5 and 6. 3 manuel lima, visual complexity: mapping patterns of information (new york: princeton architectural press, 2011), 69 and 224-226. in setting up this claim, lima foregrounds physicist richard p. taylor’s work on the fractal patterns that appear in jackson pollock’s paintings. for more, see for example: rp taylor, b spehar, donkelaar p. van, and cm hagerhall, “perceptual and physiological responses to jackson pollock's fractals,” frontiers in human neuroscience 5 (2011): 1-13. here, taylor et. al. speculate that fractal patterns may “trigger” a “resonance” in the act of viewing when “the eye sees a fractal pattern that matches its own inherent characteristics” (6). such discourse, however speculative and even mystical it may be, begins to naturalize fractal aesthetics in a parallel fashion to lima’s discussion of network forms in art. 4 michel foucault, the order of things: an archeology of the human sciences (new york: vintage books, 1970). network ambivalence patrick jagoda 1 1 0 n e t w o r k a m b i v a l e n c e contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.150 of evolutionary divergence in the origin of species.5 famously, in their 1980 book a thousand plateaus, deleuze and guattari declare, “we are tired of trees,” arguing instead for the value of networked rhizomes. despite its overuse, this formal precursor to the network might serve as a cautionary reminder that while networks (whether they take the form of metaphors, figures, visualizations, or infrastructures) can help us apprehend various types of complexity, they are nonetheless grounded in the scientific, political, social, and aesthetic preferences of our time (fig. 1). figure 1 mickaël denié, mon réseau: facebook, mes amis et moi (blanc), august 22, 2009 (photo: flikr commons). network aesthetics appear across a wide range of cultural production, including the novel, film, television serial, digital game, transmedia narrative, and new media artwork. such works are by no means opposed to scientific appropriations of networks, which are themselves inseparable from a network imaginary. aesthetic works are not merely enhancements to or illustrations of scientific knowledge but are themselves a way of thinking and knowing. a television series like the wire, for example, both relies upon and complicates social network analysis.6 but whereas scientific work often seeks to solve problems and to clarify knowledge, aesthetic works present networks to us in ways that put existing problems in a new light, without necessarily resolving them. 5 manuel lima explores trees in visual complexity, 21-41. also, see: franco moretti, graphs, maps, trees: abstract models for a literary history (london: verso, 2005), 67. moretti takes up darwin as his opening example of how a tree diagram might be used to map changes in literary form. 6 patrick jagoda, “wired,” critical inquiry 38 (2011): 189-199. 1 1 1 p a t r i c k j a g o d a contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.150 network form, in its role as our current cultural dominant, makes scarcely imaginable the possibility of an alternative or an outside uninflected by networks. this raises a series of questions: if so many things and relationships are figured as networks, what is not a network? and then, if, as david joselit observes in the epigraph, the paradigm of networks comes “after art,” what comes after networks? in many ways, these questions are unanswerable from the position of the present. they inspire speculative reflections that may resonate more fully with network aesthetics than with network science. contemporary cultural works, from novels such as don delillo’s underworld to thatgamecompany’s videogame journey, convey knowledge about networks. but also, at times, they defamiliarize the omnipresent form of the network that we believe we know so well, transforming it into something unknown that animates the difficulty of thinking through our world, in all of its layers of past retentions and future protentions. though the realm of the unknown may suggest a future orientation, the problem of an outside to network form has more to do with the challenge of thinking about an immanent historical present that in different ways appears to be, feels as if it is, and is in fact complex. in the early twenty-first century, complexity is not some sublime phenomenon, as it still appeared in the cyberpunk aesthetic of the 1980s. it arrives in a variety of ordinary scenes. complexity becomes more apparent and present through the omnipresence of digitally networked technologies. various devices make available complex phenomena, whether through ambient exposure or stumbling into endless internet k-holes. we encounter global climate change, financial markets that exceed human monitoring, and the proliferation of terrorist groups—all of which are figured in network terms that mark a present teeming with historical residue. this is a present characterized, in lauren berlant’s terms, by an “affective experience not of a break or a traumatic present, but of crisis lived within ordinariness.”7 that “crisis” need not be anything as apparent as systemic injustice against disadvantaged populations or an identifiable event like the 2008 subprime mortgage market collapse. the scene of such crisis can be the thick atmosphere of affects that opens up as soon as one picks up a smart phone or signs into google hangouts to communicate with a distant friend or family member who might not have, even a few decades earlier, been so readily accessible. even our most casual networked technologies or normalized software may evoke what harry harootunian describes as our present’s “constant concourse of mixed temporalities mingling and coexisting with each other— the historical uncanny that has always remained in the shadow of capital and ‘our’ modernity.”8 indeed, an ordinary smart phone may connect us to electronics producers who distribute networked devices using tantalum capacitors created from coltan that is mined in the democratic republic of congo, amidst human rights abuses, including forced child labor. network form, as it appears through numerous imaginaries and everyday experiences, situates us within and shapes our historical present, without necessarily yielding a grasp on it. how is it possible, then, to gain any perspective or critical distance from within a world in which everything is figured as a network? in the closing pages of his book the interface effect, alexander galloway considers two possible responses to networks that seem to lack any outside.9 the first proposition is the avant-garde approach of discovering new political 7 lauren berlant, “thinking about feeling historical,” emotion, space and society 1 (2008): 5. 8 harry harootunian, “remembering the historical present,” critical inquiry 33 (2007): 490. 9 alexander galloway also takes up this problem in “network pessimism,” boundary 2, january 29, 2015, http://boundary2.org/2015/01/29/network-pessimism/. galloway ends this piece by asking, “what would a non-net look like?” 1 1 2 n e t w o r k a m b i v a l e n c e contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.150 tactics and aesthetic forms that may challenge the totality of networks, especially as they are commonly constituted through discussions within network science, digital communications, and global finance. of this approach, galloway concludes, “no politics can be derived today from a theory of the new.”10 novelty, in other words, is the logic of capitalist accumulation, not political rejuvenation. indeed, the “newness” of so-called new media — including networks — too often becomes assumed, fetishized, celebrated, and assimilated by market forces. it frequently takes the form of innovation that must contribute, even if indirectly, to progress. more promisingly, galloway puts forward a second proposition for reaching an outside to networks that falls under the keyword of the “whatever,” a concept that he draws most directly from philosophers gilles deleuze and giorgio agamben. in place of the supercession of the “post” inherent in the search for new possibilities, galloway suggests the negation of the “non.” “seek not the posthuman, but the nonhuman,” he declares. “be not post identity, but rather subtractive of it.”11 he contends that within a culture that encourages perpetual speech—even forces it within the digital class through social media posting, user generated content, and network participation—a promising stance is one of disengagement and indifference via the “whatever.” it is worth emphasizing, however, that fatigue, whether with social media or other types of networks, may not be a universal position, even as it is becoming increasingly more common; it is a privileged stance available primarily to people (myself included) with sufficient technological access and leisure time to develop such weariness. though galloway arguably has in mind a more comprehensive political and aesthetic strategy, we see something of the “whatever” at play in everyday discussions about “opting out” of social media.12 certainly, many people around the world cannot or choose not to “opt in” to services such as twitter or facebook in the first place. however, those who use these networks often accrue numerous reasons for leaving them behind. people may want to withdraw from a culture of publicized narcissism; combat their addictions to the high of instant gratification that comes with likes, upvotes, comments, and check-ins; minimize the loneliness, alienation, or envy associated with social comparison on such networks; eliminate the affective uncertainties associated with posts that arrive on one’s stream or wall according to an unknown logic of proprietary algorithms; challenge the threat of corporate surveillance that undermines any semblance of privacy; resist fantasies of political participation that alleviate guilt through low-touch interactions with questionable efficacy; and so on.13 for people who opt out, or wish to do so, social media networks offer too much connection or connection of the wrong kind. though opting out of social media may be a last resort for some, even that tactic may feel unsatisfying given the ubiquity of contemporary communication networks. choosing not to participate may run counter to the dominant ideology of our time but it may simultaneously entail the sacrifice of digital literacy and critical thought about the present. at the same time, subtraction, opacity, and disappearance 10 alexander r. galloway, the interface effect (cambridge, uk: polity, 2012), 138. 11 ibid., 138. 12 see, for instance: woodrow hartzog and evan selinger, “quitters never win: the costs of leaving social media,” the atlantic, february 15, 2013. also, see: jose van dijck, the culture of connectivity: a critical history of social media (oxford: oxford university press, 2013). 13 see, for instance: beth anderson, patrick fagan, tom woodnutt, and tomas chamorro-premuzic, “facebook psychology: popular questions answered by research,” psychology of popular media culture 1 (2012): 23-37. also, see: hanna krasnova, helena wenninger, thomas widjaja; and peter buxmann, “envy on facebook: a hidden threat to users’ life satisfaction?” wirtschaftsinformatik proceedings (2013), paper 92. 1 1 3 p a t r i c k j a g o d a contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.150 may be indispensable tactics in certain sociopolitical struggles—for instance, as realized in artist zach blas’s queer mask-making actions, facial weaponization suite, which oppose networked surveillance and biometric facial recognition (fig. 2).14 figure 2 zach blas, facial weaponization suite: fag face mask – october 20, 2012, los angeles, ca (photo: christopher o’leary). 14 for a parallel articulation of galloway’s position, see: zach blas, “informatic opacity,” the journal of aesthetics and protest 9 (2014). also, see: irving goh, “prolegomenon to a right to disappear,” cultural politics 2 (2006): 97-114. 1 1 4 n e t w o r k a m b i v a l e n c e contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.150 instead of adopting novel avant-garde aesthetics or opting out of networks, i would like to propose a third orientation: one of ambivalence, which operates instead as a mode of extreme presence. ambivalence is a crucial critical position from which to think within an uncertain present that is also ongoing. it is in some respects contrary to the always-on, perpetually-available mode encouraged by communications networks. it also departs from the critical certainty of negation suggested by the “whatever.” the type of response to networks that i have in mind more closely resembles the one that berlant evokes in her description of eve sedgwick’s work as preparation for bearing ambivalence that cannot be dispersed or repaired. such uncertainty, which does not require an evacuation of one’s passions and convictions, requires being present to an unsatisfying present. it demands risking absence, uncertainty, boredom, complexity, and disconnection—without promises of instant gratification, certainty, discovery, closure, or reconnection. as berlant observes, difficult though this stance may be, “without allowing for ambivalence, there is no flourishing.”15 though “flourishing” betrays floral roots, perhaps a concept that is more proper to trees than to networks, it nonetheless offers room to maneuver beyond what may seem the stalemate of the present, making available opportunities to think, feel, and act in unanticipated and unhabituated ways. ambivalence is not a variety of opting out. if anything, it suggests a process of opting in completely. going all in, however, need not be reduced to naïve complicity or the hyperbolic extremism of strategies such as accelerationism. the problem of network totality can be approached through ambivalence without yielding to apathy, cynicism, disengagement, or hopelessness. rather, it takes the form of a deliberate intensity, patience, and willingness to forgo quick resolution or any finality at all. ambivalence, then, is a process of slowing down and learning to inhabit a compromised environment with the discomfort, contradiction, and misalignment it entails.16 this stance need not be radical or romantic. it becomes tangible, for instance, through the humanities (digital or otherwise) and arts (new media and old) that dwell in traces of histories, memories, and possible futures. such work becomes more difficult and, to me, more precious amidst networked technologies that encourage greater speeds of information processing and communication. in this present, thoughtful reflection is too rare. thinking alongside and through networks encourages thought that is ambivalent in its openness to numerous disciplines, methods, forms, and affects. a network paradigm and its imaginaries, for all of their dominance, do not yield any one thing. instead of an “either-or,” network aesthetics more often yield a “both-and” and a “what else?” networks are not absolutely determinate either of dystopia or utopia, corporate networking or human contact, technological disconnection or relational connection. nevertheless, networks do offer a robust language for thinking through ambivalence via processes of decentralization, simultaneity, proliferation, complexity, and emergence. networks suggest constant change and reconfiguration that exceeds any individual’s imagination and leaves open possibilities. 15 lauren berlant and lee edelman, sex, or the unbearable (durham: duke university press, 2014), 61 and 12. 16 for an exploration of ways that art can open up an understanding of slowness, see: lutz p. koepnick, on slowness: toward an aesthetic of the contemporary (new york: columbia university press, 2014). 1 1 5 p a t r i c k j a g o d a contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.150 figure 3 screenshot from speculation, 2012-2014, n. katherine hayles, patrick jagoda, and patrick lemieux. the mode of ambivalence that i have been sketching out can play a role not only in theory but also in concrete humanities practice. between 2012 and 2014, i co-created and ran an alternate reality game called speculation with n. katherine hayles and patrick lemieux (fig. 3). this game was a transmedia production that was distributed across html pages, unity games, pdf documents, php forum software, and live performances. this largescale game responded in myriad ways to the 2008 financial crisis and the occupy movement that began in 2011, but it took as its primary political scene contemporary digital networks and the social collectives they might or might not make possible. the game served simultaneously as a pedagogical exercise that included students at multiple universities, a new media art project, and a form of practice-based research about serious games. speculation put forward several critiques of the gender and race discrimination of wall street banks, the lack of regulation of complex derivatives, and forms of high frequency trading in which faster fiber optic cables that shave mere milliseconds off an exchange can lead to annual profits in the billions. however, instead of simply condemning such practices, both the designers and players of speculation began to reflect on parallels between the technological logics of the game and the financial logics it explored. players juxtaposed varied complicities (their own and those of the game designers) without settling for the 1 1 6 n e t w o r k a m b i v a l e n c e contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.150 paralysis or passivity that sometimes accompanies critique. networked collaboration, exploratory metagaming, and shared production emerged as ways of inhabiting and experimenting with the ambivalent situation of networks that the game foregrounded.17 projects such as speculation lead to a place of humble dwelling within uncertainty. such works emphasize that there is a great deal that we do not yet (and may never) know about networks, while also emphasizing that we can still aspire to go beyond the way of thinking they instantiate. it is worth noting that the network paradigm may have triumphed since the late twentieth century, for the time being, but its cultural discourses often remain astoundingly individualistic and consumer-oriented. as jodi dean observes, “media, even smaller and more integrated, are not just many-to-many, as early internet enthusiasts emphasized, but me-to some-to me.”18 social media networks cater to individual expression, minimizing circulation and maintaining homogeneous groups that limit exposure to crossideological content.19 moreover, as jonathan zittrain argues, contrary to the early promise of the internet as “a generative network,” an increasing number of technologies such as computers, smart phones, and videogame consoles are closed to user experimentation and tethered to particular companies.20 even as network metaphors so frequently smack of tired clichés, we may be a long way off from coming to terms with networks, aesthetically, technically, and politically. older frameworks of individualism and consumption frequently overshadow the profound implications that networks suggest for ontology and epistemology, politics and ethics. networks may make individuals obsolete or irrelevant. they also help us better understand, without ever wholly comprehending, the behavior of nonhuman superorganisms like ant colonies. and, then, networked interactions defamiliarize human behavior, as with the phenomenon of upwards of 121,000 participants collaborating, in real-time, to complete a single videogame together in “twitch plays pokémon.” a great deal remains unknown, and perhaps even unknowable, about how and why such networked collaborations can yield emergent order rather than utter chaos. as i elaborate in my forthcoming book, network aesthetics multiply the possible forms that thought itself might take. thought need not be put in the service of perpetuating progress through innovation or yielding negation through critique. it can also be a state of experiencing, negotiating, affecting, inhabiting, and playing with the mixed feelings inherent in ambivalence. ambivalent thought, it is important to specify, does not necessarily belong to a divided individual. it can also unfold through collectives. rather than paralyzing an individual in indecision, collaboration changes not only how we think but also how we work 17 for a fuller account of the speculation alternate reality game and its outcomes, see: n. katherine hayles, patrick jagoda, and patrick lemieux, “speculation: financial games and derivative worlding in a transmedia era,” critical inquiry 40 (2014): 220-236. as a game, speculation encouraged participants to play with networks. in her writing about the digital humanities, bethany nowviskie characterizes an algorithmic black box as “a dark game, in many cases, a rigged game, maybe, but a game nonetheless, in which we are invited to interpret, perform, respond, and even compose a kind of countering ludic algorithm” (“a game nonetheless,” march 15, 2012, http://nowviskie.org/2015/a-game-nonetheless/). following nowviskie’s characterization of algorithms, we might imagine a ludic orientation toward networks that emerges from methods and techniques taken from the humanities and the arts. 18 jodi dean, democracy and other neoliberal fantasies: communicative capitalism and left politics (durham: duke university press, 2009), 4. 19 itai himelboim, stephen mccreery, and marc smith, “birds of a feather tweet together: integrating network and content analyses to examine cross-ideology exposure on twitter,” journal of computer-mediated communication 18 (2013): 40-60. 20 jonathan zittrain, the future of the internet and how to stop it (new haven, conn.: yale university press, 2008), 3. 1 1 7 p a t r i c k j a g o d a contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.150 and act in groups. such collectively ambivalent thought may surface in heated seminar discussions (in physical or online classrooms) during which conflicting voices cannot draw nearer to resolution but nonetheless begin to better describe the coordinates of a shared problem. it may give shape to decentralized political groups, as with the occupy movement, which was organized through an email list, a blog, and social media. it may also emerge in more casual contexts, such as raids or large group campaigns in virtual worlds or coordinated activity in long duration alternate reality games. for me, network aesthetics model a pedagogy and analytic style of ambivalence. such a stance is not meant to encourage political quietism. admittedly, i am wary of claims of political heroism—of analytic subversion, opposition, and resistance—that are common among scholars and critics writing primarily for an established in-crowd within the humanities. at the same time, i believe that scholars have much to offer in a world of highspeed networking, rapid oscillation among media, and proliferation of opinions from anyone with laptop or smart phone access. aesthetic works encourage us, despite the discomfort the process may entail, to slow down thought, oscillate among divergent perspectives, inhabit complex contradictions, and enter into uncertain collective configurations. if network aesthetics have something crucial to contribute to ongoing thought, feeling, and play with networks from an immanent inside that promises no outside, it is the patience, modesty, dissatisfaction, empathy, and thoughtfulness that are necessary, if never wholly sufficient, conditions of politics in the early twenty-first century. 1 1 8 n e t w o r k a m b i v a l e n c e contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.150 new articles in this journal are licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 united states license. this journal is operated by the university library system of the university of pittsburgh as part of its d-scribe digital publishing program, and is co-sponsored by the university of pittsburgh press. contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture vol 7, no 1 (2018) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2018.240 http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu kanaka 'ōiwi critical race theory historical and educational context nik cristobal abstract the effects of colonization on kanaka 'ōiwi, the indigenous people of hawai'i, have led to the systematic distancing of kanaka 'ōiwi from their cultural ways of knowing, replacing it, instead with eurocentric standards of education that adversely impact kanaka 'ōiwi wellbeing. in this article, i provide an overview of the history of colonization of kanaka 'ōiwi through a critical race lens. critical race theory and tribalcrit are reviewed in relation to their theoretical relevance to kanaka 'ōiwi epistemologies. a synthesis model of an adapted crt and tribalcrit framework called, kanaka'ōiwicrit is presented and discussed within the context of education as a space for resistance. about the author nik cristobal’s lineage yields from the islands of kaua'i and o'ahu. she was born and raised on the island of kaua'i and is currently a phd student in the social and comparative analysis in education program at the university of pittsburgh. her former work as a social worker and clinical specialist on kaua'i with keiki inspires her scholarly work in the areas of critical race, ethnic, and gender studies in education. she aspires to use her education to give back to her island community. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 7, no 1 (2018) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2018.240 “we are dulled by the guessing game of another culture. we are inspired by epistemological mediocrity. we are always at the short end of a smaller and smaller identity stick.” —manulani meyer1 introduction in this paper, kanaka 'ōiwi education will be discussed through the lens of critical race theory. to maintain criticality in the politicizing of indigenous identities, the term kanaka 'ōiwi will be used to refer to the indigenous peoples of hawai'i. the terms hawaiian and n/native hawaiian are avoided as they were introduced by colonizers and are not the preferred terminology for many kanaka 'ōiwi. my understanding of this term represents my intent to reference all peoples of kanaka 'ōiwi descent, regardless of blood quantum level. critical race theory makes explicit that the u.s. education system is a totalitarian one that operates from an assimilationist perspective.2 euro-american dominance via colonization and occupation in u.s. schooling forces kanaka 'ōiwi to identify and assimilate to the standards of the dominant culture.3 this system presents the potential for kanaka 'ōiwi students to grow resentful of the institutionalized racism embedded in their education.4 kanaka 'ōiwi antipathy toward the eurocentric educational system and the system’s resentment of kanaka 'ōiwi set kanaka 'ōiwi students up to fail in formalized educational settings, thereby contributing to adverse life outcomes. for instance, kanaka 'ōiwi primary school students have consistently scored below students of all other ethnicities in standardized math and reading scores.5 this trajectory leads to an overrepresentation of kanaka 'ōiwi in low-paying jobs following high school; a higher rate of teen pregnancy; and lower life expectancies as a result of a heightened risk of health issues such as diabetes, heart attacks, and strokes.6 for kanaka 'ōiwi students, the deep-seated history of colonization and occupation raises concerns about how to exist within the educational system when their two worlds are at odds. the integration of kanaka 'ōiwi into u.s., mainstream educational institutions requires that they replace their cultural world with western culture. to reconcile this tension, western notions of culture, knowledge, and power must be suspended and, instead, understood using kanaka 'ōiwi epistemologies.7 1 manulani meyer, “our own liberation: reflections on hawaiian epistemology,” the contemporary pacific 13, no. 1 (2001): 124. 2 bryan brayboy, “toward a tribal critical race theory in education,” the urban review 37, no. 5 (2005): 436. 3 i use capitals when using the terms native and indigenous and lowercase when using terms such as eurocentric, european, white, and american to remain centered on indigenous identities. 4 maenette benham and ronald heck, culture and educational policy in hawai'i:silencing of native voices (mahwah: erlbaum, 1998), 7. 5 office of hawaiian affairs, 2010-2018 strategic results: hawai'i assessment test indicator sheet sy2015. honolulu: 2015, accessed january 8, 2018, http://www.oha.org/ wpcontent/uploads/hawai'iassessment-test-indicator-sheet-sy2015.pdf 6 benham and heck, silencing of native voices, 4. 7 meyer, “our own liberation,” 125. kanaka 'ōiwi critical race theory historical and educational context nik cristobal http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ http://www.oha.org/ 2 9 n i k c r i s t o b a l contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 7, no 1 (2018) | issn 2153-5194 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2018.240 to center kanaka 'ōiwi epistemology is to counter the problematic rhetoric of paradise. although “paradise” is how many people would describe hawai'i, “paradise” is a product of u.s. colonization used to dilute the history of hawai'i until all that is left is what is pleasant to the western, white worldview. the dominant narrative of hawai'i is that of a tropical “paradise” getaway, in which kanaka 'ōiwi are understood either through racial stereotypes of simplicity or are erased from the narrative completely. in countering this narrative, i provide an overview of the history of hawai'i. i believe it is necessary to situate kanaka 'ōiwi education in a historical revisionist context, because much of the history of colonization in hawai'i has been omitted or altered so as not to disrupt a non-indigenous, western audience. i then discuss how critical race theory (crt) can and should be adapted to empower kanaka 'ōiwi through theory and educational praxis. historical overview of colonization in hawai'i first encounters the first encounter of kanaka 'ōiwi with haole (white foreigners) influences came with the arrival of british explorer captain james cook and his crew upon hawai'i sands in 1778.8 captain cook commanded the two ships that cut through the waters of the pacific, the discovery and the resolution, which manifests an ironic origin of kanaka 'ōiwi fight for selfdetermination that continues till this day.9 conversations surrounding the discovery of hawai'i and the resolution for reclaiming what was stolen remains an area of contestation over 240 years after the crew upon the discovery and resolution besieged the seashores of waimea, kaua'i. in 1820, manifest destiny, a euphemism for indigenous extermination, enabled american missionaries to introduce christianity to kanaka 'ōiwi under the premise that it was god’s will that they help kanaka 'ōiwi become more civilized.10 american missionaries described kanaka 'ōiwi as pagan savages, denouncing and abolishing kanaka 'ōiwi cultural traditions and convincing the ali'i (royalty/chiefs) that the way to achieve mana (spiritual power) and pono (righteousness/goodness) was to follow the christian religion.11 following this idea, 'ōlelo hawai'i, hula (sacred dance), and other cultural modes of education were banned.12 by 1848, capitalist ideals were enacted, thus producing the concept of private ownership of the 'āina (land), leading to large parcels of the 'āina being “owned” by missionaries and settlers.13 because polices set forth by haole influences are founded on the grounds of imperialism and self-interest, the distinction between habituation and ownership of 'āina invalidated the preexisting relationship kanaka 'ōiwi had between people and the 'āina on a 8 i use common words in 'ōlelo hawai'i (hawaiian language) throughout. i reference the english translation upon first use. i also italicize 'ōlelo hawai'i words upon first use to flag these terms for readers who may be unfamiliar with such terminology. i refrain from using italics throughout the paper as a way to challenge the reader to remain centered on kanaka 'ōiwi worldview. 9 ralph kuykendall, the hawaiian kingdom 1778-1851: foundation and transformation (honolulu: university of hawai'i press, 1938), 13. 10 mililani trask, “the politics of oppression,” in hawai’i return to nationhood, eds. ulla hasager and jonathan friedman (copenhagen: iwgia, 1994), 71. 11 lilikalā kame'eleihiwa, “ua mau ke ea o ka 'āina i ka pono: the concepts of sovereignty and religious sanction of correct political behavior,” in hawai'i return to nationhood, eds. ulla hasager and jonathan friedman (copenhagen: iwgia, 1994), 34–43. 12 noenoe silva, “he kanawai e ho'opau i na hula kuolo hawai'i: the political economy of banning the hula,” the hawaiian journal of history 34 (2000): 29. 13 kame'eleihiwa, “ua mau ke ea o ka 'āina i ka pono,” 41. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 3 0 k a n a k a ' ō i w i c r i t i c a l r a c e t h e o r y contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 7, no 1 (2018) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2018.240 physical and spiritual level, hastening kanaka 'ōiwi dispossession of the 'āina and selfstewardship through “the slow insinuating invasion of people, ideas, and institutions."14 beyond exploitatively introducing kanaka 'ōiwi to new ideologies surrounding religion and 'āina, haoles exposed kanaka 'ōiwi to foreign diseases, causing the 800,000 to 1 million kanaka 'ōiwi population to experience a 90% decrease by 1948.15 in 1887, haoles who became dominant in the hawai'i political system spearheaded the bayonet constitution against king kalākaua, stripping him of his political power. queen lili'uokalani succeded king kalākaua and during her reign she sought to reinstate the political power of the monarchy; however, in 1893, she was forcefully overthrown and detained.16 upon hawai'i’s annexation, kanaka 'ōiwi filed resolutions with the u.s. congress that ended in defeat. hawai'i became a territory of the united states and later, in 1959, the 50th state in the union.17 economics prior to captain cook’s arrival, kanaka 'ōiwi operated through the kapu (forbidden, sacred, protected) system, in which every individual had a distinct role in the community. in the kapu system, all goods and resources were produced in an environmentally sustainable manner and were used to benefit the collective. this system changed with haole-imposed systems of commerce and trade of iliahi (sandalwood) in the early to mid-nineteenth century.18 with the depletion of iliahi and the arrival of the missionaries, hawai'i’s economy turned to whaling. whaling declined by the 1870s with the rise of the petroleum industry. the u.s. annexation of hawai'i and the collapse of the whaling industry gave rise to the sugar cane and pineapple industries. the population of hawai'i more than doubled between 1896 and 1915, with the introduction of immigrants from japan, the philippines, china, and portugal to provide manual labor on hawai'i’s plantations.19 with the influx of numerous racial groups, hawai'i became a “melting pot,” a metaphor to describe mixing various cultures into one. instead of cultures coming together yet maintaining their cultural distinctiveness, they dissolve into the dominant culture. in the case of hawai'i, the “tossed salad” metaphor has been used to provide more nuance to this phenomenon of cultural encounters. the tossed salad metaphor implies that several cultural groups are tossed together in one bowl yet maintain their singularity. the question remains, “what dressing is used to cover this all?”20 this “dressing” is what is known as local culture. local culture materialized from asian-pacific cultural transfusion with kanaka 'ōiwi and haole culture, thus, splitting hawai'i identity politics into a triad: locals (of any race, but mostly of asian ancestry, living in hawai'i and adopting the “hawai'i lifestyle”), non-locals (from the 14 brayboy, “tribal critical race theory,” 431; jonathan osorio, dismembering lahui: a history of the hawaiian nation to 1887 (honolulu: university of hawaii press, 2002), 3. 15 trask, “politics of oppression,” 71. 16 kamaki maunupau, “ho'ohaole maila 'ia kākou— make us into whites: a kupuna’s thoughts on assimilation and decolonization,” in hawai'i return to nationhood, eds. ulla hasager and jonathan friedman (copenhagen: iwgia, 1994): 45–46. 17 trask, “politics of oppression,” 73. 18 kuykendall, hawaiian kingdom, 86. 19 sumner la croix. “the economic history of hawai'i: a short introduction,” university of hawai'i-eastwest center, department of economics (2002), http://www.economics.hawaii. edu/research/workingpapers/wp_02-3.pdf. 20 leana gloor, “from the melting pot to the tossed salad metaphor: why coercive assimilation lacks the flavors americans crave,” hohonu: a journal of academic writing 4, no. 1 (2006): 29. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ http://www.economics.hawaii/ 3 1 n i k c r i s t o b a l contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 7, no 1 (2018) | issn 2153-5194 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2018.240 u.s. mainland or other country), and kanaka 'ōiwi.21 championing hawai'i’s uniqueness in its lack of a racial majority contributes to the pictorializing of hawai'i as a model of the possibilities of a racially egalitarian society.22 however, this “racial paradise” assumes that all racial and ethnic groups are socially, politically, and economically equal. local identity and the myth of the melting pot, therefore, serves to mask over the history of u.s. colonialization of kanaka 'ōiwi in favor of asian settler colonialism.23 asian settler colonialism is precarious in that it recognizes that kanaka 'ōiwi relations with their u.s. colonizers are hierarchical, with haole as the ultimate colonizing force, thereby, cloaking colonialization by asian settlers behind a people of color/ haole binary. teasing apart the idiosyncrasies that come with a history of multiple colonializations makes apparent that not only haole but also asian (particularly japanese) disproportionally influence politics and control the wealth in hawai'i’s economy.24 when the sugar cane and pineapple industry collapsed as a result of the great depression and wwii, the tourism industry took over. now, hawai'i is a “fluid money-commodity economy” that runs off of the revenue generated by millions of tourists that visit the islands every year, increasing the gap between the rich and the poor and disproportionately impacting kanaka 'ōiwi residents. 25 tourism as a form of cultural prostitution, the exploitation of a culture for capitalistic gains, is forced upon kanaka 'ōiwi through economic control by colonial powers.26 the desecration of the 'āina through the building of hotels and highways upon sacred sites, commodification and eroticizing of kanaka 'ōiwi art forms such as hula, and appropriation of kanaka 'ōiwi culture, bolster the economy of hawai'i, and therefore the united states, by directly denigrating kanaka 'ōiwi existence.27 following wwii, u.s. military occupation in hawai'i magnified. hawai'i went from being a u.s. military outpost to a strategic epicenter of military power and control of the asia pacific region. immediately succeeding the bombing of pearl harbor in 1941 up until 1990, the entire island of kaho'olawe was seized by the u.s. military and used as a bomb-testing site, destroying the natural ecosystems of the island and imposing long-lasting detrimental environmental impacts on reefs, native wildlife, and fresh water tables.28 the expropriating of thousands of acres of 'āina and the rapid increase in the population of military personnel in hawai'i since wwii lends to the continued proliferation of kanaka 'ōiwi economic livelihood, with military spending second to tourism as hawai'i’s largest industry.29 with the u.s. military 21 judy rohrer, “disrupting the ‘melting pot’: racial discourse in hawai'i and the naturalization of haole,” ethnic and racial studies 31, no. 6 (2008): 1111. 22 glen grant and dennis ogawa, “living proof: is hawai'i the answer?” annals 530, no. 1 (1993): 139. 23 candace fujikane, introduction to asian settler colonialism: from local governance to the habits of everyday life, eds. candace fujikane and jonathan okamura (honolulu: university of hawai'i press, 2008), 28–29. 24 haunani-kay trask, “settlers of color and ‘immigrant’ hegemony: ‘locals’ in hawai'i,” in asian settler colonialism: from local governance to the habits of everyday life in hawai'i, ed. candace fujikane and jonathan okamura (honolulu: university of hawai'i press, 2008), 47. 25 marion kelly, “the impact of missionaries and other foreigners on hawaiians and their culture,” in hawai’i return to nationhood, eds. ulla hasager and jonathan friedman (copenhagen: iwgia, 1994), 174. 26 haunani-kay trask, from a native daughter: colonialism and sovereignty in hawai'i, (honolulu: university of hawaii press, 1999), 17. 27 ibid., 90. 28 wright and balutski, “kanaka 'ōiwi critical race theory,” 98. 29 kyle kajihiro, “a brief overview of militarization and resistance in hawai'i,” dmzhawai'i/ aloha 'aina, march 1, 2007, accessed december 17, 2017, http://www.dmzhawaii.org /dmz-legacy-site/overview_military_in_hawaii.pdf, http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ http://www.dmzhawaii.org/ 3 2 k a n a k a ' ō i w i c r i t i c a l r a c e t h e o r y contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 7, no 1 (2018) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2018.240 controlling over 25% of the 'āina on the most densely populated and commercialized island of o'ahu, demilitarization efforts must focus on regaining control of kanaka 'ōiwi natural resources and economic self-determination.30 the sovereignty movement in 1993, president bill clinton signed a joint resolution, issuing a formal apology to kanaka 'ōiwi, acknowledging the united states’s participation in the illegal overthrow of the kingdom of hawai'i in 1893.31 since the overthrow, the fight for self-determination has been a tumultuous one, with several organizations on the frontlines. some of these organizations include state-level governmental entities, such as the office of hawaiian affairs; federal-level governmental entities, such as the senate committee on indian affairs; and native non-profit, grass-roots entities, such as ka lāhui hawai'i.32 these groups differ in their approach to ea (life or breath, also used as a translation for sovereignty), but the consensus is that kanaka 'ōiwi rights have been infringed upon and reparative action needs to be taken to restore justice. currently, the nation-within-a-nation model, the state-within-a-state model, and the independence and the free association models are all up for proposal.33 as of september 23, 2016, the u.s. department of the interior announced that the u.s. federal government would recognize a nation-to-nation relationship with a unified ka lāhui (the kanaka 'ōiwi nation), if such a system were to form and if this nation were to decide this is in the best interests of its people.34 forging self-determination, self-identification, and self-government re-instills the right of indigenous communities to control their resources, decide how to govern themselves separate from u.s. legal structures, and define and operate through their own cultural understandings and ways of being.35 for many kanaka 'ōiwi, there is a sense of kuleana (right, responsibility, privilege, concern, authority) to use their education, talents, and skills to strengthen and give back to their community.36 this notion of kuleana entails a responsibility to their lāhui in aiding the efforts toward ea, aloha 'āina (love for the land), and sustaining kanaka 'ōiwi cultural practices cross-generationally. cultural perpetuation throughout a turbulent history fraught by the decline of the kanaka 'ōiwi population, changes in the economy provoked by outsiders, illegal seizure and desecration of the 'āina, and the suppressing of 'ōlelo hawai'i and culture, kanaka 'ōiwi have persevered in the reclamation of cultural values and traditions exploited and appropriated by occupation and colonialization. kanaka 'ōiwi understand the dynamics of change and what it takes to move the community forward, despite exposure to myriad factors designed to eradicate the culture. beyond and in conjunction with the equity and justice platform of the sovereignty movement, 30 haunani-kay trask, “the color of violence,” social justice/ global options 31, no. 4 (2004): 12. 31 u.s. senate reports, joint resolution, public law 103-150, no.103-126., 1993, accessed january 8, 2018, https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/statute-107/pdf/statute-107-pg1510.pdf. 32 haunani-kay trask, “politics in the pacific islands: imperialism and native self determination,” amerasia journal 16, no. 1 (1990): 12 33 mililani trask, “ka lahui hawai'i: a native initiative for sovereignty,” turning the tide: journal of antiracist activism, research & education 6, no. 5–6 (1993): n.p. 34 molly solomon, “feds finalize rule on native hawaiian government,” hawai'i public radio, september 23, 2016, accessed april 23, 2017, http://hpr2.org/post/feds-finalize-rule-native-hawaiian-government 35 brayboy, tribal critical race theory, 433–35. 36 nicole salis reyes, ““what am i doing to be a good ancestor?” an indigenized phenomenology of giving back among native college graduates,” unpublished dissertation, university of texas-san antonio, 2016. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/statute-107 3 3 n i k c r i s t o b a l contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 7, no 1 (2018) | issn 2153-5194 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2018.240 kanaka 'ōiwi have pioneered other means of cultural preservation and perpetuation as a way to reconcile cultural discontinuity. hula, oli (chants), and mele (songs) were once banned under the fiat of manifest destiny, but now serve as a strong source of cultural preservation and a way to promote the “physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual well-being” of kanaka 'ōiwi. 37 in a hula hālau (hula school), hula, oli, and mele are used to teach haumāna (in this context, specifically a hula student) about their mo'okū'auhau mo'olelo (genealogical or ancestral story/ narrative), while grounding them in kanaka 'ōiwi cultural values. hula, as a site of cultural and political resistance, recognizes and respects kumu hula (hula teachers/cultural practitioners) as bearers of cultural knowledge and as an impetus of kanaka 'ōiwi cultural preservation and perpetuation. 38 through the kumu, haumāna become educated about the cultural components that make up hula, including knowledge pertaining to ancestral origins, spiritual beliefs, plants, animals, weaving, carving, and so forth.39 another method of cultural preservation and self-determination is the establishment of lo'i kalo (irrigated terraces used to harvest taro). kalo (taro) is a crop of great spiritual significance to kanaka 'ōiwi. kanaka 'ōiwi mo'olelo connects kanaka 'ōiwi to their genealogical origins through kalo. kalo also served as a main source of sustenance for ancient kanaka 'ōiwi and continues to be a culturally significant food source, most commonly used to make poi. lo'i kalo serve as spaces where agricultural sustainability is practiced through the use of traditional harvesting techniques; where camaraderie is built among those in the kanaka 'ōiwi community; and where the mo'olelo of kūpuna (elders/ ancestors) is transmitted.40 kuleana for cultural preservation through aloha 'āina is also practiced through sustenance fishing, the protection of sacred sites, and the medicinal use of natural resources in healing.41 kanaka 'ōiwi also proclaim their cultural voices in non-native spaces. one such illustration of this stands out: the hōkūle'a. the hōkūle'a is a voyaging wa'a (canoe), built and navigated using traditional kanaka 'ōiwi methods. the hōkūle'a completed two expeditions to rapa nui and other islands in the pacific, exploring kanaka 'ōiwi origins at a deeper level. in 2016, the hōkūle'a and her crew completed a worldwide voyage, thus, achieving their goal of reconnecting with ancient traditions and sharing kanaka 'ōiwi culture with the world.42 nainoa thompson, navigator of the hōkūle'a, enacts his kuleana by educating youth in the ways of traditional navigation techniques. he thrives on teaching youth how to use the stars and the ocean as educational tools and promotes the kanaka 'ōiwi cultural value of collectivity and 37 mele look et al., “kumu hula perspectives on health,” hawaii journal of medicine and public health 73, no. 12, sup. 3 (2014): 22. 38 silva, “banning the hula,” 42. 39 kaiwipunikauikawēkiu lipe, “aloha as fearlessness: lessons from the mo'olelo of eight native hawaiian female educational leaders on transforming the university of hawai'i mānoa into a hawaiian place of learning,” unpublished dissertation, university of hawai'i mānoa, 2014, 31. 40 sondra field-grace, “anahola—taro-roots practice self-determination,” in hawai’i return to nationhood, eds. ulla hasager and jonathan friedman (copenhagen: iwgia, 1994), 210–13. 41 office of hawaiian affairs, mo`olelo ea o nā hawai`i history: history of native hawaiian governance, by davianna mcgregor and melody mackenzie, honolulu, hi: 1090-ab05, accessed january 08, 2018, https://www.doi.gov/sites/doi.opengov.ibmcloud.com/files /uploads/mcgregor-and-mackenzie-history_of_native_hawaiian_governance.pdf 42 “the story of the hōkūle'a,” polynesian voyaging society, accessed january 8, 2018, http://www.hokulea.com/voyages/our-story/. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ https://www.doi.gov/sites/doi.opengov.ibmcloud.com/files 3 4 k a n a k a ' ō i w i c r i t i c a l r a c e t h e o r y contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 7, no 1 (2018) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2018.240 cooperation in making their journeys through the pacific successful. youth are given the kuleana of carrying out their own voyage, independent of adult help. the ultimate mission of navigational education is to connect youth to their ancestral roots and to help them understand their interconnectedness with the environment and realize their part in recreating a meaningful future for the next generation of kanaka 'ōiwi.43 crt colonization and occupation are far from being phenomena of the distant past. kanaka 'ōiwi are continuously forging paths of survivance that seek to alter the political, social, and economic status of kanaka 'ōiwi. survivance is more than physical survival; it is an act of resistance and cultural thriving. 44 kanaka 'ōiwi paths of survivance include the individual and collective kuleana kanaka 'ōiwi have for contributing to ka lāhui, ea, and aloha 'āina. as colonization and occupation continue to constrict kanaka 'ōiwi pathways to survivance, theory, too, must continue to expand these pathways; to empower, liberate, and validate the lived experience of those most injured by institutionalized racism.45 critical race theory (crt) has created the space needed for kanaka 'ōiwi to use theory as a scope with which to view, critique, and dismantle the oppressive structures that pervade kanaka 'ōiwi livelihood. as kanaka 'ōiwi survivance is strengthened through theory so, too, will it be strengthened in practice. crt is undoubtedly a fruitful framework in helping kanaka 'ōiwi and allies better understand how to use the past to inform the present and empower the future. crt responds oppositionally to structural inequalities that privilege eurocentric standards over the standards held by people of color. crt posits that racism is endemic in society and is structurally supported through our economic, legal, political, and educational systems. because it is engrained in our structures and systems, racism is inseparable and inescapable from our ways of belonging and being.46 crt originally gained traction from the civil rights movement with the emergence of critical legal scholars who exposed the exploitative nature of race and legality. since then, crt has found relevance in other fields, such as education and among a variety of minoritized populations in the united states47 tribalcrit crt is a tree with many branches. these branches represent the social, political, economic, and historical complexities of various minoritized groups in the united states. these branches include, but are not limited to, asiancrit, latcrit, critical race feminism, and tribalcrit.48 recognizing the appropriateness of utilizing a crt in education framework in addressing the exploitation of indigenous peoples, tribalcrit will be discussed further. the tenets of tribalcrit were created and theorized within the frame of crt and were modified to address the needs of indigenous communities within the united states. bryan brayboy highlights the nine tenets of tribalcrit as follows: 43 gisela speidel and kristina inn, “the ocean is my classroom,” kamehameha journal of education 5 (fall 1994): 11–23. 44 for a more detailed discussion on survivance, see gerald vizenor, survivance: narratives of native presence (lincoln: university of nebraska press, 2008). 45 bell hooks, “theory as liberatory practice,” yale journal of law & feminism 4, no. 1 (1991). 46 richard delgado and jean stefancic, introduction to critical race theory: an introduction, eds. richard delgado and jean stefancic (new york: new york university press, 2001), 7. 47 ibid., 6. 48 for asiancrit, see: derald sue et al., “racial microaggressions and difficult dialogues on race in the classroom,” cultural diversity and ethnic minority psychology 15, no. 2 (2009): 183–90. for latcrit, see: daniel solórzano and dolores delgado bernal, “examining transformational resistance through a critical race and latcrit theory framework: chicana and chicano students in an urban context,” urban education 36, no. 3 (2001): 308–42. for critical race feminism, see: theodorea berry, “engaged pedagogy and critical race feminism,” the journal of educational foundations 24, no. 3/4 (2010): 19–26. for tribalcrit, see: “toward a tribal critical race theory in education,” the urban review 37, no. 5 (2005), 425–46. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 3 5 n i k c r i s t o b a l contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 7, no 1 (2018) | issn 2153-5194 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2018.240 1. colonization is endemic to society. 
 2. u.s. policies toward indigenous peoples are rooted in imperialism, white supremacy, and a desire for material gain. 
 3. indigenous peoples occupy a liminal space that accounts for both the political and racialized natures of our identities. 
 4. indigenous peoples have a desire to obtain and forge tribal sovereignty, tribal autonomy, self-determination, and self-identification. 
 5. the concepts of culture, knowledge, and power take on new meaning when examined through an indigenous lens. 
 6. governmental policies and educational policies toward indigenous peoples are intimately linked around the problematic goal of assimilation. 7. tribal philosophies, beliefs, customs, traditions, and visions for the future are central to understanding the lived realities of indigenous peoples, but they also illustrate the differences and adaptability among individuals and groups. 
 8. stories are not separate from theory; they make up theory and are, therefore, real and legitimate sources of data and ways of being. 9. theory and practice are connected in deep and explicit ways such that scholars must work towards social change.49 the above tenets are useful in providing a sturdy yet malleable base upon which various indigenous groups can work in critically examining and transforming oppressive structures. despite its utility in challenging and changing educational systems, tribalcrit, when unsupplemented, remains limited in helping kanaka 'ōiwi address the contextually and historically specific positioning of kanaka 'ōiwi in education. because tribalcrit was developed by and for native americans in the continental united states, much of the framework needs adapting to better speak to the needs of the kanaka 'ōiwi population. as a result, kanaka'ōiwicrit was developed and will be expanded upon in this paper. kanaka'ōiwicrit grounding their work in empirical studies of kanaka 'ōiwi in higher education, wright and balutski and salis reyes created principles and tenets of kanaka'ōiwicrit. salis reyes situated her tenets in indigenous critical pedagogy, while wright and balutski situated their principles in kanaka 'ōiwi critical consciousness.50 although these authors diverge in some ways in their epistemological understandings of kanaka'ōiwicrit, i argue that the core of their conceptualizations are the same. wright and balutski and salis reyes are among the only scholars to theorize and operationalize a crt specifically for kanaka 'ōiwi. in an attempt to build off of the work already performed on kanaka 'ōiwi crt, and as a way to shift from strategic essentialism to specificity in theory, i synthesize the tenets and principles laid out by wright and balutski and salis reyes into one, unified crt model for kanaka 'ōiwi. although wright and balutski and salis reyes termed their theories 'ōiwicrit and kanakacrit, 49 brayboy, “tribal critical race theory,” 429–30. 50 salis reyes, “an indigenized phenomenology,” 88–91; erin wright and brandi balutski, “ka 'ikena a ka hawai'i: toward a kanaka 'ōiwi critical race theory,” in kanaka 'ōiwi methodologies: mo'olelo and metaphor, eds. katrina-ann oliveira and erin wright (honolulu: university of hawai`i press, 2016), 88–89. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 3 6 k a n a k a ' ō i w i c r i t i c a l r a c e t h e o r y contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 7, no 1 (2018) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2018.240 respectively, both terms are legitimized in kanaka 'ōiwi academic circles as a way to decolonize standards implicit in scholarly research.51 in my attempt to weave their understandings together, i use the term kanaka'ōiwicrit. situating kanaka'ōiwicrit at the center of kanaka 'ōiwi epistemology is vital. kanaka 'ōiwi epistemology is the fabric of a kanaka 'ōiwi identity and includes the ways that knowledge is attained, retained, and communicated. for kanaka 'ōiwi, knowledge has a spiritual, 'āina, and relational dimension; the senses are acquired through the context of culture, in which feelings and intelligence, head and heart are inseparable, and ideas and language are only important insofar as function connects with purpose and intelligence with practice.52 by starting with and centering kanaka 'ōiwi epistemologies in the work done through critical frameworks, “we […] give our work a [kanaka 'ōiwi] identity, shaped by a [kanaka 'ōiwi] way of sensing, knowing, and understanding the world.”53 kanaka 'ōiwi epistemologies as expressed through kanaka 'ōiwi critical consciousness and indigenous critical pedagogy within the kanaka'ōiwicrit theoretical model is focused on colonization, liminality of identity, self-determination, and kuleana.54 extrapolating crt and tribalcrit to kanaka 'ōiwi critical consciousness and indigenous pedagogy, the themes and tenets of kanaka'ōiwicrit were developed. i synthesize these themes and tenets below: 1. occupation and colonialism are endemic in society.55 the consequences of colonialism and occupation are pervasive and unique to hawai'i in their exploitation of 'āina and appropriation of identity, particularly in the areas of local identity and settler colonialism, tourism, and de/militarization.56 2. kanaka 'ōiwi identities are multiple, intersectional, and liminal.57 mo'okū'auhau (connections to people, places, and spaces) can be used to describe and understand the diverse pathways and relationships that individuals have with respect to different contexts.58 3. as we learn and tell our mo'olelo (stories, narratives, histories), we contribute to our survivance.59 further, it is important to recognize and honor hūnā (sacred, hidden) of mo'olelo. unlike western notions of research, not everything is free and open, and sometimes what is shared can only be understood by a few.60 4. kuleana is the culmination of kanaka 'ōiwi mo'olelo about the ways in which we enact agency through social justice.61 social justice is inherently tied to our ea and ka lāhui. we must use our knowledge to restore justice and pono through aloha 'āina by breathing life into ka lāhui.62 51 katrina-ann oliveira and erin wright, kanaka 'ōiwi methodologies: mo'olelo and metaphor (honolulu: university of hawai'i press, 2016), x–xi. 52 meyer, “our own liberation,” 129. 53 nicole salis reyes, “'ike kū'oko'a: indigenous critical pedagogy and the connections between education and sovereignty for ka lāhui hawai'i,” hūlili 9 (2013): 216. 54 wright and balutski, “kanaka 'ōiwi critical race theory,” 91; salis reyes, “an indigenized phenomenology,” 84–88. 55 nicole salis reyes, “a space for survivance: locating kānaka maoli through the resonance and dissonance of critical race theory,” race ethnicity and education, 21, no. 6 (2017): 747. 56 wright and balutski, “kanaka 'ōiwi critical race theory,” 93. 57 salis reyes, “a space for survivance,” 749. 58 wright and balutski, “kanaka 'ōiwi critical race theory,” 93. 59 salis reyes, “a space for surviance,” 751. 60 wright and balutski, “kanaka 'ōiwi critical race theory,” 93. 61 ibid., 94. 62 wright and balutski, “kanaka 'ōiwi critical race theory,” 94; salis reyes, “a space for surviance,” 750751. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 3 7 n i k c r i s t o b a l contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 7, no 1 (2018) | issn 2153-5194 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2018.240 figure 1 nik cristobal, kanaka'ōiwicrit thematic intersections, digital illustration, 2018. 63 in understanding the interrelatedness of these tenets, i adapted wright and balutski’s three-level conceptualization of the thematic intersections of kanaka'ōiwicrit.64 the top level includes the macro-level forces that impact kanaka 'ōiwi education such as colonialism, tourism, and de/militarization. the middle level includes kanaka 'ōiwi epistemological and ontological, culture-based forms of articulating educational mo'olelo. this level speaks back to the negative effects of occupation and colonialization that hinder kanaka 'ōiwi in education. the third level, the self-reflexive and praxis-oriented aspect of kanaka 'ōiwi education, 63 adapted from wright and balutski, “kanaka 'ōiwi critical race theory,” 94; salis reyes, “a space for survivance,” 747-752. 64 wright and balutski, “kanaka 'ōiwi critical race theory,” 94. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 3 8 k a n a k a ' ō i w i c r i t i c a l r a c e t h e o r y contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 7, no 1 (2018) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2018.240 encompasses the value of kuleana. this level moves the other two levels toward justice for kanaka 'ōiwi through the perpetuation of ea, aloha 'āina, and ka lāhui. the figure above provides a visual representation of the relationships between the tenets of kanaka'ōiwicrit. in summation, the primary assertion of crt is that racism is endemic to society, while the primary assertion of tribalcrit is that colonization is endemic to society.65 the primary assertion of kanaka'ōiwicrit, then, is that occupation and colonization are endemic to society.66 nuancing this further, the consequences of occupation and colonization are pervasive and unique to hawai'i via exploitation of 'āina and appropriation of identity.67 kanaka'ōiwicrit as a burgeoning theoretical framework to understand and challenge the systemic subordination of kanaka 'ōiwi should not be thought of as a limitation in its applicability to scholarly works, but rather, as a strength. just like the people it represents, kanaka'ōiwicrit is a living, breathing, adaptable, yet unyielding framework that finds voice in the shifting winds and waves of institutional transformation. for the remainder of this paper, i will discuss the praxis dimension of kanaka'ōiwicrit as it relates to education. kanaka'ōiwicrit and kuleana the application of kanaka'ōiwicrit is achieved through the concept of kuleana, which combines authority with responsibility in defending and nurturing the collective livelihood of kanaka 'ōiwi.68 kanaka 'ōiwi students are culturally inclined to see themselves collectively rather than individualistically.69 kanaka 'ōiwi education, therefore, cannot be extracted from the community that supports them. truly valuing and supporting kanaka 'ōiwi within educational spaces requires repositioning dominant ideologies of what and whose knowledge is valid and what is considered appropriate in demonstrating competency in such knowledge.70 for kanaka 'ōiwi students, competency is demonstrated by enacting one’s kuleana in carrying out cultural practices gained through the kanaka'ōiwicrit tenet of mo'okū'auhau. mo'okū'auhau can be thought of as a genealogical linkage kanaka 'ōiwi have to their ancestral past, which includes spiritual, natural, and relational connections. mo'okū'auhau and the tenet of mo'oleo are intertwined. it is through mo'oleo, such as the kumulipo (the cosmological genealogical oli) and storytelling from kūpuna, that kanaka 'ōiwi come to know and feel their spiritual connection to the 'āina, including the mountains, ocean, winds, and rains. in educational spaces that utilize culturally responsive pedagogy, kanaka 'ōiwi demonstrate this connection by naming specific places that are important to their 'ohana (family) and sharing the mo'oleo of these places through mediums such as oli, hula, and storytelling.71 this bond is further established when students understand how to cultivate kalo, independently navigate wa'a using ancient kanaka 'ōiwi navigational techniques, and learn to speak and write in 'ōlelo hawai'i.72 65 brayboy, “tribal critical race theory,” 429. 66 salis reyes, “an indigenized phenomenology,” 85. 67 wright and balutski, “kanaka 'ōiwi critical race theory,” 93. 68 goodyear-ka'opua, “kuleana lāhui,” in affinities: a journal of radical theory, culture, and action 5, no. 1 (2011), 147. 69 brayboy, “tribal critical race theory,” 438. 70 gloria ladson-billings, “racialized discourses and ethnic epistemologies,” in handbook of qualitative research, eds. norman denzin and yvonna lincoln (thousand oaks, ca: sage publications inc., 2000), 258. 71 shawn kana'iaupuni and carolyn liebler, “pondering poi dog: place and racial identification of multiracial native hawaiians,” ethnic and racial studies 28, no. 4 (2005): 692. 72 for a detailed ethnographic case study on a kanaka 'ōiwi charter school that embodies kanaka'ōiwicrit in practice, see, noelani goodyear-ka'opua, the seeds we planted (minneapolis: university of minnesota http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 3 9 n i k c r i s t o b a l contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 7, no 1 (2018) | issn 2153-5194 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2018.240 mo'okū'auhau and mo'oleo directly relate to the praxis tenet of kuleana. for mo'okū'auhau and mo'oleo to matter, they must have some utility; they must be practiced and shared.73 kanaka'ōiwicrit provides a useful framework for understanding that knowledge is not something one possesses, but rather something that one practices. mo'okū'auhau and mo'oleo are practiced toward and for a collective. in order for kanaka'ōiwicrit to be put into action, there must be, as kana'iaupuni and liebler state, a “collective memory of a shared history. hawai'i, the place, connects the hawaiian diaspora through ‘social relations and a historical memory of cultural beginnings, meanings, and practices, as well as crises, upheavals and unjust subjections as a disposed and (mis)recognized people (halualani, 2002, p. xxvi).”74 in kanaka'ōiwicrit, this collective memory recognizes the ways in which colonization and occupation are endemic in society. kanaka 'ōiwi, as well as all students in the hawai'i educational system, must be taught from a young age the truth about the history of hawai'i through a kanaka 'ōiwi lens. students must be presented with a history that is forthright about colonization and occupation and is honest about the cultural strengths and challenges impacting kanaka 'ōiwi in the past, present, and future. in gaining this awareness, kanaka 'ōiwi students can unapologetically learn their mo'okū'auhau and share their mo'oleo in a way that empowers them to realize the possibilities that exist in exercising their criticality in a way that is personally, culturally, and collectively meaningful.75 when an understanding of colonization and occupation connects with mo'okū'auhau and mo'oleo, knowledge can be practiced through kuleana. in kanaka'ōiwicrit, kuleana is enacted in three major areas: ea, aloha 'āina, and ka lāhui. a model that exemplifies these components will be discussed further. davianna pōmaika'i mcgregor and other scholars describe the reconnection of kanaka 'ōiwi to cultural ways of being in a model they call ho'oulu lāhui.76 the ho'oulu lāhui model is predicated on the idea that lāhui is not built; it is raised and nurtured in resemblance to the cultural ways kanaka 'ōiwi nurture each other. the model reflects 'ohana as the basic pathway to kanaka 'ōiwi wellbeing. relevant to education, the first and most impactful influence on keiki (children) is 'ohana. for kanaka 'ōiwi keiki, the community is also important in the development of cultural identity and wellbeing. it is through community and 'ohana that keiki first begin to learn their mo'okū'auhau mo'oleo and start to develop a sense of kuleana to reach toward ea and to nurture ka lāhui. as this model illustrates, all kanaka 'ōiwi systems are embedded within the ecological dimension of the 'āina.77 kanaka 'ōiwi treat the 'āina as a highly respected entity. 'āina is not only the foundation for agricultural sustainability, but also the foundation for spiritual customs and practices and one of the most powerful kumu in the life of keiki. all systems shown in figure 2 are interdependent but are planted within the 'āina. this embodies the kanaka'ōiwicrit praxis dimension of kuleana through aloha 'āina. aloha 'āina is more than having love for the land or feeling a sense of stewardship and connectedness to the 'āina. aloha 'āina is about putting this feeling into action by carrying out one’s kuleana for environmental sustainability, subsistence farming and fishing practices, and working with one’s community in protecting and preserving the spiritual and cultural connections between kanaka 'ōiwi and the 'āina.78 press, 2013). 73 manulani meyer, “native hawaiian epistemology: sites of empowerment and resistance,” equity and excellence 31, no. 1 (1998): 24. 74 kana'iaupuni and liebler, “pondering poi dog,” 693. 75 sandy grande, red pedagogy: native american social and political thought (lanham: rowman & littlefield publishers, 2004), 21. 76 davianna mcgregor et al., “the ecological model of native hawaiian wellbeing,” pacific health dialog 10, no. 2 (2003): 106–28. 77 ibid., 111. 78 goodyear-ka'ōpua, “seeds we planted,” 32. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 4 0 k a n a k a ' ō i w i c r i t i c a l r a c e t h e o r y contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 7, no 1 (2018) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2018.240 in positioning kanaka 'ōiwi students in this model, it is important to recognize that, if systems of education are to be culturally responsive, they must invest in 'ohana as part of education, integrate community ways of knowing and involvement, and empower kanaka 'ōiwi to exercise their criticality and agency in reaching toward ea and contributing to ka lāhui. while doing so, systems of education need to foreground all teaching and learning in the 'āina. through these commitments, kuleana will be met, epistemologies honored, and survivance achieved. figure 2 nik cristobal, the ecological model of native hawaiian well being, digital illustration, 2018.79 conclusion adapting and positioning crt and tribalcrit to be of more relevance to kanaka 'ōiwi enriches the possibility of examining the cultural genocide that afflicts kanaka 'ōiwi in a critical manner. it is apparent that colonialism and occupation are endemic in hawai'i society. the exploitation of the 'āina through militarization and tourism and the appropriation of kanaka 'ōiwi through commodification, local identity, and settler colonialism leads to the severance of kanaka 'ōiwi from their ways of being and negatively impacts their life outcomes. recognizing that kanaka 'ōiwi identity is complex and is rooted within dynamic epistemological origins is important in actualizing the changes needed to ensure the strengthening and continuance of the culture. in order to change oppressive systems, such as education, kanaka 'ōiwi keiki must be awake to the truths of the past, must know their mo'okū'auhau, and must share their mo'olelo. it is in kuleana for ea, aloha 'āina, and ka lāhui, that kanaka 'ōiwi, as both a culture and a people, will persist. by expanding upon critical and indigenous theory and using it to inform the ways kanaka 'ōiwi are thought about or not thought about in education, researchers, policy makers, educators, and practitioners can better ensure that kanaka 'ōiwi will no longer be “dulled by the guessing game of another culture,” but be sharpened by their own. 80 79 mcgregor et al., “native hawaiian wellbeing,” 106. 80 meyer, “our own liberation,” 124. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 4 1 n i k c r i s t o b a l contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 7, no 1 (2018) | issn 2153-5194 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2018.240 bibliography benham, maenette k. p., and ronald heck. culture and 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45–58. copenhagen: iwgia, 1994. mcgregor, davianna p., paula t. morelli, jon k. matsuoka, rona rodenhurst, noella kong, and michael s. spencer. “the ecological model of native hawaiian wellbeing.” pacific health dialog 10, no. 2 (2003): 106–28. meyer, manulani a. “native hawaiian epistemology: sites of empowerment and resistance.” equity and excellence 31, no. 1 (1998): 22–28. ---. “our own liberation: reflections on hawaiian epistemology.” the contemporary pacific 13, no. 1 (2001): 124–48. office of hawaiian affairs. 2010-2018 strategic results: hawai'i assessment test indicator sheet sy2015. honolulu, hi: 2015, accessed january 8, 2018. http://www.oha.org/wpcontent/uploads/hawai'iassessment-test-indicator-sheet-sy2015.pdf ---. mo`olelo ea o nā hawai`i history: history of native hawaiian governance. by davianna mcgregor and melody mackenzie. honolulu, hi.: 1090-ab05, 2014. accessed january 8, 2018, https://www.doi.gov/sites/doi.opengov.ibmcloud.com/files/uploads/mcgregorand-mackenzie history_of_native_hawaiian_governance.pdf oliveira, katrina-ann r. k. n., and erin k. wright. kanaka 'ōiwi methodologies: mo'olelo and metaphor. honolulu: university of hawai'i press, 2016. osorio, jonathan k. k. dismembering lahui: a history of the hawaiian nation to 1887. honolulu: university of hawaii press, 2002. rohrer, judy. “disrupting the ‘melting pot’: racial discourse in hawai'i and the naturalization of haole,” ethnic and racial studies 31, no. 6 (2008): 1110–25 salis reyes, nicole “a space for survivance: locating kānaka maoli through resonance and dissonance of critical race theory.” race ethnicity and education 21, no. 6. (2017): 739 756. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ http://www.oha.org/wpcontent/uploads/hawai'iassessment-test-indicator-sheet-sy2015.pdf https://www.doi.gov/sites/doi.opengov 4 3 n i k c r i s t o b a l contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 7, no 1 (2018) | issn 2153-5194 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2018.240 ---. “'ike kū'oko'a: indigenous critical pedagogy and the connections between education and sovereignty for ka lāhui hawai'i.” hūlili 9 (2013): 205–27. ---. ““what am i doing to be a good ancestor?” an indigenized phenomenology of giving back among native college graduates.” phd dissertation, university of texas-san antonio, 2016. silva, noenoe k. “he kanawai e ho'opau i na hula kuolo hawai'i: the political economy of banning the hula.” the hawaiian journal of history 34 (2000): 29–48. ---. “the story of the hōkūle'a.” polynesian voyaging society. accessed january 8, 2018. http://www.hokulea.com/voyages/our-story/ solomon, molly. “feds finalize rule on native hawaiian government.” hawai'i public radio, september 23, 2016, accessed april 23, 2017, http://hpr2.org/post/feds-finalize-rule-nativehawaiian-government solórzano, daniel g., and dolores delgado bernal. “examining transformational resistance through a critical race and latcrit theory framework: chicana and chicano students in an urban context.” urban education 36, no. 3 (2001): 308–42. speidel, gisela e., and kristina inn. “the ocean is my classroom.” kamehameha journal of education 5 (fall 1994): 11–23. sue, derald w., annie i. linn, gina c. torino, christina m. capodilupo, and david p. rivera. “racial microaggressions and difficult dialogues on race in the classroom.” cultural diversity and ethnic minority psychology 15, no. 2 (2009): 183–90. theodorea berry r. “engaged pedagogy and critical race feminism.” the journal of educational foundations 24, no. 3/4 (2010): 19–26. trask, haunani-kay. “the color of violence.” social justice/ global options 31, no. 4 (2004): 8–16. ---. from a native daughter: colonialism and sovereignty in hawai'i. honolulu: university of hawaii press, 1999. ---. “politics in the pacific islands: imperialism and native self-determination.” amerasia journal 16, no. 1 (1990): 1–19. ---. “settlers of color and “immigrant” hegemony: “locals” in hawai'i.” in asian settler colonialism: from local governance to the habits of everyday life in hawai'i,” edited by candace fujikane and jonathan y. okamura, 45–82. honolulu: university of hawai'i press, 2008. trask, mililani b. “ka lahui hawai'i: a native initiative for sovereignty.” turning the tide: journal of anti-racist activism, research & education 6, no. 5–6 (1993): n.p. ---. “the politics of oppression.” in hawai’i return to nationhood, edited by ulla hasager and jonathan friedman, 71–87. copenhagen: iwgia, 1994. u.s. senate reports, joint resolution, public law 103-150, no.103-126., 1993.accessed january 8, 2018, https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/statute-107/pdf/statute-107pg1510.pdf http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 4 4 k a n a k a ' ō i w i c r i t i c a l r a c e t h e o r y contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 7, no 1 (2018) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2018.240 vizenor, gerald. survivance: narratives of native presence. lincoln: university of nebraska press, 2008. wright, erin k., and brandi j. n. balutski. “ka 'ikena a ka hawai'i: toward a kanaka 'ōiwi critical race theory.” in kanaka 'ōiwi methodologies: mo'olelo and metaphor, edited by katrina-ann oliveira and erin wright, 86–108. honolulu: university of hawai`i press, 2016. new articles in this journal are licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 united states license. this journal is operated by the university library system of the university of pittsburgh as part of its d-scribe digital publishing program, and is co-sponsored by the university of pittsburgh press. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/ http://www.pitt.edu/ http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/ http://www.upress.pitt.edu/upressindex.aspx http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ kanaka 'ōiwi critical race theory historical and educational context kanaka 'ōiwi critical race theory historical and educational context contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture vol 7, no 1 (2018) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2018.264 http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu modern art in the arab world: primary documents anneka lenssen, sarah a. rogers, and nada m. shabout, eds. golnar yarmohammad touski book review anneka lenssen, sarah a. rogers, and nada m. shabout. modern art in the arab world: primary documents. new york: the museum of modern art, in association with duke university press, 2018. 464 pp.; 49 ills.; 51 b/w ills. paperback, $40 (1633450384, 9781633450387) about the author golnar yarmohammad touski is a doctoral student researching iranian and middle eastern contemporary art at university of pittsburgh’s department of history of art and architecture. as an artist, she studied painting and sculpture at university of art (daneshgah-e-honar) in tehran, iran. her research interests include postcolonial theory, modernism studies, uneven and combined development, relational aesthetics, mobility, borders, and geopolitics. . http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 7, no 1 (2018) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2018.264 among the most recent publications in moma’s primary documents series, modern art in the arab world is a timely arrival in the contemporary history of the middle east and north africa. with these 125 documents, the collection offers an unprecedented anthology of source material on modern art in the arab world. the archive represents twelve arabspeaking nation-states across the region as well as their algerian, egyptian, iraqi, and palestinian diasporas. in their socialist reading of postcolonial discourses, anneka lenssen, sarah a. rogers, and nada m. shabout trace the effects of global, artistic transformations in the middle east, such as the emergence of national institutions and international art venues and their associated events in the arab world. the editors mark a period of modernization in the region from 1882 to 1987. the year 1987 marks a turning point of political transformation in the middle east and a global shift to a “non-linear and coeval” order when academic tropes and art institutions emerged and were subsequently dismantled by avant-garde movements. documents included in the collection are predominantly translations of arabic texts, but the editors carefully compare other regional, diasporic, and colonial languages against their sociocultural context and time frame. the texts range from artists’ articles and diary entries, journal contributions, exhibition guest book entries, encyclopedia entries, manifestos, and letters, to national and international biennials documentation. chronological ordering of texts is uniform format for moma’s primary documents series, however the book does not include a consecutive connection among the disparate texts. in lieu of a timeline or map of political events, the editors organize the content around various thematic, pedagogical mediumand document-based constellations. for example, the titles “the importance of art,” “sculpture and the public in egypt,” “arab romantics,” and “materials for a new algerian art” emphasize the importance of document-as-point-of-departure. as such, despite its chronological ordering, the book resists a comprehensive view and allows for an art historical reading salient to modernity’s contradictions and flux. the editors chronicle a fluctuant history of artistic discourse and sociopolitical struggle that seeks to replace a more stylistically formal approach, the latter of which is often the conventional practice of writing about modern and contemporary art from the middle east. due to the field’s source documents’ rare and scattered availability in english-language collections, the acts of collection and translation are necessary and overdue. however, the book goes beyond mere archival compilation as the texts and images scaffold a deterritorialized conception of modernity in the arab world and speak to an existing trajectory of texts on modernism studies. fredrick jameson famously critiqued the field of modernist studies for its offering “a modernity for everyone,” whereby every nation-state was thought to inevitably catch up with the euro-american notion of modernity.1 the editors address this misperception from the outset. to sidestep subjugating the arab world to north atlantic modernity, the book avoids an essentially geographical and hierarchal narrative both in terms of structure and content. they argue that “as artists, critics, and groups featured here went about formulating models for a responsible and flexible modernism, the arab identity was often thought of as a frame in which to consolidate creative energies without subsuming all differences.” they then assert that “to engage this writing about modern art, ideas and things, and events is to consider the deterritorialized aspects of historic modernism, and not a separate tradition or alterative modernism” (20). therefore, modernism finds broader implications beyond formalistic 1 fredric jameson, a singular modernity (london: verso, 2012). modern art in the arab world: primary documents anneka lenssen, sarah a. rogers, and nada m. shabout golnar yarmohammad touski http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 1 1 2 m od e r n a r t i n t h e a r a b w o r l d : p r i m a r y d o c u m e n t s contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 7, no 1 (2018) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2018.264 modernism and is defined as arab unity and resistance, post coloniality, globality, and progress. in the introduction, ussama makdisi best articulates the forces of modernism, laying out a brief history of the formation of nation-states in the region vis-à-vis ideas of globality and progress. here, he invokes historian albert hourani’s reflection, “the tragedy of arab history is that it was caught between an indigenous desire for self-determination and an incorrigible western will to dominate the arab world itself” (28). hence, the book defines modernism in the space between these two forces. such theoretical framework lends itself to a collection of some one hundred artworks—many of which are not widely known—as well as primary texts and focused, critical essays. in the context of countries included in the book, translation is a performative and collective act of reimagining arab polity. paradoxically, the language of this imagined polity is not always arabic. the arab world introduced in the book, in effect, is a compendium of languages and ethnicities, many of which are absent from the constellation of texts; for example, those of kurdish and armenian accounts. such absence is due to lack of archival documents, but it implies concepts of violence, conflict, and erasure. as such, non-arab-speaking ethnicities and their lack of documentation are just as much part of a post-colonial discourse of belonging as the arab speaking ethnicities documented in the book. the violence of erasure emerges elsewhere in writings of artists of the arab world, such as the algerian lettrist manifesto, which reads today as radical as it did upon its appearance in the third issue of the internationale lettriste (1952–1954). it opens with these chilling lines, “no human dies of hunger, thirst, or life. one can only die from renunciation” (163). translation here is a collective effort of a team of twenty translators working with scholars, who do so as a necessary act of making these materials available; but, more importantly, they work to translate the experience of reading them in the original context, complete with the discourses and challenges they posed. modern art in the arab world provides not only a substantial archive, but also a liminal space of textual fluidity to revisit modernity outside of its north atlantic core. new articles in this journal are licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 united states license. this journal is operated by the university library system of the university of pittsburgh as part of its d-scribe digital publishing program, and is co-sponsored by the university of pittsburgh press. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/ http://www.pitt.edu/ http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/ http://www.upress.pitt.edu/upressindex.aspx http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ modern art in the arab world: primary documents anneka lenssen, sarah a. rogers, and nada m. shabout, eds. modern art in the arab world: primary documents anneka lenssen, sarah a. rogers, and nada m. shabout contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture vol 6, no 1 “boundless” (2017) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2017.229 http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu fantasies of the library anna-sophie springer and etienne turpin, eds. chelsea gunn book review anna-sophie springer and etienne turpin, eds. fantasies of the library. cambridge: the mit press, 2016. 160 pp.; 30 color ills.; 15 b/w ills. hardcover $24.95. (9780262035200) about the author chelsea gunn is a doctoral student in library and information science at the university of pittsburgh’s school of computing and information. she received her mlis from simmons college. her research focuses on personal archives, digital preservation, and the technical and ethical challenges faced by archivists who collect born-digital networked personal records. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 6, no 1 “boundless” (2017) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2017.229 it is relatively commonplace by now to see books and other information technologies used not only as means of researching exhibitions, but also as objects of focus in exhibitions themselves. such treatment has a tendency to attend to the aesthetic or material qualities of books as discrete physical objects, separating them from the networks—shelves, catalogs, databases—in which they are generally found and from the intellectual processes by which information professionals make them accessible. in their collection, fantasies of the library, editors anna-sophie springer and etienne turpin set out to position the reader as an exhibition viewer for an exploration of “the library as curatorial spaces – a physical knowledge infrastructure organized as the veritable index of cultural and epistemological orders and aspirations, but also as a virtual domain of possibilities for other orders, logics, and dispositions.”1 these “possibilities” are to be read as the titular fantasies. originally published as part of the haus der kulturen der welt’s intercalations: paginated exhibition, this book serves the series’ agenda of critical reflection on contemporary curatorial practice, knowledge production, and information organization. one of this book’s main strengths is its framing of the processes of classification and arrangement not only alongside creative practice, but also as creative, interpretive endeavors in their own right. throughout the essays, interviews, images, and letters that make up this volume are references to the often-invisible labor required to intellectually organize, physically arrange, and provide access to information both in person and online. rather than positioning the book as a material or nostalgic object that stands in contrast to the seemingly ephemeral digital, the contributors throughout this collection emphasize the interconnected nature of the physical and digital, as well as the infrastructure required to sustain both. in this framing, the labor of information workers serves to connect and comingle the physical and digital, rather than pit them against one another. this relationship is perhaps exemplified most directly through andrew norman wilson’s scanops series, featured on the cover jacket and throughout the book. wilson’s collection of images, taken from the massive digitization project google books, features the hands of the digitizers encased in bright, unsettling latex finger cots or gloves, accidentally captured in the act of scanning or photographing a page. references like these, of the (sometimes literal) mark of the human hand, operate as a connecting thread through each of the pieces in fantasies, underlining the editors’ agenda of examining libraries and cultural collections as subjective, interpreted, and socially constructed spaces. at the same time, the book’s own organizational structure reinforces the reader-asexhibition-viewer perspective. a single essay, editor springer’s “melancholies of the paginated mind: the library as curatorial space,” runs the full length of the book in serif typeface along the right-hand pages only, interrupted at the halfway point by springer’s visual essay “reading rooms reading machines,” the book’s full-color centerfold. the lefthand pages, in contrasting sans serif typeface, feature interviews with megan shaw prelinger and rick prelinger of the prelinger library in san francisco, hammad nasar of the asia art 1 anna-sophie springer and etienne turpin, fantasies of the library (cambridge, ma: the mit press, 2016), iii. fantasies of the library anna-sophie springer and etienne turpin chelsea gunn http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 9 1 c he l s e a g un n contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 6, no 1 “boundless” (2017) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2017.229 archive in hong kong, and joanna zylinska, author of minimal ethics for the anthropocene, as well as a letter from charles stankievech to the superior court of quebec, written in defense of the online library and community platform arg.org. while it is technically true that any edited collection of essays may be read outside of the order set by the table of contents, the alternating pagination and unconventional layout of fantasies essentially requires that they do. this arrangement has the potential to distract—but, as the editors note, this kind of “productive unruliness” also encourages the reader to actively engage with the text, charting her own navigational course through it. springer’s “melancholies of the paginated mind” establishes several of the book’s primary themes: the subjective, interpretive nature of organizing information, the interplay between the intellectual classification and the arrangement of books in the physical environment, and the cultural roles and responsibilities of information spaces. walking the reader through the real and imagined libraries of borges, warburg, benjamin, and others, she offers case studies in various ways of seeing, classifying, and displaying books and other cultural artifacts. the visual essay “reading rooms reading machines” complements this work with forty-seven pages of depictions of libraries and other information infrastructures, including artist katie paterson’s future library, the people’s library deployed during occupy wall street, donald judd’s personal library in marfa, and book-scanning technologies. these pieces work nicely as a scaffolding for the book, introducing areas of inquiry that reappear elsewhere. alternative classification and the relationship between physical and digital points of access are further explored in erin kissane’s interview with the prelingers. springer and turpin’s interview with hammand nasar unpacks the role of archival materials and collecting practices in shaping collective memory and the historical record, while their interview with joanna zylinska turns to the ethics and mechanics of book as a technology and a platform. stankievich’s letter in defense of arg.org, an online document-sharing platform accused of copyright infringement, presents the sharing of printed materials as beneficial not only to individuals seeking free and open access, but also to academic and publishing sectors more broadly. viewing these sometimes complementary, sometimes contrasting narratives side-by-side in the book’s alternating pagination brings that “productive unruliness” into play, juxtaposing divergent ideas within the reader’s single field of vision. fantasies of the library is an ambitious book. it critiques and interrogates the very forms it employs, but does so effectively, resulting in a creative tension that prompts the reader-as-exhibition-viewer to ask questions and seek additional resources. each piece within it is densely packed with information and has the potential to spark further research. as a result, many parts of the book serve as jumping-off points for further questioning and resource-seeking rather than offering tidy conclusions. this composition ultimately feels fitting for a work grounded in information-seeking spaces and practices, and does not detract from the richness or quality of these narratives. while this collection will likely appeal to a broad audience, a primary readership in the areas of art history, curatorial practice, and information science is easy to imagine. readers coming from curatorial and information professions in particular will be pleased to see the ways in which the complex, creative work involved in collecting, arranging, and preserving cultural artifacts are made visible in this book. it will undoubtedly enhance the way its readers view book-based exhibitions move forward. bringing together elements of history, philosophy, and literature, and connecting them to classification, curatorial practice, environmental ethics, academic publishing, and copyright, fantasies of the library effectively highlights the intersectional nature of libraries as socially constructed spaces. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 9 2 f a n t a s i e s o f t h e l i b r a r y contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 6, no 1 “boundless” (2016) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2017.229 new articles in this journal are licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 united states license. this journal is operated by the university library system of the university of pittsburgh as part of its d-scribe digital publishing program, and is co-sponsored by the university of pittsburgh press. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/ http://www.pitt.edu/ http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/ http://www.upress.pitt.edu/upressindex.aspx http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture vol 6, no 1 “boundless” (2017) | issn 2153-15914(online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2017.230 http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu zhang peili: record. repeat. art institute of chicago, march 31 – july 9, 2017 ellen larson exhibition review exhibition catalog: orianna cacchione, zhang peili: record. repeat. exh. cat. chicago: art institute of chicago, 2017. 96 pp.; 50 color ills. hardback $25.00 (9780300226225) exhibition schedule: art institute of chicago, march 31–july 9, 2017 about the author ellen larson is a second-year phd student at the university of pittsburgh, focusing her studies on modern and contemporary chinese art. she earned her master’s degree in modern chinese history from minzu university of china and actively curates exhibitions and cultural symposia focusing on contemporary chinese and global thematic topics in both the united states and china. ellen has contributed to english and chinese-language publications, including leap: the international art magazine of contemporary china and journal of beijing language and culture university. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 6, no 1 “boundless” (2017) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2017.230 widely recognized as “the world’s factory,” china is responsible for manufacturing most electronic devices used in our everyday lives. the laptops that have become integral to our daily productivity, the smart phones we use to record and share life’s moments, the touch-screens we view and interact with every hour of every day; these devices were likely manufactured and assembled in china. chinese contemporary culture and economy thrives on the newest electronic communication devices. yet, paradoxically, the earliest electronic video and camcording devices were only introduced to chinese households in the 1980s. near the end of this decade, in november 1988, chinese contemporary artist zhang peili premiered what has become widely recognized as the first work of chinese video art. the three-hour video work, 30x30 (figure 1), presents a cropped visual image of the artist who, after shattering a mirror on the ground, engages in the monotonous task of gluing it back together piece by piece. zhang peili recalls that during the first screening of the work, viewers became increasingly impatient with the static presentation of this nonsensical action, demanding that he fast-forward to the end. in this earliest example of chinese video art, zhang peili confounded the beholder’s expectations, disrupting the accepted notion that artworks and moving images are created for the sole purpose of entertainment. 30x30, in demanding patience from an impatient audience, underscores zhang peili’s continuing artistic practice of encouraging audience awareness of the existence of time, while presenting metaphorical imagery that comments on the particularity of chinese sociocultural conditions. almost thirty years later, zhang peili is regarded as the father of video art in china, referring not only to his artworks, but also to his role as teacher and mentor to many of the most successful young artists working today. record. repeat., curated by orianna cacchione and presented at the art institute of chicago, marks zhang peili’s first retrospective exhibition in the united states. the exhibition presents a unique opportunity for an international audience to encounter videos created by one of the most influential chinese artists in the past several decades. record. repeat. features twelve iconic works produced between 1988 and the mid-2000s. each work provides an engaged viewer with an interactive and sometimes confounding viewing experience, addressing particular sociocultural conditions through subtle metaphor. passive visitors unfamiliar with china’s sociopolitical climate during the past three decades may have difficulty extracting the subtle meaning and cultural critique layered within this assemblage of moving visuals. individuals experiencing this challenging and intriguing exhibition are confronted by three primary groupings of zhang peili’s experimental video work. the first category of works presents a series of formal exercises in repetition and disruption of daily life. following 30x30, these canonical videos are also motivated by zhang peili’s interest in capturing or emphasizing time through repetitive, meaningless exchanges and forcing his audience to become aware of the passage of time. the artist’s monotonous actions purposefully eliminate any sort of pleasure or entertainment value the viewer might be able to extract from her or his experience. eating (1997) is a three-channel video that captures the mundane act of eating from three different perspectives. three 1980s-era television monitors are stacked on top of one another, displaying a close-up presentation of the artist’s jaw, a plate of various food items such as boiled eggs, cucumbers, and tomatoes, and a glimpse of the artist from the perspective of the plate. this video compels viewers to become hyper-aware of their own zhang peili: record. repeat. art institute of chicago, march 31 – july 9, 2017 ellen larson http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 1 0 6 z ha ng p e i l i : r e c o r d . r e p e a t . contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 6, no 1 “boundless” (2017) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2017.230 figure 1 zhang peili, 30x30, 1988, single-channel color video, sound, 32:09 minute loop, collection of the artist. participation in the simple, often forgotten actions of daily life, while remaining cognizant of the presence of time. other videos contemplate themes of power and submission in a chinese sociohistorical context. shot in a similar manner to 30x30, zhang peili’s 1991 piece, document of hygiene no. 3, features three retro-monitors simultaneously presenting different views of the artist’s hands methodically engaged in the process of washing a hen. though initially resistant to this unnatural and intrusive act, the hen soon becomes passive in response to the artist’s persistence. this video enlists subtle metaphor to respond to government-instituted hygiene programs prevalent in china during the early 1990s. water: standard version from the cihai dictionary (1991) incorporates commonplace images from popular culture. the artist filmed television anchor xing zhibin, a figure widely recognized by those familiar with official chinese state media. while xing zhibin sits at a news desk, her customary role as disseminator of state rhetoric is undermined as she reads aloud from the standard cihai dictionary, defining terms that begin with the character shui (the chinese word for water). the video confounds spectators’ expectations of popular culture by challenging their passive acceptance of the current situational environment perpetuated through official rhetoric. a second category of videos presents zhang peili’s influential experimentation in new media and his active exploration of new recording and transmitting technologies introduced into chinese entertainment and popular culture during the mid-1980s. several works in this section also reflect the artist’s continued investigation into new forms of analog and digital media, introduced to china in the 1990s. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 1 0 7 e l l e n l a r s o n contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 6, no 1 “boundless” (2017) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2017.230 focal distance (1996) is an eight-channel video, the first screen of which captures a busy hangzhou street. subsequent screens are increasingly manipulated until all visual understanding of place has been lost through a process of technical deconstruction. focal distance presents viewers with a gradual optical disintegration of image; the presumed reality of photographic video slowly deconstructs until it is nothing more than abstracted pixels and colors. this work explores the disruption of visual and audio information through experimentation with digital media. this experimentation creates an awareness for the spectator that images seen in popular media may appear to represent experiences of real daily life, but are in fact forms of manipulated visual data. building on these themes—and especially evident in more recent artworks—a third category of videos shocks the audience out of passivity, compelling them it to confront art as more than simply a form of entertainment. these videos insert the viewer directly into the experience of the work. they suggest that media technologies can be employed by artists to generate greater audience participation and, by extension, more profound social value and cultural critique. a scene in black and white unfolded four times (2007) also elicits an unsuspecting audience participation into the work, becoming a catalyst in creating meaning. twenty-eight digital photographs of hangzhou’s venice water town appear on monitors connected to motion sensors. as individuals approach the images, the photographs go black. only at a distance can the viewer extract any meaning from the photographs. the public is encouraged to observe this media from a distance, but not to look too closely. spectators are reminded and frustrated that close analysis of ocular information is not permitted. actors lines (2002), last words (2003), and happiness (2006) all appropriate video clips from popular chinese revolutionary films. moving images are presented in a dark, theater-like space, far removed from the rest of the exhibition. the visuals are remixes of climactic moments from the films, creating repetitive dialogue and actions. as the short film segments are projected in this cinema-like space, the intended drama of these various scenes is undermined as the clip is played over and over. the actions become increasingly ridiculous each time they are repeated, gradually becoming devoid of meaning and drifting toward abstraction. through methodical, exaggerated, and often ridiculous means, zhang peili’s works distort the media of popular culture and actions of daily life. using video technologies as a means for cultural critique, his work continually questions the role of images in society. the exhibition presents spectators with an excellent introduction to zhang peili’s work and to important experimentation in video taking place in china in the 1980s and 90s. many of the works are presented on television monitors from the period, creating an intimate relationship between image and form. audience members who lived during this era may experience nostalgia, while those born in the past two decades are transported to an era of imperfection and impermanence initiated by the original analog format. the curation and presentation of record. repeat. encourages individuals to actively enter zhang peili’s practicing space and time, and consider the historical context, legacy, and preservation of these moving images. calling for more active participation in the exhibition experience, the artist remarks in the exhibition catalogue, “perhaps the time for supplying pleasure should be over. it is in the artist’s power to give it away and for (him) to take it back again.” http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 1 0 8 z ha ng p e i l i : r e c o r d . r e p e a t . contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 6, no 1 “boundless” (2017) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2017.230 new articles in this journal are licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 united states license. this journal is operated by the university library system of the university of pittsburgh as part of its d-scribe digital publishing program, and is co-sponsored by the university of pittsburgh press. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/ http://www.pitt.edu/ http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/ http://www.upress.pitt.edu/upressindex.aspx http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture vol 5, no 1 “agency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2016.183 http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu awakening objects and indigenizing the museum stephen gilchrist in conversation with henry f. skerritt abstract curated by stephen gilchrist, everywhen: the eternal present in indigenous art from australia was held at harvard art museums from february 5, 2016–september 18, 2016. the exhibition was a survey of contemporary indigenous art from australia, exploring the ways in which time is embedded within indigenous artistic, social, historical, and philosophical l ife . the exhibition included more than seventy works drawn from public and private collections in australia and the united states, and featured many works that have never been seen outside australia. everywhen is gilchrist’s second major exhibition in the united states, fo llowing crossing cultures: the owen and wagner collection of contemporary aboriginal australian art at the hood museum of art in 2012. conducted on april 22, 2016, this conversation considers the position of indigenous art in the museum, and the active ways in which curators and institutions can work to “indigenize” their institutions. gilchr ist discusses the evolution of everywhen, along with the curatorial strategies employed to change the status of object-viewer relations in the exhibition. the transcription has been edited for clarity. about the authors belonging to the yamatji people of northwest western australia, stephen gilchrist is associate lecturer of indigenous art at the university of sydney. he was the australian studies visiting curator at the harvard art museums where he curated everywhen: the eternal present in indigenous art from australia. henry f. skerritt is curator of indigenous art of australia at the kluge-ruhe aborigina l art collection, university of virginia. skerritt is a doctoral candidate in the department of history of art and architecture at the university of pittsburgh. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.183 henry f. skerritt (hs): i’d like to start by discussing your evolution as a curator, and in particular, how it shapes the thinking behind everywhen. stephen gilchrist (sg): well, my work as a curator can be characterized by un-belonging and belonging—working within institutions and without—and the pros and cons that come with both of those opportunities. as a curator i want to keep trying new things by working with different artists, different collections, and different spaces. i’ve worked with australian state and national col lections and at university art museums in north america. for what it’s worth, i consider myself to be a curator of contemporary art and so the everywhen show was an opportunity for me to work more explicitly with historic objects. the invitation for this show was to think about those ideas that i bring about the contemporary, of presentness, of nowness, and to place them in conversation with the history of collections. within this framework, i was hopeful that the show could also be an intervention into those collections. hs: that’s interesting because you’ve already brought up the idea of the histor ica l. at the same time, everywhen to me is a very conceptual exhibition. it’s quite different to any surveys of its kind staged before. what were you trying to do with that show in particular, and what were the particular challenges that it brought up? sg: for me, the provocation of the show is really to imagine the world otherwise: to think through, between, and beyond, what we’ve been presented as the dominant narratives of indigenous art and culture. colonization isn’t the meta-narrative of indigeneity, but people often think that it is, so in this show i wanted to explore other ways of be ing in time; the rhythms of seasonal time, the shape-shifting of ancestral time, the measures of ceremonial time in addition to colonial and post-colonial time. i wanted people to engage not just with the 228 years since colonization, but also with the 40,000 plus years of indigenous residence on the place now termed australia. the invitation for visitors is to become synchronous with the everywhen, even if only momentarily, and by doing so they could lessen the burden of the colonial register in this exhibition. of course colonization is there, it’s never going away, but you can try to blunt it somehow. and to me this methodological approach endorses the potential of indigenization within museums. it is a process of un-assimilation. by making the frames of reference to be wholly indigenous, as much as we can, we are not just decolonizing the space, we are in fact indigenizing it. hs: can you just tease out the distinction there? it strikes me that part of that distinction is one of intersubjectivity. you’re trying to get away from this dialectic that frames the colonizer and the colonized in this kind of mutually dependent power re lationship, is that right? awakening objects and indigenizing the museum stephen gilchrist in conversation with henry f. skerritt http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 1 1 0 a w a k e n i n g o b j e c t s a n d i n d i g e n i z i ng th e mu s e u m c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/cont.2016.183 figure 1 ins tallation view of “seasonality” module from everywhen: the eternal present in indigenous art from aus tralia, harvard a rt museums, c ambridge, ma, curated by stephen gilchrist. works left to right: gulumbu yunupingu, garak iv (the universe), 2004; regina pilawuk wilson, syaw (fish net), 2008; yumutjin wunungmurra, gangan to baraltja (larrakitj), 2005; djirrirra wunungmurra, dhalwangu (larrakitj), 2005; djambawa marawili, dhakandjali—dhupundji (larrakitj), 2006; djirrirra wunungmurra, yukuwa, 2010; and judy watson, bunya, 2011. image courtesy harvard art museums, © p res ident and fellows of harvard c ollege. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 1 1 1 s te p h e n g i l c h r i s t a n d he n r y f . s k e r r i t t c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.183 sg: exactly. the exhibition isn’t merely about time, it is also about power and who gets to claim time, history, place, and cultural memory. the essential question for me is not why are we excluded from cultural texts and institutions, art histories, and formations of nationhood, but why are we part of these systems to begin with. the norm is a disruption for indigenous people, so how can we disrupt this historical violence that has become normative? for me, one possible strategy is to return to the foundational narratives of place, people and practice and to weave those into the internal logic of the exhibition. even though both strategies are necessary and productive, i feel that there is a different inflection between a curatorial practice that privileges philosophies of decolonization over indigenization. for me at least, the former is about undoing something that invariably feels like you are forever playing catch up. indigenization for me is about doing; manifesting, instantiating, and running our own race on our own terms. i am reluctant to say the distinction is between “undoing” and “being” as i don’t want to reproduce unhelpful essentialist tropes, but i think there is something crucial about openness and creating openings to indigenous ways of seeing, knowing, and being. hs: and how is that being received in the usa? sg: it’s so hard to be objective. hs: well you don’t have to be objective. sg: well, there is actually a lot of freedom in doing a show for north american audiences, because many of the signposts that are used and are useful for australian audiences don’t register here. conceptually, i needed to disrespect chronology, to disrespect these colonial geographies, and to disrespect these distinctions between the urban, the remote and the rural, but they were also practical considerations too. i want people to understand the breadth, sophistication, beauty, and politics of indigenous art and i hope that most v isitors get a sense of that. it would be great if visitors could spend time with these unfamiliar ideas that can potentially recalibrate their understanding of indigeneity. hs: let’s get down to more practical questions. can we talk a bit about the show’s evolution? i’m thinking here very much in the practical sense, the way you went through thinking about the collections at harvard, and but also of the other collections that you drew from. what do the practicalities of putting a show like this together look like? sg: my very first visit to harvard university included a tour of the collection storage at the peabody museum of archaeology and ethnology, but at that stage i didn’t really have a clear idea of what i wanted to see, as i didn’t really know what was there. with the collections manager, i was pulling out drawers, looking, seeing, listening to which objects spoke to me and which objects were of interest. one of the first groups of objects that i saw were the beautiful riji (engraved pearl shells) that we have in the exhibition. one in particular was a broken pearl shell, with incised geometric designs that were infilled and rubbed with ochre. what interested me was that it represented a fragment of material culture that was thousands and thousands of miles from where it came from. but it also voiced this promissory moment of reconnection. i wanted the objects to go through this process of somehow returning to the communities from which they came. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 1 1 2 a w a k e n i n g o b j e c t s a n d i n d i g e n i z i ng th e mu s e u m c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/cont.2016.183 museums do represent loss for indigenous peoples, so this object literalized these ideas of brokenness and of being incomplete. i wanted the objects to represent both the ceremonies that never were, the ceremonies that never could be, but also be a conduit of reconnection. sometimes, the information that we have as museum professionals and as indigenous people is not just incomplete, but incompletable. but this process of falling into the unknown brings us closer to who we were, who we are, and who we will be. an important component of this idea of reconnection was touch. and so i chose objects from the peabody’s collection that were and are cradled, woven, worn, held c lose, performed, struck. in this exhibition we have coolamons (vessels), basketry, mats, pearl shells, drums, and three larrakitj (hollow log coffins) to demonstrate a life lived through objects and how the abstracted indigenous body becomes reconstituted. interestingly, we received instructions from a community about who exactly could touch their objects. and it was a great reminder that touch is conditional, relational and it is also a gift. the objects are like the notation but when they come into contact with communities in rea l and symbolic ways, this notation becomes music. hs: i think that’s a segue to talk about objects, because one of the things that str ikes me about this show, everywhen, and crossing cultures and some of the other shows that you’ve done, is that you seem very interested in allowing the objects to speak and allowing them to speak in relation to other objects.1 often there seems to be a feeling with aboriginal art exhibitions that, in order to provide adequate “context,” the exhibitions must include mountains of text, video, audio, and other supplementary material. how do you deal with objects whose meanings are often ambiguous or alien to viewers, particular ly in america, and how can objects in museums speak without the curator speaking for them? sg: i think that is one of the most difficult tasks as a curator. i actually think that we do have a lot of text, almost every object has its own extended label of about 150 words, we do have video interviews with artists in the space and we do have regular guided tours. as a teaching museum, the exhibition had to fulfill certain pedagogical takeaways and i had to give people enough points of access, in multiple platforms for them to respond to the visual, auditory, temporal, and scholarly information in the space. these are fairly traditional ways of communicating information but they don’t by themselves do the work that needs to be done by the visitor or even the object. hs: can you expand on what you mean by that? because i think there is something about your curating that is very respectful to honoring the works and their creators, and their cultures. so what do you mean when you say that it is a really traditional manner? because, i think that term has slightly different connotations in the american and australian contexts. 1 see stephen gilchrist, ed., crossing cultures: the owen and wagner collection of contemporary abor i ginal aus tralian art at the hood museum of art (hanover, nh: hood museum of art, dartmouth college, 2012). http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 1 1 3 s te p h e n g i l c h r i s t a n d he n r y f . s k e r r i t t c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.183 figure 2 ins tallation view of “t rans formation” module from everywhen: the e ternal p resent in indigenous art from a us tralia, harvard art museums, c ambridge, ma, curated by stephen gilchrist. works background, left to right: walter t jamlitjinpa, rainbow and water story, 1972; m ick namararri tjapaltjarri, big cave dreaming with ceremonial object, 1972; ronnie t jampitjinpa, two women dreaming, 1990; and gunybi ganambarr, buyku, 2011. foreground, left to right: unidentified artist, coolamon, c .18961931; unidentified artist, coolamon, c .1896-1931; unidentified artist, coolamon, c .1951; and unidentified artis t, coolamon, c .1951. image c ourtesy harvard a rt museums, © p res ident and fellows of harvard c ollege. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 1 1 4 a w a k e n i n g o b j e c t s a n d i n d i g e n i z i ng th e mu s e u m c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/cont.2016.183 sg: yes, we are talking about two overlapping sets of traditions. as a curator or art historian you can’t be closed to what the object is trying to say to you or to audiences. indigenous people sometimes describe it as “waking up objects,” so the first point of departure is be ing open to these awakenings with objects. and that means having a reverence and a respect for these objects, recognizing that you can unlock this cultural information through these encounters, sometimes through touch, but, also through the other senses as well: looking, smelling, listening, touching. i think that is a traditional indigenous way. i think art museums produce particular ways of thinking and behaving. you read a label that has an authoritative, omniscient voice that is based on the assumption that we’re all children of the enlightenment, and that we want to have these rational, scientific labe ls. i’m not suggesting that there is no reason or intellectualism in indigenous culture, but i am much more interested in different philosophies of perception. there are ways of understanding these objects that aren’t necessarily cognitive. hs: i think this comes back to the idea you’d spoke of earlier about indigenizing the museum. you’ve written about shifting the role of the ethnographic museum to allow for the reaffirmation and reinterpretation of objects for indigenous peoples. how do you think museums can take an alternative role for indigenous peoples, to allow them to get in touch with their pasts and identities? is that possible in a show like everywhen that is so far from the geographic point of origin of the works? and does it require museums to completely rethink that kind of enlightenment way of doing things as well, and to open themselves up to alternative ways of experiencing objects? sg: two of the works in the show are cylindrical-shaped ochred baskets that had become flattened and misaligned over the years. i chose them because they had these great abrasions from the wearer’s shoulders showing the body imprinted on the object. louise hamby who had a visiting fellowship at the peabody museum invited an important elder from milingimbi to look at these works. when we selected them for display, peabody conservators reversed the damage and by putting them on display, the works were awakened. it was through these active and generative encounters with those objects on a cultural but also a material level. even though they are far from home, these objects become renewed through these active encounters. hs: one of the things that strikes me is your emphasis on praxis, and on the active process of indigenizing over the essentialized idea of indigenous curating. i know you’ve spoken about striking a balance between indigeneity as a strategically essentialist mode and a form of active being in the world. i’d like to try and tease out what this looks like in practice in the context of curating. what are the things that institutions might do to move forward in indigenizing their institutions? sg: well, i think it’s about recalibrating their relationship to the objects away from preservation into activation. it is about activating relationships and not de fining them. objects become fully realized through active encounters with their community. the cultural memory of objects resides with the community, and institutions need to be mindful of this. from the beginning, the objects for me weren’t objects at all. they were subjects, and the challenge was how to deploy this subjective status for the viewer and for the institution. at the opening of the show, i spoke about openness and being open. institutions have to be open, and not closed to entering into dialogues about the memory of these cultura l objects http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 1 1 5 s te p h e n g i l c h r i s t a n d he n r y f . s k e r r i t t c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.183 and the custodianship of these objects. i think that is the first step. it’s not necessarily about having indigenous curators or, curators who have an indigenist approach. the museum itself has to be open to this process of indigenization. hs: when you talk about that it sounds like a lot of it operates outside of the exhibition itself. where do exhibitions fit into this? i think of how someone like jens hoffmann has started to refer to himself as an “exhibition maker” as opposed to a curator, in order to draw a distinction between these two practices. but it seems to me, when you talk about curating, you are speaking about it as a much broader activity. sg: like painting is more than painting, curating is more than curating. it is a social practice and a form of activism, and those modalities are engaged within the space, but also, as you say, outside the exhibition space. for me, an exhibition is about “presencing.” it is about being in and with the presence of the ancestors, but it is also about bringing things into view, into focus, into relief. sometimes it is less about the accomplishment of that goal and more about the effort. i’m particularly thinking about the objects whose original names have been erased. we engage with the object and with the community to allow for a surfacing of information that can be presented in the space. we changed the labels to read “unidentified artist” rather than “unknown maker,” and for me this was about presencing the humanness of the makers and perhaps the carelessness of the collectors. within these histories of erasure what can still be presenced? hs: how have the various projects that you’ve worked on before helped you to develop your ideas on the possibilities and the potentials of an indigenized practice, and how do you see the state of the field both locally and globally? sg: yeah, that is a hard question to answer for all kinds of reasons. hs: well, maybe a different way to approach the question is to ask who you would see as mentors, and what you learned from them. but also, how do you think that the challenges are different for an indigenous curator working today as opposed to your predecessors, such as hetti perkins, brenda croft, or djon mundine? sg: yes, they are definitely my curatorial mentors and tormentors and i have learnt so much from them. one lesson is to use the enviable platform that we are given as curators to speak truth to power. but the monopolies of violence over our indigenous communities are even greater today, and the risks of speaking out are high. i worry about the state of indigenous art at the moment. we reached a poin t, i guess in 2008, where there were indigenous curators in every single state art gallery in australia and of course the national gallery of australia. since then, though, we have had a numerica l regression with a number of high-profile senior level curators standing down, i think as a vote of no confidence in these institutions. but we have also had these locational regressions, where the space afforded to indigenous art is shrinking. i guess it comes as no surprise when, as a nation, we have basically been going backwards politically. so i f ind a ll this very troubling. however, there is also a growing interest in indigenous art internationally and i definitely see that continuing. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 1 1 6 a w a k e n i n g o b j e c t s a n d i n d i g e n i z i ng th e mu s e u m c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/cont.2016.183 figure 3 ins tallation view of “remembrance” module from everywhen: the eternal present in indigenous art from aus tralia, harvard a rt museums, c ambridge, ma, curated by stephen gilchrist. works left to right: julie gough, dark valley, van dieman’s land, 2008; v ernon a h kee, many lies , 2004; yhonnie scarce, the s ilence of others (series of s ix) n2360, n2409, n2357, n2394, n1858, n2358; and p addy nyukuny bedford, emu dreaming, 2003. image c ourtesy harvard a rt museums, © p res ident and fellows of harvard c ollege. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 1 1 7 s te p h e n g i l c h r i s t a n d he n r y f . s k e r r i t t c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.183 hs: i know it’s a difficult question, but why do you think that this regression has happened? sg: i do think, on one level indigenous art has been a victim of its own success in australia . indigenous art was everywhere for a while. and, maybe audiences in australia did reach a kind of saturation point and were no longer receptive to what it offered. for me it has been really great working in an international sphere, where aboriginal art is not the other to australian art. it is immediately and necessarily part of an internationalized discussion around the categories of contemporary art and, by virtue of being seen in these new contexts, it creates expansionary movement in our understanding, awareness, and cultura l value. hs: i think that’s an interesting question, about the sort of difference between the loca l to global context. i pulled this quote of yours that i liked a lot, where you said, “the lesson of indigenous art is not that it behaves differently from contemporary art, but rather that contemporary art can no longer be considered a singular entity. like the other myriad alternate forms of contemporary art practice current today, indigenous art must be evaluated on its own terms.”2 i like that quote because it gets to the heart of a lot of the complex challenges that aboriginal art poses in the contemporary art world context. sg: i think maybe that the first wave of indigenous curators were necessarily about visibility. it was about localized resistance to institutions that were refusing to exhibit indigenous art and even refusing to consider indigenous art as fine art, let alone contemporary art. i think new generations of indigenous artists and curators are grappling with not necessarily the politics of exclusion, but the politics of inclusion, as in, how do we position ourselves? now that we’re here, we don’t have to defend who we are, we get to define who we are. we don’t have to be understood in opposition to the dominant culture, but we can be understood in relation to and with ourselves. hs: in your essay “indigenising curatorial practice” you make the point, that attempts to position indigenous art globally often end up implying that indigenous art needs the validation of the western art world.3 but it strikes me that you’re seeing an opportunity in this globalized space to enliven the world. you conclude your catalogue essay by saying, “[t]he everywhen can show us that indigenous art and culture do not merely represent the time before time, but in fact, awaken us to the fullness of it.”4 i wonder if you can speak then to this question of separatism because it seems to me that separatism as a concept makes a lot more sense in australia than it does for a curator in the usa. i guess the question is, where your international experience forces you to take different stances in the australian context than the american context on these ideas. 2 stephen gilchrist and jananggoo butcher cherel, "am i a good painter or not?" in no boundaries, ed. henry f. skerritt (reno and new york: nevada museum of art and prestel, 2014), 48. 3 stephen gilchrist, “indigenising curatorial practice,” in the world is not a foreign land, ed. quentin sprague (parville: ian potter museum of art, university of melbourne, 2014), 55-59. 4 stephen gilchrist, ed. everywhen: the eternal present in indigenous art from australia (cambridge, ma: harvard art museums, 2016), 30. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 1 1 8 a w a k e n i n g o b j e c t s a n d i n d i g e n i z i ng th e mu s e u m c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/cont.2016.183 sg: absolutely. it’s not that the stakes are higher or lower, but the stakes are definitely different. every exhibition is a curatorial exercise in wayfinding, and i think this exhibition has taught me that as i move through the world, relationships are my politics. i t is about intellectual, cultural, and political engagement, and who we can bring with us into this collective and often difficult “we.” i felt that i was also using the institutional armature of harvard university to state something that to me is self-evident. aboriginal art isn’t of the margins. it is something that is self-possessed and deserving of its own value. the work of the viewer is to not just question the canon, but question canonicity itself. the job of the curator is to negotiate the indigenous systems of value that don’t change with those that do. hs: so, in that sense then, do you see yourself having to take on the role of translator, trying to translate one world into another world? sg: translation is definitely part of it but i think it’s also about unsettling one world so it can better recognize the other. hs: critics like tony bennett have made a strong case that the institution of the museum is designed to perpetuate a very modernist and progressive version of time.5 everywhen seems very much an attempt to work against the hegemony of progressive time. returning to the question of indigenizing the museum, how do you think that indigenous cultura l practices can work within or against the in-built temporal frames of the museum? sg: when i was initially thinking about this exhibition and even when we were installing it, i did envision the museum as this site of temporal collapse. but it isn’t about the disintegration or the flattening of time. it is about the possibilities of activating these registers of the past, present, and future. the white-rectilinear galleries that i was given to work with have the ir own histor ies and significations and the only way i could address it was through configuring the exhibition as this endless figure eight which obviously is about non-linearity. the themes of the show are, like time itself, overlapping, dynamic and interactive and as you move through the space, you move through, between, and beyond these indigenous temporal frames. hs: i guess that that is the essence of not fetishizing the museum. i sometimes fee l that there is a danger in hardline foucauldian arguments of reifying the power structures, and then perpetuating their power. but if you don’t let those power structures dictate, then there is the possibility of working within them as well against them. 5 tony bennet, pasts beyond memory: evolution, museums, colonialism (london: routledge, 2004). http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 1 1 9 s te p h e n g i l c h r i s t a n d he n r y f . s k e r r i t t c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.183 figure 4 ins tallation view of “p erformance” module from everywhen: the eternal present in indigenous art from aus tralia, harvard a rt museums, c ambridge, ma, curated by stephen gilchrist. works left to right: doreen reid nakamarra, untitled, 2007; unidentified artist, warup (drum), mid-19th—early 20th century; and dorothy napangardi, karntakurlangu jukurrpa, 2002. image c ourtesy harvard a rt museums, © p res ident and fellows of harvard c ollege. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 1 2 0 a w a k e n i n g o b j e c t s a n d i n d i g e n i z i ng th e mu s e u m c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/cont.2016.183 sg: yes, i mean for me it’s about redirecting energy and modeling these values within a space of discomfort but also a space of reciprocity. your question was about museum framing and seeing? hs: yeah, that’s right, i mean you are still working within a museum context. but it seems to me that everywhen is very successful at working against those frames without necessarily being explicit in the way that it’s doing it. it feels like quite a subtle piece of subterfuge. sg: there’s always a little bit of stealth work that is required and i do think it is probably closer to subversion than inversion. but at the same time, i was very up front about what i was doing and why i was doing it and asking why it hadn’t been done before. the harvard art museums didn’t want me to be curatorially anonymous and so they encouraged me to use my voice and the voicings of the artists to achieve these a ims. with some things like the surfacing of indigenous words for indigenous objects, i didn’t ask permission, but i also didn’t think that i needed to. hs: how would you respond to indigenous american artists or curators who might argue that they face the same problems here, that indigenous australian curators face in australia. i guess this a dual question, how do you think what you’re doing here might be able to have an impact in australia? but also, how do you think it might be able to impact what’s going on in the local context here with indigenous practice, which has really, i think, been neglected in a very big way? sg: oh, yeah, absolutely. at all the talks and lectures and presentations, and film screenings that we have had at harvard, we have begun with an acknowledgement of country. and it’s been really amazing how this small, but important gesture can really change the way people understand the place we are in. some people have found it quite profound, and i ’ve been struck by how necessary those things are because of the neglect of the incredible art practices of native american artists. people have said to me, “you know, this [everywhen] is great, but it’d be great to also see a native american show here.” and i have to say, i completely agree. what we have to do is just to try and show support, and show that we’re trying to unpack some of the same things. so it’s a case of trying to do two things at one time. i’m asking people to think about what happened in australia, but also what happened here as well, so hopefully there’s two takeaways to the show. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 1 2 1 s te p h e n g i l c h r i s t a n d he n r y f . s k e r r i t t c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.183 new articles in this journal are licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 united states license. this journal is operated by the university library system of the university of p ittsburgh as part of its d-scribe digital p ublishing p rogram, and is co-sponsored by the university of p ittsburgh press. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/ http://www.pitt.edu/ http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/ http://www.upress.pitt.edu/upressindex.aspx http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture vol 8, no 1 (2019) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2019.293 http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu art and miracle in renaissance tuscany robert maniura sarah reiff conell book review robert maniura, art and miracle in renaissance tuscany. cambridge: cambridge university press, 2018. 276 pp.; 59 b/w ills. hardcover $99.99. (9781108426848) about the author sarah reiff conell is a phd candidate in the history of art and architecture department at the university of pittsburgh. she employs art-historical and digital methods to investigate late medieval and early modern cults of the virgin mary in the danube river valley. her research traces the flow of miraculous agency through objects that participate in various forms of replication both within and across media. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 8, no 1 (2019) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2019.293 this engaging book by robert maniura represents the leading edge of scholarly discourse about miraculous agency. throughout this study, the author draws upon a rich corpus of materials, taking into consideration tokens (badges and prints), paintings, votive offerings, books, and works of architecture as well as both personal and organizational records. unpublished primary sources are represented in excerpts, brief transcriptions, and translations. maniura’s narrative is punctuated by elegant plans and maps (by matilde grimaldi) that emphasize the spatial context in which the actions that are central to this text’s argument unfold. art and miracle in renaissance tuscany revisits some case studies offered in limited form in maniura’s earlier essays, such as that of the pratese lawyer, giuliano di francesco guizzelmi. in this book, the author limits his scope to the “biographical timescale” demarcated by the life of guizzelmi (1446–1518). the itinerant life of this lawyer offers a window into the personal draw of cults, acting as “a guide to the visual and devotional culture of his time” (8). throughout this text, maniura avoids arguments about historical beliefs, instead focusing on the behaviors of people and objects as components within a single structure, “an arena in which relationships, both sacred and social were generated and developed” (12). the first chapter introduces readers to the guizzelmi family, including their particularly rich archival legacy. the family chapel is placed in the context of familiar art historical territory through comparison with other major monuments. such examples illustrate the aspirations of the guizzelmi and establish guiliano as a figure particularly worthy of attention. before addressing guiliano guizzelmi’s marian devotion, maniura devotes a chapter to presenting four examples of the lawyer’s christocentric devotional practice: his veneration of two miraculous crucifixes, the focus on christ in the iconography of the painted program in the family’s burial chapel, his membership in a confraternity that accentuated devotion to the eucharist, and a vow to make a pilgrimage to the holy sepulcher in jerusalem that remained unfulfilled on his death. this emphasis on christ is a framework for understanding the later exploration of marian devotion, likewise acting as a counter balance to potential misunderstanding about exclusivity in devotional allegiances. chapter three introduces pratese marian cults, which are the subject of much of guizzelmi’s writing and the primary focus of this book. shrines are framed in context of community, simultaneously ecclesiastic and civic, represented by guizzelmi in handwritten manuscripts that recount and update local miracles. these were not printed but rather lent out as a rearticulation of the cult and its continuity, incorporating stories from guizellmi’s own lifetime. maniura compellingly argues that devotion is in constant need of construction, and therefore cannot be passive. he likewise introduces the power of intermediary material tokens that combine resemblance and touch, facets that feature prominently in the miracles of the town’s burgeoning image cult. chapter four establishes the cult of santa maria delle carceri’s origins, as a once marginal painting on a prison wall transformed into a devotional image worthy of a shrine. by tracing the early communal response, maniura offers readers valuable insights into the political, architectural, and textual landscape in which guizzelmi’s actions emerged. maniura argues that devotional acts were learned and highly social behaviors in which devotees relinquished control in their performance without guaranteed outcomes. chapter five delves further into the unique components of guizzelmi’s miracle book about santa maria delle carceri. his narrative additions to the collection include claims of firstand second-person accounts of miraculous events, and shift from tales of highly localized miracles art and miracle in renaissance tuscany robert maniura sarah reiff conell http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 1 2 9 s a r a h r e i f f c o ne l l contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 8, no 1 (2019) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2019.293 to geographically distant intercessions that took place away from the shrine. in his reporting of these non-proximate instances, guizzelmi emerges as a propagator of this new cult’s dissemination, largely through the distribution of and advice concerning mediating material tokens. these prints and badges shared two key features; they were figured to resemble santa maria delle carceri and had touched the painting. maniura hones in on vows as fundamental and active rituals by leveraging this primary source as a rare, first-hand account of appropriate devotional behavior. vows and votive offerings are explored in a full chapter as central components to a type of ritual action described as an “exchange of images” (139). the author lays out the many forms that representation can take and draws parallels to ritual behavior, arguing that “material gift and devotional performance are inextricable” (158). drawing inspiration from gift giving, votive offerings are framed as performative and social acts, a process primarily articulated by images rather than words. as he puts it, “the painting actively constructs the relationship it shows” (166). chapter seven directly confronts the role of the visual in devotional practice. maniura asserts that miracles of healing and intercession, which are often distant from the shrine itself, warrant more attention than miracles of transformation. he states that focusing on moments of transformation puts undue emphasis on the status of the miraculous image or the shrine itself. maniura instead forefronts actions associated with the image, in part by drawing connections between miracles and magic. images are central to ritual and act as “foci for constructive performances of devotion” (177). people, rather than divine forces, are the unmistakable actors in maniura’s system, as “the devotees themselves construct the miracle” (173). for the author, performance makes reality, and ritual is defined as a form of collective identity construction. he advocates for a diffused model of agency in miraculous cults, a move away from seeing cult chapels or their central objects as points of principal devotion. maniura offers compelling evidence that “miraculous images are only one element of a rich devotional landscape” (9). nevertheless, they were certainly objects that figured centrally in devotees’ actions, and the author’s description of these images highlights one of the fundamental contradictions in the study of miracle cults; it is difficult to understand why shrines were filled with valuable objects or why tokens that touched miraculous images were used in healing if it was, as he argues, “unlikely that they were taken to provide direct access to the divine” (9). in his conclusion, the author employs terms like “framework,” “diagram,” and “system” while continuing to eschew notions of psychology or belief. the actions of a pratese lawyer provide a valuable window into a single case, one that calls for further integration with actions of others and perhaps even the convictions that led people to put their faith in images. the persistent metaphor of networks might be useful in expanding the scope of this research without flattening out the particulars that make maniura’s scholarship exceptionally strong. engaging with network theory may help expand and develop his exciting claim that “what makes sense of these phenomena is the network of action itself” (188).1 this book is a treasure-trove of insights into devotional behaviors of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. it is well-researched and makes visible a range of rich archives, from civic administrations to personal documents. the author weaves historiographical discourse with primary sources, canonical artworks, and lesser-known objects to render a masterful representation of devotion in renaissance tuscany. each example is part of a narrative that leads the reader to a fuller understanding of the context in which guizzelmi lived. chapter six has particular pedagogical potential for unpacking the role of wax offerings in art history, while also providing a model of research for objects that no longer survive. cambridge university press has produced an attractive book with illustrations of nearly every object discussed, including a few images of pages within the primary sources themselves. with a relatively high 1 there is much work to be done to realize the full potential of networks in art history, particularly in relation to questions of agency. for an introduction to the challenges and affordances of networks in history and archeology, see tom brughmans, anna collar, and fiona susan coward, eds., the connected past: challenges to network studies in archaeology and history (oxford: oxford university press, 2016). http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 1 3 0 a r t a nd m i r a c l e i n r e na i s s a n c e t u s c any contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 8, no 1 (2019) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2019.293 sticker price, it is unfortunate that color illustrations are only available online. nevertheless, this captivating and wonderfully rich volume is a valuable resource for anyone invested in late medieval and early modern devotion. new articles in this journal are licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 united states license. this journal is operated by the university library system of the university of pittsburgh as part of its d-scribe digital publishing program, and is co-sponsored by the university of pittsburgh press. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/ http://www.pitt.edu/ http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/ http://www.upress.pitt.edu/upressindex.aspx http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ art and miracle in renaissance tuscany robert maniura art and miracle in renaissance tuscany robert maniura contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture vol 6, no 1 “boundless” (2017) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2017.232 http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu defying empire: the third national indigenous art triennial national gallery of australia, may 26 – september 10, 2017 marina tyquiengco exhibition review exhibition catalog: tina baum, defying empire: 3rd national indigenous art triennial. canberra: national gallery of art, 2017. 160 pp. $39.95 (9780642334688) exhibition schedule: national gallery of australia, canberra, act, may 26, 2017 – september 10, 2017 about the author marina tyquiengco specializes in contemporary indigenous art as a phd student at the university of pittsburgh working with professor terry smith. she received her master of arts in history of art and architecture at pitt in 2016. her ma examines the contemporary reuse of ethnographic photographs by aboriginal australian artists. her dissertation will focus on indigenous selfhood through artists’ use of their own bodies from the 1990s to today in australia, canada, and the u.s. she will serve as editor-in-chief of contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture for a special issue on the topic of race and museums. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 6, no 1 “boundless” (2017) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2017.232 what is contemporary indigenous art in 2017? the third national indigenous art triennial, defying empire, demonstrates the breadth and diversity of indigenous art, specifically in australia.1 contemporary aboriginal art, like contemporary art more generally, lacks a unified style and is connected by a concern for distinct temporalities and alternative histories.2 defying empire evidences that art can be both indigenous and contemporary, as scholars like ian mclean argue.3 the term “aboriginal” has mainly been used to describe art by australia’s indigenous peoples based on distinct visual languages they have passed down for generations, and presented in culturally specific mediums. the traditional aspects of remote aboriginal art have led many art scholars from the 1970s, onward, to argue against its modernity and, thus, its contemporaneity. until recently, artists of aboriginal descent working in western mediums were marginalized—qualifying as neither contemporary nor aboriginal art. defying empire opened to the public at the national gallery of australia (nga) in canberra on friday, may 26, 2017. as part of the opening celebration, curator tina baum delivered a lecture, which was followed by several artist talks. the date of the opening was chosen to coincide with australia’s nineteenth annual national sorry day, a day commemorating the publication of bringing them home, a national report on the forced removal of aboriginal children from their homes and communities, which took place from 1910 to 1970. these displaced aboriginal people, known as the stolen generations, encountered considerable abuse and ill treatment at the hands of church and government schools outside of their communities. the stolen generations is just one example of the many human rights atrocities committed against aboriginal people with the complicity of the australian government. the following day, may 27th, marked the fiftieth anniversary of the “yes” vote for the 1967 referendum, a ballot initiative removing a reference to aboriginal people and a discriminatory clause from australia’s constitution.4 the referendum’s success allowed aboriginal people to be counted in the census. as aboriginal activist and historian gary foley argued during a panel discussion on the referendum, the impact of the referendum is still controversial. the timing of this exhibition opening with politically significant anniversaries could suggest an explicitly political reading of the exhibition but the works on view, in fact, demonstrate exceptional nuance and subtlety. defying empire asks what, if anything, has changed for aboriginal people and their creative practices since these historic moments. one answer, according to baum, herself a member of the 1 i will refer to the national indigenous art triennial as the triennial generally and the iterations of it by their subtitles. 2 aboriginal, a latin rooted word meaning “from the beginning,” is the term commonly used for indigenous peoples of australia. 3 see ian mclean, ed. how aborigines invented contemporary art: writings on aboriginal contemporary art (sydney: power publications, 2015). 4 “the 1967 referendum: fact sheet 150,” australian government, accessed may 28, 2017, http://www.naa.gov.au/collection/fact-sheets/fs150.aspx defying empire: the third national indigenous art triennial national gallery of australia, may 26 – september 10, 2017 marina tyquiengco http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ http://www.naa.gov.au/collection/fact-sheets/fs150.aspx 1 1 5 m a r i n a t y q u i e n g c o contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 6, no 1 “boundless” (2017) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2017.232 larrakia/wadaman/karajarri peoples of the northern territory and western australia, is that, “we defy by existing,” a pronouncement she repeated throughout the opening celebration.5 all three curators of the triennials have been of aboriginal descent, demonstrating the nga’s commitment to promoting aboriginal artists and indigenous curatorial practice. baum is the curator of aboriginal and torres strait islander art at the national gallery of art and contributed to previous triennials, thus providing a degree of curatorial consistency. artists in the show represent every state of australia based on their language and people associations. the first niat, culture warriors, was curated by artist and scholar brenda croft, then–senior curator of aboriginal and torres strait islander art. culture warriors provided an encyclopedic survey of aboriginal art, with thirty artists representing equally urban and remote areas of australia. the exhibition presented the artists as culture warriors, fighting for either preservation or reconnection with their respective cultures. the second niat, undisclosed, organized by curator carly lane, sought to correct the over-representation of geographically remote artists in aboriginal art globally and nationally by focusing heavily on urban-based artists. figure 1 installation view, defying empire: the third national indigenous art triennial, national gallery of australia, canberra, act, photo courtesy of national gallery of australia. 5 tina baum, conversation with author, may 27, 2017. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 1 1 6 d e f y i n g e m p i r e : t h e t h i r d n a t i o n a l i n d i g e n ou s a r t t r i e n n i a l contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 6, no 1 “boundless” (2017) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2017.232 defying empire mirrors both the scale of culture warriors and the geographic emphasis of undisclosed providing space for artists to claim and proclaim their aboriginality while eschewing the stereotypes of aboriginal art. as baum states, “when people think of aboriginal artists, they think of bark painting and dot painting so we need to challenge that by featuring those artists among everyone else as well.” most artists in the exhibition utilize nontraditional mediums such as film, installation, sound art, and multimedia works. baum’s deliberate refusal to showcase the expected is a strength of defying empire and exhibitions like the national indigenous art triennial. as baum states, “they are contemporary artists who happen to be indigenous, who happen to be gay or lesbian who happen to be mothers, fathers, or brothers.” baum, like the exhibition overall, presents the artists’ indigeneity as one, deeply felt, identity, among others. figure 2 installation view, defying empire: the third national indigenous art triennial, national gallery of australia, canberra, act, photo courtesy of national gallery of australia. the exhibition begins in the nga’s main entrance with reiko rennie’s oa_rr (2016), a painted rolls royce. the title of rennie’s piece is a riff on the term “og” or “original gangster” — “oa” stands for “original aboriginal.” as rennie’s title indicates, street art and hip hop culture influence his work as much as his kamilaroi heritage does. the gold luxury car with its kamilaroiand graffiti-inspired designs exemplifies these dual influences on urban aboriginal people. most of the exhibition is in the nga’s temporary exhibition space next to its australian gallery; two striking exceptions, however, are yhonnie scarce’s phenomenal thunder raining poison (2015) and dale harding’s thought-provoking installation their little black slaves perished in isolation (2015) (figure 1). scarce’s sculpture speaks to the devastating health effects of nuclear testing at maralinga in south australia, http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 1 1 7 m a r i n a t y q u i e n g c o contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 6, no 1 “boundless” (2017) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2017.232 her home state. thunder raining poison is composed of two thousand fetus-like glass-blown yams, tinted green, suspended in the air—poignant and breathtaking—and resembles an eerily beautiful storm cloud. harding’s installation of a room burnt black on the interior is a memorial to a teenage aboriginal domestic servant who died when a fire broke out while she was locked inside her quarters. each of these works requires physical and contemplative space unavailable in the main galleries, and their placement attempts to disseminate defying empire throughout the nga. the works are labeled but more visual markers would be helpful to insure visitors do not bypass these important works. the main gallery space is expansive, fitting the scale required for each work, with a few deep-blue-hued galleries and one with a warm burnt umber color breaking up the massive white walls so typical of contemporary art spaces. the exhibition was thoughtfully curated around seven themes: forever memory, recounting and revival, resistance and refusal, disrupting invisibility, asserting presence, rising passion, and bearing witness. more than pithy phrases, these themes reinforce the continuity amid instability of aboriginal cultures, and the curatorial staff’s deep respect for traditional knowledge despite what one might expect from a show focused on urban-based artists. these short and deceptively simple phrases lend an intentional poetics to the exhibition. defying empire compels viewers to consider how each work relates to the specific and general themes. the recounting and revival gallery was perhaps the most remarkably curated, with dale harding’s body of objects (2016) opposite ray ken’s kulata tjuta (2016) paintings and traditional spears made by ken’s grandson (figure 2). harding’s installation emasculates traditionally male-gendered objects such as nails, horseshoes, and other tools by molding their shapes into black silicon wax, rendering them harmless and flaccid. these objects reflect colonial efforts to emasculate aboriginal men by eliminating their access to weapons—undermining their ability to provide food and therefore effectively subjugating entire aboriginal communities.6 “kula tjuta” means spear-making in pitjantjara, a skill that ken, as a senior man, teaches to the younger men in his community. the pairing presents weapons as purely symbolic and as important means of reinforcing deep ties to country, culture, and future generations. women are well represented in the exhibition, totaling thirteen of the thirty artists included, and their contributions were some of the most memorable in the triennial. yhonnie scarce’s work, detailed above, provides one notable example. other examples consist of a thought-provoking film and installation by julie gough, maree clark’s impressive traditional necklaces created on a wall-size scale, and beautiful traditional water design paintings by nonggirrnga marawili. karla dickens’s three works are also particularly memorable for their scale and setting against burnt umber walls. her assimilated warriors ii (2014) references activists from the aborigines progressive association active during the great depression through a looming installation of farm equipment hung with black business suits adorned by dangling woven strings (figure 3).7 these works display a knowledge of history enacted through the suggestion of corporeality, provoking the viewer to imagine the bodies inside the suits. 6 tina baum, conversation with the author, may 27, 2017. 7 karla dickens, artist talk on defying empire, may 26, 2017. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 1 1 8 d e f y i n g e m p i r e : t h e t h i r d n a t i o n a l i n d i g e n ou s a r t t r i e n n i a l contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 6, no 1 “boundless” (2017) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2017.232 figure 3 karla dickens, assimilated warriors ii, 2014, emu feathers, textiles, leather, metal, wood. installation view, defying empire: the third national indigenous art triennial, national gallery of australia, canberra, act, photo courtesy of national gallery of australia. the works in defying empire are large and look contemporary in terms of spectacular scale and meanings that are not obvious at first glance. overall, the exhibition could be compared in its impressiveness and diversity to other triennials and biennials, not only those of indigenous art. drawing from different mediums and techniques, the works address temporalities outside their own, on the massive scale of modern work, but expressly without modernity’s relentless pursuit of progress. disregarding such ambitions, the artists of defying empire are free to explore the past as well as the future and deeply consider their own being in the present; thus fulfilling the mandate of contemporary art, as notably defined by terry smith as a theoretical framework for art after modernism, which is with or between times.8 it is virtually impossible to discuss a major exhibition of indigenous art without some reference to the dichotomous way that it is often discussed, for example traditional versus contemporary, remote versus urban. by organizing the galleries thematically, these dichotomies are subverted so connections rather than distinctions between works arise. according to baum, “all the artists in the exhibition draw from traditional knowledges some more deeply than others.” the artists are contemporary people who are aboriginal regardless of whether they live in remote or urban areas. like all artists working now, they draw from a 8 see terry smith, what is contemporary art (chicago, il: university of chicago press, 2004) and contemporary art: world currents (sydney: prentice hall, 2008). http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 1 1 9 m a r i n a t y q u i e n g c o contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 6, no 1 “boundless” (2017) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2017.232 variety of influences, of which their heritage is one. baum stresses the need to challenge what people think of aboriginal art—bark paintings, dot paintings, and the like. this exhibition defies categories—and empire—by demonstrating the breadth of extant aboriginal art today. new articles in this journal are licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 united states license. this journal is operated by the university library system of the university of pittsburgh as part of its d-scribe digital publishing program, and is co-sponsored by the university of pittsburgh press. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/ http://www.pitt.edu/ http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/ http://www.upress.pitt.edu/upressindex.aspx http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ national gallery of australia, may 26 – september 10, 2017 contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture vol 6, no 1 “boundless” (2017) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2017.226 http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu firelei báez: bloodlines the andy warhol museum, february 17 – may 21, 2017 nicole f. scalissi exhibition review exhibition catalog: maría elena ortiz, firelei báez: bloodlines, exh. cat. text by maría elena ortiz, naima j. keith, and roxane gay. miami: pérez art museum miami, 2015. 128 pp.; 65 ills (53 col.). cloth $35.00 (9780989854672) exhibition schedule: pérez art museum miami, fl, oct. 15, 2015 – march 6, 2016; the andy warhol museum, pittsburgh, pa, february 17–may 21, 2017 about the author nicole f. scalissi’s research focuses on american artists who stage violence against gendered, racialized, and classed bodies—marginalized identities with which the artists themselves identify—as a method of both community-identification and self-empowerment to call attention to the prevalence of disproportionate violence committed against women and people of color in the us more broadly. she is a phd candidate in the history of art and architecture at the university of pittsburgh and carries a master’s degree from pennsylvania state university. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 6, no 1 “boundless” (2017) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2017.226 metal keys of a kalimba plink as if plucked by a breeze. the twinkling soundtrack for the introductory video at the entrance of bloodlines chimes throughout the gallery, creating a place apart from the rest of the andy warhol museum, one awash in chromatic rhapsody and inharmonic sound. organized by and first installed at the pérez art museum miami, and now in its second installation in pittsburgh, bloodlines is firelei báez’s first major solo exhibition in the united states. essentially an early career retrospective, the exhibition takes over the second of the museum’s seven floors with drawings and paintings that cut to the heart of báez’s project: making visible the lineages—bloodlines— among resistance movements of people of color in the united states and the caribbean, and asserting the histories and global influence of subaltern cultures more broadly. the trans-caribbean narrative told in the exhibition is, in part, báez’s own. of dominican and haitian ancestry, báez (b. 1981, santiago de los caballeros, dominican republic; lives in new york) moved as a child from her native dominican republic to the united states, first to miami then to new york, where she attended art school. while some artworks foreground her experience navigating a multifaceted identity, bloodlines extends far beyond autobiography and appeals to a more nuanced understanding of historical connections across the americas, questioning who is allowed to construct history with a capital “h.” figure 1 installation view of firelei báez: bloodlines with (left to right) ciguapa pantera (to all the goods and pleasures of this world) (2015, acrylic and ink on paper, 69 x 95 in.) and body speaking to the space you fill up and keep (2016, acrylic on yupo paper, 80 × 60 × 4 in. framed), the andy warhol museum, pittsburgh, photograph by abby warhola, 2017. firelei báez: bloodlines the andy warhol museum, february 17 – may 21, 2017 nicole f. scalissi http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 9 9 n i c o l e f . s c a l i s s i contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 6, no 1 “boundless” (2017) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2017.226 bloodlines opens with body speaking to the space you fill up and keep (2016), the only fully abstract painting on view (fig. 1). body speaking is painted on yupo, a smooth, nonabsorbent synthetic “paper” that ripples under the weight of the acrylic paint pooled on its surface. swells of color—summery yellow, coral, cerulean—swim up to a seeping center of dappled mauves, dark greens, and lilacs. the layers of marbled, splashy color seem to be bleeding, giving the impression that body speaking is still wet, in-process, mercurial. báez sifts through the chancy washes to pin down the unfixed space conjured by color using delicate ink lines that sprout, hairlike, at the edges of swirls of paint. in doing so, she pushes the composition toward the recognizable but not to resolution, and ultimately worries the distinction between the representational categories of abstraction and figuration. consider this báez and curator jessica beck’s gentle greeting; ludic in composition and expeditious in its rewards, body speaking demonstrates the satisfaction in slowing down and looking closely. yet, its installation as the inaugural artwork is curious—body speaking does not prepare you for bloodlines and the uneasy cross-cultural confrontations and compressions that lay ahead. bloodlines is organized non-chronologically by báez’s aesthetic interests over the last half-decade, six discrete moments relating clearly to the exhibition’s overarching concerns with empowered femininity, visibility, and resistance: full-length renderings of the ciguapa, the hirsute female trickster of dominican folklore; large paintings that reimagine textile patterns to acknowledge uneven colonial relationships and subsequent political resistance; sumptuous portraits of carnivale dancers that convey personal biography; portraits that directly question racial legibility or geographic belonging; and abstract paintings that play with time and memory. some of these groupings are cross-gallery pairings that activate the space between, or operate on a sight-line framed by a series of ornate arches specially made for the andy warhol museum presentation (fig. 2). figure 2 installation view of firelei báez: bloodlines with sans-souci (this threshold between a dematerialized and a historicized body) (2015, acrylic and ink on linen, 74 x 108 in.) as seen through the arches of the mural walls. the andy warhol museum, pittsburgh, photograph by abby warhola, 2017. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 1 0 0 f i r e l e i b á e z : b l o od l i n e s contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 6, no 1 “boundless” (2017) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2017.226 the main exhibition opens with a set of thirty monochrome self-portraits in a range of medium browns—sandy beige, pale clay, caramel—each featureless except for defined brown eyes that appear active, looking. her gaze shifts from wide-eyed, playful glances skyward in the first row, to a frontal stare that hardens to a taunt, then despondently lowers. báez color-matched paint to her forearm daily over the course of a summer month, her painted complexion darkening, lightening, and darkening again; her curls relaxing-tighteningrelaxing across the thirty portraits hung in the uneven grid of a calendar. can i pass? introducing the paper bag to the fan test for the month of june (2011) stands out among her early work and economically conveys the stakes of bloodlines through its aesthetic clarity and conceptual concision (fig. 3). figure 3 installation view (left) and detail (right) of firelei báez: bloodlines with can i pass? introducing the paper bag to the fan test for the month of june (2011, gouache, ink, and graphite on paper, 96 x 128 in. overall), the andy warhol museum, pittsburgh, photograph by abby warhola, 2017. each color-matched painting references the paper bag test, which calibrated the acceptable limit of brownness to the color of the standard paper bag in the united states: social clubs, churches, and colleges awarded privilege of entry to subjects whose skin was no darker than the bag.1 the curly, uneven, and sometimes even kinky silhouette of her hair simultaneously suggests her african heritage and evokes the fan test, a similarly discriminatory test still in use in the dominican republic which tests the coarseness of women’s hair using a fan’s breeze. both practices cast the internal stratification of communities of color into sharp relief, in tandem with the misguided but widely popular belief that people of lighter complexions—read: predominately european—were better suited to 1 the test was especially popular in the american south during the first half of the twentieth century. see audrey elisa kerr, the paper bag principle: class, colorism, and rumor and the case of washington, d.c. (knoxville: university of tennessee press, 2006), 2–19. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 1 0 1 n i c o l e f . s c a l i s s i contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 6, no 1 “boundless” (2017) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2017.226 intellectual and social tasks. báez points to both the ongoing legacy and continued internalization of these standards, while showing them to be mutable and inaccurate. báez’s work is charged with subversive femininity and radical subjectivity—proud, staring, dark, hairy, corpulent, sexual, female bodies through which resistance is waged. femininity is most aggressively exercised in man without a country (aka anthropophagist wading in the artibonite river) from 2014, a wall-filling cluster of miniature paintings and collages. inspired by persian miniature painting and western illuminated manuscripts, báez presences the caribbean female body—or, more generally, the markedly subaltern body— through their super-imposition onto the pages of antiquated history and science books, literally inserting women into the pages of history. as the title signals, báez takes up the selective cultural absorption, reinterpretation, and redeployment as artistic strategy famously articulated by oswald de andrade in his manifesto antrópofago (1928). in the brazilian context, this cultural cannibalist philosophy empowered the appropriation of ideas and artistic styles of (at that time) dominant europe as a radical aesthetic and political gesture. báez appropriated female silhouettes from youtube videos produced internationally, and patterned their limber poses with vibrant botanicals to evoke the landscapes of hispañola, thus marking their figures with caribbean identity. some of the paintings are humorous (sexy ladies sticking their hands up a stuffy man’s nose), others are devastating, such as the tiny disheveled figures who exhaustedly trudge across an empty page as though through water, equally referencing the survivors of hurricane floods such as katrina, or haitian migrants crossing the watery border of the artibonite river to seek a more prosperous future in the dominican republic. in her selective painting-out of the names and faces of (white, male) politicians with white paint or the spots of color-blindness tests, báez enacts a contra-colonization of history through erasure and female figures that cross temporal, cultural, geographic borders. figure 4 installation view of firelei báez: bloodlines with those who would douse it (2015, acrylic and ink on panel, 68 x 115 in.), the andy warhol museum, pittsburgh, photograph by abby warhola, 2017. as i stand here, transfixed by thirty faces of firelei báez, i feel can i pass?—and the rest of bloodlines—as a physical presence opening itself up to my inclusion, not just my inspection. i found myself raising my own arm to find my place with báez in june 2011 (today, under the warhol’s lights, i am june 15th or 18th) and wondering if my own grandfather, a very darkly complexioned east indian man, experienced this test after he crossed the caribbean sea for howard university in 1945; wondering if he failed; wondering about the racial tests he didn’t even know he was being subjected to in colonial british guiana, and then in his adopted united states. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 1 0 2 f i r e l e i b á e z : b l o od l i n e s contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 6, no 1 “boundless” (2017) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2017.226 the intersecting issues of gender and color (as prismatic chroma, dermal phenomena, and social concept) course through bloodlines. throughout, báez integrates tropical flora with the female body, playing on the hair-like fibers of palm trunks or the inviting plush of mammalian fur to evoke the complex relationship of women and hair, seductively pressuring the limits of licit femininity. through excessive tresses or total concealment of hair with flowers, flames, or fabric coiffure, báez’s interrogation of femininity and power in the next gallery, where three overwhelming, high-key color paintings hang on custom-built walls (fig. 4). expanded from a smaller piece installed in miami (a wall fragment with an unusable arch precariously propped up as sculpture), the colorful walls in the andy warhol museum form a set of room fragments connected by archways, each painted in overlapping washes of indigo blue and real brewed coffee (an acknowledgment of the major, labor-intensive cash crop of south and central america). embellished with hand-painted symbols of radical political movements in both the united states and the caribbean, each mural is covered in a filigree of lunging panthers of the black panther movement; raised fists of the broader black empowerment movements; and the azabache, another fist icon associated with protection and empowerment among several [latin] american cultures. báez and her team of painters—interns, volunteers, curators, and members of the andy warhol museum’s funded teen leadership program, the youth arts council—literalized and appropriated the symbolic chains of oppression by using real ones to distress the murals. roughed up by chains, pounded by hammers, and sliced by bladed tools, the wall bleeds its pulp and makes palpable the history of violence at the center of bloodlines. figure 5 installation view of firelei báez: bloodlines with (left to right) trust memory over history (2015, acrylic and ink on panel, 31.5 x 46.5 in.) and the last one who remembers it (2015, acrylic and ink on panel, 29.5 x 43 in.), the andy warhol museum, pittsburgh, photograph by abby warhola, 2017. we leave bloodlines the way we began, wading through abstract swells of paint, this time hardened with geometric patterns and the symbols of resistance that run through the exhibition. two small panel paintings displayed near the exit, trust memory over history and the last one who remembers it (both 2015), dwell on memory, the human capacity that fundamentally allows for the recording of history yet is ultimately discredited by that which it http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 1 0 3 n i c o l e f . s c a l i s s i contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 6, no 1 “boundless” (2017) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2017.226 enabled (fig. 5). memory here is presented as an act of resistance, the counter strategy of subaltern people to being left out of history. perhaps what bloodlines shows us is that those who have been colonized, their descendants, and those who have been erased from history experience time differently. in the mind of the colonizer, the occupation of the other can be solidly in the past (something our predecessors did) without contemporary implication; for those colonized, the occupation persists as part of the present social, psychic, economic world, especially in the context of global commerce and identity. in bloodlines, time before and during occupation are equally and simultaneously one with the present, in an uneasy contemporaneity with our now. new articles in this journal are licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 united states license. this journal is operated by the university library system of the university of pittsburgh as part of its d-scribe digital publishing program, and is co-sponsored by the university of pittsburgh press. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/ http://www.pitt.edu/ http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/ http://www.upress.pitt.edu/upressindex.aspx http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ the andy warhol museum, february 17 – may 21, 2017 contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture vol 7, no 1 (2018) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2018.265 http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu the invention of race in the middle ages geraldine heng jacqueline lombard book review geraldine heng, the invention of race in the middle ages. new york: cambridge university press, 2018. 504 pp.; 10 ills. hardcover, £34.99 (9781108422789) about the author jacqueline lombard is a phd candidate in the history of art and architecture at the university of pittsburgh, where she also earned her m.a, in 2017. prior to coming to pitt she earned her b.a. in studio art and medieval and renaissance studies at carleton college. she specializes in medieval art history, with a particular focus on the history of art objects as products or conduits of cross-cultural exchange across medieval europe, the middle east, and northern and eastern africa. her research explores premodern conceptions of ethnic and racial identity, and seeks to understand how medieval peoples engaged with art objects to articulate and understand their own identities and spaces within their global networks. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 7, no 1 (2018) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2018.265 straddling the complicated line between medieval studies and critical race theory, the invention of race in the middle ages is a comprehensive volume that will change the ways in which medieval history is understood. operating between two fields that have historically taken little interest in each other, geraldine heng addresses race alongside power, empire, gender, religion, culture, literature, and art with tremendous insight built on meticulous research. she compels readers to consider how race shaped medieval european societies and worldviews, and how its roots can be detected far earlier than canonically assumed. heng’s attention to particularities in the invention of race in the middle ages is praiseworthy, and more remarkable is her ability to weave so many seemingly disparate case studies into one comprehensive analysis. the invention of race stands upon the last few decades of foundational works on medieval race, which consist largely of a diverse array of individual case studies. heng lays out the recent historiography of both medieval studies and critical race theory in her first chapter, where she also offers a trans-historical definition of race that serves as the foundation for the chapters to come. throughout the book, heng presents a strong argument for a comparative approach to the study of historical race as she explicates a wide variety of source materials to illuminate previously undetected patterns of race-making. heng repeatedly demonstrates that each medieval source has its own agenda and its own stake within its own context and audience. when studied together, however, each narrative offers more insight into the trans-cultural development of race. the second and third chapters explore how race could be built upon religious difference in the medieval world, and how religious race was frequently blurred with ideologies about blood and genealogy-based race that could not be altered, even by conversion. chapter 2 explores chronicles, charters, and statutes that pertain to the legal treatment and subsequent persecution of jews in medieval england. heng compares these social laws to later literary works produced in england after the expulsion of 1290 in order to unpack their implications within the english christian imagination. chapter 3 turns to the so-called saracens through analysis of crusade accounts, trade contracts, and epic poetry to explore how europeans engaged with, feared, or fantasized about their muslims neighbors, and how european ideas of race could be quite fluid depending on the political or economic situation at hand. in these opening chapters, and in those that follow, it becomes increasingly clear that the circumstances that give way to medieval ideas of race often differ from those of the modern world. medieval ideas of race tend to be more nuanced, and not yet systematized. heng skillfully navigates and unpacks these differences. in chapter 4, she turns to the question of color-based race—perhaps the most resonant with modern readers—to explore the distinctly medieval manifestations of color-based racial ideologies. in this chapter, heng parses the multifaceted meanings of blackness in medieval european thought, as a concept distinct but not exclusive from african identity or the actual quality of having black skin. figures such as moriaen, saint maurice, abba moses, and the queen of sheba are brought together with works including the king of tars, parzival, and albertus magnus’s quaestiones super de animalibus to explore how artistic and philosophical explorations of the meaning of blackness shaped white european perceptions toward black african people. heng pays careful attention to the developing concept of whiteness as well, and how medieval terminology and thought came to influence color-based racial ideologies as they would eventually exist in the modern world. the last section of the book addresses the nature of globalism in the twelfth through fifteenth centuries and elucidates how europeans conceptualized the more geographically distant peoples they encountered outside the abrahamic faiths. chapter 5 considers the the invention of race in the middle ages geraldine heng jacqueline lombard http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 1 0 9 j a c q u e l i n e l om b a r d contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 7, no 1 (2018) | issn 2153-5194 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2018.265 archeological remnants of norse contact in north america alongside contemporary saga narratives, arguing that many of the mythical creatures and encounters explored in these stories were based upon their understanding of native americans. chapter 6 considers accounts written by europeans who encountered the mongol court, and chapter 7 traces the woefully understudied arrival of the romani in europe by studying their depictions within persian and european romances, chronicles, and legal correspondence. in these last chapters, heng’s research acumen shines: she foregrounds how europeans perceived the native americans, mongols, and romani, which she astutely follows with insights into how these groups perceived themselves. heng thus offers a refreshing emphasis on the identities and cultural practices of the groups in question not simply as racialized subjects, but for their own historical merits as well. at the center of heng’s work is the question of how to address race in these diverse but intersecting contexts and what race represents through a trans-historical lens. she ably demonstrates that race, as a social force enacted by groups of people to categorize human beings via differences believed to be fundamental and immutable, was indeed developing in the middle ages and must be studied as such. this timely argument comes after multiple decades of debate among medievalists about whether the term race can be appropriately used in medieval studies, or if such a question has any purchase in the first place. terms such as “difference,” “xenophobia,” “alterity,” and “otherness” have been championed as more suitable alternatives as medieval peoples themselves never used the word race. by adhering to the methodological lens of critical race theory, heng persuasively shows how more ambiguous terms such as difference or otherness can quickly lose their potency, and that race, with all of its larger implications, presents the only appropriate term to use. the debates raised and addressed in this work will challenge scholars to radically rethink how they approach the social histories with which they work, and for scholars who consider social context to be an essential aspect of their research, the invention of race is a must-read. new articles in this journal are licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 united states license. this journal is operated by the university library system of the university of pittsburgh as part of its d-scribe digital publishing program, and is co-sponsored by the university of pittsburgh press. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/ http://www.pitt.edu/ http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/ http://www.upress.pitt.edu/upressindex.aspx http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ the invention of race in the middle ages geraldine heng the invention of race in the middle ages geraldine heng contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture vol 6, no 1 “boundless” (2017) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2017.186 http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu the internal frontier how art at once problematizes borders and draws us closer to them kasia ozga abstract this study combines first-person storytelling, visual interpretation, and linguistic investigation to analyze how a mixed-media artwork that kasia ozga produced in 2011, the internal frontier, represents immigrant journeys on an autobiographic, social, and discursive level. in the context of an increasingly polarized political climate, ozga examines borders as individual experiences and geopolitical phenomena to explain how art conditions conflictual aspects of the self to coexist, promoting social consciousness and community engagement. those in power use borders to naturalize and separate what is familiar from what is strange. as an artist, ozga explores how our personalities are partitioned, enforced, and made from external boundaries that define our movements, and by the internal borders that we impose on ourselves. here, reproductions of different “frontiers” around the world are literally cut from the fabric of human chest x-rays collected from immigrant long-term visa applicants, highlighting physical removal and absence. to produce these modified artifacts, shown in light-boxes in various exhibitions in france and the united states, ozga researched the border-as-process of inclusion and exclusion linked to regulative authority in social relations, nation-building, political sovereignty, as well as personal identity formation. in the artworks, migration is transformed from an isolated act to a shared human experience. the images, at once precise and indeterminate, maintain the dual symbolism of the border as barrier and as springboard, simultaneously inhibiting and enabling interactions between individuals and select geographic locations. just as migrants lead us to re-evaluate our physical and mental borders, critical cultural production can contest the impact and staying power of borders by underscoring how establishing and overriding boundaries enable us to claim and reclaim who we are. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 6, no 1 “boundless” (2017) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2017.186 (away from it all) here there & everywhere (beneath it all) here there & everywhere (all over it all) here there & everywhere (above it all) here there & everywhere lawrence weiner1 as an immigrant, i am interested in the spaces between the ideals of open and closed borders and the geographic organization and psychological impact of these opposing paradigms. as an artist, i share jane rendell’s conviction that the function of art is its critical role within the public sphere, and in particular its capacity to ask questions about how we occupy public places.2 while borders have been intimately tied to my identity, i rarely addressed them in my art before producing a series entitled the internal frontier (la frontière interne) during an artist residency on the french and spanish border in 2010– 2011. my desire to give form to the immaterial effects of this social and geographical construct was prompted by my body’s daily physical confrontations with a border to which i had no prior personal connection. in this paper, i analyze how the artworks represent immigration on an autobiographic, social, and historical level. i first describe how they portray border passages and transgressions by combining paper cutting techniques with medical imaging. later, i explore how borders, both as geopolitical phenomena and as building blocks of identity, inform my work. finally, i foreground various philosophical and linguistic conceptions of borders evoked by the series, to consider the disparate experiences of border crossers in different sociopolitical contexts. i conclude by analyzing how visual art can encourage dialogue on border policy by enabling various conflictual aspects of identity to coexist, promoting social consciousness and community engagement. representing borders through visual art, i explore how our identities are partitioned, enforced, and made from external boundaries that define our movements and by the internal borders that we impose upon ourselves. the internal frontier series juxtaposes recent visual evidence of the interior anatomy of various male and female human bodies with reproductions of different “frontiers” around the world. the works were initially created at nekatoenea, an artist residency in the domaine d’abbadia in hendaye, in the basque country in 2010–2011, right before the dawn of the arab spring and subsequent civil war in syria. the artwork addresses borders as political institutions and corporal experiences, rather than as mere territorial markers. 1 lawrence weiner, here there & everywhere, language and the materials referred to, dimensions variable (whitney museum of american art, new york, 1989). 2 jane rendell, art and architecture: a place between (london: i.b. tauris, 2008), 156. the internal frontier how art at once problematizes borders and draws us closer to them kasia ozga http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 3 k a s i a o zg a contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 6, no 1 “boundless” (2017) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2017.186 figure 1 kasia ozga, internal frontier i and ii, 2014, x-ray film on medical lightbox. installation view, la nuit de l’instant 2014, marseille, france. (photo: author) the series consists of cutouts made from human x-rays, displayed on medical-grade light boxes. like most developed countries, france requires non-eu immigrants seeking longterm residency permits to obtain chest x-rays in order to get cleared for processing. this form of physical screening was initially introduced for public health reasons: to prevent outbreaks of tuberculosis. every day, governments assert their right to view and catalogue the innermost parts of immigrants’ bodies to determine who gets to stay within their borders and who is unfit to remain.3 the x-rayed body is examined by the medical establishment and reduced to an object of study. even when informed consent is obtained, this penetration of the body by the state via medical imaging is a highly symbolic act, imposing authority and commanding deference.4 the automated procedure obscures the intimacy of what takes 3 this procedure is used by many nations—including the united states—that screen immigrants for tb. kevin schwartzman and dick menzies, “tuberculosis screening of immigrants to low prevalence countries. a cost-effectiveness analysis,” american journal of respiratory and critical care medicine 161, no. 3 (2000): 780–89. eu countries often, and controversially, resort to radiographic examinations of the teeth and skeletons of asylum applicants as a means of age assessment. al aynsley-green, tim j. cole, heaven crawley, nick lessof, louise r. boag, and rebecca m. m. wallace, “medical, statistical, ethical and human rights considerations in the assessment of age in children and young people subject to immigration control,” british medical bulletin 102, no. 1 (2012): 17–42. doi:10.1093/bmb/lds014 4 indeed, britain’s borderguards used x-rays to scan trucks suspected of ferrying migrants through the chunnel until the procedure was banned in 2016, and police have deployed similar technology at checkpoints in south-eastern mexico. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 4 t he i n t e r n a l f r o n t i e r contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 6, no 1 “boundless” (2017) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2017.186 place: each immigrant is required to trade a detailed image of his or her inner anatomy to the state in exchange for a new identity card. in my artwork, each x-ray, denoting a specific person’s experience, becomes an anonymous symbol of this process as the surveillance itself is exposed to public scrutiny. the personal is political: my own chest was scanned and photocopied in an assemblyline-style intake center in the suburbs of paris in 2007, before polish citizens became full european union members. shortly thereafter, i asked fellow immigrants who had kept their x-rays as souvenirs of the country’s notorious bureaucracy to donate them for use in entrez! (enter!), a public video art installation made for the 2009 ici et demain festival in paris in collaboration with emilie mcdermott. in that work, anonymous x-rays were taped together to form a three-meter-tall temporary tunnel through which visitors were forced to walk. the passage, designed to be shown inside a student center for foreign researchers, included a video of individuals walking back and forth across a bridge projected underfoot, symbolizing the nonlinear nature of the immigrant experience. once the project was over, i incorporated the x-rays into my subsequent artworks as a discrete medium. figure 2 kasia ozga, internal frontier i, 2014, xray film on medical lightbox, 35.5 x 43 x 10 cm. installation view, land grab exhibition, the mission, chicago, illinois. (photo: author) http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 5 k a s i a o zg a contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 6, no 1 “boundless” (2017) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2017.186 the idea of literally cutting apart x-rays came about by accident. one day, as i was removing the plastic fire-retardant film used to hold the images in place for the installation entrez, the x-rays ripped apart. i grew interested in seeing the photographic medium itself as a material that could be surgically manipulated. thus, i researched papercutting, a form of decorative art present in diverse cultures around the world for over 2,000 years.5 by drawing projected images on the x-rays and then cutting them out with an x-acto knife, i was able to physically juxtapose a representation of a particular body at a particular moment with an image of another place and time. rather than a mere layering and merging of two images via photoshop or double exposure, each scarred double image highlights physical removal and absence, formally emphasizing displacement as a process that has lasting consequences for our bodies and ourselves. the frontière interne is not a visual illustration of a theoretical treatise on borders but rather a poetico-plastic exploration informed by sensory experiences and intellectual reflection. representations of borders depend just as much on formal qualities (the paper on which they are printed and the contexts in which they are displayed and reproduced) as they do on visual content. the frontière interne is divided into two series of artworks that alternately include abstract close-up and iconic landscape imagery. the first group, frontière interne i, consists of nine vertical images cut out of standard-size chest x-rays, each measuring 35.5 x 43 cm. each piece can be displayed in a separate light box. abstract images of plants, such as ferns, and landmarks photographed along the physical border zone between france and spain are cut out of the x-rays of immigrants currently living in france. the second group, frontière interne ii, consists of twelve horizontal images cut out of chest x-rays, each measuring 43 x 35.5 cm, also displayed in light boxes. this time, the works juxtapose the x-rays with cutout images of various borders and conflict zones around the world. some of these images directly relate to the personal histories of the individuals who donated their images. all are distilled from found border photographs posted online and obtained via internet search engines. being on an open border such as the one separating hendaye from irun reveals the artificiality of all borders. as philosopher étienne balibar explains, “there have never existed, anywhere, ‘natural borders,’ that great myth of the foreign policy of nation-states. everything here is historical.”6 i photographed the source imagery for frontière interne i during months that i spent living in an area where walking back and forth across a field allowed me to move between two different countries. this was the first time i had lived in a border zone. the sand swirling along the coast paid no heed to which nation it landed in as the tide came in. the physical space of the border existed in sharp contrast to aerial maps, satellite photos, and gps signals that identify a specific area as the border; neither here nor there. the real border was more political and institutional than cultural and palpable.7 this understanding led me to trace and remove shapes found in the physical border from the x 5 contemporary paper cutout artists include béatrice coron, who creates highly detailed stories using this technique; david thorpe, who layers papers to create photorealistic dystopian science fiction scenes that feel like relief maps; and kara walker, whose life-size, socially engaged wall pieces explore slavery and the african american experience to understand how foreground and background contribute to a specific understanding of narrative and place. 6 étienne balibar, we, the people of europe: reflections on transnational citizenship, trans. james swenson (princeton, nj: princeton university press, 2004), 109. 7 étienne balibar, politics and the other scene (london: verso, 2002), 89. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 6 t he i n t e r n a l f r o n t i e r contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 6, no 1 “boundless” (2017) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2017.186 rays i had brought with me—material artifacts of the border-as-process of inclusion and exclusion. the works in frontière interne i are often more abstract than those in the second series while, at the same time, more directly related to my personal physical experience of one specific border. organic forms dominate with vegetal motifs, wooden branches, leaves, raindrops, and clouds covering and obscuring the precise scientific prints of sternums and clavicles. these forms are artifacts of my meandering within the border zone that appear generic, as though they could have come from anywhere, just as the term “border town” obscures the specific realities of such spaces.8 i juxtaposed the symmetry of the bone structure and chest cavities revealed by the x-rays with asymmetrical twigs and reeds, at once covering and sprouting from limbs and ribs. because the sticks’ silhouettes do not specify where they come from, the images imply that borders potentially exist anywhere and everywhere. the source photos were mainly taken with my camera pointing down at the ground: the space in which physical border walls were planted and to which passageways were tethered, when this particular border was actively policed before the implementation of the schengen agreement in 1995. like flat wallpaper patterns recalling the forms of matisse’s gouache on paper cut-outs, they hint at and reveal the textures of each subject without proffering a clear context or location. these motifs do not provide any obvious indication as to which view of the x-ray is “right side up.” rather, the orientation of the works comes from the placement of the human skeleton in the background image. the second series, frontière interne ii, has more narrative content: cutout landscapes portray borders around the world, some tense, others peaceful. several images contain the silhouettes of people: border control officers, soldiers, children, and marchers in a procession. vehicles and architectural forms include fences, gates, and passageways copied from images of the us-mexico, us-canada, poland-ukraine, israel-jordan, the korean dmz, and other historic border crossings alluded to by the geographic coordinates in the works’ titles. because they are less abstract, and depict identifiable if not familiar locations, these works invite viewers to imagine specific narratives or experiences related to the passage between one country and another. before being formally exhibited, the artworks were reproduced in a bilingual french/basque catalogue, borders, barrières, frontiers (2013), with an essay by the curator, alexandra baurès. though i had intended to display the works independently in identical steel light boxes, i often ended up grouping them together in practice, to produce entirely different narratives. x-ray cut-outs aligned next to one another on a long horizontal illuminator invite comparisons that allude to changes over time and space, as the cut-out images indicate different physical states and pathologies. when works from the second series are shown alongside works from the first, they act as establishing shots in a film, setting the scene for the “close ups” next to which they are placed. a detail of a hole ripped through a chain-link fence, an image of soldiers patrolling a hillside, and a second detail of a cloud formation in the sky, for example, could combine to suggest a clandestine passage. the order in which the works are shown is constantly changing: they were exhibited in different configurations in an individual exhibition, la off #3: borders/barrières/frontières, at the centre culturel saint-exupéry, reims (2013), in a group exhibition, la nuit de l’instant, in 8 marc augé, non-lieux (évreux : éditions du seuil, 1992). http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 7 k a s i a o zg a contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 6, no 1 “boundless” (2017) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2017.186 marseille, france (2014), and in an individual show at the mission gallery in chicago, illinois, entitled land grab (2014)9. figure 3 kasia ozga, internal frontier ii 32°32'03.7"n 117°07'25.5"w, 2014, x-ray film on medical lightbox, 35.5 x 43 x 10 cm. installation view, land grab exhibition, the mission gallery, chicago, illinois. (photo: author) access to possible futures the series was motivated by empathy with the challenges many foreigners face, frustration with the unfairness of the global birthplace lottery, and a coming-to-terms with my own privileged experiences as an immigrant in france and in the united states. borders symbolize opportunities that prove illusory for many immigrants. i highlight the divide between the romantic ideal and the reality of modern-day border crossing by connecting official imagery with personal representations. the work launches an inquiry via imagination, 9 they were also discussed during a lecture at the staatliche akademie der bildenden künste stuttgart on 06/21/16 and profiled in the electronic journal for visual culture, invisible culture (ivc), published by the university of rochester. k. ozga, “internal frontier,” ivc 22, no. 1 (04/18/2015), https://ivc.lib.rochester.edu/internal-frontier/ http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ https://ivc.lib.rochester.edu/internal-frontier/ 8 t he i n t e r n a l f r o n t i e r contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 6, no 1 “boundless” (2017) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2017.186 posing questions as a way of opening up possibilities for reflection, suggesting—rather than specifying—what a border is and should be. while the notion of borders is often linked to nation-building and political sovereignty, such barriers intimately affect personal identity. in my own case, border crossing was both an imposed experience in my youth and a personal choice in my adult life. i was born a few months before the declaration of martial law in poland, a country with one of the largest diasporas in the world, where “brain drain” is a recurring political issue.10 in the early 1980s, the then–people’s republic of poland (prl), part of the eastern block and within the soviet sphere of influence, was on the cusp of transforming its government and relations with its closest neighbors. for reasons both economic and political, my parents decided to emigrate abroad when i was a toddler. once my mother secured a postgraduate internship in an architecture studio in berlin, she left communist poland alone to go to then–west berlin on a temporary visa. for months, she drew the façades of buildings from blueprints and observation, despite not speaking the language. my father and i received permission to join her six months later. border crossings are constantly shifting passages that appear solid and immutable. stories about the difference between eastern and western europe, and the then-perilous passage between the two, were a fixture of my childhood. my grandmother told me about the border guards in watchtowers slowly observing each train car that passed below, cradling assault rifles and sowing fear among passengers who hid family heirlooms and american dollars in jars of bigos, a savory home-made polish stew. she told me about the large dogs that obediently followed the guards examining passengers for possible smuggling, her smiles through clenched teeth as i, a boisterous three-year-old child, casually chatted with our fellow passengers about my imminent departure from a country in which the very act of obtaining a passport was near-impossible for most of the population. she remembers the sinking feeling of knowing she might never see her son again as well as the shock and recognition at each detailed letter he sent back home, describing his new life. twenty years later, i rediscovered these letters and experienced the opposite kind of shock: the intervening years had so transformed both the border itself and my father as to render his words about his new home barely recognizable. since the 1980s, poland has been inching from east to west, aspiring to the living standards and wealth of its eu neighbors, and the gulf between it and the united states has narrowed to that of an admittedly unequal, banal bilateral relationship. borders are always political, but not necessarily cultural and linguistic. my parents were obliged to study russian, even in university. however, my mother had also learned french and dreamed of ending up in france or québec. at that time, legal immigration to western europe was not an option. in berlin, my parents were denied political asylum to canada, australia, and south africa. after sweating under uncomfortable woolen business attire in embassy after embassy, they decided to dress casually for the visa interview to the united states. to this day, my father credits their move to the united states to ronald reagan’s largesse and to the 80s-style tracksuits they wore that day. crossing a border implies agreeing to the host country’s terms. despite the apparent separation between church and state, polish immigrants in the 1980s needed a sponsoring organization to settle in the united states and most were religiously affiliated. we landed in a 10 up to twenty million people of polish ancestry live abroad, compared to the country’s current population of thirty-eight million. polish ministry of foreign affairs, polish diaspora, http://www.msz.gov.pl/en/foreign_policy/polish_diaspora/ http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ http://www.msz.gov.pl/en/foreign_policy/polish_diaspora/ 9 k a s i a o zg a contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 6, no 1 “boundless” (2017) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2017.186 small town (springfield, missouri) in the open arms of a local church, even though my family of atheists had traditionally rejected religious affiliations. the church, the daycare center, and the office became sites for cultural and linguistic assimilation, where old behaviors were discouraged and new walls were erected. internalizing new cultural codes went hand in hand with creating an american identity.11 in my childhood, a border symbolized possibility, not a barrier that was inevitably either open or impenetrable, but a door that could be pushed ajar with the right combination of cunning and luck. i grew up pledging allegiance to the american flag and attending polish school on saturdays in the chicago suburbs. i went to college in boston, graduate school in poland, and completed my phd in france, where i now live—in a twist of fate—thanks to my polish passport rather than my american identity papers. with my own roots spread over two continents, i code switch constantly, continually changing how i relate to and represent national allegiances. despite the hardships that my parents and i faced when i was young, i am incredibly lucky to have gained the freedom to choose where i live. i was and am able to circulate in a world where it is relatively easy for me to traverse national borders. others are not so fortunate. figure 4 kasia ozga, internal frontier i and ii, 2014, x-ray film on medical lightbox. installation view, la nuit de l’instant 2014, marseille, france. (photo: author) 11 charlotte burck, multilingual living: explorations of language and subjectivity (new york: palgrave macmillan, 2005), 76–79, 85. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 1 0 t he i n t e r n a l f r o n t i e r contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 6, no 1 “boundless” (2017) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2017.186 borders as limits border control is a form of power. “borders, far from serving merely to block or obstruct global passages of people, money, or objects, have become central devices for their articulation.”12 resources and opportunities are not equally distributed around the world, and scholars have long pointed out the disparity between how nations treat goods versus how they treat human capital.13 at the same time, as we abolish tariffs and promote free trade, we increase restrictions on cross-border travel, making it harder to legally move about and work far from home—unless one is part of a privileged, educated class hailing from the global north. if my parents were not polish in the early 1980s but mexican or syrian or nigerian in 2017, we might never have gotten a visa to enter the united states, let alone a green card (permanent residency permit), and, ultimately, american citizenship. even among those in our situation, we were the lucky ones. three-fourths of the poles who immigrated to the united states in the 1980s did not obtain asylum, but rather overstayed short-term visitor visas and were forced to work illegally in the underground economy, limiting their ability to anticipate the future.14 when identities are fixed, people are stuck both physically and mentally, anchored to physical sites and behavioral norms; their agency is limited. not all places offer equal opportunity and hospitality. many would-be migrants are mired permanently on the outside, unable to join the club of privileged visa holders and to change their situation and the imposed cultural norms framing and essentializing their identities. permanently leaving one’s home can be a long and fraught process of confronting and overcoming various limitations. while a minority of the world’s people are technically migrants, the migrant experience affects all humans as a cultural archetype and political reality. according to the united nations population fund, in 2015, only 3.3% of the global population lived outside of its country of origin.15 this figure includes all migrants—refugees, economic migrants, and asylum seekers, immigrants and expats alike. according to the united nations high commissioner for refugees, there are sixty-five million forcibly displaced people worldwide, including twenty-one million refugees, fleeing armed conflict, persecution, natural disasters, death, imprisonment, torture, starvation, poverty, or disease.16 these people have abandoned their homes yet cannot move about freely; they do not have the necessary papers, authorizations, and financial means to do so. the largest single group of refugees comes from syria. many are trapped in limbo in “temporary” camps for years at a time, where boundaries are imposed by the outside rather than embraced from within. according to a study by the overseas development institute, the duration of refugee displacement is currently increasing, with over half of refugees being displaced for over four years, and over 12 sandro mezzadra and brett neilson, border as method: or, the multiplication of labor (durham, nc: duke university press, 2003), ix. 13 antoine pécoud and paul de guchteneire (eds.), migration without borders: essays on the free movement of people, (unesco, 2007) and charles b. keely, globalization transforms trade-migration equation (washington, dc: migration policy institute, 01/12/2002). 14 dominic a. pacyga, “polish diaspora,” in encyclopedia of diasporas, eds. melvin ember, carol r. ember, and ian skoggard (new york: springer, 2005), 254–63. 15 united nations population fund, migration, 2015, http://www.unfpa.org/migration 16 adrian edwards, “global forced displacement hits record high,” unhcr, http://www.unhcr.org/en-us/news/latest/2016/6/5763b65a4/global-forced-displacement-hits-recordhigh.html http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ http://www.unfpa.org/migration http://www.unhcr.org/en-us/news/latest/2016/6/5763b65a4/global-forced-displacement-hits-record-high.html http://www.unhcr.org/en-us/news/latest/2016/6/5763b65a4/global-forced-displacement-hits-record-high.html 1 1 k a s i a o zg a contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 6, no 1 “boundless” (2017) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2017.186 a third for over ten years!17 the state of being permanently in transit can represent a lifestyle choice for ex-pats or an impossible burden for displaced people. many long to escape war for peace, not to keep running for years on end. political movements such as the dreamers in the united states, no border, or l’action des chrétiens pour l'abolition de la torture (acat), and social practice artworks like tania bruguera’s immigrant movement international seek to transform and revolutionize current border control regimes, encouraging solidarity across these barriers while governments around the world increasingly impede refugee resettlement. with the internal frontier, i raise awareness of limitations on international mobility, encourage viewers to reflect on immigration as a product of both desire and necessity, and condemn the othering of the immigrant body that takes place amid a culture of intensifying nationalism. the possibilities and limitations national borders represent are compounded by cultural factors that are themselves immaterial boundaries enabling and rejecting various expressions of identity. a boundary is “at once a geographical marker and a geographical maker of regulative authority in social relations,” encouraging some behaviors and discouraging others.18 a border’s restrictiveness depends on where one stands in relation to it. as any sports fan (polish kibic) will tell you, borders that appear closed and oppressive to the outside can, on the inside, enable discovery, creativity, and fellow feeling. cultural boundaries such as gender binaries frame how male and female children are socialized differently. however, these social borders can and do evolve. as writer agnieszka graff observes, traditional arrangements between the sexes increase in the context of political, social, and economic crisis.19 political power regulates cultural factors to limit our capacity to struggle against the borders that are imposed upon us. at the same time, we can choose not to internalize these borders via passive, nonviolent resistance or overt contestation. critical cultural production can affirm facets of identity overlooked or suppressed by normative values, contesting the impact and staying power of borders that will not and cannot be closed forever. the internal frontier series posits that encountering immigrants and exploring border regimes informs our identities. raising awareness of the human dimension to these geopolitical markers can help undermine them. in the series, each anonymous, identically proportioned x-ray is hand-carved with a personal, individual motif. rather than being another number in a residency card application file, each immigrant is shown as having a story to tell, an experience to share. at the same time, that story is not 17 nicholas crawford, john cosgrave, simone haysom, and nadine walicki, “protracted displacement: uncertain paths to self-reliance in exile,” september 2015, humanitarian policy group, https://www.odi.org/sites/odi.org.uk/files/odi-assets/publications-opinion-files/9851.pdf 18 matthew sparke, “boundary,” in the dictionary of human geography, 5th ed., ed. derek gregory, ron johnston, geraldine pratt, michael watts, and sarah whatmore (singapore: wiley blackwell, 2009), 55. 19 agnieszka graff, świat bez kobiet. płeć w polskim życiu publicznym (a world without women: gender in polish public life) (warsaw: wab, 2001). in poland, as inequality between rural and urban areas widened after the fall of communism, so did restrictions on family planning services. in the united states, a decrease in women’s participation in the labor force since 1999 occurred amid the rise of restrictions on women’s health services. oecd (2016), “labour market statistics: labour force statistics by sex and age: indicators,” oecd employment and labour market statistics (database), http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/data-00310-en, accessed october 23, 2016. elizabeth nash, rachel bensongold, zohra ansari-thomas, olivia cappello, and lizamarie mohammed, “laws affecting reproductive health and rights: state trends at midyear, 2016,” guttmacher institute, july 21, 2016, https://www.guttmacher.org/article/2016/07/laws-affecting-reproductive-health-and-rights-state-trendsmidyear-2016 http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ https://www.odi.org/sites/odi.org.uk/files/odi-assets/publications-opinion-files/9851.pdf http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/data-00310-en https://www.guttmacher.org/article/2016/07/laws-affecting-reproductive-health-and-rights-state-trends-midyear-2016 https://www.guttmacher.org/article/2016/07/laws-affecting-reproductive-health-and-rights-state-trends-midyear-2016 1 2 t he i n t e r n a l f r o n t i e r contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 6, no 1 “boundless” (2017) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2017.186 fixed. indeed, according to postcolonial scholar edward said, “[t]he art of memory for the modern world [is] something to be used, misused, and exploited, rather that something that sits inertly there for each person to possess and contain.”20 figure 5 kasia ozga, internal frontier ii 52°01'54.3"n 23°39'33.4"e, 2013, x-ray film on medical lightbox, 43 x 35.5 x 10 cm. installation view, borders: barrières frontières la off #3 exhibition, centre culturel numérique saint-exupéry, reims, france. (photo: author) depicting the toll of migrant experiences on the human body enables viewers to connect with immigrants through a universally recognizable form. the body is a physical system existing in time and space with a social presence. the body is not confined to the material within our skin, but it requires this boundary to function mentally and socially, to activate spaces and situations. x-rays and photographs can document the body inside and out at a specific moment in time; however, the former usually reveal little about the body’s specific social context. our environment affects our bodies and our identities. our relationships to borders shape who we are; a child refugee in a camp for displaced persons will have a different sense of security than a child raised in a predictable environment with limited, and rarely life-threatening, conflict. in the frontière interne series, the experience of a specific border environment is a signifier of social existence engraved on a medical scan of an immigrant’s body. the identity of each person is represented by the interplay between the body and the border experience. 20 edward w. said, “invention, memory, and place,” in landscape and power, ed. w. j. t. mitchell, 2nd ed. (chicago: university of chicago press, 2002), 245. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 1 3 k a s i a o zg a contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 6, no 1 “boundless” (2017) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2017.186 limitations can be oppressive, but they can also be constructive. identity depends on both adhering to and transgressing borders. by establishing and overriding boundaries, we claim—and reclaim—who we are. in maintaining its’ boundaries, a nation affirms its core values and identity as rigid or porous and progressive, asserting power over us while denying or enabling human agency. in “developed” nations, borders are perceived as outlines reifying territorial sovereignty on a map and guaranteeing security within. populist and nationalist political parties see them as a means of protecting citizens from “outsiders,” casting victims of a civil war at home as villains sowing violence and uncertainty. this posturing denies the actual geography of the immigrant experience. despite the constant negative media reporting around middle eastern and muslim refugees in the west, 95% of syrian refugees are hosted in just five countries, none of which are in europe or north america.21 the “unprecedented” influx of migrants from the global south to europe is actually a trickle compared to the scale of such flows, and to internal displacement, in other parts of the world. right-wing politicians use appeals to emotion to limit who can pass through borders and deflect responsibility, blaming foreigners for their countries’ internal social and economic problems, and promoting an isolationist agenda that denies the immigrants’ human rights. their point of view is also divorced from economic realities; economists agree that the net fiscal impact of immigration generally lies within the range ±1 percent of gdp.22 when a person reestablishes boundaries within his life, he implies that categories and identities are not static but change over time (indeed, the country listed on my birth certificate literally no longer exists—it changed its name to the republic of poland after the fall of communism). when i call myself polish, i acknowledge a link to my ancestors and a collective allegiance to that country. and when i call myself american, i likewise embrace the values that i associate with that label. i affirm that these identities should exist, although i often actively contest the political leadership in both countries. as i admit or reject elements of polish and american culture, i internalize these identities and contribute to their outward complexity, decreasing their connotations with national sovereignty. negotiating transitional spaces like refugees, economic migrants who move abroad looking for a better life challenge the morality of existing national borders. these newcomers can make us more attuned to the world outside and to the pain of our fellow humans, or inspire xenophobic reactions and assign blame for social or economic problems. in questioning the purpose of our physical borders, migrants also lead us to re-evaluate our mental ones; by embodying different lifestyles and adapting (or not) to their new environments, they raise awareness of how social and cultural frontiers encourage some behaviors and denigrate others. they demonstrate that borders are permeable and identities are malleable by negotiating the norms of their new environment daily in contexts that alternately promote multiculturalism and assimilation. the border can be a barrier that divides common ground and prevents individuals from living together, or a gateway to a new life. both definitions—a rule that codifies distinction 21 amnesty international, syria's refugee crisis in numbers, september 4, 2015, https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2015/09/syrias-refugee-crisis-in-numbers/ 22 robert rowthorn, “the fiscal impact of immigration on the advanced economies,” oxford review of economic policy 24, no. 3 (2008): 577. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2015/09/syrias-refugee-crisis-in-numbers/ 1 4 t he i n t e r n a l f r o n t i e r contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 6, no 1 “boundless” (2017) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2017.186 and a site of unpredictable opportunity—apply. recently, the death at sea of tens of thousands of migrants seeking to immigrate to europe from north africa by evading official borders has become one of the most compelling social problems on our continent. many are refugees that risk their lives, betting borders are the stuff that dreams are made of, only to find themselves exploited by human traffickers and turned away from the countries from which they seek safe haven. crossing the border can thus be a turning point in a migrant’s life or the latest in a series of setbacks, trials, and tribulations. a border sets up a space “within” as being distinct from the space without and regulates what passes through. the very definition of a border varies across disciplines and languages and connotes ideas involving physical spaces—barriers, frontiers, fences, separations, boundaries, maps, districts, zones—populations affected—citizens, foreign nationals, diasporas—and associated issues—transit, transport, mobility, immigration, communication, national identity, safe passage, security, treaties, and more. enforced through laws and language, the border is a limit set, for example, to a country’s territory. in english, the word border means both the outer limit of a place, and an ornamental edge (the word is derived from the french word bordure, or edge, rand in german). the word implies power. according to katarzyna stokłosa and gerhard besier, “[t]he contemporary meaning of the word grenze…involves the linear demarcation of a specific area of dominion or possession…. the german term grenze does not do sufficient justice to the various types of borders in existence [whereas] the english terms ‘frontier’ and ‘border’… establish the differences between a positive and a negative perception of borders.”23 that power is associated with the laws of nature. grenze in german comes from the slavic/polish granica, meaning border, boundary, or (mathematical) limit. granica can also mean a limit to what a person can tolerate (granica wytrzymałości) or the elastic limit, which is the maximum extent to which a solid may be stretched (granica plastyczności). the border separates what is familiar from what is strange. za granicą (beyond the border) means à l’étranger in french—literally in a strange (foreign) place—and abroad or away from home in english. borders are instruments of possession: those with power over an area decide where to establish borders and how to enforce them. their actions reveal that “borders are not merely geographical margins or territorial edges. they are complex social institutions, which are marked by tension between practices of border reinforcement and border crossing.”24 such dynamics can also be expressed on a more local scale: through a barrier to entry, such as a security checkpoint in an office building that only admits employees; a rule preventing some behaviors, such as smoking, in public transportation; or informal notices, such as age limits posted at the entrance to a playground. perceptions of borders change over time and are not merely a result of physical proximity. in 2016, i was an artist in residence in the val du sambre, a region in the north of france near the belgian border. whereas in polish/ukrainian border towns like przemyśl and in the basque country, the border was a constant topic of conversation, in maubeuge the issue hardly ever came up. that changed dramatically after the suicide bombing in the brussels airport in early 2016. suddenly the proximity to belgium was a source of fear, a 23 katarzyna stokłosa and gerhard besier, european border regions in comparison: overcoming nationalistic aspects or re-nationalization? (new york: routledge, 2014), 3. 24 mezzadra and neilson, border as method, 3, 7. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 1 5 k a s i a o zg a contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 6, no 1 “boundless” (2017) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2017.186 figure 6 kasia ozga, internal frontier i and ii, 2014, x-ray film on medical lightbox. installation view, la nuit de l’instant 2014, marseille, france. (photo: author) reason to cancel school outings and public performances. the french government had declared a state of emergency following the november terrorist attacks, banning protests in public places. after march, many school districts in the north followed suit by banning public art. strangely enough, the state did not cancel the euro soccer tournament or bat an eye at the russian and english football fans clubbing each other with café tables in the streets of marseille during the games. apparently, limits on mobility across borders and tightened rules governing presence in public spaces are justified in some cases and not in others (especially when commercial interests are at stake). borders are the result of power deployed to enforce behaviors and identities both within and without. in naming the work frontière interne, i invited viewers to reflect on how we define, translate, and describe borders over time. the word frontier in english, which means border in french, has strong connotations with the exploration and colonization of unknown places. the french border is a boundary that defines france’s territorial sovereignty, and the frontière interne is thus a kind of paradox referring to the boundaries within a unified body. the american frontier, as described by the turner thesis,25 is a distant horizon, an extreme space where the spirit of future expansion lies. moreover, the frontier comes from the word 25 frederick jackson turner, the significance of the frontier in american history (madison: state historical society of wisconsin, 1894). http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 1 6 t he i n t e r n a l f r o n t i e r contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 6, no 1 “boundless” (2017) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2017.186 front, the vanguard of the army, the part of the country that looks ahead and progresses outwards. the frontier of the wild west is a springboard to freedom and lawlessness, and represents more of an opportunity than a limit to our actions. the internal frontier thus also refers to the shifting range of our potential movements. the frontiers imposed upon us and the frontiers that we put into place to frame our identities can thus be both limits and starting points for action. figure 7 kasia ozga, internal frontier ii 25°48'26.5"n 80°17'39.7"w (left), i (center), and ii 0937°54'39.3"n 126°41'52.0"e (right), 2013, x-ray film on medical lightbox. installation view, borders: barrières frontières la off #3 exhibition, centre culturel numérique saint-exupéry, reims, france. (photo: author) opening bodies, fostering dialogue the frontière interne’s ambiguity underscores the dual symbolism of the border as both barrier and springboard, simultaneously inhibiting and enabling interactions between individuals and select geographic locations. in the x-ray images, the physical site of transit is inscribed within the body, rather than something that we pass through, unharmed. the carved images highlight the narrative, temporal dimension of a site primarily considered in spatial terms. “when the subjective dimension of border crossings and struggles is introduced, the border acquires a temporal thickness and diversity that is not fully discernable within an analysis that systematically privileges spatial qualities.”26 metaphorically, the human skin becomes a permeable membrane, rather than a fixed barrier, through which experiences of passage penetrate our core identities. the experience of moving from one area to another stays with the migrant, and becomes part of how he experiences the world. 26 mezzadra and neilson, border as method, 133. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 1 7 k a s i a o zg a contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 6, no 1 “boundless” (2017) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2017.186 the works explore how our identities are formed as we pass through and reflect on the many borders—physical as well as mental—that we cross daily. the representations of borders in the series are ambiguous; they include vegetation, banal locations such as border control tollbooths, and anxiety-inducing fences patrolled by military personnel. viewers are not given a ready explanation for the works’ meanings but rather are asked to interpret why such scenes have been permanently inscribed on these very x-rays. many learn about the use of biometric data in immigration control, for the first time. the plants and places become metaphors for experiences and barriers on a local and global scale. the border becomes not only an external, political reality, but also an internalized way of relating to spaces and situations. figure 8 kasia ozga, internal frontier i, 2014, x-ray film on medical lightbox, 35.5 x 43 cm. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 1 8 t he i n t e r n a l f r o n t i e r contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 6, no 1 “boundless” (2017) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2017.186 though national borders are easier to identify than shifting cultural codes, the act of transgressing either is a form of expression that entails changing one’s frame of mind by moving from the known to the unknown. thus, we can look at border crossing as a metaphor for going beyond one’s comfort zone and experiencing a sort of archetypal jungian “night journey,” a mythological descent to the underworld in which a hero confronts adversity within himself by voyaging outside of his existing environment.27 whereas national borders influence each person’s internal frontiers, many other factors likewise contribute to identity formation; these include interactions (collective undertakings, social support, family, and peer relationships) as well as cognitive, scholastic, and sociocultural influences.28 we negotiate between the varying demands of these constituencies as we define and redefine ourselves.29 we become who we are through the process of setting and crossing internal borders. the images remind us that we all already cross symbolic borders in our daily lives. rather than seeing the immigrant as “other,” we appreciate him or her as one of us. the artworks transform migration from an isolated act to a shared human experience. we may not all be immigrants, but we can all potentially find ourselves in the migrant’s position. indeed, as the public advocacy campaign founded during the 1997 “documenta x” in kassel reminds us, “no one is illegal.”30 by inspiring interpretation and encouraging fellow feeling, the frontière works foster dialogue, “providing the possibility for antagonism to be transformed into ‘agonism,’” and promoting the coexistence of multiple simultaneous discourses, institutions, and forms of border regimes.31 the frontière interne asks what art can contribute to our understanding of borders. rather than providing an easy answer, the works invite viewers to reflect on how these barriers are internalized and experienced by migrants and how they are elaborated upon and enforced by those who put them into place. new articles in this journal are licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 united states license. this journal is operated by the university library system of the university of pittsburgh as part of its d-scribe digital publishing program, and is co-sponsored by the university of pittsburgh press. 27 carl jung, the archetypes and the collective unconscious, vol. 9, part 1 of collected works, 2nd ed., trans. r. f. c. hull, (princeton: princeton university press, 1968). 28 erik erikson, identity and the life cycle; selected papers (new york: international university press. 1959). 29 babies are born without a clear sense of distinction between themselves and the world around them; the mother is not seen and appreciated as an autonomous individual until infants are six months old and this separation (border) between the self and the mother is crucial for identity formation. 30 hybrid workspace, “no one is illegal” manifesto (documentax: kassel, 1997), https://noii2017.wordpress.com/portfolio/manifesto-english/ 31 chantal mouffe, “for an agonistic public sphere,” in democracy unrealized, ed. okwui enwezor (ostfeldern-ruit: hantje-cantz verlag, 2002), 90. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/ http://www.pitt.edu/ http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/ http://www.upress.pitt.edu/upressindex.aspx https://noii2017.wordpress.com/portfolio/manifesto-english/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture vol 7, no 1 (2018) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2018.253 http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu border check hazel batrezchavez about the artist hazel batrezchavez received her bachelor of arts degree in studio art and anthropology from grinnell college. she has been a part of various group exhibitions and pop-up shows in california, new mexico, iowa, and minnesota, and has had solo exhibitions in new mexico and iowa. her work moves freely among sculpture, video installation, and performance as a way to address the complexities of identity and all that is tied to it—such as the body, language, and material. she is interested in how the act of performing identity through daily rituals can be translated to the action that occurs in the process of making a sculpture or doing a performance. she recognizes that within the fine arts world there is an expectation that if you are raced, or gendered, your work is directly associated with identity. often in identityor race-curated exhibitions, the work functions as a double-edged sword; it celebrates achievement while also creating and fixing notions of race. in batrezchavez’s praxis and work, you will not a find frida kahlo or day of the dead skulls, nor will you find a sombrero or a trope about the hard-working immigrant; you will not find delicate and soft materials just because she is a female, either. what you will find is the artist taking up space, making the viewer recognize the space she is taking, and a resistance to conform with the existing structures, to be defined and labeled with the institutional language, whether that is accomplished through the large-scale objects, or the actions that take place in the artist’s studio or her performance. currently batrezchavez is an instructor of record and working towards her mfa in sculpture at the university of new mexico, albuquerque. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 7, no 1 (2018) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2018.253 my current work moves freely among sculpture, video installation, and performance. i work in multiple mediums as a way to address the complexities of identity, and all that is tied to it, like the body, language, and material. lately, i've been interested in how the act of performing identity through daily rituals can be translated to the action that can happen in the process of making a sculpture or doing a performance. making work that revolves around identity can sometimes feel burdening as a human; it leads me to questions. what work might be expected of me in the art world because of my gender or the way i am “raced”? often in critiques it can be difficult to talk about these specificities, like “race,” gender, and the nude body, let alone be responsible for directing that conversation. i hope that through this work, a dialogue can be started. border check hazel batrezchavez http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 7 4 b o r d e r ch e c k contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 7, no 1 (2018) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2018.253 figures 1&2 hazel batrezchavez, border check, 2018, film stills. full film: hazel batrezchavez, border check, 2018, video. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ https://vimeo.com/262787438 7 5 h a z e l b a t r e z c h a v e z contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 7, no 1 (2018) | issn 2153-5194 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2018.253 new articles in this journal are licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 united states license. this journal is operated by the university library system of the university of pittsburgh as part of its d-scribe digital publishing program, and is co-sponsored by the university of pittsburgh press. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/ http://www.pitt.edu/ http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/ http://www.upress.pitt.edu/upressindex.aspx http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ border check border check contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture vol 5, no 1 “agency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2016.184 http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu documenting/performing the vulnerable body pain and agency in works by boris mikhailov and petr pavlensky ingrid nordgaard abstract this article explores the concepts of pain and agency in the photography series case history (1997–1998) by the ukrainian photographer boris mikhailov, and in four performance-actions (2012–2014) by the russian performance-activist petr pavlensky. although they represent different generations and respond to different historical contexts, mikhailov and pavlensky share a focus on the wounded body. taking both the documentary and performative aspects of these artworks into account, nordgaard argues that the wounded body stands forth as a body of agency which also reflects the social, political, and historical settings in which it exists. the relational consideration of the two artists therefore offers important insights for understanding post-soviet ukraine and present-day russia, and reflects on the correlation between the private and the public body. by placing mikhailov and pavlensky in dialogue with a broader discussion on spectatorship and the role and significance of “shock imagery” and spectacle in contemporary media, the article further suggests why artworks depicting the body in pain have both an ethical and political function. about the author ingrid nordgaard is a phd student in the department of slavic languages and literatures at yale university. she holds a bachelor of arts in russian studies from the university of tromsø, norway, and in 2013, she completed a master of arts in russian studies at new york university. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.184 in september 2015 when the european refugee crisis was at its most pressing, a photograph of toddler aylan kurdi lying dead on a beach in turkey circulated in international media. as adam withnall of the independent phrased it in a headline: “if these extraordinarily powerful images of a dead syrian child washed up on a beach don't change europe's attitude to refugees, what will?” withnall added, “[t]he independent has taken the decision to publish these images because, among the often glib words about the ‘ongoing migrant crisis,’ it is all too easy to forget the reality of the desperate situation facing many refugees.”1 from whithnall’s point of view, the distressing image moved beyond the confines of the seemingly habitual everyday reporting of human tragedy. shortly after, however, online news sites commented on the image taken by photojournalist nilüfer demir, only this time the headlines did not express a call for mercy and action but were rather set on exposing the truth behind the image: “aylan kurdi’s father denies claims he was a people smuggler and driving boat that capsized and led to son’s death;” “europe’s policy did not kill aylan kurdi;” “'aylan's father just wanted better dental treatment': liberal senator cory bernardi's brutal claim that drowned syrian boy wasn't a 'real refugee'.”2 in the months following the death of kurdi, the french satirical magazine charlie hebdo published several cartoon versions of the image, accompanied by headlines such as “what would’ve become of aylan had he grown up? —a groper.”3 suddenly the tragic fate of the helpless three-year-old was used to complicate the narrative of the european crisis: as if the image caption that once read “this is tragic” now stated “this is tragic, but . . . .” on the one hand, the example above shows how we believe that images could have the power to change attitudes. this stance aligns with william stott’s claims about social documentary photography of the 1930s, which he stated “encourages social improvement” by making us feel implicated through portraying social situations that may be a ltered.4 on the other hand, some of the photograph’s reception suggests that such hopes are futile in the context of contemporary media. in our ever-changing media reality, the distinction between media-producer and media-consumer is increasingly ambiguous: interactive social media frequently intersect with traditional news reporting, and online self-publishing blurs the boundary between critical journalism reporting and opinion pieces. while one may argue that such a media landscape supports openness, transparency, and diverse outlooks, it could also distort the distinction between reality and fiction, and news reporting and 1 a dam whithnall, “i f these extraordinarily powerful images of a dead syrian child washed up on a beach don't change europe's attitude to refugees, what will? ,” independent september 2 , 2015, http://www.independent.co.uk/. 2 respectively, a ndrew griffin in independent, september 13, 2015, http://www.independent.co.uk/; c rispian c uss in al jazeera, september 4 , 2015, http://www.aljazeera.com/; and louise cheer in daily mail, september 8 , 2015, http://www.dailymail.co.uk/. 3 see, for example, a manda meade, “c harlie hebdo cartoon depicting drowned child a lan kurdi sparks rac ism debate” in the guardian, january 14, 2016, https://www.theguardian.com/. 4 william stott, documentary express ion and thirties america (c hicago: university of c hicago p ress, 1973), 21 and 26, respectively. documenting/performing the vulnerable body pain and agency in works by boris mikhailov and petr pavlensky ingrid nordgaard http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/aylan-kurdi-s-father-denies-claims-he-was-a-people-smuggler-and-driving-boat-that-capsized-and-led-10498798.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3225898/liberal-senator-cory-bernardi-says-drowned-syrian-boy-aylan-kurdi-wasn-t-real-refugee.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3225898/liberal-senator-cory-bernardi-says-drowned-syrian-boy-aylan-kurdi-wasn-t-real-refugee.html 8 7 i n g r i d no r d g a a rd c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.184 entertainment, thus slowly erasing the difference between media consumption for informational and for entertainment purposes. this is perhaps especially true in cases that involve human suffering or pain; we have become so accustomed to seeing pain in the media that the potential of an empathic viewing of the tragedy and despair of others seems lost—a statement that has certainly become a cliché, but that still rings true. the fact that the image of aylan kurdi triggered such an overwhelming response discloses how public display of pain is inherently connected to discussions of ethics, voyeurism, general media consumption, and spectacle.5 more important, the photograph reveals how fragile the wounded body is when captured without knowing, unable to give consent to its own visibility or simply becoming part of larger narratives over which it has no control. the appearance of presumed pain in such documentary images may help us conceptualize, understand, and provide photographic evidence for global suffering, but it is also too easy to ignore its presence or to question it—as seen in the case of the syrian toddler. this paper explores the relationships between photography, agency, spectatorship, and pain in works by the ukrainian photographer boris mikhailov (b. 1938) and the russian performance-activist petr pavlensky (b. 1984). these two contemporary artists have addressed the body in pain and its visual presentation using both photography and live bodily performance. representing different generations and working in different social and art historical contexts, mikhailov and pavlensky nevertheless share the goal of capturing bodily vulnerability and revealing the physical impact of social and political injustice on the human body. in mikhailov’s photograph series case history (1997–98), homeless people openly exhibit their wounded, naked bodies in front of his camera. pavlensky, in the performance-actions seam (2012), carcass (2013), fixation (2013), and segregation (2014), mutilates his own body publically in some of the most symbolically laden locations in russia. although what follows is not an explicit comparison of the two artists, a re l ational consideration is productive because both mikhailov and pavlensky refuse to present the wounded body as a powerless victim. instead, i argue that the wounded body in their works represents a way of exposing and contending with external factors that may be harmful not only to the individual, but to all of us. it is my hope that a discussion of the two artists will offer new perspectives on the making and distribution of photographic images of bodies in pain, and on the fraught correlation between the artist, the photographic subject, and the spectator. 5 debord c laims that with the intense focus on produc tion in the modern age, everything has become mere representation characterized by spectacle, “a soc ial relation between people that is mediated by images .” guy debord, the society of the spectacle, trans . ken knabb (berkeley: bureau of p ublic secrets, 2014), 11. indirectly following debord’s notion of the global spectacle, p hil c arney argues that photography is a “soc ial practice of produc tion” and a s trong soc ial force; the photograph produces more than it represents. whether or not photographic images are depicting what is “real” or mere fantasy is bes ide the point, as c arney is more interested in showing how photographic images are parts of how we define our lives . c arney, however, does not linger on the negative impacts of the (photographic) spec tacle, but like debord he points out that it defines the way we live. the reality of soc ial practice can indeed be seen through the photographic spectacle, but it is also produced by it: the photograph must be seen as a performative force. see phil c arney, “c rime, p unishment, and the force of p hotographic spectacle” in framing crime: cultural criminology and the image, eds . keith j. hayward and m ike p resdee (new york: routledge, 2010). susan sontag, among others, has c riticized the concept of spec tacle: “[t]o speak of reality becoming a spectacle is a breathtaking provincialism. i t universalizes the viewing habits of a small, educated population living in the rich part of the world, where news has been converted into entertainment.” see susan sontag, regarding the pain of others (new york: p icador, 2003), 110. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 8 8 v u l n e r a b l e b o d y c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.184 the photographic subject in pain: context and representation before discussing mikhailov and pavlensky on their own terms, some context should be given regarding the photographic medium and photography ’s presumed relationship to pain and its representation. moreover, it is also worth asking what type of response such images may trigger in the viewer. in her famous account on photography (1977), susan sontag claims that photographic images have lost their ability to trigger an ethical response in the spectator, because visual representations of suffering have become commonplace and are inherently linked with sensationalism. in sontag’s account, such images create a “chronic voyeuristic relation” to the world.6 in a similar vein, martha rosler’s 1981 essay “in, around, and afterthoughts (on documentary photography)” offers a substantial critique against the notion that documentary photography can give a truthful account of “reality.” claiming that documentary photography only offers empty remarks about the “conditions of man,” rosler states that the common idea “that documentary precedes, supplants, transcends, or cures full, substantial social activism is an indicator that we do not yet have a real documentary.”7 in other words, documentary photography may pacify the viewer by reaffirming the distance between the photographic subject and the spectator, rather than function as a call for action. the remarks made by sontag and rosler raise important points about the photographic subject and the spectator, contemporary media, and the aesthetic ization of suffering. in addition, it indirectly addresses the issue of agency. according to sontag, the act of taking a picture is somewhat predatory because it violates people by turning them “into objects that can be symbolically possessed.”8 from sontag’s point of view, the photographer is in complete control, whereas the people in the images are objectified and robbed of agency, as both sontag and rosler argue is the case in diane arbus’s photographs of social “outsiders.”9 photographing wounded, differently-abled, and non-normative bodies highlights the nonconformity of these bodies, which emphasizes the photographer’s power but also victimizes the photographic subject. as i understand sontag and rosler, to be victimized is the same as being deprived of personal agency. this is perhaps articulated most clearly in rosler’s essay, which states that traditional documentary photography “carries (old) information about a group of powerless people to another group addressed as socially powerful.”10 6 susan sontag, on photography (new york: farrar, straus , and giroux, 1977), 11. jacques rancière offers a different approach to “intolerable images” and their dis tribution in relation to the ques tion of ethical response. ranc ière convincingly argues that our systems of information do not operate through an overabundance of horrific images, but by “selec ting the speaking and reasoning beings who are capable of ‘dec iphering’ the flow of information about anonymous multitudes . the politics of its images consists in teaching us that not jus t anyone is capable of seeing and speaking. this is the lesson very prosaically confirmed by those who c laim to c riticize the televisual flood of images .” ranc ière, “the intolerable image” in the emancipated spectator, trans . gregory e lliott (london; brooklyn, ny : v erso, 2009), 96. while ranc ière’s observations are an important contribution to the discussion of photographic images and their dis tribution, my paper will not follow his line of inquiry. 7 martha ros ler, “in, a round, and a fterthoughts (o n documentary p hotography)” in decoys and dis ruptions: selected writings , 1975-2001 (c ambridge, ma; london: mit p ress, 2004), 196. 8 sontag, on photography,14 . 9 sontag for ins tance writes: “the ambiguity of a rbus’s work is that she seems to have enrolled in one of art photography’s most visible enterprises—concentrating on vic tims, the unfortunate, the dispossessed— but without the compassionate purpose that such a projec t is expected to serve.” see s ontag, “freak show,” new york review of books 20 , no. 18 (1973), http://www.nybooks .com/articles/1973/11/15/freak-show/. 10 ros ler, “in, a round, and a fterthoughts,” 179. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ http://www.nybooks.com/articles/1973/11/15/freak-show/ http://www.nybooks.com/articles/1973/11/15/freak-show/ 8 9 i n g r i d no r d g a a rd c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.184 in regarding the pain of others (2003), sontag engages with her former work on photography and further grapples with the medium’s ethical implications. commenting on some of the most harrowing images from the past two centuries, sontag struggles with the question of photography’s value. although skeptical of the medium’s ability to convey reality, sontag implores the atrocious images to haunt us, as photography depicting suffering potentially is “an invitation to pay attention, to reflect, to learn, to examine the rationalizations for mass suffering offered by established powers.”11 however, sontag does not explicitly address the photographic subject’s agency, but rather focuses on the spectator’s reaction to the images of wounded bodies. it therefore seems as if sontag is stil l hesitant to approach the body in pain as a body with agency. in the following, i will show how mikhailov and pavlensky challenge such a position as the wounded body in the ir works stands forth as a body that may bear the actions of others, but also has the capacity to act. boris mikhailov’s case history: documenting history and delegating performance as a result of the dissolution of the soviet union, the city of kharkov, ukraine, went through dramatic changes over the course of the 1990s.12 gradually, the c ity was covered with foreign advertisements—bright and colorful manifestations of the newly accumulated wealth of a fortunate few and in stark contrast to overwhelming signs of poverty. watching his home city change before his eyes, boris mikhailov became astutely aware of a new presence in the modern cityscape: a great number of homeless people. whereas kharkov had undergone the transition from communism to a market economy, neo-libera l reforms, hyperinflation, and the downsizing of social welfare systems, these were the people who had lost their homes and received no state support. wanting to document the historical moment, mikhailov embarked upon a project that took two years to finish and resulted in case history (completed in 1999), a series of more than four hundred life-sized color photographs portraying the lives of homeless people in kharkov.13 an active photographer since the 1960s, mikhailov has received international acclaim for his numerous photography series.14 while his early work to some extent shared the conceptual framework of moscow conceptualism (associated with figures such as ilya 11 susan sontag, regarding the pain of others (new york: p icador, 2003), 117. 12 ukraine gained its independence from the soviet union in 1991. the years to come would be marked by dramatic economic decline. a ccording to the world bank, in 1991 the gdp per capita was $1,490; by 2000 it had fallen to $636. 13 the his torical specificity of case his tory is important. in the soviet union, it was s trictly forbidden to take photos in specific public spaces, to develop photos that might ques tion or c riticize soviet ideology and everyday life, and to photograph naked bodies. explaining his reason for c reating case his tory, mikhailov s tated, “[h]aving these laws and their consequences in my memory, i was aware that i was not allowed to let it happen once again that some periods of life would be erased” in boris m ikhailov, case his tory (berlin: scalo, 1999), 7 . 14 m ikhailov was born in kharkov, ukraine (ussr) in 1938, and began his career as an amateur photographer in the 1960s. by the late 1960s, m ikhailov had finished what is acknowledged as his firs t larger photography series, superimpos itions, and he soon became a figure within the unoffic ial art scene in the soviet union. in 1976, he quit his job and devoted himself entirely to his photographic work. by the early 2000s, m ikhailov had made twenty-six photography series. in 2000, he was awarded the hasselblad foundation international a ward, considered by many to be the most pres tigious recognition in contemporary photography. for a cohes ive account of m ikhailov’s s tylistic and formal development as a photographer, see u rs stahel, “p rivate pleasures, burdensome boredom, public decay—an introduction” in boris mikhailov: a retrospective/eine retrospektive, ed. u rs stahel (zurich: scalo, 2003), 12 –17. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 9 0 v u l n e r a b l e b o d y c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.184 kabakov, erik bulatov, viktor pivovarov, and andrei monastarsky), his post-soviet ser ies speak directly to the state of confusion, disillusionment, and the collapse of order that followed as a result of the dissolution of the soviet union.15 case history marks a pivotal point in mikhailov’s photographic documentation o f post-soviet reality. several of the photographs show explicit nakedness or human suffering, and the series includes photographs of animals, children, mikhailov himself and his family members, objects or rooms, and cityscapes. the images therefore depict not only the situation of the homeless, but also reflect general life in kharkov. figure 1 boris m ikhailov, untitled, from the series case his tory, 1997– 98. c hromogenic color print, 58 7/16 x 39 3/16 in. c opyright boris m ikhailov; courtesy p ace/macgill gallery, new york. 15 for more on m ikhailov’s connection to moscow c onceptualism, see boris groys’s his tory becomes form: moscow conceptualism (c ambridge and london: mit p ress, 2010) and matthew jesse jackson’s the experimental group: i lya kabakov, moscow conceptualism, soviet avant-gardes (c hicago: university of c hicago p ress, 2010). http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 9 1 i n g r i d no r d g a a rd c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.184 although the focus of case history is above all on kharkov’s inhabitants, the series clearly documents a city in decay. in some of the photographs, mikhailov carefully aligns the two, as exemplified by the image of a man lying in a hole in an asphalt road (fig. 1). from its jagged, uneven shape, it is evident that the hole is not carefully designed, but rather the result of natural erosion or caused by rough weather conditions. covered by plants and trash, the hole has clearly remained unattended for quite some time. the man is formally dressed, but his suit is stained and his shoes are worn. his hands are swollen and a large wound is visible on his left wrist. his face is covered in dust and grease. these visual markers suggest that the man is one of the homeless people in kharkov. mikhailov here captures both human and social decline and seems to suggest an almost symbiotic relationship between the homeless man and his environment—one may even speculate whether the man’s positioning within the hole is accidental, or whether mikhailov instructed the man how to lie. for example, his back and shoe bottom run parallel to the right edge of the asphalt, while small indents are visible in the asphalt above his head and above the elbow of the arm on which the man rests his head. he stretches his left arm out in front of his belly, perhaps to provide the spectator the best view of his swollen and wounded hand, an awkward pose that mirrors the irregular shape of the hole. in the upper left corner of the photograph, a large crack appears in the asphalt, and the direction of the crack continues visually through the position of the man’s right forearm and the angle of his extended leg. lastly, the man’s jacket chromatically mirrors the asphalt, and his unwashed face has the color of the dirt and gravel in the hole. considering these compositional features, it is as if mikhailov suggests that man and environment are one, as if the hole has perfectly taken shape around the man’s body. while case history at first glance resembles social documentary photography in the vein of jacob riis, walker evans, roman v ishniac, mary ellen mark, and david goldblatt (to name but a few), it is mikhailov’s careful compositional choices such as these that add a clear artistic component to the series, thus situating case history as both documentary and fine-art photography.16 documenting a specific moment in ukrainian history, mikhailov pays special attention to homeless subjects who are covered in wounds and characterized by deformities, as if the ir bodies bear physical evidence of a society in decline. considering the focus on bodies in pain alongside the title of the series, the spectator is forced to look at the bodies portrayed as though extracted from a medical journal of pathology. this aspect of the work even led one critic to accuse mikhailov of contributing to the creation of a “pornography of pain.”17 although such characteristics point out the complicated issue of voyeurism and the photographer’s potential exploitation of his/her subjects, i challenge the notion that mikhailov’s photographs are set on victimizing or humiliating the subjects whose woun ded bodies are depicted. in one photograph, mikhailov portrays a naked woman with a large abdominal hernia—a physical ailment that causes pain and discomfort that may be increased by basic, everyday movements (fig. 2). the woman’s naked body is centered in the photograph, and the woman 16 o n the connec tion between m ikhailov and documentary photography, see walead beshty, “toward an emphatic resistance: boris m ikhailov’s embodied documents,” afterall: a journal of art, context, and enquiry, no. 12 (a utumn/winter 2005), 80 –88. 17 see henry h itchings, “what’s right in front of you” in times literary supplement, july 18, 2003, 18. the art c ritic and author boris groys has argued against such c ritic ism, noting that on c loser inspection, case his tory “is in fac t concerned with the mise-en-scène of the body—in this case not as an ideologically s taged “soviet” body, but as an erotic body expressing desire” in groys , his tory becomes form: moscow conceptualism, 140. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 9 2 v u l n e r a b l e b o d y c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.184 stands tall, in profile, with a serious look upon her face. her body, covered in sunlight, is aged and worn, and a large scar is visible on her shoulder. the woman’s pose seems contrived and staged, suggesting that she is aware of being photographed. the composition offers the spectator the best possible view of her deformity—exposed by the sun and set against a dark background. it is therefore tempting to argue that mikhailov captured the woman in such a position so that the observer may get the best possible view of her deformity, satisfying our morbid fascination. however, a closer look at other formal, compositional decisions suggests that this is not simply an image of a hernia or a pathologized body. the woman’s body is paralleled by the building structure behind her, as the brick walls are covered with wounds and architectural deformities, thereby evoking the marks that time leaves on everything and everyone. in some places paint is chipping off, and the wall to the right reveals a failed attempt to cover the brick in a different materia l. the beige color of the left wall is similar to the woman’s general skin complexion, while the old paint stains mirror the darker shade of her nipples, her scars, and the mole above her r ight knee. the patterns in the mortar resemble the shapes made by the prominent ve ins in her hand, the creases in her elbow, and the wrinkles on her neck. suddenly, the protruding hernia seems of less significance. instead, in its detail and overall careful composition, the photograph becomes a celebration of lived life, imperfection, and naked vulnerability. figure 2 boris m ikhailov, untitled, from the series case his tory (1997–98). c hromogenic color print, dimens ions variable. c opyright boris mikhailov; courtesy p ace/macgill gallery, new york. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 9 3 i n g r i d no r d g a a rd c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.184 what i am proposing by analyzing this specific photograph in form, content, and context, is that mikhailov is not interested in exposing the wounds or deformities of others simply to shock or provoke the spectator. in case history, the body in pain needs to be considered from a more generous approach that pushes us to look beyond the explicit exhibition of cuts and bruises, and that challenges us to view these bodies as worthy of aesthetic contemplation. more important, mikhailov’s compositional strategies compel viewers to look more closely and consider the stories of the individuals photographed in relationship to their surrounding environment. the homeless in case history therefore should not be viewed simply as objects of a social documentary, but as co-creators in an aesthetic production. this latter point is made even clearer when examining the connection between the documentary and performance in case history. commenting on the creative process of making case history, mikhailov states that he approached the homeless from a journalistic point of view, but that he wanted to avoid doing “pure journalism”—defined by the artist as “taking snapshots of events without interfering.”18 he accomplished this by asking the homeless subjects to reenact situations or scenes he had witnessed, or to strike a pose of their own design. i claim that this should be interpreted as an act of embodied agency since mikhailov’s photographs do not solely document a specif i c historical moment; they also record the agency of kharkov’s homeless through the ir often self-fashioned portraits and reenactments. while i certainly do not propose v iewing case history as performance art, the staged elements of the works, and the complicit contribution of the homeless subjects who were asked to “perform themselves” should not be understated. indeed, a continuum that may be traced in mikhailov’s photographs from the last three decades is his exploration of the fine line between theatrical performance (of everyday life) and documentary—an important aspect of his art that has been pointed out by several critics and is especially apparent in case history.19 the implications of the homeless subjects’ self-performance can be interpreted through claire bishop’s concept of “delegated performance,” defined as “the act of hiring nonprofessionals or specialists in other fields to undertake the job of being present and performing at a particular time and a particular place on behalf of the artist, and following his or her instructions.“20 the people who are hired, according to bishop, are asked to perform their socioeconomic category, whether this is a matter of age, gender, race, disability , or profession. mikhailov’s accounts of the making of case history focus on this element of collaboration between himself and the homeless, but it should be noted that he paid the 18 boris m ikhailov and jan kaila, “a discussion between boris mikhailov and jan kaila” in boris mikhailov: the hasselblad award 2000, ed. gunilla knape (goteborg: hasselblad c enter, 2000), 78 –84. 19 v iktor m isiano and a nna p ilkington give a valuable account of this connection in m ikhailov’s work, coining it “the representation of the everyday and the performative ac ting -out of subjec ts.” see m isiano and p ilkington, “the e thics of v iew: notes on boris mikhailov,” afterall: a journal of art, context, and enquiry, no. 72 (fall/winter 2005): 72 –79. a nne von der heiden also argues that the connection between the documentary and the performative is at the very core of case his tory, and calls it “the most scandalous element of the work as a whole.” see von der heiden,“‘c onsummatum est’ case his tory by boris m ikhailov” in boris mikhailov: a retrospective/eine retrospektive, ed. u rs stahel (zurich: scalo, 2003), 170–172. 20 c laire bishop, “delegated p erformance: o utsourcing authenticity,” october 140 (spring 2012): 91. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 9 4 v u l n e r a b l e b o d y c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.184 figure 3 boris m ikhailov, untitled, from the series case his tory (1997–98). c hromogenic color print, dimens ions variable. c opyright boris mikhailov; courtesy p ace/macgill gallery, new york. homeless for their participation.21 to some degree, this establishes an unequal power relation between mikhailov and the homeless, making it easy to criticize the photographer for exploiting a vulnerable social group. but although such a transaction may affirm the artist’s hierarchical status, it is also a matter of probing singular authorship, delegating power, and entrusting the performers with agency.22 there is a dialogical relation between artist and performer; as bishop emphasizes, “delegation is not just a one-way, downward gesture.”23 to interpret the wounded bodies in case history as exploited subjects who are taken advantage of deprives the homeless individuals of the agency that is manifest in their participation. to be clear, i am not suggesting that the homeless in case history are fully in 21 in the introduc tory notes to case his tory, m ikhailov discusses the fac t that he paid the homeless to partic ipate in the making of the series: “manipulating with money is somehow a new way of legal relations in all areas of the former ussr. a nd by this book i wanted to transmit the feeling that in that place and now people can be openly manipulated. in order to give this flavour of time i wanted to copy or perform the same relations which exist in society between a model and myself.” in boris m ikhailov, case his tory (berlin: scalo, 1999), 9 . the financ ial transaction between m ikhailov and his photographic subjects thus draws awareness to the capitalist system at large, and also speaks to the s ituation of pos t -soviet ukraine in the 1990s, during which time certain groups gained prosperity, while others faced the deepest poverty. 22 bishop, “delegated p erformance,” 110. 23 ibid., 111. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 9 5 i n g r i d no r d g a a rd c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.184 charge of the work’s production and its distribution, but rather that agency should not be reduced to thinking of the photographic subjects as exploited, and the artist as explo iter. instead, the individuals in the series must be acknowledged for their participation in the making of the photographs. an old man who opens his mouth to reveal his missing teeth, pulling back his lip so we can see them better, surely displays an image of someone’s pa in and misfortune, but it is also the image of an individual who allowed for such a photograph to be taken (fig. 3). the old man looks straight into the camera as if to tell us that he is not ashamed of his pain, suggesting that being photographed in this setting is a matter of consensus, agreement, and mutual recognition between the photographer and the subject, although this naturally does not do anything to ease his personal tragedy. the confrontational gaze and the matter-of-factness with which the homeless man presents himself affirm his agency. ignoring such an expression of personal agency, i argue, may lead to the further victimization of the photographic subject. my intention so far has been to show how mikhailov combines documentary photography, fine art, and performance in order to record a specific moment in post -soviet history. in addition, mikhailov’s case history presents bodies in pain that are not victimized or robbed of agency, but are rather active participants in the creative process of making the series. nevertheless, in case history, bodily pain as such is portrayed by mikhailov as a consequence of social issues beyond the subject’s control. what, then, of pain that is se lf inflicted and consciously incorporated into artistic action? petr pavlensky: the political potential of pain in november of 2013, news agencies across the world circulated an image of a young man sitting naked on red square in front of the imposing kremlin in moscow with his scrotum nailed to the cobblestones (fig. 4). the young man was petr pavlensky, a professionally trained artist who sees his practice as uniting art and political action, and who in the last five years has emerged as a powerful voice of dissent in russia.24 besides be ing mentioned in news reportage around the world, the persistent coverage of pavlensky in magazines such as artforum, the calvert journal, and 1843 (the economist’s cultural magazine) has made pavlensky a symbol of russian art and activism in the eyes of a western audience. the wide online distribution of pavlensky’s actions and the resulting commentaries triggered by them further speak to the charged relationship between his performances and their documentation, and also raise the question of whether the public aftermath of his actions should, in fact, be interpreted as being part of his overall performance. in the following descriptions, i refer to live performances—events that happened at a certain time and place in front of an audience—but my descriptions are necessarily based on photographs taken during the events. on the one hand, this represents 24 p etr p avlensky is a former s tudent of both saint p etersburg art and industry academy and saint p etersburg pro arte foundation for c ulture and a rts (which he quit for political reasons). together with o ksana shalygina, he is the founder of the journal political propaganda, which publishes material in different media on art and politics. while p avlensky’s art does not always revolve around self-mutilation and a public display of the artis t’s own (naked) body, the works that will be explored here all focus on the wounded body in encounter with public spaces and political power. i t should also be noted that, when referring to his performances, p avlensky uses the russian word aкция (akts iya). this term should be unders tood as an ac t that is the consequence of actionism. by employing this word to desc ribe his art, p avlensky positions himself within the larger artis tic tradition and discourse of v iennese a ctionism of the 1960s and 1970s, but more important, it connec ts him to moscow a ctionism of the 1990s, famous ly personified by figures such as a natoly osmolovsky, a leksandr brener, and o leg kulik. for the sake of s implicity, i will use the english word action when desc ribing pavlensky’s performances. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 9 6 v u l n e r a b l e b o d y c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.184 a methodological challenge, and on the other, it offers a chance to approach pavlensky’s work as twofold: as both performance and as photographic performance documentation, circulated not as art but as news. to each of the performances that will be discussed in my paper, pavlensky invited photographers to document his actions, although no contract existed between the artist and the photographers regarding the future media distribution of the images.25 thus, pavlensky did not view the photographs as being part of the artwork. rather, he used photography to validate and document his performances. figure 4 p etr p avlensky, fixation (фиксация), november 10, 2013. p erformance action with photographic documentation, moscow, russ ia. p hotograph, 36.39 x 56.31 in. p hotographer anonymous , image courtesy of p etr p avlensky. 25 p avlensky in an email to the author, september 4 , 2016. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 9 7 i n g r i d no r d g a a rd c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.184 paul auslander has argued that whenever a performance is documented, the performance may be approached as raw material for documentation, while the document itself emerges as the final product that is widely circulated and known to a larger audience. 26 in a similar vein, amelia jones states that performance art is dependent on documentation “to attain symbolic status within the realm of culture.”27 in pavlensky’s case, this is especially true. not only does the distributed documentation reach an additional audience both nationally and internationally, but it also helps constitute his actions as art: for, as auslander claims, “the art of documenting an event as performance is what constitutes it as such.”28 in the russian political context in which pavlensky operates, such an attribution is o f crucial importance. his actions have been interpreted by the authorities as signs of mental i l lness and as acts of vandalism, and as a result pavlensky has been detained, fined, and imprisoned. furthermore, the iconic photographs of his actions may become part of a collective memory of a body that resisted political oppression. the relationship between pavlensky’s actions and their documentation is therefore “viral” in the sense that christopher bedford deploys the term, precisely because the afterlife of his performances “extends the primary act of the performance into the indefinite future of reproduction.”29 although the action on red square was not the first time pavlensky used his own body to express his opposition to the political situation in russia, fixation (фиксация) received massive media attention due to its explicit content and loaded symbolism: the date of the action, november 10, coincided with the national police day, and red square bears special significance in the political history of the russian state.30 regarding what he wanted to achieve with the performance, pavlensky stated: the performance can be seen as a metaphor of the apathy, the political indifference, and the fatalism of russian society. it is not the official lawlessness that deprives society of the possibility to act, but the fixation on its defeats and 26 p aul a uslander, “the p erformativity of p erformance documentation” in paj: a journal of performance and art 28 , no. 3 (2006): 3 . 27 a melia jones, "‘p resence’ in a bsentia: experiencing performance as documentation" in art journal 56 , no. 4 (1997): 13. 28 a us lander, “p erformativity of p erformance,” 5 . 29 c hris topher bedford, “the viral o ntology of p erformance” in perform, repeat, record: live art in his tory, eds . a melia jones and a drian heathfield (c hicago: intellect books, 2012), 77. 30 p olice day—or p olice and internal a ffairs servicemen’s day—is a professional holiday in russia. i t has been celebrated s ince 1962 and is formerly known as m ilitsiya day. o n this day, the police and everyone working in the m inistry of internal a ffairs are honored by their superiors and o ther government officials. red square dates from the late 15th century. for centuries, it func tioned as one of the most central market places in moscow, and was a gathering place for public celebrations and castigations. red square is also the location for russia’s famous military parades. i t should be noted that p avlensky’s action evokes another his torical component: in russ ian prisons, there is a tradition of inmates nailing their scrotums to s tools and benches to protest the prison authorities. see interview with marat guelman in ekow eshun, et. al., “the naked t ruth: the a rt world reacts to p yotr p avlensky’s red square protest,” calvert journal, november 14, 2013, http://calvertjournal.com/articles/show/1768/pyotr-pavlensky-russian-artist-nailsred-square. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ http://calvertjournal.com/articles/show/1768/pyotr-pavlensky-russian-artist-nails-red-square http://calvertjournal.com/articles/show/1768/pyotr-pavlensky-russian-artist-nails-red-square 9 8 v u l n e r a b l e b o d y c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.184 losses nails us even firmer to the pavement of the kremlin, shaping people into an army of apathetic statues—patiently awaiting their fate.31 pavlensky’s statement touches upon a number of characteristic elements of his work: its almost obvious use of metaphors and symbolism; its clear political component; and its desire to comment on the larger social body through the use of the artist’s own body. the likening of the russian people to “an army of apathetic statues” is telling of how pavlensky views his contemporaries: as passive and submissive; easily shaped by the authorities; and as unwilling or incapable of changing their fates.32 nevertheless, the use of the word “army” suggests that pavlensky acknowledges the potential power and inherent agency of russia ’s citizens, and although pavlensky is physically affixed to the square in his performance, the fixation alluded to in the title is also psychological in nature. i therefore argue that pavlensky’s actions do not only reflect the artist’s interpretation of his contemporaneity , but they also call on others to act, even if indirectly. the way in which pavlensky speaks to today’s russia, while simultaneously anchoring his actions in russian history through his careful choice of performance locations and timing, makes his actions function as a reminder: history may be irreversible, but it should not dictate our present. this, of course, does not mean that pavlensky’s actions do not need to be contextualized within the ir own socio-historical moment to be fully understood. following the parliamentary election of december 2011, in which vladimir putin’s party united russia won the majority of the seats in the duma, protests broke out in several cities around the country. for months to come, people regularly gathered in the streets to protest what they considered illicit elections and political and economic corruption—signs of russia moving in a non-democratic direction. on february 21, 2012, five members of the punk rock collective pussy riot staged a performance of their song “punk prayer—mother of god, chase putin away!” in moscow’s cathedral of christ the savior.33 the video of the performance was uploaded to the internet and soon went viral, and with their bright costumes and radical message, pussy riot became a world symbol of the anti-putin opposition in russia. however, 31 “а кцию можно рассматривать как метафору апатии, политической индифферентности и фатализма современного российского общества. не чиновничий беспредел лишает общество возможности действовать, а фиксация на своих поражениях и потерях все крепче прибивает нас к кремлевской брусчатке, создавая из людей армию апатичных истуканов, терпеливо ждущих своей участи.” a uthor’s translation. see, “художник петр павленский прибил мошонку гвоздем к брусчатке на красной площади,” november 10, 2013, http://grani.ru/politics/russia/activism/m.221013.html. 32 a rt c ritic marat guelman for ins tance interpreted fixation as a means of showing soc iety and the oppos ition “that we have los t, that the battle is over: they’ve imprisoned us all and nailed us to the ground.” guelman even added that p avlensky’s action was “the artis tic equivalent of setting yourself on fire,” while the russ ian artist o leg kulik viewed p avlensky as a martyr. see eshun, et al. 33 pussy riot’s choice of location is by no means coincidental. the original c athedral of c hrist the savior was built in the 19th century, but, on the order of joseph stalin, it was demolished in 1931. in 1958, a large outdoor swimming pool was built on the foundation of what was initially supposed to become the p alace of the soviets. the pool operated until 1994, and in the following year, the building of the new cathedral began. the second cathedral of c hrist the savior was consecrated in a ugust 2000. e liot borens tein has argued that the c athedral of c hrist the savior must be unders tood as “the material foundation of the cultural logic of p ussy riot” because it speaks to the concept of his torical ins tability. pussy riot’s performance must therefore be unders tood as a s trong c ritique against the almost symbiotic relationship between the russian s tate and the russian orthodox c hurch—a connection that was made explic itly evident in the months preceding the russian presidential election of 2012 when p atriarch kirill in his sermons encouraged people to vote for p utin. see e liot borenstein, “holy appropriate: why pussy riot and the c athedral of c hrist the sav ior are a match made in heaven,” calvert journal, january 22, 2012, http://calvertjournal.com/comment/show/1983/christ-the-saviour-moscow-pussy-riot. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ http://grani.ru/politics/russia/activism/m.221013.html http://calvertjournal.com/comment/show/1983/christ-the-saviour-moscow-pussy-riot 9 9 i n g r i d no r d g a a rd c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.184 the severe legal persecutions facing the women also made clear how harshly the russian state would punish political dissidents.34 pavlensky’s action seam (шов) of july 2012, was in indirect dialogue with pussy riot and the authority’s treatment of the group’s members. standing in front of the famous kazan cathedral in st. petersburg, dressed in black and with a stoic expression, pavlensky he ld a large placard which read: “the performance of pussy riot was a replication of the famous action of jesus christ (matthew 21:12–13)”35—referring to jesus christ’s expulsion of money changers and merchants from the temple.36 in contrast, the artist’s silence was made explicit and irreversible since his mouth was sewed shut with visible red thread.37 pavlensky’s action thus expressed his support for the members of pussy riot, whose tr ia l was to take place in moscow the same month.38 a year later, in may 2013, pavlensky would once more use his body to address the political situation in russia. in the action carcass (туша), pavlensky lay in front of the main entrance of the st. petersburg legislative assembly bare naked and wrapped inside a large cocoon of barbed wire (fig. 5). as the barbed wire would cut deeper into the artist’s skin with every move he made, pavlensky was forced to lie completely still in the cold, incapacit ated and dependent on law enforcement to be released. carcass was performed as a protest against a number of laws that were discussed (and passed) in the russian duma in the fall of 2012 and spring of 2013, several of which pavlensky and others interpreted as restricting individual freedom.39 pavlensky wished to embody this restriction, and to symbolize “the existence of a person living within a repressive yet law-given system in which every move 34 for more on the aftermath of p ussy riot’s performance, see masha gessen, words will break cement: the pass ion of pussy riot (new york: p enguin, 2014). 35 “а кция pussy riot была переигрыванием знаменитой акции иисуса христа (мф. 21:12–13).” a uthor’s translation. 36 the c itation from matthew 21:12–3 reads: "and jesus went into the temple of god, and cas t out all them that sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew the tables of the moneychangers, and the seats of them that sold doves , a nd said unto them, i t is written, my house shall be called the house of prayer; but ye have made it a den of thieves." p avlensky underlines the symbolical gesture of p ussy riot’s performance, as the offic ials of the russ ian orthodox church are likened to the moneychangers in the temple because of their commercial ac tivities. for more on the russ ian o rthodox c hurch and its economic relations, see n ikolai m itrokhin’s русская православная церковь: современное состояние и актуальные проблемы (moscow: novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 2004). 37 for images and a survey of his ac tions, see shaun walker, “p etr p avlensky: why i nailed my scrotum to red square,” the guardian, february 5 , 2014, https://www.theguardian.com/. 38 a lthough c learly speaking to his present, p avlensky’s choice of ac tion also situated him within a larger corpus of both performance artists and ac tivists who have sewed their mouths shut to s ignal political oppress ion and the s ilencing of certain social groups. david wojnarowicz, bob flanagan and sheree rose, and ron a they are jus t a handful of the artis ts who have had their lips sewn shut during or as performances for diverse reasons, but the ges ture further resonates with those of asylum seekers in a us tralia and great britain as a way of symbolizing unjus t governmental treatment . see amelia jones, “p erforming the wounded body: p ain, a ffect, and the radical relationality of meaning,” parallax 15 no. 4 (2009): 46–47. 39 o ne such example is the russian federation’s law “for the purpose of p rotecting children from information a dvocating for a denial of t raditional family values,” which became known in western media as the “gay propaganda law.” a nother, the law “o n a mendments to legislative acts of the russ ian federation regarding the regulation of the a c tivities of non-profit o rganisations p erforming the functions of a foreign a gent,” s tated that russian ngos receiving donations from abroad must offic ially declare themselves as foreign agents, and that all “political activity” within a given organization must be regis tered with the authorities before being carried out. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 1 0 0 v u l n e r a b l e b o d y c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.184 triggers a strong reaction by the law, and forces its way into the body of the indiv idual.” 40 the title of carcass further suggests that pavlensky’s body should be seen as immobilized and deprived of agency. the performance therefore exhibited the artist’s body as will ingly victimized as pavlensky indirectly delegated some of his initial artistic agency to the people who witnessed his action, and to the ones who cut him out of the barbed wire—a point that will be explored more closely below. figure 5 petr p avlensky, carcass (туша), may 3 , 2013. p erformance ac tion with photographic documentation, st. p etersburg, russia. p hotograph, 24 x 16 in. p hotographer anonymous, image courtesy of p etr p avlensky. as a consequence of his actions, pavlensky’s mental state has been questioned, and the artist has been evaluated by state-appointed doctors and psychiatrists. one might say that the authorities had no choice—exposing or voluntarily seeking out pain goes against social norms, and is usually synonymous with destructive behavior. pavlensky is well aware of this, which can partially explain the location of his (to the date of this publication) last performance involving his wounded body. the action segregation (oтделение ) took place outside the serbsky center, a famous psychiatric hospital in moscow.41 on october 19, 2014, pavlensky sat naked on the wall outside of the serbsky center, and with his only accessory, 40 “существование человека в репрессивной законодательной системе, где любое движение вызывает жестокую реакцию закона, впивающегося в тело индивида." a uthor’s translation. see “художник петр павленский прибил мошонку гвоздем к брусчатке на красной площади,” november 10, 2013, http://grani.ru/p olitics/russia/activism/m.221013.html . 41 in the soviet union, punitive psychiatry was a common way of s ilencing artistic or political dissensus, thus diagnos ing opposition as a mental illness. for more on the topic , see for ins tance sarah marks and mat savelli, eds ., psychiatry in communis t europe (london: p algrave macmillan, 2015), and rebecca reich, “ins ide the p sychiatric word: diagnosis and self-definition in the late soviet period," slavic review 73 , no.3 (2014): 563–84. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ http://grani.ru/politics/russia/activism/m.221013.html 1 0 1 i n g r i d no r d g a a rd c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.184 an enormous knife, cut off his right earlobe (fig. 6). by consciously performing an action that he knew would likely label him as psychologically unstable, pavlensky cha llenged the carefully crafted distinction between the sane and the insane, which separates the healthy from the sick. moreover, by physically cutting off his earlobe (which seems to have disappeared when pavlensky was escorted away from the serbsky center42) from the rest of his body, pavlensky gestured towards the fragile line of demarcation between the part and the whole; the individual and the state. he also evoked the trope of the misunderstood artist-genius—balancing between madness and prophetic clarity, and famously personified by van gogh and his severed ear.43 it is thus the act of cutting as such that is important in pavlensky’s action, not the physical mutilation of his body. figure 6 petr p avlensky, segregation (oтделение), o c tober 19, 2014. p erformance ac tion with photographic documentation, moscow, russia. p hotograph, 72 x 48 in. p hotographer anonymous, image courtesy of p etr p avlensky. 42 marc bennetts, “a c ts of res istance: p yotr p avlensky on p erformance a rt as p rotest,” the calvert journal, december 1 , 2014, http://calvertjournal.com/articles/show/3373/pavlensky-performance-artprotes t. 43 several commentators have connected pavlensky to the figure of the holy fool (юродивый). the holy fool has deep roots in russian o rthodoxy where the term des ignates someone who feigns s tupidity or madness in order to uncover injus tice. the figure also appears frequently in russian literature. for more on p avlensky as an example of the holy fool, see for ins tance dasha filippova, “the russian terrorist: p etr p avlensky,” artslant, june 13, 2016, http://www.arts lant.com/9/articles/show/46065#f4 . i t should be noted, however, that the artis t himself has rejec ted such a comparison: see his interview in новая газета in december 2012, http://www.novayagazeta.ru/arts/71111.html. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ http://calvertjournal.com/articles/show/3373/pavlensky-performance-art-protest http://calvertjournal.com/articles/show/3373/pavlensky-performance-art-protest http://www.artslant.com/9/articles/show/46065#/h http://www.novayagazeta.ru/arts/71111.html 1 0 2 v u l n e r a b l e b o d y c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.184 simply focusing on palvensky’s own body leaves out an important component of his art: the relationship between the social body and the body of an individual, an essential aspect of his work because of its consciously and explicitly public nature. discussing the performance carcass in which the artist becomes completely dependent on others to be freed, pav lensky actively engages with the question of why his performances are so centered on his own body: “why i use the body? because there is a social body—a body that i am also a part of. by using my own body in this act, i am showing what is going on with the social body.”44 i f we take him at his word, pavlensky does not conceive of his actions as disconnected from the lives of his russian contemporaries, but rather seeks to reflect what he considers the state of the social body. pavlensky’s view on the artist’s body here clearly resonates with the projects of other body artists who see the artistic subject as a subject that continuously reaches beyond itself in order to show that identity is always relational, thereby entering the aesthetic realm as a social and political entity.45 in addition, the performed link between the individual and the social body in pavlensky’s actions makes it especially valid to analyze his approach to pain and to ask whose pain this really is. if pavlensky’s body is a metaphor for the larger social body, one may assume that he considers the social body in pain, perhaps even to be pitied or healed. and yet, despite pavlensky’s powerful use of metaphors, such metaphors do not obliterate the fact that, during his actions, the body in pain is indeed his . this raises an important issue regarding his actions: are we (as spectators and as representatives of the social body) somehow to blame for the individual’s suffering? 46 regardless of how one chooses to answer, the question itself shows the importance and potential of paying special attention to pain in pavlensky’s actions.47 i argue that, due to the artist’s blurring of the border between the private and the social body, the experience of pain 44 russ iaforall. “художник пётр павленский о своей акции у за кс спб,” youtube v ideo, 3:41, may 8 , 2013, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ylwaw0brshe. a uthor’s translation. 45 a melia jones, body art/performing the subject (m inneapolis/london: university of m innesota press, 1998), 13–14. see also zdenka badovinac, ed., body and the eas t: from the 1960s to the present (c ambridge, ma: mit p ress, 1999); m ichael feher, “o f bodies and technologies” in discussions in contemporary culture, ed. hal fos ter (seattle: bay p ress, 1981); and nelly richard, “margins and ins titutions: a rt in c hile s ince 1974,” in art & text 21 (1986). for a spec ific account of body art and its soc ial s ignificance in relation to masochism in western performance art, see kathy o ’dell, contract with the skin: masochism, performance art, and the 1970’s (m inneapolis: university of m innesota p ress, 1998). 46 this ques tion brings to mind other performances by artists such as chris burden, gina p ane, and marina a bramovic—artists who have all self-inflicted pain or had others inflic t pain upon their bodies. for an analys is of the “s ilent acceptance” of audience members to such ac ts, see o’dell, contract with the skin; and frazer ward, no innocent bys tanders: performance art and audience (hanover, dartmouth c ollege p ress, 2012). 47 this is not to say, of course, that p avlensky’s actions are about pain as such. when asked about the role of pain in an interview, p avlensky s tated: “i t is not important. in my ac tions i do not attach any conceptual s ignificance to pain, and i do not emphas ize it. the point is not to bring harm upon myself. in general, i relate to pain as i relate to a phobia that must be overcome—like any other fear. the feeling of pain originates in the mind.” a uthor’s translation. for the original quote in russ ian, see evgeniy levkovich, “пётр павленский: ‘моя цель—побудить людей к действию’,” julia&wins ton, november 9 , 2015, http://juliawinston.eu/pavlensky/. while p avlensky seems to want to draw attention away from pain as a component in his ac tions, i maintain that, to the average viewer, the assumed presence of pain s till affec ts how one reac ts to and interprets his actions. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ylwaw0brshe http://juliawinston.eu/pavlenskiy/ 1 0 3 i n g r i d no r d g a a rd c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.184 must be considered as both private and social in nature: the pain of another is also my own; the pain inflicted by another, is also inflicted by me.48 pain rendered public as should be clear from what has been explored so far, mikhailov and pavlensky are not necessarily interested in simply focusing on the pain of one single individual; rather, they use the wounded body to allude to the larger social and political structures that may be causing pain. for both artists, the distinction between the individual and the social body is thereby challenged. because of this, i would like to suggest that the presence of pain in the artworks discussed above indirectly disputes elaine scarry’s study the body in pain, in which she argues that pain is inexpressible; that it resists language and is characterized by its inability to be shared. as scarry puts it, “[t]o have pain is to have certainty; to hear about pain is to have doubt.”49 pain, for scarry, cuts us off from our community and the ability to sufficiently express our emotions, and threatens to destroy our sense of self in the world: our ethics, the promises given by us to loved ones, and our personal integrity. scarry approaches pain as an experience of pure negation; pain as something always appearing as being against the subject, even though the sensation of pain introduces a sense of radical subjectivity.50 scarry’s work has been influential across disciplines, but it has also been cr iticized for giving an ahistorical account of pain, in which pain is presented as an ontological entity of its own—independent of cultural and political signifiers. pain becomes a fact for scarry, rather than something that needs to be interpreted within a more complex framework. 51 histor ian joanna bourke offers an alternative approach and seeks to contextualize pain as a concept and to challenge the notion of it being entirely private in nature. bourke points out that pa in can be felt differently depending on how one experiences it, and should be analyzed as a type of event rendered public through language—not as something that happens to the body independently of its environment.52 as bourke phrases it, “pain describes the way we experience something not what is experienced,” and this “way” of experiencing pain is 48 jennifer doyle’s scholarship has explored the importance of the viewer’s affec tive response to artworks of challenging or difficult content. specifically writing on the “difficulty” involved in viewing the performances of the hiv-positive body artist ron a they, doyle notes: “the work is hard because it forces us to keep company with vulnerability, intimacy, and des ire. . . . these are the things that, in fac t, make life hard. they are produc tive and important kinds of difficulty—not because they expand our ideas of what cons titutes art but because they speak to quite fundamental aspects of being a soc ial subject.” doyle’s book is especially useful when interpreting the use of the wounded body in case his tory and in pavlensky’s ac tions, as she argues that the artist’s triggering of an affec tive response in the viewer es tablishes or further s trengthens the political and ideological implications of a given artwork, thus making us aware of our own respons iveness and potential to ac t. see doyle, hold i t agains t me: difficulty and emotion in contemporary art (durham, nc : duke university press, 2013), 20. 49 e laine scarry, the body in pain: the making and unmaking of the world (o xford: o xford university p ress, 1985), 13. 50 ibid., 50 . 51 geoffrey galt harpham, “e laine scarry and the dream of p ain,” salmagundi no. 130–131: 208. 52 joanna bourke, the story of pain: from prayers to painkillers (o xford: o xford university press, 2014). http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 1 0 4 v u l n e r a b l e b o d y c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.184 intrinsically public and political in nature.53 bourke argues that by scrutinizing various painevents from a political perspective, “we are encouraged to explore the political apparatus . . . of pain-events: the discourses, institutions, laws, and medical, scientific, historical, and philosophical structures that underpin knowledges and behaviours associated with being-inpain.”54 however, bourke states, although our experience of pain might be connected to larger systems of power (ideology, the state, the police, etc.), this does not mean that individuals are unable to reconstruct pain-events that may oppose them. the pain-event as a mode of opposition is, i argue, exactly what is being exhibited in case history and pavlensky’s actions. bourke is a helpful interlocutor for understanding the role of pain in the works of both mikhailov and pavlensky because she focuses on the public component of pain. in my reading, the wounded body should here be seen as a body that is already incorporated in and marked by external forces that cause pain. both artists therefore speak to the body’s vulnerability—a topic that has gained a prominent position in judith butler’s scholarship of the last decade. butler has convincingly argued that the body is susceptible to external forces, although this does not mean that it is simply a surface for others to inscribe .55 vulnerability does not speak to a subject’s personal disposition but must be regarded as inherently relational, as an inescapable result of our human condition of living amongst others.56 in recent work, butler pays special attention to forms of politica l resistance that mobilize the fragility of the human body, with the goal of asserting existence through deliberate bodily exposure.57 arguably present in case history as well, this form of political resistance is especially apparent in pavlensky’s actions and adds another level of complex ity to his use of pain as a mode of artistic expression. pavlensky’s physical susceptibility is visually exhibited through his nakedness, the fact that he is performing alone, and through his wounds. it is also reflected in the authorities’ response to his actions, as the ir punitive repercussions confirm pavlensky’s status as an assailable individual, while s imultaneously affirming the control and power of the state. at the same time, however, one may ask why the authorities consider it necessary to respond so strongly to a body in pain that at times is even completely immobilized. does a wounded body really posit a threat to the social order? judging by the reactions of the russian authorities, the answer is yes, and thereby ra ises a certain paradox: by reacting so aggressively to pavlensky’s actions, the authorities actually 53 a melia jones has also challenged the notion that pain is exclusively private in nature. focusing on the presence of the phys ical wound, jones notes that our perception of someone’s wound as actual makes us realize that our own body may be wounded as well. p otentially, the wound can therefore challenge the s tric t boundaries between myself and my other, a notion that may have political implications. see jones, “p erforming the wounded body: p ain, a ffect, and the radical relationality of meaning,” parallax 15 , no. 4 (2009): 55. 54 bourke, the story of pain, 19 . 55 judith butler, frames of war: when is life grievable? (london/brooklyn, ny : v erso, 2009), 33. for other accounts of vulnerability as a shared human condition with a political potential, see debra bergoffen, “february 22, 2001: toward a p olitics of the v ulnerable body” in hypatia 18, no.1 (winter 2003); “exploiting the dignity of the v ulnerable body: rape as a weapon of war” in philosophical papers 38 no.3 (2009); and a driana cavarero’s horrorism: naming contemporary violence (new york: c olumbia university p ress, 2008). the connection between p avlensky’s ac tion and vulnerability was also pointed out by c olleen mcquillen in her conference paper “the v ulnerable body as a p olitical instrument in c ontemporary russian art activism,” presented at the annual convention of the modern language a ssociation, a ustin, texas, january 7 –10, 2016. 56 judith butler, precarious life: the powers of mourning and violence (london/brooklyn, ny: v erso, 2006), 31. 57 judith butler, “rethinking vulnerability and resistance,” paper presented in madrid, june 2014. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 1 0 5 i n g r i d no r d g a a rd c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.184 acknowledge his potent bodily rhetoric and clear political potential. it is here that the power of the vulnerable body truly manifests itself and becomes a body of socia l dissensus and agency. although one may claim that pavlensky’s actions are more explicitly political than mikhailov’s case history, both artists refuse to define vulnerability as a lack of agency. by contextualizing the body in pain socially and historically, they show how pain is relational—in essence, both private and social—which probes us to consider our own pain and our implic it relation to the pain of others. furthermore, mikhailov and pavlensky offer valuable perspectives on what it means to inhabit and depict a wounded body in public. conclusion lying face down on a beach in greece in january 2016, the famous chinese artist activist ai weiwei reenacted the photograph of three-year-old aylan kurdi. the black -andwhite photograph which captured the reenactment—taken by rohit chawla, a photographer for one of the biggest english-news magazines in asia, india today—was part of a larger and exclusive photo shoot that the magazine had with ai. claiming that the image was a tr ibute to kurdi, a press release from india today commented on the reenactment and its public response: “the result is a world exclusive photograph that has gone viral. the whole story is one image, which is what great art is.”58 the photographic documentation and distribution of ai’s reenactment bring us back to the issues with which my paper began, concerning the fine line between journalism and sensationalism; news and entertainment; critical austerity and consumerist concerns in contemporary media, and how photographic representation of the wounded body fits into this landscape. in addition, because the photograph of ai first appeared in a news magazine, the picture introduces another question—whether news images such as these are, or should be considered, art. in regarding the pain of others, susan sontag reflected on viewing wartime photographs exhibited in galleries, noting that such photographs and others automatically become art once they enter the gallery space. sontag claimed that these images merely become stations along a stroll, which may cause us to lose our ability to contemplate what we see.59 as a result, we fail to view the people in the photographs as subjects. jacques rancière has keenly noted that art images do not “supply weapons for battles” but that they can inspire new configurations regarding what can be seen, said, and thought of, as long as “their meaning or effect is not anticipated.”60 this, i argue, applies to the artworks by boris mikhailov and petr pavlensky that have been the focus of my pap er. by showing his case history in some of the most prestigious galleries in the world, mikhailov challenges the viewer to see the wounded bodies of kharkov’s homeless from an aesthetic perspective. moreover, the participants in mikhailov’s series, who str ike poses and will ingly perform in front of the camera, are indirectly asking us to look at them and see them as subjects, as people in pain. in a rather different fashion, the wide media distribution of the 58 the release then went on to mention that a full interview with a i and more pic tures from the shoot would appear in the magazine’s next is sue. “a rtist ai weiwei poses as aylan kurdi for india today magazine,” india today, february 1 , 2016, http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/artist-ai-weiwei-poses-asaylan-kurdi-for-india-today-magazine/1/584804.html. 59 sontag, regarding the pain of others , 121. 60 ranc ière, “the intolerable image,” 103. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/artist-ai-weiwei-poses-as-aylan-kurdi-for-india-today-magazine/1/584804.html http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/artist-ai-weiwei-poses-as-aylan-kurdi-for-india-today-magazine/1/584804.html 1 0 6 v u l n e r a b l e b o d y c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.184 photographs documenting pavlensky’s actions, and the attention they elicit, reveals that we are not sure how to approach the wounded body when it is explicitly—and voluntarily— performed. by gaining attention from some of the major news companies in the world, websites and magazines become pavlensky’s personal exhibition space, making the v iewer wonder whether she is witnessing art or international news. this speaks to the aesthetic, political, and social implications of these artists’ engagement with the wounded body. rather than viewing mikhailov’s case history, pavlensky’s actions, and works like them by other artists as romanticizing or sensationalizing suffering, these projects need to be contextualized within a larger (art) historical setting. only then will we fully comprehend the significance of pain in these artworks. while i do not suggest that the representations of pain in mikhailov’s photographs and in the images documenting pavlensky’s performance-actions are more authentic or rea l than others, the wounded body in their art still stands forth as a body of agency and personal volition; as a body that may appeal to our voyeurism, but that simultaneously challenges us to contemplate what we are seeing and why we are watching. the wounded body may provoke and upset, surprise and appall, but it always challenges, always resists. as history takes yet another turn, one may hope that such a body will haunt us. acknowledgements i would like to express my sincere gratitude to my two anonymous reviewers for their invaluable comments, criticism and suggestions. i am grateful to molly brunson for her helpful feedback on a seminar paper on boris mikhailov and for challenging me to think more about his work, and to marijeta bozovic for fruitful conversations on the connection between politics and bodies. for introducing me to the diverse field of performance studies and for his priceless mentorship, i thank joseph roach. thanks also to petr pavlensky for willingly answering my questions and for granting me permission to use his personal photographs. lastly, profound appreciation is extended to my editor, nicole f. scalissi: i could not have asked for a more attentive reader, whose professional insights have greatly benefitted my paper. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 1 0 7 i n g r i d no r d g a a rd c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.184 new articles in this journal are licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 united states license. this journal is operated by the university library system of the university of p ittsburgh as part of its d-scribe digital p ublishing p rogram, and is co-sponsored by the university of p ittsburgh press. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/ http://www.pitt.edu/ http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/ http://www.upress.pitt.edu/upressindex.aspx http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ 3 eisman denying difference vol 2, no 1 (2012) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2012.45 http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu denying difference to the post-socialist other bernhard heisig and the changing reception of an east german artist april a. eisman abstract this article traces the reception of east german artist bernhard heisig’s life and art—first in east germany and then in the federal republic of germany before and after the wall. drawing on post-colonial and post-socialist scholarship, it argues that heisig’s reception exemplifies a western tendency to deny cultural and ideological difference in what the postsocialist scholar piotr piotrowski calls the “close other.” this denial of difference to artists from the eastern bloc has shaped western understandings of heisig’s life and art since reunification. once perceived as an intellectually engaged, political artist, both in east and west germany, after the fall of the wall and german unification, heisig was reinterpreted as a traumatized victim of two dictatorships, distorting not only our understanding of the artist and his work, but also of the nature of art and the role of the artist in east germany. about the author april a. eisman is an assistant professor of art history at iowa state university, and cofounder of the transatlantic institute for the study of east german art. contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 2, no 1 (2012) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2012.45 if world art history is to be written... it ought to be developed within a different, “horizontal” paradigm... a critical analysis should reveal the speaking subject: the one who speaks, on whose behalf, and for whom. this is not to cancel western art history, but to call this type of narrative by its proper name, “western.” -piotr piotrowski, 20091 the west is not ready yet to see an equal other... -olu oguibe, 19942 postcolonial scholars like olu oguibe have argued that the west needs the other to define itself.3 focusing in particular on artists of african descent, oguibe argues that artists of color are accepted into the western art establishment only when their work reflects upon their “native” heritage.4 those who try to escape this framework by adopting western conventions generally do not find acclaim, but rather are disparaged for adulterating their native “authenticity.”5 as a result, he charges, non-white artists can only rarely assimilate into the western art market even if they have lived in the west for decades.6 oguibe defines this emphasis on cultural difference as one of the most difficult challenges artists of color face: as other, they are forced into a “numbers game” in which non-white artists compete for the limited number of spaces available to them in an otherwise white, western art world.7 in this game, artists of color cannot escape their associations with the “third world.” those who refuse to play the game, i.e. to create work or make statements that support the western view of them, are simply dropped in favor of those who will. whereas postcolonial scholars like oguibe focus on the distant (racialized) other, postsocialist scholars like piotr piotrowski focus on the “close other,” artists from eastern 1 piotr piotrowski, “towards horizontal art history,” in crossing cultures: conflict, migration, convergence, ed. jaynie anderson (melbourne: melbourne university publishing: 2009) 82-85, here: 83. 2 olu oguibe, “a brief note on internationalism,” in global visions, towards a new internationalism in the visual arts, ed. jean fisher (london, kala press: 1994) 58. 3 olu oguibe, “in the heart of darkness,” in olu oguibe, the culture game (minneapolis & london: university of minnesota press, 2004) 3-9. 4 olu oguibe, “play me the ‘other’: colonialist determinism and the postcolonial predicament,” in the culture game, 18-32. 5 olu oguibe, “nationalism, modernity, modernism,” in the culture game, 47-59. 6 olu oguibe, “double dutch and culture game,” in the culture game, 33-44. in this article, oguibe shows how yinka shonibare, and to a lesser extent, chris offili, successfully play the culture game. 7 olu oguibe, “prologue,” in the culture game, xi-xvi. in this case, oguibe is arguing about the difficulty faced by non-western artists more generally, including those from africa, asia and latin america. denying difference to the postsocialist other bernhard heisig and the changing reception of an east german artist april a. eisman 4 7 a p r i l a . e i s m a n contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 2, no 1 (2012) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2012.45 europe.8 these artists are generally white and share a similar background to those from the west, but were separated from it for decades by the iron curtain. their otherness is based on politics rather than race. rooted in the same cultural history and traditions as the west, their art nonetheless developed in a “different semiotic and ideological space than western europe,” so even when it looks similar, it often has a different meaning.9 this difference is frequently elided in the west, where socialist art is dismissed as peripheral and a poor imitation of art created in the center. in sharp contrast to artists from the “third world,” one of the greatest challenges these “second world” artists face is the elision of their difference, the inability for western critics to see that although the styles and imagery may be similar, the meanings can be different. the result is a misunderstanding of their work that distorts its meaning, reduces its complexity and strips the artists of their agency. the loss of difference experienced by the close other can be seen in the case of bernhard heisig (1925-2011), one of east germany’s most successful artists. highly praised on both sides of the wall in the 1980s, he is best known today for his many expressionist paintings about war and trauma. these works are frequently interpreted in terms of his biography: heisig was a teenage soldier for the nazis in world war ii, where he fought on both fronts and was a member of the prestigious 12th ss tank division of the hitler youth. some of his paintings, such as fortress breslau (1969, fig. 1) and the battle of the bulge (1978-81), make direct reference to his own experiences, whereas others seem to suggest the connection more indirectly through the inclusion of military tanks and uniforms. recent scholarship tends to emphasize these works, portraying heisig as an artist obsessed by “his own wartime traumas.”10 his tendency to paint multiple versions of a particular subject, and to rework each canvas—sometimes to the point of destroying it—encourages this view, seeming to illustrate a freudian response to trauma.11 some authors have claimed in recent years that “his artistic achievement lies in his lifelong struggle to come to terms with the traumas of a biography that passed from war and dictatorship to another dictatorship and the cold war.”12 the power of this interpretation is that it makes heisig’s life and art into a microcosm of germany’s recent history and, in particular, its struggle with totalitarianism. 8 piotr piotrowski, “towards horizontal art history,” 2009. 9 piotr piotrowski, “the geography of central/east european art,” in katarzyna murawska-muthesius, ed. borders in art. revisiting kunstgeographie (warsaw: institute of art, 2000) 43-50. 10 “bernhard heisig – the rage of pictures opens at k20,” artdaily.org <http://www.artdaily.com/section/lastweek/ index.asp?int_sec=11&int_new=13991&int_modo=2>. last accessed: 15. december 2011. 11 eckhart gillen, “beharrlichkeit des vergessens. der maler als regisseur seiner erinnerungen,” in gillen, ed., bernhard heisig, die wut der bilder (köln: dumont, 2005) 28-53. 12 catherine hickley, “east german painter heisig, portrayer of war and fascism, dies,” bloomberg, 11. june 2011 < http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-06-10/east-german-artist-bernhard-heisig-painterof-war-and-fascism-dies-at-86.html> last accessed: 15. december 2011. 4 8 d e n y i n g d i f f e r e n c e t o t h e p o s t s o c i a l i s t o t h e r contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 2, no 1 (2012) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2012.45 figure 1 bernhard heisig, fortress breslau – the city and its murderers, 1969. oil on canvas. 165 x 150 cm. (the painting no longer exists in this form; heisig reworked it in 1977.) 4 9 a p r i l a . e i s m a n contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 2, no 1 (2012) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2012.45 in east germany, by contrast, heisig’s life and art were interpreted quite differently. his nazi past was not seen as a traumatic source for creativity, but rather as the reason he chose to become a communist and to live in east germany, where he remained throughout the cold war period. for him, as for many german intellectuals in the wake of world war ii, communism’s critique of imperialism and its emphasis on pacifism seemed to offer a better path for the future. rather than an artist obsessed by trauma, heisig was presented in east german scholarship as a politically engaged artist who created more from his intellect than his psyche. his wartime paintings were linked to his biography, but the emphasis was on how they functioned as a critique of the continuation of fascism in the west. they were “never a simple history illustration.”13 not only did east german critics interpret heisig’s images of war differently than post-wall critics, they also emphasized a greater variety within the artist’s oeuvre, which include portraiture, murals, still lifes, and literary illustrations. these works showed the positive side of heisig’s artistic creation, fulfilling his own call in 1964 that art be well rounded: “the entire person, his joys, desires, longings, dreams, as well as the tragic elements, his fear, imperfection, pain—in short, life and death—are the content of artistic engagement.”14 this article traces the reception of heisig’s life and art—first in east germany and then in the federal republic of germany before and after the wall—to illustrate the western tendency to deny difference to the “close other” and the impact this has had on our understanding of heisig’s life and art. it will show that heisig was perceived as an intellectually engaged, political artist before 1989 in both east and west germany. after the fall of the wall and german unification, however, a previously marginal narrative in the west about heisig as a traumatized victim came to prominence and ultimately usurped all other interpretations. this particular view distorts heisig’s achievements as an artist by depoliticizing him and his work. it thus downplays his allegiance to socialism and forces him into the role of the tortured, solitary artist. such an approach not only limits our understanding of heisig and his contribution to post-war german art, but also of art under communism and the perspective it offers on art in the west. ultimately, this rewriting of heisig’s life and art in recent years shows the west’s inability to see or accept difference in the close other, an illustration of oguibe’s statement that the west is not yet ready to see an equal other. if we are to write a world history of art, however, we need to incorporate the art of the other, both close and distant, and in heisig’s case, to accept not only that art could be created under communism, but also that its meaning—regardless of stylistic or thematic similarities to work created in the west—was often quite different on the other side of the wall. bernhard heisig in east germany discussions of heisig’s art first began in the east german press of the 1950s, with several articles mentioning his work in 1959. at this point in time, the thirty-four year old artist was a teacher at the leipzig academy and chair of the leipzig branch of the association of visual artists. unlike today, he was known in these early years primarily as a graphic 13 h[enry] s[chumann], “als künstler gebraucht werden,” leipziger volkszeitung (16 march 1968). 14 heisig’s speech at the fifth congress of the association of visual artists germany (vbkd), 1964, as reprinted in ulrike goeschen, vom sozialistischen realismus zur kunst im sozialismus (berlin: duncker & humblot, 2001) 424-9. 5 0 d e n y i n g d i f f e r e n c e t o t h e p o s t s o c i a l i s t o t h e r contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 2, no 1 (2012) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2012.45 artist rather than a painter and for having a straightforward, realist style. in a review of the fifth regional art exhibition in leipzig published in the national magazine sonntag in 1959, horst jaehner stated that heisig’s portrait drawings and lithographs on the paris commune showed he was one of the most talented artists of the younger generation in the exhibition.15 in another review, this one of a small exhibition of his prints and drawings, the unnamed author praised heisig’s portraiture, stating that “every single one of these faces betrays something of the soul.”16 in 1960, heisig was singled out as one of four up-and-coming young artists—together with harry blume, werner tübke and willi sitte—in a substantial article published in the national magazine junge kunst.17 the article stated that these four artists, despite significant differences in temperament, background and painterly style, shared a similar striving for artistic excellence that was important for the development of art in east germany. heisig was represented by a portrait painting (1958, fig. 2), two lithographs, a drawing and some sketches. 18 the text focused on the lithograph titled, peace march (1957, fig. 3), praising it both for showing an early event in the history of soviet power, i.e. the october revolution, and also for transcending that moment in time to create a work that emphasized class, brotherhood and internationalism. 15 horst jaehner, “genrebild kein stiefkind mehr,” in sonntag, nr. 31, 1959, 7. 16 “mensch und natur,” mittel neueste nachrichten, 18. september 1959. 17 “vier maler zwischen gestern und morgen,” in junge kunst, april 1960, 17-32. 18 in the article, the portrait, now known as model scene (jutta), was dated to 1960. the museum that owns the work dates it to 1958 based on the information it was given when it acquired the painting from the artist in 1973. wolfgang büche. “aw: copyright anfrage: bernhard heisig ‘modellszene’ (1958).” email to april eisman. 7 march 2012. figure 2 bernhard heisig, model scene (jutta), 1958. oil on fiberboard, 79 x 59.5 cm. stiftung moritzburg. kunstmuseum des landes sachsen-anhalt. foto: klaus göltz, halle/saale. 5 1 a p r i l a . e i s m a n contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 2, no 1 (2012) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2012.45 the following year, in august 1961, heisig became director of the leipzig academy, one of east germany’s four main art schools, and introduced a painting class to the curriculum. three months later, he exhibited two paintings and ten lithographs at the sixth regional art exhibition in leipzig. this exhibition marked his emergence onto the east german art scene as a painter and the beginning of a more sustained engagement with his work in the press.19 most reviews of the sixth mentioned his paintings of the paris commune and pointed out the importance of the topic for the history of socialism: it was the first communist government on european soil. some questioned the tone of the works, however, especially in the wake of walter ulbricht’s visit to the exhibition in december. apparently ulbricht, head of the east german state, had disliked the passive quality of the figures in heisig’s paintings and had encouraged him to emphasize the “storming” of the communards.20 the leipzig art historian joachim uhlitzsch stated that although the paintings were both titled march days in paris (1961, fig. 4), they were more like a “last stand,” the doomed fight of may rather than the heady days of march.21 19 heisig created his first painting, circle of young field biologists, in 1952. it was followed by 1848 in leipzig, which he worked on from 1954-58, and several portraits. although he exhibited one of these portraits, modellpause, at the fifth regional art exhibition in leipzig in 1959, it was first with the paris commune paintings in 1961 that heisig began to be discussed in the press for his paintings. he first began working with this topic as a series of prints in 1956. 20 werner krecek & karl heinz hagen, “ein blick in den spiegel unserer zeit, rundgang mit walter ulbricht durch die 6. kunstausstellung des vbkd bezirk leipzig,” leipziger volkszeitung (15 december 1961). 21 joachim uhlitzsch, “es gilt das leben zu verändern,” das blatt, january 1962. figure 3 bernhard heisig, peace march, 1957. lithograph. size and location unknown. 5 2 d e n y i n g d i f f e r e n c e t o t h e p o s t s o c i a l i s t o t h e r contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 2, no 1 (2012) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2012.45 these texts about heisig’s paintings at the sixth reveal the importance of art in east germany, where not only did the head of state visit the exhibition and offer his opinion on some of the works displayed, but the exhibition itself was discussed in great detail in the press. the interest in heisig’s paintings reflected both the importance of the paris commune to east germany and the importance of heisig’s role as one of east germany’s earliest history painters. these early articles also offer insight into heisig’s working process and, in particular, his interest in engaging with others in the creation of his art. as one article noted, heisig responded to criticisms raised by the jury that the paintings were too static by reworking one of the compositions.22 this is one of the first mentions of heisig’s tendency to rework paintings, and the reason given is an intellectual rather than emotional one. 22 clipping from junge kunst, heft 1, 1962, as found in akademie der künste (adk) archive, kober nachlass 14. figure 4 bernhard heisig, march days in paris i, 1960. oil on canvas. 123 x 153 cm. destroyed through overpainting. 5 3 a p r i l a . e i s m a n contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 2, no 1 (2012) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2012.45 just under three years later, in february 1964, heisig resigned from the pressures of his position as director of the leipzig academy in order to have more time for his work.23 he continued on as a professor, however, until 1968, and was also head of the graphics department until that time. in the two years following his resignation, he was at the center of a number of controversies about art that were taking place in east germany in these years as artists and art historians attempted to broaden the definition of socialist realism. the first of these controversies, which took place in april 1964, was over a number of speeches given at the fifth congress of the association of visual artists.24 heisig’s was one of them. in his speech, he defended modern art, stating that “modern art was not a forbidden fruit on the tree of capitalism,” but rather was something that east german artists could use to create socialist art.25 he also stated that it should be artists—not political functionaries—who should decide what art is, and that it was in fact their responsibility to do so as part of the east german intelligentsia. this speech resulted in a multi-week investigation into his loyalty to the state and, ultimately, a public self-criticism to redeem himself with the party. within six months of the speech and self-criticism, and perhaps in response to them, heisig shifted away from the straightforward realism of his early work to the modern style for which he is now known, one marked by the use of simultaneity. one of the first examples of this new style was a series of murals he created for the hotel deutschland in late 1964/early 1965. each of the murals focused on a city in germany and demonstrated a modern style quite different from his earlier work. in schwedt (fig. 5), for example, which was the most controversial of those he created, bright colors swirl together in organic shapes that combine the large, simplified face of a working woman with the shapes and symbols of the city into a composition that, according to the leipzig journalist rita jorek, “did not make it easy” for the viewer.26 in a positive review, jorek explained that these murals “are not to be understood as an illustration of thoughts and ideas, but rather as independent artistic creations.” she then quoted heisig as stating that “all too frequently it is forgotten that the happy attitude towards life that a work can produce also has an ideological function.” this article was the first of four in a series published in the leipziger volkszeitung that engaged with the complexity of heisig’s murals from both positive and negative perspectives. the intent of the series was to help the general public to better understand and appreciate art, presumably in response to the state’s desire—heavily promoted in the wake of the building of the wall in 1961—for a higher quality of art for the “educated nation.”27 23 resignation letter from heisig to binder, 19. february 1964. hochschule für grafik und buchkunst (hgb) archive. as will be discussed later, heisig’s resignation as director was later seen by western scholars as politically motivated, a punitive action based on the controversial speech he gave in april 1964. his resignation letter, however, predates this event, and its pre-conference date is confirmed by two other documents at the archive of the leipzig academy. 24 the art historian hermann raum and sculptor fritz cremer also gave controversial speeches at this conference. 25 heisig’s speech at the fifth congress of the vbkd, 1964, as reprinted in goeschen, 424-9. 26 altogether, heisig created four murals for the hotel deutschland. the fourth, however, was created at a later date. rita jorek, “wir stellen zur diskussion: bilder auf der etage, ein erstes gespräch mit prof. bernhard heisig,” leipziger volkszeitung (10 july 1965). 27 april eisman, “in the crucible: bernhard heisig and the hotel deutschland murals,” in amy wlodarski and elaine kelly, eds. art outside the lines: new perspectives on gdr art culture (amsterdam and new york: rodopi, 2011) 21-39. in 1964, the second bitterfeld way called for a higher quality of art for the “educated nation,” a term used at the sixth party conference in 1963 with regard to east germany. 5 4 d e n y i n g d i f f e r e n c e t o t h e p o s t s o c i a l i s t o t h e r contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 2, no 1 (2012) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2012.45 the second debate focused on a new painting in the paris commune series that heisig showed at the seventh regional art exhibition in leipzig that fall. like his murals for the hotel deutschland, the paris commune (1964, fig. 6) combined multiple moments and events into one image, which showed more than fifteen people engaged in hand-to-hand combat in the final days of the paris commune. early on, critics in leipzig praised the work as “energetic” and “explosive,” a “symphony of dramatic tones” that made “the unstoppable strength of the communards noticeable.”28 as the exhibition wore on, however, critics from places other than leipzig began to attack the painting on both stylistic and thematic grounds. these attacks culminated the following spring with an article by harald olbrich in bildende kunst in which he stated that heisig’s “superficial interests in problems of form... and writhing amorphously doughy masses decidedly limit the party value of the commune.”29 28 günter meißner, neues deutschland (5 october 1965), m.t., die union (21 october 1965) and leipziger volkszeitung (3 october 1965). 29 harald olbrich, “ästhetische subjektivität oder subjektivismus,” in bildende kunst 5 (1966) 272-273. figure 5 bernhard heisig, schwedt, 1965. sgraffito. 300 x 900 cm. radisson blu hotel, leipzig. photo: april eisman. 5 5 a p r i l a . e i s m a n contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 2, no 1 (2012) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2012.45 the controversies in 1964 and 1965 were followed by a few years of quiet in which only a handful of texts about heisig appeared in the press, generally in response to small exhibitions of his graphic work. then in 1968, heisig had a small solo exhibition of his paintings that marked a turning point in his career. at the time, he was still a professor at the leipzig academy, although he resigned later that summer, working as a freelance artist for several years until the mid 1970s. he was also still seen primarily as a graphic artist. this latter fact becomes clear in the most extensive review of the exhibition, that by the leipzig art historian henry schumann, who began by acknowledging that this was the first major exhibition of paintings by “the graphic artist professor bernhard heisig.”30 30 h[enry] s[chuman], “als künstler gebraucht werden,” leipziger volkszeitung (16 march 1968). figure 6 bernhard heisig, the paris commune, 1964. oil on canvas. 150 x 152. destroyed through overpainting. 5 6 d e n y i n g d i f f e r e n c e t o t h e p o s t s o c i a l i s t o t h e r contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 2, no 1 (2012) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2012.45 this article was one of the first to mention heisig’s wartime experiences and to interpret his work as a reckoning with fascism. schumann pointed specifically to heisig’s lithographic series from 1965/66, the fascist nightmare as an attempt at self-emancipation, and stated that “the causes of the imperial war are visible” although it is a pacifist tone that dominates the work. he then turned to the paris commune, which he saw as heisig’s central theme, and argued that it, by contrast, showed the possibility of a just war, the final goal of which was to end all wars. according to schumann, of the approximately eight finished paintings heisig had created on the paris commune to date, four still existed and were in the exhibition, including the controversial one from 1965. he then pointed out that these paintings were not historical illustrations, but rather, allegories. mentioning two of the earliest paintings in heisig’s oeuvre to deal explicitly with the nazi past, jewish ghetto fighters in warsaw and the christmas dream of the unteachable soldier, both from 1964, he stated that these works mark “the possible beginning of a thematic enrichment of his painting and maybe even a new socialist history painting.” he ended the article by stating that painting was not just for a circle of aesthetes; it was something that was needed in east germany. the following year, in 1969, heisig was at the center of another controversy, this time over the “loud, brutal, wild – and very sensitive” painterly style evident in his painting, the brigade (1969), which was on display at the regional art exhibition in leipzig.31 although many of his paintings the previous year had exhibited a similarly energetic brushwork without causing a stir, a number of critics did not think this style suitable for depicting one of the most revered topics in east german art, the worker portrait. the harshest criticism was written by dr. herbert letsch, editor of the leipziger volkszeitung, who wrote that: the expressive painting wakens above all the impression of pained, mistreated human beings. the painting has a strong leaning toward the amorphous, the destructive, the morbid. at the same time the clumsy and brutal painting style is not to be ignored… bloody and virtually brutal reds have been placed in the faces, with corresponding pale, sick blues and weak greens. the warm orange tones emphasize the amorphous and brutal character of the painting. this use of color does not lead to an expressive enhancement of a true expression of the spiritual life of the new human being, but rather an impression of pained and physically mistreated human beings… similarly the composition avoids all stability; it is as amorphous and formless as the painting itself. the features of the handwriting apparent here are the painterly expression of a subjective and false interpretation of the essence of the socialist human being.32 a similar sentiment was expressed a month later—allegedly by a reader, although reader letters like these were sometimes written by cultural functionaries—in the government’s national newspaper, neues deutschland: “i know that professor heisig is an artist with great talent, but the construction workers that he painted radiate, in my opinion, neither the strength of the working class, their creation, their self-confidence, nor the true humanity of socialist personalities. they appear to me to be crude, impersonal, and foreign…”33 in response to these criticisms, heisig continued working on the painting, ultimately destroying 31 dr. m.t., “eine topographie in farben. werken von bernhard heisig bei ‘kunst der zeit’ ausgestellt,” die union (30 march 1968). 32 dr. herbert letsch, “handschrift-expressivität-ideologie,” in leipziger volkszeitung (24 may 1969). 33 irma nitschka, “wir suchen unser geistiges antlitz, leser schreiben zu bezirksausstellung ‘architektur und bildende kunst,” in neues deutschland (24 july 1969). 5 7 a p r i l a . e i s m a n contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 2, no 1 (2012) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2012.45 the original and creating at least two others in the process. one of them, the brigadier ii (1969/70), would later become one of his best known works in east germany. in the 1970s, heisig rose to national prominence in east germany, in part due to the significant cultural “thaw” that occurred in the wake of erich honecker becoming head of the communist government in 1971. shortly after taking power, honecker stated that “for those artists who truly believe in socialism, there can be no more taboos on their work, neither in content nor in style.”34 the resulting period of “breadth and variety,” which lasted until the end of the cold war with only minor fluctuations in policy, marked a greater openness to modern artistic styles for traditional media. newer media such as installations and performance art, however, were not included, nor were artists allowed to make direct criticisms of east germany or the soviet union. it is at this point in time that heisig gained national prominence within the east german art world. in january 1972, harald olbrich published a heavily illustrated five-page article on heisig in bildende kunst, praising him as one of the “most exciting artists in leipzig” and pointing out the significant development in his work in the past five years.35 olbrich praised heisig’s recent lithographs and paintings of vladimir lenin (fig. 7), tracking the various elements and stages in heisig’s work to date. he pointed to the influence of lovis corinth and oscar kokoschka on heisig’s paintings, and of max schwimmer on his prints, as well as to the importance of heisig’s murals on the development of his artistic style, including the decision to create a series of worker portraits in the late 1960s. olbrich saw history paintings as playing the most important role in heisig’s oeuvre, and especially the paris commune series. he cited heisig’s experiences in world war ii as part of the reason why his images on the paris commune in the mid 1960s were so controversial: his own experiences had led him to paint the paris commune as a heroically senseless battle. heisig’s recent exploration of this past in paintings like fortress breslau – the city and its murderers (1969, fig. 1) and the lithographic series, the fascist nightmare (1965/66), however, had allowed him, in olbrich’s opinion, to gain the distance necessary to separate these personal experiences of world war ii from his portrayal of the paris commune. olbrich also pointed to the importance of landscapes and still lifes for the development of heisig’s style since 1964, offering him inspiration in terms of both color and painterly sensibility. 34 erich honecker at the fourth conference of the central committee of the sed as reported in the party’s main newspaper, neues deutschland (18 december 1971) and cited in kunstkombinat ddr, daten und zitate zur kunst und kunstpolitik der ddr 1945-1990, eds. günter feist and eckhart gillen (berlin: museumspädagogischen dienst, 1990) 77. 35 harald olbrich, “voll schöpferischer unrast. zum schaffen des leipziger malers bernhard heisig,” bildende kunst, january 1972. 5 8 d e n y i n g d i f f e r e n c e t o t h e p o s t s o c i a l i s t o t h e r contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 2, no 1 (2012) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2012.45 figure 7 bernhard heisig, lenin and the incredulous timofej, 1970. oil on fiberboard. 272 x 150 cm. museum der bildenden künste, leipzig. photo credit: bpk, berlin/museum der bildende künste, leipzig/ursula gerstenberger. 5 9 a p r i l a . e i s m a n contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 2, no 1 (2012) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2012.45 eight months later, bildende kunst published another article about heisig, this one by the leipzig art historian karl max kober (1930-87), who had had many long conversations with the artist about his work.36 titled, “the chance to contribute to a world view,” it focused on the development of heisig’s paris commune paintings, culminating with the highly praised four-panel version first shown at the eighth regional art exhibition in leipzig in 1972. in the six-page, heavily-illustrated article, kober discussed heisig’s work in terms of the recent emergence of history painting in east germany, but argued that heisig’s paintings were not simply illustrations of the past; rather, they were allegories for the present. kober saw the emergence of the paris commune topic in heisig’s oeuvre as a response to “counterrevolutionary putsch” in hungary in 1956, together with a book heisig was reading at the time by prosper olivier lissagary on the paris commune, and credited heisig’s return to the topic after a multi-year break following the criticisms of 1965 as a response to the vietnam war. he praised the 1972 version as the culmination of a dialectical process: it was the combination of the early static images of heisig’s first paintings on the topic with the scenes of battle in the second series to create a third variation that combined them both into a new formulation. in october 1972, the seventh art exhibition of the german democratic republic (gdr, or east germany) opened in dresden. the most important exhibition of contemporary art in east germany, it contained the four-panel version of heisig’s the paris commune (1972) as well as another key work in heisig’s oeuvre, the brigadier ii (1969/70, fig. 8).37 the latter was a portrait of a brigade leader that had emerged from the discussions about his controversial painting of a group of brigade workers exhibited three years earlier. an article in kulturelles leben praised the new painting—which showed a smiling middle aged man in red shirt and hard hat confidently giving the thumbs-up sign—as a model for future images of the working class, a topic the author believed to be of crucial importance for the future of east german art.38 he saw in heisig’s painting a valuable combination of both a unique individual and an ideal type that reflected the strength and character of the working class. he also admired the masterful brushwork and colors of the painting, the surface of which seemed to shimmer. an interview with heisig in kunst erziehung explained how the work had come into being, in part from the discussions that had taken place about the brigade a few years earlier.39 36 karl max kober, “von der chance an einem weltbild mitzuwirken. zu bernhard heisigs bildern ueber die pariser kommune,” bildende kunst, september 1972. 37 the seventh art exhibition of the gdr was the seventh of ten major exhibitions of contemporary east german art that took place in dresden, generally every four to five years. it began with the allgemeine deutsche kunstausstellung in 1946, which included art from all four occupation zones. from 1949 until 1968, it was called the german art exhibition dresden. 38 peter betthausen, “brigadier, gemälde von bernhard heisig,” kulturelles leben, april 1973. 39 “der künstler zu seinem werk. bernhard heisig zum gemälde der brigadier — vii. kunstausstellung der ddr,” kunsterziehung, february 1973. 6 0 d e n y i n g d i f f e r e n c e t o t h e p o s t s o c i a l i s t o t h e r contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 2, no 1 (2012) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2012.45 the following year, in 1973, a major retrospective of heisig’s work opened at the gallery of new masters in dresden, the first at that prestigious location to focus on an east german artist under the age of fifty. at forty-eight, heisig was a freelance artist in leipzig and had just been made a member of the academy of arts in berlin and vice president of the leipzig branch of the association of visual artists. the substantial catalog that accompanied the exhibition contained short texts by the vice president of the academy of arts, the first secretary of the national association of visual artists, the head of the cultural department of the regional council leipzig (rat des bezirkes), and the director of the gallery of new masters in dresden.40 these political forwards each mentioned the quality of heisig’s work and his commitment to society: in heisig’s work “a passionate knowledge of our socialist 40 bernhard heisig, gemälde, zeichnungen, lithographien (dresden and leipzig, 1973). hereafter: bh73. the cover image for this exhibition was a detail from the 1972 paris commune painting showing several faces. figure 8 bernhard heisig, the brigadier ii, 1969/70. oil on canvas. 140 x 125 cm. (the painting no longer exists in this form; heisig reworked it in the mid 1970s.) 6 1 a p r i l a . e i s m a n contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 2, no 1 (2012) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2012.45 reality and political engagement are combined with high artistic mastery.”41 the catalog also contained the most substantial text on heisig that had yet been written, a thirty-five page article by karl max kober, who had published an article on heisig in bildende kunst the previous year. titled “bernhard heisig, life and work,” kober’s catalog text developed themes that would be repeated in subsequent publications on heisig in east germany.42 the first was heisig’s working method, which he explained was like “an arduous dialog” with the canvas, a working and reworking of the image until it was either finished or destroyed. he stated that heisig was never satisfied, working and reworking a painting, and even making multiple variations of it, in a constant attempt to find convincing solutions to the artistic puzzles he set for himself. in terms of the paris commune, kober pointed out that the earliest versions were destroyed, one through over painting, another painted into a later version. a second theme was heisig’s past in world war ii, which kober credited for heisig’s hatred for all things inhuman and his decision to join the communist party. this decision, according to kober, also had important repercussions for his art: it made heisig realize the importance of realism as an artistic style, which he saw as the only way to reach the people and get them to think, and that even as an artist, there was no escape from societal problems. kober also talked about the paris commune thematic in heisig’s work as a metaphor for world war ii, but not as a way to get rid of his memories or to compensate for his trauma, but rather because of heisig’s natural interest in conflict. the paris commune allowed him to show hand-to-hand conflict in a way not possible for world war ii. for heisig, all of these works—including the handful of new paintings making direct reference to the war—were about getting people to think; to look behind facades and mistrust idols and wolves in sheep’s clothing. in a three-page review of the exhibition published in die weltbühne, the berlin art historian lothar lang pointed out heisig’s painterly debts to kokoschka and corinth, before arguing that he had a different world view than these artists: heisig reflected on the problems of the world in his art, but as a socialist, and his work contributed “to the intelligent socialist art” that required viewer engagement.43 lang also pointed out that it would be a disservice to heisig to think of him simply as a “painter of landscapes or still lifes” since “his most important achievements are in portraiture and history.” mentioning heisig’s self-portraits, portraits of his mother, lenin, the musical director vaclav neumann and the brigadier, lang stated that “from now on, heisig must be considered one of our best portraitists.” he then turned to heisig’s “history” paintings, stating that they contribute to “the historical consciousness of our time.” he divided them into three main categories: the paris commune, german fascism, and the events and problems of the present. two years later, the leipzig art historian renate hartleb published the first “book” about heisig, a roughly twenty-page text for the artist and work series.44 stating that “creative unrest is a basic element in the creations of the leipzig painter and graphic artist bernhard heisig,” she emphasized the breadth of his oeuvre, which included portraiture, nudes, 41 werner wolf, “vorwort des mitgliedes des rates des bezirkes leipzig und leiters der abteilung kultur,” in bh73, 9-10. 42 [karl] max kober, “bernhard heisig, leben und werk,” in bh73, 13-47. 43 lothar lang, “der maler bernhard heisig,” in die weltbuehne, issue 30, 24. july 1973. 44 renate hartleb, bernhard heisig (dresden: veb verlag der kunst, 1975). the cover image for this book was model scene (jutta) (fig. 2). 6 2 d e n y i n g d i f f e r e n c e t o t h e p o s t s o c i a l i s t o t h e r contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 2, no 1 (2012) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2012.45 landscapes, genre scenes and illustrations, in addition to murals and the paris commune. she pointed out the many artistic references in his work to other artists, including kokoschka, corinth, adolph menzel, max beckmann, otto dix and fernand leger. like lang a couple years earlier, she singled out his portraits of his mother, of vaclav neumann and of workers, as evidence that “heisig seems predestined for portraiture.” yet she also argued that “although portraiture is very important in heisig’s work, his most important achievements are in the realm of history paintings, especially his works on the paris commune.” she, too, looked at his prints on the fascist nightmare and his criticism of militarism in both of these works. by 1975, heisig’s reputation as one of east germany’s most important artists was firmly established. a talented graphic artist and painter, he was praised for having made significant contributions to east german art, especially in terms of history paintings and portraiture. viewed as a socially engaged artist whose works reflected upon the problems of the day, heisig’s art was considered a feast for the both the eyes and the intellect. the following year, in 1976, heisig returned to the leipzig academy, assuming the position of director for more than a decade; he also became vice president of the national association of visual artists. in 1978, he received the national prize of east germany (first class). by the early 1980s, his work represented east germany in major art exhibitions in the west, including documenta and the venice biennale. with this increased interaction with the western art market, heisig shifted into a third phase of his artistic development, one that emphasized a modern style but moved away from a specifically east german subject matter to embrace topics that transcended the iron curtain.45 common themes in his paintings of the 1980s included icarus and the tower of babel, both of which symbolized the dangers of hubris; paintings of the prussian military past and of world war ii; and variations of earlier paintings such as fortress breslau and the paris commune. heisig in west germany a different, albeit not entirely unrecognizable heisig emerged in west german scholarship, which first began in the early 1970s, although it was not until 1980 that articles focusing on heisig were anything but occasional.46 in that year, heisig had solo exhibitions in bremen and frankfurt am main; they were followed by another at the brusberg gallery in 45 the first phase of heisig’s painted oeuvre (1952-63) is marked by a realist aesthetic and socialist subject matter. in the second phase (1964-76), heisig shifted to a modernist aesthetic, which he combined with a socialist subject matter. in the third phase (1977-89), he continued with the modernist aesthetic but shifted to a “german” (as opposed to east german) subject matter. april eisman, “bernhard heisig and the cultural politics of east german art,” ph.d. dissertation, university of pittsburgh, 2007, 4344. 46 the munich-based tendenzen magazine published an article about heisig in 1966, but it was written by the east german curator, gerhard winkler. the first articles written by west german authors appear in the frankfurter allgemeine zeitung in the early 1970s, although articles about the leipzig art scene more generally had been published as early as 1968 (“auf der suche nach bildern, kunst in einer sozialistsichen stadt. bericht aus leipzig von eduard beaucamp,” frankfurter allgemeine zeitung). the first article to focus on heisig appears to be the one published on january 8, 1972, albeit without an author, “ddrkunstmarkt gefordert;” it was followed nearly two years later by camilla blechen’s article, “nie ganz zufrieden. bernhard heisig in leipzig.” with the exception of an article in the neue zürcher zeitung on september 2, 1976, nothing else of significance appears to have been published about heisig in the west until 1980, at which point at least nine different articles in a number of newspapers were published. he was, however, mentioned in reviews of documenta 6 in 1977. 6 3 a p r i l a . e i s m a n contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 2, no 1 (2012) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2012.45 hannover in 1981.47 together, these exhibitions marked the beginnings of what would become a veritable flood of exhibitions—and articles—about him in the federal republic of germany (frg: west germany before 1990, united germany thereafter) that continued into the new millennium. notably, the first of these took place in the immediate wake of documenta 6 in 1977, which marked the emergence of contemporary east german painting—and, specifically, heisig, werner tübke, wolfgang mattheuer, and willi sitte—onto the western art scene.48 these four artists quickly became east germany’s best-known painters in the west and, later, the focus of controversy in the cultural battles following german unification in 1990. since none of heisig’s solo exhibitions in west germany was accompanied by a catalog, his western reception from these years must be reconstructed largely from brochures, press articles and entries about him in catalogs of east german art more generally.49 these texts— the ones written by west germans—demonstrate comparatively little engagement with the art itself, tending to make general observations about heisig’s oeuvre rather than careful analyses of individual works. they also have a number of themes in common, several of which set them apart from their east german counterparts.50 first, there was an overwhelming emphasis on heisig’s paintings of war and conflict to the virtual exclusion of the rest of his oeuvre. his landscapes, for example, were mentioned in only three of nineteen articles from the 1980s. significantly, of the three, one dismissed them as a failure, while another saw little difference between them and his war paintings: “even nature is made into a battlefield…”51 second, heisig’s paintings of war and conflict were largely interpreted in terms of his “personal entanglement” in the “horrors,” “nightmare” or “barbarism” of the second world war, rather than from an intellectual investigation of the mechanisms of oppression that led to it.52 the latter was only rarely mentioned. instead, heisig was called a “deeply frightened warner,” “traumatically touched” by his experiences, which “churn his innards” and “afflict 47 this was not heisig’s first exhibition in the west. in 1966, he had exhibited prints from the fascist nightmare series in würzberg. (the magdeburg catalog lists the würzberg exhibition as having taken place in 1965). nonetheless, he did not become a recognized name in the west until these later exhibitions. 48 the east german sculptors fritz cremer and jo jastram also exhibited work at documenta 6; their inclusion was a concession to the east german government in exchange for allowing the four painters— who had been invited by the exhibition’s curator—to attend. stichwort für ausstellung paris und documenta. bundesarchiv-sapmo: dr1/8171. 49 the press articles cluster around his solo exhibitions in 1980-82 and 1984, as well as his commission to paint the west german bundeskanzler helmut schmidt in 1986. important catalogs of east german art in west germany that included articles about him are zeitvergleich: malerei und grafik aus der ddr (hamburg: art, das kunstmagazin, 1982) and zeitvergleich ’88 – 13 maler aus der ddr (berlin: galerie brusberg, 1988). 50 frequently west german publications included articles by east german art historians. the article on heisig in the documenta 6 catalog, for example, was written by lothar lang. 51 phg, “unter dem teppich sind menschenleiber gefangen,” in berliner morgenpost (24 june 1984). michael nungesser, “bernhard heisig neue bilder, zeichnungen,” in die kunst 6 (1984). in all three articles, the mention of heisig’s landscapes was only in passing. 52 georg bussmann, “bernhard heisig: die beharrlichkeit des vergessens und andere bilder,” exhibition pamphlet (frankfurt am main: frankfurter kunstverein, 1980). volker bauermeister, “hannover: ‘bernhard heisig. bilder und graphik,’” in die zeit (18 december 1981). camilla blechen, “der unzufriedene,” in frankfurter allgemeine zeitung (5 february 1982). rudolf lange, “höllenfahrt durch zeit und geschichte, bernhard heisig bei brusberg in hannover,” in hannoversche allgemeine (12/13 december 1981). 6 4 d e n y i n g d i f f e r e n c e t o t h e p o s t s o c i a l i s t o t h e r contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 2, no 1 (2012) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2012.45 him to the present day.”53 his work was thus seen as an “attempt to free himself from [the] angst” produced by his “traumatic experience of the destruction of his home town of breslau.”54 as such, they were considered “authentic” expressions of the artist’s personal experiences in the “chaos of german history.”55 a third element shared by most of the articles written by west german authors—and one also visible in east german texts, albeit to a lesser degree—was the desire to place heisig’s work within a gesamtdeutsch (german without regard for east or west) tradition. in particular, leading expressionist artists of the early 20th century, including beckmann, corinth, kokoschka and dix, were frequently mentioned as important precursors to heisig’s work. while the “germanness” of heisig’s art was an important factor for most of the west german authors—including the prize-winning author günther grass, who stated in a catalog of east german art in 1982: “they paint more german in the gdr”—a few focused on the critical potential of his work in terms of the nazi past.56 in his article from the frankfurt am main brochure, georg bussmann stated that heisig’s art asks “questions that are only too seldomly… posed in the frg.”57 similarly, rudolph lange wrote that east germany is much further along in coming to terms with this past than west germany; “it has not stopped denouncing the violent crimes of the national socialists and the fascists.”58 this view of heisig’s work, however, was rare in the west, where the emphasis tended to be on heisig as a victim of history rather than as someone actively engaging with it. the west german emphasis on heisig’s war paintings must be seen in the context of a renewed interest in the nazi past of that country. in 1979, just a year before heisig’s solo exhibitions in bremen and frankfurt am main, millions of west germans had tuned in to the american television miniseries “holocaust,” which focused on the plight of one jewish family during the holocaust. this media event is credited with sensitizing a whole generation of west germans to the horrors of world war ii and with creating a “holocaust wave” of documentaries and books on the subject.59 it was also in 1980 that a scandal emerged around georg baselitz and anselm kiefer’s contributions to the german pavilion at the venice biennale: both were condemned in the german press for creating what were perceived to be proto-fascist works.60 in comparison, heisig’s military paintings, with their emphasis on traumatized soldiers, were clearly not promoting a fascist agenda and could be read as both an example of german victimhood as well as of the suffering of war on a more universal level. 53 bussmann, 1980. blechen, 1982. lange, 1981. 54 lange, 1981, and cb [blechen], untitled, in frankfurter allgemeine zeitung (25 january 1982). 55 bussmann, 1980. g. rühle, frankfurter allgemeine zeitung (14 april 1979). 56 günter grass, “sich ein bild machen,” in zeitvergleich (1982), 12. 57 bussmann, 1980. 58 lange, 1981. 59 andrei s. markovits and rebecca s. hayden, “‘holocaust’ before and after the event: reactions in west germany and austria,” in new german critique, no. 19, special issue 1: germans and jews (winter 1980), 53-80. 60 lisa saltzman, anselm kiefer and art after auschwitz (new york and cambridge: cambridge university press, 1999). 6 5 a p r i l a . e i s m a n contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 2, no 1 (2012) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2012.45 significantly, and in contrast to the 1990s, most of the articles about heisig published in west germany in the 1980s were positive, nor did they attempt to hide his relationship to east germany.61 in fact, some even highlighted it. in 1980, bussmann stated that “one senses the person, one senses position and a point of view…” in heisig’s work.62 “it is clearly legible on which side he stands [i.e., on the side of communism]. nonetheless this painting is… not one-dimensional propaganda… the human significance of heisig’s work is obvious; it lies in the use value of these images for mankind, for his understanding of history, his selfunderstanding, his self-worth…” as such, it was possible to “de-politicize even this art” and thereby appreciate it in the west. heisig’s retrospective 1989 – east and west in the final years of the cold war era, scholars from east and west germany came together to create a retrospective exhibition of heisig’s work that toured cities in both countries beginning in the fall of 1989. in the forward to the catalog, the curators explained the long-held desire for such an exhibition, but that it was only with the “political normalization” of recent years that it was finally possible. they had chosen heisig for this first exhibition because he was already well known in west germany: heisig had been in all of the major exhibitions of east german art in west germany since documenta 6 in 1977 and also had work in major collections in the west. the catalog for the resulting exhibition, bernhard heisig: retrospektive, reflects the state of the literature in both countries just before east germany’s collapse. it remains the most comprehensive and representative look at heisig’s work to date. the 1989 catalog contains more than one hundred full-page color illustrations dedicated to heisig’s paintings. roughly 45% of them are history paintings and komplexbilder (lit. complex paintings), 34% are portraits, and 21% are still lifes and landscapes.63 there are also more than one hundred black-and-white pages devoted to heisig’s drawings and prints—which are generally black-and-white in the original—with topics representatively distributed among portraiture, history, and literary illustrations. the catalog thus captures the diversity of heisig’s artistic production in east germany and weights each section accordingly. the works shown also represent the various phases in his oeuvre—at least as far as possible considering his tendency to rework images—with canvases dating from the late 1950s to 1989. in terms of presentation, there is no reliable order to the images, although one could argue they are roughly chronological. 61 an important exception to this is “unter dem teppich sind menschenleiber gefangen” by phg in the berliner morgenpost (24 june 1984). phg calls heisig’s work “a crude, obsessive painting.” he ends the article by calling heisig’s landscapes failures. peter sager is also critical in his article, “ein künstler mit profil,” in die zeit (26 march 1982), but his criticism is aimed at the east german government rather than at heisig. presumably there were a few more; karin thomas mentioned, for example, that heisig had encountered “hybrid ignorance... that accused him of second-class eclecticism and allegorical excess” during his first solo exhibition in west germany at the galerie hertz in bremen in 1980. karin thomas, “deutsch-deutsche kunstdialog,” die weltkunst (1 january 1982): 29. thank you to dieter brusberg for allowing me to use the press folders from his gallery. 62 bussmann, 1980. all quotes from this paragraph are from this source. 63 komplexbilder is a more inclusive term for heisig’s multi-figure compositions, which include not only history paintings, but also mythological and literary topics. 6 6 d e n y i n g d i f f e r e n c e t o t h e p o s t s o c i a l i s t o t h e r contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 2, no 1 (2012) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2012.45 in the introduction to the catalog, the exhibition’s curators—peter pachnicke from the east and jörn merkert from the west—pointed out that in comparison to music and literature, which can cross political borders relatively easily, the lack of access to original works in the visual arts had led to deep-seated stereotypes on both sides of the wall. in the west, east german art was often thought to be “beautified party-conforming realism without artistic individuality,” while in the east, west germany was often thought to be an “art market dictatorship [promoting] abstract art with no relation to reality.”64 such stereotypes only began to be redressed in the 1970s and 1980s. now a deeper look at individual artists was needed, they argued: a comprehensive exhibition of heisig’s work was wanted by both sides. the introduction—like the catalog as a whole—combined eastern and western perspectives of heisig’s work. it pointed out that in the west, his work first gained notice in the late 1970s at the documenta exhibition in 1977, and that it was particularly valued because of the “self-tormenting intensity with which he grappled with german history – and not as a moral finger pointer, but rather as someone involved… [heisig] has created the ‘work of mourning’ that, according to alexander mitscherlich, is necessary for coming to terms with the darkest phase of german history.” these works appealed to the west’s recent “hunger for images” stemming from decades of abstract art, but were also different from the “wild painting” that had emerged there in the 1980s: “this is not painting from the gut… [here is] an intact, precisely calculated image… heisig: a painter who sets the whole of his artistic means [in play]…” in addition to his value for the west, the introduction also emphasized his commitment to society: “for bernhard heisig, it is important to have the chance ‘to work on a world view,’ since he is convinced that the best art requires a connection to—and interaction with—society.” the introduction is followed by nine articles, three of which are by east germans: pachnicke, kober, and sander. pachnicke’s article is by far the longest in the catalog and follows directly after the introduction. it attempts to correct some of the misunderstandings that surround heisig’s work in the west. first, he looks at the often-vehement artistic debates that took place in east germany, especially those in the 1960s in which heisig’s paris commune paintings played a role. these conflicts, he explains, were a “dispute of opinions”—rather than merely clashes with “dogmatic narrow-mindedness”—over the definition of realism in east germany.65 they were an attempt—ultimately successful—to “push through a new understanding of realism against an historically outmoded [one, i.e., illusionism].” also at stake was the role of the artist in society: “[artists like heisig] wanted a dialogical relationship to the public,” rather than a didactic one.66 these debates, pachnicke points out, were the crucible in which heisig forged his views on art; they were a “method of recognizing—and being able to formulate—his own truth.”67 another important point pachnicke made was that heisig’s theme (thema) is not war, as is often contended in the west, but rather conflict; war is simply the subject matter (stoff) through which he can address it. he pointed out that heisig’s interest in conflict—his 64 jörn merkert and peter pachnicke, “vorwort,” in merkert and packnicke, eds. bernhard heisig: retrospektive (munich, prestel verlag, 1989), 7-8. hereafter: retrospektive. 65 peter pachnicke, “‘in jeder figur stecke ich drin,’ innovation der figurenmalerei,” retrospektive, 9-25: 12. 66 ibid., 13. 67 ibid., 14. 6 7 a p r i l a . e i s m a n contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 2, no 1 (2012) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2012.45 “preparedness” for this theme—predates his wartime experiences.68 as heisig has stated, just being in war is not enough to make one want to paint it; one needs a special leaning toward it. according to pachnicke, this leaning was already evident in heisig as a child. pachnicke also emphasized the importance of structure in heisig’s work, reinforcing the point made in the introduction to the catalog. he then ended the article by pointing out that heisig’s images are “not just about oppression and angst. an insatiable hunger for beauty, harmony and continuity fills… many of heisig’s landscapes, nudes and portraits.”69 pachnicke’s article is followed by merkert’s, who focused much of his text on heisig’s views on art, which are often at odds with the western perspective. he pointed out that heisig does not believe in the west’s emphasis on the unique individuality of the artist in paint and quotes him as follows: “having to hold onto oneself is very stressful, especially for artists. always requiring him to be original and new, to push his ego to the forefront. a dreadful thought…”70 moreover, according to heisig, “the problem with freedom and art [as understood in the west] is that it means ‘make whatever you want.’ …to be needed, to play an indispensable role in the spiritual interaction with society, that needs the cooperation [entgegenkommen] of the artist with society. not in that [the artist] gives in, but rather that he reaches out, gets mixed up in, and takes a position…”71 the rest of the articles in the catalog look at heisig’s life and work from a variety of perspectives. beaucamp described his first encounters with the artist in leipzig in 1968. he also placed his work within the western art historical canon, making links not only to corinth and kokoschka but also to the dadaists and robert rauschenberg. for beaucamp, heisig’s greatest achievement was the integration of non-painterly artistic developments into painting. klaus honnef looked at the relationship between heisig’s work and film with its shifting perspectives and acoustic references. carla schulz-hoffmann compared his work to that of beckmann and dix. sander, on the other hand, focused on heisig’s print series, the fascist nightmare. the last article in the catalog—not including the biographical documentation—was written by the highly regarded west german scholar, eberhard roters. unlike the other texts, his continued in the western tradition of focusing almost exclusively on heisig’s komplexbilder; it includes his mythological and literary images as well as his allegories of the present, and interprets them in terms of his wartime biography. in fact, roters argued that the paris commune paintings are actually allegories for heisig’s experiences as a soldier, “a first level for coming to terms [with this past].”72 for roters, heisig’s paintings are “memory paintings,” which he also called “the inner rooms of our consciousness.”73 his importance as a painter is thus in “remembering for the future.”74 it is this view—with its emphasis on memory and trauma—that would come to prominence after the fall of the berlin wall. 68 ibid., 15, 19. 69 ibid., 24. 70 jörn merkert, “die eindeutig vieldeutige wirklichkeit,” in retrospektive, 26-35: 26. 71 merkert, 26. 72 eberhard roters, “schlesisches himmelreich – preußiches hölle, oder: die tiefe der erinnerung,” in retrospektive, 82-93: 85. 73 ibid., 88. 74 ibid., 83. originally, der wut der bilder bore the title, “erinnerungen für die zukunft.” this was changed shortly before the exhibition opened in leipzig. 6 8 d e n y i n g d i f f e r e n c e t o t h e p o s t s o c i a l i s t o t h e r contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 2, no 1 (2012) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2012.45 heisig after german unification whereas east german writers had dominated the scholarship about heisig before 1990, writing all of the books and catalogs about heisig’s work before the 1989 retrospective, only three published new articles in a heisig catalog in the first fifteen years after the fall of the wall.75 of them, only one—dietulf sander—had previously published on heisig.76 instead, the myriad of texts written about heisig after unification were written by former west germans. this shift from an east german perspective to a west german one in the wake of november 1989 led to a greater emphasis on heisig’s war paintings and a tendency to interpret them in terms of trauma. unlike earlier west german publications, however, most of the articles written after 1990 attempted to distance heisig from east germany, which had been vilified after its collapse, the result of losing a forty-year competition to be the “better germany.” the view of heisig that dominates scholarship today developed during the 1990s and was concretized in 2005 with bernhard heisig: wut der bilder (the rage of images), a major solo exhibition that traveled to cities throughout germany for the artist’s 80th birthday. it opened in leipzig in march 2005 with a speech by then-chancellor gerhard schröder, who called heisig “one of the most important german artists” of the 20th century.77 although the catalog and official press presented the exhibition as a “comprehensive overview of heisig’s work,” it was not. instead, it focused on the artist’s paintings of war and trauma.78 it was, in essence, a reiteration of (west) german curator eckhart gillen’s dissertation thesis, which focused on heisig’s “personal engagement as a painter and graphic artist with the past, with his role as victim and perpetrator in war and as a member of the criminal organization, the waffen-ss.”79 by calling this selected view of his work a “retrospective,” however, the exhibition presented heisig as an artist obsessed with the traumas of war: it seemed he could paint little else. the exhibition contained no still lifes; landscapes were represented by only two small works, neither of which was shown in berlin; and heisig’s portraiture was limited, with one exception, to biographical works and politicians. similarly, his graphic work made up only a small portion of the exhibition and was limited primarily to self-portraits and images of war and conflict. none of his many literary illustrations was included. and his paris commune paintings were reinterpreted as little more than allegories of his own wartime 75 there are occasional reprints of past articles by kober and speeches by heisig. 76 günter scholz published a short article on the fascist nightmare in the small catalog, otto dix, bernhard heisig. der schrecken des krieges in 1992. jürgen papies published two articles in 1995, each taking a close look at one of heisig’s themes. and in 1998 and 2005, sander published articles on heisig’s prints. sander also published a book in 2001 based on his dissertation research, bernhard heisig, schutzversuche, 1963-2001 (berlin: galerie berlin, 2001). significantly, this book contains virtually no text, only a short, four-page introduction by sander and a half-page commentary by heisig. 77 rede von bundeskanzler gerhard schröder zur ausstellungseröffnung bernhard heisig – “die wut der bilder,” march 20, 2005. 21 february 2007, <http://www.bundesregierung.de /content/de/bulletin/2005/03/__anlagen/ nr-26-3814286,property=publicationfile.pdf>. 78 eckhart gillen, ed., bernhard heisig, die wut der bilder (köln: dumont, 2005) 10. hereafter wdb. 79 eckhart gillen, “schwierigkeiten beim suchen der wahrheit:” bernhard heisig im konflikt zwischen ‘verordnetem antifaschismus’ und der auseinandersetzung mit seinem kriegstrauma. diss. u heidelberg, 2004, 15. 6 9 a p r i l a . e i s m a n contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 2, no 1 (2012) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2012.45 experiences, as evidenced by the article titled, “bernhard heisig fails as a history painter and finds his theme: the paris commune as a trench painting.”80 the impression that heisig was an artist deeply traumatized by the war was also suggested by a reinterpretation of his painterly process. rather than viewing his tendency to continually rework a painting and make multiples of it as a reflection of his artistic struggle to find the ideal form, the curator presented it as an illustration of a freudian response trauma: “whoever wants to understand heisig’s work better, must acknowledge the decades-long memory work of the painter in the sense of sigmund freud’s famous text, ‘memory, repeating and working through.’”81 the catalog texts also placed great emphasis on the conflicts heisig had with east german government in the 1960s. significantly they focused on his speech at the fifth congress in 1964 and his paris commune painting from 1965, both of which were read in terms of suffering for his belief in western-style modern art. the conflicts surrounding his murals in 1965 and the brigade in 1969, which cannot be read as a defense of western modernism, were mentioned only in passing, if at all. similarly, heisig’s departure from his position as rector of the leipzig academy in 1964 was presented as a consequence of the speech he gave at the fifth congress rather than as a resignation. this reinterpretation of heisig’s departure first emerged in the catalog for the retrospective exhibition in 1989 and became increasingly common as the 1990s progressed. by the time of wut der bilder, however, archival evidence had been uncovered that proved heisig had resigned before the conference took place.82 how the 2005 catalog dealt with this information reveals much about the state of east german art’s reception. although the catalog texts acknowledged the existence of the letter, the authors downplayed or dismissed it throughout. in the biography, for example, the authors cited heisig stating that he did not remember such a letter and suggested that it was improperly dated.83 elsewhere, a bolded headline announced, “heisig’s fall as rector,” while in two other articles references were made to heisig’s being “let go” and his “loss” of the position.84 despite acknowledging the letter, the catalog nonetheless leaves the reader with the impression that heisig lost his position rather than voluntarily gave it up. in wut der bilder, heisig appears as a victim of both the nazi past and the second german dictatorship. indeed, this double victimization is presented as an important part of his artistic value: heisig’s “artistic achievement lies in his lifelong struggle to come to terms with the traumas of a biography that passed from war and dictatorship to another 80 eckhart gillen, “bernhard heisig scheitert als historienmaler und findet sein thema: die pariser commune als schützengrabenbild,” in wdb, 95-113. 81 wdb, 28. 82 in 2004, i found three documents in the archive of the leipzig academy—the resignation letter, official acknowledgement of its receipt, and a letter confirming heisig’s replacement—all dated to before the conference. i alerted the curator of this fact and provided him with a photocopy of heisig’s resignation letter. 83 wdb, 318. 84 karl siegberg rehberg, “expressivität zwischen machtkalkül und ‘produktiver verunsicherung. bernhard heisig als ‘motor’ und integrationsfigur der leipziger malerei,” in wut der bilder, p. 293. gillen, “weltlandshaften und weltbilder,” in wut der bilder, p. 241, paul kaiser, “prinzip zugriff. bernhard heisigs wandbild ‘gestern und in unserer zeit’ vor und nach 989,” in wdb, 274 7 0 d e n y i n g d i f f e r e n c e t o t h e p o s t s o c i a l i s t o t h e r contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 2, no 1 (2012) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2012.45 dictatorship and the cold war.”85 rather than an active participant in his own life’s story, heisig is relegated to a victim who can do little more than paint about the past that seems to haunt him. it is an image of the artist that reflects the shift in both east german studies in the early 1990s to a totalitarian paradigm, one that conflated east germany with the third reich, and in german culture in the late 1990s to an emphasis on german victimhood rather than guilt over the events of the nazi era.86 conclusion: the larger implications of rewriting heisig’s life and art in the twenty years after the collapse of east germany, heisig’s reception changed significantly as east german art historians were replaced by west german ones and western texts lost their earlier complexity. the post-wall view of heisig—which reached its apex in the 2005 exhibition and catalog, wut der bilder—rewrote the artist’s life and work, eliminating his political commitments to socialism and east germany. such commitments were problematic in unified germany, both because he had chosen socialism over capitalism and because the idea of a politically committed artist conflicted with the depoliticization of art in the west after world war ii.87 after 1990, heisig was forced into a post-war western concept of art that valorized artistic “freedom” and preferred to imagine artists as loners rather than as intellectually committed to improving society.88 heisig’s experiences in “two dictatorships” were used to give him authenticity by depicting him as one who had suffered through a difficult past from which he was freed once capitalism had triumphed. the focus on trauma similarly placed primary emphasis on heisig as an emotional artist, who drew inspiration from his tortured psyche, rather than as a political artist inspired by his intellect. the new interpretation robbed him of his agency and his art of its relationship to the east 85 hickley, 2011. this is a slight rephrasing of a quote from the promotional material for the 2005 exhibition, bernhard heisig: wut der bilder: “his artistic achievement lies in the constant artistic examination of a biography that passed from war and dictatorship to a further dictatorship and the cold war.” <http://www.berlinerfestspiele.de/ en/aktuell/festivals/ 11_gropiusbau/mgb_programmlistedetailseite_1742.php>. last accessed: 15. december 2011. 86 for a discussion of the totalitarian approach, which has since fallen out of favor, see corey ross, the east german dictatorship (new york: oxford university press, 2002). for a discussion of the shift from perpetrators to victims, see bill niven, ed. germans as victims (new york: palgrave macmillan, 2006) 8. much-discussed examples of this emphasis on german victimhood are w. g. sebald’s on the natural history of destruction (2003, originally published in german as luftkrieg und literatur in 1999) and the movie downfall (2004, der untergang). 87 for a discussion of the conscious depoliticization of west german art in the early postwar years, see jost hermand, “modernism restored: west german painting in the 1950s,” new german critique, no. 32 (spring/summer 1984): 23-41. for a more general discussion of the depoliticization of western art after 1945, see greg barnhisel, “perspectives usa and the cultural cold war: modernism in service of the state,” modernism/modernity, 14(4): 729-754. 88 although the west also had politically active artists, the emphasis in western scholarship has tended to be on aesthetic innovation rather than on content. 7 1 a p r i l a . e i s m a n contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 2, no 1 (2012) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2012.45 german and cold war contexts in which it was created, and thus denied east german art any role in post-war german culture except as a negative foil.89 although this article has focused on heisig’s reception in germany, the difficulties of interpreting these figures extends into english-language scholarship, which is only beginning to address east german art.90 an important recent contribution to the field is the catalog for the los angeles county museum of art’s blockbuster exhibition in 2009, art of two germanys/cold war cultures, which conclusively proved that east germany did have art. and yet the catalog suggested that this art was created by dissidents or, in the case of official artists like heisig, contained subversive content that “passed undetected through the censors.” 91 the catalog left unchallenged the cold war stereotype that sees official art in east germany as little more than kitsch or political propaganda. in fact, in one of the two articles to focus on east german art, the german sociologist paul kaiser dismissed all official art in east germany in one fell swoop, stating that the government “created a backwardlooking system of art whose conceptual guiding feature was an antimodernist, uncritical, apologetic socialist realism.”92 this view evidences the totalitarian approach to east germany that came to prominence in germany in the 1990s but that has largely fallen out of favor in the new millennium, replaced by a greater emphasis on the lived experience of east germans (alltagsgeschichte) and a recognition of the complexity of social life in east germany.93 this inability to accept that artists could be committed to east germany, and thus part of its official culture, and still create art (as opposed to kitsch) is not shared by other disciplines. official east german literature has long been recognized by english-language scholars for its excellence: christoph hein, stefan heym, heiner müller and christa wolf are all part of the german canon.94 more recently, anglo-american scholars have also begun to 89 frederic jameson makes reference to this fact at the beginning of “dresdens clocks” in the september/october 2011 issue new left review: “anyone with a commitment to socialism needs to take an interest in the history and fate of the german democratic republic (ddr), up to now the object of systematic neglect by west-of-the-rhine liberal and radical intellectuals alike, who have scant knowledge of its achievements in painting and film, and assume its economic and political lessons to be exclusively negative.” 90 important texts include tradition and renewal: contemporary art in the gdr (exh. cat., museum of modern art oxford, 1984), twelve artists from the gdr (exh. cat., busch-reisinger museum, 1989), and marion deshmukh, cultures in conflict: visual arts in eastern germany (conference proceedings, 1998). 91 stephanie barron, “blurred boundaries: the art of two germanys between myth and history,” in art of two germanys/cold war cultures, 12-33, here: 25. 92 paul kaiser, “symbolic revolts in the ‘workers’ and peasants’ state’: countercultural art programs in the gdr and the return of modern art,” in art of two germanys/cold war cultures, 170-185, here: 171 & 172. for more about how east germany was portrayed in this exhibition, see april eisman, “review of the 2009 lacma exhibition catalog, art of two germanys / cold war cultures,” in german history 2009 27(4): 628-630. 93 this emphasis on alltagsgeschichte, of which the german social historian alf lüdtke was a pioneer, has encouraged the burgeoning field of east german material culture. 94 for example, see david bathrick’s powers of speech: the politics of culture in the gdr (university of nebraska press, 1995). 7 2 d e n y i n g d i f f e r e n c e t o t h e p o s t s o c i a l i s t o t h e r contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 2, no 1 (2012) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2012.45 recognize the quality of east german film and material culture.95 the visual arts, however, have yet to follow suit: none of the artists held in high esteem by the east german government—such as heisig—are well-known outside of germany, the result of a lingering cold war-era ideological emphasis on the necessity of “freedom” for the creation of art, and thus the incompatibility of art and state communism. the rewriting of heisig’s life and art to fit into western preconceptions impedes our ability to understand the artist and the complexity of art in east germany. when heisig clashed with cultural functionaries in the 1960s, he was not fighting for modern art in the western sense of artistic autonomy; rather he was fighting for a greater openness to the forms of modern art, which he believed artists could use in their efforts to create art that made a connection to the people. he did not believe in art for art’s sake of the west nor the idea that the artist should be a loner. in fact, already in the 1950s he argued against the “artistic suicide” that he saw taking place in the west, where artists were rejecting a connection to society and the people in favor of exploring their psyches.96 instead, he believed artists should be involved in the world in which they lived and chose to live in the east because he felt he, as an artist, was needed there, and was excited to “participate in the creation of a world view,” especially one that fought against imperialism.97 as he stated it, “i never wanted to emigrate. i always had the possibility, but i always had the feeling that i was needed... art in the west... that of joseph beuys, did not offer what i wanted, therefore the west was not my world. i wanted this world here to be different...”98 in 2009, post-socialist scholar piotr piotrowski argued that to develop a truly global art history, scholars need to recognize “the one who speaks, on whose behalf, and for whom... not to cancel western art history, but to call this type of narrative by its proper name, ‘western.’”99 a study of heisig’s reception illustrates the profound impact of the temporalgeographical location of the “speaker” on the scholarship produced: texts written during the cold war, for example, acknowledged heisig’s commitment to and engagement in east german society, whereas those written afterward elide these connections to emphasize trauma instead. this change in heisig’s reception illustrates the dominance today of a western perspective on east german art that differs from that which existed before the wall fell. it also reveals the west’s inability to see or accept difference in the close other. heisig’s themes are reinterpreted through a lens that elides socialist criticisms of capitalism as well as alternatives to the west’s emphasis on the individual. if we are to write a world history of art, however, we need to incorporate not just the art of the other, both close and distant, 95 examples of the recent literature on east german film include sean allan and john sandford, eds. defa, east german cinema, 1946-1992 (new york: berghahn books, 1999), marc silberman, “learning from the enemy: defa-french co-productions of the 1950s” film history, vol. 18, no. 1, cold-war german cinema (2006) 21-45, and thomas lindenberger, “home sweet home: desperately seeking heimat in early defa films,” from the same issue of film history, 46-58. examples of the emerging literature on material culture include katherine pence and paul betts, eds. socialist modern. east german everyday culture and politics (ann arbor: the university of michigan press, 2008), eli rubin, synthetic socialism. plastics & dictatorship in the german democratic republic (chapel hill: university of north carolina press, 2008) and uta a. balbier, cristina cuevas-wolf, and joes segal, eds. east german material culture and the power of memory. bulletin of the german historical institute. supplement 7 (2011). 96 heisig’s speech at the fourth congress of the vbkd, 1959, adk archiv: kurella nachlass 330, 138. 97 kober, 1972. 98 typescript (20 april 1995) for lutz dammbeck’s documentary, dürers erbe (1995), as quoted in gillen (2004) 9. 99 piotrowski, 2009. 7 3 a p r i l a . e i s m a n contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 2, no 1 (2012) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2012.45 but also what that art means—or meant—in those cultures. in heisig’s case, this means having to accept that art could be created under communism and that its meaning— regardless of stylistic or thematic similarities—could be supportive of socialism and critical of the west. until we do, artists like heisig will have to continue playing the “culture game.” but in contrast to the game played by artists of color, where, as oguibe explains, artists have to maintain their connection to their “native” lands to be successful, for east german artists, the rules are the opposite: to be successful in the west means having to distance oneself from any positive relationship to the country in which they lived until 1990. author’s acknowledgements: research for this article was funded in part by the berlin program for german and european studies and the andrew w. mellon predoctoral fellowship. i would like to thank dr. dietulf sander, anka lazarus and the staff of the museum of bildende künste leipzig as well as vincent klotzsche at the archive of the hochschule fur grafik und buchkunst leipzig, where much of the research for this article was conducted. i am also grateful to dr. roland märz for the opportunity to work on the kunst in der ddr exhibition in 2003, and to dr. eckhart gillen for the opportunity to write for the wut der bilder catalog in 2005 – both of these experiences offered invaluable insights into inner workings of present-day reception in germany. thanks also go to dieter brusberg, dr. anneliese hübscher, rita jorek, rüdiger küttner, dr. günter meißner and the heisig family for sharing their insights into east german art and society with me, and to kevin amidon, grant arndt, stephen brockmann, barbara mccloskey, emily morgan, cullen padgett walsh, and the reviewers at contemporaneity for feedback on earlier versions of this manuscript. 7 4 d e n y i n g d i f f e r e n c e t o t h e p o s t s o c i a l i s t o t h e r contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 2, no 1 (2012) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2012.45 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-noncommercial-no derivative works 3.0 united states license. this journal is operated by the university library system of the university of pittsburgh as part of its d-scribe digital publishing program, and is co-sponsored by the university of pittsburgh press. contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture vol 6, no 1 “boundless” (2017) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2017.221 http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu éxodo a la “tierra prometida” del demonio y otros monstruos en la obra de juan de dios mora adriana miramontes olivas en conversación con juan de dios mora introducción por deborah caplow editado por paulina pardo gaviria sobre los autores juan de dios mora es grabador y docente en la universidad de texas en san antonio, donde comenzó a enseñar pintura, dibujo y grabado en 2010. mora es un artista prolífico cuyos grabados han sido publicados en numerosos sitios incluyendo los catálogos new arte nuevo: san antonio 2010 y new art/arte nuevo san antonio 2012. este año su obra se exhibió en distintos lugares incluyendo el museo de arte mcnay en san antonio, texas en juan mora: cultural clash (juan mora: choque cultural, junio 8 a agosto 13 de 2017) y en el centro de arte the cole en la galería reavley en nacogdoches, texas, en juan de dios mora. en 2016, mora participó en la exhibición colectiva los de abajo: garbage as an artistic source (los de abajo: la basura como una fuente artística) en el centro cultural guadalupe en san antonio (de junio 10 a julio 29 de 2016). mora también ha sido curador de la exhibición print it up por varios años, organizada por el artista en el área del centro de san antonio dándoles una visibilidad sin precedentes a numerosos artistas. para esta exhibición mora guía y aconseja tanto a estudiantes como a exalumnos sobre el proceso de exhibición, desde cómo crear un portafolio, enmarcar e instalar obras, hasta realizar contratos con galeristas y vender las obras al público. adriana miramontes olivas es estudiante de doctorado en el departamento de historia del arte y arquitectura en la universidad de pittsburgh. completó su licenciatura en la universidad de texas de el paso y la maestría en la universidad de texas de san antonio. sus intereses en materia de investigación incluyen arte moderno y contemporáneo global con un enfoque en latinoamérica, estudios de género, sexualidad e identidad nacional. la dra. deborah caplow es historiadora del arte, curadora y autora del libro sobre el ilustrador mexicano leopoldo méndez (leopoldo méndez: arte revolucionario y el grabado mexicano, publicado por la universidad de texas). ella enseña historia del arte en la universidad de washington, bothell. sus áreas de investigación incluyen arte mexicano del siglo xx, las intersecciones entre arte y política, y la historia de la fotografía. actualmente hace investigación de grabados contemporáneos en oaxaca, méxico. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 6, no 1 “boundless” (2017) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2017.221 introducción los impactantes grabados del artista juan de dios mora (n. 1984) presentan una interesante intersección de culturas, visiones y experiencias relacionadas a la realidad de los migrantes en su camino hacia los estados unidos. las imágenes de mora sitúan temáticamente a los migrantes en la zona entre la vida y la muerte que todos deben cruzar en su travesía –la frontera, el desierto, el río y el mar– siempre en riesgo de muerte e invariablemente acompañados por la esperanza y la pérdida. mora sobrepone imágenes referentes a la historia de méxico y de su relación con los estados unidos, desde la antigüedad hasta el presente. aun siendo profundamente personales y autobiográficos, los grabados de mora representan las vidas y las muertes de todos los migrantes. análogo a los grabados de josé guadalupe posada (1852-1913) y de otros miembros del taller de gráfica popular, el trabajo de mora explora la injusticia y el sufrimiento a través de un vocabulario complejo de signos y símbolos culturales, en este caso tomados directamente de su arraigada relación con méxico y la migración hacia el norte. tal como el grabador contemporáneo artemio rodríguez (méxico, n. 1972), quien trabaja en michoacán y california y crea imágenes con virulentos comentarios sociales, mora emplea tradicionales técnicas gráficas que han caracterizado el grabado político mexicano por más de cien años. sus aglomeradas composiciones en blanco y negro combinan un simbolismo fantástico con afinadas críticas sociales; en los grabados de mora, ingeniosas imágenes humorísticas y sarcásticas se burlan constantemente del poderoso y simpatizan con el oprimido. y tal como el trabajo del artista oaxaqueño alejandro santiago (1964-2013), cuyas esculturas en cerámica de la serie 2501 migrantes expresan el dolor y la pena de la migración en retorcidas y expresionistas estatuas de mujeres, hombres y niños, las imágenes de mora operan tanto en el corazón como en la mente y hacen que quien las vea se aproxime a ellas a través de un estudio cuidadoso que resulta en una experiencia emocional. en los grabados aquí publicados, mora explora a menudo la temática de dualidad, omnipresentes en el arte mexicano desde su comienzo. en su rapto del emigrante, el migrante parece suspendido entre la vida y la muerte, entre el cielo y la tierra, mientras que el demonio alado que lo carga es a la vez ángel y diablo, con un talón de águila y una cola de serpiente terminada en un glifo maya. algunos perros surrealistas los rodean y flotan en el aire, como aquellos pequeños demonios de algunos de los grabados de josé guadalupe posada. según mora, el demonio representa a la migra (servicio de inmigración de los estados unidos) y los perros son sus pastores alemanes. junto con este simbolismo, el grabado está lleno de opuestos: bondad y maldad, vida y muerte, luz y oscuridad, comida y agua, mitos pre-colombinos y católicos. así mismo, los postes de teléfono pueden ser vistos como cruces que marcan la división que es a la vez frontera y carretera, mientras evoca las tumbas que marcan el camino. el águila, el cactus y la serpiente pueden representar tanto el mito fundador de tenochtitlán (la ciudad de méxico hoy en día), y, por consecuencia, a la nación mexicana. en el grabado rapto del emigrante en particular estos símbolos están fragmentados como una insinuada referencia a la identidad nacional. estas alusiones duales también animan asunción del emigrante, con las palabras ‘alma’ y ‘cuerpo’ enmarcando la figura principal, en tanto que ésta asciende en el aire con los brazos levantados, recordando la crucifixión. esta figura está rodeada por una mandorla compuesta por una multitud de querubines sosteniendo botellas de agua y por un intrincado grupo de ángeles, nubes, botellas, una rosa, un fríjol y limones, no como estereotipos, sino como un recordatorio del origen de los migrantes y de las situaciones en las que se encuentran. los limones, por ejemplo, son una parte esencial de la dieta diaria mexicana y, tal como lo explica mora, una graciosa referencia a la palabra que los migrantes utilizan para éxodo a la “tierra prometida” del demonio y otros monstruos en la obra de juan de dios mora adriana miramontes olivas, juan de dios mora, y deborah caplow http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 4 5 a d r i a n a m i r a m on t e s o l i v a s , j u a n d e d i o s m o r a , y d e b o r a h ca p l ow contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 6, no 1 “boundless” (2017) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2017.221 imagen 1 juan de dios mora, asunción del emigrante, 2009, linograbado, 24 x 18 ⅛ pulgadas. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 4 6 é x od o a l a “ t i e r r a p r om e t i d a ” contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 6, no 1 “boundless” (2017) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2017.221 la migra (‘limones’), que lleva uniformes verdes. adicionalmente, a un lado mora incluye las garras de un águila y al otro una pezuña de burro, mientras que una elaborada corona flota en la parte superior sobre la cabeza del migrante, reminiscente de los tocados aztecas. aquí la virgen de guadalupe está reducida a un signo parcial en las esquinas inferiores, su manto cubriendo un cactus en un lado y una botella de agua en el otro, convirtiéndose así en una fuerte alusión a los muchos migrantes que mueren de sed en el desierto en un intento por cruzar la frontera hacia los estados unidos. en atacado por los pescados mora incluye el mismo simbolismo. en este grabado, un hombre que se ahoga está rodeado por feroces peces mientras busca salvarse haciendo un gesto de ascendencia, aunque las botellas de plástico, por ligeras, no lo sostendrán y es por el contrario halado hacia abajo por lo que parece ser una botella de agua bendita. el corazón a su lado también se hunde. los brazos del hombre están levantados, de nuevo en un símbolo de crucifixión, y el grabado provoca una inevitable comparación con la historia bíblica de jonás, quien es arrojado al mar y debe hacer de su travesía su destino. como en los otros grabados, el sentido de desánimo y desastre está balanceado por la promesa de la salvación espiritual. un peso para el almuerzo, aunque no trata directamente sobre la inmigración, apunta hacia la pobreza y las penurias que llevan a muchos migrantes a dejar su país en busca de mejores condiciones de vida. la dificultad por sobrevivir diariamente está simbolizada en los afiches que anuncian la lucha libre y la corrida de toros. la presencia de una ermita con velas encendidas y los brazos en alabanza del mendigo dan la impresión de una salvación potencial, mientras que el perro y el acordeón parecen implicar que la vida en la tierra también tiene recompensas. como en todas las obras aquí publicadas, en este grabado mora ofrece esperanza en medio de la adversidad y sugiere un vínculo con un poder superior, infundido con la profunda espiritualidad de la cultura mexicana. ahora, más que nunca, estas imágenes tienen gran relevancia y valor al aumentar diariamente la crisis mundial migratoria y la división entre pobres y ricos continúa sacando a miles de sus hogares y arrastrándolos hacia un peligroso e incierto futuro. deborah caplow adriana miramontes olivas1: el grabado tiene una larga historia de activismo y arte denunciatorio. en la ciudad de méxico, el taller de gráfica popular o tgp (fundado en 1937 y en continua actividad hasta el 2010) enfatizó las injusticias cometidas hacia la clase trabajadora, la inestabilidad política y los problemas sociales, así como el esfuerzo colectivo y la acción. el tgp se enfocó en la vida diaria de los pobres y sus artistas demandaban el cambio social. juan, tu obra también está motivada por la política y es crítica de la economía, del desempleo, tratados de comercio internacionales, seguridad fronteriza e idioma, por nombrar algunos de los temas. ¿cuál es el propósito de representar tal problemática? 1 también agradezco la colaboración y sugerencias de mi colega rae di cicco y los editores de contemporaneity. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 4 7 a d r i a n a m i r a m on t e s o l i v a s , j u a n d e d i o s m o r a , y d e b o r a h ca p l ow contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 6, no 1 “boundless” (2017) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2017.221 juan de dios mora: algo que me interesó mucho cuando vine para estados unidos desde méxico fue la discriminación y la inmigración. en méxico se habla bastante de la inmigración, de una parte, a otra, legal o ilegalmente. pero cuando vine a laredo, texas, eso me impactó. todo eso me llegó de una forma inesperada, porque estaba joven, así que he hecho estos temas parte de mi obra. ¿cómo asociar estos problemas con lo del taller de gráfica popular? me gusta también muchas veces representar las condiciones sociales: hablar de nuevo laredo, ciudad juárez, la violencia y la inmigración. mucha gente no quiere comentar sobre estos asuntos, pero están ahí, es evidente. tengo una pieza, asunción del emigrante (2009), que es de un inmigrante que se murió. ¿qué es lo que le pasa a los inmigrantes cuando mueren cruzando la frontera? ¿qué es lo que le pasa a esas personas? en cuestión de lo físico, se recuperan los cuerpos o los huesos y se llevan a la morgue. se intenta identificar a los individuos y se espera a que alguien los recupere o se creman. pero muchas veces las autoridades no mandan los cuerpos a su país de origen porque no saben de dónde vienen. yo en mi trabajo, como en asunción del emigrante, trato de darles cierto crédito a todas esas personas que se vienen a estados unidos, que lo dejan todo, sus tierras y sus familias en méxico, centro y sur américa para echarle muchas ganas, que viajan en busca de mejores oportunidades, pero que muchas veces se quedan en el camino. entonces asunción del emigrante refleja a una persona que se murió pero que se va para el cielo. en otras palabras, estoy tratando de darles una cierta importancia a esos eventos que mucha gente ignora o que no les hacen caso. amo: tu obra hace uso de múltiples fuentes. en cuestión de temas, pienso en guillermo gómez peña (n. 1955) y su “arte fronterizo,” pero en referencia a la técnica y al contenido la puedo relacionar a los aztecas y sus “guerreros águila” en mesoamérica, a la virgen de guadalupe (1779) de sebastián salcedo, y a méxico en la guerra: los braceros se van a estados unidos (1982) de leopoldo méndez. sin embargo, tus grabados son completamente diferentes porque están llenos no solamente de referencias religiosas y crítica social sino también de seres imaginarios como los peces con garras o los perros con cuernos. ¿cuáles son tus fuentes? ¿qué es lo que lees o ves para informarte, para inspirarte? jdm: cuando llegué al colegio yo no sabía quién era frida kahlo ni diego rivera. en el rancho no hay nada, yo no conocía nada de arte. aún en estados unidos, todavía en la preparatoria, yo desconocía lo que era el renacimiento. fue hasta el colegio en las clases de introducción que me enseñaron sobre las obras de miguel ángel, rafael, leonardo da vinci y los grabados de alberto durero. me llamó mucho la atención cómo los artistas hacían al demonio, sobre todo en san antonio atormentado por los demonios (1470) de martin schongauer, porque hay numerosas pinturas y trabajos acerca de la lucha entre el bien y el mal y todos los demonios son diferentes. pero lo que me gustaba es que a los santos los representaban como seres humanos y los glorificaban, pero los demonios eran distintos, los hacían para asustar. entonces en laredo nosotros les hacíamos burla a los agentes de inmigración, la migra, de que eran unos monstruos. y empecé a comparar a la migra con los demonios del renacimiento inventando mi propio estilo, creando mis figuras híbridas. es mi interpretación del demonio y de cómo yo lo veía, lo imaginaba, y ojalá que cause miedo. el grabado atacado por los pescados (2009) es de un inmigrante que está tratando de cruzar el río y se está ahogando. esta obra tiene una historia muy chistosa porque supuestamente unos pescadores encontraron unos cocodrilos en el río grande, entonces había rumores en la comunidad, se hacen chistes y chismes. empezaron a decir que había cocodrilos en el río. después se comentó que unos inmigrantes que trataron de cruzar de nuevo laredo, tamaulipas, a laredo, texas, pusieron el primer pie en el río y empezaron a sentir como que los estaban mordiendo y ¡se regresaron para méxico! pero en realidad eran http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 4 8 é x od o a l a “ t i e r r a p r om e t i d a ” contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 6, no 1 “boundless” (2017) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2017.221 imagen 2 juan de dios mora, atacado por los pescados, 2009, linograbado, 24 ¾ x 12 pulgadas. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 4 9 a d r i a n a m i r a m on t e s o l i v a s , j u a n d e d i o s m o r a , y d e b o r a h ca p l ow contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 6, no 1 “boundless” (2017) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2017.221 los pescaditos chiquitos que les estaban mordisqueando la piel de los pies, se la estaban comiendo. por eso hice los pescados así en forma de monstruos, como demonios, para que reflejara un poquito la inocencia de muchos de los inmigrantes pero también comentar sobre su estado psicológico. porque hay ciertas estrategias que se usan para evitar el cruce ilegal de los inmigrantes. por ejemplo, la patrulla fronteriza tiene tecnología para poder capturar a todos los que intenten pasar ilegalmente, pero también usan el estado psicológico de los inmigrantes. porque ellos vienen desde muy lejos, tienen un camino largo que recorrer y, además, la frontera es otro reto. trato de representar sus vidas, cómo se la pasan desde sus tierras hasta méxico y lo que les sucede al llegar a la frontera de estados unidos. amo: en términos de activismo y protesta, ¿has organizado, participado o planeas establecer alguna organización o taller políticamente activo en san antonio, en méxico, o en algún otro lugar? jdm: ahorita no, lo que hacía con andrei rentería entre el 2014 y el 2015 es que íbamos a educar a la comunidad en las artes. íbamos a los albergues de los niños que cruzan ilegalmente para los estados unidos, que vienen de centro y sur américa para buscar a sus familias o mejores oportunidades y les enseñábamos un poquito de alguna técnica de arte, de artistas, o una que otra palabra en inglés. donábamos nuestro tiempo para hacer los talleres y estos proyectos pequeños y realizábamos una o dos obras y los niños aprendían una técnica. no podíamos preguntarles cosas personales, pero ellos nos platicaban las experiencias por las que habían pasado que eran muy muy feas. de una forma u otra me relacioné porque yo también vengo de méxico. amo: explicas que cuando llegaste a laredo eras muy joven y que te impactó esta cuestión de la inmigración, ¿qué tan joven eras y por qué fue tal el desconcierto? ¿era que ignorabas este asunto de la inmigración o por qué creó tanto impacto en ti? jdm: no es que lo ignorara, es que en méxico se idealiza venir para los estados unidos. allá lo único que se sabía es que el papá, el tío, o el primo se fueron para los estados unidos y están mandando dólares para la familia. ¡qué bonito! ¿verdad? pero ya estando en laredo me di cuenta de lo complejo de la problemática, gente muere, los acusan, otros también se vuelven locos o pobres. entonces esos problemas me impactaron y traté de comparar mi vida a la de otros inmigrantes y es muy diferente, aunque mi familia y yo también venimos como una gente trabajadora. todo eso me ayudó a sacar temas para mi obra, a conocer historias de gente, de sus experiencias de cruzar la frontera. amo: los estados unidos es considerado como la “tierra prometida” por muchos inmigrantes. en busca del llamado “sueño americano” cientos de hombres, mujeres y niños intentan cruzar la frontera cada año. el viaje para los inmigrantes indocumentados es por lo regular muy caro y peligroso. aunque es difícil aportar con cifras específicas, debido a las diferencias según el país de origen y la duración del viaje, es estimado que los migrantes pagan a los “coyotes”, o traficantes de humanos, una cifra entre $429 dólares (únicamente http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 5 0 é x od o a l a “ t i e r r a p r om e t i d a ” contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 6, no 1 “boundless” (2017) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2017.221 para llegar a la frontera) hasta $2500 dólares para cruzarla.2 en este viaje los migrantes confrontan un sin fin de peligros. los inmigrantes son amenazados, robados, secuestrados, violados y/o torturados.3 además de estos riesgos, una vez en tierra estadounidense, por ejemplo, en el desierto de arizona, los inmigrantes están expuestos a temperaturas de 120˚f durante el verano y a temperaturas congelantes durante el invierno. tus obras asunción del emigrante, atacado por los pescados, rapto del emigrante (2009), y un peso para el almuerzo (2010) tratan de la inmigración. en tu opinión, ¿por qué razón cientos de personas intentan cruzar la frontera cada año a pesar de los retos e inseguridades que esto conlleva? jdm: en lo personal, en méxico mi papá tuvo muchos problemas económicos, él estaba endeudado. en distintos países se habla del trabajo de menores, pero nosotros desde chiquitos trabajábamos y lo considerábamos como algo normal. nosotros íbamos para el rancho de mi papá a colaborar en las cosechas y mi papá nos decía saquen hierbas, agarren el azadón, hagan esto, y andábamos en friega, de un lado para otro. pero nosotros, como te digo, estábamos jóvenes y no percatamos que mi papá estaba en muchos problemas económicos. entonces llegó un tiempo donde sinceramente mi papá ya no podía más con la deuda y tampoco con el estado psicológico, y decidió dejar todo en méxico e irse a los estados unidos. la primera vez dice mi papá que para él fue muy difícil cruzar porque tenía que encontrar al “coyote” y también juntar el dinero para pagar al traficante. él comenta que para cruzar la frontera sí tuvo mucho miedo, pero en ese tiempo era más fácil. ahorita con la tecnología moderna es altamente complicado. para cruzar, mi papá caminó por días, llegó a una caballeriza y en el abrevadero estaba el agua bien sucia, pero cuenta mi papá que tenía bastante sed y que con las dos manos agarró el agua y la bebió así (juan hace un gesto y se lleva las manos hacia la boca). recuerda mi papá que le sabía ¡como refresco! (risas). pero lo más importante de todo esto es que los inmigrantes se mudan por la economía. mi papá tiene una familia grandísima, éramos cinco hermanos y con mi mamá seis, entonces ya no podía, mi papá ya no sabía qué hacer. y en méxico, en el rancho, todos hablaban de estados unidos, el norte, el norte, el norte, y el “sueño americano”, el dinero, los dólares, los dólares. mi papá, pues siendo una persona responsable y también valiente, vino para acá y trabajó, juntó dinero y después se regresó para méxico por un año. luego decidió volver otra vez para estados unidos. la tercera ocasión que atravesó la frontera para estados unidos, entró la reforma migratoria y fue cuando nos arregló la residencia a todos nosotros, pero fue muy difícil para mí y mi familia. se sentía muy diferente la cultura aquí, fue una experiencia bonita, pero mi papá abandonó su país por la economía. otras personas se mudan por la violencia. 2 esta cifra es hasta el 2014. jeremy slack and howard campbell “on narco-coyotaje: illicit regimes and their impacts on the us-mexico border,” antipode 48, no. 5 (2016), 1393; joseph sorrentino, “mordiendo la mano que nos alimenta: trabajadores migrantes en nueva york sin gozar derechos básicos,” en rufino domínguez santos, “tiempos de obama: migración,” la jornada del campo no. 17, 13 febrero 2009, http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2009/02/13/migracion.html 3 tal es el caso de la masacre ocurrida en san fernando en tamaulipas méxico que recibió atención internacional y que tuvo lugar en agosto del 2010 en la que 72 inmigrantes de diversas nacionalidades fueron encontrados muertos. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2009/02/13/migracion.html 5 1 a d r i a n a m i r a m on t e s o l i v a s , j u a n d e d i o s m o r a , y d e b o r a h ca p l ow contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 6, no 1 “boundless” (2017) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2017.221 amo: ha habido numerosos intentos para prevenir el paso de inmigrantes indocumentados a los estados unidos en su frontera con méxico. esto ha creado el llamado “efecto embudo” en el que los migrantes usan rutas alternativas en áreas remotas para evitar ser detectados y detenidos en lugar de los tradicionales puntos urbanos de cruce. esto los lleva a zonas peligrosas como los desiertos del sur de arizona.4 en consecuencia, esto ha incrementado los riesgos asociados con el cruce de la frontera y, aunque el número de muertes en la frontera e.u.-méxico es desconocido, las estadísticas de la patrulla fronteriza demuestran que, del 1º de octubre de 1997 al 30 de septiembre de 2013, hubo más de 6029 muertos.5 en tu grabado rapto del emigrante vemos el paisaje dividido en dos por un camino. también hay un hombre joven cuyo cuerpo está siendo perforado por un alambre de púas. en una mano sostiene una botella con agua, en la otra sostiene una bolsa de soriana, la compañía de supermercados mexicana, quizá con provisiones de comida. el joven aparece en el aire peleando con una criatura híbrida, pero a pesar de esto, él no suelta su botella de agua ni su fuente de alimento. ¿podrías explicar en dónde están? y ¿podrías platicarnos de las diferentes partes que conforman este monstruo, como el diferente pelaje, diversas plumas, los cuernos y las garras? jdm: en el rapto del emigrante, el demonio es la patrulla fronteriza y los perros son los que traen los oficiales, los de raza alemana. en el sol está un maíz y arriba de éste hay un frijol. el maíz lo uso como un símbolo de fertilidad y es una metáfora de nosotros, inmigrantes, que venimos a estados unidos en busca de una nueva vida. el maíz cuando uno lo planta, da de comer y también puede dar dinero, se puede vender. entonces es una metáfora de nosotros los que nos mudamos para acá, donde podemos comer, ganar dinero y, asimismo, enviarlo para que nuestras familias sobrevivan en méxico. entonces el maíz allí arribita es como un ídolo, tiene un círculo, la aureola, y adentro de ésta se encuentra un frijol, en referencia al término “frijolero,” porque a mí me empezaron a decir “frijolero”. así que el frijol lo uso en forma cómica, pero también de una forma política. a mí no me afecta, lo adopto a manera de fortalecimiento, lo que nos dicen lo podemos cambiar y convertir en algo positivo, por eso tengo el frijol. en el rapto del emigrante la figura híbrida representa al diablo, es un demonio, la patrulla fronteriza. tiene las patas de un águila, los cuernos de una gacela y además aparece con cuatro orejas. el estilo es como del renacimiento, ya que cuando los artistas hacían los monstruos los dramatizaban, los representaban de cierta forma para asustar al público. entonces aquí hice eso yo también: lo exageré, el demonio tiene una piocha para hacerlo más tenebroso, para espantar. en la mano izquierda sostiene un garrote, representando los que usan los oficiales de la patrulla fronteriza, y en la mano derecha este demonio sujeta un alambre de púas que a la vez está amarrando a la otra persona para transportarlo hacia arriba. el alambre asimismo cuenta con unos hilos y de ahí cuelgan frijoles que son una representación de nosotros, los inmigrantes, los frijoleros. la cola del demonio es maya, un jeroglífico, y también de ahí están colgando unos frijoles. en el rapto del emigrante, abajo aparece la imagen de la virgen maría, un ícono de nosotros, es para dar aliento, para sobrevivir, para echarle ganas a la vida, una motivación 4 daniel e. martinez, robin c. reineke, et al. “structural violence and migrant deaths in southern arizona: data from the pima county office of the medical examiner, 1990-2013,” journal on migration and human security 2, no. 4, (2014), 262. 5 cornelius, 1998, in daniel e. martinez, robin c. reineke, et al., 258. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 5 2 é x od o a l a “ t i e r r a p r om e t i d a ” contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 6, no 1 “boundless” (2017) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2017.221 imagen 3 juan de dios mora, rapto del emigrante, 2009, linograbado, 22 x 30 pulgadas. para el estado psicológico. de este ícono cuelgan una vela y un guaje que se usa para transportar agua, sirve como recipiente. arriba de la virgen están dos pedazos de maíz, dos granos, que son como las semillas de nosotros aquí en estados unidos. en seguida se encuentran dos maíces de los cuales se suspende un tercer maíz que está medio quebrado. en méxico teníamos nosotros que almacenar el maíz, se cosechaba lo que era para un año y muchas veces si no se le echaban unas pastillas para curar el maíz, se podía estropear ya que le entraban animalitos, insectos, y se comían todo el maíz de adentro del tambo. esas pastillas lo que hacían era destruir el gorgojo que es el insecto que entra al maíz y se lo come. entonces el maíz fragmentado lo hice como una metáfora, si uno no es dedicado y trabaja duro aquí en estados unidos se puede echar a perder, por eso el maíz aquí no está entero ni saludable, lo hice medio quebrado, así como que lo mordió un animal. y en la http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 5 3 a d r i a n a m i r a m on t e s o l i v a s , j u a n d e d i o s m o r a , y d e b o r a h ca p l ow contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 6, no 1 “boundless” (2017) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2017.221 esquina derecha inferior está un grano de maíz con alambre de púas reflejando que en varias oportunidades también uno se puede tropezar y morir. en el rapto del emigrante, los dos perros representan a los de la patrulla fronteriza que tienen en los puntos de revisión para que huelan las drogas y para otras labores. y aquí están dirigiendo al inmigrante al diablo. debajo de estos monstruos hay un limón; en laredo le decíamos a la migra los “limones,” porque se visten de verde, entonces yo uso mucho los limones en referencia a la migra. el inmigrante está casi desnudo, esto refleja que cuando viajan, vienen de sus países con muchas cosas, pero cuando llegan acá, ya vienen casi sin nada, eso es una metáfora también de que las cosas materiales no valen nada. la bolsa de soriana (o el heb o gigante), todos esos supermercados, reflejan el estado económico de méxico. en el rapto del emigrante aparece un camino. esto refleja que muchas veces en el desierto hay rutas, pero esas vías son para rancheros o para la migra para moverse de un lado a otro, pero si te fijas no hay nada alrededor, no hay nada más que postes de teléfono y en ocasiones incontables gente camina por allí, pero al hacerlo dejan sus huellas aumentando sus probabilidades de que la migra los agarre. pero el camino también es una forma de poder salvarse, porque si están cansados ellos se pueden quedar allí sentados hasta que alguien vaya a recogerlos o a reportarlos. por eso digo que el camino está allí, es una forma para salvar vidas, pero también para que los inmigrantes sean descubiertos y el sueño americano sea frustrado. enfatizo en que estas rutas son más para cuando los inmigrantes ya están en las últimas, cuando ya están a punto de morir. amo: en tu obra un peso para el almuerzo vemos a un hombre que podría ser un vagabundo. está en la calle mendigando “un peso para el almuerzo” y, aunque su ubicación es ambigua, en el fondo podemos leer un señalamiento que dice “pobres street (calle pobres).” ¿es esta una referencia a la fallida promesa del “sueño americano”? tú has vivido en ambos países, méxico y los estados unidos, y saliste de tu pueblo para venir a la “tierra prometida” como muchos otros. ahora que has vivido aquí por varios años, ¿aun crees en el “sueño americano”? jdm: el “sueño americano” sí se ha realizado para mí, eso no lo puedo negar. me ha llevado a donde yo he querido llegar. un peso para el almuerzo es sobre la frontera de nuevo laredo en tamaulipas y laredo en texas, y acerca de una gran cantidad de gente que se queda enseguida del puente internacional pidiendo dinero para poder sobrevivir cada día, juntar un dinerito, pagar al coyote y poder cruzarse. muchas veces en el puente internacional en nuevo laredo había numerosas personas mendigando, pidiendo dinero, y tenían a sus hijos allí, a veces tocando unas maracas o un acordeón. a mí me daba tristeza y les daba dinero. en esta pieza lo que hice es reflejar un poquito lo que pasa: muchas familias se quedan allí en la frontera de méxico y en ocasiones primero se cruza el papá y en el cruce muchas veces se muere o lo meten a la cárcel. otros padres se vienen para estados unidos y primero mandan dinero a sus familias, pero después de un tiempo se olvidan de ellas porque encuentran una nueva pareja o simplemente se olvidan de su familia. entonces un peso para el almuerzo lo hice para reflejar estos temas y en vez de un niño puse un perro con un gorrito como para tratar de entretener, porque no me gustaría tener un niño allí, porque quiero que mi obra tenga un tono político, pero tampoco que no sea muy fuerte. el perro es un amigo del hombre y los vagabundos tienen muchos perros. arriba hay dos veladoras con un frijol que tiene una manta en forma del velo de la virgen maría. atrás en el fondo hay unas casas, como las de estados unidos reflejando el lado estadounidense. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 5 4 é x od o a l a “ t i e r r a p r om e t i d a ” contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 6, no 1 “boundless” (2017) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2017.221 imagen 4 juan de dios mora, un peso para el almuerzo, 2010, linograbado, 26 x 27 ¼ pulgadas. amo: juan, en tus grabados podemos observar la túnica de la virgen de guadalupe, los pequeños ángeles y las veladoras. ¿por qué juega un papel tan importante la religión en tu obra? jdm: la religión es para mantener una actitud positiva y seguir adelante todos los días, para olvidarse de ciertas cosas que son muy sangrientas o para la gente que pierde a su familia. es más para echarle ganas a la vida y darle para enfrente. amo: en tus grabados asunción del emigrante y en un peso para el almuerzo vemos cómo un cactus y también frijoles sustituyen la imagen de la virgen de guadalupe. aunque la referencia a méxico y a su gente es obvia, ¿no crees que esto puede ser ofensivo para una audiencia religiosa? jdm: sí, yo crecí en una casa muy religiosa. cuando empecé a estudiar comencé a ser más liberal, a aceptar a otras culturas y a cuestionar ¿de dónde vengo?, ¿qué es esto?, ¿por qué dicen tal cosa? la religión tiene muchas cosas positivas, pero también tiene otras negativas. la religión mantiene la mente positiva, pero si se considera en extremo en vez de ser una salvación puede ser un veneno y en ocasiones hay que adoptar otras ideas para poder http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 5 5 a d r i a n a m i r a m on t e s o l i v a s , j u a n d e d i o s m o r a , y d e b o r a h ca p l ow contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 6, no 1 “boundless” (2017) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2017.221 sobresalir. mi objetivo no es ofender, muchas veces yo pongo un frijol para hacer referencia a la situación política, pero yo sé que sí voy a alborotar algo. amo: juan, ¿no crees que el uso de esta planta, el cactus, y esta comida, el frijol, como íconos continúe el uso de estereotipos sobre méxico? jdm: sí, eso no te lo puedo negar y sí la estoy regando, pero muchas veces como artista tienes que liberarte, ser expresivo sobre cómo se siente uno por dentro. en mi familia hacemos burlas intensas a ciertas cosas, tenemos mucho humor, y eso me ayudó a reflejar ese estado de ánimo en mis obras de arte. también lo hago para representar cómo los gringos nos miran a nosotros, como frijoleros, como nopales. lo hago para describir cómo otro sector demográfico nos percibe. amo: el recientemente elegido presidente de los estados unidos, donald trump, ha dado a conocer varias declaraciones provocadoras en contra de méxico y su gente. ¿cómo piensas que los mexicanos deberían interpretar o responder a su discurso, y cómo piensas que un país de inmigrantes, como lo es estados unidos, debería reaccionar a tal declamación? jdm: lo que debemos hacer es echarle ganas en estos cuatro años. no debemos reaccionar de una forma loca, sino como todos los activistas, hacerlo todo con paz, nada de violencia. en este país todavía existe la discriminación y el odio, es como una forma de despertarnos y de estar conscientes de la situación difícil en la que nos encontramos. hablamos de la “tierra prometida”, pero también está duro, acá vienes a ganar dólares, pero también hay discriminación. amo: juan, ¿hay alguna forma de detener la inmigración hacia estados unidos o es el llamado “efecto embudo” siempre presente? ¿es posible con un muro interrumpir la inmigración? ¿qué mensaje quieres dar a académicos y a legisladores con tu obra? jdm: no, no hay forma, eso no se impide, la manera de cruzar de un lado para el otro sólo cambia, pero no para, la gente va a seguir cruzando. la tecnología lo hace más complicado, pero hay formas de poder burlarse de esa tecnología y por tal razón pasa mucha gente. a estados unidos lo que le gusta es gastar dinero. es como los romanos, ellos lo que hacían es que tenían obras de teatro, tenían los gladiadores matando gente para tener a su imperio entretenido, pero también para que le tuvieran fidelidad al imperio. entonces aquí en estados unidos es similar. a nosotros que estamos aquí nos ofrecen muchísimas cosas para estar tranquilos, el muro es para tener calmados a los ciudadanos. pero nosotros somos resistentes. yo de manera cómica digo que los inmigrantes somos como los insectos nocturnos, sabemos cómo entrar y salir de un lugar a otro en busca de mejores oportunidades. amo: en tu opinión, ¿cuál es o debería ser el papel del gobierno mexicano en referencia a la inmigración y la frontera méxico-estados unidos? jdm: la forma más cliché es que se provea con más trabajos, formas de empleo, ¿verdad? que a todos los rancheros les paguen mejor por sus cosechas, que les den más oportunidades, como aquí en estados unidos que a todos los que cosechan les dan mejor http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 5 6 é x od o a l a “ t i e r r a p r om e t i d a ” contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 6, no 1 “boundless” (2017) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2017.221 interés para poder pagar una máquina, químicos para echarle a las plantas y mejores impuestos. en méxico a lo mejor sí hay eso, pero no se puede, como quiera no se puede, yo digo que deberían distribuir más dinero para que puedan sobresalir y sobrevivir cada día. amo: tu obra es de una naturaleza paradójica. usualmente ofrece un mensaje firme con una crítica severa de la política contemporánea y otros eventos, pero también tiene un sentido del humor. aportas con detalles inesperados que cambian el tono serio de la obra hacia uno que provoca risa o hasta entretiene. de hecho, en la entrevista con sabrina alfaro en el 2013 comentaste, “no me gusta ser político porque creo que hay muchos artistas, yo soy chistoso e intento ser chistoso”. 6 sin embargo, en rapto del emigrante, atacado por los pescados, asunción del emigrante y un peso para el almuerzo el humor parece haber desaparecido de la obra. ¿qué le ha pasado a tu sentido del humor en estos grabados y por qué es el tono de la obra tan serio? jdm: estas tres piezas son del 2009-2010 pero ya cambió mucho mi trabajo. yo a veces no me quiero meter mucho en la política, sin embargo, todos estamos involucrados en ella. estemos conscientes de eso o no, vivimos con eso, es parte de nuestras vidas. esto se refleja en mi trabajo, sea chistoso o no. mi obra a veces ataca a cierto sistema o trata de educar a la comunidad de ciertos problemas que están pasando y que nosotros muchas veces no les hacemos caso, nosotros actuamos con negligencia. cuando me enfoco en la política lo hago para reflejar lo que es mi cultura y mi comunidad, lo que son los atropellos, la discriminación y hasta la pobreza que en ocasiones ignoramos. amo: generalmente en tus grabados como en la dust demonia (2011) y mi nave can fly! (2011) se puede ver el bilingüismo o el uso de cambio de código del inglés al español que es característico del arte chicano. ¿por qué usas spanglish o nada más español, por ejemplo, en rapto del emigrante o atacado por los pescados? jdm: la audiencia es muy importante y si quieres ser más político tienes que ser más directo a la audiencia para que lo pueda entender. en atacado por los pescados hay unos listones y uno dice, “se me va la vida” y el otro dice “el agua bendita de todos los días”. yo lo estoy haciendo como forma de un mensaje escondido. es chistoso cuando empiezo a tirar palabras en inglés aquí y allá, empiezo a jugar. me gusta mucho. amo: ¿qué tan importante es para los inmigrantes el que mantengan su idioma, religión e identidad cultural como tradiciones, celebraciones, comida, música, vestido, literatura? 6 entrevista llevada a cabo por sabrina alfaro el 2 de octubre de 2013 y presentada en la universidad de texas de san antonio el 10 de octubre de 2013. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 5 7 a d r i a n a m i r a m on t e s o l i v a s , j u a n d e d i o s m o r a , y d e b o r a h ca p l ow contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 6, no 1 “boundless” (2017) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2017.221 jdm: es importante, es lo que nos da la forma de pensar, la manera de sobrevivir y la forma de actuar. todo eso nos ayuda psicológicamente a echarle muchas más ganas, eso me ayudó bastante a formar parte de lo que soy, a reflejarme de una forma diferente. nuestra cultura es bellísima. es muy importante mantener nuestras tradiciones para pasárselas a nuestros niños, el idioma. amo: juan, ¿en qué te encuentras trabajando actualmente? ¿estas enfatizando otros temas? jdm: las nuevas piezas se llaman soy lo que soy. es una serie de la gente trabajadora, de cómo trabajan duro en cualquier labor por simple o humilde que sea. los estoy tratando de poner en una forma heroica, simbólica, como reyes. por ejemplo, hay un barrendero que está sentado bien orgulloso. todos tienen un pedestal. hay otro que se llama la hormiga guerrerita, lo hice cuando íbamos con los niños a los refugios, es un niño y está en una montaña. en vez de un penacho tiene una hormiga, porque las hormigas son bien trabajadoras y siempre siguen un camino. tiene un ángel y un escudo con un calendario maya y también hay una máscara de un luchador porque en méxico decimos “échale ganas” o “sigue luchando.” me gusta mucho decirle a la gente que mi arte es para motivar. quiero decirle a toda la raza que ¡sí se puede! echándole ganas se puede. cualquier carrera que quieran hacer, artista, comunicador de radio, cualquier cosa que sea buena en este mundo se puede. y que las nuevas generaciones no se olviden de su cultura porque nosotros somos gente trabajadora, no somos de la cultura floja como muchas personas dicen. hay que seguir motivando a las nuevas generaciones, borrar viejos estereotipos y echarle ganas. new articles in this journal are licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 united states license. this journal is operated by the university library system of the university of pittsburgh as part of its d-scribe digital publishing program, and is co-sponsored by the university of pittsburgh press. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/ http://www.pitt.edu/ http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/ http://www.upress.pitt.edu/upressindex.aspx http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ éxodo a la “tierra prometida” del demonio y otros monstruos en la obra de juan de dios mora introducción éxodo a la “tierra prometida” del demonio y otros monstruos en la obra de juan de dios mora contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture vol 7, no 1 (2018) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2018.263 http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu unsettled exhibiting the greater west lily brewer exhibition review exhibition schedule: the nevada museum of art, reno, nevada, august 26, 2017—january 21, 2018; anchorage museum, anchorage, alaska, april 6, 2018—september 9, 2018; palm springs art museum, palm springs, california, october 27, 2018—february 18, 2019 about the author lily brewer is a phd student at the university of pittsburgh, where she studies modern and contemporary landscape and aerial photography. based in chicago and pittsburgh, she is the editor-in-chief of the forthcoming journal sedimenta, which investigates environmentalism in the arts and humanities. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 7, no 1 (2018) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2018.263 the nevada museum of art’s exhibition unsettled provides us with a new grammar called the greater west, which invites artists to take back the frontier narrative from colonizing currents.in its companion triennial conference, contemporary art curators william l. fox and joanne northrup define the greater west as a super-region surrounding the pacific basin, “from alaska to patagonia to papua new guinea to australia.” in turn, the exhibition visualizes artistic practices within larger global, planetary conditions, making (re)appropriation the new anti-colonial western motif. figure 1 lily brewer, gallery view of (l–r): sonia falcone field of color (2013), guillermo bert mapuche portal #1 (2014), andrea zittel prototype for billboard at a-z west: big rock on hill behind house (2011), and ed ruscha lost, empires living tribes (1984), nevada museum of art, 2018. all rights reserved. in unsettled, alaska native, first nations, latinx, and black artists represent this consequential super-region from a dynamic and seismic vantage that ties their practices to the earth’s surface and its geopolitical tensions. the gallery space is a microcosm for these tensions, conceptually expanded. chocolate room (1970–2004), by u.s. artist ed ruscha, comprises over three hundred panels of chocolate silkscreen and occupies an entire room, defamiliarizing the hershey brand, which has a contentious and genocidal history in central america. on a wall outside the galleries, which way does the arrow point (2017), by colombian multimedia artist minerva cuevas, observes and flips the visual rhetoric of advertising through parody. the cultural icon smokey the bear, who relayed the dangers of forest fires through public service announcements in the 1990s, breaks an arrow in half whose end is the chevron petroleum logo. the two icons parody the relationship between petrolunsettled exhibiting the greater west lily brewer http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 1 1 5 l i l y b r e w e r contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 7, no 1 (2018) | issn 2153-5194 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2018.263 imperialism in the nevadan forest systems and its impact on neighboring first nations communities. bolivian installation artist sonia falcone’s field of color (2013) consists of eightyeight clay bowls filled with spices, centering the hostile history of the spice trade within the space. this constellation of works within unsettled is the sharpest in terms of considering material histories. unsettled’s contemporary artists revise the sublime yet threatening frontier narratives perpetuated, in part, by the exhibition’s twentieth-century artists, such as u.s. southwest painters georgia o’keefe in road past the view (1964) and gerard curtis delano in navajo camp (ca. 1930s). “the theme ‘shifting ground’ tells the story of the epic collisions of the tectonic boundaries that create the physical landscapes of the greater west,” writes northrup. the twentieth century’s hackneyed narrative of idyllic yet treacherous terra nullius—no one’s land—contributed to representations of a perfidious mother nature. drawing their own histories out from the horizon-heavy landscape painting traditions from the mid-twentieth century, these artists take up the aesthetic tools of colonization, through technology, design, and constructions of race and gender. nuclear anxiety and themes of destruction resonate through the exhibition and join with the unsettled motif. patrick nagatani imagines altered landscapes in uranium tailings, anaconda minerals corporation, laguna pueblo reservation, new mexico (1990). his collages mark imagined geographies in the arid and semi-arid southwestern region, formerly (but in the not-too-distant past) subject to violent nuclear testing. in particular, his photographs of world war ii–era japanese internment camps mark largely forgotten sites of humanitarian duress in his collages. in another geographical (re)marking, nicholas galanin photographs actual signposts. your inane perspective: haa aaní haa kusteeyíx sitee (our land is our life) (2015) is a highway sign reading “no name creek” with the addendum “watlachéix’k’i héen” underneath, which reclaims the whitewashed creek bed and surrounding land. da-ka-xeen mehnor reclaims formerly prescribed identities in da-ka-xeen, the thlinget artist 2005, from the series reinterpretation (2005–07). he takes back a critical tool of colonial science—the ethnographic photograph—and manipulates it with his own image mirrored against a nineteenth-century member of his thlinget tribe. these photographers’ works refuse white western appropriation and reclaim lost titles. their presence scaffolds other attempts to decolonize museum spaces. allison warden, whose stage name is aku matu, uses twitter as a platform for poetry, reappropriating language through this digital, social medium. her 140-character poems interject intermittently through the exhibition, most often higher than eye level. her poetic tweets uphold iñupiaq domains of experience within the museum space. addressing issues of gender, performance photographs by guatemalan artist regina josé galindo show the artist buried up to her neck in pine timber sawdust, the shaved remnants of an exploited natural resource in her home country. this abuse brings to bear human rights violations as well as the imperial, industrial infrastructures that incite violence toward indigenous mayans, especially women. her works resonates with ana mendieta’s silueta series, shown as well, whose voids left in the ground, dusted with red powder, also tempt readings of environmental and corporeal violence. ana teresa fernández’s performance of erasing the border (borrando la frontera) (2012) depicts her painting the border wall between tijuana, mexico, and san diego, california. using martha stewart’s brand of sky blue paint, fernández blurs the boundary among the nations, the border wall, and the sky. new york artist frohawk two feathers’s 2012 map of the pyramid lake region extends his mapped mythologies through the fictional kingdoms of lemuria. as in other works, he imagines long, speculative regional histories wherein seventeenthand eighteenth-century france and england combine to form a colonial superpower. to this end, he arrogates early modern cartographic methods, sometimes replete with mythological imagery. by contending with and reperforming histories of colonialism, the artists in unsettled recover lost landscapes, and their works serve a metonymic function that reclaims settler http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 1 1 6 un s e t t l e d contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 7, no 1 (2018) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2018.263 taxonomies, land use, and modes of expression. the west is ordinarily resonated powerfully with western imperial ideology, an ideology that traversed the atlantic with one mission: to colonize, modernize, and capitalize on seized land. if unsettled successfully redefines the boundaries and borders of the greater west, then the works offered from this super-region change the rules of western imperialism’s larger disputes on its own stolen soil. new articles in this journal are licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 united states license. this journal is operated by the university library system of the university of pittsburgh as part of its d-scribe digital publishing program, and is co-sponsored by the university of pittsburgh press. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/ http://www.pitt.edu/ http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/ http://www.upress.pitt.edu/upressindex.aspx http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ unsettled exhibiting the greater west unsettled exhibiting the greater west contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture vol 5, no 1 “agency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2016.149 http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu photographs of the “dust of the highway” georgiana goddard king’s way of saint james annemarie iker abstract this article explores the use of photography in american art historian georgiana goddard king’s the way of saint james (1920). king’s genre-defying book on the camino de santiago pilgrimage intertwines art historical insights with literary commentary, historical examinations, geographical observations, and travelogue. but despite king’s rich, groundbreaking scholarship on medieval spain in the way of saint james and other monographs, her legacy has been overshadowed by subsequent art historians, chief among them her peer arthur kingsley porter. here, it is suggested that king’s emphasis in the way of saint james on personal experiences of pilgrimage—both historical and contemporary — diminished the value of her work in the eyes of her colleagues, particularly when compared with porter’s supposedly objective studies. these differences in approach to the c amino de santiago, visually manifest in king’s and porter’s respective deployment of photographic evidence, have implications for medieval, historiographic, and feminist art historical inquiries. about the author annemarie iker is a doctoral student in the department of art and archeology at pr inceton university. she received her ma in art history from williams college. her research focuses on artistic and scholarly connections between southern europe, northern europe, and the americas in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and she has a special interest in the historiography of spanish medieval art. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.149 following the mysterious disappearance of art historian arthur kingsley porter from the coast of donegal, ireland in 1933, his former doctoral student kenneth conant mourned the loss of “one of the truly great medievalists of our time.”1 conant, by then a professor of architecture at harvard university, credited porter (b. stamford, ct, 1883; d. inishbofin, ireland 1933) with challenging the regional classifications governing the study of early medieval art and architecture. through monographs like romanesque sculpture of the pilgrimage roads (1923) and spanish romanesque sculpture (1928), porter expounded a model of stylistic development and transmission facilitated by the pilgrimage to santiago de compostela, in the spanish province of galicia. “of enduring value,” conant noted, “was his new emphasis on the importance of spain.”2 while porter is remembered today as an—if not the—american leader in the study of spanish medieval art and architecture, the iberian peninsula was hardly “new” to georgiana goddard king (b, west columbia, wv, 1871; d. los angeles, ca, 1939), founding chair of the department of art history at bryn mawr college (fig. 1).3 a path-breaking art histor ian, king taught the first graduate courses on spanish art in the united states and produced scholarship of noted breadth, depth, and ingenuity. king’s intellectual commitment to the iberian peninsula long predates the 1923 publication of porter’s romanesque sculpture of the pilgrimage roads. by 1923, king had already released an annotated edition of george edmund street’s gothic architecture in spain (1914); a scholarly re-issue of street’s writing, george edmund street, unpublished notes and republished papers (1916); a brief account of the military orders in spain (1921); and a three-volume text on the camino de santiago, the way of saint james (1920).4 in addition to these book-length studies, king, also prior to 1923, had published numerous articles on spanish castles, cloisters, and churches in the most distinguished 1 kenneth conant, “arthur kingsley porter,” speculum 9 (1934): 95. 2 ibid. 3 scholars began to revisit king’s legacy at the turn of the twenty-first century. see madeline h. caviness, “seeking modernity through the romanesque: g.g. king and e.h. lowber behind a camera in spain c. 1910-25,” journal of art historiography 11 (2014): 1-30; alba del pozo garcía, “una pionera de hispanismo: georgiana goddard king (1871-1939),” informes usa 14 (2013); ana hernández, “georgiana goddard king (1871-1939), pionera de la historia del arte medieval en galicia,” in as mulleres na historia de galicia. actas do i encontro interdisciplinar de historia de xénero , ed. miguel garcía-fernández, silvia cernadas martínez, aurora ballesteros (santiago de compostela: andavira, 2012), compact disc; hernández, “saint mary of melón por georgiana goddard king,” quintana 7 (2008): 203-207; janice mann, “‘hark the herald angels sing’: here’s to georgiana goddard king (1871-1939)” in women medievalists and the academy, ed. jane chance (madison, wi: university of wisconsin press, 2005), 111-126; mann, “georgiana goddard king and a. kingsley porter discover the art of medieval spain,” in spain in america, ed. richard l. kagan (champaign, il: university of illinois press, 2002), 171-192; and susanna terrell saunders, “georgiana goddard king (1871-1939): educator and pioneer in medieval spanish art” in women as interpreters of the visual arts, 1820-1979, ed. claire richter sherman and adele m. holcomb (westport, ct: greenwood press, 1981), 209-238. 4 note that king appears to have largely completed the way of saint james in 1917 when she submitted the manuscript to her editors. she further edited the manuscript in 1919 while in spain. see caviness, “seeking modernity through the romanesque,” 18. photographs of the “dust of the highway” georgiana goddard king’s way of saint james annemarie iker http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 2 9 a n n e m a r ie i k e r c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.149 academic journals in the united states.5 as her bryn mawr colleague harold wethey would observe in king’s obituary, american art historical scholarship on spain f lourished under porter and his followers. but if porter came to overshadow king in her lifetime, and eventually, to eclipse her entirely, it was not always so: “the american pioneer in this r ich field was a woman,” wrote wethey, “professor georgiana goddard king.”6 figure 1 unidentified photographer, professor georgiana goddard king at bryn mawr college, c . 1910. spec ial collections, bryn mawr c ollege library, bryn mawr, pa. c ourtesy special collections, bryn mawr c ollege library. king’s obscurity relative to porter, ironically, may be attributed to her best-known book, the way of saint james. across three illustrated volumes, king explores the monuments and traditions of the camino de santiago. early reviewers noted that the way of saint james interlaces art history with literature, history, archeology, folklore, geography, and travelogue, forming king’s “own personal genre.”7 the resulting weave is thick , with each strand maintaining its apartness. the close formal analysis of monasteries, churches, and cathedrals along the camino de santiago lies beside the recounting of long-ago battles, recitation of archaic poems, description of landscapes, and even reports of the author’s present-day dealings with her fellow pilgrims. indeed, king acknowledges in the introduction 5 among early articles published by king are: “three unknown churches in spain,” american journal of archaeology 22 (1918): 154-165; “spanish cloisters,” journal of the american institute of architects 7 (1919): 481-8; “castles in spain,” journal of the american institute of architects 10 (1921): 377-382; and “some churches in galicia,” art studies 1 (1923): 55-64. in 1923—the same year as the publication of porter’s romanesque sculpture of the pilgrimage roads—she published sardinian painting (new york: longmans, green and co.); the following year, the long-researched pre-romanesque churches of spain (new york: longmans, green and co.); and in 1927, mudéjar. in 1941, her heart of spain, a collection of essays edited by agnes mongan, was published posthumously. 6 harold e. wethey, “an american pioneer in hispanic studies: georgiana goddard king,” parnassus 11 (1939): 33. 7 ibid. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 3 0 p h o to g r a p hs o f th e “d u s t o f th e h i g h w a y ” c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.149 to the way of saint james that the aim of her project shifted considerably from start to finish: the intention, as the reader will see, has grown long since from a mere pedantic exercise in architecture, to a very pilgrimage, to following ardently along the ancient way where all the centuries have gone.8 over the course of the way of saint james, king forgoes “mere pedantic exercise[s] in architecture” for evocation, and impartiality for ardor.9 most significantly, she grants the same attentiveness to sensory apprehension and shifting internal states as she does to art and architecture. choir screens, vaults, and tympana yield often to the chronicling o f experience—to, as king intended, the “very pilgrimage” itself. king, in the way of saint james, and porter, in romanesque sculpture of the pilgrimage roads, trace the same pilgrimage road. nonetheless, their scholarship diverges sharply in focus, perspective, and tone. porter himself broached this divergence in a review of his student conant’s early architectural history of the cathedral of santiago de compostela (1926). surveying the existing literature on the cathedral, porter writes, miss king [in the way of saint james], while bringing much new light had her hands far too full with the vast subject of the pilgrimage roads to be able to undertake the thousands of patient measurements, the conscientious checking up of results, the stone-for-stone study of the building required for an architectural monograph.10 implicitly, porter aligns himself with the “patient” and “conscientious” “stone -for-stone study” practiced by his student, conant—the very approach labeled “mere pedant[ry]” by king.11 the self-consciously differing objectives and methods of the art historian as envisioned by king and porter, then, are readily apparent in their respective writing. but as distinctive as each medievalist’s prose, i suggest, is his or her mobilization of visual evidence. though king, like porter, engaged deeply with images and objects, her own production of images and objects—namely, photographs and illustrated scholarly publications—has received less attention.12 here, this topic is addressed through photographs featured by king in the way of saint james. i propose that these photographs deserve 8 georgiana goddard king, the way of saint james, 3 vols. (new york: g.p. putnam’s sons, 1920), 1:23. 9 ibid. 10 arthur kingsley porter, “santiago again,” art in america and elsewhere (february 1927): 5-6. 11 conant wrote a fond review of king’s heart of spain (1941), a book published two years after her death. in the review, he praises king’s “flashing mind, her keen artistic judgment, and her warm appreciative intelligence” and calls her “one of the choicest critics among american critics, historians, and teachers of medieval art.” see conant, “heart of spain [review],” the art bulletin 24 (1942): 110. 12 there are important exceptions, however. on the topic of king’s usage of photography, see caviness, “seeking modernity through the romanesque.” for more on porter’s usage of photography—better documented than king’s, like his career at large—see christopher r. lakey, “contingencies of display: benjamin, photography, and imagining the medieval past,” postmedieval: a journal of medieval cultural studies 7 (2016): 86-87; kathryn brush, “imag(in)ing medieval stones: arthur kingsley porter, photography, and the study of romanesque sculpture after world war i” (paper presented at “photo archives and the photographic memory of art history,” part iii, institute of fine arts, new york university, new york city, march 25-6, 2011); friedrich kestel, “the arthur kingsley porter collection of photography and the european preservation of monuments,” visual resources 9 (1994): 361-381; and james ackerman, “the visual arts collections: manifold resources,” in the invention of photography and its impact on learning: photographs from harvard university and radcliffe college and from the collection of harrison d. horblit, ed. louise todd ambler and melissa banta (cambridge, ma: harvard university library, 1989), 62-71. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 3 1 a n n e m a r ie i k e r c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.149 careful consideration as interpretive tools working in tandem with the text around them. moreover, i believe that they are contrasted productively with photographs featured by porter in romanesque sculpture of the pilgrimage roads. for it is through examination of king and porter’s treatment of the same subject, the camino de santiago, that differences in their scholarship emerge most starkly. these differences can be observed at once v isually and textually: while the photographs included by porter in romanesque sculpture of the pilgrimage roads demonstrate his commitment to what he termed “stone-for-stone study,” those included by king in the way of saint james, by contrast, reveal her stated intention to approximate, in book form, a “very pilgrimage.” to be sure, king and porter alike were precocious in their early adoption of photography. both learned to photograph to aid their research, and both included reproductions of photographs by themselves, family, friends, and commercial photographers in their various publications. nonetheless, photographs included in their monographs on the camino de santiago betray fundamentally dissimilar conceptions of the practice of art history —and, i argue, shed light on the reasons for porter’s enduring luster and king’s eventual anonymity. first, though, it merits emphasis that i discuss neither king nor porter as a photographer. rather, i focus on king’s strategic use of photographic illustrations in the way of saint james, and arrive at new insights by comparing her approach toward il lustrations with that of porter in romanesque sculpture of the pilgrimage roads. in part, my motives are practical: while porter attributes photographs to himself, to his wife, and to commercial photographers, king, unfortunately, does not specify the source of her photographs and photogravures.13 recent scholarship by madeline caviness indicates that many were purchased from commercial photographers.14 given the range of photographic authorship in porter’s volumes and the remaining uncertainty regarding attribution in king’s, i do not stress the identity of those behind the camera. instead, i foreground the rhetorical deployment of photographs as art historical evidence by king—evidence in support of a history of art, perhaps, less familiar to us today than that presented by porter. santiago de compostela: two views of the puerta de las platerías one of the few sites along the camino de santiago documented visual ly in both king’s way of saint james and porter’s romanesque sculpture of the pilgrimage roads is its culmination, the cathedral of santiago de compostela.15 santiago emerged as a pilgr image destination for european christians in the ninth century, nearly a thousand years after the 13 in romanesque sculpture of the pilgrimage roads, porter includes photographs attributed to himself (“a.k.p.”), to his wife (“l.w.p.”), and to professional photographers whose images he purchased. featured in this paper are photographs porter attributes to the barcelona-based photographer roselló mas and the madrid-based photographer j. roig. see porter, romanesque sculpture of the pilgrimage roads (boston: marshall jones company, 1923), 1:357. 14 as caviness writes in “seeking modernity through the romanesque,” both king and her partner and travel companion, edith lowber, were active, accomplished photographers. even so, most of the photographs featured in the way of saint james appear to have been purchased from commercial photographers or engraved after photographs already published, indicates caviness (19). to further complicate matters, few of the many photographic negatives or prints deposited by king and lowber at bryn mawr college and at the hispanic society of america can be decisively attributed to either woman. caviness, quoting patrick lenaghan, curator of photography at the hispanic society, suggests that these negatives and prints, some of which went on to appear in king’s books, all be labeled “photos from the king-lowber expeditions.” see caviness, “seeking modernity through the romanesque,” 6. 15 for many historical and contemporary pilgrims, the camino de santiago has concluded at the cathedral of santiago de compostela. other pilgrims, however, have continued beyond the cathedral to finisterre, a peninsula on the west coast of spain whose name comes from the latin finis terrae, “end of the earth.” http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 3 2 p h o to g r a p hs o f th e “d u s t o f th e h i g h w a y ” c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.149 remains of saint james—an early apostle of christ, who purportedly preached the gospel in spain, and was martyred in jerusalem—were said to have appeared miraculously off the coast of galicia.16 by 896 a modest church containing saint james’ tomb began to attract small numbers of pilgrims.17 so began the practice of journeying overland or by sea to the remote northwestern corner of spain, a practice king calls “hugeous, incredible.”18 even porter, a more restrained writer, professes that the “actuality of the pilgrimage, like a cosmic phenomenon, overwhelms with the sense of its force, its inevitability.”19 as more recent scholarship has stressed, though, there was nothing “inevitable” about santiago’s rise to the ranks of longstanding christian pilgrimage destinations like jerusalem and rome. the construction of the present cathedral of santiago de compostela, begun in 1078 under the lea dership of alfonso vi, king of castilla, león, and galicia, and the local bishop, diego peláez, serves as a particularly dramatic example of the promotion of pilgrimage by interested parties.20 for scholars of early medieval art and architecture, the cathedral’s southern entrance, the puerta de las platerías (silversmiths’ portal), holds particular interest as it appears to be the structure’s only remaining romanesque façade.21 porter, significantly, includes eighteen 16 for an account of the myth and life of saint james in relation to the cathedral of santiago de compostela, see kenneth conant, the early architectural history of the cathedral of santiago de compostela (cambridge: harvard university press, 1926), 4. for a contemporary perspective on the cathedral, its origins, and its traditions, see josé-luis senra, en el principio: génesis de la catedral románica de santiago de compostela. contexto, construcción y programa iconográfico (santiago de compostela: teófilo edicións, 2014). 17 according to conant, a new church built around saint james’ tomb was begun under the leadership of king alfonso iii (king of asturias, león, and galicia) and bishop sisnando menéndez in 879, completed in 896, and dedicated in 899 (conant, cathedral of santiago de compostela, 6). more recent scholarship has emphasized the role of eleventh-century bishop diego peláez in nurturing the cult of saint james and conceiving the present cathedral of santiago de compostela. see for instance senra, génesis de la catedral románica de santiago de compostela. 18 king, the way of saint james, 1:25. 19 porter, romanesque sculpture, 1:171. 20 the construction of the cathedral of santiago de compostela had firmly established religious, political, and financial motivations. karen rose mathews in “reading romanesque sculpture: the iconography of the south portal sculpture at santiago de compostela” (gesta 39 [2000]: 3-12) addresses the role of local archbishop diego gelmírez in commissioning the puerta de las platerías and shaping its vision of ecclesiastical might. mathews situates the construction of this south portal in a moment of tension between gelmírez, and townspeople and lay leaders. likewise, barbara abou-el-haj explores the cathedral of santiago de compostela as an expression of gelmírez’s political ambitions in “santiago de compostela in the time of diego gelmírez,” gesta 36 (1997): 165-179. additionally, christabel watson re-dates significant portions of the western facade and interior—long attributed to a single “master mateo”—to the tenure of gelmírez, expanding his already considerable importance to the early development of the pilgrimage to santiago. see watson, “a reassessment of the western parts of the romanesque cathedral of santiago de compostela,” journal of the society of architectural historians 59 (2000): 505-521. 21 m.f. hearn writes, “all that remains of three great façade ensembles [at the cathedral of santiago de compostela] is to be found on the south transept façade, known as puerta de las platerías” (142). he suggests that the portal has undergone at least six major renovations since the twelfth century, leaving the portal program a “meaningless jumble.” m.f. hearn, romanesque sculpture: the revival of monumental stone sculpture in the eleventh and twelfth centuries (oxford: phaidon press, 1981), 145. porter also considered the portal a puzzle: “no order is traceable in the composition as a whole. little statues, big statues, pieces of statues are walled in helter-skelter” (212). he proposed that two major renovations have occurred. see porter, romanesque sculpture, 212. more recently, claudia rückert has argued that one discrete sculptural element on the puerta de las platerías, the so-called “woman with the skull,” sheds light on the architectural transformations undergone by this southern portal. according to rückert, the sculpture originally appeared on the romanesque northern portal, destroyed in the eighteenth century, and was subsequently integrated into the southern portal. this move, she writes, was one of many reconstructions during the medieval, early modern, and modern periods, leading to the portal’s “disturbed appearance.” rückert, “a reconsideration of the woman with the skull on the puerta de las platerías of santiago de compostela cathedral,” gesta 51 (2012): 130. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 3 3 a n n e m a r ie i k e r c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.149 photographs of the puerta de las platerías alone in romanesque sculpture of the pilgr image roads. the first plate, captioned puerta de las platerías, relief in western buttress. a ferocious lion, depicts its subject in great detail (fig. 2). with its head swive led toward the viewer, a sculpted lion strides forward intently along its stone backdrop and casts a menacing glance to the right. the lion’s muscled haunches and blocky head project from the façade with force, while the pocked granite makes its hollowed eyes seem wild and its hide mangy. figure 2 j. roig, puerta de las platerías , relief in wes tern buttress . a ferocious lion, from a rthur kings ley p orter, romanesque sculpture of the pilgrimage roads , vol. 6 , castile, as turias , galicia (bos ton: marshall jones c ompany, 1923), plate 674 (photo: author). but in relation to the decorated portion of the façade at large, this beast is marginal, even diminutive. the lion slinks atop a stringcourse to the left of the portal, peripheral to the elaborate figurative sculpture extending across the tympana, spandrel, and jambs (fig. 3). indeed, the photograph itself supplies much of the menace. the tight focus and oblique angle used by the photographer, for example, amplify the lion’s size and accentuate its heft.22 the creature in a ferocious lion appears ready to pounce out of its frame: its toenails nearly scrape the photograph’s lower border, and its back leg, caught mid-stride, flexes with potential. seen as one component of the larger portal program, however, the lion is less a fearsome predator and more a ready guard. figure 3 c athedral of santiago de c ompostela, la c oruña, spain, begun c . 1075, view of the puerta de las p laterías (photo: josé luis filpo c abana, wikimedia c ommons). 22 porter attributes a ferocious lion to “j. roig,” likely juan roig, a commercial photographer based in madrid. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 3 4 p h o to g r a p hs o f th e “d u s t o f th e h i g h w a y ” c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.149 king, in the way of saint james, also includes a photograph of the famed puerta de las platerías. in her image, titled simply puerta de las platerías, porter’s “ferocious lion” becomes an inconspicuous housecat (fig. 4). far from magnifying a single sculpture, puerta de las platerías includes the entirety of the cathedral’s southern transept. the photographer captures the full vertical extent of the façade, from the steps leading to the porta ls, to the first level’s portals and spandrel, to the second level’s paired windows, and finally to the roofline’s balustrade.23 the photograph also features a section of the cloister, to the le ft of the staircase, and the clock tower, to the portal’s right. thus while a ferocious lion portrays a self-contained entity removed from its portal context, puerta de las platerías emphasizes the portal’s embeddedness in its broader architectural site. figure 4 unidentified photographer, puerta de las platerías , from georgiana goddard king, the way of saint james , vol. 3 (new york: g.p . p utnam’s sons, 1920), page 145 (photo: author). in addition to the difference in scale, king’s puerta de las platerías bears traces of the circumstances behind its making. to the right of the photograph a broad shadow cast by the protruding clock tower sweeps across the cathedral, leaving recessed doorways and windows in varying degrees of darkness according to their depths and distances from the spire. the uneven lighting draws attention to other idiosyncrasies contained within the photograph, from its slightly slanted and plunging perspective to the sole open door in the le ft porta l. unlike porter’s ferocious lion, the photograph selected by king prompts consideration of the time and place of its own manufacture. already, king and porter’s distinct photographic approaches to the same monument, puerta de las platerías, indicate substantial differences in their art historical projects. a ferocious lion, like nearly all of porter’s 1,540 photographs in romanesque sculpture of the pilgrimage roads, isolates a single sculptural element from its broader programmatic setting (figs. 5 and 6). according to christopher lakey, porter’s tendency toward tightly cropped photographs allowed him to “reproduce aspects of medieval sculpture that would normally 23 as with other photographs and photogravures in the way of saint james, king does not credit the photographer of puerta de las platerías. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 3 5 a n n e m a r ie i k e r c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.149 escape the eyes of modern viewers.”24 this approach, he continues, resembles that of walter hege and richard hamann, german photographers contemporary with porter who also trained their cameras on medieval sculpture.25 like the photographs of hege and hamann, those included by porter in romanesque sculpture of the pilgrimage roads demonstrate a high degree of visual precision. porter, for instance, notes in his text that the ferocious lion possesses “peculiar paws” and a “sardonic expression,” and that its “tail [is] cur led around behind his leg.”26 all of these traits are visible in porter’s photograph but impossible to discern in king’s puerta de las platerías. figure 5 lucy p orter, puerta de las platerías . western portal, wes tern jamb. moses , from a rthur kingsley p orter, romanesque sculpture of the pilgrimage roads , vol. 6 , castile, as turias , galicia (bos ton: marshall jones company, 1923), plate 682 (photo: author). the remaining seventeen of porter’s eighteen photographs of the puerta de las platerías in romanesque sculpture of the pilgrimage roads move carefully across the cathedra l’s southern façade. frame by frame, the images proceed from west to east across the spandrel, then west to east across the tympana, and finally, west to east across the jambs and buttresses. after a ferocious lion, for instance, appears upper zone, western end. apostles, st. peter, expulsion, angels (fig. 7). as the title indicates, this photograph encompasses a small portion of the leftmost part of the spandrel. the largest-scale photograph, puerta de las platerías, upper portion. apostles, st. james, christ, god the father, apostles , depicts the central segment of the spandrel (fig. 8). more typically, however, porter’s photographs portray single figures, like a bishop, or small figural groupings, like apostles, angels, st. peter, an apostle (figs. 9 and 10). 24 lakey, “contingencies of display,” 87. 25 for a critical perspective on hege’s photography, see markus hundemer, “reiter & co.—der fotograf walter hege (18931955) und der bamberger dom,” in dem himmel entgegen: 1000 jahre kaiserdom bamberg exh. cat., ed. norbert jung and wolfgang f. reddig, 183-192. 26 porter, romanesque sculpture of the pilgrimage roads, 1:213. here, citing their formal similarities, porter argues that santiago de compostela’s two lions (one has disappeared, according to porter [1:213]) were copied some 50 years later by the sculptor who executed the lion of saint mark on the papal throne at the cathédral d’avignon. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 3 6 p h o to g r a p hs o f th e “d u s t o f th e h i g h w a y ” c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.149 figure 6 j. roig, puerta de las platerías . eas tern tympanum. adoration of the magi; doubting thomas, crowning with thorns , flagellation, betrayal, from a rthur kings ley porter, romanesque sculpture of the pilgrimage roads , vol. 6 , castile, as turias , galicia (bos ton: marshall jones company, 1923), plate 680 (photo: author). figure 7 lucy p orter, puerta de las platerías . upper zone, wes tern end. apos tles , st. peter, expuls ion, angels , from a rthur kings ley p orter, romanesque sculpture of the pilgrimage roads , vol. 6 , castile, as turias , galicia (bos ton: marshall jones c ompany, 1923), plate 675 (photo: author). http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 3 7 a n n e m a r ie i k e r c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.149 figure 8 roselló mas, puerta de las platerías , upper portion. apos tles , st. james , chris t, god the father, apos tles , from a rthur kings ley p orter, romanesque sculpture of the pilgrimage roads , vol. 6 , castile, as turias , galicia (bos ton: marshall jones c ompany, 1923), plate 676 (photo: author). here, the mutual dependence of image and text best demonstrates porter’s underlying intent in romanesque sculpture of the pilgrimage roads. he begins his chapter on the puerta de las platerías by noting formal similarities in specific sculptural elements between this portal in santiago de compostela and the western portal of saint-sernin, in toulouse. after dismissing the notion that a single “master” executed them both, he notes that “[i]t is, however, evident that one must have influenced the other. which is the original?”27 in the chapter that follows, porter places the cathedral of santiago de compostela in a spatial and temporal genealogy extending along the camino, a “chain which stretched from santiago to the remote ends of europe.”28 he relates the galician cathedral to developments in sculpture and architecture to be found from lombardy, in italy, to languedoc, in france. but the means by which he does this merit close attention. after posing the question of which cathedral came first, santiago de compostela or saint-sernin, porter’s next sentence proves equally revealing: “the documents do not determine the question” (emphasis added).29 what will, porter leaves unstated, is the meticulous formal analysis and comparison facilitated by his vast repository of visual evidence—that is, photographs. 27 porter, romanesque sculpture, 1:211. 28 ibid., 1:225. 29 ibid., 1:211. it should be noted, however, that porter in fact placed great importance on documentary evidence in dating (see for instance “the chronological problem,” romanesque sculpture, 1:3-17). he simply considered the existing documentary evidence inadequate in the case of the puerta de las platerías. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 3 8 p h o to g r a p hs o f th e “d u s t o f th e h i g h w a y ” c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.149 figure 9 roselló mas, puerta de las platería. eas tern portal, wes tern jamb. a bishop, from a rthur kings ley p orter, romanesque sculpture of the pilgrimage roads , vol. 6 , castile, as turias , galicia (bos ton: marshall jones c ompany, 1923), plate 683 (photo: author). porter, in the preface to his earlier book, medieval architecture (1909), writes that he has “preferred photographs whenever available as being more accurate and presenting architectural forms as they actually appear.”30 the ratio of plates to text in his scholarship reflects this belief in the “accuracy” of photographs. medieval architecture features 1,010 pages of text to 289 plates; in lombard architecture, the numbers climb to 1,838 pages of text to 954 plates; and in romanesque sculpture of the pilgrimage roads, photographs vastly outnumber prose, with 1,540 plates, and 412 pages of text.31 this latter book fills ten volumes, one of them devoted exclusively to prose and the other nine, remarkably, devoted exclusively to full-page photographs. while the prose and photographs in romanesque sculpture of the pilgrimage roads appear in distinct volumes, porter links them tightly by making frequent reference to plates. in his chapter on the puerta de las platerías, for instance, porter notes, “[t]he same extraordinary mixture of subjects exists to-day in the tympana (ill. 678-680)” directing readers to visual confirmation of the tympana’s heterogeneity across three different photographs.32 the plates themselves, moreover, feature long titles which systematica lly locate the sculptures by city, province, monument, and position within the monument. titles also provide iconographic explication, as in this example from the puerta de las p later ías: “santiago de compostela [city], (la coruña) [province], catedral [monument]. puerta de las platerías, western jamb [position within monument]. creation of adam; god reproves adam 30 porter, medieval architecture: its origins and development (new york: the baker and taylor company, 1909), viii. 31 for the source of these figures on the ratio between images and text in porter’s scholarship, see friedrich kestel, “the arthur kingsley porter collection of photography and the european preservation of monuments,” visual resources 9 (1994): 365. 32 porter, romanesque sculpture, 1:213. emphasis added. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 3 9 a n n e m a r ie i k e r c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.149 and eve; angels, prophets [iconography].”33 unsurprisingly, just the list of illustrations accompanying porter’s 1,540 photographs fills tens of pages. porter, to be sure, argues as much through images as words. figure 10 j. roig, apostles , angels , st. peter, an apos tle, from a rthur kings ley porter, romanesque sculpture of the pilgrimage roads , vol. 6 , castile, as turias , galicia (bos ton: marshall jones c ompany, 1923), plate 688 (photo: author). king, though, displays a different attitude toward photography. she writes in the forward to the way of saint james, “spain is a long way off, and pictures are not always explic it.” 34 certainly, king makes less use of photographs than porter: the way of saint james reverses his ratio of images to prose, with 37 plates and 1,687 pages of text. king, furthermore, embeds photographs into her three volumes. unlike porter, she intersperses her text at varying intervals with illustrations—some, full-page photogravures, and others, photographs that share the page with words. often, these illustrations bear no direct relation to the prose nearest to them, and searching for relevant passages requires considerable page-thumbing. perhaps most noticeably, while porter’s photographs focus exclusively on sculpture, k ing includes a much wider array of imagery. among the subjects of photographs included in the way of saint james are mountain ranges, plazas, bridges, markets, and farmers; many photographs, moreover, contain landscape, architectural, and human elements in a s ingle composition (figs. 11 and 12). figure 11 unidentified photographer, a little town in leon, from georgiana goddard king, the way of saint james , vol. 2 (new york: g.p . p utnam’s sons, 1920), page 235 (photo: author). 33 porter, romanesque sculpture, vol. 6, illustrations: castile, asturias, galicia, 7. 34 king, the way of saint james, 1:iii-iv. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 4 0 p h o to g r a p hs o f th e “d u s t o f th e h i g h w a y ” c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.149 figure 12 unidentified photographer, the thursday market in es tella, from georgiana goddard king, the way of saint james , vol. 1 (new york: g.p . p utnam’s sons, 1920) opposite page 326 (photo: author). king’s photographs in the way of saint james number fewer than porter’s in romanesque sculpture of the pilgrimage roads. they also appear less methodically ordered and titled. even so, they express her purpose as aptly. puerta de las platerías, for instance, permits factors external to the façade to intercede in its representation (fig. 4). contingencies like shadow, sunlight, and perspective each mark the cathedral’s southern entrance, generating speculation as to the photographer’s viewpoint, the time of day, the season, and even weather conditions. while this may be true of all photographs, a composition like ferocious lion purposefully minimizes circumstances beyond its subject. it is these very circumstances, by contrast, from which puerta de las platerías derives some of its most significant visual qualities. in the forward to the way of saint james, king rather strikingly states her interest in social, religious, historical, and circumstantial factors external to the works of art and architecture she encounters. there, she directs readers “who desire to secure facts while avoiding the context” to her index. “this makes it possible,” she continues, “for the learned to look up a church unmolested by the dust of the highway.”35 but king herself is as interested in the “dust of the highway” as the church. better put, she is as interested in the church and how “dust” shapes perception of the church—and, for that matter, perception of all else that is to be found along the highway. 35 king, the way of saint james, 1:v. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 4 1 a n n e m a r ie i k e r c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.149 king’s recounting of the twelfth-century pilgrimage to santiago de compostela by french monk aimery picaud exemplifies this interest.36 of particular relevance is a passage in which she interweaves speculation about the physical appearance of the cathedral of santiago de compostela in the twelfth century with her imaginative reconstruction of picaud’s experience there: for him, the crypt has become fabulous: there lies s. james in a marble ark, in a fair vaulted sepulcher, wonderful for size and workmanship; it is lighted heavenly-wise with carbuncles like the gems of the new jerusalem, and the air is kept sweet with divine odours; waxen tapers with heavenly radiance light it and angelic service cares for it.37 as in the photograph puerta de las platerías, this passage portrays the site at hand—the crypt below the ground level of the cathedral, with a tomb supposedly containing the remains of saint james38—through layers of sensory apprehension. king’s sensitivity to scale, texture, light, and even smell conjure the crypt as a space experienced rather than a purely architectural space. if puerta de las platerías evokes a clear, bright morning due to the shadows stretching west across the façade away from the eastern clock tower, this passage, helped by king’s liberal use of adjectives like “fabulous,” “fair,” “sweet,” and “divine,” casts the scene in a wondrous, deeply felt aura of religious marvel. king’s dedication to conveying experience in the way of saint james encompasses individuals with less historical import than picaud, presumed author of the famed camino de santiago guide-book, the codex calixtinus. once in santiago de compostela, for instance, king observes a shortage of religious faith. there, she perceives “gravity, but on the whole little devotion.”39 while her description of the cathedral’s crypt as beheld by p icaud bathes the scene in beatitude, lay worshipers in santiago receive rougher treatment. “at the shr ine you see men kneeling a little awe-struck,” she says, but, “at the gold, or at the age?” likewise, she writes, “[y]ou find a group of women saying litanies. but s. james means nothing to them, he is only the means of making magic.”40 this frank ascription of transactional motives to worship—and significantly, the appeal of material opulence— indicates the range of people and the breadth of experience that king considers worthy of study. from pious medieval monks to calculating contemporaries, she extends her thought to both the lofty ideals and complex realities of faith. two additional images of santiago de compostela in the way of saint james, the fountain at santiago and a beggar by the puerta santa, make evident king’s curiosity, 36 aimery (or aymeric) picaud, a monk and scholar from poitou, undertook the pilgrimage to santiago de compostela around 1140 (though king says, “not later than 1138” [58]). he is credited by historians with authorship and/or editorship of the codex calixtinus (occasionally called the book of saint james), five volumes on the camino de santiago containing liturgies, reports of miracles, and a traveler’s guide. see jan van herwaarden, between saint james and erasmus: studies in late-medieval religious life (leiden: brill, 2003), 356-361. millán bravo lozano also offers a helpful introduction to and contextualization of the codex calixtinus in guía del peregrino medieval. introducción, traducción, y notas (sahagún: centro de estudios del camino de santiago, 1990). for a gripping, recently published work of historical fiction in which picaud appears, see lucy pick, pilgrimage (new york: cuidono press, 2014). 37 king, the way of saint james, 3:59. 38 to the question of whether saint james’s remains are actually in the tomb at the cathedral of santiago de compostela, conant answers, “[t]he middle ages were much surer that he was than we can be.” conant, cathedral of santiago de compostela, 4. 39 king, the way of saint james, 3:23-24. 40 ibid., 3:24. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 4 2 p h o to g r a p hs o f th e “d u s t o f th e h i g h w a y ” c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.149 empathy, and expansive gaze. in the fountain, two women gather water at the fuente de los caballos (fountain of the horses), in the plaza immediately adjacent to the cathedral’s puerta de las platerías (fig. 13). the women perform a prosaic chore, indifferent to the ir proximity to one of christianity’s most sacred sites. the woman at the left stands as stout and imperious as her monogrammed, bell-shaped jug, and the younger woman to the r ight leans against the fountain’s lip, concealing what appears to be a grimace with her hand. curiously, these women recall an earlier description of santiago’s faithful. king, in a passage already quoted, observes “little devotion” in santiago “except,” she continues, “sometimes in the case of women: young women, who are afraid of life and take precautions: or elder ones who have suffered in life, and look for anodyne.”41 this written sketch is in no way paired formally with the fountain. still, its inclusion of another human dimension to fa ith—adding the alleviation of fear and suffering to the attraction of “gold,” “age,” and “magic” —seems applicable to these women, one younger and palpably timid, and the other, older and outwardly hardened. figure 13 unidentified photographer, the fountain at santiago, from georgiana goddard king, the way of saint james , vol. 3 (new york: g.p . p utnam’s sons, 1920), oppos ite page 54 (photo: author). in a beggar by the puerta santa, like the fountain, architecture provides the backdrop to human life (fig. 14). the “beggar” advances along the cathedral’s east entrance, which plays a meaningful role in lived ritual at santiago de compostela. the puerta santa (holy door) opens to the public only during saint james holy years; through the portal, the public may enter the rear ambulatory, behind the altar, and descend the staircase leading to saint james’ crypt (fig. 15).42 but the left edge of the photograph included by king aligns a lmost 41 king, the way of saint james, 3:24. 42 the puerta santa is opened to the public during años santos jacobeos (also called años santos compostelanos), years in which july 25 (saint james’s day) falls on a sunday. miguel taín guzmán gives an account of the social history of the puerta santa and festivals associated with it in “arquitecturas festivas catedralicias: los castillos y las fachadas de los fuegos del apóstol santiago,” ciencias sociais e humanidades 22 (2010): 495-518. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 4 3 a n n e m a r ie i k e r c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.149 precisely with the right edge of the puerta santa. this effectively eliminates the portal from view. in fact, all that is visible of the puerta santa in a beggar by the puerta santa is s ix of the twenty-four sculpted doormen comprising the portal’s frame.43 the photograph’s flat lighting and slanted angle, moreover, cause the sculptures to recede into their alcoves. figure 14 unidentified photographer, a beggar by the puerta santa, from georgiana goddard king, the way of saint james , vol. 3 (new york: g.p . p utnam’s sons, 1920), page 109 (photo: author). in a beggar by the puerta santa, it is not the famed and titular portal that occupies the most space. instead, the stone paving of the plaza de la quintana and the unarticulated eastern façade of the cathedral loom large. of course, these elements serve to highlight the photograph’s real subject, its “beggar.” not coincidentally, it seems, he bears a striking physical resemblance to the sculpted saint james who presides over the out-of-frame puerta santa (fig. 16). like the sculpture of saint james, the passerby has long hair, a staff, and a wide-brimmed hat which he has removed, in apparent acknowledgement of the photographer. intriguingly, the man grasps his staff just like the nearby sculpture of saint james: the two fingers closest to his thumb wrap around his walking stick, while the remaining two curl beneath it. a beggar by the puerta santa, with its preference for the human figure over the sculpted figure, typifies king’s commitment to portraying experience. rather than a photograph of the celebrated puerta santa and its revered saint james, she instead chooses to feature a humble pilgrim passing perpendicular to his stone look-alike. 43 emilia lamelas and jesús maría cendán discuss the seventeenth-century puerta santa and its sculpted doormen in greater detail in their article on its restoration, “la nueva puerta santa, catedral de santiago de compostela,” restauración & rehabilitación 93 (2004): 58-63. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 4 4 p h o to g r a p hs o f th e “d u s t o f th e h i g h w a y ” c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.149 figure 15 c athedral of santiago de c ompostela, la c oruña, spain, begun c . 1075, view of the puerta santa (holy door) (photo, 1960: william keighley, a rtstor). figure 16 c athedral of santiago de c ompostela, la c oruña, spain, begun c . 1075, view of saint james , p uerta santa (holy door) (photo, 2006: wikimedia commons). king and the “pilgrim’s perspective” in 1913, at bryn mawr college, king offered the first graduate course on spanish art in the united states.44 until her death in 1939, king would teach and publish tirelessly on secular and ecclesiastical medieval art and architecture of the iberian peninsula.45 for king, the appeal of iberia lay in the opportunity for discovery: in her assessment, medieval spain had not yet “become a part of the general scheme of things as siena.”46 despite her early 44 saunders, “georgiana goddard king,” 210. 45 though king dedicated much of her career to the medieval art and architecture of spain, her interest turned toward portugal near the end of her life. at the time of her death, she was working on a manuscript on portugal that remains unpublished and can be found among her papers at bryn mawr’s canaday special collections library. see saunders, “georgiana goddard king,” 230. 46 mann, “georgiana goddard king,” 113. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 4 5 a n n e m a r ie i k e r c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.149 contributions to medievalism, however, many historiographies of the field omit king altogether, focusing instead on luminaries like arthur kingsley porter, his french sparring partner emile mâle, and his students kenneth conant and walter muir whitehill.47 according to janice mann, one of the few art historians to offer a critical reappraisal of king in the twenty-first century, “king and her work have all but vanished from current scholarly memory.”48 despite the tendency to attribute king’s neglect to gender bias, a dif ferent factor appears equally significant. this factor—itself gendered, to be sure—is the early twentiethcentury conceptualization of art history as an academic discipline distinct from amateur aesthetics and connoisseurship. porter, though removed from the german formation of a scientific art history, or kunstwissenschaft, contributed to and benefitted from its inroads in the united states.49 indeed, kathryn brush credits porter’s growing interest in artistic attribution, dating, and provenance in the 1920s to his recent immersion in german scholarship. as she writes, romanesque sculpture of the pilgrimage roads “needs to be interpreted as the first major american rejoinder, or even rival, to certain established genres of german art history.”50 porter’s relationship to german kunstwissenschaft was hardly simple or stagnant. stil l, the title of the first chapter in romanesque sculpture of the pilgrimage roads—“the chronological problem”—indicates the degree to which his art historical imperatives a ligned with those gaining purchase within the academy both stateside and abroad. in his recent survey of the “modern origins of romanesque sculpture,” for instance, robert maxwell has demonstrated that the early twentieth-century search for the genesis of medieval sc ulpture caused many art historians to focus on classification according to date, region, material, and style.51 the question porter asked of the cathedrals of santiago de composte la and saint sernin—“which is the original?”—fits comfortably within this paradigm. but king’s photographs, as much as her prose, reveal the gulf between her own art historical objectives and methods, and those of her peers and successors. if king has effectively “vanished” (or, been vanquished) why return to her and her genre-defying book, the way of saint james? madeline caviness, janice mann, and susanna terrell saunders, king’s three recent champions in the united states, offer a variety of reasons. for mann, king’s writing provides a barometer of rapid changes within art history in the first half of the twentieth century. as she writes, “[b]y the 1930s the personal grounding 47 porter and mâle famously disagreed over the origins of romanesque sculpture, with mâle arguing for the primacy of languedoc and toulouse, and porter emphasizing the pilgrimage roads as transnational carriers of artistic and architectural styles. see porter’s review of mâle’s l’art religieux du xii siècle en france (1922), “spain or toulouse? and other questions,” the art bulletin 7 (1924): 2-25. 48 mann, “georgiana goddard king,” 111. for a historiographic study of spanish medieval art and architecture that explores the evolution of what mann terms “current scholarly memory,” see john w. williams, “spain or toulouse? a half century later, observations on the chronology of santiago de compostela,” in actas xxiii congreso internacional de historia del arte. granada. 1973 (granada: universidad de granada, 1976), 557-567; and williams, “the emergence of spanish romanesque sculpture: a century of scholarship,” in current directions in eleventhand twelfth-century sculpture studies, ed. robert a. maxwell and kirk ambrose (turnhout: brepols, 2010), 188-196. 49 for an account of porter’s attitudes toward developments in german art history, see brush, “german kunstwissenschaft and the practice of art history in america after world war i. interrelationships, exchanges, contexts,” marburger jahrbuch für kunstwissenschaft 26 (1999): 12-14. 50 brush, “german kunstwissenschaft,” 14. 51 robert maxwell, “modern origins of romanesque sculpture,” in a companion to medieval art, ed. conrad rudolph (malden, ma: blackwell publishing, 2006), 334-356. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 4 6 p h o to g r a p hs o f th e “d u s t o f th e h i g h w a y ” c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.149 of much of king’s scholarship caused it to lose credibility with the next generation of art historians, whose art historical methods were more regimented and scientif ic.”52 saunders strikes a similar note, suggesting that king’s “‘passionate’ attachment to spanish culture, ironically, tended to restrict the effectiveness of her art historical scholarship.” 53 caviness, meanwhile, identifies king’s life and work as another example of what she describes elsewhere as the “symbiosis between modern artists and medievalists.”54 she sees king, and her joint research and photographing expeditions in spain with edith lowber, her partner and travelling companion, as “part of a drive toward modernity.”55 crucially, both caviness and mann highlight king’s forgotten career as a symptom of the status of women within art history and academia at large. for cav iness, k ing’s “is a ta le about the silencing of women.”56 mann, moreover, stresses that it was king who first sparked porter’s interest in the pilgrimage to santiago de compostela. according to mann, a lecture given by king at haverford college in 1914 inspired porter’s research for romanesque sculpture of the pilgrimage roads57—a book, it bears repeating, frequently credited with introducing anglo-american intellectuals to medieval spain. this story, and porter’s apparent failure to properly acknowledge king, would seem to confirm judith bennett’s observations about the conflicted status of women medievalists in her article “medievalism and feminism.” there, she explains that female scholars achieved earlier and greater acceptance in medieval studies than other fields; even so, she writes, “women have been kept segregated from an d subordinated to the mainstream.”58 another reason to revisit king and particularly, the way of saint james, looks forward from king’s era into the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. new directions in romanesque scholarship suggest that king’s writing in fact prefigured many contemporary art historical concerns. caviness, for one, writes that king’s career can be seen not only as part of the “drive toward modernity” but even as “presaging a post-modern breaking down of disciplinary boundaries.”59 certainly, the way of saint james—not to mention, king’s other books—resist straightforward classification as art history given their historical, literary, archeological, and religious insights. revealingly, the very eclecticism that troubled severa l of king’s critics now seems prescient. remember that porter, for instance, felt king “had her hands far too full with the vast subject of the pilgrimage roads to be able to undertake the thousands of patient measurements, the conscientious checking up of results, the stone-forstone study of the building required for an architectural monograph.”60 in other words, porter 52 mann, “georgiana goddard king,” 121. 53 saunders, “georgiana goddard king,” 231. 54 caviness, “broadening the definitions of ‘art’: the reception of medieval works in the context of post-impressionist movements,” in hermeneutics and medieval culture, ed. patrick j. gallacher and helen damico (albany, ny: state university of new york press, 1989), 259-282. 55 caviness, “seeking modernity through the romanesque,” 4. 56 ibid., 3. 57 mann observes that porter discretely credited king with having shown him helpful photographs in “the development of sculpture in lombardy in the twelfth century” (1915). see mann, “frontiers and pioneers: american art historians discover medieval spain,” in romanesque architecture and its sculptural decoration in christian spain (toronto: university of toronto press, 2009), 21. 58 judith m. bennett, “medievalism and feminism,” speculum 68 (1993): 313. 59 caviness, “seeking modernity through the romanesque,” 4. 60 porter, “santiago again,” art in america 15 (1927): 5-6. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 4 7 a n n e m a r ie i k e r c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.149 felt that king’s broad, interdisciplinary exploration of the camino de santiago hindered her ability to undertake serious art historical research and to produce sound art historical scholarship. now, king’s writing appears newly relevant, and even complementary to that of porter. as remarkable as king’s precocious transgression of disciplinary boundaries, though, is her attentiveness to both historical and contemporary beggars, worshipers, and pilgr ims. paula gerson, in “art and pilgrimage: mapping the way” (2006), writes that early art historical scholarship centered along medieval pilgrimage routes long focused exclusively upon images, objects, and buildings. more recently, however, scholars have moved away from the description, classification, and morphological designation of these works. now, of greater interest is how residents and visitors have perceived them. “rather than imposing an artificial model on monuments,” she summarizes, “today’s scholars prefer to understand pilgrimage from the pilgrim’s point of view.”61 likewise, for christopher lakey, “a comprehension of a medieval ‘way of seeing’ is probably more important now than ever before.”62 king, of course, trained her eye and her pen on medieval and contemporary experience. she readily adopted a “pilgrim’s point of view,” although this distanced her scholarship from what lakey terms the “art historical ‘way of seeing’”63 then gaining traction among her colleagues. king considered individual experience a valid, even essential, line of art historical inquiry. her dedication to experience—past and present, her own and others’— is evident throughout the three volumes of the way of saint james.64 indeed, both mann and saunders have observed king’s “personal grounding” (mann’s term) and “‘passionate ’ attachment” (saunders’ term) in her writing on the camino de santiago. but king’s photographs, it should be noted, expose these traits just as readily. this is particularly evident in king’s approach to a carved capital in the c lo ister of san pedro de la rúa, in the camino town of estella. here, text and image prove complementary, with prose offering a straightforward iconographic reading of the capital, and the photograph supplying a jolt of subjective authenticity. from king’s verbal descriptions of the histor iated capitals, the one photographed can be identified as the entombment of christ. capita l at estella would seem to offer an uncomplicated view of this sculpture, characterized succinctly by king as depicting a “carved sarcophagus, set high on four legs” (fig. 17).65 closer inspection of capital at estella, though, reveals a more personal approach. the sarcophagus itself and the sculpted figures beside and above it are actually difficult to discern: rather than a level, tightly cropped view of the sculpture—as porter likely would have supplied—the photographer replicates the familiar view that results from looking upward at a capital. because of the tipped-back perspective, other elements feature in the composition—a sliver of the arcade’s ceiling, the underside of its rounded stone arch, the 61 paula gerson, “art and pilgrimage: mapping the way,” in rudolph, a companion to medieval art, 610. 62 lakey, “contingencies of display,” 89. 63 ibid. 64 king shared her interest in experience, perception, and consciousness with phenomenologists such as edmund husserl, martin heidegger, maurice merleau-ponty, and jean-paul sartre. unfortunately, i have found no concrete evidence that king followed the development of phenomenological thought in the early twentieth century. still, given king’s postgraduate coursework in philosophy, research into her awareness of phenomenology and other philosophical currents would no doubt improve our understanding of her art historical scholarship. 65 king, the way of saint james, 1:341. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 4 8 p h o to g r a p hs o f th e “d u s t o f th e h i g h w a y ” c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.149 neighboring capital, and treetops in the courtyard. though it fails to provide a clear image of the sculpture in question, capital at estella captures something else: the point of view of the photographer, and likewise, those who have craned their necks in a cloister. the effect, it goes without saying, is quite different from porter’s desire to facilitate what lakey terms an “art historical ‘way of seeing’” rather than a “medieval ‘way of seeing.’”66 figure 17 unidentified photographer, capital at es tella, from georgiana goddard king, the way of saint james , vol. 1 (new york: g.p . p utnam’s sons, 1920), page 349 (photo: author). king, unlike porter, considered herself a pilgrim and wrote transparently about the sensory layers between her and the monuments she encountered. often, these layers are unpleasant: king openly admits to experiencing the fatigue, hunger, boredom, and general discomfort of pilgrimage. in one passage, she describes the tedious landscape approaching león: “the tawny upland is dotted with brown church towers all just alike: you look up after an hour and think you are come back in a circle.”67 few art historians would admit the occasional repetitiveness of their research, but for king, this imbues the eventual “spires of leon” with an “unguessed grace, a charm, a spell of the exquisite.”68 put another way, it is passing through the unrelieved castilian plains that makes sight of león’s cathedral feel l ike deliverance. elsewhere, king directly addresses the loneliness of solitary research, particularly for women. of winter nights in pamplona, home to the raucous running of the bulls during summertime sanfermines, king says: for a woman alone, they are hard. she has been out seeing things while the daylight lasted and is honestly tired; moreover, most churches close at nightfall 66 lakey, “contingencies of display,” 89. 67 king, the way of saint james, 2:176. 68 ibid., 2:177. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 4 9 a n n e m a r ie i k e r c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.149 and the rest have nothing by any chance worth seeing even were they not wrapped in a midnight of their own, just starred with votive candles.69 photographs like eunate and el sepulcro evoke the intermittent solitude and melancholy along the camino de santiago (figs. 18 and 19). in el sepulcro, a c luster of children and birds gather at the east end of a church in torres. while they are not the focus of the photograph, they are impossible to overlook. king’s description of her v isit to the church expresses similar ambivalence. an earlier art historian had warned king about the children in torres and their tendency to interrupt work; she writes, somewhat unkindly, “[t]hey are indeed tiresome as gnats, but not bad-hearted . . . their elders rebuked and dispersed them a dozen times, but always they gathered again, filling the open doorway of the empty church, and blotting out the patch of sunlight on the floor.”70 for king, with her measuring tape and camera, the children and their antics prove a nuisance. still, the chosen photograph creates a subtle layering of human lives against a church that king goes on to characterize as layered itself, with greek, roman, romanesque, and “oriental” sources, and french, italian, and mudéjar craftsmanship, all “gathered up by the side of the way.”71 figure 18 unidentified photographer, eunate, from georgiana goddard king, the way of saint james , vol. 1 (new york: g.p . p utnam’s sons, 1920), oppos ite page 230 (photo: author). a photograph taken in front of the cathedral of santiago de compostela’s puerta de las platerías encompasses the emphasis on experience, the pilgrim’s perspective, and the se lf reflexivity characteristic of the way of saint james. the pilgrim in santiago stands before the platerías portal, but with the photographer shooting away from the portal and toward the fuente de los caballos at the base of the steps (fig. 20). the photograph’s rightward t ilt echoes that of the pilgrim: the slight inclination of his body suggests the incessant push forward of the camino, albeit come to an end in santiago de compostela. as one might expect, king reveals that his traditional dress inspired the photograph. the pilgrim wears a dark robe studded with scallop shells, the symbol associated with saint james and the camino de santiago, and he bears its customary accessories, the wide-brimmed hat and staff. struck by the similarity of the man’s appearance to saint francis, king writes, she 69 king, the way of saint james, 1:261. 70 ibid., 1:310. 71 ibid., 1:321. “mudéjar” refers to architecture influenced by the moorish settlement of spain. king’s mudéjar (1927) focuses exclusively on the significance of north african, middle eastern, and central asian style and craftsmanship to medieval and early modern spanish architecture. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 5 0 p h o to g r a p hs o f th e “d u s t o f th e h i g h w a y ” c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.149 requested a portrait. he “readily yielded; then asked an alms. why not? g ive and take is fair.”72 throughout the way of saint james, king strives verbally and visually to access different perceptions of the same monuments and traditions along the camino de santiago. nonetheless, she tacitly acknowledges that she will be the one to relay these perceptions through prose and photographs. indeed, in images like a pilgrim in santiago, the specif icity of individual experience becomes manifest: king’s photo-op is another man’s charity-op, and her medieval reverie comes to an abrupt halt with their monetary exchange. time and again, king maneuvers between her commitment to portraying experience and her recognition that any experience aside from her own, whether medieval or contemporary, remains to some degree unattainable. as the way of saint james makes plain, this too is part of the “give and take” of art historical writing—a give and take, king would be gratif ied to learn, ever more important to students and scholars today. figure 19 unidentified photographer, el sepulcro, from georgiana goddard king, the way of saint james , vol. 1 (new york: g.p . p utnam’s sons, 1920), page 311 (photo: author). figure 20 unidentified photographer, a pilgrim at santiago, from georgiana goddard king, the way of saint james vol. 2 (new york: g.p . p utnam’s sons, 1920), page 483 (photo: author). 72 king, the way of saint james, 3:23. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 5 1 a n n e m a r ie i k e r c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.149 acknowledgements for early guidance on this paper, i would like to thank peter low at williams c ollege. paul park and my peers in his writing seminar at williams read early versions of this paper and their comments greatly improved it. i am especially grateful to my anonymous peer reviewers, and to my editors at contemporaneity, jacqueline lombard and elizabeth morrissey, for their encouragement and suggestions. lastly, i extend my gratitude to marianne hansen at bryn mawr college’s special collections for helping me navigate georgiana goddard king’s papers and providing me with her portrait. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 5 2 p h o to g r a p hs o f th e “d u s t o f th e h i g h w a y ” c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.149 new articles in this journal are licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 united states license. this journal is operated by the university library system of the university of p ittsburgh as part of its d-scribe digital p ublishing p rogram, and is co-sponsored by the university of p ittsburgh press. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/ http://www.pitt.edu/ http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/ http://www.upress.pitt.edu/upressindex.aspx http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture vol 7, no 1 (2018) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2018.267 http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu 20/20 the studio museum of harlem and the carnegie museum of art rebecca l. giordano exhibition review exhibition schedule: carnegie museum of art, july 22–december 31, 2017 about the author rebecca l. giordano is a graduate student in the history of art and architecture department at the university of pittsburgh, specializing on race, gender, and transnational exchange in the americas in the twentieth century. she has written on feminist economics, politics of belonging, and sexual violence in contemporary performance and visual art by women. giordano is deeply committed to public facing art history and has worked for five years as a museum educator at the blanton museum of art and the warfield center for african and african american studies. she is a co-founder of the anti-racist feminist curatorial collective, ingz. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 7, no 1 (2018) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2018.267 the curators of 20/20, a collaborative exhibition between the carnegie museum of art (cmoa) and the studio museum of harlem, on view at the cmoa, framed the exhibition as an opportunity “to bring the very different collections into conversation.” the introductory wall text outside the exhibition described the studio museum’s catalytic role in the championing of modern and contemporary work of artists of african descent since 1968 and the cmoa’s more than 120 years of showing contemporary art. the adjoining wall featured sparsely collaged reproductions of works from the exhibition, including the torso of a black female figure flashing a subtle peace sign, by renowned painter kerry james marshall, and michelle obama’s focused gaze cropped from a photograph by collier schorr. though neither the words “black” nor “race” appeared, the museum’s positioning of the exhibition was clear. here—finally—at the cmoa, blackness was on view. less clear was how this conversation between institutions helped visitors (or the institutions themselves) understand “a tumultuous and deeply divided moment in our nation’s history,” as the wall text suggested, or how race has shaped the institutions and their collections differently. though officially presented as a dialogue about collections, most of the six themes that organized the exhibition— “a more perfect union,” “working thought,” “american landscape,” “documenting black life,” “shrine for the spirit,” and “forms of resistance”—referenced u.s. political history and dimensions of civil society more than collections or art institutions. it was only in the final section, titled “forms of resistance,” that exclusion and misrepresentation in the art world were addressed through feminist touchstones like free, white, and 21 (1980), howardena pindell’s deadpan testimonial video done in whiteface, and documentation of lorraine o’grady’s 1981 powerhouse performances as mlle. bourgeoise noire. the suite of photographs shows o’grady crashing art events bedecked in a dress entirely made of white gloves and carrying a white cat o’nine tails, a whip associated with slavery, linking the elite art world to antebellum society, finery, and violence. the same section included meleko mokgosi’s walls of casbah (2010–2012), appropriated, densely annotated wall texts screen-printed on linen panels. these offered sharp retorts directly to the persistently patronizing treatment of black art. one of 20/20’s strengths was its compelling and beautiful layout. the formal connections between individual works demonstrated thoughtful curatorial vision—in this case, an emphatically collaborative one. amanda hunt and eric crosby seized the rhythmic powers of the chosen works and offered visitors rich visual paths through the exhibition. abstract works that rely on repetition, like mark bradford’s many rough-edged paper rolls, slapping the daily prophet (2016), or kori newkirk’s teal and black hair-bead strands, solon 6:12 (2000), didn’t sink into their patterns but riffed on each other and on other imaginative uses of everyday materials nearby. abigail deville’s carnivalesque assemblage harlem world (2011), in which the artist repurposed trash collected in harlem into layered, kaleidoscopic planes, followed and enriched bradford’s similarly scavenged abstraction, both hovering somewhere between painting and sculpture. 20/20 the studio museum of harlem and the carnegie museum of art rebecca l. giordano http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 1 1 9 r e b e c c a l . g i o r d a n o contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 7, no 1 (2018) | issn 2153-5194 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2018.267 figure 1 installation view of 20/20: the studio museum in harlem and carnegie museum of art. photo: bryan conley." featuring abigail deville harlem world (2011) and kori newkirk solon 6:12 (2000). crosby and hunt’s selection of works also highlighted the ability of minimalism, conceptualism, and abstraction to respond to political, cerebral, and spiritual themes. quentin morris’s enormous monochromatic circular painting, untitled [january–february 1994] (1994), was given space to be sublime. somehow it both absorbed light and shimmered, like a black sun reflecting on water. edgar arceneaux’s slideshow, blocking out the sun (2004), in which he repeats the youthful gesture of trying to blot out the sun by pinching one’s fingers, humorously nods to catastrophic climate change and to the ordinary metaphysics of seeing. who doesn’t wish for the power to sway the universe, even minorly, in times like these? 20/20 was not a show about, or of, black art. one might describe it as an exhibition of largely postwar art by black artists that acknowledged—but did not coalesce into—a history of blackness in the united states. artists’ races were not uniformly identified in the wall labels and several white artists were included. the title 20/20 referred to the number of artists chosen from each institution; given that they were only forty, why include white artists at all? perhaps the idea was modeling integration while centering blackness. the exhibition emphasized formal and thematic connections between artworks across time and race rather than historicized artistic production or exchange. but what does zoe strauss’s half house (2008) offer that isn’t imaged more urgently for pittsburghers by latoya ruby frazier’s photograph of a destroyed medical facility twelve miles from the cmoa (doctor’s office, 2011)? does a show in pittsburgh that features mostly black artists need an andy warhol/jean-michel basquiat collaboration? could that space have been used to acquaint visitors with a lesserknown black artist with local ties? http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 1 2 0 20 / 20 contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 7, no 1 (2018) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2018.267 figure 2 "installation view of 20/20: the studio museum in harlem and carnegie museum of art. photo: bryan conley." featuring quentin morris, untitled [january–february 1994] (1994). with the exception of three, the artists in 20/20 were u.s.-born. jamaican-born nari ward’s contribution—a sculpture of a baseball bat painted white, sugar-soaked, and covered in cotton—did the heavy work of reminding viewers that the horrors and aftermath of slavery in the united states comprise but one node in the transatlantic slave trade’s pervasive, violent grip on the atlantic. the piece demonstrated the necessity of including immigrant voices and positioning u.s. history—and art—within global flows. which begs another question: why are the forty artists only black and white? in the 20/20 gallery guide, hunt writes “i think our show was prompted by a shared urgency to describe what our country looks like to us today, and what it is shaping up to be in the not-so-distant future.” if so, where are native, latinx, asian, and arab artists (including the africandescended artists who share these identities)? this is not to say that blackness should not be central but to press the relation between the exhibition’s framing and roster of artists on view. 20/20 began with abe lincoln’s first book (1944)—a phenomenal nocturne of young lincoln reaching for a book in a dark cabin lit by a single candle, painted by the influential modern painter horace pippin. the u.s. flag is featured prominently in other works in the room, and the wall text argues that they “reflect the very foundation of our american democracy.” http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 1 2 1 r e b e c c a l . g i o r d a n o contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 7, no 1 (2018) | issn 2153-5194 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2018.267 figure 3 horace pippin, “abe lincoln’s first book,” 1944, oil on canvas, collection of the carnegie museum of art, gift of sara m. winokur and james l. winokur. leading with a painting of a white president (albeit by a black artist) and extolling u.s. patriotism contradicts the commonsense understanding that part of the “shared urgency” surrounding 20/20 was ushered in by widespread black-led opposition to state violence in the form of police brutality. black lives matter has wrought an overdue awareness of the histories of quotidian and juridical antiblackness in the united states, including in museums. borrowing a phrase from the u.s. constitution to title the opening section, “a more perfect union,” risked papering over the state’s role and vested interest in perpetuating racism and our fractured civil society. the histories of large public museums are inscribed in a consistent neglect of black artists and the once-legal exclusion of and routine disinterest in the black communities, which they are, in fact, charged to serve. no exhibition that showcases black art could avoid being freighted with expectations of righting this history. but if an exhibition’s (unstated) objective is to remedy or at least avoid contributing to a more than hundred-year history of institutional racism, it must do justice to the complexity and contradictions within the myriad themes, affects, and formal approaches in artwork by black people. in many of these ways 20/20 succeeded. however, such efforts towards cultural reparations would have been bolstered by direct acknowledgment of racism in the institutional history in and beyond the collections. after all, reconciliation begins not with celebration but with public discussions of difficult truths. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 1 2 2 20 / 20 contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 7, no 1 (2018) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2018.267 new articles in this journal are licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 united states license. this journal is operated by the university library system of the university of pittsburgh as part of its d-scribe digital publishing program, and is co-sponsored by the university of pittsburgh press. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/ http://www.pitt.edu/ http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/ http://www.upress.pitt.edu/upressindex.aspx http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ 20/20 the studio museum of harlem and the carnegie museum of art 20/20 the studio museum of harlem and the carnegie museum of art contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture vol 7, no 1 (2018) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2018.268 http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu presenting race institutional contexts and critiques marina tyquiengco about the author marina tyquiengco studies contemporary indigenous art at the university of pittsburgh with professor terry smith. she received her m.a. in art history in 2016 from the university of pittsburgh. her m.a. topic was contemporary reuse of ethnographic photographs by aboriginal australian artists. her dissertation will focus on indigenous artists’ use of their bodies in artwork from the 1990s to today in australia, canada, and the united states. she was chosen as the history of art and architecture participant for the race-ing the museum, the inaugural collecting knowledge pittsburgh workshop supported by the a.w. mellon foundation. she served as the inaugural graduate representative for the history of art and architecture’s diversity committee in 2016–2017. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 7, no 1 (2018) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2018.268 depending on one’s perspective and sense of history, race is either nowhere or everywhere in museums and cultural institutions—ignored and absent, or lurking always just beneath the surface. this issue of contemporaneity brings race to the forefront across a wide range of spaces including art museums, historical sites, university archives, classrooms, and community centers. presenting race: institutional context and critiques was inspired by the university of pittsburgh’s inaugural collecting knowledge pittsburgh workshop, race-ing the museum, supported by a grant from the a. w. mellon foundation. in may 2016, kirk savage and shirin fozi led a group of twelve faculty and graduate students from different schools within the university through a week-long dive into collecting institutions around pittsburgh, asking questions about inclusion and access, racial storylines and institutional structures. the workshop challenged participants not just to critique but also to contribute through work of their own. several projects grew out of the workshop including teaching slavery, a collaboration between the school of education and the center for american music at the university of pittsburgh, led by dr. ashley woodson, and the ojo latino photovoice project, initiated by pitt scholars in the departments of anthropology, history of art and architecture, and public health. to open the issue, savage and fozi reflect on the experience of race-ing the museum over two years later, in the midst of the trump presidency. while racial injustice and white grievance have only heightened throughout the united states, the intensely local experience of the workshop set off cross-disciplinary conversations and public engagements that continue to generate small but important rays of hope. articles by caitlin frances bruce, nik cristobal, and a five-scholar team led by héctor camilo ruiz sánchez, outline nontraditional forms of learning and partnering through theoretical and practical lenses. caitlin frances bruce examines the potential of public art to reignite community through her co-organization of the hemispheric conversations: urban art project (hcuap), which culminated in a collaborative mural by nine artists from chicago, leon guanajuato, mexico, and pittsburgh at the carrie furnaces site in pittsburgh. prior public events preceeded this mural, giving students ages seven to seventeen opportunities to learn graffiti techniques, graffiti history, and local history from hcuap collaborators. bruce reflects on the impact of hcuap on pittsburgh and the larger community, using this collaboration as a potential roadmap for future projects involving scholars, artists, organizations, and communities. working more theoretically, nik cristobal provides an overview of educational history in hawaii and puts forward a new epistemological model for conceptualizing society, kanaka 'ōiwicrit, kanaka 'ōiwi (native hawaiian) critical race theory. cristobal proposes how using a kanaka 'ōiwicrit framework in education, through kanaka 'ōiwi language and principles, can lead to better outcomes for kanaka 'ōiwi students. finally, héctor camilo ruiz sánchez, paulina pardo gaviria, rosa de ferrari, kirk savage, and patricia documet reflect on their project ojo latino, a collaborative photovoice project meant to presence pittsburgh’s growing latino community in order to counter its absence from many archives in pittsburgh. the photographs that came from this piece are stored in a digital repository to show the daily lives of several latinos living in pittsburgh in 2016–2017. through these contributions, models of engaging in community and education through nonacademic means emerge. the themes of the workshop have clear resonance in the art world. christiana harkulich and nicole scalissi delve into artworks that respond to timely and connected issues, institutional representation of native americans, and the potential expansion of a united states–mexico border wall. in considering these pieces together, i am reminded of the “no presenting race institutional contexts and critiques marina tyquiengco http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ i i i m a r i n a t y q u i e n g c o contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 7, no 1 (2018) | issn 2153-5194 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2018.268 ban on stolen land” signs after president trump’s travel ban on mostly muslim-majority countries. the continued dominance of white american culture in the united states presents many opportunities for intersectional and cross-community solidarity. christiana harkulich details a performance by the native american artist gregg deal (pyramid lake paiute) at the denver art museum. harkulich argues that performances by living indigenous artists are a potential and mostly untapped source of decolonization, a way for museums to allow indigenous peoples to represent themselves. nicole scalissi explores an artistic response to president trump’s proposed border wall by the pittsburgh artist jenn meridan and others. working as j. m. studios, meridan and a collective of artists solicited alternative border walls with the language of trump’s call for proposals for the actual border wall. scalissi suggests that these “other border walls” can help to clarify our current moment by elucidating its simultaneous absurdity and seriousness. annika johnson considers the legacy of an exceptional first nations artist, lawrence paul yuxweluptun, in her review of the catalogue lawrence paul yuxweluptun: unceded territories. though the exhibition took place in 2016, the catalogue is prescient as several areas of the united states and canada remain unceded territory and sovereignty continues to be of paramount importance to indigenous peoples globally. similarly, lily brewer discusses the new conception of the greater west, incorporating north america and australia, in relation to the exhibition unsettled, a three-venue exhibition first on view at the nevada museum of art. she is particularly interested in how the concepts of landscape and settlement are demonstrated by a diverse slate of artists. jacqueline lombard and golnar yamohammad touski review two recent books that explore distinct dimensions of race and ethnicity over time. lombard considers an ambitious new book, the invention of race in the middle ages, by geraldine heng, which traces understanding of race in the medieval world through a variety of sources. lombard argues that this is a necessary addition to the canon of texts on the medieval world for heng’s multidimensional approach to race and difference. golnar yamohammad touski reviews a recent museum of modern (moma) art publication, modern art in the arab world: primary documents, edited by anneka lenssen, sarah a. rogers, and nada m. shabout. touski considers how the editors frame texts from around the arab world in a hundred-year period within the existing chronological format of moma’s primary documents series, situating translated works in useful conceptual frames. rebecca giordano and benjamin ogrodnik consider two important exhibitions highlighting the work of black artists on view in pittsburgh in 2017. giordano explores the exhibition 20/20, a collaboration between the studio museum in harlem and the carnegie museum of art. between these two distinct institutions, a question of what black art is, or has been, remains. ben ogrodnik reviews two exhibitions of the work of ruby latoya frazier, a pittsburgh native and winner of a macarthur award for her groundbreaking photography. ogrodnik explores the labor dimension of frazier’s work and her collaborations with a former steelworker. finally, paulina pardo gaviria’s review explores the work of brazilian contemporary artist letícia parente across three exhibitions of the major pacific standard time: la/la (los angeles/latin america) on view last fall in over seventy southern californian institutions. homing in on parente’s work, pardo considers how each exhibition presents an aspect of her practice in distinct though overlapping narratives. the art submissions of aaron henderson, meghan kozal, jezebeth roca-gonzales, nick simko, hazel batrezchavez, and cecelia price offer varied conceptualizations of race, identity, absence and presence. batrezchavez, gonzalez, kozal, and price’s distinctive works are particularly personal and inward looking. they ask us to consider how the raced, sexed, and gendered body moves through the world. aaron henderson conceptualizes absence as literal rather than figurative, exploring blank or empty spaces. nick simko’s contributions consider whiteness not only as raced and masculinity as gendered in a series of portraits. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ i v p r e s e n t i n g r a c e contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 7, no 1 (2018) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2018.262 now in its seventh edition, contemporaneity is itself an institution. this manifestation of the journal challenges both authors and readers to think expansively and creatively about one of the most persistent and difficult issues of our time. new articles in this journal are licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 united states license. this journal is operated by the university library system of the university of pittsburgh as part of its d-scribe digital publishing program, and is co-sponsored by the university of pittsburgh press. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/ http://www.pitt.edu/ http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/ http://www.upress.pitt.edu/upressindex.aspx http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ presenting race institutional contexts and critiques presenting race institutional contexts and critiques contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture vol 8, no 1 (2019) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2019.292 http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu fujiwo ishimoto exhibition: from marimekko flowers to ceramic fruits in dialogue with the rinpa hosomi museum, kyoto, japan carolyn wargula exhibition review exhibition catalog: yoshinao yamada, fujiwo ishimoto: from marimekko flowers to ceramic fruits. tokyo: wacoal art center, 2018. 23 pp. ¥1,188 exhibition schedule: the museum of art, ehime, october 27 – december 16, 2018; hosomi museum, kyoto, march 9 april 21, 2019; spiral garden, tokyo, june 19 – june 30, 2019. about the author carolyn wargula is a ph.d. candidate in the history of art & architecture department at the university of pittsburgh. she was the recipient of the 2018-2019 japan foundation fellowship and conducted research at the international research center for japanese studies in kyoto. her dissertation, entitled “embodying the buddha: the presence of women in japanese buddhist embroideries, 1200-1700,” considers the materiality, patronage, and ritual function of embroidered buddhist images. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 8, no 1 (2019) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2019.292 fujiwo ishimoto (1941–) may have created four hundred works as a prolific designer for the legendary finnish firm marimekko, but his fabrics and ceramics are not finnish. they reflect his own japanese heritage and interest in the vividly colorful rinpa (or rimpa) style1—at least that is the conclusion that the hosomi museum hopes its audience will reach in the show fujiwo ishimoto exhibition: from marimekko flowers to ceramic fruits in dialogue with the rinpa, held from march 9 to april 21, 2019, in kyoto.2 the hosomi museum thoughtfully curated over eighty of ishimoto’s fabrics and ceramicwares alongside twenty-one rinpa-style hanging scrolls, folding screens, and textiles already in the museum’s collection to explore concurrences of the old and the new, the local and the global. the comparison makes clear that ishimoto’s objects continue—rather than break—tradition. in dialogue with the rinpa highlights this traditional japanese visual language embodied in ishimoto’s art and reveals how the rinpa style was adapted for a global audience and a transnational design house. the uncanny resemblance between ishimoto’s work and the historical rinpa pieces is unsurprising. ishimoto’s textiles are bursting with vibrant colors that mirror works by the originators of the rinpa style—tawaraya sōtatsu and ogata kōrin—which have influenced ishimoto since he enrolled as a student of design and graphics at the national university of art in tokyo in 1960.3 the highly decorative rinpa style emerged in kyoto during the early seventeenth century. it combines abstraction with naturalism to create dazzling ornamental paintings on a variety of formats. both rinpa artists and ishimoto posit that art is meant to seep into everyday life. rinpa artists painted on possessions used in daily activities, while ishimoto transformed mundane objects like socks and hand towels into gorgeous pieces with a fresh pop of color as a designer of interior fabrics at marimekko from 1974 to 2006. his textiles, however, were not always widely accepted. armi ratia, founder of the company, initially rejected ishimoto’s brushstroke mark-making designs, insisting that these patterns “weren’t marimekko.”4 as ishimoto’s fabrics gained traction, he began to push against this conventional style and rigid nordic cultural identity of the brand. by 1977, he departed from bold abstraction into a more minimalist and japanese calligraphic style of textiles. this exhibition foregrounds ishimoto’s commitment to making art that expresses his own cultural identity and places his works in dialogue with rinpa art to show their similarities in form, subject matter, and craftmanship. it is evident in the first room of the museum that seasonal change runs as a consistent thread through the works of both rinpa artists and ishimoto. eight vibrant fabrics of ishimoto’s 1 rinpa style is a modern term deriving from the name of ogata kōrin. it literally means “school of kōrin,” but there was never a rinpa school in the traditional sense of a master passing down his designs to the next generation. rinpa refers to a group of painters with a similar stylistic preference that worked in a variety of kyoto workshops during the edo period. 2 this show was part of a traveling exhibition of fujiwo ishimoto’s textiles and ceramicware. the retrospective opened at the museum of art in ishimoto’s native ehime prefecture on october 27, 2018 and concluded at the spiral garden in tokyo on june 30, 2019. 3 yoshinao yamada, “an interview with fujiwo ishimoto,” in fujiwo ishimoto: from marimekko flowers to ceramic fruits, ed. yoshinao yamada, trans. william andrews (tokyo: wacoal art center, 2018), 19. 4 marianne aav, ed., marimekko: fabrics, fashion, architecture (new york: the bard graduate center, 2003), 70–72. fujiwo ishimoto exhibition: from marimekko flowers to ceramic fruits in dialogue with the rinpa march 9april 21, 2019 hosomi museum, kyoto, japan carolyn wargula http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 1 3 3 c a r o l y n w a r g u l a contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 8, no 1 (2019) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2019.292 design hang from the ceiling like floating pillars. these textiles are massive, and their idiosyncratic vegetal shapes, repetitive patterns, and gestural marks evoke a sense of power in space, as if each fabric occupies a separate world. twelve additional wall-sized fabrics by ishimoto, rolled into cylinders like japanese hanging scrolls, line the gallery walls between rinpa-style floral sketches. the robin’s egg blue suvisunnuntai (a sunday in summer, 1998) blends seamlessly with the adjacent painting of blue morning glories (nineteenth century) made by rinpa artist nakamura hōchū using soft watery brushstrokes. sōtatsu’s moonlight under plum blossoms fan painting (seventeenth century) is paired with ishimoto’s winterthemed uomo (midwinter, 1987)—an appropriate match, given the identical palette of black and gold and the similar marble-like wave pattern called suminagashi. ishimoto also breathes new life into the theme with maisema (landscape, 1983), a blue-green patchwork design textile, by moving his focus away from japan to the changing light and color in finland’s different seasons. the next two rooms of the exhibition focus extensively on ishimoto’s ceramicwares to explore how he, like the rinpa artists, embellishes functional everyday items with bold, exaggerated motifs. these rooms display ishimoto’s pottery for the finnish brand, arabia, which he began making in 1989. some ceramic plates are painted with a single bulbous tangerine, a popular local produce from his hometown tobe in ehime prefecture while others are incised with thin lines representing the slender branches of a japanese dappled willow tree. these objects are juxtaposed with rinpa-style decorative folding screens and fan paintings that invite viewers to look closely and delight in their formal similarities. yet, several of his artistic decisions, such as the ceramicwares’ foreign titles and european formats, signal his engagement with audiences outside japan. in dialogue with the rinpa compels viewers to interpret ishimoto’s works not as replications of the rinpa style, but as formal interactions in a relationship “neither too close nor too distant from one another.”5 this synergistic interplay between the local and the global is encapsulated in onni (happiness, 1975), a giant cheerful textile fluttering from the thirdfloor balcony near the museum entrance (figure 1). at first glance, this peasantmotif fabric inspired by finnish folk art appears foreign and distant from traditional japanese design. still, onni, like the exhibition overall, invites viewers to probe deeper, asking them to unravel what appears to be a foreign pattern by a native artist to consider how it remains rooted in traditional japanese imagery through its focus on nature and use of rinpa-style abstract botanical shapes. its prominent position reinforces ishimoto’s mastery of both finnish and japanese design and insists on the compatibility and even interconnectivity of these two styles. 5 yamada, “an interview with fujiwo ishimoto,” 19. figure 1 fujiwo ishimoto, omni (happiness), 1975. installation view. hosomi museum, kyoto, japan. (photo: author) http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 1 3 4 f r o m m a r im e k ko f l o w e r s t o c e r am i c f r u i t s i n d i a l o g ue w i t h t h e r i n p a contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 8, no 1 (2019) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2019.292 the exhibition culminates in an installation on the third-floor kokoan tea room to consider what transnational design has to offer for traditional japanese art practices like the tea ceremony. the assemblage of ishimoto’s objects explores the theme when the spring sun shines and reflects on the month of march in kyoto as winter transitions to spring. ishimoto’s dotted-grid-pattern fabric replaces the decorative hanging scroll that usually fills the room’s tokonoma alcove. guests lucky enough to participate in the performance are served a seasonal sweet in the shape of ishimoto’s winter melon along with matcha green tea in a traditional tea bowl designed by the artist himself. the serene and contemplative tea room repurposes ishimoto’s objects, showing how they can be used to refresh traditional japanese spaces and distill the dissonance of our present contemporary life. in dialogue with the rinpa is a small but ambitious show that deftly tracks ishimoto’s encounter with rinpa aesthetics and techniques. however, a few factors of the exhibition make it challenge the non-specialist viewer. none of ishimoto’s works are labelled, perhaps to let the textiles and ceramics speak for themselves. the exhibition also assumes the audience has prior knowledge of the rinpa style. the opening wall text, for example, is only written in japanese and omits contextual information on the aesthetic. nevertheless, this show successfully shifts the narrative surrounding japanese designers like ishimoto working for transnational brands. the show makes a strong case that they do not simply emulate foreign designs but bring a distinctly japanese pictorial style to a global audience. the exhibition ends with this implicit question: what exactly can prolific japanese designers working abroad like ishimoto, rei kawakubo, and kenzō takada do for the nation? their designs have the potential to populate our daily lives like the works by rinpa artists before them, but on a much grander scale. marimekko products, for example, are massproduced and easily available across the globe. couch cushions, king-sized duvet covers, and even bathrobes printed in ishimoto’s bold designs can be purchased at just the click of a button. obscured behind these rinpa-style motifs is also this grim reality: foreign brands are profiting off of traditional japanese design. from this perspective, it is difficult not to imagine ishimoto’s fabrics and ceramicware as conspicuous product placements for foreign finnish brands. but the exhibition also radiates positivity, championing the ingenuity and formal innovation inherent to traditional japanese imagery and expressed centuries later through ishimoto’s mesmerizing objects. one can hear a collective sigh of relief reverberate through the museum. the global demand for japanese design is still alive and well—a hopeful and refreshing thought for a nation that has been economically stagnant for almost three decades. new articles in this journal are licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 united states license. this journal is operated by the university library system of the university of pittsburgh as part of its d-scribe digital publishing program, and is co-sponsored by the university of pittsburgh press. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/ http://www.pitt.edu/ http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/ http://www.upress.pitt.edu/upressindex.aspx http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ fujiwo ishimoto exhibition: from marimekko flowers to ceramic fruits in dialogue with the rinpa hosomi museum, kyoto, japan fujiwo ishimoto exhibition: from marimekko flowers to ceramic fruits in dialogue with the rinpa march 9april 21, 2019 hosomi museum, kyoto, japan contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture vol 9, no 1 (2021) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2021.323 http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu eight views of the sun setting on the south pacific kio griffith about the author kio griffith is an interdisciplinary artist, independent curator, and arts writer working across themes of contemporary social issues, geopolitics, and migrating cultures. he engages with multimedia, contemporary craft, and technology-based media, including graphic design, sound and video, performance, coding, spatial design, and publishing. his work has been extensively exhibited internationally, including at the 2016 aichi triennale in nagoya, japan. notable curatorial projects include his work as an emerging curator at lace (los angeles contemporary exhibitions) in 2017, as a curator for the japan foundation and as guest editor-in-chief for the january/february 2015 issue of artillery magazine, which covers under-represented contemporary asian feminist, nonbinary, and lgbtq artists. his current projects include roles as co-founder of oote 41221 project space and transit republic, an art and socioanthropological publication. griffith also works as an editor for genzō, an intercultural photographic journal and independent curator and contributing editor for fabrik (los angeles), artscape (tokyo), and art bridge institute (tokyo). griffith holds a bfa from otis/parsons school of design and an mfa from university of california, santa barbara. his work is included in private and museum collections, including the los angeles county museum of art. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 9, no 1 (2021) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2021.323 my thoughts and concepts often dwell on the crosscultural history that infuses images, sound, and the materiality of found and appropriated objects. i mine public and private family histories for personal experiences that generate insights into broader geopolitical contexts, even as they touch on modern-day issues of immigration and hyphenate identities. my work channels psycho-geographical experiments to investigate personal referential space, challenging hierarchy, territory, and fidelity of sound. cultural identities are woven through spatial-time zones, overwriting the history of the other. this duality penetrates the projected double-image of identity and destabilizes borders. my practice engages with a range of concepts—from projected visuals and invented languages to experiments in cross-cultural work. interpretations are built and objects are formed from the most accessible materials: a sculpture spun out of poetic verse; bottles transmitting and receiving intermittent and insecure radio frequencies; myriad historical manifestos played in loops in the form of ep vinyl; the negotiation of familial history in the pacific; and the ways that speech and sound can transition into noise, mondegreens, illusions, and then become reinterpreted into music or hybridized languages. my work is an exploration of processed and shuffled information that uncovers meaning in a world of self-journalism, self-documenting, and archiving. today, the general structural notion of “reading” is recalibrated continuously in reinvented languages, truncated communication strategies, aggregate associations, and “readings” between lines, faces, spaces, and the air surrounding us—in them, we continue to interrogate our context in the current world. eight views of the sun setting on the south pacific kio griffith http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 5 4 e i g h t v i e w s o f t h e s u n s e t t i n g o n t h e s o u t h p a c i f i c contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 9, no 1 (2021) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2021.323 figure 1 kio griffith, eight views of the sun setting on the south pacific / castle ruins, 2020. digital collage print on paper. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 5 5 k i o g r i f f i t h contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 9, no 1 (2021) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2021.323 figure 2 kio griffith, eight views of the sun setting on the south pacific / five story pagoda, 2020. digital collage print on paper. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 5 6 e i g h t v i e w s o f t h e s u n s e t t i n g on t h e s o u t h p a c i f i c contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 9, no 1 (2021) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2021.323 figure 3 kio griffith, eight views of the sun setting on the south pacific / ijn shōhō, 2020. digital collage print on paper. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 5 7 k i o g r i f f i t h contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 9, no 1 (2021) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2021.323 figure 4 kio griffith, eight views of the sun setting on the south pacific / operation mo, 2021. digital collage print on paper. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 5 8 e i g h t v i e w s o f t h e s u n s e t t i n g on t h e s o u t h p a c i f i c contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 9, no 1 (2021) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2021.323 figure 5 kio griffith, eight views of the sun setting on the south pacific / rabaul, 2021. digital collage print on paper. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 5 9 k i o g r i f f i t h contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 9, no 1 (2021) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2021.323 figure 6 kio griffith, eight views of the sun setting on the south pacific / bougainville, 2021. digital collage print on paper. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 6 0 e i g h t v i e w s o f t h e s u n s e t t i n g on t h e s o u t h p a c i f i c contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 9, no 1 (2021) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2021.323 figure 7 kio griffith, eight views of the sun setting on the south pacific / the bridge, 2021. digital collage print on paper. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 6 1 k i o g r i f f i t h contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 9, no 1 (2021) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2021.323 figure 8 kio griffith, eight views of the sun setting on the south pacific / whirlpool passage, 2021. digital collage print on paper. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 6 2 e i g h t v i e w s o f t h e s u n s e t t i n g on t h e s o u t h p a c i f i c contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 9, no 1 (2021) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2021.323 new articles in this journal are licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 united states license. this journal is operated by the university library system of the university of pittsburgh as part of its d-scribe digital publishing program, and is co-sponsored by the university of pittsburgh press. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/ http://www.pitt.edu/ http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/ http://www.upress.pitt.edu/upressindex.aspx eight views of the sun setting on the south pacific eight views of the sun setting on the south pacific contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture vol 9, no 1 (2021) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2021.316 http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu questionnaire introduction paula kupfer and jacob eisensmith questionnaire about the authors paula kupfer is an art historian, writer, and editor specialized in the history of photography and modern art in latin america. she is pursuing a phd in the department of the history of art and architecture at the university of pittsburgh, where her research addresses connections between photography, ecology, and the natural and built environment. she was a recent contributor to the volume a world history of women photographers (paris: éditions textuel, 2020). jake eisensmith is a phd candidate in the history of art and architecture at the university of pittsburgh. his research examines trans-cultural interactions during the renaissance in southern italy, with a particular focus on italian response to islamic cultures. his work is primarily concerned with spatio-temporal cultural networks, emphasizing artistic creation in relation to historic and contemporaneous cultures. sites of particular interest include venice and its colonies, naples, sicily, and apulia, and their complex relationship with their own cultural pasts and the ottoman empire and north africa. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 9, no 1 (2021) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2021.316 the impetus for this issue of contemporaneity and the questionnaire section was growing scholarly discussions surrounding the movement of people and objects across time and space, with emphasis on the forms of cross-cultural knowledge that emerge from these mobilizations. however, the concepts of mobility and exchange acquired a decidedly different character after the onset of the covid-19 pandemic in the united states in march 2020. we solicited contributions in february, and by the time texts began coming in a few months later, much had fundamentally shifted. the historic developments of 2020 revealed to us newfound permutations of the notions of mobility and exchange, while surprising us with the ways our own physical and scholarly movement became almost unimaginably restricted. this year, we witnessed the fast spread of a novel coronavirus and the ways it laid bare systemic racism and socioeconomic inequality. as we negotiated our own truncated movement, we came face to face with ever-present questions of who is allowed what kinds of freedom of movement with or without fears of violence or harm. this questionnaire was first conceived as a way to take the temperature of the “state of the field” from those actively participating in the interdisciplinary conversation surrounding mobility and exchange. we sought to learn from researchers across disciplines how these notions—both as research foci and as methodologies—manifested in their work and how they envisioned them shaping future scholarship. we asked them to respond to one or more of the following prompts: • what aspects of the mobility and exchange of people, objects, and ideas manifest most prominently in your work, and how? • how do issues related to mobility and exchange manifest in your academic life and environment? how do they impact your work? if they don’t, why might that be? • have you seen shifts in the ways issues related to mobility and exchange have been addressed in your field over the course of your career? whose scholarship do you look to as a model for its theoretical framework or application? • within your field, where do you see the greatest potential or need for the implementation of concerns related to mobility and exchange? how do you think future scholarship could benefit from considering issues from this vantage? as the deadline for responses grew near, it became apparent that no consideration of research methods could be immune to the daily, embodied experience of 2020. our respondents, a diverse group of academics at the university of pittsburgh, articulated prodding, thoughtful responses that weave a consideration of the scholarly and the quotidian. their reflections are grounded in their research and practice, but reveal how academic projects, regardless of historical era or geography, have stakes for our daily, present reality. they speak simultaneously to urgent contemporary concerns and broad historical interests, while also serving as text-based time capsules of a particular moment in this ever-shifting year. dr. sahar hosseini’s (history of art and architecture, haa) response, rooted in early modern safavid persian architecture, considers issues of center and periphery by thinking about how mobility manifests in the immobile architecture of the city of isfahan during the seventeenth century. hosseini, an architectural historian, tracks the movement of people and ideas between europe and persia, focusing on ritualized movements through space. at the same time, she connects her analysis of seventeenth-century iran to the present day, considering how displacement is visualized in the work of western-trained architects operating in the global south or the foodscapes shaped by immigrant communities in newark, nj. questionnaire introduction paula kupfer and jacob eisensmith http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 3 p a u l a k u p f e r a n d j a c ob e i s e n s m i t h contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 9, no 1 (2021) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2021.316 architectural historian dr. mrinalini rajagopalan (haa) reflects on the intersections of architecture, mobility, class, and gender, asking what the possibilities of mobility are when social restrictions are in place. rajagopalan reflects on the role of a nineteenth-century female patron who enabled religious connections between luso-indian calcutta and the catholic capital of rome despite her own gender-based mobility restrictions. her case study exposes genderand class-based biases that underwrite some of the scholarship on mobility within art and architectural history, while her close analysis of a nineteenth-century british watercolor demonstrates how notions of movement framed the colonialist visual representation of indian locals. moving us into the present, ethnomusicologist dr. lee veeraraghavan (music) discusses the paradoxes of mobility in relation to indigenous communities in canada, whose movement the government desires to limit through forced displacements and reservations, while simultaneously seeking to increase the flow of energy commodities from the very lands in question. through a focus on the aural, veeraraghavan thinks holistically about how vocal and listening practices of indigenous communities have been vital elements in the historic negotiation between indigenous and colonial law, while remaining attentive to the colonialist undertones of certain modes of scholarly research and the academic desire for the free exchange of ideas. our final respondent, artist lindsey french (studio arts), shifts our attention from the mobility of ideas and populations to exchanges among and with the natural world. french expands the framework of communication by focusing on exchange among plants, including their release of airborne chemicals as warning signals. she focuses in particular on marginalized plants such as poison ivy, highlighting how their release of urushiol, the itchinducing allergen, makes humans objects of transmission rather than the subjects of an exchange. using a botanical framework, french meditates on issues of purity as they extend to consideration of the human body and to constructions of whiteness as they are envisioned by white americans. in each of these responses, our contributors offer unique and original perspectives on issues of mobility and exchange, pushing beyond a standard conception of the movement of people and objects, and the exchange of ideas. by troubling the question of who has the ability to move, and how that movement is registered, they prompt us to consider questions of inclusivity and novel methods of identifying historically marginalized communities. by expanding the frame so as to consider exchanges from and between non-human actors, these responses directly address the role of humans in the anthropocene, thereby decentering humans as the principal agents in considerations of mobility and exchange. in doing so, these reflections speak to the unsustainable movement of commodities and the modes in which nature continues to declare its presence despite continued marginalization. we are deeply grateful to our respondents for their thoughtful contributions and to the editors of contemporaneity for their invitation to organize this questionnaire section. we hope that you will find the following responses as thoroughly compelling as we have, as we all continue to anticipate and work toward a time of increased and equitable mobility and exchange. new articles in this journal are licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 united states license. this journal is operated by the university library system of the university of pittsburgh as part of its d-scribe digital publishing program, and is co-sponsored by the university of pittsburgh press. questionnaire introduction questionnaire introduction questionnaire introduction contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture vol 8, no 1 (2019) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2019.291 http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu raphael and the redefinition of art in renaissance italy robert williams christopher j. nygren book review robert williams, raphael and the redefinition of art in renaissance italy. cambridge: cambridge university press, 2017. 314 pp.; 113 b/w ills. hardcover $105.00 (9781107131507) about the author christopher j. nygren is an assistant professor of european art, 1300-1700 at the university of pittsburgh. he received his phd in the history of art from the johns hopkins university in 2011. he has held preand post-doctoral fellowships from the kress foundation, the mellon foundation, the delmas foundation, and the american council of learned societies. his book, titian’s icons: tradition, charisma, and devotion in renaissance italy, will be published by penn state university press in spring 2020. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 8, no 1 (2019) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2019.291 in april 2018, the field of italian renaissance art history was shocked by news of robert williams’s untimely death. williams was a leading figure in the field who spoke with an original voice. he worked intensely at the intersections of critical divides—the chasms between image and text, theory and practice, modernity and its others, to name only a few. williams had been preparing this book on raphael for over a decade. in that time, raphael became the battleground on which most claims about the modernity (or non-modernity) of the renaissance are contested. declarations of raphael’s modernity have been made since the sixteenth century. but following the publication of hans belting’s likeness and presence: a history of the image before the era of art (german edition 1990, english translation, chicago university press, 1994), raphael seems to have been certified as the fulcrum on which pivot the majority of art historical accounts tracing the genealogy of artistic modernity. raphael is the culminating figure in alexander nagel and christopher wood’s anachronic renaissance (zone, 2010), which presents his stanza della segnatura as “the break that marks the advent of a ‘modern’ art” (anachronic renaissance, 355). williams’s book may be thought of as a thorough-going response to the claims made by such scholars on behalf of raphael (although it is worth noting that anachronic renaissance is not cited in williams’s study of raphael). for williams, the modernity of raphael’s art, such as it is, should not be sought in its secularization (belting) or as resulting from a crisis of faith in painting’s ability to transmit meaning (nagel and wood). rather, his modernity resides in the way that he and his workshop fundamentally reorganized and reoriented the practice of painting. labor, not crisis, is the key term. within this context, williams’s book is both monumental and important; it will earn the respect of specialists within the field. it also merits consideration from scholars beyond the field of renaissance art history. at the core of raphael and the redefinition of art in renaissance italy is a bold claim regarding not only the practice of renaissance art history, but also how the discipline of art history is subjected to the conditions of modernity. williams stakes this claim early when he asserts that “modernism has obscured just how modern raphael was,” continuing to note that “our understanding of modernity – that is, of ourselves – is incomplete until we correct this situation” (1). as the book unfolds, it becomes clear that williams is not using early modern sources simply to reconstruct the details of raphael’s career (indeed, williams is scrupulous in pointing out where and how the primary sources are inaccurate). instead, he examines the descriptions of raphael’s contribution in order to reveal how the art world was undergoing fundamental transformations around 1500. the task he set himself is to show how raphael and his workshop transformed the practice of painting. as raphael’s workshop grew and the master developed a systematic approach to representation that relied on the collective efforts of numerous painters with specialized areas of expertise, intellectual labor and physical labor became enmeshed. from his close reading of primary sources, williams excavates the reorientation of labor practices as one of the primary elements of note in the early lives of the artist as well as one of the constituent features of raphael’s modernity. the book develops over three chapters, each dedicated to revising a key concept. the first chapter focuses, in a word, on style. giorgio vasari observed that raphael radically transformed the style of painting: in what did this transformation consist? in offering a critical reassessment of vasari’s claims, williams makes clear that “style” is not reducible to ductus, or how the painter applies pigment to a surface. rather, style concerns another key concept: imitation. williams suggests that raphael developed a form of critical imitation that allowed the artist to integrate the divergent styles of his contemporaries into a single “synthetic” style that superseded its predecessors. this was, in williams’s account, a monumental achievement in abstract rationality: “vasari’s account suggests that raphael’s achievement was to have created a specifically supra-regional, transnational style, and that its specifically transnational raphael and the redefinition of art in renaissance italy robert williams christopher j. nygren http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 1 2 5 c h r i s t o p he r j . n y g r e n contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 8, no 1 (2019) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2019.291 or ‘universal’ quality was part of what was felt to make it modern” (7). in williams’s account, raphael engaged in a self-conscious recalibration of his style, and the historically informed nature of raphael’s reorientation distinguishes it as a founding moment in modern subjectivity. chapter two presents decorum as the framework over which raphael’s systematic approach to representation was constructed. according to williams, decorum is not a force of constraint but rather a philosophical and rhetorical concept capable of unveiling the essence of things. williams is aware that this might be a hard sell: “as the heirs to modernism, we have a very hard time conceiving of decorum as anything but a repressive idea. for us [moderns], it is the principle that compels art to follow social norms, to reinforce stereotypes; it is the principle of censorship, the very antithesis of creativity” (9). however, for those steeped in pre-modern rhetorical theory, williams’s reorientation of the term will be familiar: in classical rhetoric, tailoring language to an occasion was not a constraint but rather a spur to thinking in the subjunctive mode—about what might be the case. decorum forces the consideration of possibilities other than those that exist in the current state of affairs, whether this be in the depiction of historical episodes (how did people dress at the time of attila’s march on rome?), the suspension of natural laws (what does it look like when god intervenes in the natural world?), or any number of other historical contingencies. redescribing raphael’s art as an exploration of decorousness (in the rhetorical rather than normative sense) effectively transforms it into an exploration of potentiality rather than actuality. the upshot is that our understanding of raphael’s art is transposed from style in search of “naturalism” (however defined) to something that is probative, examining in different idioms—portraiture, sacred narrative, devotional images, for instance—where expressive potential and truth may be found. labor is at the heart of the third chapter, which seeks to understand the development of raphael’s workshop as a response to the changing character of the economy circa 1500. raphael and his team were subject to market forces not unlike those seen in the contemporary economy: the decreasing power of guilds (unions) resulted in a generalized anxiety for young artists; advances in technology allowed a select few artists to exert quasi-monopolistic power over entire regions, forcing their peers to become more migratory, chasing what little work remained; and patrons became less interested in painting as a product of manual labor and more interested in it as a commodity to be collected. this chapter is exemplary in how it reintegrates narrowly focused studies of economic history into the history and theory of early modern art. more than anywhere else in the book, williams here reveals his ethical and intellectual commitments with vigor and clarity. despite his admiration for long, periodic sentences, the prose remains forceful and cutting. williams’s account of raphael is stimulating and challenging. rather than being principally concerned with the rise of naturalism, he believes that the distinctive achievement of the renaissance rests on the twin ideas of discursivity and decorum. these are complex and abstract notions, the stakes of which are elaborated in a thorough introduction and a brief conclusion. in these chapters, williams develops his argument through an attentive reading of early modern sources, demonstrating that authors like vasari, giovanni battista armenini, and giovanni paolo lomazzo (among many others) understood the achievement of renaissance art to reside in its philosophical engagements. how can painting—an obviously fictive art— probe the depths of truth? if modern thinkers like john ruskin and martin heidegger offer one account that seems, in the first instance, to preclude renaissance art from engaging with deeper truths because it is predicated on illusionism, williams reads primary sources against the grain to reveal how renaissance art probed the depths of philosophical concepts like truth and potentiality. this is an ambitious line of argument that many outside the field of renaissance studies may feel is inflating the period precisely at the moment when its star is finally receding over the horizon. this pushback is welcome. this book is not an exercise in resuscitating the cult of genius that later attached to raphael and his contemporaries. by the same token, williams believes that merely decrying the cult of genius is not sufficient. rather than praise raphael, this book looks to elucidate how, through his engagement with http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 1 2 6 r ap h ae l a nd t h e r e d e f i n i t i o n o f a r t i n r e n a i s s a n c e i t a l y contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 8, no 1 (2019) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2019.291 discursivity and decorum, raphael produced art that has philosophical stakes beyond its aesthetic appeal. these stakes, for williams, place raphael firmly on this side of modernity. through his ingenious mode of argumentation, williams anticipates the objections of many readers and in doing so reveals yet another illusion of modernism. he insists that the renaissance understood art as a mode of inquiry into being-in-the-world; modernity stakes its own uniqueness on refusing to grant art of earlier periods that mandate. for williams, such chauvinism must be resisted. williams put incredible work into the scholarly apparatus for this volume. the footnotes (rather than endnotes, hallelujah!) are a veritable wellspring of insight. cambridge university press should be commended for including original language citations in the footnotes: lengthy passages of italian, latin, and german (among others) allow scrupulous readers to confront their reading of the primary sources against williams’s honorable translations. the layout of the pages is handsome and includes illustrations of most of the images discussed in the text. however, all illustrations are in black-and-white. in an era when hd color images are accessible online, this is understandable. but with exclusively b/w illustrations, one would hope to see a lower sticker price ($105.00!). regardless, this is an important volume and one that will make williams’s voice heard for generations to come. new articles in this journal are licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 united states license. this journal is operated by the university library system of the university of pittsburgh as part of its d-scribe digital publishing program, and is co-sponsored by the university of pittsburgh press. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/ http://www.pitt.edu/ http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/ http://www.upress.pitt.edu/upressindex.aspx http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ raphael and the redefinition of art in renaissance italy robert williams raphael and the redefinition of art in renaissance italy robert williams contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture vol 7, no 1 (2018) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2018.260 http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu “an imagined border of safety, humanitarian relief, and creativity” j. m. design studio’s other border wall project nicole f. scalissi abstract in april 2017, j. m. design studio—three pittsburgh-based artists and designers—responded to the customs and border protection's public request for proposals for a wall along the u.s.mexico border. j. m. design studio then announced its own call for more border "wall" proposals from other artists. the following commentary details these prototype concepts and tracks the executive policies and rhetoric that established a foundation for the border wall. this commentary also shows how j. m. design studio’s prototype submission and the subsequent artistic platform it initiated model how creative connection and the co-option of established public channels are themselves acts of political resistance in an era of disrupted democratic participation and ossified partisanship. about the author nicole f. scalissi's research focuses on art produced in the united states since the 1970s that stages, performs, or fakes violence against marginalized communities as a means to call attention to the disproportionate and real violence committed against women and people of color in the united states. nicole completed her master’s degree at penn state with a qualifying paper on andy warhol’s early career 3d-style paintings that depicted a 1950s “lady” wrestler and the specific challenges that her untraditional femininity presented to gender categories in the cold war popular context. she is a doctoral candidate in the history of art & architecture at the university of pittsburgh. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 6 n i c o l e f . s c a l i s s i contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 7, no 1 (2018) | issn 2153-5194 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2018.260 from the earliest public moments of his presidential aspirations, donald trump conjured an image of the united states under attack by mexico, describing the border as a dangerously porous zone through which drugs, crime, and “rapists” from the lawless south slip into the peaceable north, threatening the public safety, national security, and economic supremacy of the united states.1 in his announcement of his run for president in june 2015, trump made the pledge that would become the figurative and literal symbol of the “america first” isolationism at the heart of his future administration: “i would build a great wall, and nobody builds walls better than me, believe me, and i’ll build them very inexpensively, i will build a great, great wall on our southern border. and i will have mexico pay for that wall. mark my words.”2 figure 1 detail from j.m. design studio, “prototype #3 a wall of artists redrawing borders” from the other border wall proposals (2017). digital scanned image of ink drawing on paper, text. 8 ½ x 11 inches. collection of j. m. design studio. in the first days of his administration, trump began to make good on his campaign promise by setting the wall’s foundation in executive order #13767, “border security and immigration 1 time magazine staff, “here’s donald trump’s presidential announcement speech,” time magazine, june 16, 2015, http://time.com/3923128/donald-trump-announcement-speech/ 2 ibid. “an imagined border of safety, humanitarian relief, and creativity” j.m. design studio’s other border wall project nicole f. scalissi http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ http://time.com/3923128/donald-trump-announcement-speech/ 7 n i c o l e f . s c a l i s s i contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 7, no 1 (2018) | issn 2153-5194 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2018.260 enforcement improvements,” which established policies to “secure the southern border . . . through the immediate construction of a physical wall,” and detain then “remove promptly” individuals found to be in violation of state or federal immigration laws. eo #13767—his third since taking office just five days earlier—further mandated hiring five thousand additional border patrol agents, conscripted local law enforcement into performing the “functions of an immigration officer,” and—in a vague and mean-spirited section 11—tamped down on the “abuse of parole and asylum provisions currently used to prevent the lawful removal of removable aliens.”3 despite the republican party’s longstanding criticism of the previous administration’s issuance of executive orders as “overreach”4—not to mention trump’s own statements that president barack obama’s executive orders were “major power grabs of authority”—trump’s immediate use of the executive order was positively received by the republican party, and his action allowed for swift changes to law enforcement practices at the border without the approval of congress or the american people.5 “a contiguous, physical wall or other similarly secure…impassable physical barrier” over the following weeks—during which the futures of the recipients of deferred action for childhood arrivals (daca), known as “dreamers,” were held hostage as trump bargained their citizenship for funding for the wall; the government temporarily shut down; and trump became embroiled in emerging scandals related to affairs with adult entertainment stars—the secretary of homeland security began the logistical process of wall-building. as the opposition took up signs saying, “build bridges, not walls” to protest the administration’s early actions on immigration and travel bans, the u.s. customs and border protection (cbp) began publicly promoting its pro-wall vision. in the video walls work, which became the agency’s refrain,6 border patrol agent s. lubin (who, as a legibly african american woman, represents two groups significantly underrepresented in the cbp)7 describes how existing sections of “border barriers” have “made a world of difference.” at the barriers, she claims, “apprehensions” 3 “executive order: border security and immigration enforcement improvements,” the white house, january 27, 2017, https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/executive-order-border-securityimmigration-enforcement-improvements/ 4 in response to president barack obama’s november 2014 executive action on immigration policy, then– chairman of the republican national committee, reince priebus, released a statement: “the constitution does not grant the president the power to act as a one-man legislature when he disagrees with congress and with voters. the last time the president issued a politically motivated executive order to change our immigration laws, he precipitated a crisis at our border, leaving thousands of children at risk and ripping apart the families he claims to want to protect. granting amnesty does not secure our borders.” “statement on president obama’s executive overreach,” republican national committee website, november 20, 2014, https://www.gop.com/rnc-statement-on-president-obamas-executive-overreach/? 5 for an accounting of trump’s early use of eos and collection of his statements on eos, see christopher ingraham, “six times trump said executive orders were bad before he decided they were actually good,” wonkblog at the washington post, april 25, 2017, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/04/25/six-times-trump-said-executive-orderswere-bad-before-he-decided-they-were-actually-good/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.29ea84067bda 6 in his march 30, 2018, briefing, acting deputy commissioner ronald vitielllo reiterated the cbp’s support of the project: “walls work and agents know it.” see “u.s. customs and border protection briefing,” cspan, video 19:42 (quote at 4:40), https://www.c-span.org/video/?443273-1/border-protection-officialbriefs-construction-wall&start=157; walls work, u.s. customs and border protection website, march 7, 2017, https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/video-gallery/video-library/walls-work 7 lubin identifies herself as a border patrol agent in walls work. according to the most recent workplace demographics of the cbp, “females represent 5.0% of bpas . . . black or african americans represent 1.9% of bpas.” no statistics track two identifiers (such as agents who are both female and black/african american. office of the commissioner privacy and diversity office fy 2013 annual report, 18, https://www.cbp.gov/sites/default/files/documents/pdo-fy13.pdf http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/executive-order-border-security-immigration-enforcement-improvements/ https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/executive-order-border-security-immigration-enforcement-improvements/ https://www.gop.com/rnc-statement-on-president-obamas-executive-overreach/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/04/25/six-times-trump-said-executive-orders-were-bad-before-he-decided-they-were-actually-good/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.29ea84067bda https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/04/25/six-times-trump-said-executive-orders-were-bad-before-he-decided-they-were-actually-good/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.29ea84067bda https://www.c-span.org/video/?443273-1/border-protection-official-briefs-construction-wall&start=157 https://www.c-span.org/video/?443273-1/border-protection-official-briefs-construction-wall&start=157 https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/video-gallery/video-library/walls-work https://www.cbp.gov/sites/default/files/documents/pdo-fy13.pdf 8 n i c o l e f . s c a l i s s i contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 7, no 1 (2018) | issn 2153-5194 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2018.260 dropped by 87 percent, “natural habitats damaged by illegal migration” recovered, and “neighborhoods and businesses replaced what was once lawless wasteland.” in short, she tells us, “walls do work” (figs. 2 and 3).8 figure 2 & 3 screenshots by author from walls work video. u.s. customs and border protection website. march 7, 2017. https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/video-gallery/video-library/walls-work. ten days later, on march 17, the cbp issued two requests for proposals (rfp) to the public for “the design and construction of a . . . wall prototype and various miles of border wall along the southwest border,” from san diego, ca, to brownsville, tx. the first, rfp hsbp1017r0022, solicited offers for a “solid concrete prototype.” the second, rfp hsbp1017r0023, or “other border wall prototype,” sought proposals for a wall constructed of other materials. the solicitations mandated nearly the same requirements for either prototype, including that the “other border wall” • “shall be physically imposing in height,” ideally 30-feet tall but no less than 18-feet • “shall not be possible for a human to climb” • “shall prevent, for at least 30 minutes, a physical breach of the wall by pick-axe, chisel, oxy/acetylene torch, etc.” • “the north side of wall (i.e. u.s. facing side) shall be aesthetically pleasing in color, anticlimb texture, etc., to be consistent with general surrounding environment” • “incorporating a see-through component/capability to the wall that facilitates situational awareness but does not negate the requirements listed above is operationally advantageous.”9 8 the secure fences act of 2006 was signed by president george w. bush in october 2016, and mandated “systematic surveillance” of u.s. land and maritime borders through technology, manpower, and several sections of physical barriers extending miles on either side of ports of entry in ca, az, nm, and tx. see https://www.congress.gov/109/plaws/publ367/plaw-109publ367.pdf transcript of walls work can be found here: https://www.cbp.gov/video/opa/cbp-walls-work.srt 9 “other border wall rfp,” federal business opportunities website, https://www.fbo.gov/index?s=opportunity&mode=form&id=db624ab3e7356ff358bbf40cdde5c721&tab=co re&_cview=1, page 2 of “attachment #1 sow” in hsbp1017r0023 document. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/video-gallery/video-library/walls-work https://www.congress.gov/109/plaws/publ367/plaw-109publ367.pdf https://www.cbp.gov/video/opa/cbp-walls-work.srt https://www.fbo.gov/index?s=opportunity&mode=form&id=db624ab3e7356ff358bbf40cdde5c721&tab=core&_cview=1 https://www.fbo.gov/index?s=opportunity&mode=form&id=db624ab3e7356ff358bbf40cdde5c721&tab=core&_cview=1 9 n i c o l e f . s c a l i s s i contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 7, no 1 (2018) | issn 2153-5194 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2018.260 the guidelines for the “other border wall” rfp also stipulated “fully developed drawings, details or specifications are not desired or required,” allowing the designers some flexibility in approaching their prototypes.10 along with supplying prototype images, all applicants or “offerors” were required to demonstrate, as part of their submission, their qualifications in terms of experience with large-scale projects and competence to bring the design into fruition. in april 2017, three pittsburgh-based artists and designers—jennifer meridian, leah patgorski, and tereneh idia—did just that, submitting their qualifications as “designers, artists, and creatives” under the name j. m. design studio, along with six prototype concepts, to the “other border wall” rfp (figs. 1, 4–8).11 in some illustrations, reproduced here, j. m. design studio deployed whimsicality as opposition, following the cbp’s guideline of reaching an “physically imposing” height, but doing so with massive pipe organs or white pine trees, which support a two thousand–mile line of hammocks strung from their thirty-foot trunks (figs. 4 and 5). other prototypes make the danger of a restricted border zone explicit: a “wall” comprising a million gravestones becomes a dotted line between the countries, a memorial to the migrants and refugees who have died trying to cross. or, with hope toward preventing similar deaths, the artists proposed a bastion of lighthouses to guide travelers through the “inhospitable” desert toward safety (figs. 6 and 7). beyond satire and the knowing implausibility of their proposals, j.m. design studio’s drawings are embedded with a radical reconceptualization of the border as something other than a barrier—ductile, bi-nationally lucrative, and resonsive to the shifting needs of the environment and its transnational community. “a wall of clean water” for example, literalizes their optimism for a “fluid border” by offering an oasis and refuge to travelers in the deserts of both nations (fig. 8), while “a wall of artists redrawing borders” shows the border to be based in imagination and, ultimately, arbitrary, negotiable, and propositional at best when confronted in real, physical space (fig. 9). 10 hsbp1017r0023, 39. 11 see j. m. design studio’s full proposal, https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5a28a74fa9db09d65c2b097f/t/5a5436b453450a6b369cfab1/1515 468469699/jmdesign-studiorfphsbp1017r0023phase1.pdf http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5a28a74fa9db09d65c2b097f/t/5a5436b453450a6b369cfab1/1515468469699/jmdesign-studiorfphsbp1017r0023phase1.pdf https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5a28a74fa9db09d65c2b097f/t/5a5436b453450a6b369cfab1/1515468469699/jmdesign-studiorfphsbp1017r0023phase1.pdf 1 0 n i c o l e f . s c a l i s s i contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 7, no 1 (2018) | issn 2153-5194 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2018.260 figure 4 j. m. design studio, “prototype #2 a wall of pipe organs” from the other border wall proposals (2017). digital scanned image of ink drawing on paper, text. 8 ½ x 11 inches. collection of j. m. design studio. figure 5 j. m. design studio, “prototype #1 a wall of hammocks” from the other border wall proposals (2017). digital scanned image of ink drawing on paper, text. 8 ½ x 11 inches. collection of j. m. design studio. prototype #2 a wall of pipe organs _________________ a semi-continuous wall of nearly 10 million pipe organs, in a line that follows the entire border. for the most part, these stand at approximately 30’ high. every 20’ there is a opening, like an archway, which enables people from either side to walk through but not before sitting down to play a quick (or long) tune on the organ. this is a wall of music, and the only requirement is that every person who passes through must spend at least two minutes playing the organs. prototype #1 a wall of hammocks _________________ a continuous wall of nearly 3 million hammocks, strung together across the entire border with 30’ western white pines between them for support. this is the tree of peace. these hammocks are available for anyone’s use as a place to rest, relax, and dream. as a place to take refuge, recuperate, and move between the two countries with an ease usually only felt when on vacation. we envision this wall as a place of restoration, beauty, and friendship that celebrates, and advocates for, human rights and the end of prosecution for refugees fleeing oppressive and violent regimes. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 1 1 n i c o l e f . s c a l i s s i contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 7, no 1 (2018) | issn 2153-5194 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2018.260 figure 6 j. m. design studio, “prototype #4 a wall of gravestones for migrants and refugees (memorial to asylum)” from the other border wall proposals (2017). digital scanned image of ink drawing on paper, text. 8 ½ x 11 inches. collection of j. m. design studio. figure 7 j. m. design studio, “prototype #5 a wall of lighthouses for the border” from the other border wall proposals (2017). digital scanned image of ink drawing on paper, text. 8 ½ x 11 inches. collection of j. m. design studio. prototype #5 a wall of lighthouses for the border _________________ we consider the border between mexico and the united states a kind of terrifying, dangerous, and inhospitable place as it now stands today. it is much like the coast of a rugged, wild ocean that is covered in giant boulders. we propose to line the entire border with colorful, functional, and beautiful lighthouses. these are no ordinary lighthouses, they are lighthouses for the desert they are meant to provide the safe guidance and benevolence to all who see them in their dangerous journeys and travels. these lighthouses will stand 30’ in the air, as the wall has specified, and be painted in all manner of wonderful colors. the lights themselves will run on solar power, and the people who are the lighthouse keepers will be the refugees themselves who have had training to do this work. therefore this wall is a form of employment, beauty, and functionality. these are the major ideas we like to stress in our design work. prototype #4 a wall of gravestones for migrants and refugees (memorial to asylum) _________________ a collection of nearly 1 million gravestones will follow the entire border of the united states and mexico. these will be simple gravestones, made out of available local stones, and the names on them will reflect those who have died trying to cross this border and all borders throughout the world in their quest for survival. these gravestones can be imagined towering 30’ into the air, as the wall proposal specifies, by considering the ghosts of these incredibly strong, valiant, and brave human beings hovering just above each of the graves 30’ high into the air. there they billow like sails, if you can only pause for a moment to consider the danger, terror, and horror they must have faced in trying to cross. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 1 2 n i c o l e f . s c a l i s s i contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 7, no 1 (2018) | issn 2153-5194 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2018.260 figure 8 j. m. design studio, “prototype #6 a wall of clean water” from the other border wall proposals (2017). digital scanned image of ink drawing on paper, text. 8 ½ x 11 inches. collection of j. m. design studio. figure 9 j. m. design studio, “prototype #3 a wall of artists redrawing border walls” from the other border wall proposals (2017). digital scanned image of ink drawing on paper, text. 8 ½ x 11 inches. collection of j. m. design studio. prototype #6 a wall of clean water _________________ imagine a wall of clean water along the us/mexico border. this will provide respite, relief, nourishment, and a moment of relaxation to anyone who has just spent a series of terrifying days in the harsh, inhospitable desert that flanks the border. this wall belongs to everyone, of all ages. it is a welcoming sign from the us, and a welcoming sign from mexico. it is a fluid wall, and signals a new era where borders are fluid, designed for a functionality that increases overall human well being and kindness. the water will be sourced from the pacific and through a sophisticated desalination process, be clean enough to drink as it winds easily through the wall. this prototype embodies much of what our design studio aims to achieve. prototype #3 a wall of artists redrawing borders _________________ where the border between mexico and the united states currently exists, we propose to hire artists from mexico and the us to redraw the border. in this proposal, the wall is human beings who draw directly onto the earth with a variety of interesting, non-toxic, colorful materials. we estimate there would be between 5-10,000 artists needed for this proposal. this provides stable income to many artists who are having a very difficult time right now making a living, as well as create a new attitude that advocates for the essential re-questioning of what borders mean and how they were formed initially. we would like to see this implemented at every border around the world. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 1 3 n i c o l e f . s c a l i s s i contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 7, no 1 (2018) | issn 2153-5194 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2018.260 their submissions were reported by national news outlets that recognized the prototypes as protest, sometimes comparing their deliberate absurdity to the unintentionally absurd concepts submitted in earnest by actual contractors—such as the wall compound comprising a thirty-foot wall, a chain-link fence, motion sensors, a one hundred–foot deep trench lined with “holding cells for nuclear waste processing,” and working train tracks, proposed by the clayton company, also based in the pittsburgh area.12 from more than four hundred submissions, the cbp selected eight prototypes to be constructed, at tax-payer expense, in the san diego border community of otay mesa in the fall of 2017. (unfortunately, j. m. design studio was not among them.) other border visions in its commitment to continued resistance, j. m. design studio distributed its own request for designs online in january 2018, “other border wall project: how to build a non-wall.” the collective sought “visions for the border between mexico and the united states as a site of connection, creativity, and humanitarian support . . . signaling possibilities for what the future of walls, and borders, can become” as a means to “dismantle the view of the border as a fortified, insurmountable, and destructive barrier.”13 its public solicitation created a platform for connection and an opportunity not just to think critically and creatively about trump’s order and the practicalities of such a wall (price and at whose cost, impact on border cities’ environment and families, etc.) but also for reconceptualizing “borders” and “walls” in the first place, calling for others to imagine new possibilities for these zones where neighbors meet. the call yielded both ludic pitches that met the folly of cbp’s solicitation with farce as well as rich meditations of a transnationalist future beyond current u.s. isolationism. the collective received more than fifty submissions, a selection of which is reproduced here. many had read the cbp/trump’s original call as bizarre and performative, responding in kind with jocular “designs” such as sofia caetano’s the border collie wall, a herd of collies lined up and sitting at attention, perhaps facing south (figs. 10 and 11). the porcelain poodle patrol looks and sounds no more menacing; each pup in the single-file line of glossy bubblegum-pink poodles sits alert with one fluffy paw raised, not a “halt!” so much as performing “shake” in hopes of a treat. figure 10 & 11 sofia caetano, the border collie wall and porcelain poodle patrol (2018), digital renderings for other border wall project: how to build a non-wall, 2017. 12 for a description of the clayton proposal, see anya litvak and chris potter, “local firm envisions a nuclear-waste moat for trump’s border wall,” pittsburgh post gazette, april 8, 2017, http://www.postgazette.com/local/north/2017/04/08/local-firm-envisions-a-nuclear-waste-moat-for-trump-s-borderwall/stories/201704080097. j. m. design studio’s submission was covered by national public radio, the wall street journal, slate, and others. see http://jennifermeridianstudio.com/press/ 13 from j. m. studio’s request for designs. see https://www.otherborderwallproject.com http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ http://www.post-gazette.com/local/north/2017/04/08/local-firm-envisions-a-nuclear-waste-moat-for-trump-s-border-wall/stories/201704080097 http://www.post-gazette.com/local/north/2017/04/08/local-firm-envisions-a-nuclear-waste-moat-for-trump-s-border-wall/stories/201704080097 http://www.post-gazette.com/local/north/2017/04/08/local-firm-envisions-a-nuclear-waste-moat-for-trump-s-border-wall/stories/201704080097 http://jennifermeridianstudio.com/press/ https://www.otherborderwallproject.com/ 1 4 n i c o l e f . s c a l i s s i contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 7, no 1 (2018) | issn 2153-5194 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2018.260 susanne slavick’s “other border wall” is more properly a row of gateways that entices border crossings, and perhaps re-crossings, with its sensual feather turnstiles. others reenvisioned the border as a junction, a useful space for exchange and bread-breaking, such as barton schindel’s food booth wall or emma brown’s two-thousand-mile double-sided banquet, which reminds us that the united states and mexico are in a permanent contiguous relationship with the neighborly advice: “build a longer table, not a higher fence” (fig. 12). others recharged the wall with literal humanity, suggesting that people stand along the border or that the wall itself be made flesh, a soft but eerie membrane. figure 12 emma brown, border table (2018), watercolor paintings for other border wall project: how to build a nonwall. some artists took direct aim at trump and the “alternative facts” on which his administration has based itself. the app expo group proposed the appglass™ augmented reality border wall, an awkward glass cone that, when worn over the head while facing the “general direction of mexico,” shows the wearer “an alternatively factual wall in your own unique reality,” constructing the wall only as figment in one’s (i.e., trump’s) imagination (fig. 13).14 figure 13 the app expo, appglass™ augmented reality border wall (2018) digital rendering for other border wall project: how to build a non-wall. 14 counselor to the president kellyanne conway used the phrase on nbc’s meet the press as she disputed host chuck todd that press secretary sean spicer had lied and inflated the crowd size at the 2017 presidential inauguration: “don’t be so overly dramatic about it, chuck. what you’re saying, it's a falsehood. . . sean spicer, our press secretary, gave alternative facts to that [estimated inaugural crowd size].” see transcript of meet the press, january 22, 2017, nbcnews.com, january 22, 2017, https://www.nbcnews.com/meet-the-press/meet-press-01-22-17-n710491 st ep 1: put on your appgl ass™ st ep 2: look i n t he gener al di r ect i on of mexi co st ep 3: see an al t er nat i vel y f act ual wal l i n your own uni que r eal i t y http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ https://www.nbcnews.com/meet-the-press/meet-press-01-22-17-n710491 1 5 n i c o l e f . s c a l i s s i contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 7, no 1 (2018) | issn 2153-5194 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2018.260 beyond levity and sly critique, many submissions proposed a new ecology at the border, critically thinking through the “other border wall” as a bi-national site responsive to the pressing issues of environmental and economic sustainability in the context of a globalized economy and hastening climate change. helen cardona, for example, proposes a “fluctuating border” that shifts along, and sometimes over, the meandering rio grande. by redeveloping the existing border barriers with retractable fencing and renewable energy production capabilities, cardona’s plan envisions an “infrastructure that leads to healthy environments, social equity, and sustainable economies” on both sides of the border (figs. 14–16). figure 14-16 details from helen cardona, fluctuating border (2018), digital rendering for other border wall project: how to build a non-wall in addition to its online archive and social media presence, j. m. design studio presented the other border wall project to the public in an early 2018 exhibition at the flatland gallery in houston, texas. the original six prototype sketches and the dozens of submissions it had received for phase 2 how to build a non-wall were on view, alongside an array of maps showing the different ways the border has been drawn over the years, a new large-scale chalk drawing by meridian that referenced the current narratives at play, and an interactive installation that invited visitors to draw their own “other border wall” proposal and post them to the exhibition wall.15 at the time of this publication, j. m. design studio is in the process of finalizing phase 2 (which officially ran from january 1 to may 31, 2018), which includes a published book of selections and highlights from both phase 1 and 2, a limited edition poetry broadsheet collaboration, and the preliminary plans for phase 3.16 additionally, they plan to indefinitely extend the open call process for the public to submit its ideas for alternate border visions. the collective remains committed to keeping in step with the trump administration’s ongoing general anti-mexico agitation, such as nafta-breaking trade restrictions and high tariffs and the crisis of reuniting children separated from their parents 15 jennifer meridian, email message to author, june 5, 2018. 16 the collaboration resulted in a limited edition broadsheet of the poem “the wall” by poet anita endrezze, https://www.otherborderwallproject.com/broadsides-for-sale/ http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ https://www.otherborderwallproject.com/broadsides-for-sale/ 1 6 n i c o l e f . s c a l i s s i contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 7, no 1 (2018) | issn 2153-5194 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2018.260 upon entering the united states seeking asylum (a crossing that does not constitute breaking the law).17 simply by keeping the phase 2 call active so that “that anyone can continue to submit ideas . . . if it helps them to process and make sense” of the administration’s ideology and policies, j. m. design studio extends the project and models yet more ways to work against the wall and its divisive function by creating opportunities for potential collaboration and opening up the lines for extended connection. in an era of disrupted political participation since the weakening of the voting rights act in 2013,18 foreign influence in the 2016 general election,19 the increased exercise of unilateral presidential power through the executive order function as well as the failure of social media to allow for democratic access to public participation,20 the other border wall: how to build a non wall is not only a model for artistic dissent, contribution, and discussion but also a refuge of creative connectivity in a time of contested civic engagement. perhaps more important, the other border wall project models to citizens and artists a powerful and productive way to resist by using the ideological circuitry of this—or any other—administration. new articles in this journal are licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 united states license. this journal is operated by the university library system of the university of pittsburgh as part of its d-scribe digital publishing program, and is co-sponsored by the university of pittsburgh press. 17 brian naylor, “trump administration imposes steel, aluminum tariffs on eu, canada, and mexico,” npr online, may 31, 2018, https://www.npr.org/2018/05/31/615753031/trump-administration-imposes-steelaluminum-tariffs-on-eu-canada-and-mexico 18 by supreme court decision, states would be allowed to change their election laws and procedures such as enact voter identification laws, move or eliminate polling locations, and draw redistricting maps without advance federal approval. adam liptak, “supreme court invalidates key part of voting rights act,” new york times, june 25, 2013, https://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/26/us/supreme-court-ruling.html 19 a january 2017 report from the office of the director of national intelligence assesses that “russian president vladimir putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the us presidential election. russia’s goals were to undermine public faith in the us democratic process, denigrate secretary clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency. we further assess putin and the russian government developed a clear preference for president-elect trump.” see assessing russian activities and intentions in recent us elections, january 6, 2017, https://www.dni.gov/files/documents/ica_2017_01.pdf 20 facebook’s privacy and communication procedures came into question when it became public that they had allowed the firm cambridge analytica, associated with the trump election campaign, to harvest user data. see michael riley, sarah frier, and stephanie baker, “understanding the facebook-cambridge analytica story: quicktake,” the washington post, april 11, 2017, https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/understanding-the-facebook-cambridge-analytica-storyquicktake/2018/04/11/071f8c84-3d97-11e8-955b-7d2e19b79966_story.html?utm_term=.5d9df284fa69 http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/ http://www.pitt.edu/ http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/ http://www.upress.pitt.edu/upressindex.aspx https://www.npr.org/2018/05/31/615753031/trump-administration-imposes-steel-aluminum-tariffs-on-eu-canada-and-mexico https://www.npr.org/2018/05/31/615753031/trump-administration-imposes-steel-aluminum-tariffs-on-eu-canada-and-mexico https://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/26/us/supreme-court-ruling.html https://www.dni.gov/files/documents/ica_2017_01.pdf https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/understanding-the-facebook-cambridge-analytica-story-quicktake/2018/04/11/071f8c84-3d97-11e8-955b-7d2e19b79966_story.html?utm_term=.5d9df284fa69 https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/understanding-the-facebook-cambridge-analytica-story-quicktake/2018/04/11/071f8c84-3d97-11e8-955b-7d2e19b79966_story.html?utm_term=.5d9df284fa69 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ “an imagined border of safety, humanitarian relief, and creativity” contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture vol 7, no 1 (2018) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2018.255 http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu football nick simko about the artist nick simko is an artist based in albuquerque, new mexico. simko’s practice utilizes figurative imagery to navigate cultural processes of identity formation. simko’s work has been exhibited at museums and galleries throughout the united states, including the vizcaya museum and gardens in miami, the walters art museum in baltimore, the university of new mexico art museum in albuquerque, the tyler school of art at temple university in philadelphia, colorado photographic arts center in denver, and hillyer arts space in washington, dc. in 2018, simko was one of two artists selected for the exceptional visual scholars program at the sanitary tortilla factory in albuquerque. simko is a 2018 recipient of the van deren coke fellowship in photography from the university of new mexico. simko holds an mfa in photography from the university of new mexico as well as a bfa in art history, theory, and criticism from the maryland institute college of art. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 7, no 1 (2018) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2018.255 football addresses cultural categories of identity in the context of contemporary portraiture. i started this body of work in 2015 by shooting thousands of photographs of college football players during live sports events. my dad, who guided me in where to get the best shots, was especially delighted, having once been the sports photographer at west point. i attended football games for three seasons, sitting in the stands and using a 400-millimeter lens to photograph the many figures involved in the spectacle. at the same time i was photographing flora in the studio, and it wasn’t until later that i saw that these archives both addressed issues of categorization and naturalness essential to my current practice. in my research, i had been considering the expectations bestowed upon artists who have specific marks of identity, and how their work is expected to authenticate their experience: women should represent their gender, people of color should represent their race, and queer folk should represent their desire. i wanted to problematize this equation by articulating the formation that often privileges itself as the transparent, rectilinear frame through which american culture is often perceived. with this in mind, i selected normative, white, male figures from my archive and extracted them from the din of the football field. each figure is resituated amid an array of wild flowers, and their uniforms have an unexpected, garish team color. these digital composites are printed at life-size and use a visual vocabulary that hovers between the presumed reality of lens-based photography and the presumed fantasy of digital painting. depending upon one’s physical proximity to the printed pieces, the appearance of the figures and of the flowers shifts from being very stable to very fluid. this project demonstrates that portraiture does not necessarily disclose intrinsic truths about the subject matter it depicts, but rather renders bodies as wildly fluctuating surfaces upon which culture projects, incises, and embeds its ideals. football nick simko http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 1 0 0 f oo t b a l l contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 7, no 1 (2018) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2018.255 figure 1 nick simko, football (7), 2018, digital composite photograph, inkjet print on paper, 60 ¾ x 41 ¾ in. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 1 0 1 n i c k s i m k o contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 7, no 1 (2018) | issn 2153-5194 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2018.255 figure 1 nick simko, football (1), 2018, digital composite photograph, inkjet print on paper, 31 x 31 ½ in. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 1 0 2 f oo t b a l l contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 7, no 1 (2018) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2018.255 figure 3 nick simko, football (10), 2018, digital composite photograph, inkjet print on paper, 58 x 41 ¾ in. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 1 0 3 n i c k s i m k o contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 7, no 1 (2018) | issn 2153-5194 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2018.255 new articles in this journal are licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 united states license. this journal is operated by the university library system of the university of pittsburgh as part of its d-scribe digital publishing program, and is co-sponsored by the university of pittsburgh press. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/ http://www.pitt.edu/ http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/ http://www.upress.pitt.edu/upressindex.aspx http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ football football microsoft word 213_220_regina mamou exhibition 7-27.docx vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.142 http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu exhibition review: regina mamou unfortunately, it was paradise chicago, il, city gallery in the historic water tower october 2013 january 19, 2014 john murphy abstract a review of regina mamou’s solo exhibition, unfortunately, it was paradise, held at the city gallery in the historic water tower (chicago, il) from october 11, 2013 to january 19, 2014. about the author john murphy is a phd candidate in art history at northwestern university. his dissertation investigates the socialist-utopian dimensions of early 20th century american arts & crafts communities. he was a disertation fellow at winterthur museum in delaware and is a 20142015 acls/luce fellow in american art. he co-curated the left front: radical art in the “red decade,” 1929-1940 (mary and leigh block museum of art, northwestern university, evanston, il), which travelled to new york university’s grey gallery in january 2015. contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.142 mist shrouds an open field; the softness suffocates. in fieldwork (blue) regina mamou stages the paradox of immanence and imminence—god always and everywhere on the verge of appearing: a stifling remoteness, an intimate distance (fig 1). unfortunately, it was paradise, exhibited late 2013 to early 2014 at chicago’s city gallery in the historic water tower, is a haunting series of photographs by mamou of utopian colonies in the united states. the historic water tower, with its saw-toothed spires and ecclesiastical gothic atmosphere, proved a congenial setting for photographs of now-defunct utopian experiments. these heterodox communities, founded in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, stood fenced-off from the fallen world as safe harbors for refugees from singlutted cities and old world religious persecution. established largely by pietist sects (shakers, quakers, harmonists, etc.) splintered from protestantism, they drew controversy for their dissident belief systems (a kind of ascetic christian socialism) that included in some cases equality of the sexes, and the abolition of both private property and the traditional family unit. figure 1 regina mamou, fieldwork (blue), 2012. digital c-print, 40 x 50 in. (photo: courtesy of the artist). exhibition review: regina mamou unfortunately, it was paradise october 2013 january 19, 2014 john murphy 2 1 5 j o h n m u r p h y contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.142 realizing “utopia” is, of course, epistemologically impossible; the word itself means “nowhere.” this contradiction puts a particular pressure on visual representations of utopian spaces. how can one represent sites that ontologically should not exist? the communities photographed by mamou share a curious afterlife as historical landmarks, tourist attractions, and perhaps, ironic evidence of utopia’s inevitable failure. they have been consigned to capitalism’s only guaranteed salvation: roadside meccas, monetized monasticism, utopia, inc. they are displayed, in all their abject failure to realize heaven-on-earth. but mamou is not out to “expose,” with a documentarian’s gaze, the hollowness at the heart of the utopian project, revealed by the fallow fields and kitschy gift shops. utopian desire indicates the insufficiency of current conditions, an estrangement from the historical present. the future is the substantive result of things hoped-for, always (in the present) in the process of becoming. when moving around the octagonal interior of the water tower, encountering mamou’s large though unassuming photographs (all 40 x 50 or 40 x 32 in.) mounted handsomely against the chalky limestone, one hardly detects a tone of irony. there seems instead an apparitional shivering in the images, a disquieting sense that something lurks beneath the surface; what george eliot called that “roar which lies on the other side of silence.” residual aura clings. but can a photograph act as a “medium” to reveal the supernatural? shooting with a large format monorail camera, mamou’s photographs suggest spiritual exercises— experiments in contemplative looking. they have their own asceticism, a sort of reticence or wariness about breaching the insistent seclusion of these spaces. her photographs haunt utopia's outside margins; there are no figures and no interiors. only the buildings, fences, green swards, and graveyards index the community's ultimate goal of finding divinity in the everyday. the fog-shrouded fields, frostbitten gardens, overgrown vineyards, and severe houses of worship should be familiar, but they seem to occupy some uncanny horizon line where memory, imagination, spirits and specters all cohabit. in harmonist cemetery (2012, digital c-print) a profusion of green and brown leaves blanket the ground, evoking whitman's haunting analogy: "the uncut hair of graves." philip johnson's vision of god (2012, digital c-print) invites meditations on theophany, how the divine assumes material form. the non-denominational "roofless church" johnson designed in 1960, an open park girdled by a brick wall, evokes the harmonists' spartan spirituality, but also the revival of heterodox sects in the 1960s (fig. 2). the austerely symmetrical composition focuses on johnson's cedar-shingled dome, lifting and dipping like a parachute, highlighting the tension between self-contained utopias and the infinite dome of sky. utopia is not open. the first was an island. for mamou, using contemporary architects like philip johnson as points-of-entry highlights the accreted quality of the communities—sedimentary layers of human activity built up over centuries; a would-be “static” vision of earthly paradise vulnerable to the vagaries of time, the laws of entropy. mamou draws attention to how famous architects (invisible yet omnipresent) reinterpret sacred space through their roles as secular gods who shape our experience of the phenomenal world. richard meier’s atheneum in new harmony, indiana, is visible in chartres cathedral (2012, digital c-print), a tripartite photograph cut horizontally by the bending, rain-slicked road and the median-grid of a fence (fig. 3). meier’s visitors’ center looms in the background as white and distant as a cloud. gray chokes the upper atmosphere, dissolving the tops of branches and casting a hazy pall. mamou fencecuts the composition again in one of the series’ most evocative images, richard meier's vision for athene, night #2 (2012, digital c-print). eerie lights artificially illuminate a rectangular slab of grass and a white fence cuts the composition in half, the upper portion swallowed in black. the fences bar access, prevent the crossing of thresholds. does time find its spatial corollary in these totems of inaccessibility, of sites marked off and enclosed? the past is a foreign land and we have no passport (fig. 4). mamou often shoots at dusk and dawn, an aesthetic choice especially evident in the series of “fieldwork” photographs in which the atmosphere—fog, clouds, rain—overwhelm 2 1 6 e x h i b i t i o n r e v i e w : r e g i n a m a m o u u n f o r t u n a t e l y , i t w a s p a r a d i s e contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.142 the earth and sky, blurring both into an indistinct zone of ethereality, recalling theophany’s recurring theme of “god in the mist” dematerializing the world. when the mist dissolves, hard edges and straight lines reinforce the communities’ asceticism. ascetic living (2012, digital c-print) is broken into clean horizontals: the grass, the road, the lawn, a two-story house, a bank of trees and blue sky. the white building is window blind. the lawn is freshly mowed. the road hints at travelers, passersby, the curious or indifferent. but the building holds the center, inward-turning, defensive, the purity of its windowless white confrontational. the vertical slash of a shadowed door is a riddle of non-invitation, austere hostility, and promise. as william blake scrawled in the margins of a book: "i am hid." figure 2 regina mamou, phillip johnson’s vision of god, 2012. digital c-print, 40 x 52 in. (photo: courtesy of the artist). 2 1 7 j o h n m u r p h y contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.142 throughout the series mamou’s position is ambiguous. is she a tourist? an archaeologist excavating ruins? a naturalist studying an extinct species? or a pilgrim seeking refuge from the fallen world? mamou suggests the slippage between those preassigned roles. the religious scruples of the communities would have forbidden photography, in their own time, as a worldly vanity. yet there is a piety in her photographs, a sense that even the borrowed or secondhand sacred demands an invitational orientation, a willingness to receive “visitations,” as the shakers called them. the title of the series comes from a collection of poems by mahmoud darwish, who wrote: “of our home we see only the unseen: our mystery.” figure 3 regina mamou, chartres cathedral, 2012. digital c-print, 40 x 50 in. (photo: courtesy of the artist). seeing the unseen, the mystery—this comes close to the heart of mamou’s project, i think. it is a project that involves admitting photography’s insistence on the visible, the seen, the material. unfortunately, it was paradise finds mamou resigning herself to what she sees as photography’s clay-footed inability to capture the ineffable, the incorporeal, while straining the medium to suggest the spiritual beyond the mundane. to this end, i suspect, she has added installation elements to her most recent work—rocks, altars, blue lights, spiritualist paraphernalia. these elements are intended, perhaps, to tease out of photographs more than the surface can manage, as if the photograph itself was the surface of a mirror pool over which mamou stands like a wizard hoping to conjure spirits from invisible depths, or like a paranormal investigator with a battery of detectors, sensors, and uv lights, hoping against hope that a contraption as clunky and mechanical as a camera could be sensitive to the immateriality of memory or spirituality. 2 1 8 e x h i b i t i o n r e v i e w : r e g i n a m a m o u u n f o r t u n a t e l y , i t w a s p a r a d i s e contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.142 mamou’s latest project, psychometrics (2015), monumentalizes the e-meter, a scientologist machine for detecting and determining the spiritual state of a subject. in a bright, seductive digital c-print (75 x 60 in.) mamou lovingly enlarges and fetishizes an emeter against a yellow as luminous as any medieval gold ground, its reflection shimmering in the polished surface. the e-meter is like mamou’s camera: a clunky machine poignantly trying to attune to the unseen spiritual realm. figure 4 regina mamou, richard meier's vision for athene, night #2, 2012. digital c-print, 40 x 32 in. (photo: courtesy of the artist). 2 1 9 j o h n m u r p h y contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.142 mamou is currently la-based. are scientologists the new shakers? is la the closest thing we have to a utopian experiment? perhaps on the west coast she’ll discover the new age iteration of the radical shaker faith that discovered the devil in dust, and produced streamlined, lightweight shaker furniture—high-priced collectibles now (as sleek as the emeter)—that could be hung on wall pegs the easier to sweep the dirty, demon-ridden floorboards. what is certain is that mamou will continue to put pressure on a mechanical apparatus to perform alchemical feats of transmutation. unfortunately, it was paradise finds in utopian communities the ideal conditions for this kind of experiment. the communities are haunted by collective memories, untransmittable and inaccessible (another line from darwish: “there is no place on earth where we haven’t pitched our tent of exile.”) there is belatedness in mamou's work as in the communities themselves; a sense of coming after, of waiting, watching, not so much in anticipation as in delayed rapture. the second coming has happened, we are saved, and yet somehow, unfortunately, we are still here. 2 2 0 e x h i b i t i o n r e v i e w : r e g i n a m a m o u u n f o r t u n a t e l y , i t w a s p a r a d i s e contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.142 new articles in this journal are licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 united states license. this journal is operated by the university library system of the university of pittsburgh as part of its d-scribe digital publishing program, and is co-sponsored by the university of pittsburgh press. contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture vol 9, no 1 (2021) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2021.320 http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu questionnaire response lindsey french questionnaire response about the author lindsey french is an artist and educator whose plant-oriented work takes many forms, including of texts written in collaboration with trees, scent transmissions, and videos made for plant perception. she has shared her work nationally in museums and galleries including the museum of contemporary art (chicago) and the international museum of surgical science (chicago), pratt manhattan gallery (new york), and in conjunction with the international symposium of electronics arts (albuquerque and vancouver). recent include chapters for olfactory art and the political in an age of resistance, why look at plants, and poetry for the journal forty-five. she currently teaches as a visiting assistant professor in the department of studio arts at the university of pittsburgh. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 9, no 1 (2021) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2021.320 july 3, 2020 mobility and exchange appear in my work through my consideration of the material aspects of communication. i work with expanded systems of communication that involve not only humans but also plants, landscapes, airborne molecules, subdermal immune reactions, and the technological materials of communication systems. in recent projects, i worked with green leaf volatiles (glvs)—airborne chemicals released by plants as warning signals. these register to the human nose as “green” notes. for signal to nose (2018) at assemble in pittsburgh last year, i transmitted these glvs along with another airborne warning—an fm radio transmission of youth climate activists, with community contributions gathered and broadcast throughout the month-long project. these airborne broadcasts called attention to the atmosphere, and to both human and nonhuman transmissions. in another body of work, i examine the communicative potential of working with the poison ivy plant, toxicodendron radicans, and urushiol, the chemical contained within these plants that causes an allergic reaction for many people on the surface of the skin. in this process of material exchange, humans are not the subject of this exchange but the object for its transmission. the exchange is not about us but occurs on us, and it offers an opportunity to acknowledge not only our own objecthood, but also the agency and potency of another entity we might otherwise consider marginal (the poison ivy, and its urushiol). i work with poison ivy for many reasons, including its maligned position in spaces of nature and the fact that it thrives in conditions of climate change. moreover, this plant challenges and aggravates the surface of my skin. it locates itself on my skin and in my environment; it irritates my understanding of the environment. it refuses to be idealized; it demands an understanding of the image of “nature” as not pure. questionnaire response lindsey french figure 1 it takes time to process unintended harm. detail of mural made of poison ivy leaves pressed onto a substrate of lard on gallery window to draw out urushiol in the manner if the scent extraction method enfleurage. 2018. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 1 9 l i n d s e y f r e n c h contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 9, no 1 (2021) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2021.320 let’s consider this in the context of whiteness. there is huge societal momentum that keeps whiteness invisible, that allows me as a white person to disappear into its privilege and power. i know that to undermine white supremacy requires this kind of agitation; it requires a continual reckoning, and it also requires being prepared to lose something. in urushiol tattoos (2016), i offered temporary tattoos using urushiol, which after application on the skin, would provoke a rash within twenty-four to forty-eight hours for those allergic to urushiol, which would then last ten to fourteen days. before the application of the tattoos, participants signed a waiver as an opportunity to discuss the risks, and to provide a moment for negotiation and consent. these kinds of practices allow us to consider the limits of the human sensorium, but i also suggest that they might be brought into other forms of relationship. what if i contaminated my sense of purity by inviting others into my border? what if i willingly risk some of my own safety for the experience of knowing another? even and especially if knowing that i might feel the discomfort of losing something? in grieving the loss of species and habitats, can i also welcome the loss of unjust power and unjust systems? i do not want to compare a controlled rash from poison ivy to the lived experiences of institutional racism, but i do want to propose that in these small moments—of consenting to risk, of resisting a false sense of purity, of inviting knowledge outside of our boundaries—we practice what is necessary to take the larger risks necessary for transformation. i am writing this response during not only the covid-19 pandemic and its airborne transmission, but also during the first week of widespread uprisings across the country against police brutality and racial violence, and in the days following the incident of a white woman calling the cops on a black man in central park because she was afraid. there is a lot to unpack here, but, one element of this incident was a white woman’s fear, and her immediate soothing of that fear by calling on a system she knew would privilege her word. what if that fear was managed not by infrastructures of oppression, but instead by a measured assessment of the risks involved in this individual situation? the long story of whiteness is constructed so as to tell white americans that we are not the dangerous but the fearful. and in the midst of the covid-19 pandemic, we see americans, and especially white americans, struggling to confront the reality of the danger of simply being present (evidenced in the insistence on reopening the economy at the expense of vulnerable bodies). instead of reacting to fear by reaching for an oppressive system to feel safe, what would it mean to approach the risk? what would it mean to accept that there is no safe space, to realize that purity is not an option, and instead to find solidarity and form coalitions of mutual support? not to stay safe, but to stay careful, to stay caring? in an interview with laverne cox, feminist scholar bell hooks talks about the illusion of safe space, and asks, “what does it mean for us to cultivate together a community that allows for risk—the risk of knowing someone outside your own boundaries?” this is a guiding question in my own contributions to, or constructions of, social spaces. i find anthropologist anna lowenhaupt tsing’s work on “contamination as collaboration” to be a generative framework, especially in conversation with alexis shotwell’s against purity (2016) and mel chen’s scholarship around toxicity, animacy, and intimacy. i also look to kyle powys whyte’s skepticism about indigenous and settler reconciliation, particularly related to discussions and activism around climate change. inherent to whiteness and settler colonialism is a problematic conflation of purity and safety. for those who benefit from these systems, safety is not only assumed to be possible, but is treated as something to retreat into, rather than to struggle for. these writers undermine the assumption of safety as something that can be found in isolation, offering instead forms of social, political, and ecological coalition based in shared risk and collective work. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 2 0 q u e s t i o n n a i r e contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 9, no 1 (2021) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2021.320 new articles in this journal are licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 united states license. this journal is operated by the university library system of the university of pittsburgh as part of its d-scribe digital publishing program, and is co-sponsored by the university of pittsburgh press. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/ http://www.pitt.edu/ http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/ http://www.upress.pitt.edu/upressindex.aspx questionnaire response questionnaire response contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture vol 9, no 1 (2021) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2021.324 http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu la gente/the people jonathan christensen caballero about the author jonathan christensen caballero is a multimedia artist born and raised in utah. he graduated from indiana university with an mfa, with an emphasis in ceramics, in spring 2020. he has exhibited nationally and internationally in venues such as the clay center of new orleans in louisiana, standard ceramic supply in pennsylvania, carbondale clay center in colorado, and tsukuba museum of art in japan. his work focuses on the human figure and advocates for the latin american labor community. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 9, no 1 (2021) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2021.324 the personal is political, and i feel a moral imperative to create art that critiques the oppression of latin american laborers in the united states. my art is based on my personal identity; my mother is a central american immigrant, and i grew up with parents who supported our family through manual labor jobs. the figures in my work represent people who contribute to society at a cost to their physical bodies. the work is thus rooted in latin american identity and socioeconomic status. these sculptures narrate enduring questions of identity through the human figure, pre-columbian iconography, and the use of mixed media. the figurative work i make is driven by questions of inclusion and exclusion: who benefits from the american dream? who in the united states is accorded representation, visibility, and a sense of belonging? why is the latin american community forced to remain invisible and to always be perceived as the outsider? my work critiques the oppression of latin american laborers in this country and advocates for my community’s representation by revealing both the plight of the proletariat as well as the resilience of immigrants. figure 1 jonathan christensen caballero, service: chairs, 2019. earthenware, secondhand fiber, readymade objects, metal, wood. la gente/the people jonathan christensen caballero http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 6 5 j on a t h a n c h r i s t e n s e n ca b a l l e r o contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 9, no 1 (2021) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2021.324 figure 2 jonathan christensen caballero, entierro/burial, 2020. earthenware, secondhand fiber, drywall, metal, wood. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 6 6 l a g e n t e / t h e p e op l e contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 9, no 1 (2021) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2021.324 figure 3, figure 4 jonathan christensen caballero, entierro/burial (detail), 2020. earthenware, secondhand fiber, drywall, metal, wood. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 6 7 j on a t h a n c h r i s t e n s e n ca b a l l e r o contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 9, no 1 (2021) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2021.324 figure 5 jonathan christensen caballero, service: trash, 2019. earthenware, secondhand fiber, readymade objects, metal, wood. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 6 8 l a g e n t e / t h e p e op l e contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 9, no 1 (2021) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2021.324 figure 6 jonathan christensen caballero, service: trash (detail), 2019. earthenware, secondhand fiber, ready-made objects, metal, wood. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 6 9 j on a t h a n c h r i s t e n s e n ca b a l l e r o contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 9, no 1 (2021) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2021.324 figure 7 jonathan christensen caballero, hijo mio/my son, 2019. earthenware, secondhand fiber, readymade objects, metal, wood. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 7 0 l a g e n t e / t h e p e op l e contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 9, no 1 (2021) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2021.324 figure 8, figure 9 jonathan christensen caballero, hijo mio/my son (detail), 2019. earthenware, secondhand fiber, ready-made objects, metal, wood. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 7 1 j on a t h a n c h r i s t e n s e n ca b a l l e r o contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 9, no 1 (2021) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2021.324 new articles in this journal are licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 united states license. this journal is operated by the university library system of the university of pittsburgh as part of its d-scribe digital publishing program, and is co-sponsored by the university of pittsburgh press. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/ http://www.pitt.edu/ http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/ http://www.upress.pitt.edu/upressindex.aspx la gente/the people la gente/the people contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture vol 8, no 1 (2019) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2019.297 http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu yesterday’s contemporaneity finding temporality in the past jacqueline m. lombard about the editor-in-chief jacqueline lombard is a ph.d. candidate at the university of pittsburgh. she specializes in medieval art history, with a particular focus on the history of art objects as products or conduits of cross-cultural exchange between medieval europe, the middle east, and africa. her dissertation examines images of africans that were circulating in europe during the tenth through twelfth centuries to explore how medieval european artists used visual languages to communicate ideas about identity, globality, and race. she is currently based in frankfurt am main as a guest researcher at the goethe university through the support of a daad research grant. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 8, no 1 (2019) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2019.297 contemporaneity refers to the state of existing in time, within a particular moment, as agents alongside agents. crucial to the idea of contemporaneity is the recognition that there is a multiplicity of ways to exist within any given moment in time. the act of defining contemporaneity to make sense of the past is a foundational practice in the field of art history, even when it is not the explicit goal of the art historian. to attempt to study a work of art within its own time is to stake a claim about what that time entailed, and what and who the people of that moment understood to be coeval with themselves. even to nominate the relevance of one historical entity to another is to declare them to be contemporaneous. while the concept of contemporaneity is often invoked in studies of the present, it is less frequently linked to historical inquiry. yet it remains true that everything now historical was at some point contemporary, and thus this line of inquiry remains ever-relevant as a means of exploring the ways in which people of the past have defined themselves and their own positions in history. in order to investigate the varied histories of time, and the distinct role that art objects can play in defining or altering perceived temporalities, this edition assembles articles, symposium papers, conversations, and book and exhibition reviews to examine the implications of temporality and contemporaneity across a breadth of historical contexts. this topic, as the contributions in this edition attest, is as much a historical issue as it is a historiographical one. while grappling with historic conceptions of time, it is just as critical to decipher the preconceived, or sometimes anachronistic, notions of time and periodization that have been imposed on any given moment or culture. the contributions in this edition highlight the efforts of art historians and artists now and in the past to navigate the multiple layers of narrative that have molded any given moment in time. in “the sands of time: medhi-georges lahlou’s aesthetics of disorientation,” conor moynihan situates medhi-georges lahlou’s work alongside the history of orientalist thought from the eighteenth-century to today. he maintains that orientalism has acted as a disabling force on historical and contemporary middle eastern and north african cultures by freezing them in a fictional past. in turn, moynihan explores medhi-georges’ arts practice as a means of re-asserting the artist’s own contemporaneity by disorienting orientalist expectations. in another conversation around the legacies of western colonial perspectives, monika siebert and marina tyquiengco examine the role of native american imagery in the united states. their discussion focuses on siebert’s recent book indians playing indian and a recent exhibition from the smithsonian national museum of the american indian (nmai), titled americans, which opened on january 18, 2018, and will continue through 2022. siebert and tyquiengco unpack the multiple ways in which the proliferation of native american imagery in mainstream american culture informs widespread beliefs about indigenous peoples while simultaneously acting to define american cultural identity as a whole. siebert and tyquiengco also examine the instution of the nmai, where they conducted their conversation, as a conduit for exploring these narratives. this edition also features two conversations between art historians and artists whose work grapples with external impositions of cultural and temporal perceptions by appropriating historical imagery and issues for a present-day dialogue. in “the canaries of democracy: imagining the wandering jew with artist rosabel rosalind kurth-sofer,” rae di cicco speaks with rosabel rosalind kurth-sofer about the relationships between kurth-sofer’s faith and artistic practice and the long history of anti-semitism. thomas messersmith introduces the conversation with an essay on the broader history of anti-semitic imagery and thought, as kurth-sofer describes how she, as a jewish woman, has navigated and appropriated archives full of anti-semitic imagery towards a new purpose. the approach that kurth-sofer takes yesterday’s contemporaneity finding temporality in the past jacqueline lombard http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ i i i j a c q u e l i n e m . l o m b a r d contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 8, no 1 (2019) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2019.296 towards this particularly painful and persistent past resonates with another conversation in this edition: “from axayácatl to el chapo: rethinking migration and mexico’s war on drugs in gabriel garcilazo’s dystopic magical codex.” here, adriana miramontes olivas speaks with artist gabriel garcilazo, whose work dystopic magical codex (2015) confronts the social and political consequences of the mexican war on drugs as a piece of mexico’s longer history. positioning garcilazo’s work against both contemporary politics and historical manuscripts, such as the sixteenth-century codex azcatitlan, miramontes olivas and garcilazo explore ability of art to re-engage and re-contextualize historical memory. in her exhibition review, carolyn wargula writes on fujiwo ishimoto, an artist who also works within a cross-temporal dialogue, as well as a cross-cultural one. wargula examines fujiwo ishimoto exhibition: from marimekko flowers to ceramic fruits in dialogue with the rinpa, as it was on view from march 9 to april 21, 2019, at the hosomi museum in kyoto, japan. wargula commends the dialogues the show facilitated across cultures, as ishimoto is a japanese designer working for a finnish firm, as well as across time, as his art regularly employed the historic rinpa style, which was popularized in japan during the edo period (c.1603–1868). the issue also includes a special section dedicated to motivating monuments, the 2018 iteration of the university of pittsburgh’s history of art and architecture department’s biannual symposium. the symposium brought together speakers addressing a wide range of monuments and the political power they hold as public articulations of identity, community, and memory. monuments can serve as testaments to a bygone event or societal value, or as grandiose attempts to preserve some form of public memory. thus, conceptually, monuments hinge on time and the fundamental relationship between present and past. in her paper, “so shall yoe bee: encountering the shrouded effigies of thomas beresford and agnes hassall at fenny bentley,” aimee caya addresses the elusive beresford monument, a funerary monument that depicts its subjects in their funeral shrouds, thereby concealing all markers of their individuality. by contextualizing the monument alongside other late medieval artistic and devotional practices, caya argues that this iconographic strategy was designed to evoke particular empathetic responses in viewers. while caya explores the power of anonymization in her contribution, another speaker from the symposium, ramey mize, discusses the power of likeness and physical contact by addressing a set of plaster casts taken of abraham lincoln’s hands and face by leonard wells volk in 1860. drawing on theories of medieval sanctification and relic function, mize examines the legacies of the casts to argue that the casts functioned as a type of modern relic that supported the ongoing sanctification of this american president. our book review section features three reviews of recent publications on renaissance art, a field that has long grappled with temporality and periodization as critical historiographic issues. andrea kibler maxwell reviews saints, miracles and the image: healing saints and miraculous images in the renaissance (2019). edited by sandra cardarelli and laura fenelli, this volume presents a range of case studies from renaissance italy in order to further flesh out the complicated and dynamic history of images as both cult objects and objects of art, thereby challenging the previously established belief that 1500 marked a fundamental shift between these two modes of image function. christopher j. nygren evaluates raphael and the redefinition of art in renaissance italy (2017) by the late robert williams (d. 2018). nygren describes the book as a novel perspective on the modernity of raphael, as williams highlights essential yet underrecognized aspects the artist’s modernity including his labor practices and approaches to style and decorum. finally, sarah reiff conell assesses art and miracle in renaissance tuscany (2018) by robert maniura, a monograph that highlights the life of giuliano di francesco guizzelmi (1446–1518) and his role in shaping the marian cults of his time in prato. conell commends the book for its depth and insight into its focused case study, and further considers the potential of such a methodological approach alongside contemporary discussions of network theory. contemporaneity has always been underpinned by the continued support and effort of countless individuals at the university of pittsburgh. it is with the utmost sincerity that i thank http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ i v y e s t e r d ay ’ s c o n t e m p o r a ne i t y contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 8, no 1 (2019) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2019.297 all of the people who have made edition 8 possible, including jacob eisensmith, emi finkelstein, paulina pardo gaviria, rebecca giordano, paula kupfer, katie loney, krystle stricklin, and yijing wang, who served together as this edition’s formidable editorial board, as well as david tenorio who acted as a guest editor for this edition. these thanks must also be extended to our many peer reviewers who volunteered their time to support and improve the scholarship featured in this edition. i also thank jennifer josten, kate joranson, barbara mccloskey, terry smith, and alex taylor. their constant support and insight as our advisory board helped guide this edition to completion. former editors marina tyquiengco, rae di cicco, nicole scalissi as well as all the past editors-in-chief deserve the highest praise for the work they have put in to making this journal what it is today, and for their constant generosity and mentorship. i also thank annalisa zox-weaver, whose sharp eyes and editorial acumen have bettered this journal every year that she has acted as our copyeditor, this year included. vanessa gabler, kari johnston, and the entire team that make up the university library system at pitt also have our endless gratitude for all of the work that they do to make our journal possible. this year in particular has also been a monumental one for contemporaneity as we have launched our new website, complete with a new design and new publishing template. we could never have executed this effort without their constant support, knowledge, and enthusiasm. contemporaneity thrives on the voluntary labor of these people and many more, all of whom are driven by love for this journal and by a true commitment to publishing quality openaccess scholarship. it is because of their constant support that we may proudly present our eighth edition, which we hope will serve to inspire and inform many conversations to come. new articles in this journal are licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 united states license. this journal is operated by the university library system of the university of pittsburgh as part of its d-scribe digital publishing program, and is co-sponsored by the university of pittsburgh press. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/ http://www.pitt.edu/ http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/ http://www.upress.pitt.edu/upressindex.aspx http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ yesterday’s contemporaneity finding temporality in the past yesterday’s contemporaneity finding temporality in the past contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture vol 9, no 1 (2021) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2021.326 http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu the metabolic museum clémentine deliss marina tyquiengco book review clémentine deliss, the metabolic museum. berlin: hatje cantz verlag, in association with kw institute for contemporary art, 2020. 128 pp. softback $22.00. (9783775747806) about the author marina tyquiengco is a chamoru scholar of global indigenous art and a phd candidate at the university of pittsburgh. she is currently a curatorial assistant in contemporary art at the mfa, boston and has previously taught at brown university. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 9, no 1 (2021) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2021.326 at their best, museums are transformative spaces of learning and engagement; at their worst, they reaffirm inaccurate narratives and racist hierarchies. the ethnographic museum—often overflowing with colonial spoils—can function at both of these poles. clémentine deliss’s the metabolic museum proposes a messy and difficult solution to the question of how the ethnographic museum can remain relevant in the twenty-first century: become a post-ethnographic museum. from 2010–2015, deliss was the director of the weltkulturen museum, an ethnographic museum in frankfurt, germany. the museum’s roots date to the founding of the senckenberg natural history society in 1817, opening its doors as the städtisches völkermuseum, or municipal folk museum, in 1904.1 the museum prides itself on being a truly civic venture, with collections donated by frankfurt residents.2 the museum has had a few different names throughout its history, becoming the weltkulturen museum, or world cultures museum, under deliss’s directorship.3 city officials unceremoniously informed deliss that her contract, originally set to expire in 2018, would be terminated early in spring 2015; her abrupt ouster was followed heavily by art presses.4 however, the sudden end to her tenure is mentioned only at the outset of her book; she instead focuses on the major ideals and minutia of running, in her words, a post-ethnographic museum. a short book, the metabolic museum is a fascinating look at a museum director who attempted to be truly transformative. for her time at the weltkulturen museum, deliss, a well-regarded figured in contemporary art and anthropology,5 is notable for the creation of new ventures in programming to reimagine the ethnographic museum as a public space. reflecting her long practice of writing and publishing, the metabolic museum is not a typical academic book. it is organized into short chapters and written almost entirely in the first person. the author outlines her values related to museum work and moves out from her specific projects—artist residencies, explorative seminars, and unique public programs—to what they mean for an inherently colonial institution. through brevity of text and a lack of images, deliss presents a finished work similar to the personal journals on which the book is based. her challenge to the authority of the ethnographic museum as it was imagined upon creation comes from a place of deep knowledge of such institutions. through anecdote and personal experience, she argues that museums can function as living things, and are hence metabolic, referencing mostly living scholars whom she knows. in the author’s own words, “this is the narrative of my endeavor to transform the 1 the weltkulturen museum, “history,” accessed october 23, 2020 https://www.weltkulturenmuseum.de/en/museum/history/ 2 ibid. 3 ibid. 4 see benjamin sutton, “director of frankfurt’s ethnographic museum fired without explanation,” hyperallergic, june 18, 2015, https://hyperallergic.com/215057/director-offrankfurts-ethnographic-museum-fired-without-explanation/. also see henri neuendorf, “tribunal finds no reason for firing of frankfurt ethnographic museum director,” artnet news, march 22, 2016, https://news.artnet.com/art-world/clementine-deliss-firing-frankfurtethnographic-museum-455162. 5 ibid. the metabolic museum clémentine deliss marina tyquiengco http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ https://www.weltkulturenmuseum.de/en/museum/history/ https://hyperallergic.com/215057/director-of-frankfurts-ethnographic-museum-fired-without-explanation/ https://hyperallergic.com/215057/director-of-frankfurts-ethnographic-museum-fired-without-explanation/ https://news.artnet.com/art-world/clementine-deliss-firing-frankfurt-ethnographic-museum-455162 https://news.artnet.com/art-world/clementine-deliss-firing-frankfurt-ethnographic-museum-455162 7 9 m a r i n a t y q u i e n g c o contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 9, no 1 (2021) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2021.326 modus operandi of a contentious genre of european museum and develop a post-ethnographic institution.”6 the metabolic museum provides poetic musings in the form of two manifestos that can be applied more broadly to this type of museum work. the first of these manifestos, “manifesto for the post-ethnographic museum frankfurt/new york, october 2013,” was written in the midst of her directorship and begins with “anomalous and anachronistic / it’s about working with a collection / that belongs to another time / that belongs to other people.”7 organized into four stanzas, this opening manifesto presents some concepts picked up later in the book. the second stanza, “domestic research,” emphasizes working from the very specific space and community of the museum. the stanza “remediation over time” stresses the museum’s need to change and adapt, while “curating neighborhoods” focuses on residency programs and visitors to the museum. finally, “the museum-university,” presents deliss’s idea of a museum based on learning around and through collections, truly breaking down the importance of buildings and objects themselves. her concept of the metabolic museum reflects how the museum can function as a living organism that needs tending and care. speaking of weltkulturen, she muses, “i began to recognize the museum as a complex body with a severely ailing metabolism, afflicted organs, and black cannels of circulation.”8 thus the metabolic museum is the aim of the postethnographic museum—to be a healthy living institution. each chapter examines a broad topic. though they build upon each other and her manifestos, each can be read as an individual article or essay. primarily autobiographical, the book presents both her training leading up to her directorship and her many projects at the museum. she emphasizes the importance of the physical space of the museum and her push to center the museum as a research hub. according to deliss, the post-ethnographic museum does not seek to understand cultures through study and categorization of objects, instead “taking these extraordinary objects as stimulus for future innovation and therefore the starting point for new knowledge production.”9 in this model, many types of knowledges have the capacity to expand one’s understanding of ethnographic objects and shift away from anthropological approaches. most striking is how deliss, who possesses cultural anthropology training, pushes against the hierarchy and expertise of the ethnographic frame. she compares museum ethnographers who base their positions on “owning the keys to context and thus the authoritative frame of the object in question” to artists who are more likely to discover alternatives to this narrative in the collection.10 but rather than ignore her training, deliss used it in key moments, such as in approaching the museum as fieldwork. equally important to her tenure at the museum, her notion of the post-ethnographic museum is based on her earlier work—such as her first encounter with the revolutionary art collective laboratoir agit-art, cofounded by famed senegalese artist issa samb (1945–2017), with whom she repeatedly collaborated. she details her publication metronome, a nontraditional art and cultural publication that she also thought of in organic terms. the later chapters further explore her ideas of remediation and organic analogies to the museum. in “the consequences of remediation,” she introduces a metaphor in which the museum’s collection of objects is akin to the illegal organ trade market. “a museum in reverse” 6 clémentine deliss, the metabolic museum (berlin: hatje cantz verlag, in association with kw institute for contemporary art, 2020), 9. 7 ibid., 12. 8 ibid., 18. 9 ibid., 37. 10 ibid., 65. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 8 0 t h e m e t a b o l i c m u s e u m contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 9, no 1 (2021) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2021.326 takes its title from artist luke willis thompson (new zealander, b. 1988), who sees the ethnographic objects as spoils of colonized people, thus necessitating the museum to begin dispersing objects.11 another chapter, “the “lure of objects” further questions the role of the ethnographic museum and its continued ties to colonialization. she writes, “like the organ trade, the necropolitical colonial museum survives off the control and regulation of the nerve centers of agency.”12 deliss argues that the collecting of objects is always incomplete, as the objects can never represent the whole—much like a single organ cannot represent the entire body. this emphasis on human connection within museums is explored more deeply in “models of a museum-university,” a term that casts the museum as a university space rather than a museum at a university. deliss has organized two iterations of the museum-university (initially called the school of remediation13), contending that “the ultimate vector today needs to be the human being in an emancipatory and ecological dialogue with the existence of everything that this venue and its collections provide and invoke: a museum without condition to paraphrase jacques derrida.”14 deliss’s concept of a “museum without condition,” emphasizing learning beyond the physical space of the museum, is extremely prescient, as many museums have closed their doors for long periods due to the novel coronavirus. the metabolic museum ends with a second manifesto, “manifesto for rights of access to colonial collections sequestered in western europe, dakar, may 2018.” deliss calls on everyone to be part of a process of remediation, mainly to “return both respect and copyright back to their ancestors!”15 by recurrently metaphorizing the museum as a living body and its works as illicitly purchased organs, the museum seems to be bloated with the excess of its collections. thus her call for return, presaging germany’s set of guidelines for the return of objects from its former colonies,16 is the logical step for a museum that amassed collections through unequal power relationships, possessing peoples through their objects. the brevity of the metabolic museum does not always translate into clarity. the book’s non-linear narrative is, at times, difficult to follow. the lack of visuals is also challenging given the emphasis on museum spaces, collections, and projects. her extremely descriptive text does not compensate for the type of understanding readers would gain upon seeing these spaces and objects. images of work created by the numerous artists and scholars who collaborated with the museum would also contribute to its precision; the volume of figures and the breadth of their work—and hers—can simply wash over the reader. for its shortcomings, the metabolic museum is thoughtful and inspiring. deliss provides an honest look behind the curtain of a museum that she argues cannot exist in its historical form. such institutional ambivalence and radical thinking from a museum director are especially stimulating at moment when museums are combatting the twin pandemics of coronavirus and a reckoning with anti-black racism. museum professionals can take deliss’s book as a roadmap for envisioning new activations of their collections. readers with less background in this field might wonder what a manifesto of the post-pandemic museum might entail. 11 ibid., 90–93. 12 ibid., 99. 13 ibid., 107. 14 ibid., 113. 15 ibid., 119. 16 christopher f. schuetze, “germany sets guidelines for repatriating colonial-era artifacts,” the new york times, march 15, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/15/arts/design/germany-museums-restitution.html. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/15/arts/design/germany-museums-restitution.html 8 1 m a r i n a t y q u i e n g c o contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 9, no 1 (2021) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2021.326 new articles in this journal are licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 united states license. this journal is operated by the university library system of the university of pittsburgh as part of its d-scribe digital publishing program, and is co-sponsored by the university of pittsburgh press. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/ http://www.pitt.edu/ http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/ http://www.upress.pitt.edu/upressindex.aspx the metabolic museum clémentine deliss the metabolic museum clémentine deliss contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture vol 7, no 1 (2018) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2018.266 http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu lawrence paul yuxweluptun: unceded territories karen duffek and tania willard, eds annika johnson book review karen duffek and tania willard, eds. lawrence paul yuxweluptun: unceded territories. with contributions by glenn alteen, marcia crosby, jimmie durham et al. vancouver: figure 1 publishing and museum of anthropology at ubc, 2016. 182 pp.; 85 ills (chiefly color). hardcover $45.00 (9781927958513) exhibition schedule: museum of anthropology at the university of british columbia, vancouver, bc, canada, may 10—october 16, 2016 about the author annika k. johnson is the 2017–2019 wyeth fellow at the center for advanced study in the visual arts. her dissertation, entitled "agency at the confluence of euro-american and dakota art, 1835-1900," examines cross-cultural artistic exchange during the colonization of dakota homelands. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 7, no 1 (2018) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2018.266 “every native person wakes up and they are usufructed.” – lawrence paul yuxweluptun (14) usufruct refers to one’s right to the nondestructive use and fruits of the land. the enforcement of such property law on stolen indigenous lands exposes the colonialist attitude toward human-land relations. while, historically, several first nations ceded their traditional territories to british, then canadian, governments via treaties (official government-to-government agreements), present-day british columbia’s original inhabitants never surrendered their coastal lands that the government opened to settlement. indigenous communities retain limited usufruct rights to fish, hunt, and perform ceremony on traditional lands, while—paradoxically—the government permits industry to irreparably damage waterways, forests, and sacred sites. such is the state of being “usufructed,” in artist lawrence paul yuxweluptun’s wry characterization of colonial property law. the artist materializes his memorable polemical statements (“your back rent is due, british columbia!”) in supersaturated rainbow-hued paintings that demand recognition of aboriginal sovereignty. unceded territories, a major retrospective of yuxweluptun’s work hosted by the university of british columbia’s museum of anthropology (moa) in 2016, fittingly took place on lands that coast salish peoples never officially ceded to the government. the region’s unsettled land disputes provide fertile conceptual ground for the political aesthetics of yuxweluptun, an artist of cowichan (hul’q’umi’num coast salish) and okanagan (syilx) descent. this essay reviews the exhibition’s equally noteworthy catalogue edited by co-curators karen duffek and tania willard. its seven essays range in format from yuxweluptun’s artist statement to a curatorial dialogue, a short story by artist jimmy durham, and scholarly essays that contextualize his oeuvre. one hundred color reproductions of paintings, drawings, performances, and a few studio and historical photographs accompany the essays. contributors explore the implications of yuxweluptun’s refusal to be constrained by western legal and analogously aesthetic boundaries. broadly, this collection forwards a vision of a decolonized art world while remaining skeptical of its institutions and bounded territories. the contributors position yuxweluptun, a self-described history painter, within a long line of first nations activists who have creatively combatted the government’s abuse of indigenous land rights. marcia crosby’s historical essay examines how tsimshian and skwxwú7mesh leaders and other indigenous organizations employed print media and public performance in the early 1900s to petition the crown and reclaim indian title. yuxweluptun’s practice follows earlier leaders “who innovatively used the dynamics of indigenous intercultural exchange to develop common political goals” (111). knowledge of landmark land rights cases and key legal terminology, her essay makes clear, is essential to an art history of unceded territory. in “a free state of mind zone,” lucy r. lippard examines yuxweluptun’s free use and subversion of western aesthetics. for lippard, the artist’s maneuvering between western and indigenous (i.e., “traditional”) art worlds subjects him to a double standard: critics dismiss his incisive appropriation of modernism’s primitivizing aesthetics as derivative (his paintings’ visual affinities with surrealism are well noted) (89). conversely, some coastal communities criticize yuxweluptun’s appropriation of their traditional designs and his depiction of restricted ceremonial spaces. to negotiate this double imputation, yuxweluptun employs a philosophy he calls “ovoidism” to free himself from such constraints. he explains that the cultural ambiguity of the ovoid shape, a signature form in his abstract works, allows multiple visual grammars within western and indigenous languages to merge and collide. lawrence paul yuxweluptun: unceded territories karen duffek and tania willard, eds. annika johnson http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 1 0 6 un c e d e d t e r r i t o r i e s contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 7, no 1 (2018) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2018.266 many essayists discuss this provocative engagement with “tradition.” willard writes that, in works like night in a salish longhouse (1991)—depicting as it does sacred space and knowledge, yuxweluptun shows us “something of his own interior, his experience of ceremony. he is showing us not the artifact of ceremony, like a carved mask, but the vitality and continuum of ceremony as a living, breathing part of his culture” (39). larry grant, a musqueam elder and hən’q’əmin’əm’ language educator, remarks in his preface that yuxweluptun uses “cultural and artistic license to create the visions that he has,” such that “he’s being a frontline activist, trying to throw off the chains of cultural restraint” (2). yuxweluptun’s provocative works combat urgent ecological and political injustices. the heart of the catalogue features interwoven essays by artist and curator tania willard (secwepemc nation) and karen duffek, moa curator of contemporary visual arts & pacific northwest. they delve into unceded territories as a conceptual framework for interpreting yuxweluptun’s art and indigenous self-determination. they re-orient the paradigm of the painted landscape as a thing to behold (perhaps a metaphor for extractive, capitalist land use practices) toward land as experience and inheritance. most interestingly, they provoke the connections between the lived realities of colonized land and the colonized territories of the art world (the museum, academy, market, and stylistic conventions) that yuxweluptun’s highly political practice exposes. whom is he beholden to, and what sort of action can his paintings elicit? is yuxweluptun “selling out” when an oil executive buys his paintings that criticize such “super predators” (33)? this difficult and fascinating question exposes the interface between two seemingly binary worldviews between which yuxweluptun moves freely. through his drawings, large-scale paintings, and—as discussed in glenn alteen’s essay— performances, yuxweluptun petitions a specifically non-indigenous viewership. “immigrants are my hobby. i want them to understand who they are” (14); that is, squatters on indigenous land. lippard acknowledges the reckoning required for non-indigenous viewers and critics of yuxweluptun’s works who “have to take a deep breath each time we undertake an essay like this one on a native artist who has the courage to make it clear when and how often we screw up” (93). in his foreword, moa director anthony alan shelton reflects on the museum’s complicity in the colonial subjugation of the region’s indigenous peoples through the collection and display of their cultural patrimony—which the museum seeks to amend. but can the art world ever truly de-colonize the museum, a quintessential colonial institution? exhibition visitors who viewed yuxweluptun’s work in vancouver experienced first-hand the artist’s reclamation of the museum space that currently occupies unceded musqueam territory. but how might the catalogue conceptually re-position a global readership on coast salish land? as the topic and framework of discussion, unceded territory petitions for recognition of first nations sovereignty by asking readers on whose ground they stand. another question looms behind the essays: in the face of environmental destruction on a planetary scale, are we all totally “fructed”? yuxweluptun’s focus on indigenous land rights calls upon us all to consider our shared environmental future. new articles in this journal are licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 united states license. this journal is operated by the university library system of the university of pittsburgh as part of its d-scribe digital publishing program, and is co-sponsored by the university of pittsburgh press. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/ http://www.pitt.edu/ http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/ http://www.upress.pitt.edu/upressindex.aspx http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ lawrence paul yuxweluptun: unceded territories karen duffek and tania willard, eds lawrence paul yuxweluptun: unceded territories karen duffek and tania willard, eds. contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture vol 6, no 1 “boundless” (2017) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2017.206 http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu historical contemporaneity and contemporaneous historicity creation of meaning and identity in postwar trauma narratives thorsten wilhelm abstract this paper contends that traumatic memories are not inherently memories of an experienced trauma. it explores a new perspective on post-1945 jewish-american fiction. analyzing jewish-american novels from three generations—survivors, their children, and their grandchildren—the author traces the trajectories and changing perspectives in the narrative productions of these three generations. the analysis uses jeffrey alexander’s theory of cultural trauma to analyze generational trajectories in identity formations. about the author thorsten wilhelm is a doctoral student in the english department at heidelberg university and an exchange scholar at yale university. he received his ma in history and english literature and linguistics from heidelberg university. his research focuses on the ongoing effects of the holocaust in jewish-american fiction. he looks at how these intergenerational trauma narratives form identities and collective trauma. apart from this, his interest in nineteenth-century literature has him working on bibliographical histories of engravings for the novels of charles dickens. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 6, no 1 “boundless” (2017) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2017.206 generational trauma like other narratives, trauma narratives follow a process of “coding, weighting, and narrating,”1 constituting a co(n)temporaneous past that exceeds the bare facts. the past becomes not just contemporaneous, but cotemporaneous in its experiential quality. for that, it is necessary to distinguish between stories that retell an individual trauma and cultural narratives that evolve from the continuous generational engagement with such traumas. humans tell stories to interlink their identities with others and establish a contemporaneity: a contemporaneity that allows storytellers to approach as closely as possible a reality they may or may not have experienced themselves.2 in this quest, the past is a vital source of—and a powerful force in—defining the present(s) and the future(s).3 contemporaneity is distinct for each generation: every generation, every individual seeks to create a unique version, which is invariably filled with their own pertinent questions for both present and future. one “generation feels keenly what another barely notices,” one “appreciates (or dreads)” what “another takes for granted.”4 it is this drive for an understanding and need to experience something of an other’s past trauma that fuels the trauma narratives of those who have not lived through the holocaust. commemorative narratives related to this urge to re-present memory, history, and trauma is the attempt, in narrative, to build a whole self with a stable, independent identity. it is an attempt grounded temporally for both individual and collectivity. to achieve this goal, accounts of the (traumatic) past, present perceptions, and dreams and hopes for the future need to unify into a coherent narrative, making trauma narratives both a disruptive and a unifying factor for identity formation, which is why ron eyerman sees the role of memory in identity formation as the narrativized account of one’s past—the “part of the development of the self or personality.”5 memory, thus, is the key anchor in the tides of time, allowing us to 1 jeffrey c. alexander, “the social construction of moral universals,” in remembering the holocaust. a debate, ed. jeffrey c. alexander (oxford: oxford university press, 2009), 7. 2 eugene hollahan, “saul bellow: vision and revision by daniel fuchs; saul bellow and history by judie newman,” studies in the novel 20 (1988): 104. 3 rachel m. herweg, die jüdische mutter: das verborgene matriarchat (darmstadt: wissenschaftliche buchgesellschaft, 1994), 6. 4 hana wirth-nesher and michael p. kramer, “introduction: jewish american literatures in the making,” in the cambridge companion to jewish american literature, ed. hana wirth-nesher and michael p. kramer (cambridge: cambridge university press, 2003), 5. 5 ron eyerman, “slavery and the foundation of african american identity,” in cultural trauma and collective identity, ed. jeffrey c. alexander et al. (berkeley: polity press 2004), 64–65. historical contemporaneity and contemporaneous historicity creation of meaning and identity in postwar trauma narratives thorsten wilhelm http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 2 1 t ho r s t e n w i l h e lm contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 6, no 1 “boundless” (2017) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2017.206 construct our individual and collective selves.6 remembering the past, then, is—as proust describes in in search of lost time—not an actualization of the past. in remembering, we do not recreate a rankean past “as it actually was” but as we perceive it at the present moment: it is re-presented.7 in remembering, one constructs a revivified narrative of a past in which the memory is formed by a present subjectivity.8 this kind of remembrance, for those who have not experienced the holocaust, is fraught with complications. gary weissman stresses the desire of children of holocaust survivors “to become a prisoner, to actually feel the horror – in short, to witness the holocaust as if one were there.”9 this longing is not, as weissman accurately puts it, “limited to those who are the children of holocaust survivors,” but pertains to “many people who have no direct experience of the holocaust but are deeply interested in studying, remembering, and memorializing it.”10 as such, discrepancies among factual reality, survivor memory, and non-survivor imagination become complicated. “finally, it was hearing stories […] at the very scene of the crime,” which allows those without a holocaust experience “to come closest to something of the missing horror, however fleetingly.”11 the closeness to and of the narrative is the means of connecting to a place and a time that otherwise could not be made co(n)temporary. hearing the stories transforms hitherto historically significant places into those that are personally informed. conceptually, only the survivors have a direct link to some aspects of the holocaust. their individual trauma is specific to their experiences and gives rise to individual stories and memories which, in and of themselves, create access points for the post-holocaust generations who want to connect to the trauma of their ancestors. to achieve this connection, “the tendency to privilege and identify with those histories that resonate with one’s own sense of identity” is the vital touchstone to make the past trauma a contemporaneous identity.12 the generations of children and grandchildren of holocaust survivors implement their forebears’ memories into their own memories and identities.13 by imagining the narratives they hear, or do not hear, they form memories of a possible story which are realized as actual memories of events they did not, in reality, live through. nevertheless, the experiential quality is quite similar. hearing their parents’ stories and 6 jeffrey k. olick, “introduction,” in the collective memory reader, ed. jeffrey k. olick, vered vinitzky-seroussi, and daniel levy (new york: oxford university press, 2011), 37. 7 christoph münz, “alles was ich tun kann ist diese geschichte zu erzählen: erinnerung und gedächtnis im judentum und christentum,” in die gegenwart des holocaust: “erinnerung” als religionspädagogische herausforderung, ed. michael wermke (münster: lit, 1997), 73. 8 alan megill, “history, memory, identity.” in the collective memory reader, ed. jeffrey k. olick, vered vinitzky-seroussi, and daniel levy (new york: oxford university press, 2011), 196. 9 gary weissman, fantasies of witnessing: postwar efforts to experience the holocaust (ithaca/london: cornell university press 2004), 4. 10 weissman, fantasies, 4. we remember also lawrence langer’s now-famous statement about the high standards and dangers of engaging scholarly with the holocaust. 11 weissman, fantasies, 5. 12 weissman, fantasies, 7. 13 in the following, i use the term first generation for the generation of holocaust survivors. the second generation are the children of the survivors. the third generation denotes the grandchildren of survivors. although these distinctions are sometimes identical with literary or cultural generations, that is not always the case. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 2 2 h i s t o r i c a l c o n t e mp o r an e i t y a nd c o n t e mp o r an e o u s h i s t o r i c i t y contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 6, no 1 “boundless” (2017) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2017.206 imagining them—that means actualizing these narratives—in the present re-members14 them within their pertaining contemporary identity. memory, here, is not a remembrance of isolated incidents, but the construction of a meaningful narrative which allows for an inscription into others’ contemporaneous identities: the formation of a usable past, a livable present, and a wishable future.15 processing trauma in this endeavor, writers become makers of meaning and architects of reality because their subject matter is the whole temporal continuum of which man tries to make sense by binding together past, present, and future.16 where does fact end and fiction begin? how factitious is fiction? how fictitious is fact? i inquire into the narrative collectivization of a historical event over three generations of literary engagement to analyze how, to borrow jeffrey alexander’s phrase, “a specific and situated historical event, an event marked by ethnic and racial hatred, violence, and war, becomes transformed into a generalized symbol of human suffering and moral evil.”17 i will follow the theory of cultural trauma developed by alexander, who sketches the history of the perception of the shoah from nazism-related war “atrocities” via a progressive narrative to a tragic narrative that went hand in hand with inaugurating the holocaust’s status as unique and universal.18 this development is essential in understanding the emergence of the holocaust as an event of cultural trauma that is very much alive for later generations whose predecessors, although being closer to it, felt no or little connection to.19 this phenomenon is in addition and contrast to what marianne hirsch called “postmemory,”20 a form of nonmemory or absent memory of the later generations that spawned a varied and 14 remembering here takes on two meanings: first, to bring them back to mind and hand them down from generation to generation and, second, to inscribe themselves, through this memorial act, as members of the collectivity of the traumatized. 15 paul connerton, how societies remember (cambridge/new york: cambridge university press, 1989), 26. 16 see, in this context, the heraclitian sentiment that “[e]verything changes and nothing remains still. you cannot step twice into the same stream” (rapp 2007, 67). according to heraclitian philosophy, history is a constant temporal stream, which is never the same at two different points of time. see also, the augustinian doctrine that “if the present time were always present and weren’t blending into the past, it wouldn’t be time anymore but eternity” (meijering, 1979, 59). time is seen as a whole that cannot be put into human histo-temporal categories, but is instead an auxiliary construction to grasp reality (harpham 1985, 81; stein 1984, 7). it follows, that “beliefs in a historical past from which men might learn any simple, substantial truth” are false, as “there were as many ‘truths’ about the past as there were individual perspectives on it” (white 1973, 332). for nietzsche (2010, 42), “[t]he unrestrained historical sense, pushed to its logical extreme, uproots the future, because it destroys illusions and robs existing things of the only atmosphere in which they can live” (grass 1983, 128–29; anchor 1987, 121–22). 17 alexander, “social construction,” 3. 18 alexander, “social construction,” 3–32. 19 alexander, “social construction,” 3. 20 marianne hirsch, the generation of postmemory: writing and visual culture after the holocaust (new york: columbia university press, 2012). http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 2 3 t ho r s t e n w i l h e lm contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 6, no 1 “boundless” (2017) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2017.206 complex literary output in the attempt to approach the trauma.21 this “postmemory” deserves further analysis vis-à-vis alexander’s theory. whereas alexander “explores the social creation of a cultural fact and the effects of this cultural fact on social and moral life,”22 i explore the literary narratives produced both as cause and effect of this social construction and its metamorphoses over the generations. the “canon”23 of jewish american fiction establishes dialogues between individuals and groups and, thus, allows for interrelated and/or opposing representations of identity. as part of the literary tradition, the narratives form horizons on which we see how individuals and collectivities inscribe their identities as created by inclusion and exclusion of aspects of the collective identity. individually, those who lived through the holocaust are traumatized by the atrocities they experienced. collectively, this trauma was transmitted to the following generations who are traumatized by its aftermath. the survivors’ tales foster a tradition of holocaust narratives that perpetuates the trauma, transmitting it to the following generations—thereby engaging in a certain healing process. but these tales also constitute a connective collective experience24 through the need of later generations to incorporate the traumatic contemporaneity into their own contemporaneity, that is the identities they narrate both of and for themselves. first-generation testimonies, especially elie wiesel’s night, use narrative stylistic features to draw the reader into, and stir engagement with, the trauma stories by simultaneously propagating the incomprehensibility and incommunicability of the holocaust. these individual renditions establish a collective narrative of the trauma that traumatizes even later generations. this can be seen, alexander argues, “when members of a collectivity feel they have been subjected to a horrendous event that leaves indelible marks upon their group consciousness, making their memories forever and changing their future identity in fundamental and irrevocable ways.”25 he asserts that a cultural trauma is not a priori in the world, that is events, on the cultural level, are not inherently traumatic.26 rather, what creates a cultural trauma are the individual and collective attributions to an event.27 21 ellen s. fine, “intergenerational memories: hidden children and second generation,” in remembering for the future: the holocaust in an age of genocide, vol. 3, memory, ed. john k. roth and elizabeth maxwell (basingstoke: macmillan, 2010), 187. 22 alexander, “social construction,” 3. 23 i will not attempt to define a comprehensive and exhaustive canon of jewish american fiction—let alone literature. this effort has been undertaken and is currently being worked on by eminent scholars such as ruth r. wisse and justin cammy, to name but two. following jan assmann, i will merely use my individual “canon” as a principle of the interrelation of collective and individual identity formation through and in works of fiction. i hold that the works i analyze describe, form, change, and discard the normative consciousness of a whole population and the individuals who relate their identities to it (cammy 2008; wisse 2000). 24 see joseph soloveitchik’s “covenant of fate” in denoting such a formation of a collective identity along the narratives about the holocaust trauma (kaplan 2005, 5). 25 jeffrey c. alexander, “toward a theory of cultural trauma,” in cultural trauma and collective identity. ed. jeffrey c. alexander et al. (berkeley: university of california press, 2004), 1. 26 jeffrey c. alexander, trauma. a social theory (cambridge, ma: polity. 2012), 13. 27 alexander, “toward a theory,” 8. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 2 4 h i s t o r i c a l c o n t e mp o r an e i t y a nd c o n t e mp o r an e o u s h i s t o r i c i t y contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 6, no 1 “boundless” (2017) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2017.206 but trauma leaves ruptures “in the web of meaning,” thereby constricting the construction of “meaningful histories.”28 that is why fictional traumas are sometimes no less traumatizing than factual ones. trauma “becomes a thing by virtue of the context in which it is implanted.”29 as such, trauma generates traumatic narratives that must be remembered in order to be worked through and spoken out.30 individual and collective traumatic memories continue through narratives, which, again, change over time as new memories are found or formed in the construction of coherent narratives by victims and following generations. accordingly, the original trauma, while being worked through, is re-enacted by subsequent generations. generationally, our present and past involvements are causally connected. on one hand, our perception of the past depends on present influences. on the other, the past influences our perception of the present.31 trauma narratives, hence, play an important role in studying post-holocaust jewish-american fiction, as highlighted by yael zerubavel, who contends that [e]ach act of commemoration produces a commemorative narrative, a story about a particular past that accounts for this ritualized remembrance and provides a moral message for the group members. […] collective memory clearly draws on historical sources. yet it does so selectively and creatively. […] the commemorative narrative […] undergoes the process of narrativization.32 post-1945 jewish-american fiction, in many respects, constitutes such “commemorative narratives.” in alexander’s theory, trauma simultaneously constitutes a disruptive and a constructive force in identity formation.33 remembering becomes an act of putting memories into meaningful narrative sequences that invest one’s present with meaning, irrespective of whether the remembered entities are based on fact. there cannot, of course, be a single adequate and accurate memory; rather, there is a multiplicity of memories.34 this highlights the basic principle: while “survivors persist in writing memoirs to bear witness to their encounter with death. […] children of survivors are trying to come to terms with the wounds they have inherited.”35 in this process, imaginative narratives are paramount because they create meaningful stories that allow for coherence and grounding by filling gaps either fictionally or by incorporating other people’s memories. necessarily, this process, to a lesser extent, pertains also to survivor testimonies, since no 28 bernhard giesen, “the trauma of perpetrators: the holocaust as the traumatic reference of german national identity,” in cultural trauma and collective identity. ed. jeffrey c. alexander et al. (berkley: university of california press, 2004), 113. 29 neil j. smelser, “psychological trauma and cultural trauma,” in cultural trauma and collective identity, ed. jeffrey c. alexander et al. (berkeley: university of california press, 2004), 34. 30 giesen, “trauma of perpetrators,” 113. 31 connerton, how societies, 2. 32 yael zerubavel, recovered roots: collective memory and the making of israeli national tradition (chicago: the university of chicago press, 1995), 237. 33 cf. the holocaust trauma and second-generation identification, not with the following generations’ own present reality but with their parents’ memories. it shows the need to incorporate the traumatic memories, which constitute a connective collective experience to interlink one’s identity with others. 34 fine, “intergenerational memories,” 78. 35 fine, “intergenerational memories,” 78. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 2 5 t ho r s t e n w i l h e lm contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 6, no 1 “boundless” (2017) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2017.206 survivor can represent the holocaust or even one concentration camp experience in its entirety,36 which is why works engaging with the tradition of holocaust testimonies can be seen as “works born of belated trauma.”37 there is not one holocaust trauma, but a range of traumata born from the specifity of one’s experiences at a certain time and location within the event. each trauma is specific to the context in which it occurs. taken together as an evolved and evolving collective narrative, the respective experiences and traumata form a story of a collective trauma. at the same time, the holocaust trauma constitutes several collective identities that must be differentiated: the identity of survivors, of the second and third generations, and of all those living in the aftermath of the holocaust.38 each identity is marked by specific scripts, which the individual has and which she follows to ground herself. to analyze the use, function, and implications of these scripts, one must analyze the intergenerational “contingent, sociologically freighted nature of the trauma process[es].”39 such an intergenerational approach to the literary productions is significant because the effects of the cultural trauma have not yet been studied in depth. an analysis based on alexander’s theory shows that a good many studies of jewish-american fiction fail to see that there is an interpretive grid through which all “facts” about [the holocaust] trauma are mediated … [it] has a supraindividual, cultural status; it is symbolically structured and sociologically determined. no trauma interprets itself. before trauma can be experienced at the collective (not individual) level, there are essential questions that must be answered, and answers to these questions [and the questions themselves] change over time.40 these changes are overtly and covertly reflected in the literary outputs of each generation. when we are interpreting the world and our perceptions of it, we do so by constructing texts that reflect our rootedness in our respective contemporaneities—social, historical, communal, regional, geographical, religious, temporal, and so forth. we should not forget that, although the holocaust traumatized each survivor, spawning a plethora of narrative and creative engagements, jewish-american fiction is more than a mere literature of the holocaust. third-generation works such as all other nights, in which dara horn explores another kind of jewish trauma experience during the american civil war of 1861–1865, and what we talk about when we talk about anne frank, in which nathan englander explores a wider range of questions about jewish identity in a post 36 weissman, fantasies, 1–5. 37 this is a form of individual, i.e., “psychological,” trauma and not one of cultural trauma as alexander conceptualizes it. these two concepts, while compared, should not be intermixed or blurred. 38 marita grimwood, in her study holocaust literature of the second generation (new york: palgrave macmillan, 2007) underlines the inherent transnationality of second-generation literature—a fact easily expandable to both firstand third-generation writing as well. according to grimwood, “[s]econdgeneration writing is by its nature an international field. while not wishing to elide the cultural specificities of immigrant experiences and memorial traditions, it is clear that in this case drawing rigid boundaries between national literatures is both arbitrary and limiting. owing to the nature of postwar migration, even pinning a given writer down to a single country can be difficult” (2). in the following, however, we contend that analyzing works written from within a specific cultural context–the united states–nevertheless accounts for certain features pertaining and originating specifically from this context. 39 alexander, “social construction,” 7. 40 alexander, “social construction,” 7. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 2 6 h i s t o r i c a l c o n t e mp o r an e i t y a nd c o n t e mp o r an e o u s h i s t o r i c i t y contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 6, no 1 “boundless” (2017) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2017.206 holocaust world, producing particularly illuminating narratives in looking beyond the trauma by building upon it. first-generation testimony the 1970s saw the beginning of a tradition of sharing testimony of one’s experiences during the holocaust with a more widely interested audience. before that, stories of the traumatic experiences were not welcomed by the larger public. perceptions of the survivor also changed.41 ellen s. fine’s statement that “the afterlife of the holocaust […] has expanded in the 1990s” reflects this growth of testimonial material.42 direct testimony fostered the emergence of survivors as a new concept in the trauma discourse because they provided a “tactile link with the tragic event. as their social and personal role was defined, they began to write books, give speeches to local and national communities, and record their memories of camp experiences on tape and video.”43 the trajectory of silence and testimony can be seen in the example of elie wiesel, who at first imposed a pledge of silence upon himself: i knew that the role of the survivor was to testify. only i did not know how. i lacked experience, i lacked a framework. i mistrusted the tools, the procedures. should one say it all or hold it all back? should one shout or whisper? […] and then, how can one be sure that the words, once uttered, will not betray, distort the message they bear? […] so heavy was my anguish that i made a vow: not to speak, not to touch upon the essential for at least ten years. long enough to see clearly. long enough to listen to the voices crying inside my own. long enough to regain possession of my memory. long enough to unite the languages of man with the silence of the dead.44 41 the survivors’ testimonies emblematize the problems that arise on expressing and working through the traumatic events. lived-through atrocities or witnessed atrocities together form the trauma that the survivors need to work through. temporal, geographical, and, most importantly, linguistic distance is needed to be able to construct a meaningful narrative. although clearly based on fact and actual events, each testimony is also a novel or, to use claire colebrook’s (1997, 16) expression, a “discursive event.” hence, it incorporates historical facts into “a collection of new relations,” filling up gaps and establishing links to foster coherence. the consecutive literary traditions, then, are clearly and unavoidably works of fiction. the factual element in secondand third-generation literary productions is based on “historical evidence” and the accounts of “those who were there.” the fictional element is that they imaginatively connect to the factual events trying to grasp, or even experience, the trauma they have inherited as parts of their past. in connecting to their parents’ trauma, the second generation faces elemental difficulties. for one, they do not have actual memories of the trauma they have inherited from their parents’ stories and physical and psychological suffering. also, their parents’ actual memories— emotional and bodily reactions—cannot be transformed into their own memories one to one. nevertheless, their imaginative effort—as realized in their works—allows them to approximate their parents’ memories in their “affective and psychic effect” that marianne hirsch (2012, 31) terms “postmemory.” the concept of postmemory is based on the premise that, for the children, who actually had to cope, if not with the trauma itself, then with its aftereffects, the holocaust is “a memory not of theoretical abstraction or ideological strategies, but of proximity charged with feeling” (hoffman 2004, 180). 42 fine, “intergenerational memories,” 51. 43 alexander, “social construction,” 66. 44 elie wiesel, a jew today (new york: vintage, 1978), 18. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 2 7 t ho r s t e n w i l h e lm contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 6, no 1 “boundless” (2017) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2017.206 wiesel’s night and the implications of his “vow” deserve reevaluation considering intergenerational trauma narratives, especially since wiesel claims that his work is born from silence. “i entered literature through silence,” wiesel states in an interview, i seek the role of witness, and i am duty bound to justify each moment of my life as a survivor. […] words can never express the inexpressible; language is finally inadequate, but we do know of the beauty of literature. we must give truth a name, force man to look. the fear that man will forget, that i will forget, that is my obsession. literature is the presence of the absence. since i live, i must be faithful to the memory. […] i must be the emissary of the dead, even though the role is painful. if we study to forget, live to die, then why? the question is the answer; what i do, what i write, is the answer. i write to understand as much as to be understood. literature is an act of conscience. it is up to us to rebuild with memories, with ruins, with efforts, and with moments of grace.45 caruth thought-provokingly approaches the theoretical stance of the unknowability, incomprehensibility, inexplicability, and inexpressibility of the holocaust and its ensuing traumata with an interest “in the complex relation between knowing and not knowing,” because it is at this intersection “that the language of literature and the psychoanalytic theory of traumatic experience precisely meet.”46 the nexus where knowing, not-knowing, and the emerging narratives to imbue meaning in the events through language meet is vital in this context. contrary to caruth’s theorem of the incomprehensibility of the initial trauma experience, however, richard mcnally contends that the trauma is available to the victim initially and fully. in the cases where there is a silence, that silence is either voluntarily or involuntarily imposed on the victims as a result of personal needs or the public audiences’ reaction to the trauma narratives.47 this is not a form of repression, since the memory of trauma remains virulent in the victim, but a form of not talking about it. in the narrative quest for understanding and meaning creation (as highlighted in alexander’s theory of a coded, weighted, and narrated collective narrative in the face of destroyed meaning), the trauma narratives make the initial, individual experiences and memories of the trauma available to those who have not experienced it or who have experienced it differently. there, in the open space of public and literary discourse, is the “truth, in its delayed appearance and its belated address” merged with “what is known, but also [with] what remains unknown in our very actions and our language.”48 moreover, the collective narrative starts to haunt those who have not experienced the horrors themselves but are drawn into the victims’ traumatic narratives. wiesel published the yiddish …un die velt hot geshvign with significant differences to the later night. all english versions of night are translations of the french version. most importantly, wiesel’s work allows for an analysis of fictional versus historical truth and of how the narrativization of memory shapes the perception of the holocaust. apart from that, 45 heidi anne walker/elie wiesel, “how and why i write: an interview with elie wiesel,” the journal of education 189, no. 3, reflection and renewal (2008/2009): 49–50. 46 cathy caruth, unclaimed experience: trauma, narrative, and history (baltimore, md: the johns hopkins university press 1996), 3. 47 richard j. mcnally, remembering trauma (cambridge, ma: the belknap press of harvard university press 2003). 48 caruth, unclaimed experience, 4. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 2 8 h i s t o r i c a l c o n t e mp o r an e i t y a nd c o n t e mp o r an e o u s h i s t o r i c i t y contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 6, no 1 “boundless” (2017) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2017.206 night lies in the middle of a significant transitional period in the social construction of the holocaust. not only is wiesel’s account located at a point in time when communal perception of the holocaust began to change from a progressive to a tragic narrative, but also, he helped in making that transition. night, as a paradigmatic narrative, has had a strong impact on subsequent discourses about holocaust trauma and how it has been narrativized. wiesel artistically and poetically recounts the unspeakable events and uses historical and fictional reappraisal to bridge the void of silence and memory loss through testimony and narrative. thereby wiesel powerfully shows that the inexplicability and unspeakability is no hindrance to speak of it and to find linguistic expressions to approach the subject. as naomi seidman emphasizes, wiesel’s—and trauma discourses in general—stylization of the unsayable is not what cannot be expressed at all but “what cannot be spoken in french.”49 wiesel’s use of narratological techniques to tell his experiences, to relate to his experiences, and to mediate these experiences, as well as the way those techniques establish or reestablish a certain degree of identity after the trauma, help understand the literary productions of the following generations. these productions are, in themselves, new building blocks for new identities. seidman, in her comparative analysis of night and …un die velt holds the different endings to be two “entirely different account[s] of the experience of the survivor.”50 she sees the ending of night to be a projection of eliezer, the surviving protagonist, into the post-holocaust world in which the witness becomes a torn mediator between the need to speak and the silence and death born by an unspeakable event. seidman conceptualizes this as a change in the witness’s identity, arguing that …un die velt portrays the enraged “yiddish survivor [who] shatters that image as soon as he sees it, destroying the deathly existence the nazis willed on him.” this depiction would fit into the context of what alexander calls the progressive narrative, an enraged but teleologically oriented outlook that underlines the need to shatter the trauma for life to go on. in night, on the other hand, the narrative projects “liberated eliezer’s death-haunted face into the postwar years when wiesel would become a familiar figure,” and when the outlook had changed to a tragic narrative, which constituted the survivor as an eternally maimed figure who needs to be held in awe because of the message delivered by the witness of trauma.51 an interesting counterpoint is louis begley’s 1991 novel wartime lies. begley, who spent the war years hiding in poland with his mother under a fake identity, will—although not a survivor of a concentration camp—be dealt with as a witness of the traumatic events of the holocaust. begley, in contrast to wiesel, never claims that his account is mnemonically or historically accurate (he writes, after all, nearly fifty years after the events). on the contrary, he offers the possibility of fictional freedom and narrative contortion. begley claims “the freedom to invent, consistent with the profound moral and psychological truth of the story.”52 he holds that “the passage of time and exile” functions as “a psychic screen” that helped him grapple with the topic.53 like wiesel, he needed temporal distance. 49 naomi seidman, “elie wiesel and the scandal of jewish rage,” jewish social studies: new series, 3 (1996): 8. 50 seidman, “scandal,” 7. 51 seidman, “scandal,” 7. 52 louis begley, wartime lies (new york: ballantine books, 2004), 201. 53 begley, wartime lies, 201. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 2 9 t ho r s t e n w i l h e lm contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 6, no 1 “boundless” (2017) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2017.206 however, in contrast to wiesel, who stresses mnemonic and historical accuracy, begley emphasizes that wartime lies represents one possible memory and possible identity. this does not necessarily make his account a lie, but allows for a deeper understanding of the process of fictionalizations. both wiesel and begley stress that temporal distance is crucial in understanding and narrating the experiences, but begley writes that wartime lies is “quintessentially a work of fiction and not an autobiography or memoir, and that i had to write the story […] in the form of a novel. the form was no less necessary than the emotional distance from the events i was going to evoke conferred by exile and the passage of time.”54 a valuable excursus here is the holocaust hoax fragments. memories of a childhood, 1939-1948 by binjamin wilkomirski alias bruno doesekker alias bruno grosjean, because it unfolds questions about the possibility of such strong identification with the holocaust that one creates one’s own account of it.55 to be more precise, wilkomirski identifies so deeply with the ex post facto collective narratives as to make them his new, lived identity. fragments provides an interesting counterpoint to the survivor testimonies and bridges the gap not only to authors like saul bellow,56 philip roth,57 and cynthia ozick,58 who are contemporaries of the holocaust, although spatially and experientially removed from the events, but also to secondand third-generation writers. i do not intend to qualify one account as more genuine or less truthful than another. it is much more fruitful to analyze the implications that arise with this account and its reception—the need to identify with a traumatic event and a certain narrative about it, as well as the need to establish one’s own account of a memory that one has without it being one’s own memory. it is a striking example of how a collective trauma can be used to inscribe one’s identity. in a poetic narrative mode, the novels engage with the individual’s universal problems of contemporaneity in a present infused with traumatic narratives. tradition, community, and culture are paramount. in the historical nexus, the individuals need to inscribe themselves into their respective version of history by creating meaning from the past. a whole self and a livable present is possible only by bringing past, present, and future into co(n)temporaneity. second generation the second generation’s literary output is marked by the conflict arising from the inherited parental trauma, which they feel as if it were their own but of which they have no personal memory. they must necessarily overcome past traumata: not only the holocaust, but also forgetfulness, fragmentation, their personal fears, and unrealized hopes. living in the present cannot be achieved if the individual is overwhelmed by the past. the protagonists in second-generation novels—mainly members of the second-generation themselves—yearn for a present wholeness of self and a stable identity. the parents’ trauma poses a tremendous legacy that counteracts this yearning. not only do the children bear witness to the trauma, but they also must “never forget!” so that later generations will know what happened and 54 begley, wartime lies, 200. 55 binjamin wilkomirski, fragments: memories of a childhood, 1939-1948 (london: picador, 1997). 56 saul bellow, mr. sammler’s planet (new york: penguin, 1995). 57 philip roth, the ghost writer (new york: the library of america, 2007). 58 cynthia ozick, the shawl (new york: vintage, 1990). http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 3 0 h i s t o r i c a l c o n t e mp o r an e i t y a nd c o n t e mp o r an e o u s h i s t o r i c i t y contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 6, no 1 “boundless” (2017) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2017.206 that the trauma may be, at some point, healed. second-generation accounts are marked by features like parental silence as to their experiences, parental stories of the horrors without hope or contextualization, witnessing the parents’ futile attempts to start over again, and the self-imposed role as witness to the results of atrocities as well as to their parents’ survival. all of this results in a feeling of helplessness, rage, and near incapability of establishing a stable and independent identity in the face of this legacy. while the second generation bears the brunt of the ongoing trauma of the holocaust, it is an indispensable link in working through the collective trauma. as proxy to the trauma, the second generation is overwhelmed by the individual and collective obligations to create a future. in doing so, the second generation is torn in the conflict between its inheritance and its own selves. thane rosenbaum’s second hand smoke novelizes such helplessness, rage, and difficulties a child of survivors faces. trained by his mother to be a jewish nemesis who pursues all anti-semites and finally fights back, duncan katz grows up as “a child of trauma. not of love, or happiness, or exceptional wealth. just trauma. and a nightmare, too.”59 significantly, his parents’ silence about their holocaust past fills duncan with fantasies about the events that allow him “to encounter them” imaginatively in the hope to feel at least something, “to be swallowed up […], to become a prisoner, to actually feel the horror” his parents felt and thereby break the excruciating tension he experiences between their holocaust suffering and his seemingly comfortable post-holocaust world.60 duncan is a witness to “the damage that could never be undone. the true legacy of the shoah. lives that were supposed to start all over but couldn’t. halting first steps, then the stumbles. the inexhaustible sorrow of the parents; the imminent recognition of the children.”61 for duncan, children of survivors are “[c]hildren of smoke and skeletons,” so that, inadvertently, the “holocaust shaped those who were survivors of survivors. inexorably, cruelly, and unfairly so.”62 the development of the narrative is further crafted around the dilemma of survivors who lost children during the holocaust and had children again. they face the problem of whom to love and whom to care for when their post-holocaust children are mere surrogates for the lost ones. duncan, born after the holocaust, lacks an identity without the possibility of a memory separate from his parents’ trauma. he is indoctrinated by his survivor mother to “avenge our deaths.”63 the “ghosts of a robbed childhood” roam this novel of rage, hopelessness, and remembering without the ability to relive the real events.64 yet, he revisits auschwitz on his trip to poland, where he wants to find the brother he had never known he had until an uncle reveals duncan’s mother’s darkest secret. in birkenau, accompanied by his yogi brother, duncan experiences a terrifying catharsis that enables him to come to terms with the imagined past and gnawing rage. 59 thane rosenbaum, second hand smoke: a novel (new york: st. martin’s griffin, 2000), 1. 60 weissman, fantasies, 1. 61 rosenbaum, second hand, 2. 62 rosenbaum, second hand, 2. 63 rosenbaum, second hand, 32. 64 rosenbaum, second hand, 19. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 3 1 t ho r s t e n w i l h e lm contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 6, no 1 “boundless” (2017) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2017.206 it is this possibility of cathartic moments, by linking firstand second-generation trauma narratives, that constitutes the importance of this generation. duncan, raised and trained by his traumatized mother “to be alone, to do without,” faces his greatest fears in the barracks of birkenau. he is “paralyzed by the fear of being abandoned. even my insides know it. my intestines are strangling each other.”65 duncan, the nazi hunter, bodybuilder, and martial artist, who fulfills his mother’s dreams of an unquenchable flame against anti-semitic atrocities, is incapable of crushing the fantasies of being selected, incarcerated, and tortured by the nazis that surface from his (post-)memories. these memories are fantasies born from countless testimonials he read and that constitute the overall collective narrative of the holocaust from which the post-generations draw their knowledge. duncan needs his brother, isaac, who, though born after the holocaust in a dp camp, is held to be a death-camp survivor by his polish neighbors and works as a yoga teacher in warsaw, to make sense of these fears and come to terms with past and present traumata. “your parents died too soon, and then your wife left you and took your child,” isaac reminds duncan. “your stomach is not wrong; you just don’t know how to live with the grief.”66 isaac highlights the close connectedness between the past trauma and the present grief. duncan must separate the two to establish a contemporaneity instead of his state of a past overwriting his present. duncan, isaac points out, should acknowledge that his mother’s experiences were of a different nature because she experienced the death camps. isaac explains to his collapsing brother that he “can’t live a normal life with images of the holocaust playing in [his] head” by showing duncan the numbers that their mother branded on his forearm: “i am not afraid of them,” isaac says. “you have no numbers, and yet they terrify you. you are hiding from yourself. you are a stranger to yourself. we are locked in this barracks, but you are trapped in yourself even tighter. you buried yourself alive in your own tomb.”67 duncan’s problems originate in his struggle to live an identity that is not his but is created by the narratives he forms from his parents’ silence and trauma, as well as the seemingly infinite number of holocaust books cluttering his apartment. at first, duncan only realizes that he is caught in a time warp, trapped in a cattle car. everything is about loss. it feels like there is no difference between my life and what happened to our family during the war. […] my life is like one big atonement. everything is kaddish. kristallnacht all over again, but this time the glass is not from broken storefronts, but families.68 duncan emblematizes the second-generation paradigm. he is excruciatingly aware of the difference between then and now, as indicated by his choice of words like “dress rehearsal,” “time warp,” and “what happened during the war.” in fact, it is especially this awareness of a seemingly unbridgeable temporal gap that makes it so unbearable for him. at the same time, he feels the need to pass on the trauma and, in an everlasting process of mourning, violates the very principles of the kaddish because for him “[t]o mourn is to forget.”69 duncan 65 rosenbaum, second hand, 262. 66 rosenbaum, second hand, 262. 67 rosenbaum, second hand, 262. 68 rosenbaum, second hand, 262–63. 69 rosenbaum, second hand, 264. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 3 2 h i s t o r i c a l c o n t e mp o r an e i t y a nd c o n t e mp o r an e o u s h i s t o r i c i t y contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 6, no 1 “boundless” (2017) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2017.206 transforms the second-generation burden, that is, the inability to feel what his parents’ felt during the holocaust, into his “birthright,” which constitutes “a permanent scar.”70 to heal this scar, duncan needs his brother, who symbolizes the connection to the actual trauma and helps duncan see that he cannot continue to make his parents’ past trauma his own contemporaneous identity. isaac tells duncan that “rage is all about holding on to something that you don’t need but are afraid to let go. you have a life force inside you. it is time to use it for living, and not as a prison.”71 after living through his own personal— but imagined—auschwitz nightmare, duncan is finally able to heed this advice. he establishes his own narrative, in which he incorporates the narrative of his parents’ past but which no longer overwrites his own present identity. third generation focusing on continuing the legacy, second-generation literature faces the dilemma that it can only approach the trauma, memory, and history imaginatively. to come to terms with the trauma, second-generation writers incorporate historical (factual) accounts into their fictional narratives. with direct contact with survivors and witnesses quickly becoming less possible, such incorporation and transmission become even more pressing for the third generation. unlike the children, the survivors’ grandchildren have more distance to the actual accounts. however, scholarship suggests that many survivors find it easier to recount their experiences to—or to revisit the old country accompanied by—their grandchildren instead of their children. compared to the third generation’s curiosity about their ancestors’ past, distance and closeness produce a plethora of new ways of engaging with the trauma. what is more, members of the third generation are more deeply ingrained in the american collective identity and are more likely to engage with the holocaust in their individual way. dara horn’s the world to come highlights the difficulties the third generation faces: the need to bear witness to memories and traumata of the holocaust in a world where true witnesses are dying out fast. however, the world to come emphasizes that such a world to come is not as bleak as it seems. even in the face of a history full of trauma, pogroms, and atrocities, the past is viewed as an inalienable part of a person’s contemporaneity. “i believe,” says ben, the protagonist of the world to come, “that when people die, they go to the same places as all the people who haven’t yet been born. that’s why it’s called the world to come, because that’s where they make the new souls for the future.”72 one’s predecessors are bound to one’s present identity because one is formed by their actions, decisions, choices, and lives. simultaneously, the past intricately shapes and influences present and future, which is then bound back to a new generation arriving. past, present, and future are inextricably linked in horn’s narrative conception of the world to come. the world to come is filled with these intricate relapses into a past before the holocaust, a past where trauma already existed in the cloth of narrative. but for horn, this history full of memory and loss is precisely what constitutes the fascination with it. one character ties “himself up in ropes of memory, caged himself in with iron bars of memory, drew the 70 rosenbaum, second hand, 264. 71 rosenbaum, second hand, 264. 72 dara horn, the world to come. a novel, (new york: norton 2006), 124. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 3 3 t ho r s t e n w i l h e lm contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 6, no 1 “boundless” (2017) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2017.206 curtains and hid himself in the dark tomb which he filled with an entire world of memory – until all that was missing was color and light.”73 it is a powerful play on the ambivalence between the actual memory and the belated writing. the characters in the world to come are torn between preservation (the conservation of knowledge from all previous generations that is taught to the unborn new generations in the world to come) and destruction (the vital forgetting of being born into one’s present), liberation (the possibility to start anew), and enslavement (the generational baggage that comes with the past). in that, they mirror the difficulties of a generation that can approach the trauma increasingly only through secondhand narratives. these stories of the past fill one’s present because the deceased “give them all the raw material of their souls, like their talents and their brains and their potential.”74 there still is hope because “it’s up to the new ones, once they’re born, what they’ll use and what they won’t, but that’s what everyone who dies is doing, i think. they get to decide what kind of people the new ones might be able to become.”75 in this respect, horn’s work is typical of third-generation writing, as it powerfully shows that the third generation is also characterized by an urge to move on from, instead of merely continue, the trauma. the worlds of the past, present, and future are continuously shifting in and out of co(n)temporaneity. the world to come becomes the world before: the yiddish world of eastern europe and its plethora of narrative possibilities becomes a foil for the present dreams for the future. horn and other third-generation writers acknowledge the holocaust trauma but try to connect to this pre-holocaust world to create a new life in the post-holocaust one. the world to come—a future reference in itself—is where present and future merge with the past through predecessorial instruction. in this process, imaginative narratives are paramount because they create meaningful stories that allow for coherence and grounding by filling gaps either fictionally or by incorporating memories of other people. future contemporaneity the selected novels deploy a historicization of fiction and a fictionalization of history. memory and history—as fact, as well as a fictional narrative—are used to produce meaning, to retell the past(s) to create, shape, or meet the present. the novels are bound by their need to bear witness to a traumatic past that entered the fabric of individual and collective identity, although, for the nonwitness generations, it is a past they can never experience themselves. both first-generation writers such as begley and secondand third-generation writers like rosenbaum and horn constitute a conception of the past as being one possibility among others. survivors’ identities are shaped by the co(n)temporaneity of memories of a trauma that shattered their identities and their past up to the holocaust. for the following generations, a considerable part of their identity is constituted by the co(n)temporaneity of a past trauma they have not experienced first-hand but, as a collective trauma narrative, overwhelms them nevertheless. if the process of remembering and forgetting is disrupted, both survivors and following generations will suffer a loss of identity—a footing in their present—as the collective trauma narratives take over. the past, in this conception, is a histonarrativistic nexus, that is constituted by individual and collective memories, facts and narratives, toward which the individual feels an urge to connect. while for wiesel, the 73 horn, world to come, 200. 74 horn, world to come, 124. 75 horn, world to come, 124. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 3 4 h i s t o r i c a l c o n t e mp o r an e i t y a nd c o n t e mp o r an e o u s h i s t o r i c i t y contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 6, no 1 “boundless” (2017) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2017.206 auschwitz self, although shattered metaphorically as an image in a mirror, will always remain a present reality, duncan katz, in second hand smoke, needs to develop an identity that is his alone and not a reenactment of other people’s memories. in the world to come, what alexander calls a progressive narrative, is more palpable again. the co(n)temporaneous identity consists of the past and moves into a future, which is causally connected to a past of following generations. in this nexus, past, present, and future constitute a conflux of time in the individuals’ minds, enabling them to move intellectually backward and forward in time and generationally reshape the collective trauma narratives. here, trauma can be both cause and effect of disconnection. it might even be the case that reinvention is a new form of trauma. the past is a necessary factor in the establishment of an identity grounded contemporaneously. the lack of a past or its traumatization is a cause for fragmentation. memory and tradition together form identity in the process of making history co(n)temporaneous. likewise, the present can be used to create meaning in the past and shape identity. the particular version of a collective identity changes with each individual and new generation, as everyone applies his or her personal history and views on collective history to create a new identity. individual traumata are continuously retold in different narratives to work out and create meaning from various experiences. collective traumata need to incorporate these stories as well as to meet the audiences’ respective imaginative or real contemporaneities. identity is always in dispute within the novels and their audiences. identity, as presented and interpreted here, requires constant redefinition and reinterpretation by each individual as well as by entire communities. it must be created from our versions of our pasts—the histories we construct from it—and our present—the meaning we extract from our own worlds. identity, like history, becomes something the individual creates and chooses.76 the characters grapple with their real or invented origins and where they will lead them in the present and future.77 the emphasis lies on the essentiality of the past and a meaningful connection to tradition—retelling stories of the past with ever-new meanings, stressing the need to link the past and the present.78 the authors and their characters explore the origins of contemporaneous identities. they are united in their attempt to create a meaningful world worth living in, and in their search for meaning and legitimacy in a world that is shaped by the traumata, memories, aspirations, and choices of a nexus of generations of ancestors.79 memory and the past, however, are not just relative or arbitrary stories that can be reinvented according to the individual’s pleasure. certain historical landmarks are necessary, unalterable parts of each story, an underlying individual trauma that cannot and must not be negotiated. facts like the birth and death of people, or the shoah, cannot be invented away; one must take them into account while one reinvents one’s own personal, meaningful story around or from them. 76 bryan cheyette, “on being a jewish critic,” in anglophone jewish literature, ed. axel stähler (london: routledge, 2007), 34. 77 josh lambert, american jewish fiction (philadelphia: jewish publication society, 2009), 5. 78 melissa friedling, “feminisms and the jewish mother syndrome: identity, autobiography, and the rhetoric of addiction,” discourse 19 (1996): 109. 79 jeffrey rubin-dorsky, “philip roth and american jewish identity: the question of authenticity,” american literary history 13 (2001): 86. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 3 5 t ho r s t e n w i l h e lm contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 6, no 1 “boundless” (2017) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2017.206 the texts represent continued explorations in search of meaning in history and histories they have inherited from their forebears. moreover, it emblematizes their urge to interpret these meanings in new terms for a new generation.80 nevertheless, the novels emphasize that memory is almost never accurate; it is the meaning and the possibility of creating a whole self in a contemporaneity. historical truth is only the marginal framework in which the manifold possible realities are narrativized. these narratives create a special sense of identity and co(n)temporaneity: not only identity in the sense of identifying oneself with the incidents of history and tradition but also that one’s identity is constituted by these incidents as individual stories form collective narratives.81 the novels allow this through their conception of “a unique identity which springs from [an] origin and [a] story.”82 each individual has to take this basis of cultural identity to start on their path toward creating and exploring their origins, thereby creating and exploring themselves, thereby creating collective narratives to which others can relate. new articles in this journal are licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 united states license. this journal is operated by the university library system of the university of pittsburgh as part of its d-scribe digital publishing program, and is co-sponsored by the university of pittsburgh press. 80 yosef h. yerushalmi, zakhor: jewish history and jewish memory (seattle: washington university press, 1982), 18. 81 max i. dimont, the jews in america: the roots, history, and destiny of american jews (new york: simon and schuster, 1978), 216. 82 ruth r. wisse, “jewish american renaissance,” in the cambridge companion to jewish american literature. ed. hana wirth-nesher and michael p. kramer (cambridge: cambridge university press, 2003), 199. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/ http://www.pitt.edu/ http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/ http://www.upress.pitt.edu/upressindex.aspx http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture vol 9, no 1 (2021) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2021.318 http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu questionnaire stationary women moving through the world: the church of the sacred heart of jesus, calcutta, founded by mrs. pascoa barretto de souza, 1834 mrinalini rajagopalan questionnaire response to the questionnaire: “stationary women moving through the world: the church of the sacred heart of jesus, calcutta, founded by mrs. pascoa barretto de souza, 1834” about the author mrinalini rajagopalan is associate professor in the department of history of art and architecture, university of pittsburgh. at the time of writing this essay she is also allen w. clowes fellow at the national humanities center. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 9, no 1 (2021) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2021.318 in 1835 pope gregory xvi received a petition from mrs. pascao barretto de souza (1775–1856) inviting him to consecrate the church of the sacred heart of jesus, which had been completed the previous year.1 the recently widowed barretto de souza came from the wealthy luso-indian barretto family of calcutta. besides seeking the pope’s blessings for her church, the letter made clear her generous endowment of a catholic church at a time when that denomination was being overshadowed by the anglicans.2 despite being built to serve the catholics of calcutta, the church of the sacred heart of jesus bears a strong architectural resemblance to the anglican st. martin-in-the-fields, london. designed by james gibbs and completed in 1726, the architectural elements of st. martin’s—a broad neoclassical pedimented portico, a facade with five bays, and a multi-tiered and tapering steeple—became popular across india in the early nineteenth century.3 modest scottish parish churches in bombay, madras, and meerut and larger catholic churches like barretto de souza’s built between 1815 and the 1830s echo the visual composition of st. martin.4 eight years after she wrote to the pope, in the winter of 1843, barretto de souza stood at the entrance of her church to welcome bishop borghi (an italian capuchin serving as the vicar apostolic of agra from 1839 to 1848), who celebrated a pontifical high mass followed by the choir singing mozart’s mass, no xii.5 despite the global interconnectedness of nineteenth-century india, with both men and women playing roles in creative expression, the discourse of mobility (the voluntary choice of moving through space and time) is particularly fraught when writing women’s histories; this is hardly because women were not mobile and did not travel. in addition to the patriarchal sanction to move from the father’s to the husband’s house, we know that buddhist and jain nuns traversed the south asian subcontinent on foot as part of their religious practice; that elite women moved with traveling courts and sometimes accompanied their male patrons on military expeditions; and that women pilgrims journeyed across geographies and cultures that seem daunting even to the contemporary subject. yet the question that lingers about the aforementioned story is: did the prestige, wealth, and elevated social rank of women like barretto de souza translate into a vicarious form of mobility that expanded their sphere of 1 names of many of the indian cities mentioned here have been changed as part of a recent “vernacularization” process. in this piece, however, i continue to use the proper nouns that were current during the historical period under study: calcutta (now kolkata); bombay (now mumbai); and madras (now chennai). 2 archivio storico propaganda de fide (rome), scritture congressi indie orientali, vol. v, 443– 447. letter dated 7 may 1835. 3 it is not clear why the architectural schema of st. martin in the fields’s facade was adopted so widely by church builders in india. one pragmatic reason may have been that institutional buildings such as court houses, libraries, and town halls were being constructed all across india in the same neoclassical idiom as st. martin-in-the-fields. local masons and contractors in india might therefore have found the architectural language of that church easy to translate in the indian context. another more cultural explanation might be traced to the desire of indian catholics to bridge the divide between their community and the church of england by adopting an overtly anglican architectural language for their churches. 4 see, for example, st. andrew’s church bombay (1815), st. george’s church, madras (1816), st. john’s church, meerut (1821), and st. andrew’s church, madras (1821). 5 “the durrumtollah church,” the bengal catholic herald (calcutta: p.s. d’rozario & co., 1843), 340. questionnaire stationary women moving through the world: the church of the sacred heart of jesus, calcutta, founded by mrs. pascoa barretto de souza, 1834 mrinalini rajagopalan http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 1 1 m r i n a l i n i r a j a g op a l a n contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 9, no 1 (2021) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2021.318 influence and experiential knowledge beyond their domiciles? in other words, might we think about histories of mobility outside of physical movement and/or displacement? in this piece, i have chosen to respond to the following provocation forwarded by the editors: “within your field, where do you see the greatest potential or need for the implementation of concerns related to mobility and exchange?” i propose a pressing need to consider histories of mobility for those who remained stationary, either by personal choice, social expectations, or individual circumstance. at stake in such an intervention is the dismantling of the concept of mobility that continues to be embodied in gendered and racial privilege. feminist geographers have long critiqued the masculinist affect and male postures that belie the history of mobility.6 for example, mona domosh has shown that the origins of the discipline of geography in the nineteenth century cannot be separated from the imperialist tropes of the intrepid european male “explorer” of the colonized world. domosh further argues that while colonialism brought european women the opportunity to travel outside their homes and homelands, their mobility was instrumental to reinscribing colonial brutality and oppression.7 if the histories of mobility, travel, and exploration are thus caught up in the experience of gendered, racial, and class privilege and imperialism, how do we make room for someone like barretto de souza’s founding of a catholic church as an act of faith and mobility— the agency to travel between, without physical movement, the world of luso-indian calcutta and the catholic metropole of rome? if the archive of barretto de souza is scant, as archives of women usually are, and provides little clue of her aspirations to mobility, how might we recast the discourse of movement to include subjects like her in a more productive way? one way to do so might be by placing barretto de souza in creative tension with her male contemporaries whose own prodigious mobility was enabled by the global networks of the nineteenth century. consider, for example, the author of this watercolor of the church of the sacred heart of jesus, charles d’oyly (1781–1845). d’oyly was an officer of the east india company and dilettante artist in his spare time. at the time that this painting was made, he held the post of senior member of the board of customs, salt, opium and of the marine. salt and opium were both global commodities exchanged in a market monopolized by the british in the early nineteenth century. barretto de souza’s father, luis barretto, and uncle, joseph barretto, had founded a shipping insurance company in macau in 1797 and profited richly from the opium trade between india and china.8 d’oyly, barretto de souza’s father and uncle, the church of the sacred heart of jesus and st. martin-in-the-fields, the pope and bishop borghi were thus interconnected in global networks where commodities like salt and opium, neoclassical and late georgian architectural vocabulary, clergy, and colonial agents moved from one part of the colonized world to the metropole. while barretto de souza may herself appear stationary in this aggregate juggernaut of motion, it is only because the discourse of mobility as it currently stands elides her agency in these routes of movement. 6 for example, sophie bowlby, jo foord, and suzanne mackenzie, “feminism and geography,” area 14, no. 1 (1982): 19–25; doreen massey, space, place, and gender (minneapolis: university of minnesota press, 1994); gillian rose, feminism and geography: the limits of geographical knowledge (hoboken, nj: john wiley & sons, 1993). 7 mona domosh, “toward a feminist historiography of geography,” transactions of the institute of british geographers 16, no. 1 (1991): 95–104. 8 roy eric xavier, “luso-asians and the origins of macau’s cultural development,” journal of the royal asiatic society hong kong branch 57 (2017): 187–205. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 1 2 q u e s t i o n n a i r e contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 9, no 1 (2021) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2021.318 i conclude my note on mobility by offering a visual reading of the term as it appears in d’oyly’s painting. in it, barretto de souza’s church serves as an architectural backdrop and its spire as an exclamation point to the busy foreground of the dharamtala bazaar. an indian rides a horse at a fast clip, outpacing the slower carriage carrying two european women and one man as they head across the dusty square. d’oyly produced numerous picturesque scenes of architecture and landscape during his time in india.9 complimenting his prolific artistic abilities, bishop reginald heber wrote “[d’oyly] says india is full of beautiful picturesque country, if people would but stir a little from the banks of ganges, and his own drawings and paintings certainly make good his assertion.”10 here is d’oyly wishing for indians to be mobile because he found their stationary postures disruptive to the otherwise “picturesque” frame of his vision. barretto de souza’s global connections to the vatican due to her faith and to england vis-à-vis the architecture of her church offer one way to make the histories of mobility more capacious. another arrives in the form of the immobile or obstinately anchored “native” body that thwarts d’oyly’s colonial longing for a perfect, picturesque frame. i contend that it is precisely from these sanguinely stationary (barretto de souza) and stubbornly immobile (“natives”) bodies that new epistemologies of mobility can emerge. 9 for an analysis of how the “picturesque” served as a visual domination of the colonial landscape for european artists, see tapati guha thakurta, monuments, objects, histories: institutions of art in colonial and postcolonial india (new york: columbia university press, 2004) and nicholas dirks, “guiltless spoliations: picturesque beauty, colonial knowledge, and colin mackenzie's survey of india,” in perceptions of south asia's visual past, ed. catherine asher and thomas metcalfe (new delhi: ibh publishing co. 1994), 211-233. 10 [emphasis my own] reginald heber, narrative of a journey: through the upper provinces of india from calcutta to bombay, vol. 1 (london, john murray, 1828): 314. figure 1 charles d’oyly, “curch. entrance to the dhurumtolla,” 1848, (views of calcutta and its environs) © the british library board (x 666, plate 7). http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 1 3 m r i n a l i n i r a j a g op a l a n contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 9, no 1 (2021) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2021.318 new articles in this journal are licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 united states license. this journal is operated by the university library system of the university of pittsburgh as part of its d-scribe digital publishing program, and is co-sponsored by the university of pittsburgh press. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/ http://www.pitt.edu/ http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/ http://www.upress.pitt.edu/upressindex.aspx questionnaire stationary women moving through the world: the church of the sacred heart of jesus, calcutta, founded by mrs. pascoa barretto de souza, 1834 questionnaire stationary women moving through the world: the church of the sacred heart of jesus, calcutta, founded by mrs. pascoa barretto de souza, 1834 microsoft word 7. blomfield and loney.docx vol 9, no 1 (2021) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2021.314 http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu “india in america” a curatorial conversation on the work and practice of lockwood de forest and the ahmedabad wood carving company nina blomfield and katie loney conversation a curatorial conversation between nina blomfield and katie loney on the work and practice of lockwood de forest and the ahmedabad wood carving company. this conversation is based on a public conversation held on october 3, 2019 at the university of pittsburgh. about the authors nina blomfield is a ph.d. candidate in the department of history of art at bryn mawr college. she holds a b.a. in history from victoria university of wellington, new zealand and an m.a, from bryn mawr college. her research focuses on nineteenth-century architecture and design history, the material culture of the home, and networks of consumption in the decorative arts. she is working on a dissertation that explores the intimacy of cultural encounter in latenineteenth-century interior decorating and the role of the domestic interior in engendering, embodying, and preserving complex social and artistic relationships. katie loney is a ph.d. candidate in the department of history of art and architecture at the university of pittsburgh. her research examines nineteenth-century american art and design, with a focus on processes of making, international art markets, collecting histories, and orientalism. she currently holds an andrew w. mellon predoctoral fellowship at the university of pittsburgh, where she is writing her dissertation “lockwood de forest, the ahmedabad wood carving company, and the global circulation of luxury goods.” her work has been supported by the world history center, the terra foundation for american art, and casva. contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 9, no 1 (2021) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2021.314 what happens when we contextualize latenineteenth-century “artistic” interiors within global material and social networks? two exhibitions curated by the authors in 2019 and 2020 explored this question through the work of the ahmedabad wood carving company (awcc), a joint venture started in 1882 by new york-based artist-designer lockwood de forest and gujrati merchant and philanthropist muggunbhai hutheesing. “all-over design”: lockwood de forest between ahmedabad and bryn mawr, curated by nina blomfield, was the first comprehensive exhibition of the decorative arts program designed by de forest at bryn mawr college (fig. 1). the exhibition explored de forest’s idea of “all-over design” as a complex expression of his globalist enterprise—from establishing a carving workshop in ahmedabad, india, to the interiors he decorated for the newly-founded american women’s college. “india in america:” east indian furnishings between ahmedabad and bryn mawr, curated by katie loney, was a digital exhibition that focused on a set of furnishings produced by the awcc now held by bryn mawr college (fig. 2). the exhibition tracked these furnishings from production to consumption, visualizing the now non-existent spaces through which these objects moved. virtual galleries registered the position of the company’s work as objects of skilled craftsmanship, commodities, and exotic luxury furnishings, as well as how turn-of-the-century indians and americans used objects to navigate their identities and social relationships in an increasingly interconnected world. both exhibitions examined the movement of these objects from ahmedabad to new york, baltimore, and bryn mawr, accounting not only for the creative agency of de forest but also for the oftenoverlooked work of hutheesing, the company’s craftsmen, and de forest’s elite female patrons: baltimore railroad heiress mary garrett and bryn mawr college president m. carey thomas. the following conversation revisits an event held publicly on october 3, 2019, in the indian nationality room at the university of pittsburgh (fig. 3). a project that began in the early twentieth century and continues today, the nationality rooms in the cathedral of learning are monuments created by pittsburgh’s immigrant communities. the indian nationality room was created by the indian room committee and dedicated in the year 2000. architect deepack wadhwani designed an immersive interior modeled after nalanda university (bihar, india), collapsing space and time between pittsburgh and the buddhist monastic university that operated from the fifth to twelfth centuries. blomfield and loney chose this venue for its affinity with aesthetic movement interiors, which also sought to imagine distant times, places, environments. over the course of curating their exhibitions, blomfield and loney have collaborated informally through research and conversation and by co-presenting ideas about material culture and global exchange. their scholarly work shares a focus on interiors as complete compositions and interrogates the transportive effect of such spaces. by locating their conversation in the indian nationality room, they aimed to highlight the totalizing and transformative atmospheres shared by the nationality rooms and late-nineteenth-century orientalist interiors. the community-built indian nationality room is, however, fundamentally different from the de forest-designed interiors at bryn mawr college. built by pittsburgh's indian community, the indian nationality room reproduces nalanda university’s architectural features, creating a direct connection between the indian diaspora and the buddhist monastic university, which educated students from across asia. de forest, on the other hand, filled his interiors with an assortment of carved wood and metalwork from india, inlaid pearl chests and fritware tiles from damascus, carpets from egypt, and japanese ceramics. the layering of color, pattern, “india in america” a curatorial conversation on the work and practice of lockwood de forest and the ahmedabad wood carving company nina blomfield and katie loney 3 2 “ i n d i a i n a m e r i c a ” contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 9, no 1 (2021) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2021.314 figure 1 installation shot of “all-over design”: lockwood de forest between ahmedabad and bryn mawr. (photograph by zachary hartzell, courtesy bryn mawr college special collections.) figure 2 frontpage of “india in america”: east indian furnishings between ahmedabad and bryn mawr by katie loney 3 3 n i n a b l o m f i e l d a n d k a t i e l o n e y contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 9, no 1 (2021) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2021.314 and texture in these densely furnished interiors disconnected objects from time or place and created totalizing artistic environments. “all-over design'' and “india in america” dismantle the work of the late-nineteenth-century orientalist interior, revealing the global networks and uneven relationships that both enabled and were sustained by the american market for decorative arts and interior decoration. in their work, blomfield and loney challenge how institutions have valued these interiors for their decorative effects and the imperial visions of western artist-designers, an interpretation that risks perpetuating the colonial systems on which the rooms relied. this conversation records blomfield and loney’s efforts to recover the creative agency of the hutheesing family and the ahmedabad wood carving company’s craftsmen, female patrons, and their surviving objects.1 1 the authors’ work is indebted to the bryn mawr college facilities and collections staff charged with the care and preservation of this furniture for over a century, as well as roberta a. mayer and abigail mcgowan for their meticulous research on lockwood de forest. they would also like to thank everyone who attended their conversation at the university of pittsburgh for their thoughtful comments and provocative questions. katie loney is especially grateful to ruth mostern and molly warsh at the university of pittsburgh’s world history center and alex j. taylor, department of history of art and architecture at the university of pittsburgh, for supporting “india in america” and her work in public history. nina blomfield would like to acknowledge the dedication and support of carrie robbins, curator/academic liaison for art and artifacts, bryn mawr college, and sylvia houghteling, assistant professor of history of art, bryn mawr college. “all-over design”: lockwood de forest between ahmedabad and bryn mawr was made possible through the generous assistance of the friends of the bryn mawr college libraries. figure 3 photograph from “india in america:” a curatorial conversation on the work and practice of lockwood de forest and ahmedabad wood carving company, october 3, 2019. (photo: alex j. taylor). 3 4 “ i n d i a i n a m e r i c a ” contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 9, no 1 (2021) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2021.314 katie loney: over the last decade or so, we have seen rising interest in de forest’s work amongst museums and curators in the us. major museums have purchased furnishings by de forest and the awcc for their collections, including the metropolitan museum of art and the virginia museum of fine arts. as part of their 2011-2014 renovation, the cooper hewitt smithsonian design museum restored andrew carnegie’s private family library, designed by de forest using the awcc’s wood carvings throughout the space. additionally, both the cooper hewitt (2015) and the olana partnership (2014) hosted exhibitions about de forest’s decorative work and his relationship with frederic church. why do you think there is such an interest in this material now? and, what prompted you to curate an exhibition of de forest’s work at bryn mawr college at this particular time? nina blomfield: over the past few years, bryn mawr’s community, like many others, has been engaged in a rethinking of the impact of individuals on public spaces. the conversation has frequently centered on the second bryn mawr college president m. carey thomas, an ardent supporter of women’s suffrage but a figure whose ideology of reform was grounded in an abhorrent set of anti-semitic and white supremacist beliefs. through the continued work of anti-racist organizers and students of color, efforts to dismantle thomas’s legacy came to a head in the fall of 2020 when students organized a sixteen-day strike against systemic racism in institutional and community structures. one of the demands issued by the core strike collective was the removal of thomas’s name and image from campus spaces. when we developed the exhibition in late 2018, my colleagues in bryn mawr’s special collections felt a pressing need to include this group of furnishings, which belonged to thomas but have this unexpected association with de forest and with india, in the discussion. but they have never been the focus of their own exhibition, and they’re currently in storage and inaccessible to the public. by exhibiting these furnishings, i hoped to lend a material dimension to the conversation and allow an opportunity to read objects against the grain and uncover new and unexpected stories. kl: thomas is such a towering figure on bryn mawr’s campus, and the removal of her name and image certainly seems like an important anti-racist action. if we want to center anti-racist and decolonial approaches as part of our growing curatorial practices, it is also essential to highlight the local and global networks, indeed the colonial systems, of which someone like thomas was a part. here, her orientalist tastes weren’t necessarily about an appreciation for indian things, but rather an investment in imperial expansion and, thus, white supremacy. when i saw your exhibition, i was struck by how you decentered thomas and, instead, highlighted how the awcc’s furnishings connected thomas, de forest, the hutheesing family, and the company’s craftsmen. how did you approach the task of recontextualizing these objects? nb: starting out, i was continually surprised by how much lockwood de forest was involved in designing bryn mawr’s campus. the collection held at bryn mawr is an unusually complete group of furnishings from de forest’s oeuvre. we are lucky to have objects and interiors that have survived alongside an archive of letters and historical photographs of the spaces. that said, the public space that de forest was most deeply connected to, the deanery, was demolished in the late 1960s. the deanery was conceived and constructed as an “all-over” interior design, and de forest was involved in decisions on everything from the selection of paintings to the color of cushion covers. the careful coordination of every aspect of the interiors was essential to achieving a harmonious visual effect regardless of the cultural origin, time period, or style of individual objects. in exhibiting this material, it was important to me that viewers could experience this aesthetic density for themselves in the form of a sort of period-room style vignette. seeing everything together, en masse, gives an important sense of how the objects were used and experienced. when the lion armchair, for example, is displayed alone, you have the space to take in all its intricate detail, but it can be difficult to imagine its context and function (figs. 45). the interiors that de forest designed for garrett and thomas overflowed with pattern and color. but the density of the aesthetic interior obscures the stories of these objects. the 3 5 n i n a b l o m f i e l d a n d k a t i e l o n e y contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 9, no 1 (2021) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2021.314 figures 4-5 the ahmedabad wood carving company, armchair, ca. 1881– 1886, wood, upholstery. bryn mawr college, pennsylvania, deanery.360. bequest of m. carey thomas, president of bryn mawr college, 1894–1922. (photograph by zachary hartzell, courtesy bryn mawr college special collections.) figure 6 installation shot, “all-over design”: lockwood de forest between ahmedabad and bryn mawr. (photograph by zachary hartzell, courtesy bryn mawr college special collections.) 3 6 “ i n d i a i n a m e r i c a ” contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 9, no 1 (2021) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2021.314 problematic issues surrounding their production, appropriation, and the orientalist thinking that guided the use of this furniture in american interiors get lost amongst a focus on decorative effects. attempting to recreate an interior “as it was,” without interrogating how it came to be, is to risk transporting viewers into the time and mindset of the space’s primary occupants. considering the exhibition space was built over the site of the demolished deanery, i did not want to provide a replication that could be regarded as a monument to m. carey thomas or an endorsement of her views. as i developed the format of the exhibition with curator of art and artifacts carrie robbins, we kept returning to the idea of offering viewers the opportunity to experience the interiors as a whole while concurrently dismantling them into a more familiar museological presentation, with individual pieces displayed on plinths (fig. 6). when we, as viewers, pull these interiors apart, both physically and conceptually, we can apply twenty-first-century critical lenses to these objects and learn from the part as well as the whole. we can accept them for the beautifully formed, aesthetically satisfying objects that they are, objects that stimulate the eyes and hands and provide comfort for the body. but we can also acknowledge their agency and involvement in harmful systems of colonial oppression. your work also raises questions of agency and interrogates how authorship has been assigned in the historiography of this material. how did that concern shape the process of curating your exhibition? kl: questions of agency were my primary concern, and recovering the collaborative and uneven modes by which the awcc’s objects were made was the driving goal of the exhibition. before i proposed this digital project to the world history center, i conducted an informal survey of museum collections in the us, tracking how they accounted for artistic agency in catalog entries and object labels. i found that most art museums house or display the awcc’s work in collections, or the context, of american art.2 here, creative and intellectual labor tends to be attributed to de forest in his position as designer. in contrast, manufacture is attributed to the awcc through the category of maker (at least in instances where provenance records are secure). while such attributions conform to standard practices for collecting and organizing metadata, it’s an insufficient account of the company’s work. it reduces a collaborative, if uneven, mode of production to a false binary that diminishes indian agency, thus perpetuating an erasure of indian agency that was so prevalent in the nineteenth century. attribution is a powerful tool. crediting de forest as the primary creative agent of an object made of indian patterns, techniques, materials, and by indian hands doesn’t accurately represent how the object was made or its history. i tried to recoup the agency of the awcc’s craftsmen in “india in america'' by making the ahmedabad wood carving company and its objects the focus, rather than de forest. tracing the awcc’s work from production to consumption, i aimed to identify the global networks and colonial systems that have supported—and continue to support—their erasure. in this historical narrative, de forest is certainly an important actor, but he is not the lone or even central actor. 2 my survey was not exhaustive, but it did include a range of prominent art and design museums in the united states, including the metropolitan museum of art, the art institute of chicago, the cooper hewitt smithsonian design museum, and the virginia museum of fine arts in addition to special collections at bryn mawr college. for example, at the met, two lockwood de forest designed chairs manufactured, or likely manufactured, by the awcc are housed in the american wing. on the other hand, brass-cutouts designed by de forest and attributed to ahmedabad are housed in the museum’s islamic art department. the descriptions of these objects in the museum’s online collections database highlight their role in the aesthetic movement. see: lockwood de forest, cutout, the met. a de forest designed and awcc manufactured server at the art institute of chicago is on display in the art of the america’s galleries. the brooklyn museum identifies cut-outs in their decorative arts collections as designed by lockwood de forest and made by “the ahmedabad workshops for lockwood de forest.” an exception to these examples is two chairs designed by de forest and manufactured by the awcc at the virginia museum of fine arts. they are currently housed in the museum’s south asian art collection and on view in their south asian galleries. 3 7 n i n a b l o m f i e l d a n d k a t i e l o n e y contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 9, no 1 (2021) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2021.314 figures 7-9 screenshots of the introduction and galleries of “india in america”: east indian furnishings between ahmedabad and bryn mawr by katie loney 3 8 “ i n d i a i n a m e r i c a ” contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 9, no 1 (2021) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2021.314 it's worth saying a bit about the nature of the manufacture of these elite goods. the awcc was a joint venture between de forest and muggunbhai hutheesing. the company relied upon a patronage system, where hutheesing was able to hire men and boys from the mistri caste (skilled artisans trained in wood and metalwork). de forest relied on hutheesing for access to these artisans and their work, with the hope of establishing a secure supply chain over which he had some control in terms of design, quality, and exclusivity. these were specific problems that de forest encountered in other parts of india, where he would have to rely on tenuous relationships with dealers and other intermediaries. for hutheesing, on the other hand, de forest provided access to an elite clientele that was not a part of the british colonial system. the american artist/designer/dealer was at most an interlocutor in the indian art schools and exhibitionary complex established by colonial art administrators in the government of british india.3 that’s not to say that de forest and his clients did not use and benefit from these systems; they did. colonial structures supported their business and collecting activities, which, in turn, served us imperialism through orientalist aesthetics as well as the global movement of goods and capital as the us started to become a global commercial power. de forest and hutheesing were both part of a cultural elite, and they relied upon the creative agency and skilled knowledge of the company’s artisans. importantly, these artisans knowingly adapted their craft to foreign markets. in curating an exhibition of the awcc’s woodcarving and metalwork, it was important for me to account for these artisans’ creative agency. the archive, unsurprisingly, reveals little about their identities or experiences—we know that men and boys worked for the company, and we know a few of their names. but we also have the objects they made, and we can read de forest’s papers against the grain. this provides a sense of the company’s collaborative and uneven operations as well as how creative agency was negotiated amongst the company’s various stakeholders. nb: yes, i think you are so right to draw attention to how museums and collecting institutions have categorized these objects, and how considering them solely as american decorative arts misses so much of their story. navigating issues of agency will always be a curatorial challenge when we’re working with networks that are this expansive. it’s an especially slippery task when the objects are so closely associated with their end-user, as with this furniture and m. carey thomas. how did you find a way to rebalance the narrative? kl: my strategy was really to focus on the objects, to make them the central actors of the story, and to track their movements through different aesthetic worlds. “india in america” traced the suite of furnishings made by the awcc at bryn mawr college from production to consumption, examining how creative agency was negotiated at various stages in these objects' long history (fig. 7). moving through digital galleries, visitors examined mary garrett and thomas’s furnishings in the workshop, de forest’s showrooms, one of garrett’s baltimore mansions, and the deanery (figs. 8-9). the digital format allowed for furnishings to reappear throughout these different environments, arranged with period photographs and archival materials. for example, i arranged garrett’s suite of furnishings and their potential prototype, 33 roberta mayer has written extensively on of lockwood de forest and his career, including his travels throughout india and relationships with various officials and arts administrators of the government of british india. any study of lockwood de forest and his work is indebted to her scholarship. the authors are especially grateful to mayer for giving the keynote address, “lockwood de forest at bryn mawr college: exoticism and eclecticism,” at the opening for “all-over design.” mayer and karen mauch also generously allowed for the photographs of the awcc’s furnishings (photographed by mauch) in mayer’s book lockwood de forest: furnishing the gilded age with a passion for india to be used in “india in america.” see: roberta a. mayer, lockwood de forest: furnishing the gilded age with a passion for india. (associated university presse, 2008). roberta a. mayer, "the aesthetics of lockwood de forest: india, craft, and preservation," winterthur portfolio 31, no. 1 (1996): 1-22. roberta a. mayer, "lockwood and meta de forest in india, kashmir, and nepal," archives of american art journal 52, no. 1/2 (2013): 44-57. 3 9 n i n a b l o m f i e l d a n d k a t i e l o n e y contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 9, no 1 (2021) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2021.314 a rough drawing made by de forest, side by side.4 juxtaposing these furnishings with this sketch and writings by de forest exposed the extent to which de forest relied on the craftsmen’s expertise, including their knowledge of woodcarving, metalworking, and local aesthetics. as the exhibition touches on, and as “all-over design” shows so well, these collaborative and uneven modes of making were also essential in designing decorative interiors. once the company’s objects arrived in the us, they became compositional elements in other artworks—so-called “artistic” interiors that relied upon orientalist taste. here, garrett and thomas also became creative agents, which doesn’t make them heroines, of course, but important actors in this network. nb: digital exhibitions are especially suited to this complex and sometimes unwieldy subject. they have the flexibility to move in and out of these categories and to draw together materials from unexpected places. for “all-over design,” the question of agency came through most strongly in the process of attribution. we spent a long time thinking about the labels and how to condense these complicated discussions of agency and authorship into what appears to be the simplest piece of text in the exhibition. we decided to attribute most of the furniture not to de forest, as it had all been previously labeled, but to the ahmedabad wood carving company (figs. 10-11). this decision was based on exhibition records for the calcutta international exhibition of 1883 and the edinburgh international forestry exhibition of 1884 that describe the senior mistri in the awcc workshop as responsible for drawing up the designs for carving. de forest’s writings often focus on the “compositional” skill of the carvers and their ability to produce highly-detailed carving without plans. the choice to fully attribute the furniture to awcc helped us decenter the narrative of de forest as sole designer and think about his role in other ways, as an importer, consultant, and educator. 4 de forest’s papers are held at the archives of american art. lockwood de forest papers, archives of american art, smithsonian institution, washington, d.c. figures 10-11 left: label for side chair by the ahmedabad wood carving company in “all-over design”: lockwood de forest between ahmedabad and bryn mawr. (photo: katie loney) right: the ahmedabad wood carving company, side chair, ca. 1881–1886, wood, upholstery. bryn mawr college, pennsylvania, deanery.368. bequest of m. carey thomas, president of bryn mawr college, 1894–1922. (photograph by zachary hartzell, courtesy bryn mawr college special collections.) 4 0 “ i n d i a i n a m e r i c a ” contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 9, no 1 (2021) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2021.314 in previous scholarship on this material, de forest is always the center point of the network; the connections are made through him. this status as a sort of cultural broker was clearly an important part of de forest’s identity as an artist, something that set him apart from his family and his peers. but de forest wasn’t the only one concerned with self-fashioning. this network is composed of diverse individuals, institutions, and commercial enterprises, many of which were separated by vast distances and opposing agendas. hutheesing was a prominent public figure and saw something to be gained through a partnership with de forest. the awcc, under the management of the hutheesing family, continued to produce and exhibit carved furniture long after de forest sold his stake in the company to tiffany studios in 1908. m. carey thomas and mary garrett were also important figures living public lives. for a time, garrett was the wealthiest unmarried woman in the united states and the inheritance of her father’s fortune, her philanthropic endeavors in medicine and education, and her move to bryn mawr college were all reported in the newspapers. helen lefkowitz horowitz has written about the shared aesthetic experiences that grounded thomas and garrett’s lifelong relationship, and how this aestheticism was closely tied to their self-perception as modern women. the deanery was a carefully crafted monument to the women’s shared aesthetic identity, but it was also strangely liminal, in-between space. originally a small cottage, the deanery expanded into a sprawling shingle-style mansion with several renovations financed by garrett’s baltimore & ohio railroad fortune. this financing occurred under the condition that the deanery was legally owned by thomas and not the college. the result of this was that a domestic space, a woman’s home, occupies the heart of a campus that consciously opposed domesticity. the collegiate gothic architecture of the campus represented a departure from the cottage-style layouts of other women’s colleges. and yet, despite bryn mawr’s antipathy, thomas was happy to deploy domestic tropes when it suited her. she called her wednesday afternoon meetings with students “at homes,” using the space as a way of playing with or controlling access to her circles. kl: garrett’s baltimore home at 101 west monument street seems, to me, to further build on what you are describing about the role of these spaces in cultivating social relationships and identities. as you mention, the deanery was a liminal space, both domestic and administrative, private and semi-public. it was also quite different from garrett’s baltimore mansion, where the awcc’s furnishings formed an indian-themed sitting room. in “india in america,” i wanted to examine what it would have meant for garrett to have an orientalist interior, what it would have offered her. unlike the dorothy vernon room, the formal sitting room that was central to both the deanery and the college’s campus, garrett’s indian-themed sitting room was a selfcontained and private space (fig. 12). what makes this room such an interesting feature of garrett’s home is that domestic orientalist interiors on this scale were usually reserved for men, who sometimes created smoking rooms or dens in orientalist styles. as design historian david brett has theorized, these rooms operated as playrooms, where elite men, and occasionally women, could experiment with their behavior and play with their identities. as brett explains, men could wear turbans and so-called turkish pants and women, when permitted, could smoke and wear trousers.5 when considering garrett’s indian theme room, i wanted to know what it meant for her—a suffragette, philanthropist, and queer woman—to have such a space. what did its transgressive potential offer her? in my research thus far, the archive has been frustratingly silent about the activities that took place within this room. but i found it useful, in the exhibition, to consider this orientalist sitting room in relation to garrett’s public persona and to consider what playing the “other” in this private environment would have meant for her. garrett was an adamant supporter of women’s suffrage and education, working to make space for white women in public and professional life. thus, it is likely that playing the other would 5 david brett, rethinking decoration: pleasure and ideology in the visual arts. (cambridge: cambridge university press, 2005). 4 1 n i n a b l o m f i e l d a n d k a t i e l o n e y contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 9, no 1 (2021) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2021.314 not just have been about experiencing the exotic or foreign but would have involved redefining traditional gender roles—redefinitions that garrett helped actualize. in this context, garrett’s sitting room can also be considered a queer space, where playing the “other” becomes a mode of playing the self. nb: what it meant to inhabit these spaces and play these roles must have shifted significantly over the long relationship that garrett and thomas had with de forest—they worked together on and off for over forty years. our conversations have often turned to the role of temporality in the ahmedabad wood carving company furniture, and every time we talk, i feel like we’re peeling back a new layer of time. both lockwood de forest and m. carey thomas carefully cultivated a sense of historicism in their decorating. in de forest’s writings, there is a constant emphasis on the carver’s work as an “old” and “ancient” craft. this orientalist viewpoint continually positions india as the past and america as the present. the gesture towards historicism was an important part of de forest’s marketing of himself as an expert connoisseur with access to antique goods and knowledge of their production. bryn mawr’s collegiate gothic architecture cultivates a similar mystique. the ivy-laden cloisters and carved gargoyles were intended to evoke the traditions of scholarship represented by oxford and cambridge and lend a historic atmosphere to what was, at the turn of the twentieth century, a very new institution. many of the architectural details were adapted by architects cope & stewardson from oxbridge models that thomas and garrett recorded on in a fact-finding mission to england. these romanticized versions of ancient india and ancient england converge in the deanery. still, the colonial resonance of jacobean scrolled armchairs embellished with brass openwork adapted from jali screens seems to have gone unremarked by contemporary observers. figure 12 ida pritchett, dorothy vernon room, deanery, c.1934, black and white photograph. bryn mawr college photo archives, pab_deanery_227. (courtesy bryn mawr college special collections) 4 2 “ i n d i a i n a m e r i c a ” contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 9, no 1 (2021) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2021.314 historicism might be an obvious first place for an art historian to go when thinking about temporality, but there are many other forms of temporality at play here. it is important to remember that as much as they are beautiful expressions of artistry, the objects in the exhibition are also functional pieces of furniture, and as such, we need to consider how they operated as part of the mundane. after the deanery was demolished, a small collection of furniture was kept together in a recreation of the dorothy vernon room. the rest was dispersed across campus and placed in offices and private spaces. most of the furniture was in daily use for over a century. it became embedded in the fabric of the college. for some of the alumnae who visited the exhibition, it was a shock to see, for example, the damascus chest put up on a plinth. they told me, “oh, this was in my office,” or, “i remember drinking a beer on the swing!” the exhibition aimed to acknowledge how this furniture became a locus of memory for alumnae while defamiliarizing it by providing greater context for its cultural origin and production. this helps us see the products of the awcc not as hand-me-down victorian oddities, as they have previously been treated at the college, but as a tangible connection to these various pasts, both real and imagined. kl: temporality is such a compelling aspect of these interiors, and i appreciate your point about historicism at bryn mawr college and how the awcc’s furnishings went from exotic and ancient, to mundane, and then to nostalgic—at least for bryn mawr students and alumnae. these objects and their production also say something interesting about modernism. at the same time de forest argued to period audiences that the work of the awcc was traditional and preservationist, the company was also industrial in its operations. much of what we know about the awcc’s operations and the people who worked there, we know through de forest’s writings. while de forest was an ardent supporter of indian arts and crafts and enthusiastic about the artistic skill and ingenuity of indian craftsmen; he was also an orientalist. as you mentioned, de forest saw the carvers engaging in an “old” and “ancient” tradition. to him, the artistic skill of the awcc’s artisans was innate rather than learned, inherited from an ancient past. in his writings on art and design, he discusses the craftsmen’s mastery over materials and praises their design skills, emphasizing that they didn’t have to draw their designs. at the same time, he uses the language of modern industry, referring to the awcc’s craftsmen as “human machines.” such ideas echo other nineteenthcentury orientalists, such as owen jones and john lockwood kipling, english men who valued and appreciated “oriental” art, but who also saw indian applied arts as separate from, or even fodder for, the progressive drive of modernity. de forest, like english art administrators, feared indian art was in a state of crisis, facing extinction due to encroaching modernity. de forest’s british peers attempted to “save” indian art through education, while de forest argued that indian art could be “saved” through western patronage. in both schemes, the perceived survival of indian art relied on western imperialism—british arts education in colonial india and us patronage or employment.6 at the same time, the operations of the awcc were almost surprisingly industrial. it was a business that relied upon a division of labor and transnational modes of production and consumption. interestingly, the objects themselves index this through a numerical stamp. some of these numbers reference designs in two identical pattern books. de forest had one, and hutheesing had the other. these portable books facilitated a practical system where de forest could commission a specific design while he was traveling throughout india or at his studio in new york. then, hutheesing could ensure it was made in ahmedabad. in some cases, 6 de forest describes the work of the awcc’s craftsmen in his unpublished book manuscript “indian domestic architecture.” see: lockwood de forest, “indian domestic architecture,” (unpublished manuscript, 1919), lockwood de forest papers, archives of american art, smithsonian institution, washington, d.c. for a discussion of how de forest’s views about the state of indian craft differed from that of english arts administrators see: abigail mcgowan, crafting the nation in colonial india, (new york, ny: palgrave macmillan, 2009). 4 3 n i n a b l o m f i e l d a n d k a t i e l o n e y contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 9, no 1 (2021) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2021.314 these numbers stamped on objects referred to how something should be assembled. as we were able to show participants of an object study session at bryn mawr college, each decorative panel of two beds owned by garrett indicated a specific location on the beds’ footboards and headboards. the objects register these transnational and transoceanic exchanges while showing one of the ways the awcc’s craftsmen anticipated the object’s future movements. nb: when we look closely, we can find this push-pull between history and modernity all over campus. the architectural forms of campus buildings refer to an imagined “ancient” past. at the same time, their historicism is closely tied to the turn of the century ideology and m. carey thomas’s efforts to establish a lasting legacy. we spoke earlier about cultivating identity thomas was keenly aware of the role of architecture and design in conveying meaning and the campus design reflected her ambitions for the college: a space that would welcome white, wealthy, aesthetically minded women, and exclude all others. she might have slept in a bed made in ahmedabad and appreciated the skill and craftsmanship of its makers, but she also gave public speeches that vilified indian culture and religion in the most derogatory terms imaginable. she used recollections of her travels in south asia as a warning against what “white civilization” would “revert” to, should americans fail to educate their daughters. these aspects of thomas’s character, her racism and her appreciation of art, are at once inextricable and irreconcilable. we have to understand both to fully grasp the meaning of these objects in time. but it’s not enough to just consider what these objects meant at the moment of their production and first use. we also have to think about the span of their lives and how their persistence into the present continues to affect the bryn mawr community. while the alumnae feel varying levels of nostalgia for the campus “as it was,” thomas’s presence is a very real and immediate source of pain for current students, especially students of color who live and work in spaces inscribed with the name of a woman who held these racist beliefs. for decades, student organizers have worked to increase awareness of the histories of racism at bryn mawr, and the recent teach-ins and conversations hosted by the strike collective have energized these conversations. there are now actions to remove images of thomas from campus spaces, and proposals have been submitted to the board of trustees to remove her name from the facade of the great hall. kl: these calls to remove thomas’s name and image from campus buildings are part of larger anti-racist practices and movements to decolonize our public spaces and national landscape. in many ways, both our exhibitions intended to contribute to this work by interrogating institutional and canonical histories—yours from the position of bryn mawr college and mine from american art history. as i continue to examine the work and practice of the ahmedabad wood carving company, i wonder to what extent we can actually recoup the agency of indian actors in north american interiors. at the very least, i hope both our exhibitions and continued work on this material can continue to challenge historical narratives and identify the very systems of global production and circulation that orientalist interiors erase. this is just the start of acknowledging the multiplicity of agents and uneven relationships that had stakes in these spaces. nb: yes, and there is still so much work to be done. new articles in this journal are licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 united states license. this journal is operated by the university library system of the university of pittsburgh as part of its d-scribe digital publishing program, and is co-sponsored by the university of pittsburgh press. contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture vol 7, no 1 (2018) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2018.269 http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu looking/not looking aaron henderson about the artist aaron henderson’s photographs, videos, and installations are inspired by the artist's visceral and intellectual interest in how the body moves through space. his projects articulate different facets of an ongoing critique of society's relationship to spectacle, technology, and performance. he believes that it is only thorough the process of examination—of ourselves and of our culture—that the past, present, and future can be fully understood. well-acquainted with movement, henderson threw himself into walls and off platforms for streb extreme action, an acrobatic performance company from 2002 to 2006. his videos and installations have been presented at the carnegie museum of art, the wexner center, and many other museums and galleries in the united states, europe, and asia. his projection designs have been presented at lincoln center, the andy warhol museum, the institute of contemporary art (boston) as well as at theaters and festivals around the world. henderson is currently an associate professor in the department of studio arts at the university of pittsburgh. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 7, no 1 (2018) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2018.269 my photographic series “looking/not looking” (2018) is a collection of traces, reflections, and shadows captured in the carnegie museum of art’s african art/art before 1300 galleries. held apart from the rest of the collection, the corridor that houses these objects is fascinating due to the range of work collected there as well as for the ways this space differs from the rest of the museum. in my own work, i often set rigorous and specific parameters. sometimes these rules are attempts to simplify complex situations, allowing me to focus on one aspect of a larger whole. sometimes they are just games i play. in this instance, i knew that i wanted to avoid photographing the actual objects, instead focusing on the space itself. as i entered the galleries, i found myself struck by the beauty of the objects and the density of their display. darker than the surrounding galleries, reflections and shadows dominate the space. the objects themselves seem to glow, with spotlights bouncing off their surfaces and glass encasing. transparent cubes create structures that contain and protect the objects, which sit on nearly identical pedestals. scuffs and fingerprints remind us that these are real spaces, despite the austere backgrounds. these photographs look around and between the objects, focusing on the space itself. they examine a gallery tucked away, but only capture glances of the treasures held within. figure 1 aaron henderson, not looking 4, 2018, digital photograph. looking/not looking aaron henderson http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 7 8 l ook i n g / n o t l ook i n g contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 7, no 1 (2018) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2018.269 figure 2 aaron henderson, not looking 9, 2018, digital photograph. figure 3 aaron henderson, not looking 10, 2018, digital photograph. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 7 9 a a r on h e n d e r s on contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 7, no 1 (2018) | issn 2153-5194 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2018.269 figure 4 aaron henderson, not looking 14, 2018, digital photograph. new articles in this journal are licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 united states license. this journal is operated by the university library system of the university of pittsburgh as part of its d-scribe digital publishing program, and is co-sponsored by the university of pittsburgh press. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/ http://www.pitt.edu/ http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/ http://www.upress.pitt.edu/upressindex.aspx http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ looking/not looking looking/not looking vol 10, no 1 (2025) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2025.351 http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu questionnaire introduction kale serrato doyen about the author kale serrato doyen (she/her) is a ph.d. student in the history of art and architecture department at the university of pittsburgh, where she studies black and latinx artists in modern and contemporary u.s. art history. her dissertation maps structural racism in pittsburgh through historic, architectural photographs from the charles “teenie” harris archive at the carnegie museum of art. she was a recipient of the 2024-25 mellon/acls dissertation innovation fellowship and served as symposium chair for “ruin and reparation: (dis)repair in art and architectural history” in spring 2024. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 10, no 1 (2025) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2025.351 through our departmental curriculum model known as the constellations, our community in the history of art and architecture (haa) defines reparation as “the act of redressing and resisting aggression and erasure in their individual and institutional forms.”1 our collective conversations wherein we defined the new reparation constellation led us to contend with our embodied positionalities and roles as scholars. by contending with how the history of art and architecture has enabled marginalization and cultural dispossession, we can sharpen our understanding of why, when, and for what ends this history has reinforced unjust social hierarchies. in the singular form, rather than plural, reparation is a call for reparative action and a vehicle for social and disciplinary change. this curricular shift signals our responsibility as researchers and educators to reckon with challenging pasts in order to envision new futures. in spring 2024, our graduate student symposium, ruin and reparation: (dis)repair in art and architectural history, helped inaugurate reparation as a constellation in haa. here, we foregrounded graduate student scholarship that contends with tensions of inherited imbalances of power in art and architectural history, with presentations by rahel kesselring, santasil mallik, amanda guido ochoa, ava romano, eric w.ross, emilela thomasadams, and jenna m. wilson. our themes of ruin and reparation were brought home to pittsburgh’s local context in a keynote address by dr. felecia davis, associate professor of architecture and director of the softlab digital studio lab at pennsylvania state university. she presented on her two computational textiles commissioned by the museum of modern art for the 2021 exhibition reconstructions: architecture and blackness in america, both of which draw on the histories and rituals of quilting and architecture in pittsburgh to imagine new possibilities for sustainable, physical, and cyber architectures in black neighborhoods. this questionnaire is motivated by the ideas developed from the reparation constellation and 2024 symposium. i hope that the following questions and their responses from invited emerging and established scholars can prompt reflection on how our scholarship and pedagogy might mobilize repair and change in our field: • what does a reparative history of art and architecture mean to you? • is a reparative history of art and architecture possible, given the legacies the discipline has inherited? • how have these questions shaped, and/or manifested in, your own teaching or research practice? • what methods are you or others using that move our discipline towards reparation? 1 “constellations.” constellations | department of history of art and architecture. accessed june 15, 2025. https://www.haa.pitt.edu/graduate/constellations. questionnaire introduction kale serrato doyen http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 3 k a l e s e r r a t o d o y e n contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 10, no 1 (2025) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2025.351 new articles in this journal are licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 united states license. this journal is published by pitt open library publishing. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ https://www.library.pitt.edu/e-journals contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture vol 9, no 1 (2021) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2021.317 http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu questionnaire response sahar hosseini questionnaire response about the author sahar hosseini is an assistant professor at the university of pittsburgh’s department of history of art and architecture. as an architectural and urban historian, she studies the socio-cultural conditions of societies by looking at the places they create, inhabit, and modify. her scholarship focuses on the built environment and material culture of the pre-modern muslim world, particularly positioning the persianate societies at the intersection of global flows, local practices, and the natural context of each region. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 9, no 1 (2021) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2021.317 confined at home at a time when the pandemic has imposed unprecedented limits on our mobility and heightened our awareness about the now-lost advantages of ready access to books and archives, trips to research sites, and spontaneous encounters with colleagues, reflecting on mobility is truly a timely exercise. in the field of art history, the last few decades have evidenced a growing interest in mobility and contact, a productive undertaking especially as the field continues its attempt to escape national parameters and expand its focus beyond “fine arts” and “masterpiece culture” to “artifacts” and “material culture.” the growing number of publications in this area confirms the rising interest in the circulation of objects and their multiple lives, meanings, and interpretations as they moved within the mercantile and diplomatic nexuses that connected asia, africa, and europe even prior to the nineteenthcentury boost in global mobility. my work on the early modern persianate world is attentive to internal mobilities that connected west and south asia as well as to the network that linked cities of the persianate world to europe and africa. seventeenth-century isfahan, the subject of my ongoing research, operated within such a web that facilitated movement of merchants, diplomats, and missionaries between major cities of the early modern world. i engage with this heightened level of mobility, while putting it into conversation with the natural environment of the locale, social formation of space, modes of mobility, and discussions of center/periphery. at the outset, the immobile nature of the built environment and landscape establishes the basis for my approach to mobility. my work is, therefore, less concerned with the trajectory of the life of artifacts as they cross political and cultural borders; rather, i am more interested in the ways in which mobile actors participate in the formation of new visual and material cultures. for example, i am currently looking into the import of mirrors from venice and the impact it had on the architectural culture of seventeenth-century isfahan, including the proliferation of mirror decorations in royal and elite structures of the period—traces of which can be found in structures such as chehel sotun palace (c. 1647) (fig.1). furthermore, architecture’s reliance on local materials and the immediate natural environment, especially prior to the technological revolution of the nineteenth century, demands that we consider these mobile forces in relation to natural systems and local architectural conventions. a case in point is the seemingly abrupt appearance of wooden palatial structures (talars) and structural/decorative elements that developed into an essential part of the imperial architectural repertoire of safavid isfahan (figs. 2 & 3)—a phenomenon that is hard to explain within the framework of stylistic influence or evolution of style. i contend that the development of technical knowledge and highly skilled wood-craftsmanship in a region where wood was scarce and had no place in vernacular architectural practices, cannot be explained without acute attention to the broader pattern of forced and voluntary migration the safavids activated at the turn of the seventeenth century. shah abbas i’s (1571–1629) success in the caucasus and his forced-migration policies brought large groups of people into the caspian and isfahan regions—the two areas that became new sites of royal investment. while further research is required, juxtaposing local materials as well as construction and decorative conventions in caucasus, along with the pattern of population movement, helps us offer a plausible explanation for the development of this new structural and decorative program. questionnaire response sahar hosseini http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 6 q u e s t i o n n a i r e contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 9, no 1 (2021) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2021.317 figure 2 ali qapu palace (talar added in 1643/44) is one of the two surviving examples of talarfronted palaces that combined masonry architecture with hypostyle wooden structures that created an open and spacious setting. photo: author. figure 3 detail of wooden columns and wooden decorations in the talar of chehel sotun palace. photo: author. figure 1 though not the earliest or best example, mirror decoration on the entrance to the chehel sotun palace (c. 1647) is one of the few cases that are still extant. photo: author. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 7 s a h a r h o s s e i n i contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 9, no 1 (2021) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2021.317 space is another concept i engage when looking at a cosmopolitan city like seventeenthcentury isfahan. increasingly, the imposed restrictions associated with this pandemic and our growing reliance on virtual space underscores the centrality of “space” in maintaining and facilitating human interaction. whereas multi-continental transportation corridors facilitated the movement of people, goods, and ideas, contact and exchange often took place within the confines of cities, modifying and shaping their urban topographies. i ask, what kinds of spaces emerged when people of diverse cultures and backgrounds inhabited the city? what new buildings and structures were developed to accommodate people, practices, and artifacts that arrived in the city? how did social and power relationships materialize as spatial orders? for example, in seventeenth-century isfahan , spaces of armenian rituals—especially those dedicated to the festival of epiphany—emerged as intriguing sites of interaction between the immigrant christian community and muslim population of the city, who often joined as bystander spectators. the change in location and visibility of the festival over the course of the seventeenth century speaks to the shifting status of the armenian community and their power relationship with the safavid state. for art historians, discussion of mobility in the premodern world has been primarily interwoven with issues of trade, war, diplomatic mission, and migration. however, concentrating on these issues, which are defined around the norms of settled urban life, marginalizes other modes of mobility that operate outside the field’s focus on trade and political exchange. how should we conceptualize the built environment and landscape in societies for whom mobility is intrinsic? what happens when the mobility of the court is entangled with political legitimacy and practices of kingship? what ramifications do such considerations have for the flow of people and goods between the empire’s center and its peripheries? it is within this context that i explore mobility as it manifests in the network of royal establishments that dotted the geography of the safavid empire. indeed, mobility of the court impacted the temporal landscape of the capital as well as physical settings, decorative programs, and the spatial configuration of royal complexes that accommodated the theater of power. furthermore, the relationship between center and periphery extends into my work on global contemporary urban landscapes. whether examining urban built environments shaped by immigrants who are often at the margins of large global economies of american cities, or exploring the contribution of western-trained architects and planners in the cities of the global south, the mobility of these actors is central to the development of new forms, spaces, and urban identities. i am particularly interested in ways in which examining the built environment and spaces that are developed in this process can complicate the narrative of outward diffusion of form, style, and ideas from the center, and make visible the active participation and contribution of forces that originated in the peripheries. for example, my collaborative work on immigrant foodscapes of ironbound neighborhood (newark-new jersey) reveals the active participation of immigrant population, and the culture and skills they bring from their home countries, in shaping the landscape of american cities.1 elsewhere, while examining the legacy of the united states’s point four aid program on the discourse of urban planning in midtwentieth century iran, i highlight the active role of local actors who, despite a persistent presence in the field, are often absent from the archive.2 ultimately, for me, attention to flow and movement is most productive when the macrohorizontal view of the network of mobilities is combined with micro-vertical research that is guided by the specifics of each place. in this context, sanjay subrahmanyam’s term 1 “ferry street,” ironbound foodscapes, accessed december 26, 2020, https://www.ironboundfoodscapes.com/ferry 2 sahar hosseini, “building isfahan for tomorrow: the united states’ point four program and discourse on urban planning in iran,” in architectural dynamics in pre-revolutionary iran: dialogic encounter between tradition and modernity, ed. mohammad gharipour (chicago: intellect & university of chicago press, 2019), 113–142. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 8 q u e s t i o n n a i r e contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 9, no 1 (2021) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2021.317 “connected histories” serves as an appropriate paradigm for reflecting upon the narrative of globalization that positions europe at the center, and for shifting the conversation from the diffusionist and hierarchical paradigm of “influence” to multidimensional concepts of “contact,” “exchange,” and “synthesis.”3 as we strive to reconceptualize the history of art and architecture along global and nonhierarchical lines, attention to mobility can be a worthwhile undertaking. such an approach not only breaks free from national constraints, but also challenges the western/non-western divide and grants greater visibility to regions that have traditionally been considered peripheral to the conversation. new articles in this journal are licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 united states license. this journal is operated by the university library system of the university of pittsburgh as part of its d-scribe digital publishing program, and is co-sponsored by the university of pittsburgh press. 3 first proposed in the 1990s, and particularly in his article, “connected histories: notes towards a reconfiguration of early modern eurasia,” modern asian studies 31, no. 3 (1997), 735-62. subrahmanyam has since employed and expanded the concept of “connected histories” in his examination of south asia’s entanglement with larger eurasian space during the early modern period. see, sanjay subrahmanyam, explorations in connected history: from the tagus to the ganges (new delhi: oxford university press, 2005); explorations in connected history, mughals and franks (new delhi: oxford university press, 2005); “holding the world in balance: the connected histories of the iberian overseas empires, 1500-1640,” the american historical review 112, no. 5 (2007),1359-358. while acknowledging the incommensurability of cultures in different regions and empires of the early modern world, the term offers a productive frame to account for connections and transfers across different cultures. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/ http://www.pitt.edu/ http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/ http://www.upress.pitt.edu/upressindex.aspx questionnaire response questionnaire response contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture vol 9, no 1 (2021) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2021.321 http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu the stones of ivittuut extracting stories from rocks alex j. taylor essay the stones of ivittuut: extracting stories from rocks about the author alex j. taylor is assistant professor and academic curator in the department of history of art and architecture at the university of pittsburgh. from 2014-6, he was the terra foundation research fellow in american art at tate, where he led a program of scholarly publications, events and displays focused on the museum’s collection of post-war american art. his book forms of persuasion: art and corporate image in the 1960s is forthcoming with the university of california press. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 9, no 1 (2021) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2021.321 bauxite, shown on the right in the form of a specimen from the collection of carnegie museum of natural history, is the primary ore from which aluminum is made. but cryolite, the pale, lustrous rock shown to the left (fig.1), was once equally essential for aluminum production. in 1884, chemists in france and the united states both discovered that the addition of molten cryolite as a flux dramatically reduced the temperature, and therefore energy, required to extract metallic aluminum from powdered oxide. in so doing, aluminum rapidly transformed from a luxury metal to a mass-produced commodity. as the pittsburgh reduction company—eventually known as the aluminum company of america (alcoa)—came to dominate the industry, it also became the world’s largest consumer of cryolite, a rock that was mined in just one place.1 that mine was in ivittuut, on the southwest coast of greenland, a site that was inextricably tied to the interests of american industry. in 1864, the pennsylvania salt manufacturing company negotiated an agreement with the danish government, which claimed colonial authority over greenland, to control the cryolite export market, primarily for use in the manufacture of soap and fertilizer. cryolite was also used by the glass and ceramics industries, and to produce yellow fireworks. one-third of the ivittuut mine’s output went to the danish government for sale in europe, but the rest was exclusively sold to the pennsylvania 1 for a useful history of aluminum that was an important influence on metal from clay, see sarah c. nichols, aluminum by design: jewelry to jets (pittsburgh: carnegie museum of art, 2000). the stones of ivittuut extracting stories from rocks alex j. taylor figure 1 cryolite and bauxite, collection of the carnegie museum of natural history, november 2019. (photo: ana rodríquez castillo) http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 2 3 a l e x j . t a y l o r contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 9, no 1 (2021) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2021.321 salt manufacturing company, which paid a 20 percent royalty to denmark to secure total control of the mineral on this side of the atlantic.2 the aluminum company of america would become the pennsylvania salt manufacturing company’s best cryolite customer, two monopolies content to coexist in a state of mutual selfinterest for decades. increased demand for the mineral involved considerable logistical challenges. in the late nineteenth century, the trip to greenland was made by a fleet of specially made wooden sailing ships. the one-thousand-mile journey was only possible in the summer, and each journey from philadelphia to ivittuut could take sixty to seventy days. sometimes, boats could become stuck in the ice and fog for weeks at a time.3 from pennsylvania, cryolite was sent by rail to the pennsylvania salt manufacturing company’s plant in natrona, twenty miles northeast of pittsburgh, not far from alcoa’s facility in new kensington. like the ocean transport upon which it relied, the ivittuut mine was seasonal. it was operated by 130 or so, mainly male, migrant workers in the summer and about half that in the winter. one account does mention an inuit woman known as maria, employed as a servant for the european miners.4 indeed, the very “discovery” of cryolite by german actor turned mineralogist karl ludwig giesecke in the early years of the nineteenth century—and its introduction to european markets—was a product of colonialism’s appetite for indigenous knowledge.5 as giesecke himself recorded in an 1822 account, “we owe the first discovery of cryolite to the greenlanders, who, in finding it to be a soft substance, employed the waterworn rounded fragments as weights on their anglings.”6 it was specimens in this form that represented the first appearance of the mineral in europe. “it was of course incorrectly stated in some periodical papers, that the cryolite was discovered by me; i only found its geological situation, and i dare say by a mere accident,” giesecke admitted, still neglecting the inuit sailors that guided his own journey.7 what was no accident, however, was that the commercial extraction of cryolite, like so many products of colonial trade, would produce little benefit for the island’s indigenous population. by the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century, the quarry at ivittuut blasted about nine thousand tons of cryolite each year; but by the 1940s, production had reached around 46,000 tons.8 the german occupation of denmark in world war ii not only left greenland an “unoccupied territory of an occupied nation” (never mind its population of some twenty thousand people) but also threatened its cryolite—a particular concern given aluminum’s use in aircraft.9 as a 1940 article noted: “the problem of defending the hemisphere against attack from greenland is not so much in the hands of the state or war departments 2 for a useful account of the industry in the late nineteenth century, see “greenland’s queer mine,” the daily republican (monongahela, pa), 14 april 1894, 2. 3 “their ships are ice bound,” the times (philadelphia, pa), 9 august 1892, 2. 4 james elverson, “a mining camp in greenland,” the philadelphia inquirer, 10 september 1911, 70. 5 on giesecke’s career, see alfred whittaker, “karl ludwig giesecke: his life, performance and achievements,” mitteilungen der österreichischen mineralogischen gesellschaft 146, 2001. 6 charles giesecke, “on cryolite; a fragment of a journal . . . ,’ edinburgh philosophical journal 6 (1821-22), 142. 7 ibid., 142. 8 trevor lloyd, “ivigtut cryolite and modern greenland,” the canadian geographer, january 1953, 43–45. 9 for more on this history, see dawn alexandra berry, “cryolite, the canadian aluminum industry, and the american occupation of greenland during the second world war,” polar journal 2, no., 2 (2012): 219–235. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 2 4 t h e s t on e s o f i v i t t u u t contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 9, no 1 (2021) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2021.321 as in the hands of the pennsylvania salt manufacturing company.”10 this is something of an exaggeration and oversimplification, but the eventual dispatch of us troops to protect private interests in the mine exemplifies what would later become known as the military-industrial complex, and confirms the longstanding entanglements of american foreign policy in the commercial underpinnings of colonialism.11 by 1985, cryolite shipments to the united states spiked at 110,000 tons. and then in 1987, the deposits at ivittuut ran out. the mine was shuttered, and the surrounding town eventually abandoned. the aluminum business would replace the mineral with a synthetic equivalent, an invention that had been in development since the 1930s, and was in fact pioneered by germany during the war to circumvent their limited access to the mineral— although the factory was bombed before this synthetic substitute could reach its productive potential.12 by the time ivittuut had no more cryolite, alcoa had established its own subsidiary to make its chemical substitute. cryolite might have the dubious honor of becoming the first mineral mined to commercial extinction, but its exhaustion was invisible to consumers for whom the supply of sparkling aluminum products seemed uninterrupted and unending, disconnected from the finite natural resources it had exhausted.13 the role of the aluminum industry in causing this rock to become all but extinct was the origin of my interest in cryolite, and it was for this reason that a specimen of the material was installed—alongside other forms and stages from the production of aluminum—in a vitrine at the university art gallery in fall 2019. the occasion for this display was an exhibition titled metal from clay: pittsburgh’s aluminum stories (fig. 2), a project that saw faculty and graduate students work with curators and collection managers from across the city’s cultural institutions to reflect on aluminum’s histories and legacies. for the exhibition and its catalogue, we brought together collection objects and essays from the carnegie museum of art, contemporary craft, hunt institute for botanical documentation, rivers of steel national heritage area, senator john heinz history center, the andy warhol museum, the frick pittsburgh, university library system, and the university art gallery.14 10 “greenland defense,” the pittsburgh press, 21 july 1940, 2. 11 in a 1942 article, scientific american already sought to deflect this connection: “greenland, you will recall, is now occupied by american troops. it is probable that more cryolite may be found in iceland. but there is no connection between the united states troops and cryolite. we have all the cryolite we need; we could also make synthetic cryolite, fully as good as the real thing.” henry w. roberts, “why are we short of aluminum?” scientific america, may 1942, 234. for alcoa’s own similar claims, see t. d. jolly, “the recent expansion of the aluminum industry,” science 96, no. 2480 (july 1942): 30–31 12 this factory was at herøya in southern norway; see “u.s. bombers smash first time at norway,” daily news, 25 july 1943, c2. 13 deffreyes notes of the exhausted supply: “it wasn’t a big news item because it was easy to make synthetic cryolite.” kenneth deffreyes, beyond oil: the view from hubbert’s peak (new york: farrar, straus and giroux), 175. 14 the core project team was myself, andrew w. mellon graduate summer fellows emi finkelstein and paulina pardo, and faculty colleagues sylvia rhor samaniego, director of the university art gallery, and ana rodríguez castillo, project coordinator of collecting knowledge pittsburgh. more than a dozen other pitt graduate and undergraduate students, faculty, and pittsburgh curators and archivists contributed to the exhibition and work that is featured in the exhibition catalogue, metal from clay: pittsburgh’s aluminum stories (pittsburgh: university art gallery, 2019). http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 2 5 a l e x j . t a y l o r contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 9, no 1 (2021) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2021.321 *** the idea of a rock becoming extinct was one that the exhibition’s organizers and i regarded as precisely the kind of story that could help tease out the invisible histories of global mobility and exchange embedded in the sleek cylindrical skin of every aluminum can. and so, we displayed the rock beside an alcoa branded can used by the company as a commercial sample. the sample of greenland cryolite loaned from the carnegie museum of natural history originally came from the vast mineral collection of william w. jefferis in west chester, pennsylvania, but must have originated among the imports of the pennsylvania salt manufacturing company, the mineral’s sole supplier. beside the cryolite and the can it had made possible, we exhibited a sample of bauxite from alabama that was donated to the museum by the pittsburgh reduction company in 1896. the fifty-fifth specimen to be accessioned by the carnegie institute, this is one of many objects in pittsburgh’s museums that materializes the aluminum industry’s indelible presence in the city’s cultural inheritance.15 sometimes, as our exhibition sought to reveal, aspects of these histories are deliberately hidden. by the mid-twentieth century, most of alcoa’s bauxite came not from alabama but from suriname. a series of botanical prints by russian émigré boris artzybasheff that juxtaposed exotic plants and indigenous peoples, as an unattributed exhibition label written by kirk savage explained, “gave no hint of the devastation to jungle habitat in upper south america caused by bauxite mining, or of labor conditions in trinidad where the ore was transferred to the cruise ships. instead, they offered, as related advertisements explained, a ‘paradise’ where flowering trees and ‘blended’ races promised an escape from modern 15 i acknowledge and thank the assistance of debra wilson, collection manager in the section of minerals at the carnegie museum of natural history for her assistance borrowing these samples, along with eric dorfman, steve tonsor, and many other collaborators at the museum that provided their assistance to this project. figure 2 metal from clay, installation shot, november 2019. (photo: ana rodríquez castillo) http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 2 6 t h e s t on e s o f i v i t t u u t contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 9, no 1 (2021) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2021.321 problems.”16 as savage’s didactic text emphasizes, images like these were designed to disguise the human and ecological costs involved in the business of moving rocks around the world. metal from clay drew upon approaches to the scholarly engagement with museum and archive collections, artistic and otherwise, that have been a significant thread of my work at the university of pittsburgh over the last four years. in 2017, a similar approach was applied in consuming nature: landscape through the lens of the anthropocene, an andrew w. mellon– funded workshop for graduate students and faculty at the university of pittsburgh that engaged with collections across the city. co-led with isabelle chartier, then curator of the university art gallery, and twelve participants from across the university, our program collaborated with curators, archivists, and their collections to consider the visual and material cultures of the landscape tradition and, in particular, their contacts with the industrial histories of western pennsylvania, a history that so directly connects pittsburgh to global economies of mineral extraction. at the carnegie museum of natural history, for instance, head of invertebrate paleontology albert kollar discussed with the group his engagement with western pennsylvanian landscape paintings in the collection of the carnegie museum of art through the prism of the geological and atmospheric processes they appear to describe (fig. 3). the group also inspected examples of slag and “anthropic” rocks, the term used to classify the kinds of human-made rocks that will, in many cases, remain part of the earth on a geological time scale. the group visited pittsburgh’s carrie furnace (fig. 4), operated by rivers of steel, where anna johnson from the university of pittsburgh’s department of biological sciences led a tour of the urban garden she helped plan to remediate seventy years of toxic residue deposited at this former steel plant. at the hunt institute, the hand-colored plates of humphry repton’s observations on the theory and practice of landscape gardening (1803) used moveable overlays to reveal the underlying earthworks that these picturesque scenes had required, allowing the reader to shift entire hills and rivers in the effortless flip of a flap of paper.17 looking at diverse collections and sites to understand the legacies of extractive industries was also central to a conference that i co-organized at the power institute at the university of sydney in summer 2018. with art historians maggie cao and sophie cras, and the support of the institute’s director, mark ledbury, we brought together thirteen scholars for a two-day conference titled mining value: art and the extraction of resources. i presented my research into the history of cor-ten steel, the proprietary alloy marketed by us steel for its aesthetic value in the 1960s. but many other papers revealed art’s much longer imbrication in the histories of mining, including amy ogata’s research into metallurgy in second empire france, anne dunlop’s exploration of the use of african gold in renaissance gold-ground painting, and matthew hunter’s account of the connections between early photographic history and the development of the combustion engine, two histories revealed to be bound together by their mutual reliance on extractive processes. 16 unattributed exhibition label, metal from clay: pittsburgh’s aluminum stories, university art gallery, university of pittsburgh, october 24–december 6, 2019. 17 for further details of the workshop, see https://www.haa.pitt.edu/ckp/ckpworkshops/consuming-nature. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 2 7 a l e x j . t a y l o r contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 9, no 1 (2021) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2021.321 figure 3 consuming nature workshop participants at cmnh, may 2017. (photo: ana rodríquez castillo) figure 4 consuming nature workshop participants at carrie furnace, may 2017. (photo: ana rodríquez castillo) http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 2 8 t h e s t on e s o f i v i t t u u t contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 9, no 1 (2021) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2021.321 alongside these and other papers, conference speakers used their visit to australia to meet with curators at the australian museum and the state library of new south wales (slnsw) and to explore the visual and material histories of mining held in their collections. at the slnsw’s mitchell library (fig. 5), for example, the group inspected drawings from the australian goldfields by artists like eugene von guerard and s. t. gill, sources that provided a rich local context for international scholars interested in the intersections between artistic and extractive visions of the landscape. with ross pogson, collection manager of minerology and petrology at the australian museum (fig. 6), we explored this museum’s expansive mineral collections. as pogson’s tour emphasized, these were aesthetic as well as scientific objects. but they were also indelibly commercial samples, tied to the state support for extractive industries that has long underpinned the australian economy. indeed, many of the specimens we inspected were once held by sydney’s former geological and mining museum, an institution founded by the government’s department of mineral resources.18 perhaps it was the notion of scarcity that attracted me, as an art historian, to the idea of exhibiting a lump of cryolite like a rare sculpture. and, in a way, this rock is a precious object— a specimen that escaped the material’s use value to be preserved in a museum. but the limited edition to which it more profoundly points is, of course, the earth itself. attending to collections beyond the conventional limits of art history helps underscore how often works of art are also tied to the long histories of material extraction and, often, exploitation that reached their apex under colonial expansion and industrial modernity. the material manifestations of these histories are no less important for art historians than they are for geologists, and the workshops i have described here have only reinforced my sense that there remains much to learn from each other’s ways of looking. when rocks are transformed into self-consciously aesthetic objects, it is easy to lose sight of these material histories; even loose-cut gemstones seem to me to occlude, as their sparkle seduces our eye, the systems of labor and commerce within which they circulate. but rocks themselves have a brute, ponderous presence that makes it usefully difficult to avoid these fundamental questions about how humans have interacted with the earth, and about who has profited from its resources. 18 for further details about this conference, see https://www.powerpublications.com.au/conference-mining-value. for a summary of the organizer’s perspectives on the outcomes of this conference, and its contribution to a broader series of scholarly events exploring economic perspectives on art, see maggie m. cao, sophie cras, and alex j. taylor, “art and economics beyond the market,” american art 33, no. 3 (fall 2019): 20–26. figure 6 mining value conference speakers in minerology collection storage at the australian museum, sydney, august 2018. (photo: author) figure 5 mining value conference speakers at the mitchell library, slnsw, august 2018. (photo: author) http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 2 9 a l e x j . t a y l o r contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 9, no 1 (2021) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2021.321 new articles in this journal are licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 united states license. this journal is operated by the university library system of the university of pittsburgh as part of its d-scribe digital publishing program, and is co-sponsored by the university of pittsburgh press. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/ http://www.pitt.edu/ http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/ http://www.upress.pitt.edu/upressindex.aspx the stones of ivittuut extracting stories from rocks the stones of ivittuut extracting stories from rocks contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture vol 8, no 1 (2019) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2019.290 http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu saints, miracles and the image: healing saints and miraculous images in the renaissance sandra cardarelli and laura fenelli, eds. andrea kibler maxwell book review sandra cardarelli and laura fenelli, eds., saints, miracles and the image: healing saints and miraculous images in the renaissance. tournhout: brepols, 2017. 318pp; 87 color ills.; 30 b/w ills. hardcover €120.00 (9782503568188) about the author andrea kibler maxwell is a phd candidate in the history of art and architecture department at the university of pittsburgh. before joining the department at pitt, she earned her ma in art history from kent state university and her ba at mary baldwin college. her research focuses on fifteenthand sixteenth-century painting and religious discourse in lombardy and the veneto region and seeks to reunite the intense local history of northern italy with its geographical location during the theological debates of the reformations. her dissertation explores the visual exegesis and discourse regarding anti-semitism, protestant heretics, and witches, as well as interrogates what it meant for art in this period to be considered “modern.” http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 8, no 1 (2019) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2019.290 writing about history is an act of fermentation. as pieces are added, other parts break down, agitation occurs, and new ideas rise. with time, some histories necessitate rewriting, retelling, and reanimating. in 1990, hans belting’s likeness and presence (first published in germany as bild und kult) established the year 1500 as the formative shift between images-as-cult and images-as-art, thus invoking the beginning of modernity. over the following decades, anthropological ideas of agency and interaction between objects permeated the field, forcing scholars to rethink perceived truths. subsequent art historical scholarship focusing on the agency of miraculous images renewed the fermentation regarding early modern cult images. belting’s divide no longer sufficiently explains divine intercession through works of art, nor the agency cult images maintained well into so-called modernity. sandra cardarelli and laura fenelli’s edited volume saints, miracles and the image: healing saints and miraculous images in the renaissance joins the movement to rethink images as agents in the lives of the faithful. these thirteen essays, while diverse in topic and range, collectively provide insight into how miraculous images came in and out of favor in renaissance italy. the essays are arranged in chronological order, and each chapter fluidly moves between case studies, emphasizing questions of social history and religious beliefs that are useful to understanding the lives of these images. to begin, sheila barker takes a broad view to explore historiography on the use of images to protect from or heal those infected by the plague in italy from the sixth to the seventeenth century. she explains that while the origins of such uses remain unclear, an unexpectedly wide range of circumstances ushered certain images forward as apotropaic or supernatural in response to the plague epidemics that ravaged italy for centuries; thus began a long history of active images and healing saints. as supplication or gratitude for image agency, the afflicted commonly left ex votos or offered the whole of their city through miniature representations of the town. then, by focusing primarily on plague-related miracles, vittoria camelliti’s essay explores how these secondary images that were offered as gifts to the divine visually disclose which saints were called upon to heal. ex votos also provide visual evidence for the types of miracles the images were expected to have performed. through these extant representations, camelliti shows that the entire community was often implicated in a single votive offering for plague protection, though a singular, wealthy family often took visual prominence in the image—either through a coat-of-arms or as the individuals offering the city-model to the virgin and/or christ. as such, this research highlights the importance of donors to fund worthy visual offerings for the divine to gain their mercy. the majority of the chapters in this volume use specific case studies to fill in the gaps of current research on miracles, images, and the saints involved. in many of these cases, the examples challenge previously assumed beliefs involving cult images. following the ideas established by belting, much of the research of the 1990s and early 2000s took for granted that the artists of miracle-working images prior to 1500 italy were irrelevant— the cult was for the image and its connection to the divine; the rare exception was when the work was by st. luke himself or a divinely completed acheiropoieton. after 1500, images received veneration for being works of art, receiving extra praise specifically because of the artist and technical skill involved. as evidence against these assumptions, jessica richardson uses her essay to describe instances in which miraculous images from bologna gained fame through affiliation with certain artists, which in turn elevated the status of those artists. as such, she establishes that the relationship between miraculous image and artist did not exist in discrete categories on either side of 1500, but rather was a lengthy, additive process of associations and reputations across centuries. saints, miracles and the image: healing saints and miraculous images in the renaissance sandra cardarelli and laura fenelli, eds. andrea kibler maxwell http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 1 2 1 a n d r e a k i b l e r m a x w e l l contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 8, no 1 (2019) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2019.290 richardson’s work propagates an important focus on reevaluating our understanding of image agency in the early modern period. other chapters in this volume highlight oftenneglected areas, including the identities, communities, and governments that formed around these works of art and the saints depicted. gabriele fattorini discusses an unusual instance in fifteenth-century-siena, where the cult of saint peter of alexandria developed not because of image agency or artist affiliation, but rather through a political party connection. after surviving a violent series of riots on peter’s feast day, the new regime adopted him as a civic saint and commissioned images in his honor. despite being a celebrated saint of siena, peter of alexandria’s visual association with this political group proved stronger than his miraculous works or, indeed, the images of any artist. once the family in power fell out of favor, images of the saint and his cult also ceased. while governments often played a role in the promotion of an image or saint, rarely were the cults contingent on that party’s existence alone. cults could be fashioned as propaganda for political or religious leaders of an area, but they also served the needs of the community beyond their governmental use. valentina živković explores how original and newly imported cults in kotor blended to signify political union as well as strengthen protection against the plague. according to stefano d’ovidio, even images that had existed for centuries could suddenly gain a cult out of a need for propaganda and social control, as seen with the madonna bruna del carmine in naples. other images could change the literal landscape and presence of churches and monasteries over time, as described by alessia meneghin in her essay on natural disasters in polesine. several chapters explore how the roman church used cults and images to respond to the debates of the protestant reformation. the goal was to defend the church and the continued existence of monasteries, prove the validity of miraculous events, the sacraments, and the ritual of the liturgy, and increase funds. descriptions of miraculous images and the protection or healing they provided were recorded as evidence for these truths. using previously unexplored material written by those cloistered in monasteries, alessia lirosi found that nuns’ chronicles served as proof that works of art divinely protected those in the monasteries, implying that god disagreed with protestants and instead approved of the monasteries’ existence. however, as meghan callahan notes in her essay, reformation propaganda was not the primary motivator for all miraculous images, saints, and cults in sixteenth-century italy. she points to the convent of la crocetta in florence, where the miraculous images associated with sister domenica were intentionally kept private, and thus did not draw crowds of public worshippers—or their money. in some cases, records describe the existence of a miraculous image or image of a miracleworking saint, but time has separated the work of art from its cult association. by exploring images of the blessed andrea gallerani in siena and saints cosmas and damian at gavorrano, respectively, diana norman and sandra cardarelli use their essays to demonstrate how intense provenance research can potentially identify some of these “missing” cult images and the saints they promoted. in contrast, other images were prolific and frequently copied, transposing both image and supernatural power from one work to the next. in their essays, laura fenelli and marco faini use many case studies from naples, spain, and the marche to explore how copy, repetition, and ritual of both images and words function to heal and protect. additionally, fenelli’s work raises the question of authenticity of copies and contact relics, and whether some miracles require the presence and power of the original image to be effective. between the thirteenth and seventeenth centuries, the nations of the christian church relied on saints and images to miraculously intervene during times of turmoil, be they plague, political, or personal crises. while not noted specifically in the title, all the case studies in this book remain in or tied to italy; however, several authors make a much-needed shift away from the popular trifecta of florence, rome, and venice to explore cult images and saints in places like rovigo, bologna, naples, venice-controlled kotor, and the reach of some cults into spain. this edited volume provides a rich collection of material inspiring further research on a more interdisciplinary and geographically diverse scale. the authors carefully highlight the http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 1 2 2 h e a l i n g s a i n t s a n d m i r a c u l o u s i m a g e s i n t h e r e n a i s s a n c e contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 8, no 1 (2019) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2019.290 various methodological dispositions toward agency and images that research can take and invite the next wave of scholars to follow into this territory using a variety of primary sources, as presented in these chapters. the use of individual monastery records, local town events, and even architectural topographies are avenues for further research in all corners of the early modern christian world. paratextual material, such as a rich bibliography and a thematically arranged index, make this a pleasure to read. aside from a scattering of typos in the final chapter, this beautifully produced book features ninety-eight full color images, many of which span the entire page and are sure to delight lay-readers and scholars alike. the opening includes a map of italy and a timeline by matilde grimaldi noting the cities and events discussed throughout the volume. this book will benefit those who are interested in the agency of images, plague culture, and early modern italian cults of saints not directly related to the holy trinity. new articles in this journal are licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 united states license. this journal is operated by the university library system of the university of pittsburgh as part of its d-scribe digital publishing program, and is co-sponsored by the university of pittsburgh press. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/ http://www.pitt.edu/ http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/ http://www.upress.pitt.edu/upressindex.aspx http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ saints, miracles and the image: healing saints and miraculous images in the renaissance sandra cardarelli and laura fenelli, eds. saints, miracles and the image: healing saints and miraculous images in the renaissance sandra cardarelli and laura fenelli, eds. contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture vol 9, no 1 (2021) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2021.319 http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu questionnaire response lee veeraraghavan questionnaire response about the author lee veeraraghavan is an ethnomusicologist interested in how music and sound participate in settler colonial state apparatuses, with an emphasis on the juridical, the police, and public health. her work focuses on the intersection of indigenous sovereignty claims and resistance to oil and gas pipeline development in canada. she is currently a kenneth p. dietrich school of arts and sciences diversity postdoctoral fellow in the department of music at the university of pittsburgh. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 9, no 1 (2021) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2021.319 i find it difficult, as a postdoc, even at the best of times, to think about mobility without becoming anxious about the future. when will i stop having to worry about my own mobility? it isn’t always clear to me where the line is between awareness of one’s working conditions and solipsism—and i have the nagging suspicion that the difference is important when it comes to the quality of one’s scholarship. now, of course, we have all been thinking about mobility and exchange (quarantine, germs, will there ever be conferences again, how does the medium of zoom affect the exchange of ideas in the classroom . . . ?) and i can’t imagine that it won’t percolate into everyone’s work. i hope that this won’t read as an attempt to salvage a more innocent way of life in the ivory tower. as my fellow ethnographers are acutely aware, the failure to be vigilant when it comes to these kinds of intellectual borderlines can have an impact on the lives of others. the difference between awareness of one’s working conditions and solipsism is comparable to the difference between the concept of exchange as such and the urge to frame our scholarship in terms of its exchange value. my work as an ethnomusicologist explores the relationship between political and aesthetic listening practices and their impact on indigenous communities fighting the canadian petrostate. while i don’t center the terms of mobility or exchange in a topical way, both are unavoidable concepts when it comes to the context that shapes my research. they manifest in governmental structures, economic priorities, cultural practices, and ultimately as key aspects of my scholarly stance. constraints on the mobility of indigenous people is a salient feature of settler colonial governmentality, whether that means the imposition of the reservation system by the indian act of 1876, or the disproportionate rate at which indigenous people are incarcerated in canada. in contrast, the canadian government’s economic priorities have emphasized removing obstacles to the mobility of energy commodities in their flow to international markets, by building oil and gas pipelines that criss-cross the country. furthermore, to protect these economic interests, court injunctions and aggressive policing are used to prevent indigenous land defenders from interfering with developments that take place on their land without their consent, including their forced removal. these actions contravene the united nations declaration on the rights of indigenous peoples, to which canada is a signatory. one might thus entertain the notion of a figurative kind of mobility: dancing around the law. set against the colonial governmental apparatus are myriad indigenous ways of life. i did my ethnographic fieldwork in british columbia, where the majority of indigenous nations are potlatching nations: gift economies in which social organization takes place through ritual exchange. the anthropological imagination has been fired by images of the potlatch that include the competitive, ceremonial exchange of gifts as well as the spectacular sacrifice of those objects whose lives of circulation are over. however, a crucial aspect of the potlatch is less tangible: the exchange of songs and stories. these exchanges are highly structured; for example, the knowledge of and right to sing a song might come with the right to use particular territories and historical knowledge about how one ought to use it. culture, including land-use rights, is reproduced through the exchange of song. in my research, i explore how the cultural systems described above are absorbed into the colonial juridical apparatus through aurality and sound. the aural—that which pertains to the ear, the voice, the heard, spoken, and sung—is a node regulating the exchanges between colonial and indigenous law. this regulation takes place primarily through the negotiation of incommensurable understandings of orality, writing, and the kind of knowledge each medium bears. quasi-judicial processes like the hearings for oil and gas pipelines held by the national questionnaire response lee veeraraghavan http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 1 6 q u e s t i o n n a i r e contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 9, no 1 (2021) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2021.319 energy regulator connect this site of exchange to the mobility of oil and gas, which travel from the land where they are extracted to the markets. the free exchange of ideas is a central academic value. however, a necessary virtue for such exchange is that of forbearance. anthropologist audra simpson and indigenous studies and sound studies scholar dylan robinson have made compelling arguments in favor of a stance of ethnographic refusal when writing about indigenous people and culture. they emphasize how much academics take from indigenous culture and politics in order to build a career, and with little thought for the ramifications, which is a crucial consideration when thinking about colonial power dynamics. however, i feel that even if one is not writing about politically sensitive dynamics that affect marginalized and oppressed peoples, choosing not to participate in every scholarly exchange—the refusal to take every opportunity—is a virtue that can help preserve the space of thought amid the rush to get our ideas to market. new articles in this journal are licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 united states license. this journal is operated by the university library system of the university of pittsburgh as part of its d-scribe digital publishing program, and is co-sponsored by the university of pittsburgh press. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/ http://www.pitt.edu/ http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/ http://www.upress.pitt.edu/upressindex.aspx questionnaire response questionnaire response vol 10, no 1 (2025) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2025.343 http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu on disciplinary disrepair editor’s introduction shawn c. simmons about the editor-in-chief shawn c. simmons is a ph.d. student in the department of history of art and architecture at the university of pittsburgh. his research interests center on modern and contemporary art, with a focus on museological critique, queer and feminist art histories, archival studies, and visual cultures of science and technology. his research examines how artists engage institutional aesthetics to question how museums construct history and cultural memory. he holds a b.a. in art history from new york university and an m.a. in art history from the university of colorado boulder. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 10, no 1 (2025) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2025.343 this volume of contemporaneity marks a return. after a four-year hiatus and a near-complete transition in editorial leadership, the relaunch of this journal has unfolded alongside seismic shifts in both the discipline and the world. the last volume of the journal was published in 2021, in a world already in crisis. yet the years since have made clear that the intersecting struggles we face—against authoritarianism, structural inequity, and ecological devastation—are not temporary ruptures but enduring conditions. the shifting academic landscape, too, has brought fresh challenges: shrinking job markets, intensified calls for disciplinary accountability, and the continued erosion of public trust in the humanities. in many ways, these conditions reaffirm the significance of graduate humanities research as a vehicle for urgent change. in this context, we offer contemporaneity as a platform not just for theorization, but for intervention. the theme of ruin and reparation provides the grounds to both address contemporaneity’s dedication to historical presence in visual culture and signal our collective conviction to act in response to our historically grounded present conditions. it is significant that this issue features contributors working across borders (both geographic and institutional) who use the tools of visual culture to address urgent, real-world concerns. to publish international scholarship in the united states in 2025 is to reckon with the privileges and responsibilities of our position; in this light, we see contemporaneity as an evolving space for reparative dialogue across divides of language, method, and access. we also view it as a space for experimentation: one that is rooted in the historical present, yet open to new forms of thought. this volume’s theme emerged from graduate student thinking and from recent curricular reorientations within the department of the history of art and architecture (haa) at the university of pittsburgh. in 2010, haa launched its constellations model, a framework for curriculum and programming that uses shared themes to connect otherwise disparate research interests. for the first time since their inception, the constellations were revisited in 2023 through a departmental strategic plan. coordinators dr. alison langmead and graduate student kale serrato doyen surveyed departmental faculty and graduate students, asked for the summative themes of their research, and proposed a new iteration of constellations from this solicited input. salient among survey responses were issues of agency, cultural dispossession, and social justice—leading doyen to propose the addition of a new reparation constellation. as we look ahead, this publication also signals a broader commitment to transformation. haa recently received a major grant from the mellon foundation to center social justice analysis in the practice of art and architectural history. over the next two years, this initiative will support a robust program of workshops, conversations, and curricular development designed to reimagine the discipline’s critical methods and public responsibilities. contemporaneity will play an active role in this process: the next issue of the journal will be dedicated to documenting, and reflecting on, the outcomes of this grant program. the current volume unfolds in three parts. it opens with a short questionnaire that asks respondents to consider: what does reparation mean for the history of art and architecture? the centerpiece of the issue is an essay initially presented at our 2024 symposium by amanda guido ochoa, who traces the adaptive reuse of forte prenestino, a nineteenth-century military fort on the outskirts of rome, now repurposed by artists and activists as a space of autonomy and resistance. ochoa’s essay argues for an ethics of preservation that honors architectural decay as a site of emancipation and creative expression. the final section of the issue gathers on disciplinary disrepair editor’s introduction shawn c. simmons http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ i i i s h a w n c . s i m m o n s contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 10, no 1 (2025) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2025.343 shorter reflections, reviews, and thought experiments that further expand the theme of (dis)repair across time, space, and disciplinary boundaries. finally, readers may notice that we have redesigned our website to reflect our expanded commitment to open-access, non-conventional scholarship. in addition to releasing our biennial peer-reviewed issues, the new site will host a rolling series of curated contributions designed to make work-in-progress and experimental forms of scholarship more accessible.this digital redesign is not simply cosmetic. it reflects our ongoing efforts to build a more flexible and inclusive platform for sharing ideas. we are thrilled to welcome readers back to contemporaneity. this volume reopens not only as a site of return, but also as a departure in sight—a threshold between what has been and what remains possible. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ i v o n d i s c i p l i n a r y d i s r e p a i r contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 10, no 1 (2025) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2025.343 new articles in this journal are licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 united states license. this journal is published by pitt open library publishing. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ https://www.library.pitt.edu/e-journals contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture vol 9, no 1 (2021) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2021.325 http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu address the issue joel addison fuller & seth adam cook about the authors address the issue, also known by the initialism a.i., is an american creative duo consisting of artists and activists seth cook and joel fuller. they first met while pursuing their master’s degree in fine arts at indiana university, bloomington, in 2017, and started their collaboration in 2019. their work addresses moments of racially motivated conflict in america that people too often would prefer to dismiss or forget. with each passing month, 2020 has brought awareness to the enduring division between black and white americans. now, a.i. see their collaboration as a way of highlighting polarizing perspectives that are further dividing the country, which cannot be recognized or empathized by the use of a stand-alone image. the global pandemic has made them more motivated to push the issues, going deeper into subject matter that some would consider controversial. joel addison fuller (b. 1993) is an artist born and raised in birmingham, alabama, a city known for its history of degradation and dehumanization of black people during the civil rights movement. he is the nephew of audrey faye hendricks, the youngest child arrested in the civil rights movement, at the age of eight years old. his family not only participated in the movement, but also risked their bodies, economic security, and lives fighting for equal rights. while his aunt is no longer here, he honors her memory and legacy, being told to “never let our struggle fade into history.” he holds a bachelor of fine arts degree in art and design from butler university. shortly after receiving his bachelor’s, he became a visual arts teacher for the birmingham city school. he holds an mfa in digital art from indiana university, bloomington, with a focus on virtual reality and the civil rights movement. his work has been displayed nationally, including kentucky, south carolina, alabama, and indiana. seth adam cook (b. 1993) is an artist born and raised in the bayou teche region of southcentral louisiana, an area known for the community’s connectedness to the land. after experiencing the aftermath of hurricane katrina and the poisoning of the gulf coast caused by http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 7 3 j o e l a d d i s on f u l l e r & s e t h a d a m co ok contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 1, no 9 (2021) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2021.325 the bp oil spill, he became motivated to confront the injustices that befell his community and ecosystem. he completed his bachelor of fine arts from the university of louisiana at lafayette in 2015, and holds an mfa in photography from indiana university, bloomington. in 2018, while earning his master’s, he gained recognition as a hastac scholar (humanities, arts, science, and technology alliance and collaboratory) for his experimentation with laser-cutting technology, the results of which were presented at the institute for digital arts and humanities 2019 spring symposium. his work has been displayed nationally, including louisiana, new york, california, colorado, massachusetts, and indiana. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 1, no 9 (2021) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2021.325 in america, there is “white innocence”—an innocence that serves as a quiet affirmation of the continuing racial paradigm against black americans. first used by gloria wekker from her book white innocence: paradoxes of colonialism and race, the term refers to her dutch ancestry, where the same issues of racial denial were—and remain—present. we look to use this term when connecting the systematic rejection of white americans toward racial discrimination and the adverse effects of silence. in this series, we take inspiration from william pope l. by using satire not simply to examine the stereotypes surrounding race but to dissect the damage these preconceptions do to both black and white individuals and, more broadly, to society. this includes but is not limited to the continued use of blackface, black cultural appropriation, and black people being seen as commodities of entertainment, objects of obsession, and subjects of fear. it is in this recognition that we understand the racial divide still taking place in what we were raised to believe was a “post-racial” america. figure 1 address the issue, i am afraid, 2019. photograph. address the issue joel addison fuller & seth adam cook http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 7 5 j o e l a d d i s on f u l l e r & s e t h a d a m co ok contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 1, no 9 (2021) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2021.325 figure 2 address the issue, keep them out of my neighborhood, 2020. photograph. figure 3 address the issue, please practice racial distancing, 2020. photograph. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 7 6 a d d r e s s t h e i s s u e contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 1, no 9 (2021) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2021.325 new articles in this journal are licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 united states license. this journal is operated by the university library system of the university of pittsburgh as part of its d-scribe digital publishing program, and is co-sponsored by the university of pittsburgh press. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/ http://www.pitt.edu/ http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/ http://www.upress.pitt.edu/upressindex.aspx address the issue address the issue document11 vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.77 http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu mapping collected memory an exploration of memory-based navigation in amman, jordan regina mamou abstract the purpose of this research is to explore navigational and image-making methods in a context where maps and formal address systems have been minimally consulted in recent years. this investigation is approached by way of a research-based art project on subjective cartography, which was carried out from 2009 to 2010 during a fulbright fellowship to amman, jordan. the project examines the mutability of a specific location as well as its relationship between obsolescence in cartographic resources and the photographic medium. by reaching out to ammani residents for informal tours of the city, selected guides were asked to narrate their experiences of navigating the city by memory and then directed to point out key landmarks during this process. later, these tours were re-memorized and landmarks were photographed as a representation of the afterimage to capture high-quality still images through the use of a large-format photographic device. these afterimages are not intended to serve as documents or memorials of amman but rather as ruminations on the faculties of memory in an ever-changing environment. this subjective experience, or the observation of a city’s minutiae amid wayfinding, poses a series of inquiries, vis-à-vis memory-based navigation and the role of still images, as an alternative to the panoptic view of a map. the result is a meditative project considering the plasticity of an urban entity, presented as a composition of written material and large-scale photographs, fragments of the city that when viewed as a series come together as a constellation of a subjective whole. about the author regina mamou is a chicago-based visual artist working at the intersection of photography, installation, writing, and research practices. she has exhibited her work nationally and internationally. mamou holds an mfa from the school of the art institute of chicago and a bfa from the rhode island school of design. contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.77 a cartographic resource, whether analog or digital, is subject to inevitable obsolescence, which leads to revision or mutability over time. by identifying known and used landmarks throughout a city, which aid in wayfinding, a resident or visitor is able to criss-cross metropolitan areas utilizing an abstract, fluid, and personalized method. broadly speaking, the city is a plastic entity, which is ever more apparent in globalization, especially in locations experiencing vast migrational patterns. while physical landmarks used by residents, visitors, and travelers are liable to change at the hand of urbanization and construction, especially in a contemporary environment, the memory of cultural, social, and historical urban markers is often permanently incorporated in the general lexicon of a city. appropriately, then, the purpose of this research-based art project is to explore landmarks in the context of amman, jordan, a locality where maps and formal address systems are minimally consulted in everyday travel, while examining specific markers and the means by which they are memorized, imaged, and interpreted in regard to navigation. the project explores image-based representation, with the utilization of wayfinding systems, as a metaphorical interpretation of a contemporary city, in addition to considering issues of architecture, urban planning, and population growth. concerning itself primarily with conceptual forms of mapping, or what the contemporary geographer denis cosgrove describes as “ ‘mapping,’ the cognitive and creative process rather than the scientific and design aspects of map-making,” the project seeks an avenue to discuss the psychology of the city through experiential travel using the eclectic elements of writing, photography, video, and durational performance (i.e., walking and driving tours) to interpret and present the findings of traversing a contemporary environment.1 as opposed to interpreting a lack of map usage as a pejorative concept, this project investigates a central theme: memory-based navigation using verbal narration inherently grants a traveler a better understanding of the city. for amman, a place that utilizes a landmark-dominated navigational system, landmarks differ from person to person, and these markers are dependent on one’s relationship to and within the city, as well as one’s knowledge of a particular neighborhood through a non-linear perspective of its wayfinding system. in formal map production, interpretation and subjective cartography is lost in the process. a version of this paper was delivered at the mediated city conference organized by the scholarly journal architecture_mps, london, april 1–3, 2014. 1 denis cosgrove, geography and vision: seeing, imagining and representing the world (london: i.b.tauris and co., 2008), 68. cosgrove’s book provides dynamic essays, mixing metaphor and history, on the relationship between the landscape, space, and human activity. the fourth chapter, “mapping arcadia,” is of particular interest to this project in regard to the figurative interpretations of geography. mapping collected memory an exploration of memory-based navigation in amman, jordan regina mamou 1 4 0 m a p p i n g c o l l e c t e d m e m o r y : a n e x p l o r a t i o n o f m e m o r y b a s e d n a v i g a t i o n i n a m m a n , j o r d a n contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.77 methods and tools utilized in the research-based art project the project research and images were developed over a fifteen-month period from september 2009 to december 2010 during a fulbright us student program grant to amman, jordan.2 the methodology used in collecting material to create mapping collected memory: an exploration of memory-based navigation in amman, jordan, which is first and foremost a research-based art project, is an abstract approach derived from the seminal text of kevin lynch’s the image of the city (1960).3 the project involved reaching out to residents of amman for walking and driving tours of the metropolis. makan art space, a non-profit contemporary art center in amman, jordan, kindly sent out a call for participation electronically in english with a translated letter in arabic. this electronic medium garnered a specific demographic of participants: a group of approximately ten permanent residents, as well as temporary visitors, who were either artists or familiar with makan’s programming, and who were comfortable meeting for an informal walk or drive through the city. participants were asked to select a navigational process (via pedestrian or vehicular travel) and a route that they used in quotidian activities. on these tours, guides narrated their experience of navigating the city using visual and verbal cues, without the aid of a map, and were directed to point out key landmarks in their navigational process. the tours were also captured via a digital camera for documentation purposes. after memorizing routes with guides during the in-person tours, landmarks were photographed later as a representation of the afterimage, capturing high-quality still images through the use of a large-format photographic device, specifically a four-by-five-inch monorail camera. the final result is a presentation composed of written material, large-scale photographs, and moving images of the process: fragments of the city that when viewed as a complete project come together as a constellation of a subjective whole. the project is not intended to document the experience of navigation, but rather ruminate on the practice of memorizing the city through its navigational methods. it deemphasizes the importance of the map and its systems, instead placing emphasis on the concept of how a city is traversed, particularly one in transition, through the experiential learning of memory and its routes. the images in the portfolio, presented at the end of this written account and research, are not intended to serve as a guidebook, historical reference, cartographic resource, or memorialization of these ever-changing markers. rather, they should be seen as the final visual conceptualization and metaphorical interpretation of one particular contemporary city, produced via a research-based art practice, and what trevor 2 while i am speaking about my own project, for purposes of this formal written account, there is a conscious decision to suppress a first-person narration and refer to the work using an abstract voice. 3 lynch outlines a methodology in the appendix b entitled “the use of the method,” which details the manner by which a sample of citizens were interviewed for the purpose of imaging los angeles, boston, and jersey city. individuals responded to a series of questions in relation to city routes and the memorization of particular areas of each metropolis. kevin lynch, the image of the city (cambridge, ma: mit press, 1960), 140-159. 1 4 1 r e g i n a m a m o u contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.77 paglen has termed “experimental geography,” to describe the engagement with space as a fluid and experiemental practice.4 amman’s history: interpretations on a lack of map usage what makes amman, the capital city of the hashemite kingdom of jordan, a singular city and unique locale for this research? in urban crossroads, a column that features regular articles by mohammad al-asad, the founding director of the center for the study of the built environment, in amman, jordan, al-asad ruminates on various identifying characteristics of the city.5 amman is described, by al-asad, as a dense network of streets, difficult for a newcomer to maneuver.6 despite a small production of maps, a number system to designate addresses, and street names—some more recently implemented than others—many of amman’s visitors and residents rely on personal methods to navigate the city. in this situation, the project asks the question, what is the benefit of a map if the urban environment is subjected to constant change? coincidentally or not, citizens of amman experience an “aversion to using street maps,” as al-asad commented in urban crossroads.7 in navigating amman, there is an integration of formal and informal systems, which has enforced the memorization of the city’s history and labeling systems. people in amman do not even use street names, except for the major streets of the city. instead, they identify a street by some landmark . . . even for a number of major streets, the official name is not always used, but instead, a name based on a wellknown landmark located along it.8 there has been a plethora of studies in navigation, and, more specifically, how this relates to memory, from ramallah to cairo to beirut, the latter of which will be addressed briefly. memory and mapping practices are certainly not conceptually new to the global arena, and artists, as well as cultural historians, have tackled both topics, in a broader sense 4 see nato thompson, experimental geography: radical approaches to landscape, cartography, and urbanism, (new york: independent curators international, in association with melville house, 2008), 13. regarding the independent curators international exhibition, “experimental geography,” thompson comments: “the manifestations of ‘experimental geography’ (a term coined by geographer trevor paglen in 2002) run the gamut of contemporary art practice today.” independent curators international exhibitions, “experimental geography,” accessed february 9, 2014, http://curatorsintl.org/exhibitions /experimental_geography. 5 see the introductory web page of urban crossroads, which details the article’s topics and publication dates. the introduction reads as follows: “urban crossroads is a regular column written by mohammad alasad, the founding director of the center for the study of the built environment (csbe) in amman. its articles address issues relating to the urban built environment, with an emphasis on amman and other cities in jordan. the articles explore the various dynamics that shape our cities, including the physical, geographic, cultural, social, economic, and political, and examine how such dynamics may be harnessed to bring about improvements in the quality of urban life. the first urban crossroads article appeared in the jordan times, jordan's english-language daily, on april 15, 2004, and continued to be published there until august 2011. following that, it has been published through the online portals www.tareeq.me and www.7iber.com in both arabic and english.” urban crossroads, “introduction,” accessed february 9, 2014, http://www.csbe.org/e-publications-resources/urban-crossroads. 6 mohammad al-asad, “amman street maps: a new frontier,” urban crossroads 18 (september 9, 2004), accessed february 9, 2014, http://www.csbe.org/e-publications-resources/urban-crossroads /amman-street-maps-a-new-frontier. 7 ibid. 8 ibid. 1 4 2 m a p p i n g c o l l e c t e d m e m o r y : a n e x p l o r a t i o n o f m e m o r y b a s e d n a v i g a t i o n i n a m m a n , j o r d a n contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.77 of the term, from pointed conferences to symposia in the middle east and north africa.9 for example, the beirut-based artist tony chakar, who conducts ongoing historical walking tours to pinpoint narrative-based, neighborhood-centered descriptions of the city, explores this trend by imaging the metropolis through faculties of the past.10 on chakar’s website for the sky over beirut (2009–), in the historical city tour section, he provides digital mapping points with narrative descriptions of specific areas in the city. in a poetic manner, one didactic text for a detailed area describes an individual’s attempt to navigate to a specific point in beirut. the map i had was old and undated, so i got a new map from my hotel. i tried to compare the two maps, but the differences among them were huge. for a moment i thought that the map i brought with me was not of the same city.11 the notion of navigating without a formal cartographic resource and address system is a common practice in many cities throughout the regions of the middle east and north africa. the city of amman is a relatively young metropolis with “the history of modern amman dat[ing] back to the 1870s,” and major building developments taking place within the last fifty years.12 this shift can be attributed to a gamut of characteristics, including foreign and domestic conflict, as well as assets that were obtained through oil in the 1970s and 1980s.13 additionally, jordan’s first university opened in the 1960s, pulling educators and students into the city’s center.14 more specifically, this has caused urban progress to develop rather swiftly, stemming from “the 1948 and 1967 arab-israeli wars” and external conflict in neighboring countries.15 these “sudden spurts” have placed amman in the unique 9 “home works 5: a forum on cultural practices” was organized by the non-profit organization ashkal alwan, the lebanese association for plastic arts, based in beirut, lebanon. “home works 5” was held from april 21 to may 1, 2010, featuring a plethora of presentations, events, and artwork. several of these works were focused on the practices of mapping and memory. see the “home works 5” brochure, accessed february 9, 2014, http://cdn.ashkalalwan.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/homeworks5 _brochure.pdf. additionally, “speak, memory: on archives and other strategies of (re)activation of cultural memory,” which took place at the townhouse gallery in cairo, egypt, between october 28 and october 30, 2010, tackled issues of cultural memory in the region, specifically in relation to collecting and archiving historical artistic practices. see the “speak, memory” brochure, accessed february 9, 2014, http://speakmemory.org/uploads/speakmemory.pdf. 10 see tony chakar’s the sky over beirut (2009–), an ongoing project, specifically the web page on the historical city tour, accessed february 9, 2014, http://www.tonychakar.com. i had the opportunity to participate in one of chakar’s tours, the sky over beirut: walking tours of the city, when they were conducted during the “home works 5: a forum on cultural practices” in beirut, lebanon, from april 21 to may 1, 2010. 11 “tony chakar’s historical city tour,” accessed february 9, 2014, http://www.tonychakar.com/historical -city-tour. quoted from the map pin with the numeric label “1.” 12 mohammad al-asad, “amman: how big is too big?” urban crossroads 87 (december 5, 2008), accessed february 9, 2014, http://www.csbe.org/e-publications-resources/urban-crossroads/amman-how -big-is-too-big. 13 alev çinar and thomas bender, eds., urban imaginaries: locating the modern city, (minneapolis: university of minnesota press, 2007). see the essay “amman is not a city: middle eastern cities in question,” by seteney shami, which deconstructs the geographical, socioeconomic, cultural, and political spaces in amman. additionally, shami discusses the characteristics of the ammani terrain, in both the physical and psychological sense, wherein urban planning and identity issues have been the main factor in describing the city. 14 mohammad al-asad, “cities of the arab east,” urban crossroads 5 (may 20, 2004), accessed february 9, 2014, http://www .csbe.org/e-publications-resources/urban-crossroads/cities-of-the-arab-east. 15 ibid. 1 4 3 r e g i n a m a m o u contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.77 position of creating infrastructure in a rapid manner, presenting critical debates about urban planning in the modern city.16 amman is currently growing at an exponential rate, encountering fragmentation, decentralization, and urban sprawl; to grasp the physical space of the city vis-à-vis a map has become a difficult task.17 the mapping experience: subjectivity and cognition in his 2005 article “maps, mapping, modernity: art and cartography in the twentieth century,” denis cosgrove writes that “post-war advances in cognitive psychology challenged many of the assumptions about the transparency of representational images by emphasizing the importance of individual and social perceptions.”18 memory plays a large role in these advances in cognitive psychology. the experience of an individual, as well as his or her upbringing, social status, and class, has an immense impact on perceptions, especially in representational images. maps are inherently part of this mass of imagery related to the translation of the physical world. but to reject the map is not necessarily the rejection of the process of mapping. maps are the coded two-dimensional illustrations of the city delineated by signs, symbols, lines, and colors, whereas mapping is part of the performance, activity, and engagement of the city. the difference between a map and mapping changes one’s relationship to the city from a spectator to participant, passive to active. when one moves through an urban environment, mapping has the benefit of changing one’s view of the city, which is dependent on vantage points or perspectives (i.e., inside the maze of a city as compared to that of an omnipresent observation). in the case of amman, map production becomes a futile effort in a rapidly changing environment. if a permanent or temporary resident of amman understands the important markers of the city from a subjective experience, it creates definition and character to an abstract and ambiguous mass of a map that may be slow to catch up with the current environment, whether this map is a paper or digital version. more importantly, as noted in cosgrove’s text regarding perception and imagery, memory has the added flexibility of remaining coded to its user through individual experience, and this subjective knowledge of the interpretation of information is beneficial as it molds to the user’s lifestyle and needs.19 16 jordan is at a “strategic location at the crossroads . . . in the middle east . . . and has had to cope with massive influxes of refugees and migrant workers fleeing conflict areas. in addition to receiving palestinians, jordan has also hosted forced migrants from lebanon during the 1975–1991 civil war and iraq during and after the 1991 gulf war . . . [t]he 2003 second gulf war, drastically raised the number of iraqis fleeing and residing in jordan to an estimated over seven hundred and fifty thousand, increasing the pressure on government authorities, economic, and social infrastructures.” see “jordan,” international organization for migration, last modified july 2007 (main text) and october 2013 (facts and figures), http://www.iom.int/cms/en/sites/iom/home/where-we-work/ africa-and-the-middle-east/middle-east -and-north-africa/jordan.html. 17 seteney shami in çinar and bender, eds., urban imaginaries: locating the modern city. 18 denis cosgrove, “maps, mapping, modernity: art and cartography in the twentieth century,” imago mundi 57, no. 1, 2005, 39. cosgrove notes in the article’s abstract that he “suggest[s] that an examination of art and cartography in the twentieth century should focus on mapping practices rather than on maps,” which serves as essential material studies for mapping collected memory and the project’s main argument that mapping practices are vital to an inherent understanding of a city, especially one in flux. 19 ibid. 1 4 4 m a p p i n g c o l l e c t e d m e m o r y : a n e x p l o r a t i o n o f m e m o r y b a s e d n a v i g a t i o n i n a m m a n , j o r d a n contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.77 in addition, the activity of mapping through memory—an immersion in a particular environment—is an experience between the relationship of bodies in space and one’s subjective resonance. this participatory action can serve to inform a navigator as to the type of environment to expect in a previsualization of negotiating space. in amman, one of the most congested and historical parts of the city is the downtown area, wast al-balad, known locally and informally as al-balad, or the “heart of the city,” the city center.20 even a reference to an urban center as the heart of a city, implies an intrinsic understanding of that space, and encapsulates the metaphorical pulse of al-balad without the aid of a formal map. one’s personal experience to this area is heightened by the knowledge of this information. to navigate a city, to walk or drive a city, is to fully participate in the noise, confusion, congestion, stagnation, bustle, movement, fluidity, and stillness of an urban entity. on a map, a satellite image (e.g., google maps) showing an area of mass congestion is translated and reduced to a series of topographical and geographical demarcations. but what is it like to actually stand within the area, and to be surrounded by a certain kind of aura and space? markers in the landscape for the sake of this short written account, it is easier to comment on the commonalities observed during guided tours than to tease out all the singular types of landmarks. from tours into the urban environment, patterns exist regarding the types of landmarks used in navigation. the common landmarks, both in walking and driving trips, include heavily frequented buildings in the area, such as shopping centers and marketplaces, hospitals (figs 1, 2, 3, 4), banks (fig. 1), and religious spaces (fig. 5). large hotels that stand towering over the average height of the short ammani building become part of the regular lexicon of the city as well. notable hotels are especially part of the vocabulary of the city, which include the grand hyatt, the four seasons, the sheraton (fig. 2), and the intercontinental (fig. 6). a bit of speculation could lead one to the internationalization of the ammani environment, which finds itself with a large community of expatriates. the act of using major international hotels as landmarks, which often bear names in english, the typical default language in amman for non-arabic speaking residents, is a process that aids memory. interestingly, bridges (fig. 7), open spaces (fig. 8), and construction sites (figs 9, 10, 11) serve as visual markers to travelers. these sites are akin to an urban cairn in the road. like a cairn, which is a unique and unnatural mound of rocks created for the sole purpose of establishing a node and directional point, empty lots and the odd visual geometry of construction zones contain interesting configurations, cranes, and objects that induce a viewer to establish a landmark. as a result, residents have an awareness of the exponential growth of amman, and an inherent understanding of the changing city. the most important and widely recognized feature in the ammani navigational system is the roundabout, referred to in the city as a “circle.” the western part of the city contains one large road or artery labeled zahran street, and organized on this route are a series of eight roundabouts informally labeled as the first circle through eighth circle (figs 1, 2). any individual wishing to navigate amman on the western side can use the closest roundabout to their desired end point. once there, the navigator might utilize landmarks near and around the circle to their final destination. it should be noted that there are additional roundabouts 20 in arabic, the word al-balad literally translates to “the country.” 1 4 5 r e g i n a m a m o u contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.77 throughout the city (e.g., paris circle and city circle) that are off of the throughway of the numeric system, and prove to be just as useful in navigational methods. the common characteristic regarding the use of these landmarks can be drawn back to one’s relationship to the city. if one lives in a specific neighborhood, the landmarks are particularly fleshed out in terms of imaging, making use of a wider range of markers in the area. the image-making of the city photography’s relationship to memory has been a tenuous one, and subject of debate, in recent years. much like photography, memory is a subjective experience: changing and shifting over the course of time. if one is to compare the brain and a representational object, there is much fodder for observational study. the posterior hippocampus, the portion of the human brain responsible for memory, also “stores spatial representations of the environment . . . is plastic, and undergoes structural change depending on the amount of navigational experience.” 21 is this dissimilar to the map and the photograph, which capture a particular scene but are experienced through the subjectivity of time, place, and viewer, as well as maker? in the case of the color photograph, the object itself, which is literally made from plastic, is doomed to fade and disintegrate, changing the aesthetic read of its subject matter. how do these images capture the essence of the navigational process? mainly, these informal guided tours are time-based performative trips, with digital video footage serving as the primary element of documentation, as well as reference and observational material. navigating back to specific landmarks requires a memorization of the guides’ tour routes. so, effectively, the process of returning to a particular spot to photograph these markers—a guide’s subjective interpretation on imaging landmarks—requires an exercise in remembrance or re-memorization of the route. therefore, the photographic representations of landmarks are tapped into the memory-focused component of the project, as the photographic act is “a reflexive medium that exposes the stakes of historical study by revealing . . . [its] constructed nature of what constitutes historical evidence.”22 the images presented in mapping collected memory rely extensively on the compositional constructions and considerations of urban representation, and much like the city and memory—the plasticity that occurs through all of these facets. the large-format camera was selected to capture the landmarks for two distinct reasons. firstly, the camera has the ability to create standard movements, such as tilt, shift, swing, rise, and fall, used for landscape and architectural photography to plumb converging lines. however, this can also create the opposite effect of skewing and distorting the image, thereby drawing attention to important details in various landmarks through the focal points or effectively distorting them. secondly, in regard to distortion, most of the images are produced with the aperture f/5.6, the largest aperture available on the particular lens used for this project, which creates an awareness of the image’s surface via shallow depth of field. 21 gillian cohen and martin a. conway, eds., memory in the real world, 3rd ed. (hove: psychology press, 2008), 176. the writing serves as a practical guide to everyday memory. the chapter on “memory for places: routes, maps, and object locations,” co-authored by alastair d. smith and gillian cohen, was particularly useful in my research for mapping collected memory. 22 jennifer tucker, “entwined practices: engagements with photography in historical inquiry,” in collaboration with tina campt, history and theory 48, no. 4, (december 2009): 3. here tucker critically examines photographs as historical objects. 1 4 6 m a p p i n g c o l l e c t e d m e m o r y : a n e x p l o r a t i o n o f m e m o r y b a s e d n a v i g a t i o n i n a m m a n , j o r d a n contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.77 the effect is purposefully subtle, a kind of anti-aperture f/64 statement in regard to representational imagery, specifically a resistance of that eponymous group’s motives “to present the camera’s ‘vision’ as clearly as possible.”23 essentially, the resulting images, outside of their context, are banal. the images are external to the mind’s faculties of memory. they do not reference or add up to much other than solitary images of an environment, and are external to the use of the narration that provide their very existence: a subjective context to navigate the city. these images are stark, mostly devoid of human presence; landmarks in isolation with clear skies. they are imaged at specific times of day, always early on friday mornings—the start of the weekend in jordan—when the streets tend to be quiet and still. they are large-scale images at forty inches (101.60 centimeters) in height with parenthetical titles. when lined up in a complete series, there is an inclination to create leaps, nodes, or stops on the print surface: a tally of a specific destination. but the images, as a whole, lead to a nowhere “less cognate with written history than with the raw materials of written history: traces of lived experience.”24 these landmarks are so personalized that the representation or imaging of them seems to crumble, fade, and fall apart. the images require narration of their experiences, an explanation of the spaces, as they are completely detached from the navigational process but clearly reference “an experience of a past exactly at the instant it crosses into an indeterminate future.”25 they are not presentations of how to navigate in an unfamiliar city, but a call to become acquainted with its streets through conversations, experiential learning, and a relationship to the city, which requires measured patience and time. there is an awareness of an obsolescence of technology: the application of a largeformat analog camera, a heavy piece of equipment, requiring a vehicle to navigate to photographic sites, as well as twenty to thirty minutes to set up and compose shots of the landmarks. something so sturdy and stationary seems bound to an architectural element made of stone. much like the map, the images are subject to obsolescence and mutability over time. already four years old, printed on chromogenic paper, their relevance is waning. a conscious decision has been made to utilize color photographs with an expiration date, avoiding archival pigment prints. the memorization of the city is a malleability encapsulated in the mind—not a static image—created with eventual decay. the photographic process is flawed from the start, but is deeply embedded in an urge to learn the city’s streets, eventually expanding the memory’s knowledge through the plasticity of experiential practice. conclusion what is there to learn by comparing the relationship of the photographic document, a representational object acting as metaphor for a contemporary city, to navigational processes? in the act of navigating amman, while maps provide a user with a generalized 23 lisa hostetler, “group f/64.” quoted from the heilbrunn timeline of art history (new york: the metropolitan museum of art, 2000–), last modified october 2004 (main text), http://www.metmuseum .org/toah/hd/f64/hd_f64.htm. 24 alan trachtenberg, “through a glass, darkly: photography and cultural memory.” in the themed issue “collective memory and collective identity,” social research 75, no. 1, (summer 2008): 121–22. trachtenberg discusses the relationship between the subjective and objective views of memory through photography. 25 ibid., 119. 1 4 7 r e g i n a m a m o u contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.77 overview of the city, landmarks incorporating memory-based navigational methods should not be overlooked. amman is currently growing at an exponential rate, and to grasp the physical space of the city through an inside-out navigational perspective becomes ever more important. landmarks are part of the vocabulary, civic engagement, and urban growth of amman, but more importantly, they are the subjective experiences incorporated into the navigational process. with amman’s urban sprawl and a decentralization of the major areas throughout the city, it is important to recognize the benefits of a personalized approach to understanding the urban fabric, which serve to narrate the experience of residents through a series of explorations, and give voice to the city from a subjective viewpoint. a photograph can aid in this process, not as an agent of history or as a historical document, but as a metaphor to call into question the static nature of urban entities and the proposed relationship to representational materials. 1 4 8 m a p p i n g c o l l e c t e d m e m o r y : a n e x p l o r a t i o n o f m e m o r y b a s e d n a v i g a t i o n i n a m m a n , j o r d a n contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.77 figure 1 regina mamou, untitled (third circle) from the series mapping collected memory, 2009-2010. digital c-print, 40 x 50 in. (101.60 x 127 cm). 1 4 9 r e g i n a m a m o u contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.77 figure 2 regina mamou, untitled (near fourth circle) from the series mapping collected memory, 2009–2010. digital c-print. 40 x 50 in. (101.60 x 127 cm). 1 5 0 m a p p i n g c o l l e c t e d m e m o r y : a n e x p l o r a t i o n o f m e m o r y b a s e d n a v i g a t i o n i n a m m a n , j o r d a n contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.77 figure 3 regina mamou, untitled (luzmila hospital) from the series mapping collected memory, 2009–2010. digital c-print. 40 x 50 in. (101.60 x 127 cm). 1 5 1 r e g i n a m a m o u contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.77 figure 4 regina mamou, untitled (shmeisani hospital) from the series mapping collected memory, 2009–2010. digital c-print. 40 x 32 in. (101.60 x 81.28 cm). 1 5 2 m a p p i n g c o l l e c t e d m e m o r y : a n e x p l o r a t i o n o f m e m o r y b a s e d n a v i g a t i o n i n a m m a n , j o r d a n contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.77 figure 5 regina mamou, untitled (street corner, hashimi) from the series mapping collected memory, 20092010. digital c-print. 40 x 32 in. (101.60 x 81.28 cm). 1 5 3 r e g i n a m a m o u contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.77 figure 6 regina mamou, untitled (intercontinental) from the series mapping collected memory, 2009–2010. digital c-print. 40 x 32 in. (101.60 x 81.28 cm). 1 5 4 m a p p i n g c o l l e c t e d m e m o r y : a n e x p l o r a t i o n o f m e m o r y b a s e d n a v i g a t i o n i n a m m a n , j o r d a n contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.77 figure 7 regina mamou, untitled (abdoun bridge) from the series mapping collected memory, 2009–2010. digital c-print. 40 x 50 in. (101.60 x 127 cm). 1 5 5 r e g i n a m a m o u contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.77 figure 8 regina mamou, untitled (dawn, hashimi) from the series mapping collected memory, 2009–2010. digital c-print. 40 x 32 in. (101.60 x 81.28 cm). 1 5 6 m a p p i n g c o l l e c t e d m e m o r y : a n e x p l o r a t i o n o f m e m o r y b a s e d n a v i g a t i o n i n a m m a n , j o r d a n contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.77 figure 9 regina mamou, untitled (abdali’s plan) from the series mapping collected memory, 2009–2010. digital c-print. 40 x 32 in. (101.60 x 81.28 cm). 1 5 7 r e g i n a m a m o u contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.77 figure 10 regina mamou, untitled (site #1) from the series mapping collected memory, 2009–2010. digital c-print. 40 x 50 in. (101.60 x 127 cm). 1 5 8 m a p p i n g c o l l e c t e d m e m o r y : a n e x p l o r a t i o n o f m e m o r y b a s e d n a v i g a t i o n i n a m m a n , j o r d a n contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.77 figure 11 regina mamou, untitled (site #2) from the series mapping collected memory, 2009–2010. digital c-print. 40 x 50 in. (101.60 x 127 cm). 1 5 9 r e g i n a m a m o u contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 3, no 1 (2014) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2014.77 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-noncommercial-no derivative works 3.0 united states license. this journal is operated by the university library system of the university of pittsburgh as part of its d-scribe digital publishing program, and is co-sponsored by the university of pittsburgh press. contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture vol 8, no 1 (2019) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2019.280 http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu “so shall yoe bee” encountering the shrouded effigies of thomas beresford and agnes hassall at fenny bentley aimee caya abstract the beresford monument from the church of st edmund at fenny bentley in derbyshire is a funerary monument that has received relatively little attention from scholars due to its unusual imagery and the lack of documentary evidence regarding its creation. the alabaster monument depicts thomas beresford (d. 1473) and agnes hassall (d. 1467) as fully shrouded threedimensional effigies. incised around the base of the monument are enshrouded representations of their twenty-one children. this paper analyzes the impact that veiling the bodies of thomas beresford and agnes hassall has on the effectiveness of the monument as a commemorative tool and situates the shrouded effigies within their broader visual and social context at the turn of the sixteenth century. rather than dismiss the unusual imagery of the beresford monument as an expedient solution selected by sculptors who did not know what thomas beresford and agnes hassall actually looked like, this paper argues that shrouding the effigies was a deliberate commemorative strategy meant to evoke specific responses in the monument’s viewers. although there is little concrete information about the tomb’s commission, contextualizing it by examining the monument in concert with other aspects of late medieval culture—including purgatorial piety, macabre texts and imagery, and ex votos— can provide a richer understanding of the object’s potentiality for its beholders. the anonymizing aspect of the shroud ultimately enabled viewers to identify freely and easily with the individuals depicted on the monument, which would have encouraged them to pray for the souls of thomas and agnes, thus perpetuating their memories and reducing their time in purgatory. about the author aimee caya is doctoral student in the department of art history at case western reserve university, where she studies medieval art under professor elina gertsman. her research primarily explores reception, performance, and materiality as they apply to late medieval sculpture. she is currently working on her dissertation, tentatively titled “brazen bodies: the reception and materiality of monumental brasses in late medieval england,” for which she has received research funding from the paul mellon center for studies in british art and the international center of medieval art. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 8, no 1 (2019) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2019.280 there was perhaps no better center of community in late medieval england than the parish church. the paintings, sculptures, textiles, and stained glass that decorated these buildings provided a shared corpus of imagery that helped to forge communal identity by visualizing ties to ancestors or by propping up the cult of a local saint.1 this paper will focus on an alabaster tomb from one such parish church, the beresford monument from the church of st edmund king and martyr at fenny bentley in derbyshire (figure 1). the most striking feature of the tomb is the pair of fully shrouded effigies on the top, identified as thomas beresford (d. 1473) and his wife, agnes hassall (d. 1467). thomas and agnes’s featureless effigies have perplexed and distressed a number of writers over the years. for example, in his 1878 publication notes on the churches of derbyshire, j. charles cox explains: “the effect is most repulsive and ghastly and we should think that the idea must have occurred to the sculptor who wished to conceal his lack of skill in chiseling the human face or figure.”2 derek h. buckley provides a slightly more sympathetic view in his 1987 book the parish church of fenny bentley and its church of st edmund king and martyr: many people have wondered why the figures are shown in their shrouds, it has even been suggested that this was because the tomb was carved a century after their death and as the sculptor did not know what they looked like, he took the easy way out and put them in shrouds. but surely, effigies up to about the sixteenth century were never accurate in any case. it seems much more likely to me that it was simply an indication that earthly splendor had passed away, and that we all appear the same before our maker.3 although buckley’s treatment of the tomb is more charitable than cox’s, both of their attempts to explain the striking choices made in the beresford monument are dissatisfying. in what little scholarly writing it has prompted, the beresford monument has largely been defined by what it is not or by what it lacks, creating an impression that the monument is not merely peculiar, but also in some sense a failure: it does not present any likeness of thomas beresford or agnes hassall; it does not exhibit particularly fine or sensitive carving; it does not conform to the more familiar iconographic traditions of the transi tomb, the gisant, or the shroud brass; it does not tell us when it was made or who commissioned it, and—particularly for nineteenth-century authors like cox—it is unsettling and distasteful. the goal of this paper is to approach the beresford monument on its own terms, focusing not on what it fails to do but rather on what its unusual imagery can tell us about the place of the viewer in the economy of salvation and how such monuments were able to negotiate the relationship between the dead and living in complex and often ambiguous ways. i suggest that shrouding the effigies of 1 i would like to thank professor elina gertsman for her guidance in the development of this paper. many thanks to sarah reiff conell and her colleagues at the university of pittsburgh for their excellent work organizing the motivating monuments symposium in 2018, and for their insightful questions regarding this project. i would also like to extend my heartfelt thanks to professors jacqueline jung and shirin fozi for sharing their own questions and astute observations at the symposium. thanks are also due to jacqueline lombard and katie loney at contemporaneity and to the three anonymous reviewers for their perceptive comments and suggestions on this paper. i would also like to acknowledge fern dawson from lincoln cathedral, chris hughes from york minster, and the reverend gordon plumb for their generosity in allowing me to reproduce some of the images in this article. 2 j. charles cox, notes on the churches of derbyshire, vol. 2 (london: bemrose and sons, 1878), 467. 3 derek h. buckley, the parish church of fenny bentley and its church st. edmund king and martyr (derby, england: j.m. tattler and son, 1987), 8. “so shall yoe bee:” encountering the shrouded effigies of thomas beresford and agnes hassall at fenny bentley aimee caya http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 2 5 a i m e e c a y a contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 8, no 1 (2019) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2019.280 agnes hassall and thomas beresford was a deliberate commemorative strategy intended to elicit responses from the tomb’s beholders that were understandable and even expected within the context of late medieval devotion. figure 1 the beresford monument, ca. 1465–1550. alabaster. church of st edmund king and martyr, fenny bentley, derbyshire. (photo: author) the beresford family had an estate near fenny bentley at newton grange and appears to have been an active patron of the church of st edmund, although thomas and agnes’s children have been tied to other churches in derbyshire as well.4 alabaster effigial monuments became popular in england beginning in the fourteenth century, and so the choice of material is unsurprising for a family of their station.5 indeed, the stone for the tomb most likely came 4 godfrey beresford, who was the eldest child of aden beresford—himself the eldest of thomas and agnes’s sons—has an incised alabaster tomb slab near the high altar of crich church in derbyshire, about fifteen miles from fenny bentley. thomas and agnes’s youngest son, james, studied canon law at cambridge and eventually became a canon and prebendary at lichfield cathedral—about thirty miles from fenny bentley. james was buried in lichfield cathedral on july 13, 1520, but i have not found any description of his tomb. “family origins” and “notable beresfords,” the beresford family society, accessed may 22, 2019, http://beresfordfamilysociety.org 5 alabaster first became a popular material for sculpture in england in the fourteenth century, when it was used for several prominent tomb effigies, including those of king edward ii at gloucester cathedral (c. 1330); the son of edward ii, john of eltham (d. 1336) at westminster abbey; and edward iii’s son, william of hatfield (d. c. 1340) at york minster. john blair and nigel ramsay, english medieval industries: craftsmen, techniques, products (london: hambledon and london, 2001), 30–31 and 36. for more on the growing popularity of alabaster as the material of choice for elite tombs in england, see rachel dressler, “identity, status, and material: medieval alabaster effigies in england,” peregrinations: journal of medieval art and architecture 5, no. 2 (2015): 65; kim woods, “the fortunes of alabaster: a http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 2 6 “ s o s h a l l y o e b e e ” contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 8, no 1 (2019) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2019.280 from the nearby quarry at chellaston, one of the main sources of english alabaster in the middle ages.6 atop the beresford monument, the effigies of thomas and agnes lie side-byside, their winding sheets gathered together at the tops of their heads and the bases of their feet, completely concealing their features from view. it is nonetheless clear from the silhouettes of their bodies beneath the gathered cloth that both thomas and agnes have their arms folded at their waist. an inscription on the base of the monument provides basic biographic information—mostly about thomas—and several lines regarding the transience of life and the importance of preparing for death.7 beneath the inscription are incised representations of their twenty-one children—all fully enshrouded. all of these figures are identical, and none is named in the inscription aside from hugh, as he was buried alongside his parents after his death in 1524. the quartered arms of the beresford and hassall families also appear on the base, and the cornice above is incised with bells, bows, and depictions of armor. there are two likely explanations for the beresford monument’s relative absence from modern scholarship. the first being that the church of st edmund at fenny bentley—like many other english parish churches—underwent significant renovations during the nineteenth century, leaving the tomb bereft of much of its original context.8 even more critically, the lack of concrete information about the circumstances of the beresford monument’s creation has contributed to its neglect by scholars. there are no surviving records that identify a patron or provide the date that the monument was installed at the church of st edmund. because all of the figures on the tomb are shrouded, scholars cannot rely on costumes or hairstyles to date the monument, as is often the case with other tombs.9 the monument may have been commissioned around the time of agnes hassall’s death in 1467, but was probably not fully completed before the death of hugh in 1524, as his burial is mentioned in the inscription on the tomb’s base. formal characteristics on the monument also indicate that the tomb’s decoration was made piecemeal over a period of time, as paula frosch convincingly proposes.10 the drapery of the shrouds is handled quite differently between the two effigies, and there are marked discrepancies in the way the fabric is gathered at the heads and feet.11 furthermore, historiographical analysis,” in from major to minor: the minor arts in medieval art history, ed. colum hourihane (university park, pa: penn state press and the index of christian art, 2012), 91–94. 6 alabaster is a fine-grained form of gypsum. although the most desirable coloration was pure white, it was often veined with red or green. the quarry at chellaston was known to have redor coppercolored veining, as seen in the monument at fenny bentley. the principle quarries in the middle ages were in staffordshire and derbyshire. blair and ramsay, english medieval industries, 30–31 and 36. 7 the full inscription with a translation can be found in the appendix. 8 the beresford monument was relocated from the chancel to a nineteenth-century side chapel, and given the alterations made to the chancel itself it is difficult to say with certainty how viewers would have approached it or what church furnishings would have served as its immediate visual context. any wall paintings that may have decorated the church of st edmund have been lost, as have any textiles—such as the altar cloth and vestments. 9 see nigel saul, death, art, and memory in medieval england: the cobbham family and their monuments, 1300-1500 (new york: oxford university press, 2001); rachel dressler, of armor and men in medieval england: the chivalric rhetoric of three english knights’ effigies (burlington, vt: ashgate, 2004). 10 paula frosch, “mind thee to die: the beresford monument at fenny bentley,” journal of the church monuments society 15 (2000): 31–32. on the practice of making tombs some time after the death of the individual commemorated, see jessica barker, “stone and bone: the corpse, the effigy, and the viewer in late-medieval tomb sculpture” in revisiting the monument: fifty years since panofsky’s tomb sculpture, ed. ann adams and jessica barker (london: courtauld books online, 2016), 124–25. 11 frosch, “mind thee to die,” 31–32. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 2 7 a i m e e c a y a contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 8, no 1 (2019) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2019.280 each effigy sits on its own, independent rectangular base, one of which has chamfered edges while the other has a square edge all the way around. these variations suggest that the effigies were carved by two separate sculptors, who may or may not have been employed in the same workshop. given the decline in the english alabaster industry amid the changes brought about by the reformation in the later sixteenth century, it seems unlikely that the beresford monument was made much later than the mid-sixteenth century.12 laurence beresford (d. 1577) has been set forward as a possible patron for the beresford monument, and may have been the one responsible for completing its construction.13 although precise dating for the tomb remains impossible, the above evidence suggests that it was erected between ca. 1465 and ca. 1550, possibly as the result of multiple campaigns. despite the admitted difficulty in reconstructing a conclusive history for the beresford monument, it is still possible to hypothesize how its viewers may have interacted with it by considering the monument’s relationship to other types of tombs and late medieval macabre imagery. many other monuments, especially in the parish churches of england, survive without the benefit of thorough documentation and provenance, but to ignore them because of these lacunae prevents us from presenting a full picture of history. it is imperative, in my opinion, to include such objects in our discussions of medieval culture in order to better understand the diversity of visual strategies at play—in this case, the various means by which viewers were encouraged to engage with commemorative monuments in the late medieval period. figure 2 tomb of bishop richard fleming (d. 1431). lincoln cathedral. (photo: author) 12 anne harris, “from stone to statue: the geology and art of english alabaster panels,” forthcoming in art and devotion in medieval england, ed. stephen perkinson and jessica brantley (kalamazoo, mi: medieval institute publications); blair and ramsay, english medieval industries, 39–40; dressler, “identity, status, and material,” 70. 13 frosch, “mind thee to die,” 32. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 2 8 “ s o s h a l l y o e b e e ” contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 8, no 1 (2019) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2019.280 viewer reception and context: medieval tombs and purgatorial piety it was by no means unusual to see a macabre representation of the commemorated individual on late medieval english tombs. transi tombs, like that of bishop richard fleming at lincoln cathedral, are composed of dual effigies: on top is the idealized body of the commemorated with all the markers of the deceased person’s office, while down below is a representation of a rotting cadaver or skeletal corpse whose shroud has fallen away (figure 2).14 the effigy on the upper level can be read as a likeness of the living individual—with at least a perceived claim to physiognomic accuracy. although buckley is by no means incorrect when he dismisses the likelihood of any real concern over facial likeness in this period, markers of identity including gender, costume, and/or coats of arms were nonetheless important tools for conveying a sense of the individual.15 by contrast, the sculpted cadaver on the lower level of the transi tomb portrays the body of the commemorated individual divested of the signs of its office, reduced to decaying matter in a performance of humility. the beresford monument, however, does not present any indicators of likeness and completely hides the deceased’s bodies from the gaze of the beholder, indicating that a different commemorative and devotional strategy is at play. monumental brasses were another common mode of commemoration in late medieval england: an incised brass plaque would be set into a flat slab of stone that could be installed in a church’s pavement or walls, or into the top of a table tomb.16 one popular type of monumental brass was the shroud brass, which depicted the body in some stage of decay, only partially covered by its winding sheet. one particularly striking example of this phenomenon is the early-sixteenth-century brass of ralph hamsterley, set into the chancel floor of st andrew’s church in oddington, oxfordshire (figure 3). the hamsterley shroud brass depicts a worm-infested skeleton emerging from the folds of its shroud, with a banderole issuing from its mouth to indicate speech. such a shroud brass has far more in common with the effigies of thomas and agnes than any transi tomb, in that the deceased individual is depicted without any visual indicators of individual likeness and all identifying information is concentrated in the inscription. both the hamsterley brass and the beresford monument accomplish the broad goal that buckley describes: they represent the equalizing nature of death, which comes for everyone regardless of their station. 14 on transi tombs, see kathleen cohen, metamorphosis of a death symbol: the transi tomb in the late middle ages and the renaissance. california studies in the history of art vol. xv (berkeley: university of california press, 1973); erwin panofsky, tomb sculpture: four lectures on its changing aspects from ancient egypt to bernini, edited by h.w. janson (new york: h.n. abrams, 1964), 56–64; elina gertsman, the dance of death in the middle ages: image, text, performance (turnhout: brepols, 2010), 23 and 29–32; paul binski, medieval death: ritual and representation (london: british museum press, 2001), 140–49; barker, 115. 15 buckley, parish church, 8. see also, thomas dale, “the individual, the resurrected body, and romanesque portraiture: the tomb of rudolph von schwaben in merseburg,” speculum 77, no. 3 (july 2002): 707–43. 16 blair and ramsey, english medieval industries, 101. for more on monumental brasses, see jerome bertram, monumental brasses as art and history (stroud: alan sutton, 1996); herbert w. macklin and john page-phillips, macklin's monumental brasses (london: allen & unwin, 1978). http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 2 9 a i m e e c a y a contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 8, no 1 (2019) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2019.280 figure 3 shroud brass of ralph hamsterley, ca 1515. st andrew’s church, oddington, oxfordshire. (photo: author) http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 3 0 “ s o s h a l l y o e b e e ” contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 8, no 1 (2019) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2019.280 but where both transi tombs and shroud brasses present the corpse emerging from its winding sheet, the sculpted dead of the beresford monument remain completely concealed from the beholder’s gaze, hidden by their impenetrable alabaster shrouds.17 notably, the fabric not only denies the viewer access to the likenesses of thomas and agnes but also hides the visual evidence of decomposition so prominently displayed by transi tombs and shroud brasses.18 when the viewer encounters the effigies of thomas and agnes, at first glance they appear as they would have at the time of their burial. in the fifteenth century, manuscript illuminations accompanying the office of the dead often included scenes of anonymous shrouded bodies being interred in the churchyard, which bear a remarkable likeness to the effigies on the beresford monument.19 and yet, this illusion—that agnes and thomas are recently dead, simply awaiting burial—is inevitably shattered not only by the dates prominently featured in the tomb’s inscription, but also through repeated exposure to the monument for the local community that made use of the church. although the passage of time does not seem to have affected the bodies of thomas and agnes, who still appear robust and weighty beneath their shrouds, the viewer can never truly be sure of the condition of the bodies underneath. these are not the visibly desiccated corpses of transi tombs or shroud brasses, clearly long dead, or the recently resurrected dead so often shown climbing out of sarcophagi on church tympana or in wall paintings, like those at the church of st james at south leigh in oxfordshire. these stone effigies of thomas and agnes do not reveal the state of their bodies; indeed, their winding sheets afford them a liminality not seen in the other types of tomb monuments—the natural process of decay and the passage of time that it implies go unrepresented but are not fully disclaimed. just as the living viewers still await the second coming and the resurrection of the dead, so, too, are the bodies of thomas and agnes seemingly fixed in this intermediary state, waiting for the promised moment when they will emerge from their shrouds, their bodies transformed into their final, perfected state, their patience rewarded.20 although the fate of the body after death was of tremendous concern throughout the medieval period, beginning in the late twelfth century theologians began to formulate an intermediary stage between death and the resurrection that came to be known as purgatory, which was focused on the fate of the soul.21 purgatorial doctrine was not finalized by the catholic church until the sixteenth century, despite its prominence in religious practice for 17 one of the anonymous reviewers of this paper asked what connection, if any, was made between the shrouds from tombs like the beresford monument and the shroud of christ. unfortunately, given how ubiquitous the shroud is in images of death (both in sculpted tombs and manuscript illuminations) from this period, such an inquiry would require a great deal of thought and research that lies outside the scope of this paper. it is nonetheless a worthy question for future scholars to interrogate. 18 elina gertsman and aimee caya, “the sensory aesthetics of death,” in a cultural history of death 850-1450, ed. ashby kinch (new york: bloomsbury, forthcoming). 19 see, for example, the grandes heures de rohan fol. 182r, 15th cent, bnf latin 9471. binski, medieval death, 55. 20 there is perhaps something to be said for the significance of alabaster’s physical properties here: alabaster is a very soft stone that was known to be vulnerable to the elements. although it became popular for use in interior monuments and small-scale interior sculpture, alabaster would dissolve if placed outside and exposed to moisture. in some sense, the fabric of the church that protects the monument from physical decay may also parallel the assurance of bodily continuity that christianity offered the faithful in the form of physical resurrection at the second coming. on medieval understandings of the resurrection of the dead, see caroline walker bynum, the resurrection of the body in western christianity, 200-1336 (new york: columbia university press, 1995). 21 jacques le goff, the birth of purgatory (chicago: university of chicago press, 1984), 4. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 3 1 a i m e e c a y a contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 8, no 1 (2019) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2019.280 several centuries prior.22 generally speaking, a judgement would be made at the time of an individual’s death, at which point there were three possible outcomes: the truly good (martyrs and saints) were admitted directly to heaven; the truly bad were sent immediately to hell; and the overwhelming majority of souls, who were guilty of venial sins, were sent to purgatory, where they could undergo penitential trials that would eventually allow them to enter heaven.23 a soul’s sentence in purgatory could be lessened through the intercession of the living, who could offer prayers (called suffrages) on behalf of the dead.24 although purgatorial doctrine extended the timeline of redemption for the soul, it was not possible to engage in selfimprovement after one’s death; as such the living were responsible for caring for the dead over an extended period of time, becoming stewards for their souls and their bodies.25 the infrastructure of purgatorial piety, and suffrages in particular, created a quid pro quo system in which the living and the dead relied upon one another in order to achieve salvation.26 one practice that developed in response to this societal need was masses for the dead.27 it became possible to annex a space in the church for the celebration of such memorial masses, and to endow those spaces with specialized clergy whose duty it was to perform them regularly.28 church records show that james beresford, one of thomas and agnes’s sons, endowed such a chantry at the church of st edmund in fenny bentley in 1512.29 by caring for the dead through memorial masses and the offering of suffrages, the living in turn amassed what paul binski refers to as a “credit system” that would shorten their own stay in purgatory when the time came.30 as such, the goal of many tomb monuments in the later middle ages was to elicit prayers from the living on behalf of the dead, to the benefit of both groups.31 some tomb inscriptions are blatant in their demands, requesting prayers for the dead person’s soul and (in some cases) promising a specific indulgence in return for said prayers. for example, the memorial brass to joan cobham in the chancel of st mary magdalene at cobham in kent, dated to ca. 1300, includes an inscription that reads: “dame joan de cobham lies here, god have mercy on her soul, whosoever for her soul prays, pardon will have of forty days.”32 the beresford monument is not quite so transparent in its demands on the living. not once in the inscription on the tomb are the living asked to pray for the souls of thomas and 22 ibid., 41. 23 ibid., 4. 24 ibid., 134; binski, medieval death, 27; 25 binski, medieval death, 25–28; ashby kinch, imago mortis: mediating images of death in late medieval culture (boston: brill, 2013), 143–44. 26 le goff, birth of purgatory, 12 and 46. 27 philippe ariès, western attitudes toward death: from the middle ages to the present (baltimore, md: johns hopkins university press, 1983), 49. 28 binski, medieval death, 27. 29 frosch, “mind thee to die,” 34. 30 binski, medieval death, 25. 31 dressler, of armor and men, 63–64; kinch, imago mortis, 145–81. 32 “dame ione de kobeham gist isi, deus de sa alme eit merci, kike pur le alme priera, quaraunte iours de pardoun avera.” binski, medieval death, 113. for more on the cobham brasses, see nigel saul, death, art, and memory in medieval england: the cobham family and their monuments, 1300-1500 (new york: oxford university press, 2001). http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 3 2 “ s o s h a l l y o e b e e ” contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 8, no 1 (2019) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2019.280 agnes, and they are promised no specific remittance of their own future purgatorial sentence. instead the viewer is forcefully reminded of his or her own impending mortality, first in the vernacular—“as you now are so once were we, and as we are so shall you be”— and then again in a latin inscription, which translates as: “clay, bubble, smoke, dust, shades, we are. we fly, from life even while we speak: puff! go we must! man, if thou art wise, learn this 'mind thee to die.’”33 the inscription as a whole not only preserves the memory of thomas beresford and agnes hassall, but also reminds the viewers that they are the soon-to-be-dead and should thus prepare for their own fates, which will undoubtedly be similar to those individuals represented on the tomb. furthermore, by including these warnings in both the vernacular and in latin, the tomb was guaranteed to reach a fairly broad segment of society, unlike the learned latin inscriptions on ecclesiastic transi monuments such as those of bishop fleming at lincoln cathedral and cardinal la grange at the church of st martial in avignon.34 medieval macabre imagery and the process of identification the warnings and admonitions in the beresford monument’s inscription would have been familiar from other tropes in late medieval macabre culture, particularly the dance of death and the encounter between the three living and the three dead.35 the dance of death is a procession in which personifications of death alternate with living figures, who are arranged according to a social hierarchy, and depicts the moment in which death comes for each of them (figure 4). many versions, like the famous murals at the cemetery of the holy innocents in paris, include verses that present a dialogue between death and his victims, in which the living are forced to recognize the inevitability of their own demise, regardless of their circumstances in life.36 for example, in an english version of the dance of death, written by john lydgate in the fifteenth century, the verba auctoris says: “for dethe ne spareth / hye ne lowe degre […] deth spareth not / pore ne blode royal.”37 this warning, that death comes for 33 the language of the inscription on the beresford monument is relatively formulaic and has much in common with inscriptions on transi tombs. for example, the translated inscription from the transi tomb of cardinal la grange at avignon reads: “we have been made a spectacle for the world so that the older and the younger may look clearly upon us, in order that they might see to what state they will be reduced. no-one is excluded regardless of estate, sex, or age; therefore, miserable one, why are you proud? you are only ash, and you will revert, as we have done, to a fetid cadaver, food and tidbits for worms and ashes.” the transi tomb of archbishop chichele at canterbury (d. 1443) has an inscription that reads, when translated: “whoever you may be who will pass by, i ask for your remembrance, you who will be like me after you die: horrible in all things, dust, worms, vile flesh.” both inscriptions reproduced in binski, medieval death, 143. 34 binski, medieval death, 145. see also anne mcgee morganstern, “the la grange tomb and choir: a monument of the great schism of the west,” speculum 48, no. 1 (1973): 52–69; gertsman, dance of death. 35 although it does not survive, the wall painting of the dance of death from the cloister of old st. paul’s in london seems to have been the most famous in medieval england. there are surviving wall paintings of the dance of death at the guild chapel in stratford-on-avon and eton college chapel. there is a painted rood screen at hexham in northumberland with death and a young man, and wall paintings of the same subject at newark-on-trent in nottinghamshire and the hungerford chapel in salisbury cathedral (the salisbury example is now lost). elina gertsman, dance of death, 9; clifford davidson, the guild chapel wall paintings at stratford-upon-avon (new york: ams press, 1988), 19–20; howe et al., wall paintings of eton (london: scala, 2012), 55; roger rosewell, medieval wall paintings in english and welsh churches (woodbridge: boydell, 2008), 83–84. 36 the murals from the cemetery of the holy innocents were destroyed in the seventeenth century but were preserved in a series of woodcuts published by guyot marchant in the fifteenth century. gertsman, dance of death, 7–8. 37 original text from the dance of death of john lydgate, huntington library, ms. ellesmere 26/a.13, fols. 1r-12v, reproduced in gertsman, dance of death, 202. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 3 3 a i m e e c a y a contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 8, no 1 (2019) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2019.280 all, is then repeated by death and the various living figures, who are invariably forced to concede that they are powerless to escape their fate. the encounter between the three living and the three dead was also both a literary and visual phenomenon, in which three noblemen, decked out in their finery and out hunting or hawking, come across three cadavers (figure 5). a dialogue between the two groups ensues, in which the dead admonish the living and encourage them to improve their ways before they, too, become nothing more than fetid corpses. the text of the encounter between the three living and the three dead sometimes identifies the dead as the ancestors of the living— especially in english examples—and often includes a refrain similar to the couplet on the beresford monument: “as you are now, so once were we, as we are so shall you be.”38 38 gertsman, dance of death, 23–26; kinch, imago mortis, 70 and 123. see also, vifs nous sommes, morts nous serons: la rencontre des trois morts et des trois vifs dans la peinture murale en france (vendôme: cherche-lune, 2001). figure 4 hans holbein (german, 1497/98-1543), dance of death: the old man. woodcut. the cleveland museum of art, 1929.165, gift of the print club of cleveland. figure 5 “the three living and the three dead,” the de lisle psalter, ca. 1308-40. parchment. london, the british library, arundel ms 83 ii, f.127r. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 3 4 “ s o s h a l l y o e b e e ” contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 8, no 1 (2019) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2019.280 in both the dance of death and the encounter between the three living and the three dead, the viewer is meant to identify with one or more figures in the scene at hand. a viewer finds his or her double in the dance of death because they share the same outward markers of personhood, for example gender and occupation (figure 4).39 in the encounter between the three living and the three dead, the beholder identifies with the living noblemen in the narrative, who in turn identify with (and converse with) their own cadaverous doubles, who have been stripped of all signifiers of class (figure 5).40 ultimately, late medieval viewers would have been trained to approach macabre images like these with the understanding that they ought to empathize with a figure within a composition and map the moralizing message onto their own bodies. the choice to represent thomas beresford and agnes hassall fully enshrouded facilitated such a process of identification by removing any visible markers of individual and corporate identity. the shrouded bodies have no recognizable gender or occupation and no physical features that might impede their audience’s ability to empathize with them. in this way, they act much like the three dead, as bodies stripped of their worldly attributes who present themselves to the living in order to issue a warning: prepare for death and have compassion for the dead. although the detailed inscription on the beresford monument identifies thomas beresford and agnes hassall as individuals, the effigies—the most prominent part of the monument—lack any markers of individuality, allowing them to act as generic allegories just as easily as they can act as commemorative images of specific people. beyond the macabre, another type of medieval image encourages the beholder to connect a generic-looking body to a specific person: the ex voto. wax ex votos were frequently used to commemorate the miraculous intercession of a saint on behalf of the faithful by creating a simulacrum of a healed body part, as shown in a series of panels from the st william window at york minster that depict the miraculous healing of a man’s leg and his subsequent offer of a wax simulacrum of that leg to the saint’s shrine (figure 6). suspended from a rod directly above the devotee are other ex votos, in the form of a lady’s head, a leg, a hand, and a heart. wax ex votos were typically left at saints’ shrines in medieval churches, which were often located at the eastern end near the main altar—also the most desirable location for elite stone tombs like the beresford monument. it is therefore possible that alabaster effigies and wax ex votos came into visual dialogue with some regularity within their original contexts. both tomb effigies and wax ex votos are portraits in the sense that they refer to specific individuals, but neither possesses the kind of mimetic individuality that modern viewers expect of a portrait.41 39 elina gertsman, “the dance of death in reval (tallinn): the preacher and his audience,” gesta 42, no. 2 (2003): 143–59. 40 susanna greer fein, “life and death, reader and page: mirrors of mortality in english manuscripts,” mosaic (winnipeg) 35, no. 1 (march 2002): 69–81. 41 christopher wood, “the votive scenario,” res: anthropology and aesthetics 59/60 (spring/autumn 2011): 223. on ex votos, see also ittai weinryb and fatima bercht, agents of faith: votive objects in time and place (new haven, ct: yale university press, 2018). http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 3 5 a i m e e c a y a contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 8, no 1 (2019) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2019.280 there is, furthermore, a material affinity between alabaster and wax—they are both ideal for simulating flesh because their milky-white color and translucency can resemble skin; and they are both soft, malleable materials. rachel dressler has even made note of the “waxy” quality of alabaster, arguing that “alabaster’s slight waxiness might convey flesh more effectively than a smoothly polished marble surface.”42 alabaster, although it is stone, is so soft when first quarried that you can carve it with a fingernail, and will in fact melt away if placed outside at the mercy of rainwater.43 likewise, wax is incredibly soft and easy to carve or mold, and melts when exposed to heat. one distinctive characteristic of ex votos may further explain and contextualize the seemingly anonymous quality of the beresford effigies: wax ex votos of hands and feet were often made from standardized molds and so looked identical to one another, but were nonetheless understood to refer to specific individuals—see, for example, the distinct similarity between the two leg votives in the image from the st william window. just as the visually anonymous effigies of thomas and agnes commemorate specific people, so too do those two identical ex votos correspond to specific devotees (and even specific events in their lives). both the votive and the effigy refer to an individual and preserve his or her memory in spite of their generic appearances; as christopher wood writes, “someone was here, the wax foot says.”44 as such, the lack of physiognomic specificity in the beresford effigies in no way prevented them from indexing particular people, and certainly allowed viewers to empathize with those figures without hindrance. all that separates the shrouded effigies of the beresford monument from their living viewers is that temporal gap between life and death; but even that, as the audience is reminded by the inscription, is merely a fleeting difference, as death will certainly 42 dressler, “identity, status, and material,” 77. 43 harris, “from stone to statue,” 7 and 12. 44 wood, “votive scenario,” 223. figure 6 a pilgrim offering an ex voto at the shrine of st william, from the st william window, ca. 1414. stained glass. york minster. cvma nvii 22b. © chapter of york: reproduced by kind permission. photo © revd. gordon plumb. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 3 6 “ s o s h a l l y o e b e e ” contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 8, no 1 (2019) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2019.280 come for them, too. the sculptors who created these effigies transformed them into loci of potentiality—rife with meaning perhaps, in part, because they defy expectations. shrouding the sculpted bodies of thomas beresford and agnes hassal highlights the ambiguity of their physical state in the time between their death and future resurrection while also encouraging viewers to consider their own fates and obligations to the dead in that interim period. the beresford monument, moreover, encourages its beholders to think about identity and the anonymizing power of death in a more ambiguous and troubled way than more traditional transi tombs or shroud brasses. the peculiarity of the monument encourages viewers to look closely, to think about what they see, and to contextualize the sculpture within their broader experience. in doing so, the tomb ensures that thomas and agnes continue to be remembered by the beholders who read the inscription that forces them into kinship with the dead: “as you now are so once were we, and as we are so shall you be.” http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 3 7 a i m e e c a y a contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 8, no 1 (2019) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2019.280 appendix inscription from the beresford monument (reproduced in frosch, “mind thee to die”) here lyes the corps of thomas berisforde esqvire the sonne of john berisforde late lorde of berisforde in the covntie of stafford esqvire and agnes his wife the daughter and heire of robert hassall in the covntie of chester esqvire who had issue xvi sonnes and five daughters. thomas departed this life the xxth day of mrch in the yeare of ovr lord god 1.4.7.3. and agnes departed this life the xvi day of mrch in the years of ovr lord god 1.4.6.7. here alsoe lyethe corps of heughe third sonne of the sayd thomas and agnes. 'as you now are soe once were wee and as wee are soe shall yoe bee. 'quern tegat hoc marmor si forte requiris amice, nobile beresford tv tibi nomen habes, lvce patrvm clarvs, proprio sed lvmine maior, de gemina merito nomina lvce capit. 'largvs, dotvs, amans, alvit, colvit, recreavit, mvsas, ivs, vinctvs, svmptibus, arte, domo, militae excellens, strenvvs dvx, fortis, et avdax, francia testatvr, cvria testis agen. 'nunc tacet in tvmvlo resolvtvs pvlvis in isto lvtvm, bvlla, fvsvs, pvlvis, et vmbra svmvs. dvm loqvimur moriamvr svbito vanescimvs omnes, si sapiens homo sis, disce memento mori.’ translation here lies the corpse of thomas beresford esquire the son of john beresford late lord of beresford in the county of stafford esquire and agnes his wife the daughter and heir of robert hassall in the county of chester esquire who had issue 16 sons and five daughters. thomas departed this life the 20th day of march in the year of our lord god 1473 and agnes departed this life the 16th day of march in the year of our lord god 1467. here also lies the corpse of hugh third son of the said thomas and agnes. as you now are so once were we and as we are so shall you be. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 3 8 “ s o s h a l l y o e b e e ” contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 8, no 1 (2019) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2019.280 'friend, if you ask me whom this marble hides, thou hast thine answer, beresford's high name. by his father's light he shines, his own besides: from this twin source he well deserves his fame. generous, learned, kind, he nursed, upheld, renewed, letters, right, captives, with purse, skill and home: mighty in war, what dash, strength, fortitude, let france, let agincourt, as witness come. now lies he in this tomb, a heap of dust. clay, bubble, smoke, dust, shades, we are. we fly from life even while we speak: puff! go we must! man, if thou art wise, learn this: mind thee to die. (middle english translation my own, translation of the latin by rev. r.k. bolton, reproduced in frosch, “mind thee to die.”) new articles in this journal are licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 united states license. this journal is operated by the university library system of the university of pittsburgh as part of its d-scribe digital publishing program, and is co-sponsored by the university of pittsburgh press. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/ http://www.pitt.edu/ http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/ http://www.upress.pitt.edu/upressindex.aspx http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ “so shall yoe bee” encountering the shrouded effigies of thomas beresford and agnes hassall at fenny bentley “so shall yoe bee:” encountering the shrouded effigies of thomas beresford and agnes hassall at fenny bentley viewer reception and context: medieval tombs and purgatorial piety medieval macabre imagery and the process of identification appendix inscription from the beresford monument translation vol 10, no 1 (2025) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2025.347 http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu historical presence and immersive technologies between repair and rewriting of visual memory francesco rizzi about the author francesco rizzi is a phd student in contemporary art history at the university of parma focusing on the relationship between art and technology. his research explores immersive experiences, the historical development of virtual reality (vr) devices and their artistic applications. he is currently a visiting researcher at the technische universität dresden. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 10, no 1 (2025) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2025.347 the notion of historical presence in visual studies has traditionally been constituted through a representational regime based on static media— textual, iconographic, photographic—designed to mediate the temporal distance between observer and event. the emergence of immersive technologies radically reconfigures this paradigm, transforming historical engagement from an act of interpretation into a mediated experience. this epistemological shift raises questions about the extent to which immersion constitutes an extension of historical presence rather than a hypermediated simulation of it.1 the emblematic case of digital reconstructions of destroyed archaeological sites, such as the 3d modeling of palmyra, exemplifies the dialectic between the repair and rewriting of memory.2 here, the notion of historical presence refers to how the past becomes experientially accessible in the present, through technologically mediated forms. repairing memory in this context does not mean restoring it to an original, unbroken state, but rather creating conditions in which historical continuity can be reestablished despite material loss. immersive reconstructions allow for the reactivation of collective memory by substituting digitally embodied experience for physical absence. the immersive rendering invites users to stand within a lost historical site, fostering a sensory proximity to the past. this spatial and perceptual immediacy does not simply restore a damaged monument; it generates a new kind of historical relationship, one shaped by technological authorship and user engagement. in this approach, conservation is no longer passive preservation but an active, generative engagement with memory—through digital means—that is capable of shaping how the past is visualized and felt. on the other hand, immersive reconstructions inevitably involve curatorial decisions, interpolations, and visual interpretations that reshape what is remembered and how. the issue of authenticity thus becomes less about truth and more about the parameters by which historical plausibility is constructed. as lev manovich notes, digital media operate according to a database logic, privileging modularity, selection, and recombination over fixed narrative structure.3 this logic further complicates the notion of authenticity by foregrounding the constructed nature of immersive environments. another significant example is carne y arena, a mixed-reality installation that immerses the viewer in the experience of crossing the united states–mexico border. unlike traditional historical reconstructions, the piece does not depict a specific event but instead composes a sensory landscape drawn from real-life testimonies of migrants.4 visitors walk barefoot on sand in a large, empty room while wearing a vr headset; through sound, temperature changes, and spatial immersion, they become part of an unfolding, fragmented narrative. the installation evokes fear, disorientation, and vulnerability, foregrounding the emotional and embodied dimensions of historical engagement. carne y arena thus exemplifies how immersive technologies displace the locus of historical presence from representation to experience. rather 1 jay david bolter and richard grusin, remediation: understanding new media (mit press, 1999), 20. 2 “experience ancient palmyra in 360° and in 3d,” pergamon museum, staatliche museen zu berlin, https://www.smb.museum/en/whats-new/detail/experience-ancient-palmyra-in-360-and-in-3d/. 3 lev manovich, the language of new media (mit press, 2001), 218. 4 alejandro g. iñárritu, carne y arena (virtually present, physically invisible), 2017, https://phi.ca/en/carne-y-arena/. historical presence and immersive technologies between repair and rewriting of visual memory francesco rizzi http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ https://www.smb.museum/en/whats-new/detail/experience-ancient-palmyra-in-360-and-in-3d/ https://phi.ca/en/carne-y-arena/ 4 8 h i s t o r i c a l p r e s e n c e a n d i m m e r s i v e t e c h n o l o g i e s contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 10, no 1 (2025) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | 10.5195/contemp/2025.347 than conveying factual accuracy, it stages a subjective, affect-driven encounter with memory, one that blurs the lines between historical witnessing and simulated proximity. it becomes evident that the debate on historical presence in the digital age must go beyond the binary of true versus false. instead, it should interrogate the new forms of historical subjectivity that immersion enables. rather than repairing or rewriting memory in any definitive sense, vr transforms it into a space of negotiation, where history, technology, and the body intersect. this intersection demands renewed critical attention to the ethics, authorship, and affective dimensions of how the past is made present. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 4 9 f r a n c e s c o r i z z i contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 10, no 1 (2025) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2025.347 new articles in this journal are licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 united states license. this journal is published by pitt open library publishing. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ https://www.library.pitt.edu/e-journals contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture vol 7, no 1 (2018) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2018.262 http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu letícia parente in pacific standard time: la/la (los angeles/latin america) paulina pardo gaviria exhibition review exhibition schedule: video art in latin america, laxart, september 7–december 17, 2017. exhibition schedule: xerografia: copyart in brazil, 1970-1990, robert and karen hoehn family galleries, university of san diego, september 15–december 16, 2017. exhibition schedule: radical women: latin american art, 1960-1985, hammer museum, university of california los angeles, september 15–december 31, 2017; brooklyn museum, april 13–july 22, 2018; pinacoteca de são paulo, august 18–november 19, 2018. about the author paulina pardo gaviria joined the history of art and architecture phd program at the university of pittsburgh in fall 2014 to specialize in art from latin america. her research examines the production of non–medium specific works (video, installation, xeroxand mail-art) as developed in the americas during the 1960s–1980s, interrogating how interdisciplinary visual strategies have redefined the art object. focusing on the development of contemporary art from brazil, her dissertation project is the first monographic approach to the work of brazilian artist letícia parente (1930–1991). http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 7, no 1 (2018) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2018.262 this review considers three separate exhibitions that were part of pacific standard time: la/la (los angeles/latin america) for how their simultaneous showcase of works by letícia parente (brazil, 1930– 1991) effectively revealed multiple layers of meaning in her work, while acting as a through line between exhibitions. on view in the fall of 2017, across more than seventy southern california institutions, pst:la/la was a large-scale getty foundation initiative of thematic exhibitions of art from latin america that allowed multiple historical perspectives on art from the region. mostly known in brazil for marca registrada (trademark, 1975)—a ten-minute black-and-white video that records the artist sewing the inscription “made in brasil” onto her own foot—parente’s oeuvre comprises videos, collages, installations, and mail and xerox artworks mainly produced between 1974 and 1982, the final years of brazil’s 1964–1985 military dictatorship.1 the inclusion of parente’s work in three concurrent pst:la/la exhibitions demonstrated its historical relevance in approaching 1970s latin american art through new media as well as the artist’s responses to the recent violent history of the region and brazil, in particular. video art in latin america, at the art space laxart in hollywood, and xerografia: copyart in brazil, 1970-1990, at the university of san diego’s university galleries, presented parente as part of medium-specific art histories, emphasizing the centrality of novel technologies in her work. video art in latin america underscored parente’s pioneering explorations of the artistic possibilities of the medium of video at a time when only few cameras were available to artists in brazil—despite sony’s launch of the first portable recording camera in 1965. meanwhile, xerografia situated parente within local networks of artists that used xerography and other industrial reproduction techniques to respond to the censorship apparatus, while reflecting on the value of the art object and the structures of the art world. in radical women: latin american art, 1960–1985, originally presented at the hammer museum in 2017 and traveling to two additional venues in 2018, parente’s videos were installed in dialogue with the works of 123 female artists working throughout the americas during a politically convulsive period that saw the rise of feminist movements and the consolidation of radical artistic practices. 1 the first presentation of letícia parente’s work in the united states was the installation of medida (measurement, 1976), which was part of data (after)lives: the persistence of encoded identity (university of pittsburgh art gallery, september 8–october 14, 2016). the online exhibition of data (after)lives: the persistence of encoded identity is currently on view at the university art gallery website (http://uag.pitt.edu). for further information on this curatorial project, see alison langmead and paulina pardo gaviria, “data (after)lives at the university of pittsburgh: a constellation exhibition in the university art gallery,” contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture 6 (2017): 36–42; https://doi.org/10.5195/contemp.2017.220. letícia parente in pacific standard time: la/la (los angeles/latin america) paulina pardo gaviria http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ http://uag.pitt.edu)/ https://doi.org/10.5195/contemp.2017.220 https://doi.org/10.5195/contemp.2017.220 https://doi.org/10.5195/contemp.2017.220 1 3 0 l e t í c i a p a r e n t e i n p a c i f i c s t a n d a r d t i m e : contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 7, no 1 (2018) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2018.262 figure 1 letícia parente, marca registrada (trademark), 1975, video. image courtesy of the artist’s estate and galeria jaqueline martins. shown at video art from latin america among sixty other videos from 1973 to 2015, parente’s marca registrada—her only work in this show—represented the central role of video for expressing social and political discontent as well as artists’ general engagement with their local contexts, two themes reflected throughout the exhibition (figure 1). an atrium and main gallery, the latter showcasing two video installations (josé alejandro restrepo’s musa paradisiaca, 1996, and gisela motta, leandro lima, and claudia andujar’s yano-a, 2005), led to three separate rooms containing a total of six thematically organized programs, each presented as a continuous sequence. while parente’s work was featured in the program titled “defiant bodies,” and was thus shown in dialogue with works where performance takes a central role, marca registrada could easily have been part of any of the other programs— “economies of labor,” “the organic line,” “borders and migrations,” “states of crisis,” and “memory and forgetting”—demonstrating the transcendence of parente’s work and underscoring the fluidity of ideas and interwoven narratives of the exhibition’s programs. marca registrada was followed by a situação (the situation, geraldo anhaia mello, 1978) and paired with the 1974 series of untitled works by sonia andrade that played on a separate tv in a well-deserved homage to this artist. showing parente’s work side-by-side with mello’s and andrade’s within a diachronic selection of videos (the most recent of this program being mariana en el cici, mariana jurado rico, 2014) was an instructive gesture as it situated parente among her closest peers in brazil, while reflecting the exponential growth of the use of video in the region. this arrangement allowed spectators to visualize parente’s horizon of references as well as some of the themes that have remained constant across several decades, such as the display of female bodies in public and private realms. a sony portapak camera (and its accompanying open reel), similar to the one parente used, was displayed near the entrance of the gallery. this was a rare treat for visitors interested in the technology of this art form and served as an excellent reminder of the analogue nature of the equipment used by artists of parente’s generation up to the mid-1980s. the video camera was successfully paired with videodanza “xochimilco” (1979), by the mexican pola weiss, one of the earliest videos that records the use of a portable video camera as weiss dances with it on the street. extending the didactics of this display, a separate room http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 1 3 1 p a u l i n a p a r d o g a v i r i a contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 7, no 1 (2018) | issn 2153-5194 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2018.262 at the back of the gallery served as a specialized library on video art from latin america. built over the course of the exhibition research, and containing, for example, the most complete catalog of parente’s work to date, the library responded to the lack of regional studies on the subject and reflected this exhibition’s important contribution to the history of video art from latin america and thus to contemporary art history. the reading material was an excellent complement to the printed booklet that, structuring the six themes and labeling the entirety of works, was handed to visitors as an exhibition navigation tool. however, this library required additional time and energy from visitors engaged in an already-time-consuming exhibition, considering the temporal nature of video art. figure 2 xerografia: copyart in brazil, 1970-1990, installation view, robert and karen hoehn family galleries, university of san diego. left: letícia parente, mulheres (women), 1975; center top and bottom: anna bella geiger, diário de um artista brasileiro (diary of a brazilian artist), 1975, and história do brasil: little boys and girls (history of brazil: little boys and girls), 1975; right: parente, do not touch and mulheres, 1975. photo: university of san diego. similarly devoted to an artistic media closely linked to technological developments, xerografia: copyart in brazil, 1970–1990 focused on the two critical decades that marked both the strongest years of dictatorial repression and the return to democracy in brazil (figures 2– 6). profusely researched, as reinforced by the catalog, the works in xerografia were displayed chronologically in two gallery rooms, which demonstrated how xerox art in brazil evolved from the exclusive use of paper into different reproduction processes and media such as fax transmission and performance. situating parente’s work outside of video art (her generally recognized niche), xerografia revealed the rich networks that parente partook in as part of the vibrant brazilian art scene of the time. works from parente’s series mulheres (women, 1976) stood out alongside works by regina silveira, hudinilson jr., anna bella geiger, and paulo brusky, among a total of twenty-one artists based in são paulo, rio de janeiro, and recife who experimented with xerox. an untitled work from mulheres—in which parente intervened a xeroxed, close-up portrait of a woman with safety pins that vertically crossed her open eyes and horizontally traversed her mouth—hung on the back wall of the first room, capturing the visitor’s attention as one of the few works prominently visible from the entrance of the exhibition. meanwhile, a non-traditional self-portrait of parente pressed against the glass of a http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 1 3 2 l e t í c i a p a r e n t e i n p a c i f i c s t a n d a r d t i m e : contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 7, no 1 (2018) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2018.262 xerox machine and labeled “no touch” synthesized the representations of artists’ bodies that xerografia effectively presented as a constant thread in brazilian xerox art. figure 3-5 letícia parente, mulheres (women), 1976, xerographs and mixed media on paper, dimensions variable. image courtesy of the artist’s estate and galeria jaqueline martins. figure 6 letícia parente, don’t touch me, n.d., xerograph and collage on paper, 21.5 x 34 cm. image courtesy of the artist’s estate and galeria jaqueline martins. focusing extensively on the use of the female body for artistic expression, radical women: latin american art, 1960–1985 brought together artists such as lygia pape (brazil), mónica meyer (mexico), and victoria santa cruz (peru), among many others, who photographed, manipulated, and displayed their female bodies to express their vulnerability within patriarchal societies. the exhibition featured five sections—“mapping the body,” “social places,” “the power of words,” “feminisms,” and “resistance and fear”—and included parente’s videos preparação i, marca registrada (both from 1975), and tarefa i (1982). the contribution of parente’s three videos, presented in separate gallery rooms, was to critique—humorously and, in the case of marca registrada, painfully—the condition of women as individuals expected to be fully skilled in domestic tasks such as sewing and ironing, naturally carry an attractive appearance, and be readily available for assisting a third party, whether an individual or an institution. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 1 3 3 p a u l i n a p a r d o g a v i r i a contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 7, no 1 (2018) | issn 2153-5194 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2018.262 figure 7 radical women: latin american art, 1965-1980, installation view, hammer museum, university of california los angeles. left: letícia parente, preparação i (preparation i), 1975; right: rosa navarro, nacer y morir de una rosa (birth and death of rose), 1982. photo: paulina pardo gaviria. seeing parente’s works among those of her peers, most of whom parente did not know, made clear that she was far from a lone wolf in an international revolution fought, in her and others’ cases, through the language of conceptual art. her inclusion in the landmark radical women also underscored parente’s signature embodied artistic strategy—presenting her pinched, taped, and ironed skin as her field of resistance—and the enduring relevance of her radical work. the impressively vast exhibition, enriched by its curatorial dialogue with previous landmark exhibitions inside the visible: an elliptical traverse of 20th century art in, of, and from the feminine (1996) and wack! art and the feminist revolution (2007), further benefited from its similarly extensive catalog (organized by country rather than theme) as well as from discrete, concurrent exhibitions of smaller size. in approaching the work of letícia parente and other artists with comparable careers, pst: la/la presented an ideal occasion to examine the work of a single artist through multiple curatorial frames. through its inclusion in two focused exhibitions of largely unmapped histories and in the landmark radical women, parente’s work demonstrates how representations of violence can be profoundly aesthetic and moving when delivered from intimate spaces (a bare room, a bathroom, a domestic laundry area) and through the very skin of a middle-aged female citizen. through this lens, a xerox and a short video can prove crucial in interpreting the contemporary history of art from latin america. new articles in this journal are licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 united states license. this journal is operated by the university library system of the university of pittsburgh as part of its d-scribe digital publishing program, and is co-sponsored by the university of pittsburgh press. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/ http://www.pitt.edu/ http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/ http://www.upress.pitt.edu/upressindex.aspx http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ letícia parente in pacific standard time: la/la (los angeles/latin america) letícia parente in pacific standard time: la/la (los angeles/latin america) contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture vol 7, no 1 (2018) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2018.243 http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu ojo latino a photovoice project in recognition of the latino presence in pittsburgh, pa héctor camilo ruiz sánchez, paulina pardo gaviria, rosa de ferrari, kirk savage, and patricia documet abstract in recent years, the latino population has increased rapidly in areas of the united states with traditionally low concentrations of latinos. latinos often live scattered within these emerging communities, forced to navigate social isolation and social services not tailored to serve their cultural and linguistic needs. latinos’ invisibility in pittsburgh, pa, manifests in the absence of records of the latino presence in the city’s museums and public archives. ojo latino, a community-engaged project, sought to advance the inclusion of the latino community in pittsburgh through photovoice. this participatory expression methodology enables individuals to share their stories with the larger public through self-made photographs and narratives. the intentional organization of the project as a group activity facilitated the transfer of power over the project to participants, creating solidarity and cultivating trust. during four meetings, participants took part in a short photography training, discussed their photographs addressing the meaning of being latino in pittsburgh, and selected thirty-four photographs for exhibition, organizing them in four themes: work, customs, family, and landscape. ojo latino held one exhibit in a community venue and another at the university of pittsburgh. in addition, the photographs are available in an electronic public repository. ojo latino served a dual purpose of expanding the visibility of latinos and educating the larger non-latino community in pittsburgh. the ojo latino team got closer to the ways latino immigrants see and experience the city. their gaze challenged our own views and experiences and also spoke to the salience of nostalgia and social networks in their lives. the open discussion of what it means to be latino in an emerging community in the united states, the opportunity to produce a visual account of it, and the public acknowledgement of the presence of this diverse population promote ethnic identity and solidarity, which have the potential to foster social and mental health and carry an important political message within a strong anti-immigrant climate. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 5 4 o j o l a t i n o contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 7, no 1 (2018) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2018.243 about the authors héctor camilo ruiz sánchez is a phd candidate in the anthropology and public health joint degree program at the university of pittsburgh. his work integrates aspects of the arts and the social sciences into applied knowledge. his research deals with the effects of the privatization of the health care system in colombia; gender, health, hiv/aids, and sexuality; the latino immigration in pittsburgh; and, more recently, the heroin epidemic in colombia. paulina pardo gaviria joined the history of art and architecture phd program at the university of pittsburgh in fall 2014 to specialize in art from latin america. her research examines the production of non-medium-specific works (video, installation, xeroxand mail-art) as developed in the americas during the 1960s–1980s, interrogating how interdisciplinary visual strategies have redefined the art object. focusing on the development of contemporary art from brazil, her dissertation project is the first monographic approach to the work of brazilian artist letícia parente (1930–1991). rosa de ferrari is a dual degree student at the university of pittsburgh pursuing her master’s degree in international development and master’s degree in public health. she is the editing coordinator of panoramas, a web-based venue for thoughtful dialogue on latin american and caribbean issues. she has spent significant time in latin america working and conducting research. her research is primarily focus on gender-based violence and maternal health in central america. kirk savage is the dietrich professor of history of art and architecture at the university of pittsburgh. he is the editor of the civil war in art and memory (2016), and the author of two books: standing soldiers, kneeling slaves: race, war and monument in nineteenth-century america (2nd ed. 2018), and monument wars: washington d.c., the national mall and the transformation of the memorial landscape (2009). patricia documet is associate professor of behavioral and community health sciences and scientific director of the center for health equity at the university of pittsburgh. she has been conducting community-engaged research and practice with latinos in the pittsburgh area for twenty years. her published work focuses on community health workers in emerging latino communities. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 7, no 1 (2018) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2018.243 introduction in recent years, the latino population in the united states has been rapidly increasing in areas with traditionally low concentrations of latinos. in these emerging communities, latinos often live dispersed throughout the territory, scattered and confronting social isolation. further, the existing social services are not tailored to serve their cultural and linguistic needs.1 in this situation of invisibility and lack of resources, social recognition can seem an important yet unattainable goal.2 ojo latino, a community-engaged project, sought to advance the inclusion of the latino community in pittsburgh through a photovoice project, a methodology that enables individuals to share their stories with the larger public by promoting group discussions based on selected photographs.3 this pittsburgh-based project aimed at promoting latinos’ ethnic identity and recognition in a place where latinos have otherwise remained invisible by providing an avenue for their cultural and artistic expression. the term “latino” has different definitions. in this article, we consider latinos those individuals who identify themselves as latinos, following u.s. census bureau parameters, which define latinos as “those who classify themselves in one of the specific hispanic or latino categories listed on the decennial census questionnaire and various census bureau survey questionnaires – ‘mexican, mexican am., chicano’ or ‘puerto rican’ or ‘cuban’ – as well as those who indicate that they have ‘another hispanic, latino, or spanish origin.”4 we consider self-identification crucial, as nobody can decide what an individual’s identity is better than that individual.5 latinos who report more discrimination, and those who perceive themselves as similar to other latinos, exhibit stronger ethnic identification; however, the way ethnic identity develops is complex and not completely understood.6 what is clear is that stronger ethnic identification protects against stressors and promotes better self-rated mental health.7 latinos, the largest minority group in the united states, accounted for 17.6% of the total population (56.6 million) in 2015. they began moving to pittsburgh in the early twentieth 1 samantha artiga et al., “health coverage and access to care for hispanics in ‘new growth communities’ and ‘major hispanic centers,’” kaiser commission on medicaid and the uninsured, september 1, 2006, 6, https://www.issuelab.org/resource/health-coverage-and-access-to-care-for-hispanics-in-new-growthcommunities-and-major-hispanic-centers.html 2 patricia i. documet et al., “participatory assessment of the health of latino immigrant men in a community with a growing latino population,” journal of immigrant and minority health 17, no. 1 (2013): 240. 3 caroline wang and mary ann burris, “photovoice: concept, methodology, and use for participatory needs assessment,” health education & behavior 24, no. 3 (1997): 379–80. 4 atiya kai stokes‐brown, “america’s shifting color line? reexamining determinants of latino racial self‐ identification,” social science quarterly 93, no. 2 (2012): 316–17. 5 ibid, 317. 6 ibid., 322. 7 adriana espinosa et al., “ethnic identity and perceived stress among ethnically diverse immigrants,” journal of immigrant and minority health 20, no. 1 (2018): 160. ojo latino a photovoice project in recognition of the latino presence in pittsburgh, pa héctor camilo ruiz sánchez, paulina pardo gaviria, rosa de ferrari, kirk savage, and patricia documet http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 5 6 o j o l a t i n o contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 7, no 1 (2018) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2018.243 century, but since the economic recovery of the 2000s, the region has seen rapid growth in its latino population.8 significantly, the number of latinos in allegheny county, where pittsburgh is located, increased by 71% between the last two censuses; and, in 2015, it was estimated that 24,616 latinos lived in the area, accounting for 2% of allegheny county’s population.9 in this context, latino immigrants have settled in a scattered way because of the lack of historically consolidated latino neighborhoods, and also because they tend to live close to their workplaces or close to transportation opportunities, bringing about social isolation. latinos are employed mainly in construction, kitchens, and various other service industries. social services have not kept pace with the relatively large increase in the population, resulting in an environment without adequate supports and opportunities.10 latinos’ presence is rarely acknowledged, a reality made evident by the marked absence of records of the latino population in the city’s museums and public archives. ojo latino was born out of “race-ing the museum pittsburgh,” a workshop directed by professors kirk savage and shirin fozi from the department of history of art and architecture at the university of pittsburgh. in this workshop, a group of graduate students and faculty visited different pittsburgh museums, libraries, and archives, aiming to look critically at how race has been publicly displayed and stored throughout the city. the absence of latinos in these public settings was noticeable and became the impetus for the ojo latino project. ojo latino’s goal was to fill this gap by highlighting aspects of the daily life of latinos living in pittsburgh. a photovoice project based on photographs taken by latino participants was ideally suited to this goal. in recent decades, photovoice, a method based on principles of emancipation and critical assessment of life developed by paulo freire, a brazilian educator, has gained popularity and has been extensively used in public health and other areas to give voice to those who are typically voiceless.11 freire’s pedagogy of the oppressed is based on the principle that establishing dialogues with communities is key to recognizing existing inequalities, and that elucidating and validating the knowledge that communities have are exceptional ways to imagine and create better life conditions.12 thus, photovoice projects are useful for producing collective meaning among marginalized groups, a goal enhanced by privileging group discussions over individual conversations with each participant or photographer.13 photovoice has served to document experiences of “invisible” communities and to address topics hard to 8 patricia i. documet, “latino’s health care access in southwestern pennsylvania,” university of pittsburgh, 2001, 109–10; http://www.healthequity.pitt.edu/sites/default/files/ documet%20dissertation%202001.pdf 9 united states census bureau, “community facts. allegheny county, pennsylvania,” accessed june 25, 2018; https://factfinder.census.gov/faces/nav/jsf/pages/community_facts.xhtml?src=bkmk. 10 documet et al., “participatory assessmen," 240. 11 robin a. evans-agnew, doris m. boutain, and marie-anne s. rosemberg, “advancing nursing research in the visual era: reenvisioning the photovoice process across phenomenological, grounded theory, and critical theory methodologies,” advances in nursing science 40, no. 1 (2017): e1–2. 12 paulo freire, pedagogy of the oppressed, power (london-new york: continuum, 2005), 54. 13 robin a. evans-agnew, doris m.boutain, and marie-anne s. rosemberg, “advancing nursing research in the visual era: reenvisioning the photovoice process across phenomenological, grounded theory, and critical theory methodologies,” advances in nursing science 40, no. 1 (2017): e6. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ http://www.healthequity.pitt.edu/sites/default/files/ 5 7 o j o l a t i n o contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 7, no 1 (2018) | issn 2153-5194 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2018.243 explain just in words,14 such as the impact of natural disasters,15 minority health inequalities,16 addiction recovery,17 difficulties of parenting within minority communities,18 or access to education for undocumented youth.19 the photographs and the narratives that accompany the images shared by community members, usually in-group sessions, seek to achieve collective responses to the problems posed, and it is in those discussions where the most valuable results of the methodology emerge.20 with this premise, ojo latino relied on group discussions at all stages of the project, while sharing meals and building social bonds essential for minority group communities and intrinsic to latino culture and essential for minority group communities. the literature likewise recommends organizing community exhibitions or other public effort to enhance visibility,21 one of the most desirable outcomes for ojo latino, whose participants are members of an invisible community that holds little power—an especially urgent concern in today’s antiimmigrant environment. while there is no presence of latinos in public archives and museums, the team decided that it was most important to focus on latinos with the least access to financial and social resources: new immigrants, those with limited english proficiency, and those who had not established professional careers. ojo latino is part of a wave of other photovoice projects that have been developed in emerging latino communities all over the united states to tackle issues such as the challenges of accessing higher education among undocumented latino youths in north carolina, where young undocumented latinos photographed and discussed the limbo that deferred action for childhood arrivals daca imposes on their daily lives and their future projects.22 in a photovoice conducted in portland, oregon, latina mothers show how a part of the city where latinos have been settling in the last decades is left behind by the city’s progressive reforms and development, negatively affecting the community’s neighborhoods and the health of its inhabitants.23 ojo latino did not pretend to exhibit professional photographic results, illustrating life in a particular region—as could be the case in the work of contemporary photographers such as graciela itúrbide, whose series juchitán (1989), for example, offers insightful views of a specific community in her native mexico. in ojo latino, on the contrary, all the photographs were taken by participants, none of whom had formal training in photography. in fact, some participants initially lacked confidence in taking photographs, but while going through the process discovered they had a good photographic eye. ojo latino used a research method, photovoice, yet it was not conceived as a research project but rather as an opportunity to promote latinos’ visibility and ethnic identity. 14 amanda o. latz, photovoice research in education and beyond: a practical guide from theory to exhibition (london: routledge, 2017), 20. 15 lucy annang et al., “photovoice: assessing the long-term impact of a disaster on a communitys quality of life,” qualitative health research 26, no. 2 (2016): 241. 16 angie pamela mejia et al., “from madres to mujeristas: latinas making change with photovoice,” action research 11, no. 4 (2013): 301. 17 gretchen miller, “addiction recovery through photovoice: qualitative study,” journal of addictive beahviors and therapy 1, no. 2:7 (2017): 1. 18 uriyoán colón-ramos et al., “how latina mothers navigate a ‘food swamp’ to feed their children: a photovoice approach,” public health nutrition 20, no. 11 (2017): 1941. 19 kashika mohan sahay et al., “‘it’s like we are legally, illegal’: latino/a youth emphasize barriers to higher education using photovoice,” the high school journal 100, no. 1 (2016): 45. 20 wang and burris, “photovoice," 379–80. 21 latz, photovoice, 127–33. 22 sahay et al., “‘it’s like we are legally, illegal,’" 48. 23 mejia et al., “from madres to mujeristas,” 315–16. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 5 8 o j o l a t i n o contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 7, no 1 (2018) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2018.243 the ojo latino methodology in spanish, ojo means eye but it is also an informal expression to call attention to something or advise caution, invoking the power of human vision. with the name ojo latino, our intention was to say “look here!” or “pay attention!” taking advantage of ojo’s spelling, visually looking like a face, easy to recognize and retain for both spanishand english-speaking populations. ojo latino started as a student initiative from the project director (héctor camilo ruiz sánchez) and involved other students (paulina pardo gaviria and rosa deferrari) and faculty (patricia documet, kirk savage, kathleen musante, sharon ross, caitlin bruce, and scott morgenstern) across different schools of the university of pittsburgh. the contributing students and faculty were in the fields of public health, anthropology, art history, communication, political science, and education. this interdisciplinary group included one latina who had over two decades of expertise with research and volunteer work with the latino community in pittsburgh (documet), and a graduate student with five years of community work with the same community (ruiz). it also included a fluent spanish-english bilingual graduate student with a background in public health (deferrari), and a professor (savage) and a latina graduate student (pardo) with backgrounds in art and activism. to carry on the project and conduct the work with as much community input as possible, this multidisciplinary group obtained internal funding from the university of pittsburgh’s year of diversity initiative. the project team used its extensive community connections to recruit participants. during a two-month period, the team distributed flyers, disseminated information through web pages and radio stations, and extended face-to-face invitations in churches, community centers, and latino markets. the final group of participants included six men and six women who had immigrated to pittsburgh from colombia, honduras, mexico, nicaragua, puerto rico, and venezuela between 1999 and 2016, and whose ages ranged between eighteen and fifty years old. their names given by permission were: blanca rodriguez, carolina genet, eriannys ferrer, gloria herrrera, iván perez, javier alemán, karen chavarro, mario garcía, omar millán, roberto boyzo, roberto hernández, and teresa garcía. only two participants were fully bilingual in spanish and english, while the majority spoke better spanish than english or solely spanish. they worked in restaurants, construction, and kindergartens; some were homemakers, and some were unemployed at the time of their participation. the project team and the participants met four times between december 2016 and february 2017 at the university of pittsburgh graduate school of public health to take advantage of printing and projection facilities as well as the physical space where the project team and all participants could convene. meetings were held on sundays, as preferred by participants, because most of them had work schedules that kept them busy on saturdays and weekdays. two women participants stopped attending due to religious and work duties. one woman, who did not take pictures but actively took part in the group discussions as she attended the meetings as the partner of another participant, was included in the final project as a participant. each meeting lasted approximately four hours and offered refreshments, often typical latin american snacks (e.g., arepas and tamales) prepared by the participants or their families and reimbursed by the project. communication between the team and the participants was established by group text messages. this channel of instant communication enabled us to share answers and suggestions on technical issues that emerged during the photographic process and to coordinate all of the project events. the resulting meeting discussions were audiotaped, transcribed, and coded with the data analysis software nvivo 10, and a selection of photographs was publicly exhibited in two different venues in pittsburgh and uploaded to a webpage. at the first meeting, participants and team members introduced each other, and participants received digital cameras and a short course in photography. this brief instruction intended to give the community-photographers technical tools to visually capture their experiences as latinos in pittsburgh as well as to produce interesting images of aesthetic impact. it included guidelines on focus, angles, and visual symbols, stressing the importance on training the gaze on the quotidian rather than the staged subject. participants quickly http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 5 9 o j o l a t i n o contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 7, no 1 (2018) | issn 2153-5194 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2018.243 engaged and requested that the tutorial be printed out for further reference. the course did not seek to restrict or guide the topics of the photographs; the only instruction was to document “what is it like to be latino in pittsburgh?” (“¿cómo es ser latino en pittsburgh?”). during the first meeting, we also provided ethics guidelines regarding representing other people in photographs. photographs including body parts (e.g., a hand or feet) or people from the back were preferred to portraits. participants received release forms to be signed by those identifiable in the photographs, in case those images were taken and shared with others as part of ojo latino. in the three subsequent meetings, each participant shared three photographs with the rest of the group, telling us why he/she took the picture and why they wanted to share it. with the help of a big tv screen, everybody could see the same picture at the same time, thus actively contributing to the group discussion by asking the participant-photographer questions and engaging follow-up comments. each picture sparked animated discussions that brought together ideas and reactions from the entire group, enriching all of the images presented. in the first results-sharing meeting, the photographs and the overall exchange revolved around the question “what it is like to be latino in pittsburgh?” for the second session, participants chose to focus on one aspect of their lives, “latino work” (“trabajo latino”), because they considered it the most important to capture. while the specifics of the work carried on by immigrant latinos (service sector, usually removed from the public eye) was one of the original premises of the project, the centrality of work in their lives organically emerged from ojo latino participants, who collectively reinforced the pride they took in their professional commitments and underscored the relevance of work relations when resettling in a foreign culture. at the end of the last discussion session, we asked participants to identify meaningful topics to guide the curatorial process of the exhibition thus transferring curatorial decisions to photographers and underlining their active engagement with the project and with their collaborating peers. in separate sticky notes, each participant wrote three topics emerging from the group discussions. we then displayed the notes and proceeded to discuss how to group the topics and structure the photographic exhibition. four content topics emerged: work (trabajo), customs (costumbres), family (familia), and landscape (paisaje). the challenges and difficulties faced by immigrants living in pittsburgh intersected all four topics as they were found at the core of their shared experiences. participants also discussed credits and authorship issues, ultimately deciding that they wanted their full name individually associated with their photographs. while the current antiimmigrant political climate was, at the beginning, a prominent concern for the ojo latino team, as the photovoice project moved from the private to the public realm of the exhibition, participants openly signaled their interest in showing their unique experiences as human beings relocated in pittsburgh, rather than griping about political aspects of immigration situations. they confirmed the need to include pictures from all participants, giving priority, however, to those who took more pictures and attended all sessions by including more of their images in the exhibition. finally, participants and the team looked at all the pictures and took time to select the ones that best represented each of the four topics, deciding which photographs to include in the exhibition by following agreed-upon rules. the final selection of photographs comprised a corpus of thirty-four pictures. the original plan called for two exhibitions, one in a community venue and one in a university venue. a third exhibition, a virtual repository, was added to have a long-lasting documentation of ojo latino. results the account of the ojo latino experiences follows the topics the participants proposed to group the photographs. therefore, this text is organized according to the four curatorial categories of work, family, customs, and landscape. in an effort to translate the importance of these themes for the daily life of latinos in pittsburgh—and thus some of their experiences at the core of “what is like to be latino in pittsburgh?”—the photographs reproduced here are http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 6 0 o j o l a t i n o contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 7, no 1 (2018) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2018.243 visually analyzed in the following sections, and participants’ explicate their relevance often in their own words. at the end of this section, we present an account of the exhibitions. work – trabajo work is the most robust section of the ojo latino exhibition, reflecting the participants’ opinion that work dignifies their presence in the united states and is, without a doubt, their main activity. following the initial guidelines of “what it is like to be latino in pittsburgh?” participants chose “work” as the second topic they wanted to photograph. they said that work is the most important aspect of their daily lives and, illustratively, only two of the twelve participants could go to the first exhibition opening on saturday at 11am because, for the rest of them, it conflicted with their working schedules. in this context, in which work is the primary aspect of this group of latinos’ daily life, coworkers’ relations have special relevance. in order to present these social relations, omar millán photographed two of his co-workers in downtown pittsburgh, where they gather every morning to commute to work. coming from different parts of the world, omar and his coworkers speak different languages, yet they share experiences. speaking rudimentary english during the commuting time they share every day allowed omar to learn some vocabulary in swahili as a means to connect with his fellow workers on a personal level. reproduced here, one of his photographs captures omar’s co-workers’ expression when he greeted them in swahili for the first time (‘habari!’) (figure 1). figure 1 omar millán, with work colleagues at the bus station, digital photograph, pittsburgh, pa, december 5, 2016. courtesy of héctor camilo ruiz sánchez. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 6 1 o j o l a t i n o contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 7, no 1 (2018) | issn 2153-5194 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2018.243 figure 2 carolina genet, self-made stilts, digital photograph, pittsburgh, pa, december 5, 2016. courtesy of héctor camilo ruiz sánchez. another photograph, taken by carolina genet, captures the renovation process of the interior of a pittsburgh apartment done by a group of guatemalan and mexican men. for this image, carolina did not focus on her own job but went in search of other latinos at work. besides showing the creative use of stilts to paint the ceiling more quickly and comfortably, according to carolina, the image speaks of the workers’ dedicated effort to effectively perform a professional job with excellent results (figure 2). in carolina’s words, “we don’t do this type of work in latino countries and it is a job that must be perfect, because if you don’t do it perfectly you don’t get paid and the most interesting thing is how they do it, [and that they allowed] me to see the procedure of how they do it.” underscoring carolina’s statement, and according to ojo latino’s group discussions, most of the participants arrived in the united states with no background in construction work and learned all their skills on the job—an accomplishment for which they showed evident pride, as reflected in several of their photographs. carolina then clarified that the latino workers she photographed, who came from a different country than her own, learned not only how to perform the job but also how to handle different materials as well as comprehend specific vocabulary related to their work despite not speaking english. the latter situation became evident during ojo latino discussion sessions through the participants’ descriptions of photographs about latino work and their use of specialized vocabulary to refer to specific kitchen utensils and construction tasks. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 6 2 o j o l a t i n o contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 7, no 1 (2018) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2018.243 figure 3 teresa garcía, selling tacos under the harsh winter, digital photograph, pittsburgh, pa, december 5, 2016. courtesy of héctor camilo ruiz sánchez. the third photograph pertaining to the theme of work, reproduced here, was taken by teresa garcía as she focused on latinos’ hard work and their resilience in carrying it out (figure 3). in this photograph, teresa captured a scene of wind and snow with one of her coworkers, whom she described as a tenacious worker who is always taking responsibility for a street taco restaurant, regardless of the weather condition, day of the week, or time of the year. altogether, the eight photographs composing this section present different circumstances in which latinos acquire professional skills and perform their work. whether showcasing an industrial kitchen or a construction site, these photographs underscore the relative confinement required in the blue-collar jobs that working-class latino immigrants perform in pittsburgh, thus bringing forward one of the causes for their public invisibility. family – familia participants of ojo latino expressed both through their photographs and in their group sessions that family bonds are intrinsic to their lives. moreover, one of the participants attended all four meetings with his partner and two others were siblings. in the set of photographs grouped under the theme of family, the gaze is centered on the importance of family life by showing mother and child relations, regular trips to school and church in the company of family members, and intimate aspects of households (figure 4). these photographs highlight parent-children relationships and domestic activities, most of them in private spaces. however, different cultural relations reach interior spaces of domestic life, thus imprinting their immigrant experience, as exemplified in roberto boyzo’s photograph of his refrigerator which displays a calendar and drawings his daughter and son made (figure 5). roberto explained how, in his home country, the refrigerator’s door is not usually used as a clipboard, and for him this seemed to be a distinctive u.s. habit, one that he and his family have now embraced. for roberto, his children’s drawings on his fridge reflected the paradoxes of raising a latino family in pittsburgh, as this photograph presents his family’s adaptation to http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 6 3 o j o l a t i n o contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 7, no 1 (2018) | issn 2153-5194 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2018.243 local traditions, while the strong family bonds from his own culture remain a constant presence. in the five photographs of this section, family activities reinforce household support networks as a way to reiterate their latino identity. figure 4 robert boyzo, attending mass in beechview, digital photograph, december 5, 2016. courtesy of héctor camilo ruiz sánchez. figure 5 roberto boyzo, children’s drawings on the fridge, digital photograph, december 5, 2016. courtesy of héctor camilo ruiz sánchez. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 6 4 o j o l a t i n o contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 7, no 1 (2018) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2018.243 figure 6 carolina genet, mother and daughter playing lotería, digital photograph, december 5, 2016. courtesy of héctor camilo ruiz sánchez. customs – costumbres in the section customs, in which the efforts to preserve latino traditions when living in a foreign culture become apparent, religious affiliations, home food, and traditional celebrations take a prominent role. participants expressed that preserving these customs was a way to keep alive the links to their countries of origin, allowing them to better cope with difficulties arising throughout the process of immigration and adaptation to a strange culture. they also made clear, both in the discussions and in photographs such as mario garcía’s, that keeping their customs alive offers them opportunities to approach other latinos in similar circumstances and get closer to community support networks. in carolina genet’s picture of a mother playing with her daughter, carolina wanted to convey the importance of intergenerational cultural transmission of traditional customs such as board games, in this case “lotería” (lottery), along with the idioms and cultural symbols that this type of game entails (figure 6). in this photograph, she also wanted to highlight the importance of playing and sharing time with children, especially when work schedules are intense, thus becoming unique moments for parents to transmit their own culture to their children. similarly, a photograph taken by mario garcía presents religious festivities as key moments to encounter a broader latino community rarely seen in pittsburgh (figure 7). it was taken in december 2016, the day of the celebration of the lady of guadalupe, which gathers not only mexicans but latinos from all nationalities, as those identified and represented in ojo latino. while individual faces are not distinguishable, and the larger context can only be imagined, religious duties expressed by gathering in church and carrying flowers are a festive opportunity to engage in public family activities that directly relate to intrinsic latino traditions. in the ten photographs of this section, the tension between preserving autochthonous customs and adapting to new environments takes the central stage as they are expressed through food choices and newly adopted routines and appropriated spaces. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 6 5 o j o l a t i n o contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 7, no 1 (2018) | issn 2153-5194 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2018.243 figure 7 mario garcía, lady of guadalupe celebration, digital photograph, december 5, 2016. courtesy of héctor camilo ruiz sánchez landscape – paisaje as reflected in the landscape section, participants discussed the conditions of winter as an environment foreign to them all, and thus as a prominent characteristic of their immigrant condition. for some, this was their first winter, and thus its novelty was worth a photograph. others, regardless of their time in the city, still saw the seasonal changes as a distinctive aspect of their lives in pittsburgh, where cold temperatures are a harsh element to cope with and a metaphor of latinos’ limited social interactions. most of the photographs displayed in this section offer a visual account of snow accumulated on tree branches or roads; winter activities such as ice-skating in downtown pittsburgh; participants’ neighborhoods; and nondescript urban landscapes. the theme of landscape is exemplified by teresa garcía’s photograph of pittsburgh’s strip district and downtown skyline, in which teresa captured the mural of a lion’s head that she encounters daily on her way to work (figure 8). as teresa clarifies in relation to this photograph, “i had a problem, […] and i said ‘god, give me a sign,’ and few days later this appears on a wall on my way to work, and that’s why i took this picture.” for teresa, this lion represents a divine message of encouragement that appeared in moments of sorrow and despair, even though she does not understand the literal message of the mural because of her precarious english skills. another participant, roberto hernandez, photographed the parking lot of one of the pittsburgh’s goodwill stores to show the relevance of community-engaged public services (figure 9). at goodwill industries, he enrolled in weekly english classes as a way to prevent depression and improve his professional skills. by sharing this photograph, roberto underlined the importance of recurrent gathering activities as key sites of encounter that allow immigrants to counterbalance isolation. the group discussions revolved around the importance of the few family support centers, churches and institutions that help latinos in the city by opening their doors, such as casa san josé or the latino family center. through http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 6 6 o j o l a t i n o contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 7, no 1 (2018) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2018.243 ojo latino outcomes, participants reinforced how these are sites of refuge that provide a sense of community and practical and social tools for latinos of different nationalities to better adapt to life in pittsburgh. while sometimes intangible, and hence not usually directly addressed, the landscapes encountered in allegheny county with its particular urban landmarks and seasonal variations shape the life of immigrants since they represent a marked contrast to latinos’ regions of origin, whether these are rural or urban areas from the caribbean, mexico, or central and south america. figure 8 teresa garcía, art on wallstrip district pittsburgh, digital photograph, december 5, 2016. courtesy of héctor camilo ruiz sánchez. figure 9 roberto hernandez, parking lot in front of the goodwill, digital photograph, december 5, 2016. courtesy of héctor camilo ruiz sánchez. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 6 7 o j o l a t i n o contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 7, no 1 (2018) | issn 2153-5194 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2018.243 the exhibitions the team planned three exhibitions to publicly disseminate the photographs and narratives collected within ojo latino, as part of the project’s goal of bringing visibility to this community. the selection of thirty-four photographs was presented at the carnegie library of pittsburgh in beechview and at the university of pittsburgh. displayed in medium-size printings (11 x 17 in.), they are also now available in a virtual repository. to advertise the exhibitions, we enlisted the help of casa san josé, a local, well-trusted latino social service organization. information about the exhibitions in beechview and the university of pittsburgh as well as the digital location of ojo latino’s virtual repository was further distributed through postcards featuring five of the thirty-four exhibited photographs. the first of these three exhibitions opened on saturday, march 25, 2017, at the carnegie library of pittsburgh in beechview, a neighborhood with an increasing concentration of latinos, latino grocery stores, and churches with services in spanish. forty people joined the opening, which included a round table and a question-and-answer session with two of the participants sharing their perspectives on the project and their experiences as latino immigrants in pittsburgh. tamales were served for attendees, most of whom were friends, family, and colleagues of the ojo latino photographers and the university team as well as a journalist from the city’s major newspaper. a few people from the neighborhood were also in attendance. the discussion was animated and made room for emerging ideas on how to keep moving the exhibition into different formats such as having bigger prints of some of the images in public locations around the city as well as transforming some of them into graffiti art. although these initiatives are yet to come to fruition, it was exciting to see visitors and participants engaged in thinking how the project could grow. the exhibition, with curatorial texts in english and spanish, remained on view for two weeks, allowing neighbors, both latinos and non-latinos, to see the photographs in their own time and in the same context in which some of them were taken, thus making the participants’ life experiences in pittsburgh more approachable. taking place in a different context, the second exhibition opened on monday, april 10, 2017, at the commons of the graduate school of public health building at the university of pittsburgh, where ojo latino was available for an academic population largely composed of domestic and international students and scholars. approximately fifty people attended the opening, most of them affiliated with the university of pittsburgh. as in the previous opening, three community photographers participated in the round table as main speakers. they shared some of their experiences of migration and settlement, and how living in pittsburgh represented hope, challenges and, many times, also fear. they strongly expressed that the latino population in the city of pittsburgh is composed of hard-working people, who many times are escaping harsh economic and social situations in their countries of origin and are shaping their futures in the united states taking blue-collar jobs, and usually with very basic english skills and reduced chances to go back home, even for visits. beyond their photographic production, these participants’ verbal contributions at the second exhibition opening—where photographs remained on view for three weeks—reaffirmed that the pittsburgh latino community is growing but still lacks a political and visible presence. it also confirmed that efforts to bring visibility, such as ojo latino, are critical in a city that benefits from their work in service sectors but does not openly acknowledge the presence of latinos, let alone their particular living contexts. based on the archival goals of ojo latino, the third exhibition is a virtual repository— publicly available online at http://ojolatinopittsburgh.omeka.net/—containing the selection of photographs previously displayed and similarly laid out into the four curatorial categories of the physical exhibitions.24 the rationale behind this virtual repository is to preserve and make publicly available material evidence of latinos’ experiences in pittsburgh as well as their efforts 24 latz, photovoice, 127–33. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ http://ojolatinopittsburgh.omeka.net/ 6 8 o j o l a t i n o contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 7, no 1 (2018) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2018.243 to share those experiences. if the project emerged as a response to the absence of a latino imprint in pittsburgh’s public archives, ojo latino’s virtual repository constitutes an effort to overcome this situation by recording both in voice and image the life experiences of this growing population. reflections ojo latino served a dual purpose. in addition to enabling latino community members to tell their story and show pride in it, the project educated the larger community about their experience. we believe that attending the exhibitions and reading the related newspaper coverage engendered understanding and dialogue by building bridges and facilitating direct communication.25 the ojo latino project was able to recruit and retain thirteen out of fifteen participants and make visible their presence in the city through public exhibitions and round table discussions. while the project participants explored commonalities such as religion and family, they also became more aware of interesting cultural and linguistic differences when photographing and discussing people from other latin american countries. the project not only raised their visibility to non-latinos but also helped them become visible to each other in their diversity. this, in turn, promoted their sense of ethnic identity, not always based on sameness but sometimes on difference within shared linguistic and cultural parameters. many other interested community members could not participate, citing a variety of reasons, most notably not being able to meet on weekends because of work, time constraints, or lack of transportation. their reality of working long hours, often sixty hours a week, and of living in a city with limited bus routes on weekends highlights their difficulties in committing to collective efforts, in spite of their manifest interest. these circumstances explain why the majority of attendees to the first public exhibition were mostly people from academia and pittsburgh’s art scene, although this may be considered another expression of the reality of latino life in pittsburgh, a city with a significant population of international students and scholars. most of the ojo latino team members and participants who began the project have a continued involvement with it and were even willing to extend it beyond the planned schedule. there are several potential reasons for this commitment to the project. first, since the first day, when participating in a short photographic course, participants found both aesthetic and social value in taking pictures and engaging in extended group discussion meetings, which contrasts with some of the literature saying that training photovoice participants in photography introduces bias and imposes limits.26 second, they repeatedly spoke of the pride derived from their work, family and customs. third, they were proud to show their photographs publicly and to display their names. ojo latino was part of their ethnic identity formation and affirmation. the ojo latino team intentionally organized group rather than individual discussions with each photographer and made every effort to transfer power over the project to participants.27 we encouraged them to decide on topics to focus on and to exhibit, to decide on rules for exhibitions, and to be the main speakers in openings. participants said they enjoyed taking part in decisions about the photographs’ content and the format of the final exhibition. this 25 diana nelson jones, “‘ojo latino’ photo exhibition gives ethnic groups a voice,” pittsburgh postgazette, april 3, 2017; http://www.post-gazette.com/opinion/diana-nelson-jones/2017/04/03/diananelson-jones-ojo-latino-photo-exhibit-pitt-public-health-commons/stories/201704030009. 26 andrew cox and melanie benson, “visual methods and quality in information behaviour research: the cases of photovoice and mental mapping,” information research: an international electronic journal 22, no. 2 (2017), n.p. 27 evans-agnew, boutain, and rosemberg, “advancing nursing research,” e3–4. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ http://www.post-gazette.com/opinion/diana-nelson-jones/2017/04/03/diana-nelson-jones-ojo-latino-photo-exhibit-pitt-public-health-commons/stories/201704030009 http://www.post-gazette.com/opinion/diana-nelson-jones/2017/04/03/diana-nelson-jones-ojo-latino-photo-exhibit-pitt-public-health-commons/stories/201704030009 6 9 o j o l a t i n o contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 7, no 1 (2018) | issn 2153-5194 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2018.243 dynamic blurred the line of authority between participants and the project team, thus creating spaces of solidarity among all members of the project. frequent telephonic and text communications among participants and the project director may have contributed to the team spirit. specifically, in informal follow-up calls, participants said they found value in learning about other people’s lives and different spanish expressions from their fellow latin americans, enjoyed getting together, discovered aspects of photography that they found interesting to explore, and were excited about seeing their pictures exhibited. faculty and students involved in the project likewise developed and cemented their community relationships, and challenged, as expected, their own stereotypes.28 for example, we learned that community members wanted to be publicly recognized and to share their names along with their photographic work. we also learned that they wanted to tell not only their own stories, but also the stories of the people close to them, such as their co-workers, neighbors, and families. it also became evident that community members actively work to preserve their traditions while at the same time enjoying acquiring new cultural practices in the united states. photovoice projects frequently forgo the exhibit and often no reason is offered for this decision.29 for the ojo latino team and participants, sharing the work publicly was one of the main objectives because it was the one thing that would increase visibility for pittsburgh’s latino community and also because it can have an empowering effect on participants.30 this is probably one of the reasons why all photographers wanted their name associated with the photographs they took. we believe the exhibitions may have an even larger beneficial role in invisible, emerging latino communities, such as pittsburgh’s. as we have emphasized, the extensive discussions and highlighting of the group’s experience helped participants explore and strengthen their ethnic identity. strong ethnic identity, in turn, protects against stress and mental health problems among immigrants.31 one of the objectives of the photovoice method is to achieve social change.32 with ojo latino, we did not explicitly engage in action planning for policy change. this is likely the next logical step and one that needs to be undertaken in collaboration with community members and community organizations in the pittsburgh area. yet, through the photographs participants took, and through their narratives, we invited the public to learn about the city that is lived and transited by latino immigrants. we got closer to the ways latino immigrants see the city, how they navigate it and how they inhabit it. their gaze challenged our own views and experiences of pittsburgh such as the beauty and harshness of winter, the many kitchens in which latinos work, or the roofs they fix. their gaze also speaks of how nostalgia for the homeland collides with the opportunities available for latinos in pittsburgh to make a living for themselves and their families who live with them in pittsburgh or who are back at home. we learned how crucial the informal connections that exist among immigrants are, and how they truly desire to better integrate with the broader society, because being isolated and anonymous creates a heavy burden in their lives. the ojo latino team believes that this project connected latinos from different origins, linked the university of pittsburgh with participants, and represented a step toward creating a latino presence in pittsburgh’s public archives. this work is also part of our desire not only to document ojo latino itself, but also to leave a public trace of the latino presence in pittsburgh 28 cox and benson, “visual methods”; sahay et al., “‘it’s like we are legally, illegal,’" 59–60. 29 evans-agnew, boutain, and rosemberg, “advancing nursing,” e8. 30 goldie komaie et al., “photovoice as a pedagogical tool to increase research literacy among community members,” pedagogy in health promotion 4, no. 2 (2018): 111; cox and benson, “visual methods”; sahay et al., “‘it’s like we are legally, illegal,’” 50. 31 espinosa et al., “ethnic identity," 160; amy l ai et al., “racial/ethnic identity and subjective physical and mental health of latino americans: an asset within?,” american journal of community psychology 53, no. 1–2 (2014): 181. 32 mejia et al., “from madres to mujeristas," 301–2; sahay et al., “‘it’s like we are legally, illegal,’" 48; evans-agnew, boutain, and rosemberg, “advancing nursing research,” e1; colón-ramos et al., “how latina mothers navigate a ‘food swamp,'" 1942. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 7 0 o j o l a t i n o contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 7, no 1 (2018) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2018.243 and our reflections about it. moreover, and as a concluding reflection, promoting open discussions of what it means to be latino in an emerging community and the opportunity to produce a visual account of it promotes ethnic identify formation. acknowledgement of the presence of this diverse population creates space for recognition with dignity and opposes uninformed stereotypes that lead to hatred campaigns and policies that noticeably impact the social, mental, and physical health of latino immigrants in the united states. bibliography ai, amy l., eugene aisenberg, saskia i. weiss, and dulny salazar. “racial/ethnic identity and subjective physical and mental health of latino americans: an asset within?” american journal of community psychology 53, no. 1–2 (2014): 173–84. annang, lucy, sacoby wilson, chiwoneso tinago, louisiana wright sanders, tina bevington, bethany carlos, evangeline cornelius, and erik svendsen. “photovoice: assessing the long-term impact of a disaster on a communitys quality of life.” qualitative health research 26, no. 2 (2016): 241–51. artiga, samantha, michelle banker, peter cunningham, and jennifer tolbert. “health coverage and access to care for hispanics in ‘new growth communities’ and ‘major hispanic centers.’” kaiser commission on medicaid and the uninsured, september 1, 2006. https://www.issuelab.org/resource/health-coverage-and-access-to-care-for-hispanics-innew-growth-communities-and-major-hispanic-centers.html colón-ramos, uriyoán, rafael monge-rojas, elena cremm, ivonne m. rivera, elizabeth l. andrade, and mark c. edberg. “how latina mothers navigate a ‘food swamp’ to feed their children: a photovoice approach.” public health nutrition 20, no. 11 (2017): 1941–52. cox, andrew, and melanie benson. “visual methods and quality in information behaviour research: the cases of photovoice and mental mapping.” information research: an international electronic journal 22, no. 2 (2017). documet, patricia i. “latino’s health care access in southwestern pennsylvania.” university of pittsburgh, 2001. http://www.healthequity.pitt.edu/sites/default/files/ documet%20dissertation%202001.pdf documet, patricia i., andrea kamouyerou, amalia pesantes, laura macia, hernan maldonado, andrea fox, leslie bachurski et al. “participatory assessment of the health of latino immigrant men in a community with a growing latino population.” journal of immigrant and minority health 17, no. 1 (2013): 239–47. espinosa, adriana, aleksandr tikhonov, lauren m ellman, david m kern, florence lui, and deidre anglin. “ethnic identity and perceived stress among ethnically diverse immigrants.” journal of immigrant and minority health 20, no. 1 (2018): 155–63. evans-agnew, robin a, doris m boutain, and marie-anne s rosemberg. “advancing nursing research in the visual era: reenvisioning the photovoice process across phenomenological, grounded theory, and critical theory methodologies.” advances in nursing science 40, no. 1 (2017): e1–15. freire, paulo. pedagogy of the oppressed. power. london-new york: continuum, 2005. komaie, goldie, keon l gilbert, cassandra arroyo, and melody s goodman. “photovoice as a pedagogical tool to increase research literacy among community members.” pedagogy in health promotion 4, no. 2 (2018): 108–14. latz, amanda o. photovoice research in education and beyond: a practical guide from theory to exhibition. london: routledge, 2017. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 7 1 o j o l a t i n o contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 7, no 1 (2018) | issn 2153-5194 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2018.243 mejia, angie pamela, olivia quiroz, yolanda morales, ruth ponce, graciela limon chavez, and elizabeth olivera y. torre. “from madres to mujeristas: latinas making change with photovoice.” action research 11, no. 4 (2013): 301–21. miller, gretchen. “addiction recovery through photovoice: qualitative study.” journal of addictive beahviors and therapy 1, no. 2:7 (2017): 1–18. sahay, kashika mohan, kari thatcher, cruz núñez, and alexandra lightfoot. “‘it’s like we are legally, illegal’: latino/a youth emphasize barriers to higher education using photovoice.” the high school journal 100, no. 1 (2016): 45–65. stokes‐brown, atiya kai. “america’s shifting color line? reexamining determinants of latino racial self‐identification.” social science quarterly 93, no. 2 (2012): 309–32. united states census bureau. “community facts. allegheny county, pennsylvania.” accessed june 25, 2018. https://factfinder.census.gov/faces/nav/jsf/pages/community_facts.xhtml?src=bkmk. wang, caroline, and mary ann burris. “photovoice: concept, methodology, and use for participatory needs assessment.” health education & behavior 24, no. 3 (1997): 369–87. new articles in this journal are licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 united states license. this journal is operated by the university library system of the university of pittsburgh as part of its d-scribe digital publishing program, and is co-sponsored by the university of pittsburgh press. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/ http://www.pitt.edu/ http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/ http://www.upress.pitt.edu/upressindex.aspx http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ ojo latino a photovoice project in recognition of the latino presence in pittsburgh, pa héctor camilo ruiz sánchez, paulina pardo gaviria, rosa de ferrari, kirk savage, and patricia documet ojo latino a photovoice project in recognition of the latino presence in pittsburgh, pa contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture vol 9, no 1 (2021) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2021.327 http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu how the light gets in herbert f. johnson museum of art, cornell university adriana miramontes olivas exhibition review exhibition schedule: herbert f. johnson museum of art, cornell university, ithaca ny, september 7 – december 8, 2019 about the author adriana miramontes olivas is a phd candidate in the history of art and architecture department at the university of pittsburgh. her dissertation focuses on contemporary artists who visit the mexico–us border to examine issues such as feminicide and juvenicidios to protest a neoliberal global apparatus that, in conjunction with the state, render the lives of workers, women, and youth ungrievable and expendable. her research areas include global contemporary art, mexican art, border studies, and feminist studies. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 9, no 1 (2021) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2021.327 “reunite” was inscribed on a giant yellow street sign placed on the façade of the herbert f. johnson museum of art, cornell university (fig. 1). presented as part of the exhibit how the light gets in, on view from september 7 to december 8, 2019, in ithaca, new york, ronald rael and virginia san fratello’s artwork, reunite (2019), sent a strong, clear message to both visitors and non-visitors to the museum. the sign, in which the silhouettes of a man and a woman appear running toward a girl, refers to the controversial policies that have separated families in the united states based on birthright citizenship. reunite protests such legal and violent practices, which discriminate based on migratory status and have not only created chaos within the immigration system but also left many unaware of the location of their families, imprisoned, or exiled. rael and san fratello’s reunite challenges what has become a normalized term—citizenship—and invites viewers to consider more flexible definitions of belonging that emphasize our common humanity and solidarity, as opposed to allegiance to the modern nation-state.1 figure 1 herbert f. johnson museum of art, cornell university. november 2019. installation view of four artworks in the exhibition how the light gets in. lucy + jorge orta, antartica flag–la villete, 2014, inkjet on polyamide, edition of 40; tavares strachan, i belong here, 2013 white neon and two transformers, edition of 9 + 2 ap; ronald rael and virginia san fratello, reunite, 2019, vinyl; manaf halbouni, nowhere is home, 2015–ongoing, mixed media (photo: author) 1 achille mbembe defines our contemporary condition as “a time of planetary entanglement.” characterized by ideas of a perfect security, a process of borderization, and a penitentiary geography, thousands of people have been denied freedom and endured a restricted mobility. deprived of their human dignity, many remain in limbo in refugee camps, migrant camps, and detention centers. in other words, many have been condemned by the accident of their birthplace. mbembe invites us to confront these injustices and instead to recognize our common humanity. mbembe also encourages us to “imagine the impossible ̶ the abolition of borders, that is to say, giving all inhabitants of the earth ̶ human and nonhuman alike ̶ the inalienable right to freedom of movement on this planet?” achille mbembe, necropolitics, trans. steven corcoran (durham and london: duke university press, 2019), 104. how the light gets in herbert f. johnson museum of art, cornell university adriana miramontes olivas http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 8 4 h ow t h e l i g h t g e t s i n contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 9, no 1 (2021) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2021.327 reunite was one of many artworks in how the light gets in that presented a strong call for denationalizing citizenship, undermining political borders, and undoing imperialism.2 on view at the johnson museum of art were a total of fifty-nine artists, three collectives, and more than one hundred artworks, including installations, banners, prints, and video art, distributed around the museum’s galleries, hallways, staircases, and façade. the exhibit provided an overwhelming but emotionally charged and conceptually rich experience. the artists were mostly born in the global south, in places such as venezuela, chile, argentina, ghana, benin, eritrea, iran, iraq, syria, china, and the philippines, yet live or work in the global north, in germany, england, france, and south korea or the united states, among other nations. these artists included manaf halbouni, sobia ahmad, jorge méndez blake, aram han sifuentes, and esperanza mayobre. the us-based artists with works in the exhibition were zoe leonard, catherine opie, and ronald rael and virginia san fratello. the collectives included in the show were postcommodity, peng! collective, and forensic oceanography (forensic architecture).3 the prevailing message of how the light gets in is the need to move beyond the binary of citizen/noncitizen and to subvert a statist notion of citizenship in favor of an open, pluralized concept that acknowledges others as co-citizens in a shared world.4 other themes seen throughout the exhibit include collective resistance, the hardships of seeking asylum, being a refugee, or going in exile, and the desolate landscapes and threatening oceans encountered when fleeing. the museum’s galleries were organized according to bare life, the institutionalization of migration and identity documents, and the structural violence of borders5—themes echoed in current scholarship and publications by ariella aïsha azoulay, judith butler, saskia sassen, and benedict anderson, among others. publicity for the exhibit announced hope, empathy, and vulnerability as major themes. according to official sources, other topics of the exhibit were displacement, mobility, and the refugee crisis. curated by andrea inselmann, the exhibit subverted notions of home as well as immigration policies.6 yet, despite the exhibition’s emphasis on the violence of escaping one’s 2 according to ariella aïsha azoulay, undoing imperialism means unlearning imperial rights to restore disabled rights to those whose rights have been smashed, ignored, or forbidden. imperial rights include the right to discover, appropriate, and dominate other worlds. by unlearning imperialism, we can claim our right not to be perpetrators, but to act along and with one another and to care, together, for the shared world. by unlearning imperial/modern citizenship, we have an opportunity to side with others who have suffered and to advocate for their cause. see ariella aïsha azoulay, potential history: unlearning imperialism (london: verso, 2019). 3 the full list of artists included saâdane afif, sobia ahmad, shiva ahmadi, john akomfrah, sama alshaibi, mounira al solh, kader attia, aziz + cucher, radcliffe bailey, rina banerjee, keren benbenisty, dawoud bey, jorge méndez blake, phoebe boswell, andrea bowers, tania bruguera, margarita cabrera, yoan capote, enrique chagoya, gohar dashti, lois dodd, willie doherty, fidencio fifield-pérez, meschac gaba, cyprien gaillard, guillermo galindo, john gerrard, mohamad hafez, manaf halbouni, mona hatoum, alfredo jaar, hayv kahraman, zoe leonard, glenn ligon, hew locke, teresa margolles, elisabeth mase, esperanza mayobre, richard misrach, fiamma montezemolo, richard mosse, yoshua okón, catherine opie, lucy + jorge orta, driss oüadahi, dawit l. petros, ronald rael and virginia san fratello, jolene k. richard, steve henhawk, waylon wilson, yinka shonibare, aram han sifuentes, shahzia sikander, tavares strachan, stephanie syjuco, and ai weiwei. 4 according to azoulay, co-citizenship denies racial, gender, and national categorizations. azoulay adds, “we should contest the right, that a minority of founders acquired for themselves, to differentiate people from others with whom they are governed and to delegate to their descendants the continuance of this legacy.” azoulay, potential history, 268. 5 giorgio agamben uses the term “bare life” in reference to lives that are unprotected, deprived of human rights, lives that may be, in agamben’s words, “killed without the commission of homicide.” giorgio agamben, homo sacer: sovereign power and bare life, trans. daniel heller-roazen (stanford: stanford university press, 1995), 159. 6 “how the light gets in,” at the johnson: the member’s newsletter of the herbert f. johnson museum of art (fall 2019): 5–10. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 8 5 a d r i a n a m i r a m on t e s o l i v a s contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 9, no 1 (2021) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2021.327 “home” and the often-encountered rejection and aggression upon arrival at borders of “safer” countries, it did not sensationalize the topics and avoided explicit imagery that could alienate viewers.7 still, the undermining of political borders resonated throughout the exhibit, inviting viewers to reflect on their constructed nature and the possibility of a different reality. as cultural historian benedict anderson shows, the nation is not only created but enforced and promoted by the rewriting of history, changes in the educational system, the adoption of specific languages, and state propaganda.8 in a similar way, notions of belonging and modern citizenship are not only imagined, but also enacted, performed, and imposed. how the light gets in invites viewers to acknowledge broader definitions of home, community, and engagement with each other.9 figure 2 manaf halbouni, nowhere is home, 2015–ongoing. mixed media (photo: author) the challenges refugees and immigrants experience were communicated on the façade of the johnson museum of art directly beneath the word “reunite.” in nowhere is home (2015– ongoing), manaf halbouni attached personal belongings, including suitcases, toys, and bicycles to a black volvo (fig. 2). the precious possessions also incorporated life vests to illustrate the 7 judith butler references the violence encountered by immigrants who are labeled as a threat to the nation by violent states, institutions, and politicians. as butler writes, “at risk of suffering violence and destruction is imagined to be the condition of the state that defends itself against migrants. and yet the violence is state violence, fueled by racism and paranoia, and directed against the migrant population.” judith butler, the force of nonviolence: an ethico-political bind (london, new york: verso, 2020), 142– 146. 8 benedict anderson, imagined communities (london, new york: verso 2006). 9 as butler explains, our constitutive interdependency means that violence against others is violence against the self. violence against immigrants, refugees, or those seeking exile will never guarantee equality and freedom in the “nation.” there must be a unified front against racism, xenophobia, misogyny, and other forms of hatred because we are all interconnected, and we have postnational obligations. in butler’s words, global obligations are “obligations that are globally shared and ought to be considered binding–they cannot be reduced to obligations that nation-states have toward one another. they would have to be post-national in character, traversing borders and navigating their terms, since populations at the border or crossing the border (stateless people, refugees) are included in the larger network of interrelationships implied by global obligations.” butler, force of nonviolence, 47. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 8 6 h ow t h e l i g h t g e t s i n contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 9, no 1 (2021) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2021.327 dangers of leaving one’s home and the desire for survival. a sticker on the car’s back asks, “gas or water?” demonstrating the tough decisions often made by those escaping hardships. immediately above reunite and to the right side, a flag on the façade of the johnson museum of art advocates for camaraderie and the erasure of political borders. in antarctica flag –la villete (2014) by lucy + jorge ota, miniature images of flags from a variety of countries intermingle, undermining any hierarchies and the notion of nationalism. as the flags blur and merge into each other, they suggest a process of transformation and obliteration. near the entrance of the museum, and below lucy + jorge ota’s flag on the window panel, tavares strachan’s message i belong here (2013) further promotes the idea of membership within a community regardless of violent laws that seek to exclude. strachan’s neon sign i belong here creates ambiguity and raises questions regarding the “here.” this “here” is everywhere and nowhere, accentuating the need for more inclusive policies unattached to territories. figure 3 tania bruguera, dignity has no nationality (2017). nylon (photo: author) the case for denationalized citizenship in how the light gets in is further conveyed upon entering the johnson museum of art. right above the front desk, tania bruguera’s banner dignity has no nationality (2017) shows the supercontinent pangaea on which man-made political borders were nonexistent (fig. 3). other banners within the museum’s halls were created by visitors in a gallery that emphasized collective resistance and empowered participants (fig. 4). in this area, the museum offered a banner-making station as well as a lending library from which activists could borrow banners to attend protests or participate in street demonstrations.10 this aspect of the exhibit emphasized a form of citizenship presented by linda bosniak in which citizenship is defined as active engagement in society.11 the bannermaking station can also be interpreted according to ariella aïsha azoulay’s ideas on the right 10 the museum also held a banner-making workshop led by artist aram han sifuentes on two occasions on september 12 and november 13, 2019. other programming in conjunction with this exhibit is listed in “how the light gets in,” at the johnson: the member’s newsletter of the herbert f. johnson museum of art (fall 2019): 5–10. 11 according to linda bosniak, citizenship requires legal recognition as well as the enjoyment of rights, participation in the political life of the community, and a sense of community membership. while she acknowledges that citizenship remains a national affair, she also demonstrates that the term is contested and subject to change. in bosniak’s words, “at least some politically and socially-based-non-state communities–including some that have taken form across national boundaries–can serve as sites of citizenship identity and solidarity.” linda bosniak, “citizenship denationalized,” indiana journal of global legal studies 7, no. 2 (spring 2000): 488. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 8 7 a d r i a n a m i r a m on t e s o l i v a s contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 9, no 1 (2021) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2021.327 to strike defined as caring for each other and acting in solidarity. in azoulay’s words, “going on strike is to claim one’s right not to engage with destructive practices, not to be an oppressor and perpetrator, not to act according to norms and protocols whose goals were defined to reproduce imperial and racial capitalist structures.”12 by engaging visitors in collective activities that foster a sense of community and a shared interest in caring for each other and for the world, empowerment at the museum takes place from below and emphasizes the need to imagine different ways of being. as such, signs hanging from the museum’s ceiling read “no wall,” “stop repeating history,” and “otro mundo es posible” (fig. 4).13 in addition to the numerous artworks, the museum had extensive labels that guided viewers through the exhibit. the exhibit clearly underscored our right not to act against others, in line with azoulay’s exhortation not to be perpetrators, and visualized a nonhegemonic view of citizenship, as described by bosniak, based on affective ties vis-à-vis birthright citizenship.14 saskia sassen has similarly reflected on alternative definitions of citizenship by examining what she terms the “global city.” sassen describes the global city as “a partly denationalized space that enables a partial reinvention of citizenship.” 15 according to sassen, in the global city, “citizens” come together based on their interests in human rights, justice, and equality as opposed to notions such as the modern nation state. aram han sifuentes’s work underscores these rights and ideas as well. figure 4 aram han sifuentes, protest banner lending library, 2016–ongoing. felt and fusible web on fabric (photo: author) 12 azoulay, potential history, 157–158. 13 “otro mundo es posible” can be translated as “a different world is possible.” 14 bosniak, “citizenship denationalized,” 479. despite the exhibit’s strong emphasis on pro-immigration policies and its criticism of nationalisms, a disclaimer was visible stating, “the works on display represent the viewpoints of each individual artist and are not an expression of the official views of cornell university.” 15 saskia sassen, “the repositioning of citizenship: emergent subjects and spaces for politics,” cr: the new centennial review 3, no. 2 (summer 2003): 44. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 8 8 h ow t h e l i g h t g e t s i n contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 9, no 1 (2021) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2021.327 printed in spanish, english, and arabic, messages to my neighbors (2016–ongoing) by sifuentes consists of three hanging white banners featuring each of these languages surrounding a bulky column (fig. 5). messages to my neighbors presents specific guidelines to empower, inform, help, and support immigrants who are considered “non-u.s. citizens.” in messages to my neighbors, sifuentes explains to those who have not been granted legal citizenship status how best to protect themselves from the injustices of government agencies, such as the us immigration and customs enforcement office, as well as from deportation. sifuentes warns, “do not open the door,” “do not answer any questions – you have a right to remain silent,” and “do not sign anything.” sifuentes’s artwork thus further makes the case for denationalized citizenship and a reinvention of the term to emphasize affective ties and undermine normative legal categorizations. figure 5 aram han sifuentes, messages to my neighbors (2016–ongoing). fabric, felt, and fusible web (left); peng! collective, fluchthelfer.in become an escape agent (2015). two single-channel videos (back center); dawit l. petros, historical rupture (detail) from the series the stranger’s notebook (2016–17). archival color pigment prints (back right); and zoe leonard, untitled (2001), five suitcases (front). installation view of how the light gets in at herbert f. johnson museum of art, cornell university, ithaca (photo: author) another theme included the institutionalization of migration. yinka shonibare’s the american library collection (politicians) (2017) presented 213 books with the names of political leaders who have voted for or against the opening of borders, providing or denying citizenship status and rights to people. inscribed in gold, the names ilhan omar, nancy pelosi, donald trump, and marco rubio were displayed on the book’s spines. in addition to the immigration debates were references to the passport—a modern invention of the nation-state. as reece jones explains, prior to world war i, passports were only used during war time, and the united states did not have a systematic passport requirement until after world war ii.16 sobia ahmad’s small identities (2017–ongoing) presents black-and-white passport-like images on tiles (fig. 6). on more than fifty tiles, ahmad contests the notion of the passport to (dis)identify the subject by eliminating biographical data such as name, country of birth, or birthdate. ahmad shows slightly blurred portraits of muslim immigrants and, according to the museum’s label, she left many of the tiles blank due to the subjects’ reluctance to be photographed in fear of retaliation and xenophobia. 16 reece jones, violent borders: refugees and the right to move (london: verso, 2017), 85. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 8 9 a d r i a n a m i r a m on t e s o l i v a s contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 9, no 1 (2021) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2021.327 figure 6 sobia ahmad, detail from small identities (2017–ongoing). photo transfers on ceramic. installation view of how the light gets in at herbert f. johnson museum of art, cornell university, ithaca (photo: author) a variety of artworks in how the light gets in offered criticism of bare life. defined by giorgio agamben as “a life that may be killed without the commission of homicide,” bare life refers to lives that are disregarded, marginalized, and subject to murder without punishment for the perpetrators.17 in the wine dark sea (2016), hew locke exhibits twelve hanging ships made of a variety of materials that included fabric, bamboo, and plastic (fig. 7). among them were a schooner, a fishing boat, and a tugboat. the precarious ships highlight the fragility of these vessels as well as that of the lives who embark on them in search of better futures. locke’s installation is a potent reminder of the thousands of people who have perished at sea with no consequences for perpetrators in a society that regards the lives of economic migrants and refugees as expendable. locke’s the wine dark sea complements the narrative of travel and border crossing in manaf halbouni’s nowhere is home as well as that of forensic oceanography’s liquid traces –the left-to-die boat case (2014), located next to locke’s installation in a darkened room. the video, liquid traces –the left-to-die boat case, shows the tragic story of 72 passengers left to die in the mediterranean sea in 2011.18 in this video, forensic oceanography exposes transnational culpability as governments from france, italy, and spain, among others, failed to assist the stalled boat and rescue the dying passengers. the video explains how a hyper-surveilled area became a death trap due to neglect and the concept of bare life that allows impunity and the continuous loss of people.19 17 agamben, homo sacer, 159. 18 achille mbembe offers a resolute critique of europe’s process of borderization. mbembe writes, “who claims the largest number of skeletons and the largest marine cemetery in this century? again, it is europe! the greatest number of deserts, territorial and international waters, channels, islands, straits, enclaves, canals, rivers, ports, and airports transformed into iron curtain technologies? europe!...” achille mbembe, necropolitics, 102. 19 there were only nine survivors. forensic oceanography’s liquid traces –the left to die boat is available online through their website (https://forensic-architecture.org/investigation/the-left-to-dieboat). for more on the border apparatus and a mobile border, read todd miller, empire of borders: the expansion of the u.s. border around the world (london: verso, 2019). for a discussion on ocean borders and migratory necropolitics, read laura lo presti, who reminds us that from 2014 to 2020, 70 percent of migrant deaths occurred at sea; see “like a map over troubled water: (un)mapping the mediterranean sea’s terraqueous necropolitics,” eflux journal #109 (may 2020). http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ https://forensic-architecture.org/investigation/the-left-to-die-boat https://forensic-architecture.org/investigation/the-left-to-die-boat 9 0 h ow t h e l i g h t g e t s i n contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 9, no 1 (2021) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2021.327 figure 7 hew locke, the wine dark sea (2016). wood, metal, fabric, string, bamboo, paint, and plastic. installation view of how the light gets in at herbert f. johnson museum of art, cornell university, ithaca (photo: author) figure 8 ,guillermo galindo, fountain of tears/fuente de lágrimas (2014). wood, iron plate, barrel, pump, plastic tubes, water, and beacon flag (center); margarita cabrera, space in between –nopal # 2 (2012) (left), space in between –saguaro (maria lopez) (2010) (back), and nopal con tunas # 2 (2006) (front). fabric, copper, wire, and terra cotta pots; teresa margolles, la gran américa (2017). fired clay (back left); jorge méndez blake, amerika (2019). bricks and edition of amerika by kafka (back right). installation view of how the light gets in at herbert f. johnson museum of art, cornell university (photo: author) http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 9 1 a d r i a n a m i r a m on t e s o l i v a s contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 9, no 1 (2021) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2021.327 similarly, guillermo galindo’s fountain of tears/fuente de lágrimas (2014) communicates the structural violence of borders and migratory policies (fig. 8). galindo’s pyramidal structure in the center of another gallery contained a blue water barrel from which drops of water fell onto a metal plate. its sign, “agua/water,” reminds viewers how precious this resource is for those found in the middle of the ocean or in the desert attempting to enter nations without being caught. the makeshift structure acknowledges that borders will be crossed despite an extensive global apparatus that enforces security and surveillance through technology and physical barriers. figure 9 fidencio fifield-pérez, detail from dacaments 1-17 (2017-2019). acrylic on paper (photo: author) http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 9 2 h ow t h e l i g h t g e t s i n contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 9, no 1 (2021) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2021.327 esperanza mayobre’s welcome to the yunaited stai addressed the main themes of the exhibit on a mat inscribed with the words “welcome to the yunaited stai” (2012). visitors could step on the mat in a way one would step on any other doormat, but inside the museum this gesture undermines both the sanctity of the artwork and its “welcoming” message. one is prompted to ask, who is welcomed? and where and when is one welcomed? mayobre’s mat introduced viewers to a room that displayed mail correspondence between fidencio fifield-pérez and his lawyer. portraying a variety of plants, the seventeen collected envelopes are evidence of a long bureaucratic process endured by those seeking legal recognition in a country (fig. 9). the worn envelopes in dacaments 1-17 (2017-2019) show not only traces of time, but also a variety of locations in which the artist found himself through the arduous and time-consuming process of applying for legal citizenship (fig. 10). figure 10 fidencio fifield-pérez, dacaments 1-17 (2017-2019). acrylic on paper (photo: author) the female body was another theme threaded through how the light gets in. while it is certain that thousands of women and their children are often on the move and are subjected to an innumerable number of abuses, a half-clothed figure showing her breasts to the viewer might have confused viewers.20 in boob gold (2018), hayv kahraman, according to the gallery label, conveys a strong individual who is empowered and reflects no intimidation or victimhood. yet the imagery and the juxtaposition of artworks in this crammed hallway diminished the powerful messages of exile, a plurality of citizenships, and the idea of social justice for all (fig. 11). the quantity of artists and artworks in how the light gets in was overwhelming for any viewer, yet the diversity of media and viewpoints made this a powerful show. how the light gets in reminds us, as leonard cohen sang in his 1992 song “anthem,” that “there is a crack 20 for a journalistic account on the violence perpetrated against women who cross borders “illegally” for a variety of reasons, read oscar martínez’s book the beast, where he writes about the “bra tree myth” along the mexico–us border where women migrants are raped and their clothes displayed as trophies. oscar martinez, the beast: riding the rails and dodging narcos on the migrant trail (new york: verso, 2013), 161–183. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 9 3 a d r i a n a m i r a m on t e s o l i v a s contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 9, no 1 (2021) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2021.327 in everything and that’s how the light gets in.”21 as environmental disasters, economic crises, authoritarian governments, and wars force thousands of people out of their homes and drive them to risk their lives, we must rethink not only the nation, but also the concept of citizenship as tied to the nation-state. moving beyond the binary of citizen/noncitizen and committing to a denationalized form of the term that is more plural and open are long overdue. the invitation is to recognize our common humanity, to practice solidarity, and to exercise our rights not to act against others. as azoulay and butler explain, we should strive to act as co-citizens and help one another in the name of equality and freedom in a shared world.22 figure 11 hayv kahraman, boob gold (2018). oil on wood (photo: author) 21 “how the light gets in,” at the johnson: the member’s newsletter of the herbert f. johnson museum of art, fall 2019, 5. 22 i thank the department of history of art and architecture at the university of pittsburgh for funding my research through the dean’s research travel fund (fall 2019). i extend my heartfelt gratitude to claire ptaschinski, emi finkelstein, and katie loney, editors of contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture: moving across/through cultures. i am also indebted to andrea potochniak, editorial manager at the herbert f. johnson museum of art, for her kindness and assistance with the images’ captions and her editorial advice. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 9 4 h ow t h e l i g h t g e t s i n contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 9, no 1 (2021) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2021.327 new articles in this journal are licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 united states license. this journal is operated by the university library system of the university of pittsburgh as part of its d-scribe digital publishing program, and is co-sponsored by the university of pittsburgh press. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/ http://www.pitt.edu/ http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/ http://www.upress.pitt.edu/upressindex.aspx how the light gets in herbert f. johnson museum of art, cornell university how the light gets in herbert f. johnson museum of art, cornell university vol 10, no 1 (2025) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2025.349 http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu questionnaire response huey copeland about the author huey copeland is andrew w. mellon chair and professor of modern art and black study at the university of pittsburgh. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 10, no 1 (2025) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2025.349 my current scholarship, which interrogates modern and contemporary african diasporic, american, and european artistic practices, focuses on the intersections of race and gender, subject and object, and the aesthetic and its others from a black feminist perspective that reveals the biases and elisions of the discipline. rather than assume the redemptive power of art, i have increasingly turned away from art history and toward black studies in order to explore the constitutive (yet often unthought) relationship between the capture of black life and the production of cultural property in the transatlantic world. cast in this light, my work can be broadly understood as what early modern theatre historian noémie ndiaye would call reparanoid, which is to say, “grounded simultaneously in a reparative desire to account for afro-diasporic life that exceeds the painful heinousness of racial formations, and in a paranoid distrust of the comfort and complacency that accounts of black life can easily elicit among twenty-first-century readers prepared for any number of reasons to minimize the transhistorical reality of antiblackness.”1 my third monograph, thinking the unthought: from continental theory to black radical study, extends and complicates this methodological orientation. the book traces how black radical study as developed at the university of california, berkeley—particularly during my formative years there as a graduate student at the turn of the last millennium—at once extends, revises, and ultimately undoes the theoretical frameworks and ethical horizons of frankfurt school and french poststructuralist theory, with far-reaching implications for longstanding art-historical protocols as well as for the means and methods of the humanities writ large. the volume is thus conceived as an intellectual autobiography, critical primer, historiographic corrective, and polemical claim for the indispensability of african/ diasporic thought in light of the transnational hierarchy of race that relentlessly situates black(ened) fem(me) beings at the bottom of a given heap. each chapter is organized around one of six contemporary thinkers, all of whom attended or taught at uc berkeley: rizvana bradley, ruth wilson gilmore, saidiya hartman, zakiyyah jackson, fred moten, and frank b. wilderson iii. in each instance, i begin with my own personal, political, and intellectual engagements with them on the ground and build toward an exploration of their theoretical interventions and how they matter for both art-historical study and our understanding of “criticality” as such. since the 1980s, black feminist approaches, most influentially legal scholar kimberlé crenshaw’s theorization of intersectionality, have proved transformative for interrogating how humanistic and social scientific disciplines overlook race and gender as formative vectors of power. art history in the united states has, as is often the case, been much slower on the uptick, especially when it comes to the black radical hermeneutics that emerged with, alongside, and in tension with crenshaw’s attempts to renegotiate the terms and boundaries of the law in light of the irreducible specificity of black women’s experiences. i center these six scholars for their outsize impact on how the academic and art industries approach and conceptualize the aesthetic, the commodity, the subject, the social, and even the “world,” in light of the structuring import of anti-blackness for these and for all of western culture’s ostensibly nonracialized formations. in my writing on bradley, for example, i explore the implications of the anteaesthetic— her contention that the black maternal flesh produced by transatlantic slavery provides the suppressed anterior of western metaphysics—for our interpretation of one of the twentieth 1 ndiaye, noémie. “introduction: performative blackness in early modern europe.” in scripts of blackness: early modern performance culture and the making of race. university of pennsylvania press, 2022. questionnaire response huey copeland with kale serrato doyen http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 1 4 q u e s t i o n n a i r e contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 10, no 1 (2025) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2025.349 century’s most canonical works. i argue that the dark womb haunts no less than marcel duchamp’s most famous readymade of 1917: fountain was literally blackened in american photographer alfred stieglitz’s iconic photograph of it, reorienting the urinal as a feminized form that has called forth art-historical associations ranging from a silhouette of the buddha to the human uterus flipped upside down. now that it is darkened and sexuated, we can see, as if for the first time, how the readymade form replays the violence of ontological translation. the object is translated from commodity into art, rather than person into property, a “lazy” object whose seeming absence of artistic labor becomes a cipher for the black belly, that repressed matrix of modern capital. a student of moten and the junior member of hartman’s practicing refusal collective, bradley now teaches in berkeley’s department of film and media, where she has played a foundational role in introducing black thought into the curriculum. in one sense, her work and her appointment serve to underline the radical transformation of knowledge in the united states since the late 1990s, emblematizing those vistas of insight that can only come into focus when the fate of the captive is countenanced. in a word, yesterday’s “critical theory” is today’s black radical study. for, in taking seriously the history of slavery and its afterlives— and in underscoring the positionality of the enslaved as, in hartman’s words, the “unthought” of western philosophy—these scholars variously unmask the universalist presumptions of critical theory, which depend upon and effectively demand the negation of black being to maintain their coherence and to enable the ongoing production of whiteness as normative and unmarked. at the same time, their writing looks back to and recenters the work of intellectual forebears such as frantz fanon, édouard glissant, and sylvia wynter, all of whom were both contemporaneous with and deeply critical of the likes of michel foucault, jacques lacan, and any number of post-marxist theoreticians. in line with contemporaneity’s framing of ruin and reparation, moten and his peers endlessly complicate the question of “what is to be done,” whether in the terms of revolution, reform, or redress. what or who, precisely, is worthy of repair and why? whose ends does such tending serve, enable, obfuscate, or suppress in our neofascist present? does the rhetoric of repair necessarily reproduce an antiblack metaphysics? how might attempts to repair hamper or foreclose the necessary—and necessarily abyssal—work of understanding the antiblack violence that continues to be inflicted in the name of art, culture, and the human? what would repair look like if it centered and sat with all that is fundamentally irreparable? or is repair ultimately aimed at sustaining that which should, in fact, be dismantled or destroyed? these questions have already had important implications for my pedagogy at pitt. in spring 2025 i taught an undergraduate special topics course, “black modernisms in the transatlantic world,” which aimed to challenge hegemonic accounts of the modern that center white, male, european fine artists. by instead starting from the idea that modernity itself would be unthinkable without the cultures, labors, and flesh of enslaved, black(ened), fem(me) beings, our seminar was able to home in on the unique challenges faced by women artists of african descent. it was also able to freshly illuminate how modern cultural practitioners, variously positioned along the color line, worked with and against the visual production of blackness in grounding their aesthetic interventions. the class eventually realized that the reparative histories we were reading, and the questions they occasioned, ought to be at the center of any art-historical attempt to narrate the modern; this is precisely the tack i will take this fall in teaching my undergraduate survey “introduction to modern art” as a truly intersectional art history for the first time. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 1 5 h u e y c o p e l a n d contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 10, no 1 (2025) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2025.349 new articles in this journal are licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 united states license. this journal is published by pitt open library publishing. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ https://www.library.pitt.edu/e-journals contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture vol 9, no 1 (2021) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2021.322 http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu the contingent body sepideh tajalizadeh dashti about the author sepideh tajalizadeh dashti is an emerging interdisciplinary artist who lives in memphis, tennessee. she received her mfa from western university in london, ontario, in 2020. she migrated from iran to canada in 2011, and has lived in the united states since august 2019. her artistic practice is related to an exploration of her body through performance and video. documented through photography and installation, her work enacts a continual engagement with the injustice and tyrannical politics of her homeland. dashti is always rediscovering, reinventing, and reinterpreting her iranian identity, which functions as a pivotal point of context in her work. she earned her bfa at the university of waterloo in waterloo, ontario, canada, where she was the recipient of various awards, including the lynn holmes memorial award and curator’s choice award. dashti’s work has been exhibited across canada, including at the photophobia contemporary moving image festival, at hamilton artists inc., and in exhibitions at the university of british columbia in vancouver, trinity square video in toronto, the university of western ontario in london, and university of waterloo in waterloo. her work has also been exhibited internationally at modern panic x in united kingdom and as part of the exhibition art as advocacy: promoting equity and social justice for women in the united states. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 9, no 1 (2021) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2021.322 my practice is body-centric; i reclaim my body through mediums of performance, video, photography, and installation. my work focuses on the traumatized female body and attempts to represent the body through abject form, in pain or a grotesque state. my work deals with the personal psychology of ambiguity as a multicultural individual. this sense of ambiguity, which derives from personal experiences with the differences between cultures, evokes an unsettledness that politicizes spaces and comes into consciousness through my oppression as a woman. to respond to this consciousness, i strive to explore the construction of women’s identity through social expectations, politics, traditional culture, and conservative belief structures that shift between middle-east and western cultures. i am in close dialogue with my homeland and aim to address critical issues that have affected me, as a woman from iran. furthermore, i try to generate questions concerning the legacies of the phallocentric system’s impact on contemporary sociocultural realities of female embodied subjectivity. i explore theories of nomadic subjects, radical relationality, and queer feminist durationality concerning the conceptual representation of the in-between state that i have intimately experienced. i believe that, representation is a crucial location of the struggle for any exploited and oppressed bodies asserting subjectivity. i explore my identity in the hope of calling oppressive authorities into question. perhaps there is not much hope for a bright future where differences are recognized without eliminating the voices of others. but striving to make this future creates a hope to continue and endure. readers are encouraged to contact the artist for links and passwords to the videos due to their sensitive nature. dashti can be reached at: stajaliz@uwo.ca the contingent body sepideh tajalizadeh dashti http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 4 6 t h e con t i n g e n t b od y contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 9, no 1 (2021) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2021.322 figure 1 sepideh tajalizadeh dashti, don’t ask i can’t sing, 2018. film stills. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 4 7 s e p i d e h t a j a l i z a d e h d a s h t i contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 9, no 1 (2021) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2021.322 figure 2 sepideh tajalizadeh dashti, generations, 2019. installation (one channel video, projected photograph, sewing machine, fabric). http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 4 8 t h e con t i n g e n t b od y contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 9, no 1 (2021) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2021.322 figure 3 sepideh tajalizadeh dashti, my family men, 2018. film stills. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 4 9 s e p i d e h t a j a l i z a d e h d a s h t i contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 9, no 1 (2021) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2021.322 http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 5 0 t h e con t i n g e n t b od y contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 9, no 1 (2021) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2021.322 sepideh tajalizadeh dashti, untitled, 2019. filmstills. figure 4 sepideh tajalizadeh dashti, untitled, 2019. installation (two channel video, sound, photography). http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 5 1 s e p i d e h t a j a l i z a d e h d a s h t i contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 9, no 1 (2021) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2021.322 new articles in this journal are licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 united states license. this journal is operated by the university library system of the university of pittsburgh as part of its d-scribe digital publishing program, and is co-sponsored by the university of pittsburgh press. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/ http://www.pitt.edu/ http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/ http://www.upress.pitt.edu/upressindex.aspx the contingent body the contingent body vol 10, no 1 (2025) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2025.345 http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu in averting my eyes, i see what lies ahead alejandro t. acierto about the author alejandro t. acierto is assistant professor of digital arts at wayne state university. acierto produces creative projects, exhibitions, and performances that highlight the impact of colonial legacies across technologies, material culture, and the environment. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 10, no 1 (2025) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2025.345 as part of an ongoing set of performances, i worked with eight postcards housed in the archive of constraint, a critical, evolving collection of colonialera visual culture from the u.s. occupation of the philippines. these postcards depicted a public execution by hanging inside a prison yard in the southern philippines. handwritten captions at the bottom read, “execution of moros.” the sequential images sensationalized the death of three incarcerated men, who remained hooded and anonymized across each image. they were not referred to by name in the captions and were only identified as moros. the photos, dated 1911, were slightly silvered and weathered by age. they were likely destined for photobooks intended for us service members and their families. figure 1 no. 3 execution of moros. photograph by wahl-thompson, july 21, 1911. item [2020.1.3] from the archive of constraint, https://archiveofconstraint.com. cropped photograph courtesy of the author. in several frames of this eight-postcard sequence, entire figures had been cut out of the photographs from the event. these figures had likely directed photographers to remove them from the scene before their images could be monetized. mounted on horses and framed by the gallows they are positioned behind, they now appear only as body-shaped empty spaces. their imprecise occlusions grapple with tensions of visibility and the evidentiary documentation that would allow for further study. sitting with these images, i was curious to understand how this intentional erasure established an imperial opacity—one that begged the question: who has the power to not be seen? at a time when panoptic surveillance measures were integral to the colonial project, partially due to the panoptical architecture of the bilibid prison in the northern region of the philippines, the rapid pace of new image-making technologies and methods exacerbated who in averting my eyes, i see what lies ahead alejandro t. acierto http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 3 3 a l e j a n d r o t . a c i e r t o contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 10, no 1 (2025) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2025.345 and what could (and needed) to be seen. an abundance of images of indigenous people from the philippines appeared in publications like daniel folkmar’s album of philippine types (found in bilibid prison in 1903): christians and moros (including a few non-christians),1 which was printed in the philippines in 1904 and distributed in the united states for the public debut of the philippine village during the 1904 st. louis world’s fair. dean conant worcester’s articles for national geographic between 1898 and 1913 established additional images. embedded within these photographs were imperial commitments to shaping narratives of power. intended for us and global consumption, they shaped how “savagery” and us policies of benevolent assimilation were felt and expressed among the broader public.2 no other institutional repositories with materials from the same era could provide any further context for these public executions, which distinguishes the archive of constraint from other collections. though the archive’s holdings contained additional sets of photographs that presented that event from three to four different angles (marking its significance), the same figures that were cut out of the postcards had been erased from every image. visits to the smithsonian, university of michigan special collections, and library of congress provided inconclusive results. other searches, and conversations with scholars of this time and geography, led to unavailable newspapers or nonexistent sources. occasionally, hints about similar occurrences were buried in secondary writings by travel authors, who alluded to routine suppression of insurgent outbursts through carceral tactics. were these evidentiary obscurities also functions of an imperial opacity? how might a long-term engagement through performance relieve these images from their colonial legacy? ken gonzalez-day’s photographs from his erased lynchings series, made between 2002 and 2006, focus on the spectators of racialized aggression to “invite a rethinking of american history and western history in particular.”3 his erased lynchings deploy erasure as a gesture of repair; by inverting america’s racial legacy, they invite viewers to question the punctum of racial violence. by contrast, wahl-thompson’s photo series from 1911 illustrates the construction of history through intentional erasures. while gonzalez-day’s source materials are well documented without his intervention—opening numerous alternatives to repair beyond his conceptual deployment of erasure—the wahl-thompson photographs disabled any future in which the photograph’s invisible characters could be known. that inability to know articulates a declaration of power, portrayed through intentional destruction of the photograph’s negatives. it provides a materialization of imperial opacity that prohibits accountability. these are histories that cannot be repaired. but if visual erasure operates to shape the conditions of history’s expressions, i want to provoke a kind of radical visibility that contributes to strategies of anti-colonial reparation. performing indexicality—whether through writing or imaging—allows for recognition without glorification. rather, by embracing erasure’s legacy, i open the possibilities to move on, to let go, to no longer look. 1 daniel folkmar, album of philippine types (found in bilibid prison in 1903): christians and moros (including a few non-christians) (manila: bureau of public printing, 1904). 2 nerrisa balce, body parts of empire: visual abjection, filipino images, and the american archive (university of michigan press, 2016), 173. 3 ken gonzalez-day, “erased lynchings,” ken gonzales-day (blog), november 12, 2016, https://kengonzalesday.com/projects/erased-lynchings/. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ https://kengonzalesday.com/projects/erased-lynchings/ 3 4 i n a v e r t i n g m y e y e s , i s e e w h a t l i e s a h e a d contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 10, no 1 (2025) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2025.345 new articles in this journal are licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 united states license. this journal is published by pitt open library publishing. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ https://www.library.pitt.edu/e-journals vol 10, no 1 (2025) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2025.352 http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu questionnaire response jennifer josten about the author jennifer josten is associate professor of history of art and architecture and a core faculty member of the center for latin american studies at the university of pittsburgh. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 10, no 1 (2025) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2025.352 since joining the university of pittsburgh’s history of art and architecture (haa) department in 2013, my pedagogy has focused on analyzing the buildings, exhibitions, and artworks that surround us in pittsburgh through postcolonial and intersectional lenses. in recent years, my students and i have identified local developments that can be categorized as reparative. schenley park’s enormous monument to christopher columbus, dedicated in 1958, has shifted from being a mostly unchallenged symbol of white supremacy and settler colonialism to one the city’s arts commission unanimously voted in 2020 to remove, responding to organized public demands. in 2023, carnegie museum of art relaunched the gallery that introduces visitors to its permanent collection, replacing a chronological, eurocentric installation with a nonlinear, thematic one that highlights makers who do not necessarily identify as white and/or male. these developments aligned with our own department’s launching of a new research constellation in 2023: reparation, which we define as “the act of redressing and resisting aggression and erasure in their individual and institutional forms.” participants contend with how the history of art and architecture has enabled cultural dispossession and reinforced unjust social hierarchies and we commit to the work of dismantling and repair by centering listening, care, and reciprocity. pedagogy, in the form of formal courses and individualized research mentorship, is the arena in which i have most actively worked to nurture reparative histories of art and architecture. on one hand, this involves identifying and supporting reparative efforts that are being carried out in the field. on the other, it involves identifying and articulating the shared characteristics of those efforts, thereby building structures that encourage the promotion, adoption, and adaptation of reparative methods. these pedagogical commitments came together in the graduate seminar i developed on reparation in the history of art and architecture to help launch the constellation in fall 2023. eleven graduate students—camila aguayo, monica daniels, kale serrato doyen, naren gao, amelia hansen, zixiao huang, rebecca lowery, cecilia muzika-minteer, hossein nakhaei, shawn simmons, and amrita vinod—and i began by contending with the concept of symbolic (as opposed to financial) reparations. we considered scholarship on examples located in latin america and the caribbean before turning to the us national mall, which we visited together to experience monument lab’s temporary exhibition beyond granite: pulling together. in our second unit, we learned from scholar-teachers from across the americas who have collaborated with descendant communities and museum workers to carry out reparative projects related to indigenous and afro-diasporic cultural sites and materials. students noted how inspired they were to talk with experts jessie ryker-crawford (white earth chippewa), keila grinberg, and sandra rozental about how they have channeled their scholarship into public-facing forms including policy papers, revisionist museography, and documentary films. the topics for our third unit were selected by students, who worked in small groups to identify veins of reparative art and architectural history that resonated with their shared research interests. these included occupation and settlement in the middle east, reparation in the digital and archival spheres, and considering reparation in pittsburgh. in their final projects, students maintained our seminar’s emphasis on public-facing outcomes by developing course syllabi and lectures, proposals for in-person and online exhibitions, and even an educational video modeled on the television program last week tonight with john oliver. in these diverse forms, students reparatively addressed topics ranging from thirteenth-century mongolian weavings, to sixteenth-century mesoamerican and european featherwork, to twenty-first century activist art in braddock, pennsylvania. questionnaire response jennifer josten http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ https://www.constellations.pitt.edu/groups/reparation https://monumentlab.com/projects/national-mall-project 6 q u e s t i o n n a i r e contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 10, no 1 (2025) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2025.352 by showing up for themselves and each other in this graduate seminar, participants learned firsthand that cases for symbolic reparation are present across the subjects that historians of art and architecture study, with no restrictions in terms of temporality, geography, or medium. indeed, the methods art and architectural historians employ—including considerations of function, agency, materiality, site, provenance, circulation, and historiography—can be highly effective for reading historical cases against the grain to comprehend and redress symbolic and intellectual forms that perpetuate structural inequities. as such, reparative methods offer historians of art and architecture pathways to contribute directly to the pressing social justice struggles of our times. the work we carried out together in this seminar laid the foundation for our department’s mellon-funded reparative histories of art and architecture initiative, through which we are working to identify reparative efforts within the discipline and build structures that can aid in promoting, adopting, and adapting reparative methodologies on a broad scale. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ https://www.haa.pitt.edu/news/reparative-histories-art-and-architecture-department-receives-mellon-grant https://www.haa.pitt.edu/news/reparative-histories-art-and-architecture-department-receives-mellon-grant 7 j e n n i f e r j o s t e n contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 10, no 1 (2025) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2025.352 new articles in this journal are licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 united states license. this journal is published by pitt open library publishing. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ https://www.library.pitt.edu/e-journals contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture vol 9, no 1 (2021) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2021.328 http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu caravans of gold, fragments in time: art, culture, and exchange across medieval saharan africa aga khan museum, toronto, canada jake eisensmith exhibition review exhibition schedule: the block museum, northwestern university, chicago, il, january 26– july 21, 2019; aga khan museum, toronto, canada, september 21, 2019–february 23, 2020; smithsonian museum of african art, washington, dc, tbd–tbd about the author jake eisensmith is a phd candidate in the history of art and architecture at the university of pittsburgh. his research examines trans-cultural interactions during the renaissance in southern italy, with a particular focus on italian response to islamic cultures. his work is primarily concerned with spatio-temporal cultural networks, emphasizing artistic creation in relation to historic and contemporaneous cultures. sites of particular interest include venice and its colonies, naples, sicily, and apulia, and their complex relationship with their own cultural pasts and the ottoman empire and north africa. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 9, no 1 (2021) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2021.328 museum exhibitions occupy a pivotal role in the expansion of geographies and cultures considered by art history within the medieval and renaissance periods as they highlight previously understudied objects and networks.1 the exhibition caravans of gold, fragments in time: art, culture, and exchange across medieval saharan africa successfully contributes to this trend in the astounding breadth and quality of the objects chosen as well as in the research the exhibition has spawned in the form of the accompanying catalog. the show decenters the historic focus on european art in favor of the sahara desert. the exhibition highlights the cultural interactions that occur between cultures, by placing equal attention on the sites of artistic creation and consumption. the exhibition began at northwestern university’s block museum (jan. 26–july 21, 2019), organized by a team headed by kathleen bickford berzock, before travelling northeast to the aga khan museum in toronto (sept. 21, 2019–feb. 23, 2020) and the smithsonian museum of african art in washington, dc (tba–dec. 31, 2021). my encounter with the exhibition came during its run at the aga khan museum, which utilized the new and open exhibition spaces of the second floor complemented by the permanent collection below. upon entry, the viewer encounters deep blue walls, explanatory wall text, a map of northern africa and europe that details the various trade networks in question, and finally an expansive screen projecting an image of the sahara desert. here, the text clearly delineates the goals of the exhibition: to focus on objects that move rather than solely on the sites in which they were either created or consumed, and the map certainly emphasizes this point. the map lacks any borders—historic or contemporary—instead offering an array of major trade hubs that functions as nodes within a webbed network of trade routes that span from ife through tunis and venice to lubeck in northern europe. all of this is to say the geography the exhibition takes on is expansive, and the objects they have pulled together are equally broad in the forms they take. this didactic introduction is supported by maps and works on paper, none more eye-catching than the facsimile of abraham cresques’s atlas of maritime charts (1375). the atlas prominently portrays mansa musa of the mali empire in eastern africa (mansa musa’s role has been highlighted in previous reviews—see smithsonian magazine and chicago tribune), stretches past the red sea, all the way to the pacific coast. the map is endlessly interesting and at times can overpower the smaller works on paper within this front section. it does, however, strongly convey just how large and interconnected the late medieval world was, subtly articulating that europe is in no way central to the narrative that is about to unfold. the viewer is then presented a path through the exhibition, with each section identified by different saturated wall colors and introductory wall text. the beginning sections are nonchronological and instead narrate the different artistic modes that relied upon natural resources and cultural influence from saharan africa. “driving desires” sets the historic stage, where highly profitable gold and salt were the primary commodities of the trans-saharan trade routes that facilitated the cultural contact and diffusion at the heart of the exhibition. this section details in particular how gold was the substance of currency, as in the gold dinar on 1 exhibitions like bellini and the east (2005), ornament and illusion: carlo crivelli of venice (2015), both at the stewart gardner museum, and more recently armenia! (2018) at the metropolitan museum of art have all brought scholarly attention to understudied cultural networks, artists, and geographies. caravans of gold, fragments in time: art, culture, and exchange across medieval saharan africa aga khan museum, toronto, canada jake eisensmith http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 9 7 j a k e e i s e n s m i t h contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 9, no 1 (2021) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2021.328 display, the de facto currency of the mediterranean, as well as material for cultural products, varying from gold leaf in italian panel painting to lettering in the sumptuous blue qur’an. in “saharan frontiers,” the exhibition becomes a sea of large display cases housing shards of pottery, glass vials, ceramic bowls, terracotta figures, and fabrics. the variety of objects helps to articulate the diverse destinations of african trade routes, each with its own resources of interest (like ivory, textiles, and indigo) that became essential in their own cultural objects. “the long reach of the sahara” contains some of the more astounding objects of the exhibition, including european ivories and igbo sculptures, which effectively expand the artistic materials and styles presented and demonstrate just how many cultures and cultural products were dependent on—and in dialogue with—saharan cultures. “shifting away from the sahara” begins a chronological consideration, outlining what happened when trade in the atlantic began to slow desert networks, highlighting how direct contact between sub-saharan and european cultures as well as those previously separated by multiple trade routes, like mamluk egypt, affected local cultural production. the final section, “saharan echoes,” emphasizes the afterlives of saharan medieval objects and concerns by showcasing their effect on more recent objects. overall, the exhibition presents the material impetus for the trade networks and lays out why north africa ought to be historically important even for scholars whose interests lay further afield: cultural products like gold-leaf paintings and ivory carvings could not exist without raw materials or influential cultural products supplied from africa. the juxtaposition of seated figure (ife) and madonna and child (france) perhaps best articulates this point in the section “long reach.” seated figure at first attracts the visitor as a masterful bronze cast whose naturalism and intricate facture may draw comparison to traditionally lauded works by donatello in florence made a century later. the wall label instead helps reconceive the work’s true importance beyond mimesis, as research on the work reveals the metal is not sourced locally but from france. seated figure is productively set against a contemporary french ivory sculpture of the virgin and child that proclaims the cultural entanglement of medieval europe and africa. by letting the objects take the lead and play against each other, the show tactfully demonstrates that any nuanced narrative of the italian renaissance or ottoman miniatures must also account for the networks that supplied such artistic creation in the first place. while the stunning objects take the fore, the average viewer struggles to identify the pertinent information that explains why this vial or that fabric was included in the exhibition. in many instances, without the aid of the exhibition catalog, the historic narratives and networks of objects are difficult to understand. in part, the wall labels are expected to fulfill this large task—provide tombstone information, illuminate the object to a general audience that may not be familiar with non-western and medieval material culture, and only then divulge the particulars that made this specific object of interest within an exhibition dedicated to cross-cultural movements and aesthetics. such a daunting task means that interested viewers frequently clumped around an expert or catalog owner passing through the exhibition hoping to overhear the information the wall label omitted. some objects made use of the limited space by prompting more questions than answers, helping to articulate how much work and scholarship are yet to be done. wall text for the asante jug (richard ii ewer), a copper ewer created in fourteenth-century england with an english inscription and found in asante possession during nineteenth-century british colonialism, notes that why and how the ewer went from medieval england into africa is unknown but expresses the importance of saharan trade routes as channels through which cultural goods and material resources flowed. while understanding the range of objects and cultures this show endeavors to put in conversation, one major issue of entanglement that the exhibition does not address in a direct or satisfactory manner is slavery. while the wall text introducing “saharan frontiers” notes, “the imports of the desert such as male and female slaves,” quoting the twelfth-century writer mohammed ibn abu bakr al-zuhri, the only noticeable discussion of the enslavement, sale, and forced movement of peoples comes in “saharan echoes.” the wall label for the nineteenthcentury danish drawing of a guinbri informs the viewer that the term “gnawa” originally http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 9 8 ca r a v a n s o f g o l d , f r a g m e n t s i n t i m e : a r t , c u l t u r e , a n d e x c h a n g e a c r o s s m e d i e v a l s a h a r a n a f r i c a contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 9, no 1 (2021) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2021.328 denoted descendants of enslaved people from western sudan who lived in morocco, and today refers more widely to “black moroccans.” even the section “shifting away,” which emphasizes african european trade on the atlantic coast, focuses on the shift of objects to new hubs of trade and does little more than acknowledge that the slave trade would dominate in this area. one can understand why the curators wanted to focus on the benefits that contact between cultures conjured and downplay a fuller and more complicated assessment; indeed, such a narrative leads away from the objects at hand and prompts larger questions about human labor and social histories. and certainly, the objects are the strength of the exhibition; the curators have endeavored to afford equal attention to all objects (regardless of how visually enticing), attending equally to pristine gold dinars and a contemporaneous glass bottle, pulling together objects that do not prioritize the “fine arts.” this array in large part comes from the many non-western institutions that the curators partnered with to bring stunning objects that scholars and publics who are familiar with western collections would not come into contact with otherwise. objects from museums and collections in morocco, mali, and nigeria did much of the heavy lifting within the exhibition and will bring much-needed scholarship and visibility to these collections, listed in full in the catalog and corresponding website caravansofgold.org. and yet, the relative silence on issues of race, slavery, and institutional inequity must be points of conversation for future shows. the exhibition climaxes in “long reach” and “shifting away” before taking a chronological jump in the final section, making “saharan echoes” feel disconnected from the rest of the exhibition. here, the show risked entering into the problematic historic narratives that cast africa as a timeless and unchanging location (something shared with the introductory screen of a static desertscape), which could be mitigated by wall text and labels, though once more such texts were already overburdened. ultimately, the exhibition attempts to highlight how traditional forms are articulated in recent objects. but one wonders if it was the best ending given the strength of the previous sections, which were expansive in their objects and geographies and made clear that medieval saharan africa was a complex, nuanced, and thriving site of commerce and culture that was strongly interconnected with the cultures around it. this very point comes across strongly in the exhibition catalog, which deserves as much praise as the show for its interdisciplinary research and excellent illustrations, assuaging some of the logistical shortcomings of installing such a challenging enterprise. overall, the diversity and multicultural connections presented in this show prove to be extremely relevant in a cultural moment in which we must continue to think critically about what voices are historically amplified or suppressed; confront institutions founded on white and european supremacy; and recommit ourselves, our discipline, and our institutions to a nuanced understanding of history that acknowledges its multivocal nature. new articles in this journal are licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 united states license. this journal is operated by the university library system of the university of pittsburgh as part of its d-scribe digital publishing program, and is co-sponsored by the university of pittsburgh press. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ http://caravansofgold.org/ http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/ http://www.pitt.edu/ http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/ http://www.upress.pitt.edu/upressindex.aspx caravans of gold, fragments in time: art, culture, and exchange across medieval saharan africa aga khan museum, toronto, canada caravans of gold, fragments in time: art, culture, and exchange across medieval saharan africa aga khan museum, toronto, canada contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture vol 9, no 1 (2021) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2021.330 http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu painting as a modern art in early renaissance italy robert brennan christopher j. nygren book review robert brennan, painting as a modern art in early renaissance italy. london: harvey miller, renovatio artium series in the arts of the renaissance, 2019. 366 pp; 11 b/w ills. + 115 color ills., 1 b/w table. hardcover €125 (9781912554003) about the author christopher j. nygren is associate professor of the history of art and architecture at the university of pittsburgh. his research focuses on the intersection of religion, philosophy, and art in the italian renaissance, and it has been featured in the art bulletin, renaissance quarterly, and other leading academic journals. his book, titian’s icons: tradition, charisma, and devotion in renaissance italy, was published by penn state university press in 2020. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 9, no 1 (2021) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2021.330 “claims to modernity,” a recognizable genre of academic writing, generally seek to demonstrate that some constitutive element of the contemporary world has its origins submerged in the period the author studies. over the last four years, the genealogies of modernity project has been dedicated to studying these sorts of claims. in that time, it has become clear that the term “modernity” has an irresistible appeal: “modernity talk” is ubiquitous. while the term “modern” has been used since the fifth century ce, modernity is a much more recent coinage, first used in the nineteenth century. what space exists between historical actors trying to recognize the limits of their own “modern” moment and claims to an absolute “modernity”? since i began training in the field of italian renaissance art history in the mid 2000s, claims to the “modernity” of renaissance art have animated much of the most exciting work in the field, but they have also engendered responses from those who feel it is important to underline the renaissance’s “non-modernity.”1 robert brennan’s painting as a modern art in early renaissance italy shows a different path forward by avoiding claims to absolute modernity and instead revealing how the term “modern” operated in art criticism of the early renaissance. brennan is principally interested in reconstructing the discursive field in which giotto’s primacy was still provisional and subject to challenge. by the middle of the sixteenth century, giotto had become a stand-in for the artistic revolution that was believed to have taken place around 1300. brennan looks to show how this came to be the case. giotto’s contemporaries certainly noted his prowess, and dante memorably described how he had surpassed his teacher, cimabue.2 but dante saw in this episode a message about human vanity, not the emergence of modernity. by contrast, brennan argues that, for authors writing around 1400, “the difference between giotto and his predecessors came to be understood as the beginning of ‘modern art’” (7). the study unfolds over three lengthy chapters. the introduction sets up the problem of the book by beginning with giorgio vasari, who was unable to recognize the radical nature of the fifteenth-century critics he cited. brennan demonstrates this by closely analyzing a passage in the lives in which vasari cites cennino cennini’s craftsman’s handbook. in vasari’s gloss, cennini described giotto as having “translated” the greek manner into latin, but as brennan shows through the rest of the book, this version critically undersells cennini’s account. chapter one focuses on the theory, practice, and social contexts that informed cennini’s appraisal of giotto’s revolutionary position in the history of art. cennini wrote his treatise around 1400 in padua, and he made much of his artistic genealogy, which descended from giotto via taddeo (ca. 1290–1366) and agnolo gaddi (1350–1396). essentially, the chapter aims to untangle the implications of a seemingly simple sentence embedded in the first chapter of cennini’s handbook: giotto “changed the art of painting from greek into latin, and made it modern, and had the art more complete than anyone since (rimutò l’arte del dipignere di grecho in latino, e ridusse al moderno, e ebe l’arte più compiute ch’avessi mai più nessuno [sic.])” (17). in this chapter, as elsewhere, brennan’s comfort with close reading carries the day. brennan explores what cennini meant when he said that giotto “reduced to modern” (ridusse al moderno) the art of painting. through philological concatenation, brennan demonstrates that giotto was understood not simply to have “translated” greek style into 1 for a discussion of these issues, see stephen j. campbell, “on renaissance nonmodernity,” i tatti studies in the italian renaissance 20, no. 2 (2017): 261–94. 2 purgatorio xi, 94–99. painting as a modern art in early renaissance italy robert brennan christopher j. nygren http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ https://genealogiesofmodernity.org/ 1 0 6 p a i n t i n g a s a m od e r n a r t i n e a r l y r e n a i s s a n c e i t a l y contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 9, no 1 (2021) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2021.330 latin, but also to have transmuted the style by simplifying or abbreviating painterly technique in such a way as to open a new pathway forward. the upshot of this chapter is to show that for cennini “to call [giotto’s] art ‘modern’ was to do something more than celebrate the new degree to which it could faithfully imitate outward appearances. it was to assert that the art now imitated nature inwardly, in its manner of operation, to an extent formerly impossible and never again to be superseded” (21). brennan tracks the differences between giotto’s pictorial style and that of byzantine icon painters by comparing cennini’s text to a late byzantine treatise, probably written sometime around 1355. this comparison shows how the simplicity of giotto’s style made it imitable. in this period “art” was linked to the greek concept of techne, a skill that can be taught. by reducing the complex procedures of byzantine painters, giotto did more than merely translate their style; he fundamentally transformed the style’s grammar, simplifying it and making it more accessible. in this, according to brennan, resides cennini’s account of how giotto inaugurated pictorial modernity. if chapter one traces cennini’s affirmative case for giotto’s modernity, chapter two takes a decidedly more jaundiced tone as it examines the biting irony embedded in the description of pictorial modernity provided by franco sacchetti in story 136 of the trecentonovelle (ca. 1390). in the story, a group of painters and sculptors gathers for a raucous dinner at a local monastery. after finishing the meal and imbibing a copious amount of wine, the conversation turns to the question “[w]hich master of painting was greatest of all, aside from giotto?” a few painters try their hand at answering the question, with mixed results, until they turn to sculptor alberto (presumably modeled on the sculptor alberto arnoldi), who offers an assessment of “modern painters” (moderni dipintori). alberto argues that “the women of florence are the greatest masters of painting there have ever been because, as one clearly sees, they restore things where nature is deficient” (95). cosmetics, rather than any theory of techne or “reduction,” carries the day in alberto’s assessment. alberto’s distasteful misogyny is rightly called out by the author, even as he seeks to understand the deeper, systemic logic that would lead an artist to make such a claim. this turns somewhat unexpectedly into a study of the repainting of icons—a “modern” cosmetic treatment of paintings made by antecedent generations. brennan shows how, along a number of axes (skin color, complexion, and proportion), the retouching of icons not only made them look refreshed but also brought them in line with new standards of fashion and beauty. skills that alberto had signaled as the province of the women painters of florence—the ability to make a crooked nose appear straight, for instance—are shown to be at the heart of these campaigns of pictorial renovation. brennan’s analysis of the repainting of medieval pictures to align with early renaissance tastes leads into an extended section on how this novel understanding of pictorial style depends on the emergence of “fashion” (foggia) as a cultural phenomenon in the 1340s, which has long been identified by scholars of costume as the crucial decade when “modern” attire emerged. the final chapter of the study moves into the fifteenth century and examines some sources that are more familiar to non-specialists, including leon battista alberti’s treatise on painting. however, the bulk of the chapter is given over to a less renowned author, michele savonarola, grandfather of the preacher girolamo savonarola, who was burned at the stake in florence 1498. michele was court physician in ferrara, where he wrote a treatise that included reflections on painting. savonarola spent considerable time reflecting on the shortcomings of giotto’s art, which he located in lack of symmetry and proportion: for savonarola, giotto was great, but he lacked a structured understanding of the art of painting. he followed intuition rather than rules. by contrast, savonarola and alberti both offer systematic accounts of painting, savonarola’s focused on proportion and alberti’s on the development of one-point perspective. even if alberti and savonarola suggest that giotto is excluded from the most cutting-edge art of their time (i.e. “modern,” of the moment), brennan argues that they nevertheless continued the project of pictorial modernity begun by giotto because they advanced “the process of setting the art on a new foundation in science and rationalizing its http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 1 0 7 ch r i s t o p h e r j . n y g r e n contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 9, no 1 (2021) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2021.330 procedures accordingly” (262). linear perspective was the fruit of that effort, as brennan shows through an analysis of the paintings of andrea mantegna. “cennini could not have imagined anything like it, and yet [perspective] perfectly satisfied the criteria for improvements intrinsic to his conception of art” (263). subsequent generations—alberti, ghiberti, filarete—eschewed claims to pictorial modernity. why? this question is addressed in the book’s conclusion. one difficulty of “modernity talk” is that historical horizons are ever shifting: the philological definition of modernus simply means “of this moment,” and that moment is constantly receding. the vertiginous scope of time snaps into focus with some “did you know?” facts: woolly mammoths still roamed the earth as the great pyramids were being created; aristotle (385–323 bce) is only slightly more distant from our present age (2021 ce) than he himself was distant from the old kingdom of egypt, the “age of the pyramids” (2686–2181 bce), about which he wrote in the meterologica; when vasari published his lives in 1568, the death of giotto (d. 1337) was more distant from him than the death of george washington (d. 1799) is from us in 2021. what are we to take away from all this? were the pyramids somehow more “modern” (of their moment) than mammoths? it may seem so because they are part of teleological narrative of technology and civilization that seems inexorable; but perhaps the only take away is that what counts as “modern” is always subjective. whereas cennini felt invested because he identified as part of giotto’s artistic heritage, by the time vasari was writing, giotto’s contribution had been frozen in amber, as it were, and transformed into an artifact of history. for vasari, the maniera moderna (“modern manner”) began roughly with the generation of leonardo da vinci and giorgione; giotto may have done much to move forward the art of painting, but in vasari’s account he is anything but “modern.” as brennan notes, the conception of pictorial “modernity” that he analyzes in cennini, sacchetti, savonarola, and alberti “must be considered a structural precondition for vasari’s outlook” (292); but by the sixteenth century, the historical horizon had once again shifted, distinguishing vasari’s “modernity talk” from that of previous generations. brennan takes the argument in many unexpected directions in order to diverge from more traditional explanations for when and how painting became modern. his narration is thoroughly seated in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, so before printmaking opened up the problem of substitution and raised questions about what constitutes an original. similarly, brennan avoids repeating the pervasive narrative of the secularization of painting in the fifteenth century. scholars like charles dempsey, hans belting, and richard goldthwaite all take different tacks on this argument, but each draws attention to how the increase in private ownership of paintings throughout the fifteenth century fostered an approach more amenable to poetic theory and mythological subjects. such arguments are usually not rooted in sources describing this turn of events as “modern,” and therefore it would be interesting to see brennan address them more directly, as he so clearly demonstrates that some notion of “the modern” was salient for his sources. the volume is extremely well produced. it is sumptuously illustrated with crisp color pictures. the prose flows, and all texts are translated in the main body text while footnotes contain the original language texts, allowing the reader to follow some of the more philological moments in the book’s argument. however, this reader was left feeling that the book might have benefitted from a slightly different structure. the length of the chapters makes them unwieldy for use in the classroom, and one wonders if there was a way to make the book more accessible to nonspecialists. renaissance italy has long been one of the major proving grounds for claims to modernity. jacob burckhardt memorably called italians the “first-born among the sons of modern europe,” http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 1 0 8 p a i n t i n g a s a m od e r n a r t i n e a r l y r e n a i s s a n c e i t a l y contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 9, no 1 (2021) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2021.330 a claim that was, of course, freighted with all sorts of noxious nationalistic implications.3 what constitutes the “modernity” of the italian renaissance is constantly being revised, but brennan’s book reveals that scholars have become much more subtle, reasoned, and philological in the arguments they make, in large part because the claims he makes are not absolute claims about who is and is not modern. rather, brennan attempts to recover the “modernity talk” that was circulating in certain elite circles in italy around 1400. modernity, it seems, is evergreen. new articles in this journal are licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 united states license. this journal is operated by the university library system of the university of pittsburgh as part of its d-scribe digital publishing program, and is co-sponsored by the university of pittsburgh press. 3 jacob burckhardt, the civilization of the renaissance in italy (oxford: phaidon, 1950), 70. on the nationalistic implications of burckhardt’s argument for germanic cultures, see martin a. ruehl, the italian renaissance in the german historical imagination, 18601930 (cambridge: cambridge university press, 2015), esp. 1-104. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/ http://www.pitt.edu/ http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/ http://www.upress.pitt.edu/upressindex.aspx painting as a modern art in early renaissance italy robert brennan painting as a modern art in early renaissance italy robert brennan contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture vol 8, no 1 (2019) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2019.288 http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu are indians in america’s dna? dr. monika siebert and marina tyquiengco conversation a conversation between dr. monika siebert and marina tyquiengco on: americans national museum of the american indian january 18, 2018–2022 washington, d.c. monika siebert, indians playing indian: multiculturalism and contemporary indigenous art in north america. tuscaloosa: university of alabama press, 2015. about the authors monika siebert is an associate professor of english and american studies at the university of richmond, virginia, where she teaches courses in contemporary american literature and north american indigenous literature and film. she is the author of indians playing indian: multiculturalism and contemporary indigenous art in north america (2015) and essays on indigenous literature and cinema in american literature, public culture, ab-original: journal of indigenous studies and first nations and first peoples' cultures, and mississippi quarterly. marina tyquiengco is a chamoru scholar of global indigenous art and a phd candidate at the unviersity of pittsburgh. she is currently a visiting instructor at brown university. her dissertation focuses on the concept of embodiment and indigenous artists’ use of their bodies in artworks from the 1990s to today in australia, canada and the united states. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 8, no 1 (2019) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2019.288 the 2018 national museum of the american indian (nmai) exhibition americans, curated by paul chaat smith and cécile r. ganteaume, takes on the trope of indians within contemporary popular culture as well as history.1 americans presents a plethora of popular images of native americans and expounds on well-known figures and histories involving native americans: thanksgiving, pocahontas, the battle of little bighorn, and the trail of tears. i first viewed the exhibition in fall 2018 and was transfixed by the curators’ expansive and thoughtful approach to the proliferation of stereotypical indian images. later, after revisiting dr. monika siebert’s book, indians playing indian: multiculturalism and contemporary indigenous art in north america (2015), i thought back to the exhibition and potential overlaps between the exhibition and her book. a conversation with siebert about americans seemed fitting as her book includes a full chapter on the first iteration of the permanent exhibitions of the nmai. this issue of contemporaneity, titled “yesterday’s contemporaneity,” examines the relationships between artists and their present moments across a range of historical time periods. it aligns well with my concept for the conversation, thinking through an exhibition that suggests that indian tropes might actually constitute a form of authenticity. the call for papers for this issue asked, “how can both history and modernity be visualized, contextualized, or conceptualized to create a sense of contemporaneity?” this question has a particularly provocative valence in the field of native american art, which has long wrestled with distinctions between modernity and tradition, history and contemporaneity. this conversation with dr. monika siebert engages this and other questions of the call. in thinking historically about native american art, the immediate concept i draw upon is “the denial of coevalness,” a phrase coined by anthropologist johannes fabian,2 who used it as shorthand for his brand of anthropological critique—namely, that many white euro-american anthropologists denied such coextensive being in time to their non-white subjects, placing them instead in an imagined past.3 in doing so, rather than genuinely approaching their ethnographic subjects as equals, anthropologists knowingly (or inadvertently) promoted colonial projects in the americas and beyond. fabian’s concept exceeds the field of anthropology, but gestures toward a much larger issue: conceptualizing indigenous4 peoples as “savage” or “primitive” obscures the history of distinct indigenous people globally, some of whom learned western law and customs in order to combat colonial encroachment. indians—meaning all indigenous americans—did not exist as a category of people prior to colonization. the term has been popularized over time due to a historical misunderstanding by christopher columbus that the island on which he landed was part of asia, rather than part 1 the title of this article comes from cover of gallery guide to americans exhibition at the national museum of the american indian, washington, dc. in the spirit of the national museum of the american indian’s fourth museum, i.e. making their collections available far from dc, via the internet, there is a website for americans that provides a digital version of the exhibition experience, including themed galleries: https://americanindian.si.edu/americans/. 2 johannes fabian, time and the other: how anthropology makes its object (new york: columbia university press, 1976). 3 ibid. 4 the word indigenous is capitalized throughout the conversation. see gregory younging, elements of indigenous style (edmonton: brush education inc., 2018). are indians in america’s dna? dr. monika siebert and marina tyequiengco http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 8 2 a r e i n d i a n s i n a m e r i c a ’ s d n a ? contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 8, no 1 (2019) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2019.288 of a distinct landmass. previously on the american continents were peoples who fought, traded, and coexisted.5 these peoples identified primarily with their specific tribe, clan, and/or community.6 indians, as such, today exist as a diverse yet connected group because of their shared experiences of colonization and collective resistance. to paraphrase chaat smith, these diverse peoples had to learn to be indian.7 indians playing indians reminds readers that, under the umbrella term “indians” in the contemporary moment, are still separate peoples who constitute separate nations. native americans have distinct interests and goals that overlap mainly through collective calls for recognition and sovereignty. related to both the historic and contemporary challenges of sovereignty and racialization is siebert’s concept of multicultural misrecognition, which she defines as “the substitution of cultural meanings for political meanings of indigeneity—that is the replacement of the concept of indigenous nations with that of indigenous cultures in contemporary popular, and often scholarly, discourse.”8 in a critique of multiculturalism from an indigenous historical perspective, indians playing indians details how contemporary artists have used their respective mediums to combat multicultural misrecognition and help mainstream society re-envision north america as consisting of distinct political entities: indigenous nations (or first nations) along with the united states and canada. in the introduction, “indigeneity and multicultural misrecognition,” siebert addresses the opening of the national museum of the american indian in d.c. and its initial construction of the permanent galleries.9 there has been much criticism of the nmai, including from prominent ho-chunk scholar amy lonetree, about the lack of indictment of colonization in these early exhibitions.10 siebert, however, generally views the nmai exhibitions positively for tuscarora scholar jolene rickard’s expert curating and her ability to tell complex stories about colonization and continued life in the americas. rickard’s approach, as siebert describes it, could not be further from americans, which highlights the proliferation of native american images in popular culture—as characters, mascots, toys, and advertisements. americans demonstrates the copiousness of such stereotyped images of indian particularity, the tropes, visualized and universalized, that continue to this day. in a deftly designed exhibition, these advertisement indians appear both uncanny and completely quotidian as they grace familiar products in niches and posters, amid projections of western films, in which indians are played by non–native american actors. on march 23, 2019, monika siebert and i explored the exhibition together, dwelling most extensively in the main gallery of americans, titled indians everywhere, and considering what narratives and strategies might be at play. we discussed the side galleries, titled the invention of thanksgiving, the queen of america, the removal act, and the indians win. there is 5 paul chaat smith, everything you know about indians is wrong (minneapolis: university of minnesota press, 2009), 4. 6 ibid. 7 ibid., 5–6. 8 monika siebert, “introduction: indigeneity and multicultural misrecognition,” in indians playing indian: multiculturalism and contemporary indigenous art in north america (tuscaloosa: university of alabama press, 2015), 2–3. 9 monika siebert, “chapter 1: indigeneity and the dialectic of recognition at the national museum of the american indian,” in indians playing indian, 22–61. 10 amy lonetree, “missed opportunities: reflections on the nmai,” american indian quarterly 30, nos. 3/4 (2006): 632–45, https://www.jstor.org/stable/4139033. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 8 3 d r . m o n i k a s i e b e r t a n d m a r i n a t y q u i e n g c o contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 8, no 1 (2019) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2019.288 additional gallery space for reflection and viewer response. in this cacophony of indian culture, my conversation with siebert seeks to locate potential multicultural misrecognition and situate americans in our contemporary understanding of native americans. we discussed what effects the surplus of native americans in images can potentially have on non-native viewers’ understanding of native americans as members of distinct nations. our conversation focused on the exhibition design of americans and how the curators’ choices lead to specific understanding on the part of the viewers.11 a multipage gallery guide in americans invites visitors to “use this guide to explore why indians are in america’s dna.”12 quoting from this text as the title to our conversation, we hope to unpack why the curators took such a surprising and effective approach to native american history and culture. conversation marina tyquiengco: indians everywhere, the entry-level gallery designed by wendy evans joseph architects, is both sleek and cacophonous in my opinion.13 i was reminded of a statement from your book when viewing this initial gallery. contemplating the original installation you write that, “this message of fundamental indian normativity, as opposed to inassimilable otherness, is further reinforced in many of the performances by contemporary american indian artists invited regularly to the museum.”14 does this gallery fit what you mean by “fundamental indian normativity” and an abundance of material culture (which you also discussed as a strategy of the museum)?15 or, instead, is this material culture so paradoxically not indian by being posed as american? monika siebert: in “indigeneity and the dialectic of recognition at the national museum of the american indian,”16 the first chapter of my book, i turned to the notions of the fundamental indian normativity on one hand, and the dialectic of scarcity and abundance on the other, to describe some of the rhetorical strategies deployed in the nmai washington d.c. museum when it opened in 2004.17 the message of fundamental indian normativity organized, to my mind, many of the inaugural film and performance offerings—such as, for example, chris eyre’s film a thousand roads or a variety of concerts by contemporary indigenous bands— 11 the text below is an edited transcript of a conversation recorded in the café of the national museum of the american indian. it represents one hour of a much longer discussion about the exhibition and siebert’s work. the text has been edited for clarity and footnoted to provide readers with additional details and avenues for future exploration. 12 quotation from cover of gallery guide to americans exhibition at the national museum of the american indian, washington, dc. 13 for more information about the exhibition design, see alan michelson, “designing americans: a conversation with wendy evans joseph,” nad now, october 29, 2018, accessed may 15, 2019, https://www.nadnowjournal.org/in-conversation/designing-americans-a-conversation-with-wendy-evansjoseph/. 14 siebert, indians playing indian, 55. 15 ibid., 50. 16 ibid., 22–61. 17 abundance and scarcity working together is how siebert conceptualized these early exhibitions to demonstrate the expansiveness of native american culture and, simultaneously, all that has been lost/gone missing due to continued colonialism. see siebert, indians playing indian, 50. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 8 4 a r e i n d i a n s i n a m e r i c a ’ s d n a ? contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 8, no 1 (2019) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2019.288 and it aimed to counteract the idea of indigenous peoples as belonging in the american past. it said, more or less: we are here, we have not disappeared, and while we retain our cultural distinctiveness, we conduct our daily lives amongst other americans and often in very similar ways, living and working in both urban and rural areas, occupying contemporary professions, and so on. the claim of fundamental normativity concerned actual contemporary american indian people, living in the twenty-first century. to describe the ideological import of the objects featured in the inaugural exhibitions our lives18 and our peoples,19 objects that were selected out of the museum’s enormous archive, i turned to the notion of the dialectic of scarcity and abundance, which i saw as a brilliant move by the curators to reconcile two seemingly conflicting narratives the museum was telling: one about the damages of ongoing colonialism and the other about indigenous survival and adaptation. an abundance of the traces of historical material cultures was necessary to evidence survival and continuity, or survivance as gerald vizenor would have it, in order to support claims to tribal sovereignty.20 the fragmentation of the material record testified to the tremendous destructive power of european and then american colonialism. if the nmai’s original exhibits showcased objects from indigenous material cultures, historical and contemporary, across the americas, indians everywhere is interested above all in a subset of broader mainstream material culture of the united states, a vast collection of indian images adorning . . . well . . . pretty much everything. thus, we can still very much talk about normativity and abundance. the exhibition’s central and intentionally provocative claim is that indians are in the american dna, thus they are not merely normative but constitutive. but, as the objects of exhibition changed so did the terms of the conversation, haven’t they? what’s normative here is the european and american fascination with “the indian,” representing the ideas about who the indigenous people were, evidenced in the objects and images on display here, and the extent to which this concept and the images that forged it served u.s. american national mythmaking. if indians everywhere implies any dialectic, it would have to be one of the hypervisibility of indian images and the invisibility of actual contemporary american indian people, given the exhibition’s opening question: “how is it that the indians can be so present and so absent in american life?” we are talking about the perspective of the non-native mainstream society, of course, the demographic that chaat smith and ganteaume explicitly want to address with this exhibition, because american indians certainly see themselves. the question of “is this material culture paradoxically not indian?” is tricky. because, the obvious answer is, of course, it’s not. this is mainstream u.s. culture in the process of deploying “the indian” for the purposes of national cultural self-definition. and yet, the obvious fact is that a lot of these objects show up in indigenous lives, too, because american indians 18 the exhibition our lives: contemporary life and identities was on view at the national museum of the american indian from september 21, 2004, to july 6, 2015. more information can be found here: national museum of the american indian, “our lives,” accessed may 15, 2019, https://americanindian.si.edu/explore/exhibitions/item?id=528. 19 our peoples: giving voice to our histories was also an inaugural exhibition on view from september 21, 2004, to january 5, 2014, at the nmai d.c., exhibition description here: national museum of the american indian, “our peoples: giving voice to our histories,” accessed may 15, 2019, https://americanindian.si.edu/explore/exhibitions/item?id=828. 20 see gerald vizenor, manifest manners: narratives on postindian survivance (lincoln, ne: university of nebraska, 1999). http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ https://americanindian.si.edu/explore/exhibitions/item?id=528 https://americanindian.si.edu/explore/exhibitions/item?id=828 8 5 d r . m o n i k a s i e b e r t a n d m a r i n a t y q u i e n g c o contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 8, no 1 (2019) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2019.288 live in the contemporary united states and participate in its daily, political, economic, social, and cultural rituals. american indians buy land o’ lakes butter or indian spirit cigarettes; display reproductions of edward curtis’s photographs or posters advertising western films; catch a game of basketball or football; ride indian motorcycles and drive jeep cherokees; fly apache helicopters and deploy tomahawk missiles, and so on.21 historically, american indian people have intentionally appropriated some of the popular culture’s indian images for a variety of reasons. leaders of eastern seaboard nations donned plains headdresses for their diplomatic missions to the federal government; edward curtis’s stoic indians showed up on american indian movement (aim) t-shirts in the 1970s; contemporary american indian visual artists continue to use archival and popular culture indian images in their work.22 the stereotypes get reframed and reused by indigenous peoples. american indian people live surrounded by the very images that are on display here whether they embrace them or are offended by them. so, to that extent, contemporary indigenous material culture, too, is represented here. 21 edward sheriff curtis was amateur ethnographer and photographer best known for his extensive photographic folio, the north american indian (1907–1930). these photographs have come to symbolize a particularly traditional, staged vision of american indian life then thought to be heading toward extinction. edward sheriff curtis’s project has inspired exhibitions such as contemporary native photographers and the edward curtis legacy, zig jackson, wendy red star, will wilson (portland museum of art, february 6–may 8, 2016) and artistic projects such as matika wilbur’s project 562, documenting federally recognized tribes across the united states, http://www.project562.com/. 22 the american indian movement was an important civil rights movement of the 1970s inspired by the civil rights movement and the black power movement. see paul chaat smith and robert allen warrior, like a hurricane: the indian movement from alcatraz to wounded knee (new york: the new press, 1996) for history of the movement. in the context of art, see jessica horton, art for an undivided earth: the american indian movement generation (durham, nc: duke university press, 2017). figure 1 paul morigi/ap images for national museum of the american indian, installation view of central gallery, january 2018. digital photograph. national museum of the american indian, washington, d.c. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 8 6 a r e i n d i a n s i n a m e r i c a ’ s d n a ? contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 8, no 1 (2019) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2019.288 mt: this is a very interesting point, that indigenous material culture is also represented in americans through the overabundance of indian images which are available to mainstream society. the circulation of these indian images here has the potential to demonstrate how american indians are americans full stop. in the galleries, we had a very productive conversation about the word ‘cacophony.’ by this i meant initially that in the indians everywhere gallery, i did not know exactly where to look and my concentration darted to all corners of the room filled with images. discussing this gallery, you situated it into this mid-twentieth century lens to argue that it is meant to be explicitly modern rather than contemporary. this is an interesting tension with the aesthetics of clean modernism in a space so full of objects. can you elaborate more on the experience of being in the exhibition? ms: this was my first impression, that most of the images come from the mid-twentieth century and represent the american mass culture after the second world war. when we actually looked at all the images in the indians everywhere hall, we discovered that there were reproductions created for the exhibition of images from the nineteenth century, the eighteenth century, and even the seventeenth century, such as the early virginia state seals, for example. but the overwhelming impression is that of the objects of the twentieth-century mass culture. most images in the main hall evoke that period, when new technologies of reproduction facilitated ever wider and faster dissemination of indian images. thus, side by side with photos of president franklin d. roosevelt in the 1930s, and other politicians, in conversations with indigenous politicians, or those of celebrities visiting reservations (einstein among the dine, for example), we have posters of cowboys and indians advertising cold war westerns, posters featuring mascots in headdresses advertising sporting events, and numerous images advertising products of mass consumption (food, toys, clothing, and so on). with the exception of the films projected at the hall’s far end, the main aesthetic appears to evoke analog rather than digital technology of image reproduction. computers were being invented already during the second world war, but the mid-twentieth century is still decades away from the digital saturation of daily life we experience now. it seems that, at least aesthetically, based on the products being advertised in the images on exhibition here, it is a post-wwii moment that predominates, with occasional examples from the earlier centuries. and, yes, you are right, the first impression is of both abundance and cacophony. there’s so much here, we do not know where to look; all the objects draw us in, compete for our attention: the imperatives of advertising and of museum exhibition work in tandem. cacophony, usually a negative term, meaning a discordant, unpleasant mixture of sounds, would describe this collection of objects as gathered together seemingly haphazardly, without discernible patterning or signposting to facilitate movement through the exhibition following a specific narrative. in a cacophonous collection, there’s no origin, no progression, no telos. by contrast, abundance is typically positive, suggesting vibrancy and richness, testifying powerfully to the presence of something. when we want to make an argument about something taking place, we show a lot of examples. in indians everywhere, we do indeed literally see a lot of indians everywhere around us and are invited to just experience the abundance first. this gallery borrows a rhetorical strategy already tested in other places in the museum, especially in the windows on collections rotating series of exhibits dispersed throughout the building (examples including arrowheads, dolls, beaded objects, clothing, tomahawks, and peace medals). these exhibits offer the objects in all their abundance and without apparent curatorial gloss; the captions and contextual information are available but not at hand, they have to be retrieved from digital screens or printed guides available nearby. in indians everywhere, rather than being offered a clear narrative to follow as we move http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 8 7 d r . m o n i k a s i e b e r t a n d m a r i n a t y q u i e n g c o contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 8, no 1 (2019) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2019.288 through the exhibition, we are put into a universe of signification and left to our own devices to decode it.23 mt: that statement powerfully sums up the experience of the main hall of americans for me, which i understood through the sense of cacophony. yet, as we discussed, there is a tension between all the images that we might not understand as going together other than the presence of native stereotype and the fact that so many of these products are so familiar. ms: i think that indians everywhere invites affective rather than conceptual engagement, at least at first. there is no obvious way to begin touring this hall, other than by plunging in medias res, which suggests that the engagement with indigenous peoples on the continent had been the fundamental, constitutive fact of american life, from its very beginning. this is then one meaning of the exhibition’s provocative “indians in american dna” gambit. for the majority of contemporary museum visitors, this engagement typically involves indian images— that is, stereotypes of indianness dispersed throughout popular culture that mark our everyday lives in mundane ways, rather than contemporary american indians themselves. and since the exhibition itself does not offer a starting point, we rely on what we recognize here to serve as a lens leading us through the exhibition. this is why so many of these images harken to the likely visual and affective landscapes of the visitors’ childhood: the cowboy and indian games, the thanksgiving pageants, the halloween costumes, the dress-up games of summer camps. these make up the core paraphernalia of american childhood, and they are all about indians. the food products are another way to appeal to the viewers affectively through nostalgia. indians everywhere invites you to remember what food was on your childhood breakfast table and how it tasted or what mascots graced your sports and cheerleading outfits in high school or college. it is as if the hall was recreating a world in which you have always been surrounded by indian images that were taken for granted, that did not demand any kind of examination, that were just there, an easy uncontested part of the american daily life. before the debates over cultural appropriation began, before the indian mascots and pocahontas halloween costumes became offensive. mt: the nostalgic dimension of the exhibition is made more effective by its design. as we walked through the exhibition, making sense of this lack of narrative of progression, we considered several terms useful in understanding the exhibition layout such as twodimensionality versus three-dimensionality, grid, frame, and analog. ms: there is an interesting play between two-dimensionality and three-dimensionality in americans. all the objects in indians everywhere are exhibited in a way that unifies them, by flattening their surfaces and fitting them into a geometrical grid.24 while the majority are images (posters, photographs, reproductions of paintings, and so on), those that are threedimensional are set back in the walls behind a glass vitrine to maintain the flat surface of the exhibition walls. all are placed in square or rectangular metal frames, with a four-digit catalogue number, real or fake, attached. you saw here the influence of the instagram aesthetic, an image with a little caption below, and a kind of standardized and industrial look 23 there are gallery guides and several suggestions of ways to navigate the experience in its online page and through the guide. what we mean here is that there is no singular progression through the exhibition that is immediately apparent upon entering. 24 with a few exceptions, most of the main gallery hall is lined with reproductions of advertisements, seals, posters, photographs, rather than with the original objects themselves. more information is available online at https://americanindian.si.edu/americans/#gallery. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 8 8 a r e i n d i a n s i n a m e r i c a ’ s d n a ? contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 8, no 1 (2019) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2019.288 to it. even the exhibition hall itself is flat and rectangular, with only the wall opposite the entry curving into a half-spherical projection screen, that is nevertheless broken up into several smaller frames/screens repeating the overall network/grid-like pattern. all these frames, along with the blackness of the walls, evoke cinema and the associated ideas of framing and projection. however, there are also multiple entrances on each side of the hall leading into adjacent spaces, and thus suggesting depth, further dimensions beyond the flat walls of the main hall, and thus possible other ways to engage with the collections and the stories they might tell. these adjacent spaces contain galleries on thanksgiving, pocahontas, trail of tears, and the battle of little bighorn as well as one gallery designed to facilitate visitors’ responses to the exhibition. unlike the main hall, where we experience an abundant cacophony, these themed galleries explicitly offer a linear way through their exhibits and a coherent narrative about their contents. in indians everywhere, the objects are framed within a grid created out of metal, which invokes some dimensionality. in the pocahontas gallery, titled queen of america, this grid loses some of its geometry and dimension—it is painted on the wall—in order to evoke the early maps of virginia, sketched by john smith.25 these maps were designed to raise funds for the virginia company by depicting the densely populated virginian shore as a promising spot for a trading post with plenty of people to trade with and with functioning transportation networks, i.e., the rivers.26 these maps were frequently reproduced and disseminated as the british colonial project unfolded. in the indians everywhere gallery, there are 350 plus images that seem to be collected not according to any particular logic other than their popularity. and while most of them are copies of original analog images, they are framed by a grid evoking the current era in which digital technology is the norm. so, mapping “america” and framing “the indian” are highlighted here as the primary forms of our attempts to account for the historical and contemporary american engagement with indigenous people. the exhibition now emerges as centrally interested in these very processes. mt: i like this idea that the organizing principle is literal frames, because the indians everywhere gallery is made up of a metal framework of triangle forms and they frame all the images and the cachets of smaller images. in each little enclave is an object that is literally framed by metal and conceptually framed by our experiences with it. ms: we talked about the indians everywhere design before we went into the the indians win gallery (on the battle of little big horn). now we know that the main hall in a way prepared us for the insight the indians win offers about the emergence of mechanical reproduction and the proliferation of indian images. in the late nineteenth century, there was an acceleration of the reproduction of images, which the curators trace back to the invention of the stereotype. the stereotype was originally a mode of mechanical reproduction of images and then it becomes a concept designating a cliché; that is, an idea repeated so often and disseminated so widely that it is taken for truth. taking this idea back to the main hall, we can now reflect on how even though each image is unique, the idea is repeated, the underlying grid suggesting the possibility of infinite reproduction and dissemination. the cacophonous abundance of images resulting from these new technologies ends up constituting the lived reality of the american experience; we are back in the dark projection room filled with images of indians. 25 for a summary of information on captain john smith’s early maps, see “smith maps,” national park service, accessed may 15, 2019, https://www.nps.gov/cajo/learn/smith-maps.,htm. 26 ibid. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 8 9 d r . m o n i k a s i e b e r t a n d m a r i n a t y q u i e n g c o contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 8, no 1 (2019) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2019.288 mt: the invention of thanksgiving film takes up an entire gallery near the entrance of the exhibition. the film is a graphic depiction of paul chaat smith’s musings on thanksgiving. in the film, despite its title, chaat smith does not really provide any clear history of thanksgiving, but instead a graphic depiction of what it could potentially mean. could you perhaps respond to it? ms: what paul chaat smith does in this particular short segment stands in sharp relief against other recent video responses to thanksgiving by indigenous people, such as, for example, the teen vogue educational video “native american girls describe the real history behind thanksgiving (2016),” made available on social media every thanksgiving.27 at the end of this video, a tribally diverse group of young american indian women overturn the thanksgiving table in front of the camera, scattering its proverbial abundance, in a gesture of rejection of the very idea of thanksgiving. at the end of the invention of thanksgiving, chaat sits at the thanksgiving table with everybody else and says that he would rather be there than not be there. it is a fundamentally different rhetorical gesture, and one repeated throughout americans. mt: since you teach at the university of richmond, i thought that the queen of america gallery on pocahontas would be a particularly interesting space to discuss. pocahontas’s image is omnipresent, but specifics of her and her life are unknown by the general public. president trump continues to use pocahontas as a nickname for massachusetts senator and 2020 presidential candidate elizabeth warren who claims native american ancestry.28 you are soon publishing an article on pocahontas.29 i learned from you that pocahontas has had an interesting history with the tribe of which she was historically a member, the pamunkey indian tribe.30 can you discuss your article and the overlap with the images of pocahontas reproduced in this exhibition? ms: the essay, titled “pocahontas looks back and then looks elsewhere,” originated with an invitation from gerald mcmaster to speak at “the entangled gaze: indigenous and european views of each other” conference at the art gallery of ontario and ocad university in toronto in 2017.31 it allowed me to bring together two long-standing interests: contemporary visual appropriations of pocahontas, on one hand, and the work of mohawk artist shelley niro, on the other. i was particularly intrigued by a specific formal feature of her 2003 short film the 27 teen vogue, “native american girls describe the real history behind thanksgiving,” youtube, november 23, 2016, accessed may 15, 2019, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k7jlebwma0u. 28 doina chiacu, “senator warren, mocked by trump as 'pocahontas,' says dna test backs her ancestry,” reuters, october 15, 2018, accessed may 15, 2019, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usapolitics-warren/senator-warren-mocked-by-trump-as-pocahontas-says-dna-test-backs-her-ancestryiduskcn1mp1i0. 29 monika siebert, “pocahontas looks back and then looks elsewhere: the entangled gaze in contemporary indigenous art,” ab-original: journal of indigenous studies and first nations’ and first peoples’ studies 2, no. 2 (2019): 207–26. 30 to learn more about the pamunkey indian tribe, see its official website: http://pamunkey.org/. 31 more information about this conference can be found on its page: ocad university and the art gallery of ontario, “the entangled gaze: indigenous and european views of each other,” accessed may 15, 2019, http://www.entangledgaze.ca/. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ http://pamunkey.org/ 9 0 a r e i n d i a n s i n a m e r i c a ’ s d n a ? contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 8, no 1 (2019) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2019.288 shirt,32 a piece that i have used in my classes to illustrate some of the central issues involved in thinking about indigenous nations through the prism of multiculturalism versus via the concept of indigenous sovereignty. the film intertwines two series of panning shots: the first of natural landscape and the second of a woman (played by the contemporary visual artist hulleah tsinhnahjinnie) who either looks directly at the camera, at times with her eyes obscured by reflective glasses, or turns to the side revealing her profile in a gesture that mimics the stoic indian familiar from curtis photographs or from the indian nickel and that is present in so many of the images displayed here in indians everywhere. what interested me in particular, however, was the very first thirty seconds of the film, before tsinhnahjinnie assumes the first “indian pose,” a brief moment when she can be observed looking off to the side, beyond the frame of the camera, laughing with someone that we do not get to see, at all, ever. given the obvious cultural capital of looking back at the camera to assert subjectivity and expose the various investments of the viewers’ gaze, what is the power of looking not just away from the camera but altogether elsewhere? why engage the viewers only to point out their exclusion from an implied but invisible physical universe and its joyous circle of sociality? what could be the rhetorical potential of that looking elsewhere in terms of the issues of privacy, agency, sovereignty, and in the context of historical representations of indigenous women? the numerous portraits of pocahontas allowed me to bring a historical dimension to my thinking about niro’s contemporary work. pocahontas is likely the most depicted indigenous historical figure in north america. i live and teach in virginia, where political and cultural claims to pocahontas are on display everywhere. my essay traces a historical genealogy of pocahontas in the act of looking and the cultural expediency of the direction of her gaze at specific historical junctions—from the 1616 simon van de passe’s engraving made when she was in london,33 through other iconic images: the friezes and paintings included in the capitol’s rotunda, the senate chambers, the virginia historical society, and the virginia museum of fine arts. you see them all in the gallery here as well because these portraits of pocahontas have been foundational to the national self-definition in the united states; they are part of the national dna, to use chaat smith’s formulation again. we do not have much at all in terms of a historical record of the actual powhatan woman who lived in the early seventeenth century, a pivotal moment in the history of this continent. but we can learn a lot about the united states and ourselves as americans by studying how her image gets appropriated throughout the subsequent centuries by variety of political constituents, from the federal government to indigenous peoples themselves. the evidence is in the artwork they fund, including the historical friezes and paintings in the capitol rotunda and in the national portrait gallery, curatorial endeavors such as americans here at the nmai, exhibits of contemporary indigenous art in tribal cultural centers as well as non-native exhibition spaces throughout the country, even in local initiatives such as the pocahontas reframed storytellers festival that is now in its third year in richmond, virginia.34 what does it mean, then, for pocahontas to be looking back at her viewers, as she does in van de passe’s portrait or to be looking down or away from 32 beachside bar, “shelly niro: the shirt,” youtube, november 7, 2017, accessed may 15, 2019, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kx2lkfujay4. the piece has been purchased by the national gallery of canada, see the national gallery of art, “shelley niro the shirt,” https://www.gallery.ca/collection/artwork/the-shirt. 33 the image referred to here is simon van de passe’s engraving of pocahontas from 1616; more information here: https://www.virginiahistory.org/collections-and-resources/virginia-history-explorer/lifeportrait-pocahontas. 34 more information on the festival as part of the evolution 2019 programing in virginia from the nmai magazine can be found at https://www.americanindianmagazine.org/story/virginias-pivotal-year. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ https://www.americanindianmagazine.org/story/virginias-pivotal-year 9 1 d r . m o n i k a s i e b e r t a n d m a r i n a t y q u i e n g c o contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 8, no 1 (2019) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2019.288 them, as she does in the famous john gatsby chapman painting the baptism of pocahontas (1839).35 and to connect niro to pocahontas: what does it mean for pocahontas’ late twentieth-/early twenty-first-century evocations to engage in the various iterations of this entangled gaze. mt: as we talked, you mentioned learning about the exhibition from the curators. an important point was starting from the place of knowledge of the potential viewer might already have. when you enter the queen of america gallery, there is video of people responding to who and what they thought pocahontas was, none of whom claim a particular connection to the pamunkey people. i wonder if we might revisit the idea that what the museum visitors already know impacts their understanding of the show. ms: the curator paul chaat smith has suggested on several occasions speaking in advance of the americans opening that the primary rhetorical strategy is to meet the visitors where they are in terms of exposure to american indians—that is, in this mainstream american culture saturated with indian stereotypes. the curators saw this approach as a corrective to the rhetorical strategies of the inaugural exhibitions. i was a fan of the inaugural exhibitions for the way they managed to articulate a critique of the ongoing u.s. colonialism in the very space—a federally funded smithsonian institution museum on the national mall—designed to conceal it, and to foreground the issue of tribal sovereignty evidenced by the historic treaties with the u.s. federal government. supporting these political relationships was the original imperative of the museum, but after a decade, the curators realized that the inaugural exhibitions did not have the desired effect, the visitors often expressing confusion and frustration with the museum. according to chaat smith the museum’s mission continues to be the fostering of tribal sovereignty. the museum’s director, kevin gover, believes that the more americans know about american indians the more likely they will be in the future to engage in democratic decisions on behalf of indigenous peoples and their nations. americans represents this new approach, educating the american public about the historical and current realities of indigenous lives in the united states. thus, indians everywhere, the hallway through which we enter americans emphatically greets the viewers with the cacophony of abundant indian images familiar from american popular culture. it even offers comfortable large sofas in the very center of the hall inviting the visitors to sink in, look around, recognize, and reminisce. we see this strategy replayed in the pocahontas gallery, which begins with a short video comprised of the interviews with random people encountered on the street responding to a question about what they know about pocahontas. it turns out that they know not much at all beyond the stereotypes evoked by the most iconic of her images. and only from there, once we are reassured by witnessing others whose limited knowledge might reflect our own, we move to the more complicated and historically accurate stories unfolded in the gallery’s layered central narrative. as you noted, in the pocahontas gallery, we move in reverse, we start with the contemporary stereotypes and then uncover the actual history the stereotypes have obscured, to the extent that it is recoverable, of course. 35 more information on gatsby chapman’s painting can be found here: https://www.aoc.gov/art/historic-rotunda-paintings/baptism-pocahontas. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ https://www.aoc.gov/art/historic-rotunda-paintings/baptism-pocahontas 9 2 a r e i n d i a n s i n a m e r i c a ’ s d n a ? contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 8, no 1 (2019) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2019.288 the same logic governs the gallery on indian removal, with its opening evocation of a familiar cultural trope about to be revealed as obscuring a much different historical truth: “trail of tears: not what you think. not even close.”36 the exhibit begins where the viewers are: trail of tears was a traumatic historical event that befell the cherokee nation and changed them irrevocably; it was about them, the indians, rather than us, the americans. the exhibition teaches us to see this specific event in the broader context of indian removal as a federal policy, implemented at great costs and massively transformative to both the indigenous nations that suffered displacement and to the united states. the ultimate takeaway is an understanding that indian removal foundationally created the united states as we know it in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.37 and we see yet another version of this very strategy at work again in the indians win. you know, for me one of the nice surprises of our walk through today was in this gallery. i think we both realized things there that we did not realize before, on our previous visits here. mt: the indians win is an exceptional gallery because it is really the only space where we can see objects three dimensionally, in the round. ms: yes! this is where we get the most classic ethnographic museum approach in the display of the plains headdress, which is also the most iconic indian object in american culture, as the indians everywhere gallery has already abundantly demonstrated. but if the main hall offered an abundance of various examples in a cacophonous display, as you noted, the indians 36 national museum of the american indian, “trail of tears: not what you think not event close,” accessed may 15, 2019, https://americanindian.si.edu/americans/#stories/the-removal-act. 37 ibid. figure 2 paul morigi/ap images for national museum of the american indian, installation view of the queen of america gallery, january 2018. digital photograph. national museum of the american indian, washington, d.c. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ https://americanindian.si.edu/americans/#stories/the-removal-act 9 3 d r . m o n i k a s i e b e r t a n d m a r i n a t y q u i e n g c o contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 8, no 1 (2019) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2019.288 win sets out to explain how it became so. again, we start with the generally familiar: iconic objects displayed in a conventional way that further enhances their status as treasures. on the first quick visit, i was so taken by the beauty and the preciousness of these objects themselves, that i hardly noticed anything else (thus reducing broader historical and political meanings of indigenous lives to an example of material culture, a process usually facilitated by the conventional ethnographic or art gallery exhibitionary practices). this time, together we paid attention to the historical connection the gallery makes between the 1876 battle of little bighorn and the era’s technologies of communication such as the telegraph and technologies of mechanical reproduction of images and thus also ideas: the stereotype in both of its meanings. in the curators’ framing, the defeat of general custer at little bighorn that shocked the country marks the origin point of a process leading from the actual plains headdress to the abundance of “indian head” images in american culture; a process facilitated by ever-newer media accelerating the dissemination of images, from stereotypes advertising wild west shows, to moving pictures and first silent westerns, to radio and the lone ranger broadcasts, to television and its “indian head test” and bonanza, all the way to the twentyfirst-century film and video game westerns. indians everywhere offers further examples of the byproducts of this process, including mid-twentieth-century beauty pageant contestants sporting headdresses with the gusto of today’s victoria secret runway models. but i also appreciated another point made in the indians win: that these new technologies replaced earlier, specifically indigenous modes of recording and disseminating information, modes that themselves were undergoing historical adaptation. in a wonderful evocation of similarity, next to each other are exhibited a large-scale reproduction of a page from an american newspaper and an actual late nineteenth-century lakota painting, the latter evoking the aesthetic properties of a lakota winter count, of ledger book drawings, and of the newspaper next to it. winter counts offer narratives of historical events unfolding over the course of decades via images traced on bison skin in a circular pattern. the lakota painting is on canvas, in the ledger book style, but in a format that echoes the vertical arrangement of the newspaper columns. when you see those two together you realize that you are looking at two technologies for dissemination of information, both of them in the process of transformation. it’s a truly arresting juxtaposition, further enhanced by the fact that fragments figure 3 paul morigi/ap images for national museum of the american indian, installation view of the indians win gallery, digital photograph, january 2018, national museum of the american indian, washington, d.c. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 9 4 a r e i n d i a n s i n a m e r i c a ’ s d n a ? contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 8, no 1 (2019) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2019.288 of the lakota painting are copied as if stenciled off but in larger scale on yet another wall of the gallery; more reproduction, more dissemination, more copies of copies. mt: the proliferation of images in the indians everywhere gallery leads us back to conversation about starting from the visitor’s place of knowledge and moving from there. the exhibition could have started with the idea of little bighorn as the beginning of the mechanical reproduction of indian images, but the curators do not present that history in the main gallery. ms: right. first, they stage/engineer the affective encounter with the images that are so familiar to us. indians everywhere invites us to stop and recognize where we are, to assess our expertise, we could say, to feel like we can engage productively here because we do know something, we do recognize many of these exhibited objects, we even have things to say about them. then eventually, we notice the entrances to the additional exhibition spaces and go on to explore what lies behind the flatness of the main hall and of the images it displays. we realize ultimately, one hopes, that these images have been obscuring something far more interesting all along. mt: but to what extent does this new conception skirt the danger of multicultural misrecognition, given its central focus on the iconic images and the stereotypes they promulgate? ms: i coined this term, multicultural misrecognition, to describe a particular side effect of multiculturalism with respect to contemporary indigenous peoples in north america.38 it’s generally accepted today that the united states and canada are multicultural democracies, that is, nation-states in which culturally distinct groups coexist, bound together by their common allegiance to a specific political ideal: representative democracy. what’s less known is the fact that this model of national cohesion obscures the historical status of indigenous peoples as citizens of their sovereign nations along with the history of their colonization. to put it differently, multiculturalism understands american indians as ethnic minorities (or racial minorities as you noted earlier) on the par with other ethnic/racial minorities that make up the multicultural nation—african americans, asian americans and so on, the categories familiar from the u.s. population census. what is being misrecognized is a particular political history and current status of indigenous nations. instead, multiculturalism celebrates essentialized cultural difference, conveniently encapsulated in iconic images. i do not think that americans makes a multiculturalist argument on behalf of indigenous people, historical or contemporary; there’s nothing here that frames them as native americans, that is, as one of the several distinct ethnic/racial/cultural groups constituting the nation. in fact, the contemporary american indians are pretty much absent from this exhibition (to learn about them we have to travel to other floors of the museum). when amongst the abundance of indian images on display, we come across exhibits relating to actual indigenous people, they hail from the past: pocahontas, the cherokee of the removal era, the lakota and northern cheyenne victorious at little bighorn. instead the exhibition declares that indians 38 see charles taylor et al., multiculturalism: examining the politics of recognition (princeton, nj: princeton university press, 1994); jeff chang, who we be: a cultural history of race in post-civil rights america (london: st. martin’s press, 2016). http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 9 5 d r . m o n i k a s i e b e r t a n d m a r i n a t y q u i e n g c o contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 8, no 1 (2019) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2019.288 are americans, period, no hyphenation required. this claim, it seems to me, presses the point that american indians are constitutive rather than complementary to “america.” i recall that chaat smith titled one of his talks about the exhibition something along the lines of, “the most american thing ever is in fact american indians,”39 meaning perhaps that the most globally recognizable iconic images from the continent have historically featured indians. and then we have “indians are in your dna,” as a kind of a dare. if you distill america to its foundational principles, you actually get indians. this statement has multiple valences, too. the vast collection of indian images spanning centuries, along with the historical narratives on pocahontas, on indian removal, and on indian wars, testifies that a long engagement— political, military, economic, social, cultural—with indigenous peoples inhabiting the continent foundationally shaped the eventual american people and their nation states. it also suggests that the imaginative engagement with americans’ ideas of who the indians are continues to shape their identities and their (mis)understanding of american history. mt: i keep wrestling with that quote, “indians are in your dna,” from the gallery guide in the indians everywhere gallery. because indians being foundational in/to americanness does not mean that all americans are indian. i realize the power of that phrase yet it’s such a provocation and a statement about non-indigenous people claiming that they are indian. ms: precisely! this rhetorical dare seems to both rescue and condemn senator warren: yes, indians are, indeed, in her dna, and no, she is not indian. but it also risks a misunderstanding, and thus fully elucidates the dangers of this exhibition’s central gambit. the provocative thought is that, if indians are in your dna, then everybody is an indian, including elizabeth warren, right? how many visitors’ will walk away with the nuanced understanding of both the foundational role of indigenous peoples to the formation of the united states, in political and cultural terms, and the unique political relationship (usually referred to as the government-to-government relationship) of indigenous nations to the federal government, and how many will walk away with new arguments to dismiss tribal sovereignty and citizenship, since we are all indians anyway? “indians in your dna make you american not indian” is how i understand the import of all the genetic metaphors. indians are in american dna means that the historical encounter with indigenous peoples here already had been foundational to the emergence of what we call america and americans. indians and europeans together birthed the americans, in that sense. this reading reminds me of frederick jackson turner’s famous frontier thesis, the idea that the process of settling the continent—a process involving temporarily “going native”—forged a specifically american character. but i’m also reminded of jolene rickard’s curating of the inaugural exhibition our peoples, which insisted on not forgetting the historical circumstances of that birthing—that is, conquest and colonization. rickard was particularly interested in how to frame these events from an indigenous point of view and within indigenous historical timeline in an institution premised on the centrality of the west. her specific curatorial choices framed american history within, and bookended by, indigenous hemispheric history. indians in american dna frames american experience within an indigenous historical timeline, too. but unlike rickard’s inaugural gallery, which was very much about the historical indigenous peoples, americans puts the american history and culture at the center, even as it rehearses over and over the notion of the constitutive role that indians (as people and images) had in shaping that history and culture. 39 chaat smith’s talk was at the walker art museum on september 20, 2017, and is available online, see paul chaat smith, “the most american thing ever is american indians,” walker art museum, accessed may 15, 2019, https://walkerart.org/magazine/paul-chaat-smith-jimmie-durham-americansnmai-smithsonian. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 9 6 a r e i n d i a n s i n a m e r i c a ’ s d n a ? contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 8, no 1 (2019) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2019.288 mt: when you enter americans, you are presented with indians as cultural figures. you only later arrive at political histories. what is interesting here is that through this exhibition we can arrive at situation where it’s not either/or; we can get a cultural sense and then a political sense. ms: yes; though the focus of the exhibition is the importance of indians (again, as people and as images) in shaping american culture, americans also makes available events from the political/diplomatic history on the continent, exhibits that recount the wars conducted, treaties negotiated, and legislative acts passed. to my mind, americans also makes the point, perhaps only inadvertently that the indians as cultural figures proliferate perhaps because they so effectively obscure the political histories of indigenous nations. and this is a wild paradox, given that the central iconic image here is one or another version of the plains warrior (in his headdress of course!), a figure that harks back to the indian wars of the late-nineteenth century and thus also the history of conquest and colonization. that’s crazy, isn’t it? a historian, daniel immerwahr, has just published a book titled how to hide an empire: a history of the greater united states, and even though he rewrites u.s. history via the lens of its overseas colonies, i wonder if it might help shed light on the internal ones as well and thus this very paradox. to learn more about the political dimensions of indianness at the nmai, one needs to leave americans and go upstairs to explore nation to nation: treaties between the united states and american indian nations, an extensive and meticulous exhibition on historic treaties, tribal sovereignty, federal recognition, and all matters pertaining to the historic and contemporary indigenous nations.40 back at the americans galleries, the iconic image of an indian in a headdress, once returned to its proper context as it is in the indians win, certainly allows us to recover the history of colonialism. i wonder though if that’s the message the visitors’ ultimately take away. the solitary indian figure, often just the indian head in a headdress, recalls such once-popular phrases deployed to capture the gist of the indian predicament as “the last of,” “the vanishing race,” and “the end of the trail.” the sheer numbers and range of contexts in which the indian head image gets deployed suggests its tremendous cultural capital. “this image has taken deep root in american culture; it has crowded out all the other historical and contemporary images of american indians, such as those of the diplomats featured in nation to nation, for example, or the images of american indian people going about their life in their communities, reservation and off, of american indian artists creating their art, and so on, all on display everywhere at the museum. as it builds its case about the indians in america’s dna, americans also urgently asks us to reflect more deeply on the reasons for and ramifications of our abiding attraction to indian images. mt: the call to question americans’ attachment to indian imagery is such a poignant way to conclude our discussion. thank you for your time, i have gained a lot from our conversation and exploration of americans. ms: marina, thank you for the invitation to visit americans together; and thank you for your questions, your insight, and for this engaging conversation. 40 there is also an associated exhibition catalogue: suzan shown harjo, ed., nation to nation: treaties between the united states and american indian nations (washington, dc: nmai and smithsonian books, 2014). http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 9 7 d r . m o n i k a s i e b e r t a n d m a r i n a t y q u i e n g c o contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 8, no 1 (2019) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2019.288 new articles in this journal are licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 united states license. this journal is operated by the university library system of the university of pittsburgh as part of its d-scribe digital publishing program, and is co-sponsored by the university of pittsburgh press. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/ http://www.pitt.edu/ http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/ http://www.upress.pitt.edu/upressindex.aspx http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ are indians in america’s dna? are indians in america’s dna? conversation vol 10, no 1 (2025) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2025.350 http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu questionnaire response camila aguayo about the author camila aguayo is an m.a. candidate in the history of art at tulane university. she was recently a hot metal bridge post-baccalaureate fellow in the department of history of art and architecture at the university of pittsburgh. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 10, no 1 (2025) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2025.350 a single question posed by my professor changed my trajectory as an undergraduate art history student. when she asked why i was writing about european art when puerto rico’s own visual culture remained largely understudied, i had a moment of uncomfortable clarity. although i am from the island, i believed in the “greatness” and “prestige” of the european canon and its old masters. i was well aware of local talent in my homeland, yet my relationship with colonialism unconsciously relegated caribbean subjects as peripheral while it centralized the “achievements” and “sophistication” that western artists had established. i had not dismissed the value of puerto rican art; rather, i had internalized a hierarchical artistic framework based on centuries of eurocentric pedagogy and conditioning. my experience was neither unique nor accidental—it reflected the mechanisms through which colonial power continues to operate in “neutral” spaces. the legacies of empire cannot be measured only through the oppressive economic and political regimes of the past. they also reverberate in the cultural and social practices that inevitably shape our collective understanding of what constitutes legitimate scholarship, reinforcing colonial epistemologies that still influence contemporary art historical discourses in the present. now, driven by a sense of academic accountability, my research interests have returned home. i decided to focus on the nineteenth-century resurgence of eighteenth-century afrodescendant artist josé campeche among the island’s criollo elite. as campeche became canonized in intellectual circles, his racial identity was obscured. blackness was no longer part of the conversations surrounding campeche’s legacy or his contributions to the island’s material and visual culture. this biographical omission separates the artist’s success from his social position as a man of color in a spanish colonial city—a feat that required more nuance than simply mastering european stylistic traditions. it seems that, to fit within the narrative of puerto rico’s brewing national identity, campeche became whitened. the erasure of campeche’s blackness to serve the “canon” demonstrates how non-white artists are not only excluded but also constructed in ways that conform to predetermined european standards of artistic legitimacy and merit. for campeche to be accepted as a “master,” his persona had to fit within colonial frameworks of prestige, class, virtue, and whiteness. what makes this omission even more significant is that it not only obscured campeche’s african heritage from public memory but also concealed the revolutionary nature of his success as a mixed-race artist in colonial puerto rico—an absence that sadly persists in much of the existing scholarship about this artist and his work. to confront campeche’s racial erasure is to question the legacies of art history that have influenced the methodologies, historiographies, and priorities governing our discipline to this day. as contemporary art historians, how can we engage in reparative scholarship within institutional frameworks that privilege european epistemologies and maintain past hierarchies of knowledge production? do we participate in the marginalization of non-western artists and artistic traditions, through our seemingly “neutral” academic practices and research? in my view, a reparative approach in our field demands a willingness both to sit in the discomfort of acknowledging our discipline’s complicity in these erasures and to actively work on dismantling the structures that continue to perpetuate them. this requires shifting from surface-level inclusions of marginalized communities in survey courses and museum exhibitions toward revelations of how these same institutions participated in silencing those communities and excluding them from the “canon.” it means grappling with questions of accountability and choosing carefully what we wish to perpetuate, among the people we educate. empire and its legacies still live in our archives, syllabi, and everyday lives. if we resist the urge to follow western universals, we create space for other forms of knowledge that questionnaire response camila aguayo http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 1 0 q u e s t i o n n a i r e contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 10, no 1 (2025) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2025.350 challenge, rewrite, and reshape the scholarship that has long defined what merits art historical value. for me, this work carries a weight of responsibility, to prevent others from internalizing the same hierarchies that once made me overlook the richness of my own culture. put simply, the stakes are both academic and human. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 1 1 c a m i l a a g u a y o contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 10, no 1 (2025) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2025.350 new articles in this journal are licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 united states license. this journal is published by pitt open library publishing. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ https://www.library.pitt.edu/e-journals contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture vol 9, no 1 (2021) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2021.315 http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu mobility & exchange: moving across/through cultures emi finkelstein and katie loney about the editors-in-chief emi finkelstein is a phd candidate at the university of pittsburgh and a 2020-21 dissertation fellow at the berlin program for advanced german and european studies at freie universität berlin, where she is undertaking research for her dissertation “beyond the wall: historicizing, exhibiting, and curating east german art in post-socialist europe.” her dissertation investigates the ways in which post-unification cultural spaces in germany tackle issues of historicizing the east german past and reckoning with its place in the nation’s contemporary identity. her research looks at the relationship between politics, ideology, identity and subjecthood in post-socialist germany and europe. katie loney is a ph.d. candidate in the department of history of art and architecture at the university of pittsburgh. her research examines nineteenth-century american art and design, with a focus on processes of making, international art markets, collecting histories, and orientalism. she currently holds an andrew w. mellon predoctoral fellowship at the university of pittsburgh, where she is writing her dissertation “lockwood de forest, the ahmedabad wood carving company, and the global circulation of luxury goods.” her work has been supported by the world history center, the terra foundation for american art, and casva. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 9, no 1 (2021) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2021.315 while the notion of “contemporaneity” is ostensibly a temporal phenomenon, the ninth issue of contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture examines the spatial reverberations of being together in time. that this issue of contemporaneity was brought to fruition in 2020, a year that saw our shared time simultaneously challenged by restrictions on public life and bolstered through the expansion of virtual space, makes the contents of this issue, conceived in late 2019 and published in early 2021, all the more pressing. the year 2020 has offered a critical moment in re-thinking the possibilities of cultural contact. while mobility and exchange between people, nations, and cultures have been shifted by many moments in world history—including the end of the cold war of 1989, the wave of student revolutions of 1968, the technological rise and attendant capitalism of the industrial revolution, and the era of exploration with its fraught legacy that led to global unevenness and colonial structures—the discipline of art history has long posed questions about how global material cultures form, define, and re-define identities and relationships. at the beginning of a new paradigm shift, contemporaniety: moving across/through cultures employs an experimental and collaborative form, eschewing the traditional long-form article and instead using various modes of conversation, to cast a critical eye on the ways people, objects, and ideas have historically and continue today to shift across cultures and boundaries into new spaces, as well as the afterlives of these movements. when this issue was initially conceived, the ability to transgress borders, to physically move across and through the world and its cultures, appeared as an embedded function of our increasingly globalized world. over the past year, however, the covid-19 pandemic has physically limited our ability to move across and through cultures as nations shut their borders and museums close their doors. at the same time, other critical events in the past year have shifted the bearings of this journal’s ninth edition. the murders of george floyd and breonna taylor at the hands of police officers has further exposed the precariousness of life for bipoc people living in the united states. as the editors of this issue, we must acknowledge that moving across and through cultures is a function of privilege. systemic racism and police brutality are built into the world we live in, fracturing our time and space rather than allowing us to coexist simultaneously. moving forward, this journal seeks to dedicate itself to anti-racist practices, naming and uprooting white supremacy, and critically addressing colonialism and its aftermath in its many forms. the ninth edition of contemporaneity has itself moved across and through cultures, from a world of seemingly open borders and endless possibilities to one where social and economic injustice and closed borders have become more visible and widespread. while many of the underlying issues that have been brought to light in the past year have always existed, our own perspective has shifted. as we publish this new issue in the new world of 2021, we aim to shift the discipline of art history in ways that realign with and address the problems we now clearly face. with one foot in the past and the other in the present, this issue offers a bridge between our old understanding of mobility and exchange and the challenges and possibilities of the future. the contributors to this edition address a broad range of questions relating to the shifting realities of mobility and exchange in the past and present. in the questionnaire, a new addition to contemporaneity, editors jacob eisensmith and paula kupfer asked scholars across the humanities to reflect on the role of mobility and exchange in their scholarship as well as personal and daily lives. as eisensmith and kupfer explain in their introduction to this section, they could not anticipate the stakes of their questions in 2020 when the questionnaire was composed and distributed to our four respondents. due to the novel coronavirus, the mobility and exchange: moving across/through cultures emi finkelstein and katie loney http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ i i i e m i f i n k e l s t e i n a n d k a t i e l on e y contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 9, no 1 (2021) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2021.315 respondents and editors were forced to think about modes of mobility and exchange, as well as the lack of movement. lindsey french and lee veeraraghavan reflect upon our current moment. veeraraghavan explains how mobility and exchange, or the constraints of mobility and exchange, operate in colonial systems and impact indigenous peoples, while also adressing how the daily anxieties of 2020 have only compounded the uncertainty of the future for those in tenuous employment positions, such as post-docs. french, on the other hand, takes a moment to reflect on her own artistic practice, explaining how her work focuses on the exchanges of living but non-human actors. in this examination, she highlights the fact that covid-19 is a living virus that lives on and through human objects. as french explains, from this perspective “americans, and especially white americans, struggl[e] to confront the realities of the danger of simply being present.” sahar hosseini and mrinalini rajagopalan focus the role of mobility and exchange in the past. hosseini situates her scholarship on safavid iran within larger art historical discourses on mobility and exchange, thus reflecting on her draw to buildings and other things that don’t tend to move. her response asks us to consider what the “immobile nature of the built environment and landscape” offers or adds to our current scholarship on mobility and exchange. in her analysis of female patronage in nineteenth-century calcutta, rajagopalan tracks the international movement of aesthetics, religious practice, and exchanges between mrs. pascoa barretto de souza, the patron of the church of the sacred heart of jesus, and the catholic church. at the same time, she pays attention to the restricted movements of barretto de souza and the ways in which she moved throughout the world when her physical body could not. reflecting on three recent exhibitions, alex j. taylor, nina blomfield, and katie loney consider the movement of objects, materials, and colonialism in collecting histories and curatorial practice. taylor provides a thoughtful reflection on metal from clay: pittsburgh’s aluminum stories, the commemorative exhibition of collecting knowledge pittsburgh. providing a detailed history of the extraction and eventual extinction of cryolite—an essential mineral in the speedy production of aluminum—taylor directs our attention to the role extraction of natural resources plays in colonial systems. focusing on a rare cryolite specimen in the collection of the carnegie museums’ natural history museum, taylor also prompts readers to consider the role scarcity plays in the value of an object and, thus, its position in art history. in the form of curatorial conversation, katie loney and nina blomfield recount their public conversation on the work and practice of lockwood de forest and the ahmedabad wood carving company (awcc), an event that took place in october 2019. discussing their two exhibitions on this topic, one curated by blomfield and the other by loney, they consider the transnational history of the awcc and ask how museums, curators, and art historians can reveal the colonial histories of the awcc’s objects, why museums have primarily attributed the company’s work to de forest, and how to recoup the agency of indian actors in north american interiors. marina tyquiengco also addresses issues of colonialism, as she reviews clémentine deliss’s examination of the ethnographic museum and how a post-ethnographic museum might operate. other contributors provide reviews of major exhibitions focusing on mobility and exchange. adriana miramontes’s review of how the light gets in at the herbert f. johnson museum at cornell highlights a vitally important exhibition for our understanding of mobility and exchange in the twentieth century, if not more specifically, the “trump era.” how the light gets in brings together work by over fifty artists and collectives, most of whom are from the global south but work in the global north. as miramontes demonstrates, the exhibition and the works it displays ask viewers to consider the permeability and solidity of borders in today’s world, challenge the family separation policies at the us/mexico border, and reconceptualize notions of belonging that are not defined by borders of the nation state. jacob eisensmith’s review of caravans of gold, fragments in time: art, culture, and exchange across medieval saharan africa, an exhibition held at the aga khan museum, the block museum, and the smithsonian museum of african art, also examines a recent exhibition that contributes to art historical discourses on material, mobility, and exchange. eisensmith explains the show’s contribution to our understanding of cross-cultural and transcontinental trade networks in the http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ i v m ob i l i t y & e x c h a n g e : contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 9, no 1 (2021) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2021.315 medieval world, especially those across the sahara and into europe. at the same time, he notes that the exhibition’s curators omitted issues and networks tied to slavery, arguing that “issues of race, slavery, and intuitional inequity must be points of conversation for future shows.” paulina pardo offers a review of colored plexiglass: irving and aaronel deroy gruber foundation gallery inaugural exhibition, turning attention to the kinetic artworks of aaronel deroy gruber and the social and material networks the artist and her work was apart. last but not least, christopher j. nygren reviews painting as modern art in early renaissance italy by robert brennan. nygren highlights the stakes of brennan’s study for our understanding of modernism, arguing that brennan identifies it not as a specific time period or stylistic shift, but as an ever-shifting temporal orientation that arises through a series of exchanges with the past in the present. the art section of this issue turns a critical eye on the many ways that mobility and exchange shape individual perceptions of the world. sepideh tajalizadeh dashti’s work draws on the female body as a source and site of trauma. in her performance, video, photography, and installation, dashti addresses notions of abjection, intimacy, family, and identity. as an iranian-canadian artist, dashti’s work is deeply imbued with the feeling of ambiguity that emerges from moving between and belonging to two different cultures. the work of kio griffith uses found and appropriated objects, as well as image and sound, to construct a personal cross-cultural history. at once deeply personal and abstract, griffith’s work engages with topics as broad as the climate crisis, language, colonialism, nationalism, and new technologies. jonathan christensen caballero’s work is expressly political, rooted in a critique of oppression in the united states, particularly the plight of latin-american laborers. a trained ceramicist, christensen caballero’s work “narrates enduring questions of identity through the use of the human figure, pre-columbian iconography, and mixed media sculpture,” asking questions of the value of the “american dream” in the present moment. finally the work of address the issue, a collective made up of artists seth adam cook and joel fuller, uses inspiration from william pope l. to both examine stereotypes surrounding race and dissect the damaging power of preconceptions to both black and white individuals and communities. their work rejects the notion of a “post-racial” america, instead drawing on the awareness of division made clear by the events of 2020. taken together, the work of these five artists provides a rich landscape for picturing the multiple ways issues of mobility and exchange continue to act on our present moment. as we come to the end of our time as stewards of this journal, we would like to acknowledge a number of people without whom this issue wouldn't have been possible. our edition of contemporaneity is deeply rooted in the work of the journal’s former editors and we are especially indebted to jackie lombard and marina tyquiengco for their support during this process. we would also like to thank our editorial staff for their tireless efforts and the editorial board for their guidance. special thanks is also due to the scrupulous eye of our copy editor annalisa zox-weaver, the unwavering support of our faculty advisor terry smith, and the ever-gracious assistance of kate kelley and emily mazzola . questions of mobility and exchange offer up a myriad of ways to think about a world that we see evolving before our very eyes. as we move from the uncertainty of 2020 to the brave new world of 2021, we hope this issue of contemporaneity offers you nuanced perspectives on these important themes. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ v e m i f i n k e l s t e i n a n d k a t i e l on e y contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 9, no 1 (2021) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2021.315 new articles in this journal are licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 united states license. this journal is operated by the university library system of the university of pittsburgh as part of its d-scribe digital publishing program, and is co-sponsored by the university of pittsburgh press. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/ http://www.pitt.edu/ http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/ http://www.upress.pitt.edu/upressindex.aspx mobility & exchange: moving across/through cultures mobility and exchange: moving across/through cultures contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture vol 8, no 1 (2019) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2019.284 http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu from axayácatl to el chapo rethinking migration and mexico’s war on drugs in gabriel garcilazo’s dystopic magical codex adriana miramontes olivas and gabriel garcilazo introduction by adriana miramontes olivas abstract in this conversation between gabriel garcilazo and adriana miramontes olivas, garcilazo explains his interest in appropriating popular culture and historical documents such as the sixteenth-century codex azcatitlan. his artwork dystopic magical codex (2015) examines the recent war on drugs in mexico and its consequences through spatial and temporal elements that reconsider concepts of borders, nations, and trade. the conversation is introduced in a brief essay in which miramontes olivas contextualizes garcilazo’s codex. she argues that garcilazo criticizes state apparatus rhetoric on the war on drugs and harsh immigration policies, demanding the conceptualization of alternative solutions that could reduce both the carnage and the exodus of those living in fear. he also warns, as have other contemporary artists from mexico, against new forms of colonization and master narratives that homogenize and hamper border-crossing and interaction among cultures. about the authors artist gabriel garcilazo (b. 1980 cuernavaca, morelos, mexico) received a master’s degree in visual arts from the escuela nacional de artes plásticas (san carlos) of the universidad nacional autónoma de méxico in 2015. he has exhibited in mexico, spain, and the united states and his artworks are in numerous collections. adriana miramontes olivas is a doctoral student in the department of history of art and architecture at the university of pittsburgh. she specializes in contemporary art from mexico. her research examines artistic responses that challenge the state apparatus as artists reflect on and protest the violence, corruption, and impunity that have devastated mexico in the last decades. the focus of her research is site-specific installations, performance, and video art. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 8, no 1 (2019) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2019.284 during his term in office from 2006 to 2012, mexican president felipe calderón conducted a national campaign against drugs.1 originally termed “a war on drugs,” it was later conceptualized as a “fight against organized crime,” and then as a national security strategy.2 this campaign empowered the mexican army and the federal police to establish arbitrary checkpoints in and outside urban centers in search of weapons or drugs and allowed these agencies to enter homes without warrant and detain citizens they deemed suspicious.3 calderón’s campaign contributed to a landscape of increased fear and violence, as detentions occurred without due process, and human rights were violated. this climate of institutionalized violence was exacerbated by criminal organizations that employed intimidation tactics such as placing warnings on corpses (narcomantas) and dismembering bodies.4 this scourge forced many citizens to relocate within the country or to move abroad, especially after receiving death threats or being kidnapped, as was the case in ciudad juárez, chihuahua, from which many people moved to the nearby border city of el paso, texas.5 1 my thanks to prof. jennifer josten, who generously read several versions of this article and provided valuable feedback. i am also grateful to prof. david tenorio and jacqueline lombard, contemporaneity’s editor-in-chief, for their suggestions and commentaries. i extend my gratitude to all of the anonymous readers for their helpful advice on this essay and interview and to gabriel garcilazo whose collaboration made this publication possible. prof. gregory elliott and the department of art and art history at the university of texas at san antonio funded my visit to mexico city and cuernavaca in the spring of 2016; prof. teresa eckmann invited me to join her and her contemporary art class on that trip, when i first encountered garcilazo’s work at centro cultural jardín borda. finally, i thank the department of history of art and architecture at the university of pittsburgh for funding my research trips to mexico through the dean’s research travel fund in spring 2017 and spring 2019. during these trips i was able to see garcilazo’s codex at el chopo and, two years later, to interview him. 2 this change in rhetoric is addressed by several scholars, among them are héctor padilla and fernando escalante gonzalbo in héctor padilla, “ciudad juárez: militarización, discursos y paisajes,” in vida, muerte y resistencia en ciudad juárez: una aproximación desde la violencia, el género y la cultura, ed. salvador cruz sierra (tijuana: el colegio de la frontera norte; méxico city: juan pablos editor, 2013), 110; fernando escalante gonzalbo, “paisaje antes de la batalla: notas sobre el contexto de la guerra contra las drogas en méxico,” revista mexicana de ciencias políticas y sociales 58, no. 218 (may-august 2013): 95. 3 padilla, “ciudad juárez,” 111. 4 according to padilla, the delivery of these messages and the use of narcomantas is not only intended to threaten rivals and other criminals but also police enforcement, military, and civilian authorities as well as society at large. these warnings also announce future deaths, fires, and the destruction of restaurants, bars, and local businesses. in the most extreme cases of violence, bodies with narcomantas were found hanging from bridges and another one was found with a pig’s mask. other bodies were decapitated or mutilated, and the body parts spread around the city. padilla, “ciudad juárez,” 107–16. 5 ciudad juárez is considered one of the most violent cities in the world. for more on this and its exodus, see padilla, “ciudad juárez,” 109–10, and kathleen staudt and zulma y. mendez, courage, resistance, and women in ciudad juarez: challenges to militarization (austin: university of texas press, 2015), 26–34. from axayácatl to el chapo rethinking migration and mexico’s war on drugs in gabriel garcilazo’s dystopic magical codex adriana miramontes olivas and gabriel garcilazo http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 1 0 0 f r o m a x ay á c a t l t o e l c hap o contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 8, no 1 (2019) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2019.284 scholars have reported that in 2011 more than 220,000 people left ciudad juárez.6 many of those who were unable or unwilling to flee the border region were killed, as in the cases of activists josefina reyes, susana chávez, and marisela escobedo.7 figure 1 gabriel garcilazo’s exhibition distopías: gabriel garcilazo at museo universitario del chopo, march–april 2017. image courtesy of the artist. (photo: gabriel garcilazo) the coexistence of institutionalized violence and criminal violence created a lawless environment in some parts of mexico, the resulting chaos was then disseminated through the national and international media and persisted throughout the presidency of enrique peña nieto (2012–2018). it is to this context, in which more than 121,683 people have died in mexico in drug-related violence since 2006, that gabriel garcilazo responds and asks us to reflect upon.8 in his multi-part artwork dystopic magical codex (2015), he questions the policies of a failed war. dystopic magical codex is inspired by pre-hispanic codices. sixteencentury codices in pre-hispanic mexico were handmade and hand-painted books originally pleated to create an accordion-style composition.9 pre-hispanic manuscripts were made on deer hide or bark paper; during the spanish colonial era, they were made with european paper, its folios bound together like a book.10 in his modern-day codex, garcilazo employed and displayed separate sheets of paper in individual frames (fig.1). in dystopic magical codex, 6 according to kathleen staudt and zulma y. mendez, the exodus of juarenses involved all sectors of society, from “marginal residents . . . to wealthy people.” staudt and mendez, courage, resistance, and women, 26–33. 7 josé manuel valenzuela, “¡ni una más! ¿traiciona al feminismo la lucha contra el feminicidio?,” in vida, muerte y resistencia en ciudad juárez: una aproximación desde la violencia, el género y la cultura, ed. salvador cruz sierra (tijuana: el colegio de la frontera norte; méxico city: juan pablos editor, 2013), 233–34. 8 “mas de ciento veintiun mil muertos, el saldo de la narcoguerra de calderón: inegi,” proceso, july 30, 2013, https://www.proceso.com.mx/348816/mas-de-121-mil-muertos-el-saldo-de-lanarcoguerra-de-calderon-inegi. 9 angela herren rajagopalan, portraying the aztec past: the codices boturini, azcatitlan, and aubin (austin: university of texas press, 2019), 7–9. 10 james oles, art and architecture in mexico (new york: thames and hudson, 2013), 26–28. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ https://www.proceso.com.mx/348816/mas-de-121-mil-muertos-el-saldo-de-la-narcoguerra-de-calderon-inegi https://www.proceso.com.mx/348816/mas-de-121-mil-muertos-el-saldo-de-la-narcoguerra-de-calderon-inegi 1 0 1 a d r i a n a m i r am o n t e s o l i v a s a nd g ab r i e l g a r c i l a z o contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 8, no 1 (2019) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2019.284 garcilazo portrays trade routes that transport drugs and the weapons brought to mexico for the war on drugs—which has empowered numerous criminals—as well as the routes humans follow to escape the ensuing violence. in showing this constant exchange and mobilization of goods and beings, i argue that garcilazo uses his art to demand his viewers to reconsider how issues such as substance abuse, immigration, and the war on drugs are discussed and addressed by the government and mass media in mexico. figure 2 gabriel garcilazo, dystopic magical codex: codex 1 (cocaine plant), 2015. charcoal and ink on paper. 66.5 x 41 cm. private collection. image courtesy of the artist. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 1 0 2 f r o m a x ay á c a t l t o e l c hap o contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 8, no 1 (2019) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2019.284 contemporary codices and the ubiquitous presence of mickey mouse dystopic magical codex is composed of thirty-four separate charcoal-and-ink drawings on paper. the smallest is approximately 9.5 x 12 inches and the largest 39 x 27.5 inches. the only textual information in garcilazo’s codex is a series of chemical formulas employed in the creation of drugs.11 dystopic magical codex begins with codex 1 (cocaine plant), a representation of a cocaine plant in the middle of a mound (fig. 2). it ends with codex 34 (weapons in mexico), which represents the aftermath of a battle in which a skull, a decapitated head, and armed men dominate an otherwise isolated landscape. as such, garcilazo’s codex as a whole testifies to a context in which weapons trafficking, forced migration, and commercialized drugs are ubiquitous. in conceiving and depicting his own historical moment garcilazo examines contemporary popular culture and looks at the past to appropriate historical documents that speak of similar living conditions in which people have engaged in territorial conquests, licit and illicit trade, and multidirectional migrations. in codex 14 (immigrants from central america join the same route) (fig. 3), garcilazo shows the subjugation of men as they are being constrained and held by their hair. other subjects hold weapons and point toward unarmed figures. surrounding these people are numerous footprints that testify to their mobility. garcilazo draws on conventions from mexica (also known as aztecs) sixteenth-century painted codices—such as holding captives by the hair or portraying footprints to signal migration—that were produced by indigenous artists in central mexico before and after the nahua-spanish war (formerly known as the conquest 1519–1525), to represent their migration and exile.12 the scene in codex 14 (immigrants from central america join the same route) culminates on the right side, with the portrayal of women escaping their homeland and children traveling in the same direction while holding their mickey mouse toys in their arms. on a sign, a mickey mouse glove at the fringe of the railroad (which could signal the freight train la bestia) indicates the direction of the journey throughout mexico and all the way to the north to the border of the united states.13 other contemporary artists who have appropriated both historical documents and modern popular imagery, such as mickey mouse and superman, include the mexican-born enrique chagoya (b. 1953) and guillermo gómez-peña (b. 1955), both of whom collaborated with felicia rice to create codex espangliensis (1998). chagoya’s images and gómez-peña’s texts sit side by side to create a complex hybridity in a design created by rice and inspired by prehispanic codices.14 codex espangliensis is a screenfold limited edition handprinted on amate paper.15 it was later mass produced in 1999 as an artist book that retained its screenfold 11 the incorporation of chemical formulas used in the production of drugs is similarly presented by garcilazo in vasijas (2015), also exhibited in mexico city in distopías: gabriel garcilazo at el chopo university museum from march to april 2017. 12 the aztecs were the inhabitants of aztlan who migrated in the twelfth century to modern-day mexico city in a journey that took more than two hundred years. the aztecs later became known as the mexicas. for more on this subject, read herren rajagopalan, portraying the aztec past, 2, 165. 13 “la bestia,” or “the beast,” as it is commonly called, is a network of trains that travels more than 1,400 miles across mexico from its southern border with guatemala to its northern border with the united states. the trains are not passenger trains and thus many undocumented migrants who manage to climb on them die or get injured during the perilous journey. 14 felicia rice, “bookwork,” in codex espangliensis: from columbus to the border patrol, ed. enrique chagoya, guillermo gómez-peña, and felicia rice (san francisco, ca: city light publishers, 2000), 9. 15 gómez-peña, codex espangliensis, 6. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 1 0 3 a d r i a n a m i r am o n t e s o l i v a s a nd g ab r i e l g a r c i l a z o contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 8, no 1 (2019) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2019.284 format. it extends over twenty-one feet and includes a variety of images and text in english, spanish, spanglish, and nahuatl. as garcilazo would later do, chagoya examined sixteenthcentury codices and appropriated representational devices from the codex mendoza, codex borbonicus, and lienzo tlaxcala, the last of which plays a prominent role in a scene in which a soldier, batman, and mickey mouse drive in a war tank (fig. 4). this armed group is joined by the tlaxcaltecans (indigenous group in the modern state of tlaxcala) who walk behind the tank.16 the unified front proceeds to attack and kill the mexica who surround them in battle.17 despite this chaotic war scene and his blood-stained glove, mickey-mouse keeps a smile glued to his face. tlaxcala was one of the few territories that resisted control by the mexica and, in the sixteen century, the tlaxcaltecans allied with the spaniards to defeat the mexica leader moctezuma ii and his people. by 1520, moctezuma declared himself subservient to king 16 kat austin, carlos-urani montiel, and victoria j. furio, “codex espangliensis: neo-baroque art of resistance,” latin american perspectives 39, no. 3 (may 2012): 97. 17 richard f. townsend, the aztecs, 3rd ed. (london: thames and hudson, 2009), 55. figure 3 gabriel garcilazo, dystopic magical codex: codex 14 (immigrants from central america join the same route), 2015. charcoal and ink on paper. 59 x 76 cm. private collection. image courtesy of the artist. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 1 0 4 f r o m a x ay á c a t l t o e l c hap o contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 8, no 1 (2019) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2019.284 charles v of spain, but the mexicas outside the palace complex, where he was under arrest, continued to fight. in this scene from codex espangliensis, the frame that surrounds the tank can be interpreted as the palace complex taken by the tlaxcaltecans and the spaniards, who also installed a crucifix on the great pyramid of tenochtitlan and an image of the virgin, as is seen here.18 the mexicas, who attacked with darts, arrows, and stones, are here portrayed surrounding the army of invaders. hernán cortés and his army later escaped the city by night, but the battle continued when the mexica retaliated. as in garcilazo’s works, chagoya’s and gómez-peña’s inclusion of characters from history and popular culture thwarts the representation of a linear account. the narrative in codex espangliensis develops across geographical territories and time periods to address a variety of themes, such as religion, immigration, and border policies, as well as to question colonial and neo-colonial practices that reappear in contemporary society in disguise. art historian jennifer gonzález explains that codex espangliensis introduces “a shift in vocabulary from geographical imperialism to cultural imperialism, from george washington to mickey mouse, from ‘columbus to the border patrol,’ a shift that maintains structures of power through a disguised language of diplomacy, popular culture and advertising.”19 18 townsend, aztecs, 220–36. 19 gonzález, “introduction,” in codex espangliensis, 3. figure 4 enrique chagoya, guillermo gómez-peña, and felicia rice, codex espangliensis, 1998. artists’ book limited edition. 19 x 24 cm. image courtesy of chagoya, gómez-peña, and rice. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 1 0 5 a d r i a n a m i r am o n t e s o l i v a s a nd g ab r i e l g a r c i l a z o contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 8, no 1 (2019) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2019.284 the mexica migration and the convergence of time in codex azcatitlan dystopic magical codex is in dialogue with sixteenth-century codices, in which one can observe the migration of the mexica, sacrificial victims, and adoration scenes.20 it is primarily informed by the codex azcatitlan, which dates to the 1560s or 1570s. codex azcatitlan was made in new spain, a territory that partially encompassed what is today known as mexico. though its authors are unknown, scholars believe it to be the work of at least two mexica artists. the mexica migrated from aztlán in 1168 and founded the cities tenochtitlan and tlatelolco around 1381 in present-day mexico city.21 the title of the codex, azcatitlan, derives from its first folio in which the word “ascatitla” is inscribed. it was named by scholar robert barlow, who wrote the first study of this manuscript.22 codex azcatitlan was first recorded in the eighteenth century within the private collection of italian collector lorenzo boturini benaduci and later entered the bibliotèque nationale de france.23 codex azcatitlan is unfinished; its twenty-five plates show a visual heterogeneity that incorporates native and european influences.24 the mesoamerican convention includes the depiction of figures in strict profile, a route traced by footprints, and a “spaceless landscape,” in which figures appear to float in space. among the european pictorial techniques seen in codex azcatitlan are the use of the horizon line, the superposition of figures or changes in scale to indicate perspective, and routes represented by a path rather than footprints, among others. according to federico navarrete, the visual heterogeneity, hybrid pictorial techniques, and narrative contrasts show the expertise of the tlacuiloque (artist-scribes) in both traditional and modern approaches to painting as well as a complex narrative addressed to different audiences, as the mexica interacted with europeans.25 codex azcatitlan illustrates the mexica building temporary shelters, fighting other ethnic groups, and going on fishing and hunting expeditions during their two hundred–year migration.26 once settled in tenochtitlan and tlatelolco, the prominent figure of the god huitzilopochtli disappears from the narrative, and the focus shifts to rulers such as 20 angela marie herren (rajagopalan), “writing collaborative histories in early colonial new spain: a study of the multiple artistic hands in codex azcatitlan,” the latin americanist 56, no. 1 (march 2012): 34, https://doi-org.pitt.idm.oclc.org/10.1111/j.1557-203x.2012.01140.x. 21 according to alejandro lugo and other scholars, aztlatlan in the modern day of nayarit might be the land of aztlan. it was identified in 1530 by nuño de guzmán, but until the eighteenth century it was imagined by the europeans as an unknown place. aztlan is considered the homeland of the aztecs, and the mexica were the only ones who claimed aztlan as such. others, such as gloria anzaldúa, define aztlan as the u.s. southwest. see alejandro lugo, fragmented lives, assembled parts: culture, capitalism, and conquest at the u.s-mexico border (austin: university of texas press, 2008), 30, 31, 56; herren rajagopalan, portraying the aztec past, 2, 49, 131; gloria anzaldúa, borderlands/la frontera: the new mestiza, 4th ed., (san francisco, ca: aunt lute books, 1987), 23. 22 herren, “writing collaborative histories,” 23–35. 23 herren, “writing collaborative histories,” 26. 24 the migration section is considered finished, but the absence of color and missing dates in the imperial, colonial, and postconquest sections have led scholars to believe it was not completed. still, scholars can interpret the information presented, the events, and leaders portrayed based on other codices and historical documents. see herren rajagopalan, portraying the aztec past, 67. 25 federico navarrete, “the hidden codes of the codex azcatitlan,” res: anthropology and aesthetics, no. 45 (spring 2004), https://www-jstor-org.pitt.idm.oclc.org/stable/20167625. 26 the two-hundred-year journey is recorded in several other manuscripts, including the codex aubin and codex boturini. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ https://doi-org.pitt.idm.oclc.org/10.1111/j.1557-203x.2012.01140.x https://www-jstor-org.pitt.idm.oclc.org/stable/20167625 1 0 6 f r o m a x ay á c a t l t o e l c hap o contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 8, no 1 (2019) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2019.284 cuacuapitzauac, the first ruler of tlatelolco, and acamapichtli, the first ruler of tenochtitlan. thus, in addition to the theme of migration, codex azcatitlan depicts imperial history and the founding of the major mexica cities. it also portrays the 1519 arrival of hernán cortés and his troops to mexico city and the ensuing battle in 1521, ending in 1527.27 like many sixteenth-century mexican painted books, codex azcatitlan includes specific dates, events, and names in pictographs, text, and european visual traditions. it rejects a linear version of history and instead explores a confluence of eras and spaces—or what angela herren rajagopalan calls a “cosmic frame,” in which diverse elements are portrayed throughout the manuscript to reference temporal and spatial shifts.28 one example of this cosmic frame is the place-glyph that represents aztlan, the ancestral homeland of the mexica, which reappears at the beginning and end of the manuscript.29 another example is the portrayal of the festival of toxcatl, which presents viewers in the festival, the battle that ensued, and its aftermath. in a scene from the imperial period of codex azcatitlan, axayácatl, the ruler of tenochtitlan, appears seated on the left-hand side of the page on a highly decorated teptzoicpalli or chair (fig. 5). he devotes himself to watching the battle taking place before him in 1473 as his armed forces battled the tlatelolcas.30 near him on the left, tenochca warriors (from tenochtitlan) hold their shields and weapons as they attack and invade 27 according to herren rajagopalan, the last event depicted, takes place in 1527, when cortés’s cousin was tortured by fellow spaniards and when the bishop of tlaxcala, fray julián garcés, arrived in mexico city. herren rajagopalan, portraying the aztec past, 99–101. 28 herren rajagopalan, portraying the aztec past, 70. 29 herren rajagopalan, portraying the aztec past, 107–09. 30 the dispute started as early as 1472 and ended in 1473, when the tlatelolcas were defeated. this was perhaps intended to give the tenochcas greater control over the market. herren rajagopalan, portraying the aztec past, 56. figure 5 codex azcatitlan, c. 1501–1600. european paper, 25 plates folio 18v. 210 x 280 mm. méxico. collection bibliothèque nationale de france. image courtesy of bibliothèque nationale de france, https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b84582686/f25.image http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b84582686/f25.image 1 0 7 a d r i a n a m i r am o n t e s o l i v a s a nd g ab r i e l g a r c i l a z o contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 8, no 1 (2019) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2019.284 tlatelolco’s temple.31 the image depicts the death and downfall of axayácatl’s rival moquihuix, the last ruler of tlatelolco. moquihuix’s fragmented body is shown falling down the pyramid as his blood spreads filling the nearby steps of the tlatelolco temple.32 the site of the 1473 battle of tlatelolco is also depicted in garcilazo’s dystopic magical codex, in codex 13 (the journey through mexico) as is the juxtaposition of different temporal and spatial moments (fig. 6).33 here, garcilazo portrays a former president and drug leader in axayácatl’s teptzoicpalli and, instead of moquihuix’s defeat, depicts the massacre of student activists in mexico as well as trucks used for the transportation and trafficking of drugs and migrants. 31 navarrete, “the hidden codes,” 156. 32 for further information on imperial and conquest scenes in the codex azcatitlan, see maría castañeda de la paz and michel r. oudijk, “la conquista y la colonia en el códice azcatitlán,” journal de la société des américanistes 98, no. 2 (2012): 59–95, doi.10.4000/jsa.12322,http://journals.openedition.org/jsa/12322; elena fitzpatrick sifford, “mexican manuscripts and the first images of africans in the americas,” ethnohistory 66, no. 2 (april 2019): 223– 48, https://doi-org.pitt.idm.oclc.org/10.1215/00141801-7298747. 33 on october 2, 1968, at the plaza de las tres culturas in the nonoalco-tlatelolco housing development in mexico city, university protesters were attacked by the government. statistics differ, but it has been reported that between forty-nine and seven hundred students were killed and many other students disappeared. the university students were protesting for the autonomy of the national autonomous university unam and the release of political prisoners, among other issues. for more information on the massacre and the events, read elaine carey, plaza of sacrifices: gender, power, and terror in 1968 mexico (albuquerque: university of new mexico press, 2005), and george flaherty, hotel mexico: dwelling on the 68 movement (oakland, california: university of california press, 2016). figure 6 gabriel garcilazo, dystopic magical codex: codex 13 (the journey through mexico), 2015. charcoal and ink on paper. 70 x 100 cm. private collection. image courtesy of the artist. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ http://journals.openedition.org/jsa/12322 https://doi-org.pitt.idm.oclc.org/10.1215/00141801-7298747. 1 0 8 f r o m a x ay á c a t l t o e l c hap o contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 8, no 1 (2019) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2019.284 in dystopic magical codex: codex 13 (the journey through mexico), the references to mexico are explicit. garcilazo has replaced axayácatl’s head with two heads: that of former president carlos salinas de gortari (1988–1994) and the drug lord joaquín guzmán loera, also known as el chapo. instead of wearing the turquoise blue diadem of mexica rulers, el chapo wears a feathered cap. el chapo/salinas hold a staff that is traditionally seen in codices and is associated with sovereignty.34 salinas participated in the signing of the north american free trade agreement (nafta), which took effect on january 1, 1994, further opening the country for transnational commerce and subsequent neoliberalism.35 thus, salinas and el chapo are both aligned with transnational trade, an assignment that locates the artwork in recent times, but spanning several decades. this overlapping of historical periods contests notions of linear time as well as concepts of a fixed history. thus, through his portrayal of el chapo/salinas, and his appropriation of codex azcatitlan, garcilazo demands that viewers rethink not only history, but also issues such as immigration, commerce, and the war on drugs. as el chapo/salinas observes the battle and massacre occurring before him/them, two men wearing black full-face masks and holding shields proceed to attack a protester in the temple whose sign reads “43.” next to the protester, the fragmented body of a man falls off the pyramid. these figures reference the september 2014 mass kidnapping of forty-three male students from a teacher’s college in the town of ayotzinapa in the southern state of guerrero. the students, who were on their way to a demonstration in mexico city commemorating the state-sponsored massacre at tlatelolco against mexico’s student and worker movement on october 2, 1968, were detained by the local police and then turned over to a criminal organization. to this day their whereabouts remain unknown and charges have not been made due to inconsistencies in testimonies, altered and lost evidence, and the involvement of government agents in the events. dystopic magical codex: codex 13 (the journey through mexico) reflects the impunity and inefficacy that has permeated the criminal justice system in mexico in the last decades, a corrupt state apparatus, and the silencing of protesters. it also speaks to a failed war on drugs and the need to reconsider both national and international policies on drugs, trade, labor, and borders to prevent more violence and further trafficking of humans. conclusion dystopic magical codex has temporal and spatial elements such as ancient pyramids, modern-day weapons, and mickey mouse imagery that allow viewers to identify and contextualize it while subverting hegemonic discourses on history, trade, and politics. the reappearance of these elements in artworks such as garcilazo’s underline the coexistence of temporalities in contemporary societies and contest master narratives. these artworks also raise questions about colonialism, imperialism, and new forms of dominance. 34 el chapo was convicted in 2019 in a u.s. court. his participation in the drug business dates to the 1970s. 35 nafta further eliminated trade barriers between the u.s., mexico, and canada. yet, as it was explained by patricia fernández-kelly and douglas s. massey, when it was implemented in the 1990s “u.s. investments already controlled two-thirds of the mexican economy” as u.s. companies had already opened export processing plants (also known as maquiladoras) in border cities such as ciudad juárez through the border industrialization program (bip) in 1965. thus, according to fernández-kelly and massey nafta did not mean the liberalization of trade, but an opportunity for u.s. investors to control trade and for the salinas administration to “shape new alliances to revitalize the troubled mexican economy and improve the standing of the partido revolucionario institutional,” among other things. read “patricia fernández-kelly and douglas s. massey, “borders for whom? the role of nafta in mexico-u.s. migration,” in “nafta and beyond: alternative perspectives in the study of global trade and development,” special issue, the annals of the american academy of political science 610, (march 2007), 103, 104. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 1 0 9 a d r i a n a m i r am o n t e s o l i v a s a nd g ab r i e l g a r c i l a z o contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 8, no 1 (2019) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2019.284 in dystopic magical codex, garcilazo combines mexica, colonial, and contemporary imagery juxtaposed with modern technology and weapons to present a social critique that speaks to the trafficking of weapons, drugs, and humans in present-day mexico. it asks viewers to reflect on the consumption and production of licit and illicit goods as well as on the consequences of governmental corruption, failed strategies, and current migratory practices. garcilazo’s dystopic magical codex invites us to rethink notions of borders and the circulation of goods and beings as well as mexico’s contemporary conditions, in which tens of thousands of people have died and others live in an environment of fear and intimidation. it asks us to reexamine current policies that cause stereotypes to proliferate and disregard human lives in this violent economic and socio-political context. figure 7 gabriel garcilazo, dystopic magical codex: codex 4, 2015. charcoal and ink on paper. polyptych (4 drawings), 35.5 x 33.3 cm. each. private collection. image courtesy of the artist. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 1 1 0 f r o m a x ay á c a t l t o e l c hap o contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 8, no 1 (2019) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2019.284 interview adriana miramontes olivas: from march to april 2017, you presented distopías: gabriel garcilazo at the galería arnold belkin at the museo universitario del chopo in mexico city. could you explain the title?36 gabriel garcilazo: dystopías comes from the main artwork, which is dystopic magical codex. i titled it in reference to the theme [or notion] of magic, slightly citing magical realism in literature but also to the dystopia of mexico, especially during the war on drugs—basically a civil war, which seems the opposite of utopia. this is how the title of the artwork was conceived, and the curator at el chopo [itzel vargas plata] used this word for the title of the exhibit, which encompasses the concept of a contemporary dystopic mexico. amo: from december 2015 to april 2016, you exhibited códice vaquero (cowboy codex) at the centro cultural jardín borda in the historic downtown area of cuernavaca in the state of morelos, mexico. i saw several similarities between distopías and códice vaquero. how were these exhibitions different?37 gg: the thematic selection of distopías was intended to be only about issues of migration and violence, so some artworks were removed from this exhibit such as códice vaquero. the main artwork of both exhibits was dystopic magical codex. amo: why do you appropriate codices? when did you first encounter codices? gg: i have always liked history, i am a bit of a fan. i have also always liked the charm that the images in the codices have. so, my interest is both historical and visual. just as now i am interested in alchemy, back then i was working with codices. i first saw codices as a boy, but at home, not at school. my mother is a historian, and my father is a philosopher. thus, i have an interest in researching history. my mother has numerous books about codices and pre-hispanic images. at home, history was always a topic of conversation, as well as of reflection. i also believe that today the information overflow is creating people without memory. we fail to retain information, and this happens every day. everything is dismissed so quickly. it is important to think about history today. that is one of my motivations for working with those documents. 36 this interview was conducted in spanish on march 20, 2019, in mexico city in the gardens of the franz mayer museum and was translated by the author and edited for the purposes of this publication. 37 gabriel garcilazo’s exhibit at museo universitario del chopo was reviewed in la jornada and el universal. read: merry macmasters, “artista retoma códices prehispánicos y aborda problemas del méxico actual,” la jornada, april 17, 2017, https://www.jornada.com.mx/2017/04/17/cultura/a09n2cul; leonardo domínguez, “distopias de gabriel garcilazo en el museo universitario del chopo,” el universal, april 15, 2017, https://www.eluniversal.com.mx/articulo/cultura/artes-visuales/2017/04/15/en-el-chopo-distopiasde-gabriel-garcilazo. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ https://www.jornada.com.mx/2017/04/17/cultura/a09n2cul https://www.eluniversal.com.mx/articulo/cultura/artes-visuales/2017/04/15/en-el-chopo-distopias-de-gabriel-garcilazo https://www.eluniversal.com.mx/articulo/cultura/artes-visuales/2017/04/15/en-el-chopo-distopias-de-gabriel-garcilazo 1 1 1 a d r i a n a m i r am o n t e s o l i v a s a nd g ab r i e l g a r c i l a z o contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 8, no 1 (2019) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2019.284 amo: why do you use the codex azcatitlan? why do you specifically appropriate this manuscript and not any other? what makes it unique? gg: this codex is precisely about the foundational myth of a city i visit and with which i interact: downtown mexico city, i see ancient ruins and their juxtaposition with colonial and contemporary buildings. the ancient ruins coexist in the present and this convergence of styles, histories, and times inspired me. i do not have a lot of contact with the maya, it is not something i live with. perhaps if i lived in mérida, i would have used a maya codex. both the tira de la peregrinación (the pilgrimage strip) (also known as the boturini codex) and the codex azcatitlan, which is the one i used, narrate the foundational myth of tenochtitlan. the codex azcatitlan has more information about the arrival of the spaniards and the conquest. since i saw several versions of the codex that were continuously updated, i thought it was appropriate to create a version of the history of contemporary mexico using those images. since the original codex shows migrations in mexico, i decided to represent the process of contemporary migration within mexico as well as drug and arms trafficking. despite these being serious topics, i like to work with humor, a dark humor, and to represent events that could be funny but are important topics. i like that combination of elements in my work. this codex [the azcatitlan] is also relevant because of its numerous updates. there are three or four known versions of this codex: one is pre-hispanic and the other dates to the spanish conquest, which includes a medieval-european influence brought by the spaniards. that is why i am interested in this codex; history was being updated in the different versions, along with the painting technique. the projects were requested by the spaniards who were priests, as the church commissioned them to preserve these histories.38 38 it is crucial here to stress that numerous artworks were destroyed with the conquest, and only about fifteen pre-conquest manuscripts survive. while many priests and friars demanded the destruction of works, there were exceptions to this eradication. one example of a friar engaged in the preservation of artworks and the creation of manuscripts is friar bernardino de sahagún who commissioned the four-thousand-page florentine codex. for more on this, see oles, art and architecture in mexico, 26–31. figure 8 gabriel garcilazo, dystopic magical codex: codex 5, 2015. charcoal and ink on paper. polyptych (4 drawings), 35.5 x 33.3 cm. each. private collection. image courtesy of the artist. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 1 1 2 f r o m a x ay á c a t l t o e l c hap o contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 8, no 1 (2019) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2019.284 amo: in dystopic magical codex, we see different historical eras, distinct temporalities, where the past is juxtaposed with the present. pre-columbian individuals hold shields, but they also carry large caliber weapons, cellphones, and bombs (figs. 7–8). at the same time, ancient pyramids from past civilizations are portrayed near helicopters and motor boats. could you explain how your interest in these distinct temporalities developed? gg: it comes from my experience of living in mexico city, a city that has great dynamism and contrasts. conceptually, in the city there is also a historical encounter between the past and a contemporaneity that might not be too different. one parallel is in terms of violence, because these codices are highly violent with sacrifices and dismembered victims. hence, i present a historical reflection, i raise a question. i always state that my work is not a critique, it is about asking questions or presenting ideas. the public observes the artwork and can interpret a critique or other information in it. i like that my work can have multiple layers of meaning and that it can be interpreted in different ways. amo: in addition to the references to the past and present, in your work dystopic magical codex, distinct processes of hybridization such as the phenomenon of migration are present. but migration is not a new phenomenon, it has been practiced throughout centuries. what prompted your current interest in migration?39 gg: migration is precisely the topic of the codex azcatitlan; it is what historically connects all epochs of humanity. there have always been migrations in the world and in mexico. that is one of the themes that keeps reappearing [in society]: only our clothes are different, we are still violent and continue to migrate. there can also be a more romantic reading: there was violence [in the past], but it may have had a spiritual connotation. this is what interests me: raising questions as well as examining similarities and/or differences. i believe one of the similarities is migration. amo: walter mignolo considers modernization a process of coloniality. he wrote, “coloniality points toward and intends to unveil an embedded logic that enforces control, domination, and exploitation disguised in the language of salvation, progress, modernization, and being good for everyone . . . ‘modernity/coloniality’ [should be conceptualized as] two sides of the same coin and not as two separate frames of mind: you cannot be modern without being colonial; and if you are on the colonial side of the spectrum you have to transact with modernity—you cannot ignore it.”40 in your work, indigenous people have not been subjugated or eradicated; to the contrary, they are empowered individuals who take over the leadership role and they appropriate modern technological instruments, most likely from other countries (figs. 7–8). i would like you to comment about your representation of the indigenous people, their current disagreements, and their protests.41 39 according to néstor garcía canclini, hybridization can occur in several ways, among them he cites “unplanned hybridization,” which includes migration and tourism among other forms of interaction. néstor garcia canclini, hybrid cultures: strategies for entering and leaving modernity (minneapolis: university of minnesota press, 1995), xxiii–xxxiv. 40 walter mignolo, the idea of latin america (malden, ma: blackwell publishing, 2005), 6–7. 41 because the artwork is inspired by codex azcatitlan, i refer to the figures as “natives.” yet, i read garcilazo’s subjects as “mexicans” without trying to homogenize the citizens of this extensive and diverse country in which numerous groups of people interact and in which there are more than thirty languages spoken. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 1 1 3 a d r i a n a m i r am o n t e s o l i v a s a nd g ab r i e l g a r c i l a z o contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 8, no 1 (2019) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2019.284 gg: the representation of indigenous people was influenced by the codices, especially the azcatitlán. i did not want to make many changes to the codex. amo: are there references to the current indigenous groups who are defending their rights, language, and traditions? gg: in dystopic magical codex, i did not necessarily address indigenous issues, it was more about appropriating the codex to speak about contemporary issues which are a mixture of themes. however, another artwork exhibited at el chopo in distopías was the pyramid deconstruction/colonization (2015) (fig.1).42 in this artwork, i do speak specifically about the migration from rural areas to the city, which includes people who are often low income, who have a more direct indigenous ancestry, and who are the heirs of this culture that i mentioned. amo: the participation of the united states in the mexican “war on drugs” and other dirty wars throughout the americas has been well documented. during operation fast and furious more than 2,500 weapons were sent to mexico.43 could you tell us more about operation fast and furious? are there references to it in your artwork? gg: there are references to arms trafficking but not necessarily to that case. dystopic magical codex is divided into several segments: the cocaine is transported from central america, then arrives in mexico, and from mexico it is taken to the united states. the last images of the codex are about the transportation of weapons from the united states to mexico, thus it is a continuous cycle. according to my research, the roads used by migrants and by drug and arms traffickers are the same. it is a continuous flow. obviously, this all has to do with the collateral damages that we already witnessed under former president felipe calderón (2006–2012). the delivery of weapons to mexico, a country in which it is illegal to own weapons and in which it is not as easy to acquire them as in the united states, is part of the collateral damage from drug trafficking. 42 the sculpture deconstruction/colonization is built out of wood, plastic, and glass. garcilazo has exhibited another similar sculpture (in cuernavaca) made with wood and a tire. according to itzel vargas plata, the use of materials such as these and the creation of informal housing solutions is a “type of colonization or appropriation of spaces.” for more on informal settlements and garcilazo’s sculpture read the exhibition catalogue entry: itzel vargas plata, “códice vaquero,” in gabriel garcilazo: códice vaquero (cuernavaca, morelos: secretaría de cultura del estado de morelos, 2017). 43for more on rápido y furioso and weapon-trafficking operations see josé manuel valenzuela arce, "estado adulterado/la juventud expropriada," in topografías de las violencias: alteridades e impasses sociales, ed. susana bercovich and salvador cruz sierra (tijuana, b.c., méxico: el colegio de la frontera norte, 2015), 149-160; josé manuel valenzuela "remolinos de viento: juvenicidio e identidades desacreditadas," in juvenicidio: ayotzinapa y las vidas precarias en américa latina y españa, ed. josé manuel valenzuela (tijuana: el colegio de la frontera norte, 2015): 36-37; jorge carrasco arraizaga and j. jesus esquivel, “confirmado: el gobierno de calderón sabía de ‘rapido y furioso,’” proceso, september 28, 2014. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 1 1 4 f r o m a x ay á c a t l t o e l c hap o contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 8, no 1 (2019) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2019.284 amo: both the drug enforcement administration (dea) and the procuraduría general de la república (attorney general of mexico, pgr) appear in your artworks, as can be seen in the acronyms of these agencies found in the men’s caps and shields, respectively (fig. 9 and fig. 10). what is their role in the battles and violence that you depict? gg: in the end, it is all similar to a theater performance. dystopic magical codex is also like a theater scene depicting the war on drugs in both mexico and in the united states. at the end of the cold war, u.s. president ronald reagan (1981–1989) made up a new enemy to keep up with the arms race that has characterized the united states as well as the power of having a common enemy: the people. in mexico, dreadful discoveries from previous presidencies are being made public and, just like reagan invented a war on drugs, calderón continued it here in 2006. they are the absurd protagonists in an absurd war. humor therefore has a lot to do with it, because it is both tragic and comic to see this performance of the war on drugs that makes no sense; it is a senseless dystopia. figure 9 gabriel garcilazo, dystopic magical codex: codex 7 (the road to venezuela), 2015. charcoal and ink on paper. 66.5 x 66.5 cm. private collection. image courtesy of the artist. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 1 1 5 a d r i a n a m i r am o n t e s o l i v a s a nd g ab r i e l g a r c i l a z o contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 8, no 1 (2019) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2019.284 amo: could you further explain codex 13 (the journey through mexico) (fig. 6)? gg: it is a section of dystopic magical codex. this section has a two-headed god who appears in the codex azcatitlan, and i added the faces of former mexican president carlos salinas de gortari (1988–1994) and the drug lord joaquín guzmán loera, also known as el chapo. the idea is that they are two sides of the same thing and it is absurd to pretend to fight against something that, in reality, is being nourished or sponsored by the other. there is also a massacre in the pyramid and a banner with references to the forty-three students from ayotzinapa. thus, there are references to the present and to history. there are also several passenger buses. these vehicles are often used for transporting the drugs that cross through mexico, among other methods. amo: why is there an allusion to london in the shirt of one of the figures? gg: when the war on drugs was taking place, several drug lords were captured and they all wore these polo shirts. they have a logo with a figure on a horse playing polo and the word london inscribed. i saw that coincidence and included it as a joke. amo: is it a reference to social class? figure 10 gabriel garcilazo, dystopic magical codex: codex 11 (the arrival to mexico), 2015. charcoal and ink on paper. diptych 70 x 100 cm. private collection. image courtesy of the artist. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 1 1 6 f r o m a x ay á c a t l t o e l c hap o contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 8, no 1 (2019) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2019.284 gg: yes, to the desire to be someone else. many people become involved in the drug business because they do not have a possibility to improve their living conditions or gain upward mobility. once they have money, they want the most expensive and luxurious items. amo: what is the role of the press in mexican society and the dissemination of violence? (fig.11) gg: the press also participates in this theater that i mentioned. in mexico not all but most of the press is paid for by someone.44 there is also a curious interest in sensationalism in mexico. i see how yellow press sells, it is a profitable business. i do not know if sensationalism is related to culture or if it is a general human condition, but it is something that attracts buyers. during the war on drugs, yellow journalism showed everyday horrible images of shooting victims. amo: do you think that as mexicans we are desensitized to violence? gg: yes, we are desensitized and we normalize it. it is a natural reaction. if violence is often perceived as very dramatic, it would be unbearable. the brain needs to think “this is 44 as with any generalizations, it would be erroneous to assume all press is corrupt. mexico is one of the most dangerous countries for journalists in the world and many have been killed or live in exile. a recent article by the bbc argued only afghanistan and syria have witnessed the deaths of more journalists in comparison with mexico. see marcos martínez, “cuantos periodistas han muerto desde que asumió la presidencia lópez obrador,” bbc, february 28, 2019, https://www.bbc.com/mundo/noticiasamerica-latina-47402149. figure 11 gabriel garcilazo, dystopic magical codex: codex 17 (collateral damage), 2015. charcoal and ink on paper. polyptych (8 drawings), 25.3 x 41 cm. private collection. image courtesy of the artist. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ https://www.bbc.com/mundo/noticias-america-latina-47402149 https://www.bbc.com/mundo/noticias-america-latina-47402149 1 1 7 a d r i a n a m i r am o n t e s o l i v a s a nd g ab r i e l g a r c i l a z o contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 8, no 1 (2019) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2019.284 normal, this is what happens,” otherwise one would go mad. likewise, if horrific visual information is constantly delivered, one ends up normalizing it. a few years ago, there were shootings everywhere and sometimes walking on the street one could encounter a shooting victim or dead men hanging from bridges. this often happened in the state of morelos. i once saw a shooting right in front of me. it happened from one car to the other. their weapons looked like submachine guns from the military, i honestly do not know what they were. it happened shamelessly in broad daylight. i turned around and fled the scene. yet, there are fellow citizens who witnessed even worst cases of violence such as encountering decapitated heads in trash bags near their homes. amo: i cannot avoid noticing that many of the roles played in your artwork are by men, although the gender identity of some of the figures remains ambiguous. why can many of the individuals be identified as “men”? gg: they are mostly men because i was using images from the codex, although there are numerous women, especially in the section that represents migration. it was a society which at that moment was completely dominated by men, i guess that is the reason. violence is usually perpetuated by men. thus, it is also related to that.45 amo: you spoke about this earlier in our conversation, but what are your goals in representing the theme of violence and migration in dystopic magical codex? gg: my objective is to represent that encounter between the past and the present and to generate questions. those are my main goals. to raise questions, to find coincidences, differences, and perhaps more. to reflect on whether we are repeating history, if we are moving forward, or if we are achieving anything, and if we are, what we are achieving. these are some of the questions i set out not only in this work but in all of my oeuvre. amo: to which contemporary artists is your artwork related? gg: to many! artists have coincided in their ways of thinking, questioning, and seeing or representing the world. i believe that is a positive thing because it means i am aware of my historical moment. there are numerous artists, and i believe that we work toward questioning our contemporaneity. 45 in writing about the construction of masculinity and the public conception of criminality, salvador sierra cruz states that organized crime is mostly identified with men. men occupy many of the high-ranking positions in criminal organizations as well as most of its membership. he also states that many of the participants are not only men, but marginalized and lower-class men. in ciudad juárez, a city once labeled the most dangerous in the country, 95 percent of homicide victims are men; see salvador sierra cruz, “memorias de dolor: violencia social y homicida en ciudad juárez,” in topografías de las violencias: alteridades e impasses sociales, ed. susana bercovich hartman and salvador cruz sierra (tijuana: el colegio de la frontera norte, 2015), 89–90. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 1 1 8 f r o m a x ay á c a t l t o e l c hap o contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 8, no 1 (2019) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2019.284 amo: who have been your artistic or intellectual mentors? gg: when i was studying art, gustavo pérez monzón enormously influenced me and my generation.46 he was like our artistic sensei. even though my work does not relate to his, he influenced me in his way of working, teaching, and asking us to think about the artwork. he is among the most relevant, but there are more. many people have influenced me in my personal milieu, such as my parents and my grandmothers. my grandmother used to make retablos, or ex-votos, as a hobby.47 she made them as a political critique. she commented on the news or made fun of them by making exvotos like those found in churches. she would include images from the newspaper of the former president vicente fox (r. 2000–2006) giving an offering. just recently when i was reviewing my work i noticed it was influenced by what my grandmother did even though she never took it seriously. still, she can be considered one of my influences. amo: your work is intrinsically political. what do you think of current president manuel lópez obrador, the government’s foreign policy regarding venezuela, and the diaspora of migrants from countries in central america? gg: i think it is too soon to judge. i think there are issues that are being handled better. i agree with the two main policies that are the focus of this administration: human rights and transparency. these have been among the most obscure topics from previous governments in mexico: disrespect to human rights and zero transparency. if the new policies do work, they would benefit the country, but it is still too soon to make further comments. in terms of the diaspora, migration has always existed. if migrants stay here in mexico, it could be even more helpful than them leaving for the united states or other countries. new articles in this journal are licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 united states license. this journal is operated by the university library system of the university of pittsburgh as part of its d-scribe digital publishing program, and is co-sponsored by the university of pittsburgh press. 46 gustavo pérez monzón (1956) belongs to a generation of cuban artists known for its interest in formal experimentation and the inclusion of new themes in cuban art of the 1980s. he participated in the exhibit volumen i on january 14, 1981, at the centro de arte internacional de la habana, an exhibit that marked the beginning of the so-called new cuban art, both within cuba and at an international level. in the 1990s pérez monzón moved to mexico, where he currently resides. for more on pérez monzón and the volumen i exhibit, see olga maría rodríguez bolufé, ojos que ven, corazón que siente: arte cubano en méxico: 1985-1996 (ciudad de méxico: universidad iberoamericana, 1997), 45–67. 47 ex-votos are offerings made after a promise has been fulfilled. ex-voto paintings were commonly placed inside churches as a sign of gratitude or as testimony after the favor or miracle had been granted. as explained by clara bargellini, “ex-voto paintings express gratitude for divine interventions . . . the literal meaning of ex-voto (from a vow) –testifies to everyone in the community, for as long as the painting survives that a miracle has taken place.” clara bargellini in painting a new world: mexican art and life 1521-1821 (denver, co: frederick and jan mayer center for pre-columbian and spanish colonial art at the denver art museum, university of texas press, 2004), 232. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/ http://www.pitt.edu/ http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/ http://www.upress.pitt.edu/upressindex.aspx http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ from axayácatl to el chapo rethinking migration and mexico’s war on drugs in gabriel garcilazo’s dystopic magical codex contemporary codices and the ubiquitous presence of mickey mouse the mexica migration and the convergence of time in codex azcatitlan conclusion from axayácatl to el chapo rethinking migration and mexico’s war on drugs in gabriel garcilazo’s dystopic magical codex interview vol 10, no 1 (2025) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2025.346 http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu redressing a lacuna in the historical record: mazepa andrea liu about the author andrea liu is a nyc/berlin-based visual art & performance critic and artist. she was curator of counterhegemony: art in social context (fellowship program for visual artists) and received her undergrad education from yale. she has written art criticism for afterimage, artmargins, e-flux, social text, new museum social practice glossary, movement research journal and catalogue/exhibition essays for visual artists georgia sagri (deste foundation), kandis williams (soft colony), aditya mandayam (kunstverein munich companion series) & bob gramsma (edition fink). http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 10, no 1 (2025) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2025.346 since russia’s war in ukraine in february 2022, institutions of visual art have attempted to take on a reparative role in the cultural sphere by elevating ukrainian artists and multiplying opportunities and visibility for them—and by dedicating entire exhibitions solely to ukraine and/or ukrainian artists. in 2022, berlin’s goethe-institut held an exhibition of only ukrainian artists, in exile. in 2023, three other european museums held similar exhibitions: the grand palais immersif in paris, with ukraine: a year of resilience, a culture of resistance; the bode-museum in berlin, with timeless contemporary ukrainian art in times of war; and the atrium gallery in london, with the heart of war: ukrainian resilience and resistance through art. amidst this landscape, the second iteration of the kyiv perennial came to berlin in february 2025—a sprawling exhibition of ukrainian artists at ngbk (neue gesellschaft für bildende kunst), between bridges, and prater galerie. perhaps the most intriguing work in the exhibition was the moving image project shown on a giant life-size screen in a pitch-black room at between bridges, the battle over mazepa, by berlin-based ukrainian artist mykola ridnyi. this film was propelled by the unexpected, robust juxtaposition of two disparate, unlikely entities: rap performance as a personal expression of polemics and historical contestation, wedded to conflicting legends of ivan mazepa (1639–1709), a seventeenth-century political leader of ukraine whose anti-hero yarn eventually came to symbolize the undercurrent of mutual distrust in the russian-ukrainian historic encounter. once a close ally of russia’s tsar peter i, mazepa later defected to join russia’s enemy, sweden’s king charles xii, at the battle of poltava in 1709. russia vanquished sweden at poltava, inaugurating an era in which russia was a global power. the rappers in ridnyi’s film take shards of two conflicting portrayals of mazepa—pushkin’s poem “poltava” (1829), which castigated mazepa as a vicious traitor and a decrepit old man, and lord byron’s poem “mazeppa” (1819), which breathlessly romanticized mazepa being tied to a wild galloping horse in his virile youth—and set them against one another. the performance is structured by six rounds of “rap battles,” with two pairs of opposing rappers (one male, one female) rapping on clusters of topics. (prior to the performance, topics from the two poems were whittled down in ridnyi’s workshop with all four rappers, led by professor susan straetling.) the film opens portentously with the disembodied sound of stomping feet and a pitchblack screen, the one-note dissonant blare of a trombone, and eventually, a whisper of a clock ticking. two rappers—ellie (a feisty spoken-word artist from london with a literary flair to her rapping) versus moh (a rapper from sudan)—begin riffing on how the russian orthodox church issued an anathema against mazepa for his betrayal of tsar peter i in 1709. throughout ellie and moh’s three rounds, the aim of each rapper seems to be to paint the persona represented by the other rapper as repulsively as possible. ellie channels mazepa’s disgust for the territorial expansionism of peter i when she raps, “but when i awake i often hear/ the stomps of peter tsar, he is near/ to grab the borderless lands/ with his greedy perverted hands.” there is a surreal aspect to watching twenty-first-century hip-hop artists—with their underground street personas, bandanas, and cut-off t-shirts—weave intricate rap verses about a seventeenthcentury ukrainian leader who rebelled against russia’s peter the great. the piece ambitiously amalgamates cultural translation, genre translation, temporal translation, and verbal translation. it is intriguing to witness how rap music’s quintessential social mores of selfmythologization and adversarial bravado are utilized so fittingly to convey the pushkin-byron rivalry. the last three rounds of the “rap battle” feature a new pair: caxxianne (a hip-hop artist from the cayman islands) and exo (a rapper from romania). this pair is a more successful redressing a lacuna in the historical record: mazepa andrea liu http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 3 7 a n d r e a l i u contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 10, no 1 (2025) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2025.346 collaboration, as caxxianne is the most convincing of the four as a rapper, imbuing her rapping with a succulent reggae lilt at times. her raps and exo’s wrap around each other, as they alternate sentence by sentence, whereas the first pair did blocks of monologues that did not dovetail so intricately. in both pairs, the female rapper subtly dominates and is a stronger performer/ writer than the male rapper. is it a coincidence then that in both pairs, the female rapper represents or advocates for mazepa’s point of view, against the tsar of russia? figure 1 the battle over mazepa. video by mykola ridnyi, 2023 (20 minutes). film still courtesy of the artist. the duality of mazepa’s historical persona (villain versus hero) is what allows for this transposition of his story into a “rap battle” paradigm of two adversarial rappers. there is not only a duality, but also a plasticity, to the historical persona of mazepa. first introduced to the west by voltaire’s book histoire de charles xii (1726), mazepa sprouted into an intergenerational muse for over 300 works of art, literature, and music, such as victor hugo’s poetry collection les orientales (1828) and franz liszt’s opera mazeppa (1854). like a chimera, mazepa morphed from a persecuted lover, to an orientalized hero tied to a wild horse in the exoticized land of ukraine, to a disgraced villain who betrayed russia during this period— depending on the author. as koznarsky observes, “mazepa is imprinted upon the identity of ukrainians both from within as a stigma, and from the outside—as a curse. note that the terrible name ‘mazepa’ was not used as a curse by ukrainians, but was applied to ukrainians by russians as an ethnic label implying perfidy, stubbornness, and an inclination to treason.”1 to a degree, ukrainians were expected to ritualistically perform public renunciation of mazepa under the imperial gaze.2 but in the aftermath of ukraine’s independence as a nation in 1991, ukrainian nationalist movements reclaimed mazepa as a symbol of national integrity and historical agency. (this is perhaps analogous to how the word “queer” was once used to denigrate gays, but was later reclaimed by the gay liberation movement as a moniker of pride.) in mykola ridnyi’s artist talk on the battle over mazepa at pushkin house in 2024, he expressed his ethical and political ambitions for the film, lamenting that “mazepa has been shaped by two gazes which are not ukrainian” and that “mazepa [has been made into] a symbol of ukraine without the 1 taras koznarsky, “obsessions with mazepa,” harvard ukrainian studies 31, no. 1/4 (2009–2010): 588, https://www.jstor.org/stable/41756516. 2 koznarsky, “obsessions,” 601. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 3 8 r e d r e s s i n g a l a c u n a i n t h e h i s t o r i c a l r e c o r d : m a z e p a contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 10, no 1 (2025) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2025.346 participation of ukraine.”3 to redress this elision in the historical record, ridnyi puts great faith in the art form of rap/ hip hop, where highly stylized rituals of competition are the vehicle through which community is fostered. in the battle over mazepa, this community consisted of roughly a dozen rap fans in their twenties, standing in attentive silence around the two battling rappers. in gramsci’s prison notebooks, “organic intellectuals” come largely from the working class and articulate the politics of their class, as opposed to the fossilized, detached figures comprising “traditional intellectuals.”4 the four rhyming rappers of ridnyi’s film can be likened to “organic intellectuals”; they use hip hop as an auto-didactic discursive framework through which to dissect, refute, affirm, or skewer multifarious aspects of the two mazepa poems, thereby creating an intertextual, polyphonic re-evaluation of the legend of mazepa. 3 mykola ridnyi, artist talk: mykola ridnyi in conversation with professor susanne strätling, moderated by dr. maria chehonadskih, posted october 13, 2024 by pushkin house, london, uk, youtube video, 37:00, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qmmsml-uugu. 4 antonio gramsci, selections from the prison notebooks of antonio gramsci, ed. & trans. quintin hoare and geoffrey nowell-smith, international publishers, 1971. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qmmsml-uugu 3 9 a n d r e a l i u contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 10, no 1 (2025) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2025.346 new articles in this journal are licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 united states license. this journal is published by pitt open library publishing. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ https://www.library.pitt.edu/e-journals vol 10, no 1 (2025) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2025.344 http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu occupied monument forte prenestino and the creative rewriting of ruins amanda guido ochoa about the author amanda guido ochoa is an architect, designer, and researcher based in mexico city. she holds a b.a. in architecture from the instituto tecnológico de tepic and an m.sc. in architectural design and history from the politecnico di milano, where her thesis examined the aesthetics of decay, urban ruins, and processes of creative rewriting. her professional experience spans architectural and landscape design, exhibition and museographic design, and the conservation of historical monuments, with work in mexico, italy, greece, and the united states. her research interests focus on ruins, adaptive reuse, memory, and the cultural and social meanings of abandoned and transformed spaces. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 10, no 1 (2025) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2025.344 abstract forte prenestino, located on the outskirts of rome, is a former military fort reappropriated as an occupied social center and a vibrant node of activism, creativity, and cultural production. constructed in the late nineteenth century as part of italy’s post-unification defensive infrastructure, the fort was eventually abandoned and fell into disrepair. its occupation by local collectives in 1986 marked a radical intervention that departed from both state-led restoration frameworks and conventional heritage frameworks. this article examines the reappropriation of forte prenestino as a case of adaptive reuse driven by anarchists, punks, artists, students, community activists, and radical leftist movements. these groups transformed a symbol of militarism and neglect into a space of communal life, artistic expression, and political resistance. their reactivation of the forte prenestino site challenges traditional preservation models, which often reinforce dominant cultural narratives and the aesthetic values imposed by hegemonic culture. here, inclusion entails not merely access to the site for marginalized groups but the active participation of marginalized identities in shaping spatial and cultural meaning. resistance is enacted through practices of occupation, horizontal governance, and anti-capitalist cultural production—graffiti, murals, and ephemeral installations—that resist commodification and institutional control. by foregrounding collective action and creative transformation, this study calls for more inclusive, dynamic approaches to preservation—approaches that embrace decay as a generative condition, rather than as failure. forte prenestino stands as a compelling example of how historical ruins can become laboratories of collective creativity where space is continuously rewritten through cultural production, resistance, and everyday use. introduction conservation practices centered on the preservation and safeguarding of architectural heritage often involve adaptive reuses of historic buildings that reinforce the cultural values and aesthetic preferences of hegemonic narratives. these interventions frequently align with processes of tourism development, gentrification, and the commodification of heritage within historic urban environments. they ultimately contribute to the marginalization or displacement of communities whose identities, collective histories, and cultural practices diverge from hegemonic narratives. in this context, subcultural groups such as anarchists, punks, anti-fascists, queer collectives, and autonomist political organizations have emerged as active agents of resistance. at sites like forte prenestino, their occupation of space itself becomes a critical aesthetic and political statement; through graffiti, murals, ephemeral installations, and everyday practices of self-governance and care, they challenge the aforementioned conventional restoration paradigms and reimagine the ruin as a living site of struggle, solidarity, and counter-memory. drawing on henri lefebvre’s theorization of the titular concepts in his works the production of space and the right to the city, this article highlights how forms of resistance occupied monument forte prenestino and the creative rewriting of ruins amanda guido ochoa http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 1 8 o c c u p i e d m o n u m e n t contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 10, no 1 (2025) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2025.344 at forte prenestino rely on two key principles: appropriation and autogestion.1 the latter refers to self-management or grassroots governance, wherein communities collectively organize to manage space without relying on hierarchical or state structures. these practices allow marginalized actors to reclaim agency within the urban fabric, transforming space through collective use and everyday negotiation. although lefebvre’s ideas have sometimes been dismissed as utopian or impractical within institutional planning discourse, real-world examples such as squatted social centers in italy demonstrate that collective action can activate neglected or decaying sites in transformative and durable ways.2 these cases show that lefebvre’s vision is not merely theoretical; it has real-world applications under the specific sociopolitical conditions that allow self-organized urbanism to thrive. within this context, daniela sandler’s concept of counterpreservation offers a critical lens through which to interpret the intentional embrace of architectural decay as both a material condition and a political act. sandler defines counterpreservation not as passive neglect or abandonment, but as a deliberate strategy that frames decay as a desirable and legible feature.3 rather than erasing traces of time and use, counterpreservation elevates them, often recontextualizing them through ephemeral interventions such as graffiti, murals, temporary installations, or collective inhabitation. in doing so, it opens space for alternative narratives, affordable living, and creative expression that operate outside the frameworks permitted by traditional conservation and heritage policy. counterpreservation, then, reveals the potential of ruins and derelict spaces not as symbols of failure or loss, but as canvases for cultural subversion and urban reinvention. these practices reclaim decay as a source of meaning and agency, exemplifying lefebvre’s vision of urban space as a contested terrain that is shaped as much by grassroots desire and collective memory as it is by formal governance or capital investment. forte prenestino, located in the suburbs of rome, offers an effective case study for exploring these ideas. this former military structure, built in the late nineteenth century as part of a broader defensive system after italian unification and the designation of rome as the national capital, remained abandoned for decades. neglected, and slowly overtaken by the passage of time, the site became a symbol of exclusion at the edges of the city. in 1986, local collectives occupied and reactivated the site. among them were punks, anarchists, feminists, artists, and members of italy’s autonomist movement. rather than pursuing institutional restoration, their intervention marked a radical reappropriation of space. the fort was no longer a relic of military power; instead, it became a living experiment in cultural resistance and self-organization. what makes forte prenestino particularly significant is not only its longevity and scale but also its continuous resistance to commodification and its embodiment of counterpreservation as an ongoing political practice. it is situated within a broader european trend of squatted social centers while retaining its distinct roman identity. 1 henri lefebvre discusses autogestion as a form of collective self-management that resists hierarchical control and enables the appropriation and production of space by its users. lefebvre’s comments reflect a broader critique of institutional power and the commodification of urban life. henri lefebvre, the production of space, trans. donald nicholson-smith (oxford: blackwell, 1991), 422–423. see also henri lefebvre, the right to the city (verso, 1996). 2 for instance, susan fainstein critiques lefebvre’s radical democratic ideals as lacking implementable frameworks within real-world governance structures. susan s. fainstein, the just city (cornell university press, 2010). 3 daniela sandler, counterpreservation: architectural decay in berlin since 1989 (cornell university press, 2016). see also daniela sandler, “counterpreservation: decrepitude and memory in post-unification berlin,” third text 25, no. 6 (2011): 687–697. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 1 9 a m a n d a g u i d o o c h o a contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 10, no 1 (2025) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2025.344 forte prenestino serves as both a paradigmatic case and a singular case within the broader network of self-managed social centers in italy and beyond. on the one hand, it exemplifies a model of occupation and autonomous organization that has been replicated across numerous contexts, all of which are grounded in shared ideological commitments to anti-capitalism, horizontal governance, and cultural production. on the other hand, forte prenestino is distinguished by its unique architectural, historical, and urban context. the transformation of forte prenestino speaks to the possibility of a reparative history of architecture—one that does not restore buildings to a static past, but instead creatively rewrites their meaning through collective use. rather than erasing signs of damage or decay, the occupiers embraced these conditions as generative, allowing new forms of social life and memory to emerge. in doing so, they enacted a form of (dis)repair that challenges inherited narratives of preservation and cultural legitimacy. while some historical harms may remain irreparable, the transformation of the fort affirmed the potential of experimental, collective practices to enact alternative forms of reparation through space, culture, and community. forte prenestina: urban and historical context after the kingdom of italy was established in 1861—following the risorgimento [revival], the nineteenth-century movement for italian political unity, and the subsequent annexation of rome from the papal states—it began an ambitious project to fortify its new capital. in response to geopolitical instability and the perceived threat of foreign invasion, the regio decreto [royal decree] was enacted to authorize the construction of a comprehensive defensive system surrounding rome, to replace the outdated and ineffective bastion system.4 the new system, conceived to align with the city’s circular urban form, consisted of a ring of fifteen forts, built in the prussian typology. this polygonal fortification system originated in france and was further developed in germany in the mid-nineteenth century. its fortifications were distributed radially, forming a protective ring around the area they aimed to secure. these forts were strategically positioned to protect key access points and were placed at specific distances from each other. the entire perimeter, conceived as a defensive belt encircling the city, stretched roughly 37 kilometers. similar fortification systems were implemented elsewhere in italy during the mid-nineteenth century, including in verona, peschiera, mestre, bologna, ancona, and piacenza—each reflecting a broader military logic of territorial control. forte prenestina, constructed between 1880 and 1884 during the second phase of fortification, was one of these defensive structures.5 situated along the via prenestina in the eastern quadrant of rome, it occupied a strategic position between the tiburtina and casilina routes. as seen in figure 1, the fort featured a pentagonal layout with a symmetrical façade facing the city, carnot walls along its retreating flanks, and angular outer walls oriented toward the countryside. it was originally equipped with artillery on its northern flank. 4 the regio decreto was a legal act issued by the monarch in the kingdom of italy, carrying the force of law. in this context, it authorized the development of military infrastructure to defend rome as the new capital. 5 the term forte prenestina is used throughout this text to refer specifically to forte prenestino in the period when it functioned as part of rome’s nineteenth-century military defense system, prior to its occupation in 1986. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 2 0 o c c u p i e d m o n u m e n t contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 10, no 1 (2025) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2025.344 figure 1 plan of the masonry at the level of the bastion of forte prenestino. the prussian typology is evident in the pentagonal shape. architectural drawing, 1889. forti di roma collection, scag (istituto storico e cultura dell’arma del genio). as a royal military asset, forte prenestina served its intended purpose for several decades. after the fall of the monarchy in 1946, the ownership of the fort was transferred to the state. in the early twentieth century, the fort was repurposed as military barracks; later, it was used as an artillery storage facility. during world war ii, it briefly housed a refugee camp and served as a detention center for residents of the centocelle and quarticciolo neighborhoods during the nazi occupation. following the liberation of rome in 1944, the fort, along with other military buildings, was occupied by allied forces before returning to italian control. however, by the 1930s, the larger fortification system that included forte prenestina began to lose its strategic value. urban expansion rapidly encroached upon the defensive ring, and by the 1960s, the forts were gradually incorporated into new residential neighborhoods. this integration rendered the forts obsolete for military purposes, and maintenance of the structures became increasingly difficult due to their size and their state ownership. while some forts were repurposed as museums or institutional spaces, many others fell into neglect and disrepair, including forte prenestina. in 1977, a failed expropriation attempt by the municipality of rome left the fort in a prolonged state of abandonment. it was not until 1986, after nearly a decade of deterioration, that the fort was occupied by a collective of local activists. although the building suffered damage throughout its layered and complex history, it had remained largely preserved due to its occupation by these groups . in 2008, it was officially recognized as a site of cultural heritage under the italian code of cultural heritage.6 as noted by architectural historian elvira cajano, “it is somehow curious that throughout its history, forte prenestino seems to have always offered shelter to marginal figures rather than serving the military purpose it was originally made for.”7 indeed, the fort’s trajectory—from a 6 ministero per i beni e le attività culturali, “d.m. 28/04/2008,” gazzetta ufficiale no. 112, may 16, 2008. 7 elvira cajano, ed., il sistema dei forti militari a roma [the system of military forts in rome] (rome: gangemi editore, 2006). http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 2 1 a m a n d a g u i d o o c h o a contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 10, no 1 (2025) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2025.344 symbol of national defense to a neglected ruin, and eventually to a thriving space of autonomous culture—reveals how architecture can outlive its intended function and be reimagined by those it was never meant to serve. reclaiming the right to the city: subcultural resistance and the appropriation of forte prenestino in rome the occupation of forte prenestino in 1986 was preceded by an earlier, unsuccessful attempt by activists in the mid-1970s, which was suppressed by police intervention. at that time, the fort was located within quartiere prenestino-centocelle, a rapidly developing yet infrastructurally underserved neighborhood lacking cultural facilities, schools, and public services. officially established as a district in 1961, prenestino-centocelle became a site of social and political experimentation during the subsequent decades. piazza dei gerani, a central square within the neighborhood, emerged as a hub for diverse groups, including communist assemblies and groups with subcultural identities, such as punks and skinheads. these interactions gave rise to creative initiatives. one of the most notable interventions originating from these grassroots movements was the giorno del non-lavoro (non-labor day), conceived as an alternative to traditional labor day celebrations and organized by the associazione culturale adesso basta (acab), or adesso basta [stop now]. the event criticized exploitative labor conditions and the marginalization of unemployed and precarious workers. initiated on may 1, 1983, the first giorno del non-lavoro took place in front of forte prenestino, outside the closed fort, with official authorization permitting festivities until midnight. as part of this event, vuoto a perdere was founded as an independent publication that merged elements of traditional magazines and underground fanzines.9 this hybrid format was significant because it allowed the publication to bridge the gap between formal editorial structures and the raw, diy ethos of underground culture— creating a platform that was both accessible and politically charged. vuoto a perdere provided space for alternative voices, dissenting opinions, and cultural experimentation at a time when mainstream media often ignored or misrepresented these communities. two years later, adesso basta occupied forte prenestino for one week in december of 1985, offering free concerts and exhibitions.10 this was a symbolic occupation,11 with the objective of proving that the association could be in charge of the abandoned space, and that it could offer a cultural agenda to the benefit of a quartiere that did not have cultural spaces. this event launched a petition to open the fort to the neighborhood. the groundwork for the occupation to come had now been laid. however, the events of 1986 marked a significant departure from previous years, setting the stage for a radical reappropriation of the fort space. in march of 1986, leonardo rinaldi, the leader of adesso basta, wrote to the municipality to ask for access to the fort building. it is important to note that forte prenestina was state property at the time (and still remains state property as of 2025); it was not under the city’s jurisdiction, and the municipality officially deemed it uninhabitable. rinaldi asked for access to the fort in exchange for offering cultural events and workshops to the public. he also demanded 9 archivio dei movimenti roma, “vuoto a perdere,” accessed may 14, 2025, https://www.armoroma.org/rivista/vuoto-a-perdere/. 10 adesso basta was a cultural association that defended the right to the access of green spaces. csoa forte prenestino, fortopia: storie d’amore e d’autogestione [fortopia: stories of love and autogestion] (rome: forte pressa, 2016), 13. 11 to call this a symbolic occupation implies a distinction from more confrontational or militant models of squatting, those rooted in tactical resistance or aesthetic reappropriation. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ https://www.armoroma.org/rivista/vuoto-a-perdere/ 2 2 o c c u p i e d m o n u m e n t contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 10, no 1 (2025) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2025.344 the renovation of the fort and the installation of electric power—an audacious request, given the circumstances. perhaps unsurprisingly, the municipality rejected the proposal. following that refusal, the giorno del non-lavoro took place as usual on may 1, 1986— outside the fort, and this time under radioactive rain. the chernobyl disaster had occurred just five days earlier, and the resulting fallout reached the italian peninsula, manifesting as radioactive rainfall during the event. the party continued as usual, with performances by local bands such as the roman punk band bloody riot. but this time, when the clock struck midnight, the party did not stop. a banner was hung in front of the stage that stated, “the party continues.” immediately, someone broke the chain to gain entry to the closed fort. the stage was then reset inside the fort, where the party went on all night. from that night on, forte prenestina became centro sociale occupato e autogestito (csoa) forte prenestino [occupied social center forte prenestino], or simply forte prenestino. around forty people were part of the occupation. they were soon joined by collettivo fuori di sede [off-campus collective], a collective of foreign students from the south of italy, as well as a diverse collection of activists interested in occupying the space, such as punks, student associations, and feminist groups. following the occupation, forte prenestino was rapidly reimagined as a space of autonomous cultural and social production. the transformation of this former military structure into a vibrant community hub was neither incidental nor purely utilitarian; rather, it was a deliberate act of reclaiming public space for collective life. the occupiers implemented a diverse range of initiatives, illustrating how cultural production could be used to reweave the social fabric of a neighborhood marginalized by the city’s formal institutions. one of the first projects was the establishment of a communal kitchen, which provided meals while also serving as a site of solidarity and economic self-sufficiency. educational activities soon followed, including lessons in music, theatre, and visual arts—opportunities that were otherwise inaccessible to many residents of the surrounding area. music studios were made available for local bands to rehearse, and the fort began to host regular film screenings and weekly concerts, featuring both local and international performers. these events not only brought cultural life to a largely underserved district but also attracted wider publics, positioning the fort as a dynamic node in rome’s underground scene. in parallel with these initiatives, the occupants of the fort curated spaces for memory and knowledge-building, including a music library and a reading room with books, journals, and zines from activist and subcultural networks. crucially, these activities were sustained through regular open meetings that enabled collective decision-making and reinforced the participatory ethos of the space. what emerged was not merely a venue for events but an infrastructure for living otherwise—an experiment in self-management, cultural autonomy, and spatial resistance. as forte prenestino grew in popularity and attendance during the late 1980s, negotiations with the municipality continued, primarily concerning access to basic infrastructure such as clean water and electricity. local district authorities expressed support for the occupation, often mediating between the occupants and the municipal government. their advocacy was grounded in the argument that the occupied social center was fulfilling a cultural and social role otherwise absent in the quartiere. however, the legal status of the occupation remained precarious. although the district supported the project, forte prenestino remained state property under the jurisdiction of the ministry of the interior, beyond the administrative reach of both the municipality and the district. this legal ambiguity placed the occupants in a position of constant vulnerability in which they were tolerated in practice and were never formally sanctioned. by the early 1990s, despite its initial alliance with the neighborhood, the fort became increasingly detached from the quartiere and the broader fabric of the city. this detachment was complex and paradoxical: even though local authorities once advocated for the fort’s http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 2 3 a m a n d a g u i d o o c h o a contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 10, no 1 (2025) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2025.344 activities, the lack of legal recognition limited their ability to secure its integration into official urban planning or infrastructure schemes. the fort’s uncertain legal position produced a form of spatial isolation, even as its cultural relevance expanded. in response to this marginalization, forte prenestino deepened its connections with the wider italian network of social centers, forming a particularly strong alliance with the leoncavallo center in milan. this move toward inter-city solidarity allowed the fort to overcome its detachment and reframe its position by showing that it was not peripheral; in fact, it was part of a decentralized cultural and political movement. by the mid-1990s, forte prenestino had gained considerable national and international visibility, namely by hosting major concerts and other public events. yet the threat of eviction persisted. in 1990, the fort joined other roman collectives to demand an amnesty for all occupied social centers in italy, rallying under the slogan: “yes to private property, only if it is self-governed.” these efforts were part of a broader campaign to establish a new legal framework for occupations rooted in community self-management. in 1994, another initiative—this one supported by then-mayor francesco rutelli—proposed legalizing the occupation through the payment of a symbolic rent. despite these overtures, the unresolved ownership of the building remained an obstacle. in 1995, forte prenestino was included in a list of properties slated for public auction by the ministry of the interior, further underlining the enduring fragility of its legal status. the city of rome could never afford to purchase the building from the state, and as of this writing in 2025, csoa forte prenestino remains an illegal occupation. nevertheless, the fort continues to offer wide cultural programming that closely resembles the original vision proposed at the time of occupation. main spaces within the complex include a cinema, a library, an enoteca, a pub, a taverna, and facilities dedicated to musical production. in addition to its regular programming, the fort hosts major cultural events such as crack! fumetti dirompenti, a festival of drawn and printed art, and babel, the independent biennale dedicated to critical discussions on housing. appropriation through graffiti and the architectural program spatial characteristics play a significant role in processes of appropriation by subcultural groups, particularly when the original function or meaning of a site has been lost or transformed. forte prenestino’s occupation can be understood as the result of multiple interrelated factors. the fort is situated within a relatively recent, informally developed urban area of rome that is characterized by inadequate infrastructure and weak connections to the broader city fabric. this context fostered the emergence of a diverse social environment comprising subcultural groups, collectives, and communist organizations who frequently utilized the neighborhood’s central square as a site of assembly. at the time of its occupation, forte prenestino was no longer fulfilling its initial military purpose and was now abandoned, neglected, and in a state of structural decline. nevertheless, its architectural configuration offered a degree of flexibility by accommodating a wide range of uses and activities. this functional adaptability distinguished it from other iconic roman ruins. the decay of sites such as the colosseum or the roman forum is often valorized; it is seen as sublime, emblematic of historical continuity. in contrast, forte prenestino’s ruination evoked a markedly different semiotic register. because it was a former military fortification designed for defence and conflict, its deterioration was associated with trauma and violence, which imparted a negative symbolic charge that was subsequently challenged and reinterpreted through its occupation. hence, the state of decay of forte prenestino at the time of its occupation, its architectural layout, and its location were determinant factors for its occupation. moreover, another possible factor was its visibility within the prenestino-centocelle area. forte prenestino is, after all, a heritage site and a monument. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 2 4 o c c u p i e d m o n u m e n t contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 10, no 1 (2025) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2025.344 following the categories explored by alois riegl in his seminal work the modern cult of monuments,12 forte prenestino is an unintentional monument with both historical value and use value. forte prenestino has historical value in that it represents a distinct moment in the evolution of a defensive architectural style. additionally, it possesses use value in that it followed the natural cycle of construction, deterioration, and decay, though it was subsequently altered through human intervention following its occupation. finally, its status as a monument also gives it value and relevance inside the urban space. due to these multiple types of value, the activities and initiatives of the occupied social center gained more visibility among the neighbors, the inhabitants of the city of rome, the media, and the authorities. most importantly, they drew the attention of individuals and groups who share the ideals that forte prenestino promotes. subcultural groups express their ideals and affiliations through a system of objects, signs, and symbols that communicate political and artistic messages. a well-known example is the punk movement, which utilizes diy aesthetics, safety pins, anarchist symbols, and band patches not only as fashion statements but also as visual tools of dissent against mainstream culture and authority. in a similar way, the occupants of spaces like forte prenestino mobilize graffiti, murals, and architectural interventions to articulate their collective identity and political stance. a notable example of the ideology behind these interventions is the phrase “ornament is not a crime,” which serves as a critique of traditional architectural views on ornamentation, particularly within the context of graffiti as a countercultural practice.13 graffiti, when understood as ornamentation, becomes an additive process rather than a reductive one. it engages with existing surfaces, often obscuring or concealing what lies beneath, transforming the space in ways that reflect a form of resistance. this act of appropriation aligns graffiti with broader cultural movements that resist dominant societal norms. as a form of ornamentation, graffiti serves as a direct challenge to architectural ideologies, particularly those articulated by adolf loos. in his 1908 essay “ornament and crime,” loos condemns ornamentation as a degenerate practice, advocating instead for a pure, unadorned materiality.14 in stark contrast, graffiti as ornamentation asserts a defiant position, using the very concept of decoration to resist dominant aesthetic and cultural standards. to fully understand graffiti’s role as ornamentation, it is necessary to contextualize it within a broader historical and ideological framework that recognizes the political and social functions of ornamentation. while ornamentation has historically been viewed as either decorative or degenerate, depending on the ideological perspective, graffiti complicates this binary by utilizing ornamentation as a form of resistance. this resistance extends beyond the aesthetic realm; it engages with the built environment and critiques the cultural and architectural hierarchies that define what is deemed acceptable. in this way, graffiti reimagines the space it occupies and challenges traditional notions of public and private space, ownership, and artistic expression. 12 in the modern cult of monuments (1903), alois riegl introduced categories such as “age value” (the appreciation of an object due to its age) and “historical value” (the value attributed to an object due to its historical significance). these concepts have influenced contemporary preservation theory by highlighting the dynamic nature of historical sites, where both physical decay and new interventions contribute to the evolving meaning of the site. see alois riegl, “the modern cult of monuments: its character and its origin,” trans. kurt w. forster and diane ghirardo, oppositions 25 (1982): 21–51. originally published in der moderne denkmalkultus: sein wesen und seine entstehung [the modern cult of monuments] (vienna: braumüller, 1903). 13 jonathan hill, immaterial architecture (london: routledge, 2006). 14 adolf loos, “ornament and crime (1908),” in ornament and crime: selected essays (ariadne press, 1998). http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 2 5 a m a n d a g u i d o o c h o a contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 10, no 1 (2025) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2025.344 hence, just as subcultures appropriate ornamental elements, subcultural spaces also embody a bricolage of elements, with graffiti as the main form of ornamentation. in addition, graffiti adds a human touch to the depersonalized urban landscape, providing a sense of place and belonging to subcultures, groups, and collectives. according to scholars myra f. taylor, julie ann pooley, and georgia carragher, a person’s sense of belonging within society emerges from a convergence of cognitive processes, behavioral patterns, emotional responses, and environmental experiences—from a dynamic interaction between the individual and their sociocultural context.15 the subcultural sense of place is activated by the collective occupation of a shared physical space, in an act of claiming temporary ownership that reinforces the feeling of being connected, included, and supported within a subculture, group, collective, or community. this sense of belonging is particularly evident in the case of forte prenestino, where the space has become a hub for various countercultural and activist groups. these groups come together to share not only physical space but also ideologies and social practices. the collective nature of the occupation fosters collaboration and solidarity across diverse subcultural groups, creating an environment in which individuals feel they can contribute to something larger than themselves. this shared experience of occupation enables the formation of deep social bonds, thereby reinforcing the sense of belonging and inclusion among the participants. the cognitive and emotional experiences triggered by the fort’s occupation are further amplified by its role as a platform for artistic and political expression, strengthening the participants’ sense of community within the broader social context. as scholar valeria federici notes, “the use of graffiti art inside the fort speaks to the process of appropriation and adaptation that this building went through since 1986.”16 from the early stages of its occupation, graffiti became a defining visual element of forte prenestino, symbolizing both resistance and identity. during the 1980s, this visual language was relatively modest, consisting mostly of tags and throw-ups that marked the space as claimed but still in transition. however, as the fort solidified its role not only as a political and social hub but also as a platform for artistic expression, graffiti evolved into a central medium of its cultural production. this transformation became especially evident in the early 1990s, when the fort began hosting a wider range of artists, performers, and sculptors. a pivotal moment occurred during a 1991 festival that featured a graffiti jam session, bringing together several renowned street artists. one of the most prominent interventions from this event is a large-scale mural by blu17 (see figure 2), which exemplifies the fort’s shift from textual graffiti toward complex visual narratives. the mural depicts a hybrid creature composed of mechanical and organic parts, multiple eyes, and distorted limbs—an allegorical figure that critiques systems of power, surveillance, and capitalist machinery. rather than delivering a literal political message, the 15 myra f. taylor, julie ann pooley, and georgia carragher, “sense of belonging and well-being: a review of the literature,” psychology of well-being: theory, research, and practice 6, no. 1 (2016): 20. 16 valeria federici, “network culture in italy in the 1990s and the making of a place for art and activism,” phd diss., brown university, 2019. 17 blu’s street art focuses on topics that express social inequality, injustice, societal insurrection, capitalism, and consumerism. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 2 6 o c c u p i e d m o n u m e n t contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 10, no 1 (2025) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2025.344 piece engages viewers through metaphor and visual provocation, reflecting the broader evolution of graffiti at the fort into a more nuanced and figurative form of expression. figure 2 one of blu’s most representative murals inside the walls of forte prenestino. the piece portrays a pair of wealthy, corpulent figures feeding off the common people, offering a critique of social and economic exploitation. photo by the author. other examples further illustrate the broader evolution of graffiti at the fort. in figure 3, the surrounding graffiti acts as a layered visual archive of protest, satire, and cultural critique. a prominent banner displayed at the entrance reads “free women in free palestine,” conveying both feminist and anti-colonial solidarity, and reaffirming the fort’s role as a space for activism and collective struggle. figure 3 the entrance to one of the tunnels at forte prenestino provides a vivid illustration of the site’s current state of decay and the interventions made by its occupants. the banners displayed at the entrance convey ideological perspectives and political statements, reflecting the fort’s role as a space for activism. photo by http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 2 7 a m a n d a g u i d o o c h o a contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 10, no 1 (2025) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2025.344 the author. figure 4 depicts a figure on a unicycle, playing the accordion, sprouting a tree from their head—an almost carnivalesque embodiment of creative resistance—while facing a phalanx of riot police. this surreal juxtaposition highlights the contrast between state control and anarchic imagination. the repetition of anti-fascist symbols, stylized lettering, and references to other global struggles (such as genova 2001, recalling the violent suppression of the g8 protests) further inscribes the fort’s walls with a shared counter-narrative. here, graffiti is not vandalism but a deliberate reappropriation of space—a way to inscribe political memory and communal identity onto the architecture itself. figure 4 mural by genova, one of the artists invited to decorate forte prenestino. this work depicts freedom and artistic expression in opposition to police forces, which are symbolized as animals. photo by the author. both individual and collective identities are articulated through the murals and graffiti that adorn forte prenestino’s walls. these visual interventions serve not only as personal expressions but also as markers of the diverse collectives and subcultural groups that cohabit at the site. the revolution lefebvre envisioned—a transformation in the production and appropriation of urban space—is materially and symbolically enacted here through graffiti, banners, and the self-managed occupation of architecture. the fort’s tunnels, vaulted ceilings, and subdivided rooms function as relational spaces: spatial configurations that both reflect and shape the social dynamics within. these architectural features not only accommodate but also actively sustain community-building practices, collective organization, and a strong sense of belonging among occupants. forte prenestino announces its presence well before its physical threshold can be reached. as one approaches from the surrounding streets, the urban landscape gradually transforms: the façades of nearby residential buildings and commercial establishments become increasingly adorned with street art, posters, and banners. these visual interventions serve both as navigational cues and as symbolic extensions of the cultural and political identity of the occupied social center into the public realm. this gradual visual unfolding not only marks the spatial reach of the center’s influence but also underscores the integration of its aesthetic and ideological presence within the everyday life of the neighborhood. in this way, the physical approach toward forte prenestino becomes an immersive prelude to the values and practices http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 2 8 o c c u p i e d m o n u m e n t contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 10, no 1 (2025) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2025.344 it embodies—affirming the site’s role as both a landmark and an active agent in reshaping the urban environment. conclusions in her book counterpreservation and her theory of the same name, daniela sandler proposes the appropriation of decay for social practices and activism, as an alternative to orthodox preservation practices. sandler’s framework centers on the reappropriation of decayed buildings as a means to provide affordable housing and create spaces for alternative ways of living that resist gentrification and promote the rewriting of dominant historical narratives. “this reappropriation is not only concrete, but also symbolic,” she argues, “infusing decay with positive associations of social inclusiveness, freedom, and creativity.”18 this dual process—both material and symbolic—is clearly exemplified by the case of forte prenestino. symbolically, the reappropriation of this building involved reclaiming an abandoned and historically significant site on the outskirts of rome and recontextualizing its original function. once associated with militarism, defense, and authoritarian control, the fort was newly infused with values of creativity, autonomy, and collective belonging. its transformation represents a deliberate re-signification of space, the shift from a symbol of exclusion to one of inclusion and cultural production. materially, this recontextualization was achieved through a rejection of conventional, state-sanctioned restoration practices. instead, the interventions at forte prenestino were carried out manually by the individuals and collectives who inhabit the space. this do-ityourself ethos manifests in the adaptive reuse of the architectural structure and the graffiti, murals, banners, and sculptures that adorn activate it. each intervention functions not only as a physical modification but also as a signifier of the presence, identity, and activities of the occupying community. by giving new purpose to every room, tunnel, and courtyard, the occupation sustains a living architecture that evolves alongside its users, thereby supporting diverse political, social, and cultural practices. hence, forte prenestino serves both the collective and the individual dimensions of social practice. the collective or socio-political dimension concerns the ability to create networks, community, a sense of belonging, and the power to change or resist outdated structures. the individual dimension is more concerned with the personal aesthetic experience of the symbolic and the material, leading to self-reflection, self-growth, the transformative experience of the sublime, and creative freedom. forte prenestino, as described by its occupiers, is not a utopian project but a heterotopia: a real space where individual experiences and frameworks intersect to create community.19 according to michel foucault, heterotopias are physical spaces that exist outside the conventional order of society but still maintain connections to it in complex ways.20 they serve as counter-sites, often holding multiple conflicting meanings and functions, and can be places of resistance, transformation, and alternative practices. in the foucauldian sense, then, forte prenestino exemplifies a successfully occupied space that meets the needs of groups outside the mainstream. through self-management and appropriation, these groups practically apply lefebvre’s theory of the right to the city. 18 sandler, counterpreservation, 45. 19 “fortopia is not a utopia, something that drifts ever farther away. fortopia is a heterotopia: a place that, once you cross the bridge and pass through the gate, is real, present, and vibrant, with its own rules that are valid here and nowhere else. a place where the possible expands into the potential without drifting from the real, becoming concrete and practicable.” csoa forte prenestino, fortopia, 5. 20 michel foucault, “of other spaces,” diacritics 16, no. 1 (spring 1986): 22–27. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 2 9 a m a n d a g u i d o o c h o a contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 10, no 1 (2025) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2025.344 despite its long-standing cultural and social relevance, forte prenestino continues to exist in a state of legal precarity—its occupation is still classified as illegal, yet is tolerated by the municipality. this ambivalence is significant: it reveals the tensions between institutional authority and grassroots urban practices and reflects broader contradictions in how cities negotiate informal appropriations of space. the tolerance extended to forte prenestino may be interpreted as an implicit recognition of its value but also underscores the fragility of its status, leaving it vulnerable to political shifts, redevelopment pressures, and regulatory crackdowns. finally, while forte prenestino is distinctive in its architectural form and its local context, it shares affinities with other squatted or re-appropriated heritage sites across europe, such as the christiania free town in copenhagen or the rote flora in hamburg—spaces where cultural production, political resistance, and communal self-management intersect.21 these cases collectively challenge conventional notions of heritage, ownership, and urban governance. within forte prenestino, feminist and queer collectives have played an integral role in shaping both discourse and practice by organizing events, workshops, and assemblies that center non-normative identities and bodies.22 these interventions resist heteropatriarchal norms and affirm the fort as a plural, inclusive space—what some have described as a “queer commons.”23 future research, involving a more sustained engagement with how gender and sexuality circulate through the fort’s social and symbolic life, would further enrich understandings of its subcultural milieu and radical potential. this study invites a rethinking of mainstream restoration and preservation practices, which often prioritize aesthetic uniformity, historical authenticity, and the idea of completeness as favorable traits. these practices typically reflect dominant cultural values and tend to overlook or marginalize spaces that do not conform to the accepted historical narrative. instead, this article proposes an alternative approach to heritage buildings, one that serves diverse groups or individuals who resist mainstream norms and wish to shape their own narratives. it also challenges the conventional view of architectural decay, encouraging the reappropriation of decay as a symbol of social inclusion, creative freedom, and resistance, rather than an imperfection to be erased through restoration. in this light, decay becomes not a failure to be repaired, but a visible record of rupture and reclamation—a form of (dis)repair that opens space for new ways of belonging. the story of forte prenestino suggests that while some histories may be irreparable, their fragments can still be reassembled into forms that resist, persist, and imagine otherwise. moreover, it aligns with the urgent call to consider whether a reparative history of art and architecture is possible—and if so, for whom, and by what means. 21 miguel a. martínez, squatters in the capitalist city: housing, justice, and urban politics (london: routledge, 2020), 75–102. 22 cristina morini and emanuela bove, “feminist practices in self-managed social centres in italy: between autonomy and precarity,” journal of resistance studies 4, no. 2 (2018): 78–99. 23 gavin brown, “mutinous eruptions: autonomous spaces of radical queer activism,” environment and planning a 39, no. 11 (2007): 2685–2698. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 3 0 o c c u p i e d m o n u m e n t contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 10, no 1 (2025) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2025.344 new articles in this journal are licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 united states license. this journal is published by pitt open library publishing. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ https://www.library.pitt.edu/e-journals contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture vol 8, no 1 (2019) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2019.286 http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu the canaries of democracy imagining the wandering jew with artist rosabel rosalind kurth-sofer rae di cicco and rosabel rosalind kurth-sofer introduction by thomas m. messersmith about the authors rae di cicco is a phd candidate in the history of art and architecture department at the university of pittsburgh, specializing in central european modernism. research for her dissertation, “the body, the kosmos, and the other: the cosmopolitan imagination of erika giovanna klien,” was supported by a fulbright-mach fellowship in austria in 2018-2019. the dissertation traces klien’s career from her beginnings as a member of the vienna-based modernist movement kineticism (kinetismus) to her immigration to the united states and subsequent work depicting indigenous groups of the american southwest. rosabel rosalind kurth-sofer is an artist from los angeles. she graduated from the school of the art institute of chicago in 2017 with a focus in printmaking, drawing, and painting. rosabel received a fulbright combined study-research grant in austria for 2018-2019 to investigate jewish caricatures in the schlaff collection at the jewish museum vienna. she currently lives in chicago and continues to explore her jewish identity through comics, poetry, and illustrated narratives. thomas messersmith is a phd candidate at the university of maryland, college park. he was a recipient of the fulbright-mach study award in austria for 2018-2019, where he conducted research for his dissertation, tentatively titled “‘god rather than men:’ austrian catholic theology and the development of catholic political culture, 1848-1888.” this dissertation utilizes both lay and church sources to explore the ways in which theological and political shifts in the late habsburg monarchy influenced each other, ultimately creating a new national and transnational catholic political culture. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 8, no 1 (2019) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2019.286 the work of artist rosabel rosalind kurth-sofer is, in essence, both destructive and constructive. it seeks to destroy the symbols of an historical antisemitic oppression while simultaneously allowing the artist to examine and construct new meanings for her own jewish identity. throughout the long history of jews in europe, antisemitic imagery has relied on representations of the jew to define the self in opposition to the “other” while reinforcing systems of oppression built on this process of othering. caricatures and archetypes of the jewish subject solidified this mythology in the collective consciousness of european christians, such that antisemitism became ubiquitous and banal while still retaining its sinister implications.1 through her series of drawings, titled exodus, which enlists the very images of antisemitism that she seeks to reject, kurth-sofer engages in the history of western european antisemitism by questioning what it means to be a jew today and contesting this persistent semiotic mythology. in doing so, her work strips antisemitic imagery of any potential historical legitimacy so that it may be recognized as a system of hatred and oppression that can and should be dismantled. while historians should be careful to avoid teleological notions of antisemitic ideology, the symbolisms of modern antisemitism nonetheless have their origins in early and medieval christianity, stemming primarily from religious differences and the need to delineate morally correct behavior.2 the trope of jews as “christ killers” defined much of this antagonism, as early christians saw jews’ refusal to convert to christianity as a perpetual act of deicide.3 it was around the year 1000 that new images and mythologies of jews began to spread throughout europe.4 images depicted jews as demonic, as the antichrist, or even as the devil 1 “mythology” here refers mainly to the work of roland barthes, who argues that a mythology is a system of symbols meant not to hide ideas but rather to discuss them openly so that they might be normalized, standardized, and rendered as a pure “statement of fact” rather than a contested ideology; roland barthes, mythologies, trans. annette lavers (new york: hill and wang, 1972), 143. 2 historians such as shulamit volkov and, from an art historical perspective, sara lipton have discussed the dangers of such teleological thinking within the historiography, demonstrating that historians cannot and should not merely see the history of antisemitism as a long march from the medieval period to the nazis, but rather should examine both its continuities and breaks in order to truly understand the historical reality surrounding it; sara lipton, dark mirror: the medieval origins of anti-jewish iconography (new york: metropolitan books/henry holt and company, 2014), 279; shulamit volkov, germans, jews, and antisemites: trials in emancipation (new york: cambridge university press, 2006), 67–81. 3 figures such as the “wandering jew,” who was forced to wander the earth after taunting christ on the way to the crucifixion became common tropes, and, for some, the diasporic nature of jews after the death of christ was itself a direct result of divine punishment for their refusal to convert. james parkes, the conflict of the church and the synagogue: a study in the origins of antisemitism (new york: atheneum, 1969); joshua trachtenberg, the devil and the jews: the medieval conception of the jew and its relation to modern antisemitism (philadelphia: jewish publication society of america, 1943); jules isaac, the teaching of contempt: christian roots of anti-semitism, trans. helen weaver (new york: holt, rinehart and winston, 1964), 44–45. 4 lipton argues that it was at this time that images of the jews as the “other” became commonplace, facilitated in part by “an unprecedented economic, cultural, and religious awakening” in western europe. as such, christian artists began to use symbols surrounding jews and their dress to set them apart, though this was largely not an attempt to persecute the jews, but rather to demonstrate correct practice of christians (i.e., delineating what was christian by marking what was not). as jacqueline e. jung the canaries of democracy imagining the wandering jew with artist rosabel rosalind kurth-sofer rae di cicco, rosabel rosalind kurth-sofer, and thomas m. messersmith http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 5 9 r a e d i c i c c o , r o s a b e l r o s a l i n d k u r t h s o f e r a n d t h o m a s m e s s e r s m i t h contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 8, no 1 (2019) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2019.286 incarnate, both utilizing and creating an iconography that drew upon religious myths.5 images and stories of jews desecrating the consecrated host became common cause for violence, as did the so-called blood libel, in which jews were said to ritualistically kill christians in order to use their blood in the preparation of matzah.6 these stories fueled the stereotypes of the jew as conspiratorial, iniquitous, and anti-christian. at this time, physiognomy, which would define depictions of jews in the modern era and features prominently in kurth-sofer’s art, was merely one aspect of distinguishing jews from non-jews in art and imagery. yet, while physiognomic symbols such as the so-called “jewish nose” were present in western european art, these depictions of physical features tended to be linked more to a perception of impure morality than indicative of an immutable ethnographic or racial trait passed on through jewish blood.7 by the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, many of the popular images of jews as twisted, dark, and conspiratorial had solidified in the european consciousness. the position of the catholic church remained that jews should be subjugated, isolated, and held in contempt, but the pope stopped short of advocating direct violence.8 the jews’ status as the other could theoretically be reversed with conversion—in which case, jews should be welcomed with open arms; however, it was rarely this simple.9 the rise of mass politics and mass media in the nineteenth century exacerbated and spread antisemitic imagery farther and with greater urgency. high-profile incidents such as the dreyfus affair (1894–1906) gave new life to older images of the “conspiratorial jew,” infusing this idea in european christian minds with newer modern economic and racial ideas.10 shows in her analysis of the naumburg west choir screen, portrayals of jews in art could be used not just to demonize the jews, but rather as a way to highlight the failings of christians by “[turning] scrutiny back upon the self.” jacqueline e. jung, “the passion, the jews, and the crisis of the individual on the naumburg west choir screen,” in beyond the yellow badge: anti-judaism and antisemitism in medieval and early modern visual culture, ed. mitchell b. merback (boston: brill, 2008), 149; lipton, dark mirror, 6–15. 5 these symbols are discussed extensively throughout the works of lipton and trachtenberg; lipton, dark mirror; trachtenberg, devil and the jews. 6 despite having no basis in scripture or reality (and the fact that consuming blood is against jewish law), charges of “blood libel” would periodically resurface in europe, sparking violence even into the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. r. po-chia hsia, the myth of ritual murder: jews and magic in reformation germany (new haven, ct: yale university press, 1988); helmut walser smith, the butcher’s tale: murder and anti-semitism in a german town (new york: w.w. norton, 2003); robert s. wistrich, antisemitism: the longest hatred (new york: pantheon books, 1991). 7 lipton, dark mirror, 182–99. 8 this policy had a long history in the church, going as far back as pope gregory i in the sixth century; but as david i. kerzer notes, though the church did not call for direct violence, its policies nonetheless acted within a framework of antisemitism, making the distinction between antisemitism (i.e., discrimination of jews based on race) and anti-judaism (i.e., discrimination of jews based on religion) difficult to maintain. david i. kertzer, the popes against the jews: the vatican’s role in the rise of modern anti-semitism (new york: alfred a. knopf, 2001). 9 theodore r. weeks, from assimilation to antisemitism: the “jewish question” in poland, 18501914 (dekalb: northern illinois university press, 2005), 10. 10 this famous political scandal concerned captain alfred dreyfus, a jewish artillery officer in the french army who was falsely accused of and imprisoned for treason. when it was discovered that someone else had, in fact, been spying, the cover-up led emile zola to write his famous open letter, “j’accuse…!” throwing french society into turmoil. for an overview of the many complicated dimensions surrounding the dreyfus affair including fights about clericalism, economics, nationalism, and other areas that both informed and were informed by antisemitism, see ruth harris, dreyfus: politics, emotion, and the scandal of the century (new york: metropolitan books, 2010). http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 6 0 t h e c a n a r i e s o f d e m o c r a c y contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 8, no 1 (2019) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2019.286 antisemites increasingly saw jews as both a product and a symptom of the worst aspects of modernity, inexorably linked to notions of capitalism and greed, and potentially working to undermine society for their own gains.11 in the late nineteenth century, new “racial science” shifted the way jews were portrayed in popular culture.12 physical features became exaggerated, and the stereotypical “jewish nose,” which had been associated with corrupt religious morality in both jews and non-jews during the medieval era, became associated with specific jewish racial features. in 1879, wilhelm marr popularized the term “antisemitism,” a word that exists in opposition to a nebulous idea of a “semitic” race rather than being linked to any cultural, religious, or economic identity.13 the conception of jewishness as a genetic racial trait passed on regardless of adherence to a particular religion made any effort by jews to assimilate into society all the more difficult.14 the markers of identity (the racial scientist would claim) would show that they had been and always would be “jewish,” whether they practiced judaism or not. the scientific racial discourse modified the mythology surrounding jews, creating a new semiotic language to reinforce the old while reaping the advantages that came from the established tradition. by the twentieth century, the concept of race merged with newer ideas about the nation and nationalism. at the end of world war i, the new order in europe saw the breaking of older empires into states organized around the principle of national self-determination. while these polities were, in theory, nationally homogenous, in reality they contained multiple groups living within the same borders, causing great tension. in the habsburg monarchy, jews had long 11 the idea of the jew as a greedy figure also has its roots in medieval depictions of jews. due to the prohibition against christian money-handling and the need for jews to keep their wealth in cash to aid in mobility during a crisis, jews were often associated with lending money. this perception quickly shifted toward an association of jews with usury and avarice. as lipton shows, the image of the jew in the early middle ages was almost intrinsically linked to that of moneybags. by the time of dreyfus, infamous works such as the “protocols of the elders of zion,” a fake text that supposedly details a secret meeting of jewish leaders laying out their plans to take over the world’s economy, began to make their way around europe, drawing on these older images, updating them for a modern europe. norman cohn, warrant for genocide: the myth of the jewish world-conspiracy and the protocols of the elders of zion (new york: harper & row, 1967); sara lipton, images of intolerance: the representation of jews and judaism in the bible moralisée (berkeley: university of california press, 1999). 12 such “racial science” was, in actuality, a pseudo-science that attempted to use objective measurements in order to achieve subjective delineations of race, often ascribing pre-conceived values to these different measurements as a means of achieving social or cultural hegemony (e.g., white supremacy). a brief history of this pseudo-science and how it relates to the development of racial views in europe can be found in michael burleigh and wolfgang wippermann, the racial state: germany, 1933-1945 (cambridge: cambridge university press, 1991), 23–43. 13 volkov, germans, jews, and antisemites, 82. 14 geraldine heng argues quite convincingly that racial structures did, in fact, exist in the middle ages; however, these structures differed fundamentally from later “scientific racism.” it is certainly useful to recognize racial structures in the middle ages, as seeing race solely in the context of the nineteenth century’s biologically-defined racism merely perpetuates and, perhaps, legitimizes these modern structures by engaging the racist discourse on its own terms and, thus, obscuring the constructed nature of race itself. nevertheless, jews were afforded a degree of theoretical permeability within these medieval racial structures that was not possible within the biologically defined racial structures of the nineteenth century. in practice, of course, this permeability often broke down, especially when power over christians was at stake, but the ambiguous nature of this racial identity (heng classifies this as a “hybrid” or “queered” identity) nevertheless existed in this society in such a way that would not be possible within a biologically determined framework. geraldine heng, the invention of race in the european middle ages (new york: cambridge university press, 2018), 15–20, 27–33, 76–83. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 6 1 r a e d i c i c c o , r o s a b e l r o s a l i n d k u r t h s o f e r a n d t h o m a s m e s s e r s m i t h contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 8, no 1 (2019) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2019.286 enjoyed the ability to assimilate through their mutual identity as subjects of the emperor. however, with the collapse of austria-hungary, jews were confronted with the pressures of exclusion in a newly nationalized central europe.15 after the rise of the national socialism in germany, the nazi propaganda machine, under the direction of joseph goebbels, began vigorously disseminating the idea that jews were inherently insidious and bent on taking over all aspects of society. nazi speeches, writings, films, newspapers, posters, and diverse ephemera—such as the postcards mentioned by kurthsofer in the following interview—proliferated nazi representations of jews. the longstanding myth of a jewish conspiracy blended with racial pseudo-science, formulating grounds for blaming all jews (as a broadly defined race rather than religious group) for perceived transgressions against non-jews. while the physical imagery depicting jews became more intense in nazi propaganda—often exaggerating the facial features of jews to an extreme degree—the primary concern to the nazis remained the supposed jewish conspiracy.16 nevertheless, the ubiquity of antisemitic imagery in nazi germany continued to circulate within the german and broader european consciousness long after the nazis had been defeated. antisemitic imagery today remains mostly within the same framework, borrowing from both racist nazi propaganda and earlier conspiratorial notions of “world jewry.”17 antisemitic groups continue to appeal to apocalyptic views of a jewish conspiracy, utilizing the same semiotic lexicon to bury the hateful nature of their argument and normalize it within the old mythological framework. by intentionally engaging with this mythology, kurth-sofer appropriates these images, effectively subverting the visual tradition of oppression and violence—both real and symbolic—suffered by jewish people for centuries. thomas m. messersmith 15 it is significant to note that one of the successor states to the habsburg monarchy, austria, is the country where kurth-sofer has conducted her work. marsha l. rozenblit, reconstructing a national identity: the jews of habsburg austria during world war i (new york: oxford university press, 2001). 16 in fact, as jeffrey herf notes, the fear of conspiracy and the institution of the yellow star, which itself harkens back to medieval practices, belies the fact that facial features were not sufficient to distinguish jews from non-jews. jeffrey herf, the jewish enemy: nazi propaganda during world war ii and the holocaust (cambridge, ma: the belknap press of harvard university press, 2006), 151. 17 this idea continues to utilize the tropes found within the “protocols of the elders of zion,” as discussed above. cohn, warrant for genocide. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 6 2 t h e c a n a r i e s o f d e m o c r a c y contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 8, no 1 (2019) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2019.286 interview rae di cicco: rosabel, when we first connected over the tree of life synagogue shooting in pittsburgh on october 27, 2018, we shared the feeling of helplessness being so physically distant from the shooting while on fulbright fellowships in vienna, austria.18 fulbright austria funded you for a year of work with the jewish museum vienna. what inspired you to work with the jewish museum’s collections? can you describe your initial vision for the project? rosabel rosalind kurth-sofer: what initially inspired me was this spontaneous drive to reconnect with my jewish identity when i was an undergraduate at the school of the art institute of chicago. i knew that i wanted to apply for a grant that would fund my art practice after graduation, so i was doing a lot of research on potential grant topics when i met a former professor for coffee. she had just gotten back from her sabbatical in vienna and wanted to tell me about her travels. she told me about the viennese cafes, and the opera, and then she started telling me about her experience there as a jewish woman. she had had a profound experience at the jewish museum’s exhibition on antisemitica.19 the objects were displayed facing a mirror in the back of the vitrines, so that that the viewer could see their own reflections alongside antisemitic objects. when she described the images on display, she seemed disgusted and captivated and inspired all at once, and recommended i visit someday. so, i went home and googled the exhibition. i learned that it was a part of the martin schlaff collection, and consequently i found myself in a black-hole of anti-jewish manuscript paintings, der stürmer propaganda, and nineteenth-century political cartoons. i couldn’t stop looking at the caricatures, largely because i had never seen anything like them before. i grew up in a majority jewish community and rarely experienced antisemitism myself. i suddenly felt this urgency to do something with this rich history of image making; i felt it needed to be shared. at the time, i was just beginning my self-portrait series. i was drawing my face on mundane objects and animals and claiming them as an extension of my own body. this was an exciting new direction for me, because while i was expanding the normative definition of the self, i could also express my own self-doubt in an empowered way. i was drawing my face on chickens, sunflowers, and tangerines. i thought they were funny, because they felt like role-playing and storytelling . . . like i was creating a mythology of my very own. so, when i saw the anti-jewish images for the first time, i was already interested in this othered body. a body that is ambiguously animal but also so human and relatable. i started doing research on the history of antisemitism and started to re-acquaint myself with judaic studies. and then i applied for the fulbright grant. my initial vision for my project was a series of self-portraits. i thought that this idea of the half-human, half-other would be the most 18 the tree of life synagogue shooting occurred during shabbat morning service at the tree of life (l'simcha) congregation in the squirrel hill neighborhood of pittsburgh, pennsylvania on october 27, 2018. white nationalist and antisemite robert gregory bowers murdered eleven people and injured six others, making the tree of life synagogue shooting the deadliest act on record of domestic terrorism against jews in the united states. kurth-sofer’s mother grew up in ambridge, pennsylvania (where her father was a rabbi) and attended yeshiva acheitemimimnechamaminsky school and hillel academy in squirrel hill. di cicco has been a resident of pittsburgh since 2013 and is pursuing her phd in the history of art and architecture department at the university of pittsburgh. 19 the antisemitic objects on display at the jewish museum vienna are included in the permanent exhibition, “vienna and the world: our visible storage,” at the dorotheergasse location. the antisemitic objects entered the collection of the jewish museum in 1993, when collector martin schlaff donated around five thousand objects of antisemitica in order to make the objects and documents available for research. schlaff began collecting such objects to to remove them from the market and thus from antisemitic collectors. for more information, see “the schlaff collection,” jewish museum vienna, accessed july 9, 2019, http://www.jmw.at/en/collections/schlaff-collection. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 6 3 r a e d i c i c c o , r o s a b e l r o s a l i n d k u r t h s o f e r a n d t h o m a s m e s s e r s m i t h contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 8, no 1 (2019) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2019.286 interesting visual component of the project. but i think my vision has changed a lot because my relationship to judaism has changed so much since this project began. rdc: these hybrid bodies, such as the jewish body as bug or the jewish body as vermin, come from antisemitic propaganda, such as the objects you’ve seen in the schlaff collection in the jewish museum. can you describe some of the images your art references in the jewish museum’s collection? rrks: i’ve spent most of my research in their collection of 511 postcards. these postcards really struck me because, as an object, a postcard serves as a simple form of communication, an innocent way of interacting with someone you care about. and yet, each piece in the collection is so blunt in its expression of racism. it’s jarring to see cheery greetings on the back of a cartoon of a homeless jewish merchant with a nose too big for his face. pretty soon in my research, i discovered that the creatures equated with jewish bodies on the postcards drew interesting parallels with jewish laws of kashrut. the creators of hate imagery strategically used animals that are unclean and foods that are forbidden to jews, such as pork and shellfish or rats. many of these caricatures involve pigs, which make for an ideal double-whammy of insult; pigs are not only filthy and un-kosher, but they’re also considered greedy and gluttonous. the use of swine reflects both behavioral stereotypes and visual ones. the creators of antisemitic images use sacred ideology against the jewish body as a form of humiliation. it’s just disturbing that a father would send his daughter a card to express his love, illustrated with jews running from ss members carrying bats. rdc: the postcards seem so quotidian and playful, and yet they’re charged with such virulent antisemitism, when it’s meant to be a quick and easy, “thinking of you. love, dad” rrks: yes, you see plenty of “happy new year!” or “greetings from slovakia” . . . i think this juxtaposition made the images more interesting for me and, at the same time, totally nauseating. rdc: i think that many people would assume this hate imagery comes primarily from the nazi era, from the late ’30s or early ’40s, but that’s not the case. what are the other sources that these images come from? rrks: most of the work that i’m looking at does come from europe, particularly poland and russia. it’s more interesting for me to see the work that inspired nazi ideology, rather than the work from the third reich produced under joseph goebbels, which we’re more commonly aware of. in the archives, i’m mostly looking at images produced at the end of the nineteenth century and in the first half of the twentieth century. the collection doesn’t concern itself with contemporary politics, so some of my visual research also comes from online archives with more contemporary material. specifically, ben garrison’s cartoons and contemporary propaganda in arab newspapers. a lot of judeophobic visual sentiments can be found in medieval and early modern christian manuscripts, some classical paintings of jesus, and many portrayals of old testament stories. for instance, depictions of jesus’s circumcision make for very opportune creative license to explore distasteful jewish caricatures. all of these i’ve had to source elsewhere, but the scope of the schlaff collection has driven this project from the beginning. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 6 4 t h e c a n a r i e s o f d e m o c r a c y contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 8, no 1 (2019) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2019.286 figure 1 rosabel rosalind kurth-sofer, exodus i, 2018. pen and ink on paper. 9x11 inches. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 6 5 r a e d i c i c c o , r o s a b e l r o s a l i n d k u r t h s o f e r a n d t h o m a s m e s s e r s m i t h contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 8, no 1 (2019) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2019.286 figure 2 rosabel rosalind kurth-sofer, exodus ii, 2018. pen and ink on paper. 9x11 inches. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 6 6 t h e c a n a r i e s o f d e m o c r a c y contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 8, no 1 (2019) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2019.286 figure 3 rosabel rosalind kurth-sofer, exodus iii, 2018. pen and ink on paper. 9x11 inches. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 6 7 r a e d i c i c c o , r o s a b e l r o s a l i n d k u r t h s o f e r a n d t h o m a s m e s s e r s m i t h contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 8, no 1 (2019) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2019.286 the collection acknowledges that antisemitism existed far before hitler came to power. i really appreciate that the jewish museum concerns itself with a history much broader than just the holocaust. it chooses to celebrate vienna as a city rich with jewish history without having such a narrow scope as many other jewish institutions do. rdc: clearly, your work connects to this longer history of hate imagery, but it also addresses the rise of nationalism and antisemitic attacks in our present. could you discuss your exodus series and its relationship to history or time? rrks: i wanted the time to be ambiguous because i’m not speaking to one story, but rather the many histories that seem to be in repetition. the jewish narrative has been fairly consistent. as a people we’ve been wandering without place for millennia. so, time is important because it allows me to connect all of these instances of displacement and summates the entire story visually in one giant migration of characters and creatures that share my face and my body. each composition in the exodus series broadly represents a moment of transition, escape, and involuntary movement. that being said, i’ve chosen to keep clothing and hairstyles ambiguous, and the objects and merchandise vary in period. therefore, none of the visual aspects feel limited to a specific moment. instead, i’m choosing to speak to the ceaseless nature of jewry in society; an entire generalized experience. and in doing so, i use my body as a consistent protagonist. the title refers to the story of moses, the first tale of jewish exile from egypt to israel. the story is an emblem of jewish resilience that we retell every year over passover. passover has been a contentious holiday throughout christian history, because of its overlap with easter. around this time of year, jewish people were more likely to be accused of blood libel and the murder of gentiles for ritual sacrifice. under certain circumstances, the fear was so heightened that jews were forbidden from leaving their ghettos during the week of easter. these blatant expressions of judeophobia make our exodus story far more poignant and timely each year. on passover we celebrate our survival and honor our origin story. through my series i’m illustrating that this idea of exodus is the state of jewish existence, emotionally and physically. transition and assimilation are familiar to the jewish people. with ink and pen, i’m depicting this liminal space that is neither static nor stable, but mobile and universal. we can’t change the past, so i’m reclaiming it as foundational to our strength as a community. rdc: in our conversations after the shooting, you were concerned that the work you were doing here, investigating this antisemitic imagery, may actually be contributing to the perpetuation of these stereotypes. how are you dealing with this concern? how has your perspective on your project changed after the tree of life synagogue shooting or after reconnecting with judaism in vienna? rrks: before the shooting, i assumed antisemitism wasn’t at the forefront of america’s issues any longer. i assumed this project would mirror more pressing issues like racial discrimination more broadly and xenophobia at the border. so, i really felt like my responsibility was to speak to the generalized other, instead of the specifically jewish body. but when the shooting happened, i realized that the broader context of contemporary racism is rooted in the legacy of antisemitism. i proceeded to read about the history of antisemitism as a lingering sentiment, something that lies beneath and only resurfaces when democracy feels threatened. one quote i encountered in my research really stuck out to me. it was from pilar rahola, a catalonian journalist: “jews are democracy’s canaries: they live and die to the http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 6 8 t h e c a n a r i e s o f d e m o c r a c y contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 8, no 1 (2019) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2019.286 extent that liberty lives or dies.”20 after spending so much time with images of jews associated with animals, i appreciated this metaphor as something empowering and redemptive. jews have always been the easy scapegoat and will continue to be a target for people who feel insecure in their social and political environment. and yet, i’m still stunned when i see judeophobia in the twenty-first century. i just don’t know how a person could see my family as a threat to their freedom. this complexity is exciting to navigate in my work. directly after the shooting, i remember feeling guilty, like my artwork wasn’t productive enough in criticizing white supremacist constructions of the jewish image in western society. i was afraid that my project could be interpreted negatively if seen by the wrong eyes, and in an uninformed context. at the time, my project was only just beginning, and i was initially recreating and copying the material i was coming across. as a jewish person, i felt i was allowed to do so. but suddenly, this practice just felt wrong. so that’s when i shifted the narrative i was attempting to tell. instead of playing with jewish tropes, i started exploring the culture itself and the traditions that have set us apart from the beginning. this would be the only way i could reform people’s perceptions of jews. so, rather than reproducing these hybrid bodies, i started this exodus series, which recasts the story of the eternally wandering jew as evidence of jewish perseverance, not weakness. rdc: so, you moved from recreating this hate imagery that could be used for nefarious purposes into a more critical practice? rrks: exactly. the shooting made my work feel more relevant, which in turn brought on an increasing amount of pressure to work through all of this material in the “correct” way. and clearly this project carries a totally different weight in austria. i feel this additional sense of accountability for my imagery, because the jewish population in vienna today is tiny, and so often i find myself speaking to an adult who had never met another jewish person before me. i feel this heavy responsibility to do my culture justice in a place where there’s hardly any representation in the first place. i learned very quickly that most of what people know about jews originates within the context of the holocaust. people should know antisemitism didn’t start with hitler and judaism didn’t end with the holocaust. rdc: in this series that’s ostensibly focused on a history of discrimination against a group of humans, fauna appear again and again. what do the animals in your drawings signify for you? rrks: each animal signifies something very different and very specific. the first drawing i finished was inspired by the quote about jews being the canaries of democracy. i wanted to humanize the jew while including them in the same composition as the animals they’re compared to. in the first drawing, exodus #1 (canary), most of the canaries are dead, hanging from the ceiling or stuffed in a bag that’s held by the humanized jew, who is standing and staring at the viewer. two live canaries are placed in the foreground, and also stare directly at the viewer. and while these birds have suspiciously nose-like beaks, the two humans have been drawn noseless, as their faces have been conveniently covered by their surroundings. 20 pilar rahola, “‘democracy’s canaries’: jews and judeophobia in contemporary europe” (lecture, the world jewish conference, june 13, 2005), http://www.pilarrahola.com/3_0/conferencias/default.cfm?id=116. quoted in phyllis goldstein and harold evans, a convenient hatred: the history of antisemitism. (brookline, ma: facing history and ourselves, 2012), 348. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 6 9 r a e d i c i c c o , r o s a b e l r o s a l i n d k u r t h s o f e r a n d t h o m a s m e s s e r s m i t h contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 8, no 1 (2019) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2019.286 figure 4 rosabel rosalind kurth-sofer, exodus iv, 2018. pen and ink on paper. 9x11 inches. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 7 0 t h e c a n a r i e s o f d e m o c r a c y contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 8, no 1 (2019) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2019.286 figure 5 rosabel rosalind kurth-sofer, exodus v, 2018. pen and ink on paper. 9x11 inches. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 7 1 r a e d i c i c c o , r o s a b e l r o s a l i n d k u r t h s o f e r a n d t h o m a s m e s s e r s m i t h contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 8, no 1 (2019) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2019.286 figure 6 rosabel rosalind kurth-sofer, exodus vi, 2018. pen and ink on paper. 9x11 inches. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 7 2 t h e c a n a r i e s o f d e m o c r a c y contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 8, no 1 (2019) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2019.286 figure 7 rosabel rosalind kurth-sofer, exodus vii, 2018. pen and ink on paper. 9x11 inches. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 7 3 r a e d i c i c c o , r o s a b e l r o s a l i n d k u r t h s o f e r a n d t h o m a s m e s s e r s m i t h contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 8, no 1 (2019) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2019.286 i didn’t want to draw jews with big noses anymore; i wanted to flip the script. or rather, rewrite the script to make these associations a little bit more ambiguous. after this initial drawing, i decided to explore other recurring animal relationships that i’d found in my research. for instance, dogs show up very often in the schlaff collection. there are several images of jews living on the street trying to fight off stray street dogs with their umbrellas. dogs seem to embody a protection of white ideals, especially since they were used by the nazis to intimidate and police jews. chickens are important to jewish food tradition and, in the ritual of kapparot, chickens are swung above a jewish person’s head on yom kippur as a form of atonement. this is seen as inappropriate and off-putting for many non-jews, but i like playing with concepts of morality in the context of religious tradition. i used camels to represent the exodus out of egypt. they’re common in illustrations of the exile in the desert and helped take some of the load during travel. i used cows because they were important livestock and trading objects for jewish communities in the countryside. many jews were involved in financial dealings with farmers and were often accused of usury and illegal activity in this business, which contributed to rural antisemitism. there are so many animals that come up in the schlaff collection, and by integrating a different creature in each drawing, the series becomes a diverse ecosystem. each animal serves as a distinct marker of both place and time as jews are a vast and diverse community spanning continents. each individual animal plays an important supporting role, acting as both brethren and means of survival. at times it’s unclear whether the humans are leading the animals or vice versa. then eventually i started to wonder where they’re all going. that’s when i thought about noah’s ark as a story that reflects this idea of jewish salvation. noah was told by god to save himself, his family, and every living species in the world. so, if we apply the judeophobic legacy of equating the jewish body with that of the animal, then perhaps this can be interpreted as a story of our own survival. incorporating both the animal and the human into the same composition allows for a completely new kind of relationship to flourish, one that reexamines hierarchies, status, and relational otherness. i like the idea of jew and beast seeking refuge together, but i don’t feel it’s necessary to include an ending to the narrative of the series. because we don’t yet have an ark, so to speak. jews are still struggling to feel safe and, in my opinion, we’re still in search of the “homeland,” so the exodus series exists in a timeless purgatory. ultimately, what the fauna and the jews in the series all have in common is that they are underestimated and resilient, living quietly, without burdening society. rdc: it’s interesting to take up the aspersion of jews as less than human and subvert that by referencing noah’s ark and, therefore, the salvation of the jewish people. as you mentioned, you include self-portraiture in the images. would you say autobiography or your family’s history plays a role in this series? rrks: yes, many of the images i’ve been looking at conjure personal memories, and a lot of the caricatures of older jewish men remind me of my zayde, my grandfather. i was raised by my zayde. he was a retired orthodox rabbi, and he lived with me all throughout my childhood. he made sure i got a wholesome conservative education at my jewish elementary school. we would light candles every friday night for shabbat and observe the holidays together in synagogue. thankfully, he never force-fed me faith, but he did hope that my studies would deepen my connection with my culture. shortly before my zayde passed away, i graduated from my jewish day school. this is when i started attending a secular high school and, as a family, we stopped lighting candles on shabbat. i disassociated from judaism altogether because i felt like it was too restrictive and structured for my teenage taste. when i went to art school, i decided to attend services on yom kippur, our holiest day of the year. at first it felt like an obligation, but upon walking into synagogue i realized that i had never voluntarily entered a jewish space before. and i had never gone to temple completely alone. but as soon as i entered, i recognized the sounds and the people and the music. i had just http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 7 4 t h e c a n a r i e s o f d e m o c r a c y contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 8, no 1 (2019) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2019.286 started my adult life in a new city. i felt so homesick and alone, but in that moment, i suddenly felt connected to something larger than myself. it was a really powerful moment, and i promised myself from that day forward, that yom kippur would be my one jewish day a year. my art practice at the time was focused on my female body rather than my jewish one. eventually this interest extended into an interest in bodies that transform into something magical and otherworldly and i began to construct my own mythologies surrounding my body. when i came across anti-jewish imagery online, i started to identify with my jewishness again. this imagery suddenly felt like an attack on my own identity, and that is when i felt impassioned. judaism is something i’d disowned for so long, but when i saw these grotesque interpretations of jewry, i deeply identified with the bodies – bodies that are ambiguous and fantastical and misunderstood. so, it is important to me that i use my body as a reference for the subjects in the exodus series. this project is more than just an investigation of stereotypes, it’s a personal exploration of my cultural identity, and, as such, i can only speak to my own experience as a white ashkenazi woman. my personal family history is inherently implicated in this series, but i’m also using this series as a platform to extend the definition of family to anyone who shares my blood. throughout this project, i’ve been thinking a lot about the many facets of blood, as a concept and a biological principle. if you have judaism in your (mother’s) blood, then you’re considered a jewish person, regardless of religious belief. so, blood, in this case, is an integral part of jewish identity. on the other hand, blood is considered dirty, and all meats must be cleansed of blood in order to be consumed according to kosher law. jews also have a rich history of being accused of blood libel, and many have been murdered for purportedly engaging in blood rituals for the sake of making matzah and wine. so, while blood is the very essence that connects many jews together, it’s still this contentious and awkward substance that reminds us of our struggle. rdc: in these self-portraits you often depict yourself as androgynous or, in some cases, in the guise of a male rabbi. why do you represent your own body in this way? how does gender figure into the series? rrks: in the beginning of the fellowship year, i was only representing the male jewish body because it seems that the male figure embodies the easily recognizable convention of what a jewish person looks like. even when women are represented in the context of antisemitic caricature, they’re portrayed with very masculine features and exaggerated facial and body hair. when one is asked to imagine a jewish person, many people visualize a jewish man with a big hat, big nose, a long beard, and payos. but pretty soon i realized that i was limiting the jewish experience to only one kind of body. so, when i started the exodus series, i used my own body as a way to loosen the gender binary of the jewish body and include women or androgynous jews. the female body is rarely represented in the schlaff collection, so this series serves as a reminder that jewish identity is independent of gender, race, sexual orientation, and ethnicity. one cannot look more “jewish” than another, because jews exist all over the world. but in drawing my own body into these histories, i’m implicating myself in the vast network of perpetually exiled jews, regardless of gender. i like twisting gender by using my own body and exaggerating these male stereotypes into absurdity. the juxtaposition of a female face wearing a black hat throws off all conventions and calls into question the inherent assumptions that exist surrounding the jew. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 7 5 r a e d i c i c c o , r o s a b e l r o s a l i n d k u r t h s o f e r a n d t h o m a s m e s s e r s m i t h contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 8, no 1 (2019) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2019.286 figure 8 rosabel rosalind kurth-sofer, exodus viii, 2018. pen and ink on paper. 9x11 inches. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 7 6 t h e c a n a r i e s o f d e m o c r a c y contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 8, no 1 (2019) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2019.286 figure 9 rosabel rosalind kurth-sofer, exodus ix, 2018. pen and ink on paper. 9x11 inches. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 7 7 r a e d i c i c c o , r o s a b e l r o s a l i n d k u r t h s o f e r a n d t h o m a s m e s s e r s m i t h contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 8, no 1 (2019) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2019.286 figure 10 rosabel rosalind kurth-sofer, exodus viii, 2018. pen and ink on paper. 9x11 inches. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 7 8 t h e c a n a r i e s o f d e m o c r a c y contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 8, no 1 (2019) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2019.286 when i decided to use my body as a reference, i had to confront the question of the jewish nose. i very consciously attempted to cover the figures’ noses as often as i could because i wanted to draw attention to the less explicit cultural stereotypes, like the objects they hold and the actions they engage in. rdc: the absence of the nose is not something i noticed right away because your compositions are so dense with pen work. do you do preparatory sketches in pencil? what was your method for creating this series? rrks: my method doesn’t require planning; most of my decision making is instinctual. i draw a rough sketch in pencil before i start. it’s important that i engage a strong foreground, middle ground, and background to create a sense of depth. dimensionality is always difficult to attain in a pen drawing. so, it takes a certain degree of planning to make sure the compositions are organized, while still allowing for complexity. rdc: you’ve mentioned a few times the complexity of your compositions. but upon first seeing these images, i was struck by your play with positive and negative space. there are expanses void of marks and they provide moments of relief from your otherwise quite dense mark-making. could you talk more about the form of your drawings? rrks: within these chaotic visual narratives, the voids allow for visual breathing room. they highlight a symbolic emptiness, and a contrast to the chaos that comes with picking up and migrating to somewhere new. this series really helped me comb through the vast catalogue of visual stereotypes and create a concrete collection for myself. i’ve incorporated different tropes that recur in the schlaff collection and have come up with my own illustrated library of caricature. i specifically draw from the recurring scenes of the jew surrounded by or carrying junk, which speaks to a history of collecting, trading, and presumed saving. these chaotic spaces create ample opportunities to engage a combination of judaic symbolism and anti-jewish fantasies. in the compositions, i incorporate the seder plate and the western wall, the hebrew clock and the menorah. this creates interesting contrasts to the jew wearing multiple hats, carrying luggage, selling garlic, wheeling giant merchandise, dragging bags of money and other junk. the mythology that i’m creating gives in to the antisemite’s fantasy of jewish materialism, but it turns it on its head in such a way that it is outweighed by jewish struggle. the viewer empathizes with the jewish resistance, rather than the anti-jewish sentiments. so nearly every detail in each composition comes from work i’ve seen in the collection and in my research. rdc: would you say the density of your compositions reflects this idea of excess and the stereotype of excess for jews, as in jews that are hoarding money, jews that are hoarding these objects they’re selling on their bodies, or carrying their lives with them in suitcases? rrks: yes, for a long time in many parts of the world, jewish people were constrained to a lifestyle of trading and selling goods. so, in the schlaff collection i was seeing a lot of illustrations of jewish people sitting on the side of the road, selling junk on the sidewalk, or carrying bundles of belongings, or cheating young boys out of the money in their pockets. jewish people would be depicted carrying around these carts or boxes hanging around their necks, with half a dozen hats piled on their heads, desperate for a buck. none of these objects were special or precious. but it’s clear that the bodies themselves manifest the junk that they were trying to sell, stuff that no one really wants. it is a stereotype that exists today, that http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 7 9 r a e d i c i c c o , r o s a b e l r o s a l i n d k u r t h s o f e r a n d t h o m a s m e s s e r s m i t h contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 8, no 1 (2019) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2019.286 jews are assumed to save money well in the hopes of becoming rich and powerful. but jews collect more than money. we collect stories and hold on to objects that contain memories. that’s what this is all about. when i bring these stereotypes to light, viewers have the opportunity to acknowledge their own preconceived notions. that’s a really exciting side-effect of this series, when people recognize these stereotypes and have become familiar with these visual conventions. if jewish stereotypes feel familiar to you, then you’ve been affected by antisemitism. the fear and hatred of jews lingers in sometimes the most unexpected places. we can’t keep writing off contemporary jewish oppression as trivial. it’s important that we stand in solidarity with other discriminated people, people of color, people in the lgbtqia community, jewish or gentile, to fight the injustice that burdens the others of society. the exodus story is a story that every other can connect with in some regard. new articles in this journal are licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 united states license. this journal is operated by the university library system of the university of pittsburgh as part of its d-scribe digital publishing program, and is co-sponsored by the university of pittsburgh press. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/ http://www.pitt.edu/ http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/ http://www.upress.pitt.edu/upressindex.aspx http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ the canaries of democracy imagining the wandering jew with artist rosabel rosalind kurth-sofer the canaries of democracy imagining the wandering jew with artist rosabel rosalind kurth-sofer interview contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture vol 8, no 1 (2019) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2019.272 http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu timelessness and precarity in orientalist temporality mehdi-georges lahlou’s aesthetics of disorientation conor moynihan abstract the hourglasses (2015), by french-moroccan artist mehdi-georges lahlou, features five large hourglasses displayed artifact-like upon a table. as one would expect of an hourglass, these glass sculptures can be inverted to measure out time. this, though, is where convention ends, as these are filled with couscous, not sand. unlike sand, couscous cannot measure time consistently and the inversion of any one of these five hourglasses results in a different measurement of time. in effect, they disorient any linear notion of temporality, raising the specter of orientalism and its fantasy of a timeless east. mehdi-georges works in a diverse range of media including performance, sculpture, installation, and self-portraiture. dealing with race, gender, sexuality, colonialism, identity, and representations of islam and catholicism, his work performs the instability in all these categories by critically complicating fantasies of “east” and “west” without relying on a mere binary reversal of meaning. contextualizing his work within a larger history of orientalism, my argument begins first with percy bysshe shelley’s poem “ozymandias,” composed in 1817, followed by an analysis of nineteenthand twentieth-century orientalist paintings before leading to a concise discussion of contemporary orientalism in art and art discourse. my analysis then circles back to the artist’s work to insist that orientalism’s fantastical invocation of the east remains a disabling presence in the contemporary imaginary. orientalism’s temporality, as glimpsed obliquely from mehdi-georges lahlou’s hyphenated identity, is likewise rendered unstable in his work. as seen in the hourglasses, his work produces what i call “an aesthetic of disorientation,” predicated on the artist’s embodied cultural hyphenation, which renders the orientalist fantasy of the east absurd through its own tropes of representation. by bringing queer theory and disability studies to bear on his work, i show how his practice engages with orientalism’s temporality to open up new possibilities of perceiving the world. about the author conor moynihan is the andrew w. mellon curatorial fellow in prints, drawings, and photographs at risd museum and a visual studies phd candidate at the university at buffalo, state university of new york. his dissertation draws attention to the aesthetic conviviality between—and contemporary forms of—orientalism, primitivism, and exoticism in art and performance. his area of focus more generally is on transnational artists dealing with gender, sexuality, and ability, specifically focusing on artistic practices that move transnationally from/between the middle east, north africa, turkey, and iran to european and north american spaces. in addition, moynihan has curated drama queer in vancouver, bc (with jonathan d. katz, 2016), ill at ease: dis-ease in art in buffalo, new york (2017), and three act, three scenes: my care, your care, careful care in brooklyn, new york (with natalie fleming, 2018). http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 8, no 1 (2019) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2019.272 my name is ozymandias, king of kings, look on my works, ye mighty, and despair! nothing beside remains. round the decay of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare the lone and level sands stretch far away. —percy bysshe shelley, “ozymandias” in the eighteenthand nineteenth-centuries, orientalism, as a field of knowledge produced by western scholars about the so-called orient, became the dominant mode by which the east was represented (in literature, painting, theater, etc.) in western spaces. initially, the “orient” of orientalism primarily referred to the near east regions such as north africa, the middle east, and, perhaps especially, egypt.1 for example, ozymandias, the “king of kings” of percy bysshe shelley’s poem, is the greek name for the egyptian pharaoh ramses ii.2 though he never went to egypt, shelley is commonly assumed to have been inspired by an encounter with the “colossal wreck” of ramses ii’s mortuary statue at the british museum. however, this viewing would have been impossible because the bust of ozymandias had only just been excavated from beneath the egyptian sands and did not arrive at the british museum, as john rodenbeck demonstrates, until 1818.3 as rodenbeck emphatically states, “shelley simply could not possibly have seen the head in question before he wrote his great sonnet.”4 it is more likely that shelley, who was from britain, learned of what egypt looked like from european travel literature in circulation at the time, such as the french two-volume voyage en syrie et en égypte (1787) by constantin-françois chassebœf, comte de volney.5 while there is much to be said about the differences between various forms of orientalism, such as those predicated on national distinctions (french versus british) or based on gender differences (male versus female orientalists6), it is equally important to highlight what remains the same in orientalism’s renderings of the east: that is, an east that has been thrust out of the west’s temporal progression and has thus become fixed in a queer state of eternal timelessness— queer because this “timelessness” is predominantly registered through the linear and teleological narratives of western modernity. 1 to stress the point, by “orient,” i mean the part of the world as defined by the western discipline of orientalism. it is therefore both a real place and a fictive one, depending on the source. 2 donald h. reiman and sharon b. powers, eds., shelley’s poetry and prose: authoritative texts and criticism (new york: w. w. norton & company, inc., 1977), 103, fn. 5. 3 john rodenbeck, “travelers from an antique land: shelley’s inspiration for ‘ozymandias,’” alif: journal for comparative poetics 24 (2004): 124–25. 4 ibid., 125. 5 ibid., 129. 6 for an example on gender differences in orientalism, see mary roberts, “contested terrains: women orientalists and the colonial harem,” in orientalism’s interlocutors: painting, architecture, photography, ed. jill beaulieu and mary roberts (durham: duke university press, 2002), 179–204. timelessness and precarity in orientalist temporality mehdi-georges lahlou’s aesthetics of disorientation conor moynihan http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 3 c o no r m o y n i h a n contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 8, no 1 (2019) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2019.272 in this understanding, literary and visual motifs serve to stabilize orientalism across other differences. in the case of shelley’s poem, it is the sand that hid and revealed ramses ii’s face and its wrecked and broken state that emerge as the mechanisms that bind the orientalist image together. as a substance that materializes temporality through its accumulation and excavation, sand allows for a renewed meeting in the present with the forgotten time of the past. however, it is not just any form of the past that is re-encountered; rather, it is the past rendered precariously in a broken or “disfigured” state that affectively charges this encounter. disfigurement, as art historian and disability studies scholar ann millett-gallant describes it, “connote[s] a range of striking visible differences from the norm—bodies [or representations of bodies] that capture attention due to their asymmetry, sizes, shapes, ‘missing’ or extra features and limbs, or other qualities that may cause social spectacles.”7 in this understanding, the encounter with brokenness can also be seen as an encounter with a temporally produced disfigurement that yields, nonetheless, a spectacle. indeed, as brokenness always already implicates a time prior to being broken, the fractured state further jettisons the bust backward into a time before the present. in addition, “new” discoveries like these, in particular those found in egypt, staged in dramatic terms the past’s renewed presence in the now. in his fielddefining text orientalism (1978), edward said maps this renewed interest in egypt, shelley being just one example, back to napoleon’s 1798 failed invasion,8 after which, said explains, “the very language of orientalism changed radically. its descriptive realism was upgraded and became not merely a style of representation but a language, indeed a means of creation.”9 this new language of orientalism produced the orient “as something whose existence is not only displayed but has remained fixed in time and space for the west.”10 sand, the matter of the fantasy’s metaphorical fixing, together with brokenness, a state in which timelessness takes form, were thereby the means that helped create the orient’s shifting temporal distance and proximity to europe’s modern present. as something that settles over time, sand’s sedimentation over objects doles out temporal and spatial distance. this process of accumulation fixes time in place and denotes spaces that are—often erotically so—lost in time, waiting for excavation and release. this trope is evidenced in disney’s aladdin (1992) when jasmine, dressed seductively in red, is trapped by jafar—despotic like shelley’s ozymandias—in an hourglass. in this scene, sand pours over her, consuming her, as it measures out the time until her mortal doom. as the last grains envelops jasmine, aladdin shatters the hourglass—a romance saved from the tyranny of the sands of time. the hourglass, an object steeped in orientalist reveries, promises to faithfully impose hegemonic time, distancing temporally the west’s modernity and the east’s timelessness. mehdi-georges lahlou’s the hourglasses (2015) (fig. 1), however, disrupts the hourglass’s fidelity to this task.11 displayed artifact-like, five of these glass timepieces are turned over to measure out time as one would expect of an hourglass. these, however, are filled with couscous, not sand. unlike sand, couscous is affected by humidity and therefore measures time incommensurably; with each inversion of any one of these hourglasses, the time it takes 7 ann millett-gallant, the disabled body in contemporary art (new york: palgrave macmillan, 2010), 13. 8 edward w. said, orientalism (new york: vintage books, 1994), 82. 9 ibid., 87. 10 ibid., 108. emphasis mine. 11 when being discussed or written about, mehdi-georges lahlou prefers to be referred as either mehdi-georges lahlou, mehdi-georges, or mgl—never just as lahlou—to maintain the hyphenation of his name. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 4 t i m e l e s s ne s s a nd p r e c a r i t y i n o r i e n t a l i s t t e m p o r a l i t y contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 8, no 1 (2019) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2019.272 for the couscous to fall to the bottom is altered unpredictably. as marie papazoglou notes, mehdi-georges “nous invite à faire l’expérience d’un temps qui n’existe pas, ou du moins, que ne régit aucune convention.”12 we may call this unconventional time—quite disorientingly— the conventional time of the orientalist fantasy, which is, as we will see, a sexualizing and immobilizing temporality. using the crisscrossing temporal and spatial movements that underpin orientalism as my starting point, i address how these discursive understandings of the east presuppose and then mandate timelessness in the orient. specifically, i am interested in how this conception of timelessness has adhered to certain geographical spaces and the bodies that inhabit them. rather than seeing the orientalist project that has produced this temporal stasis as complete, i attend to the ways that its temporality remains active in the contemporary imagination by demonstrating how we can glimpse this presence through mehdi-georges’s oeuvre. born in france in 1983 to a catholic-spanish mother and a muslim-moroccan father, mehdi-georges is a queer-identified, french-moroccan artist based in brussels and paris working in a diverse range of media including performance, sculpture, installation, and self-portraiture. dealing with race, gender, sexuality, colonialism, identity, and representations of islam and catholicism, his work performs the instability in all these categories by critically crossing over and bringing together fantasies of “east” and “west” without relying on a mere binary reversal 12 translation: “invites us to the experience of a time that does not exist, or rather, one not governed by any convention.” unless otherwise stated, all translations are my own. marie papazoglu, “the hourglasses” from behind the garden exhibition curated by simon njami at la botanique (collection of the author, brussels, belgium, 2017), n.p. figure 1 mehdi-georges lahlou, the hourglasses, 2015. mold-blown glass and couscous. series of 5, +/73 by 30 x 30 centimeters each. galerie transit, mechelen, belgium, and galerie rabouan moussion, paris, france. image courtesy of the artist. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 5 c o no r m o y n i h a n contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 8, no 1 (2019) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2019.272 of meaning.13 rather, mehdi-georges’s work, predicated on his own embodied cultural hyphenation, produces what i call an “aesthetic of disorientation” that renders the orientalist fantasy absurd through its own tropes and re-temporalizes the disabled temporality of the orient from within the very materials used to bind it. by exploding this fantasy from within, mehdi-georges’s work opens up new possibilities for perceiving the world.14 to achieve this new mode of perception, i begin with a discussion of nineteenthand twentieth-century orientalist paintings then move on to examine two more contemporary examples of orientalism in art discourse. i do so not to map out how orientalism has remained the same, but to draw attention to the myriad ways that tropes of the east have been deployed to fix this spatio-temporal fantasy in place. this legacy of orientalism, as art historian nada shabout argues, has had a profound impact on people living in the arab world. as she writes, “while colonial rule actively contributed to restructuring arab societies, orientalism aided in transmitting western ideals and directing modern arab convictions”; adding that “contemporary arab cultures are still imprisoned by these assumptions; the stereotypical image of an arab that they created still persists.”15 in agreement with shabout’s assessment, i first lay the foundation of how this stereotypical image was produced and sustained (what i call “fixed” and shabout describes as a form of being “imprisoned”) as it still continues to have reverberating and disabling consequences in contemporary life. building broadly from the tropes of sand and brokenness encountered in shelley’s orientalist poem, i return to my discussion of mehdi-georges, using queer theory and disability studies to approach how his performative works, positioned between east and west, to produce an experiential aesthetics of disorientation for viewers. he achieves this affect, i conclude, by making his own bodily precarity a spectacle affectively haunted by the legacy of colonization. as mehdi-georges’s practice often thematizes non-normative sexuality, his work readily opens up to a queer analysis. this mode of analysis can be nuanced further by considering queerness as a way that bodies register with a difference in, and through, alternating states of temporality.16 for example, in her discussion of queer temporalities, elizabeth freeman uses the phrase “time binds” to gesture to the ways “that naked flesh is bound into socially meaningful embodiment through temporal regulation” and how “time [is used] to organize individual bodies toward maximum productivity.”17 through freeman, queer theory provides a productive way to consider how race, gender, and sexuality register affectively as “other”— 13 i place “west” and “east” in scare quotation marks here to hold in tension that i am referring to real cartographical spaces that are simultaneously imaginary spaces. throughout my argument, i capitalize these two cardinal directions to emphasize their symbolic and associated meanings alongside their literal ones. 14 by making this claim, i do not mean to assert that mehdi-georges’s work is only orientated toward a critique of orientalism—this is false. his works often evade singular meanings and open themselves to many interpretations. for example, the hourglasses also makes a very direct reference to islamic time, as the five hourglasses gesture to salat, the five daily prayers expected in islam. his work often aims to desacralize, and i am taking that thrust up to show how his work also desacralizes the orientalist fantasy. therefore, my argument aims to stress how his works operate against orientalism without writing off their many other possible meanings. 15 nada shabout, modern arab art: formation of arab aesthetics (gainesville, fl: university press of florida, 2007), 7. 16 for a great discussion of queer temporality beyond the scope of this paper, see j. jack halberstam, in a queer time and place: transgender bodies, subcultural lives (new york: nyu press, 2005). 17 elizabeth freeman, time binds: queer temporalities, queer histories (durham, nc: duke university press, 2010), 3. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 6 t i m e l e s s ne s s a nd p r e c a r i t y i n o r i e n t a l i s t t e m p o r a l i t y contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 8, no 1 (2019) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2019.272 and thereby queer—through time. if time binds so as to be productive, then we can see orientalism as a form of queer temporal binding, producing images of a timeless nonproductivity in the east that are, nonetheless, quite productive for the project of colonization. likewise, mehdi-georges’s work queers these binds by temporalizing the absurdity of such stereotypes so as to re-script the social meaning that has become bound to his flesh. in addition to queer theory, i bring disability studies to bear in interpreting the orientalistinflected temporality in his work. as a field, disability studies has brought overdue attention to the ways that bodies are situated in the world along axes of accessibility and difference. further, the field has expanded to focus not just on disability as it is formally recognized but also what disability might mean in a global context.18 in line with this, disability studies scholar robert mcruer argues that, in global contexts, we must remain cognizant of “the disability to come.” 19 he posits as much to signal the inability to ever encapsulate what disability is because globalization will always produce unpredictable forms of disability and impairment elsewhere in the future.20 i also consider how, beyond being future-oriented, “disability to come” works in the past tense, allowing us to consider how orientalism arrives at states of precarity. as the language “to come” suggests, disability scholars, such as alison kafer, engage with the temporal turn in theory by positing that disability is often conceived of as an “embodied asynchrony” and as being “out of time”21—a productive parallel to the orientalist’s temporal conception of the east. further, the field of disability studies can be leveraged to draw attention to the ways that orientalism’s rhetorical de-temporalization of the east results in tangible, corporeal, and material effects on people marked as timeless. thus, a disability studies analysis helps underscore the ways in which these affected states are produced within specific contexts (e.g., in the post-colonial west). in step with this interpretation, mehdi-georges’s performances often centralize precarity, vulnerability, and the potentiality of bodily harm to himself. in so doing, however, i contend that he re-temporalizes in the present tense forms of precariousness that orientalism as a discipline has instantiated historically. taken together, a queer and disability analysis of mehdi-georges’s ouevre helps us dwell on the ways that certain bodies are fixed in time and precluded from accessing modernity’s temporal present. 18 for more on disability in global contexts, see nirmala everelles, disability and difference in global contexts: enabling a transformative body politic (new york: palgrave macmillan, 2011). 19 robert mcruer, crip theory: cultural signs of queerness and disability (new york: new york university press, 2006), 200. 20 robert mcruer has also been one of the leading voices in bringing queer theory and disability studies into conversation with one another. 21 this comes from alison kafer’s analysis of the case of ashley x. while she uses these in a different context, there are strong parallels for the way orientalism uses time to render the non-western world asynchronous and out of time. alison kafer, feminist, queer, crip (bloomington: indiana university press, 2013), 48, 53. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 7 c o no r m o y n i h a n contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 8, no 1 (2019) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2019.272 directionality and temporality in orientalist painting in 1832, shortly after algeria was conquered by france in 1830, painter eugène delacroix joined a french diplomatic envoy to morocco. en route, he sojourned in newly conquered algeria, where he made sketches based on his visit to a harem to bring back to france;22 the result was his 1834 femmes d'alger dans leur appartement (fig. 2).23 this oil painting features three algerian women fixed in the space of their apartment, reclining in a luxurious and confined interior, draped in decorated and colorful fabrics, wearing expensive jewelry and smoking from a water pipe. their alabaster white skin is set into relief by the black slave woman, the only figure shown in motion, who attends to them, framing their immobility by 22 as sarah rogers notes, delacroix was the first european male to gain access to a harem. sarah rogers, “houria niati’s no to torture: a modernist reconfiguration of delacroix’s women of algiers in their apartment,” thresholds 24 (spring 2002): 37. 23 a note on titles: i have left all titles in their original language, which primarily is french. for works that have a regularly used english equivalent, such as femmes d’algers dans leur appartement (women of algiers in their apartment), i do not provide a translation. for all other works, i provide my own translation in the footnotes. figure 2 eugène delacroix, femmes d’alger dans leur appartement, 1834. oil on canvas. 180 x 229 centimeters. musée de louvre, paris, france. (photo: franck raux).  rmngrand palais / art resource, ny. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 8 t i m e l e s s ne s s a nd p r e c a r i t y i n o r i e n t a l i s t t e m p o r a l i t y contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 8, no 1 (2019) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2019.272 her suggested departure.24 articulating eroticism through race, luxury, and excess, this stereotypical orientalist harem fantasy scene performs the insatiable, penetrating appetite of the colonialist gaze, which perceives these algerian women as distant but obtainable—a critical tension in the orientalist fantasy. note, for example, how the woman on the left of the canvas reclines like an odalisque, leaning into the sumptuous pillow under her elbow, beckoning the viewer to imaginatively enter the harem with a seductive come-hither expression. discussing this orientation, sara ahmed argues that “racial others become associated with ‘the other side of the world.’ they come to embody distance.”25 delacroix’s canvas, likewise, performs this orientation by mapping orientalism’s distance from europe through racial alterity (where the slave attendant formally functions to racialize the otherwise seemingly, though impossibly, “white” harem women26) while still marking it as graspable within the west’s desirous reach.27 importantly, femmes d'alger was a european performance of the east with a european audience in mind. in his discussion of orientalist painting, art historian roger benjamin notes that “costumed europeans often substituted for eastern men and women” as models for european painters and that “delacroix had used such models in making his women of algiers.”28 this painting orients the french viewer to an imagined space of indulgent consumption and licentiousness, performing with european models a “pastiche” of the east.29 delacroix’s canvas clearly delineates between what constitutes the east within the orientalist imaginary, which also thereby defines the west as its opposite. as said writes, “the oriental is irrational, depraved (fallen), childlike, ‘different’; thus the european is rational, virtuous, mature, ‘normal.’”30 therefore, from said, we can necessarily expand our notions of what constitutes orientalism by including forms of representation that depict the east as inherently different from the west in these binary reversals. more specifically, if we broaden said’s terms to be more generally about race, gender, class, temporality, and directionality, orientalism becomes a mode of representation that disciplines and shapes western modernity based on an a priori assumption of the east’s essential difference, a difference that can be made legible in all forms of representation. this essentialized difference and distinction between east and west, a requisite of the orientalist fantasy, needed to simultaneously produce the east for its own pleasure and disavow any analogy with europe. consequently, orientalism imposed “epistemological boundaries” to limit the porousness between east and west—one such boundary was the pastiche of temporality.31 24 in this way, if we follow joseph roach’s theory of substitution and surrogation, the slave attendant becomes a surrogate that highlights the three women’s own bondage in the harem—a bondage as interpreted by orientalist fantasy. joseph roach, cities of the dead: circum-atlantic performance (new york: columbia university press, 1996), 211–24. 25 sara ahmed, queer phenomenology: orientations, objects, others (durham, nc: duke university press, 2006), 121. 26 for more on racial associations through juxtaposition, see joseph roach, “one blood,” in cities of the dead, 179–238. 27 ahmed, queer phenomenology, 121. 28 roger benjamin, orientalist aesthetics: art, colonialism, and french north africa 1880-1930 (berkeley: university of california press, 2003), 34. 29 ibid. 30 said, orientalism, 40. 31 ibid. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 9 c o no r m o y n i h a n contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 8, no 1 (2019) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2019.272 figure 3 jean-léon gérôme, le marché d’esclaves, 1866. oil on canvas. 84.6 x 63.3 centimeters. image courtesy of the clark art institute, williamstown, massachusetts, usa. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 1 0 t i m e l e s s ne s s a nd p r e c a r i t y i n o r i e n t a l i s t t e m p o r a l i t y contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 8, no 1 (2019) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2019.272 this caricature of oriental time is furthered in jean-léon gérôme’s le marché d’esclaves (1866) (fig. 3), which depicts a denuded slave woman with a potential buyer probing her mouth with his fingers. the men in this painting are dressed in an amalgam of oriental costumes from multiple regions and time periods, signifying for european audiences that this scene is taking place abstractly in the so-called orient rather than in any real time or place. discussing this work, linda nochlin insightfully comments, “gérôme’s orientalist painting managed to body forth two ideological assumptions about power: one about men’s power over women; the other about white man’s superiority to, hence justifiable control over, inferior, darker races, precisely those who might indulge in this sort of regrettably lascivious commerce.”32 the pronounced sexual and heteronormative content of gérôme’s canvas—the fingers of the man penetrating the woman’s mouth are almost explicitly pornographic— dovetails with its colonial imperative. like the slave buyer seen in the painting, this work aims to naturalize europe’s expanding colonization by staging the orient as a despotic and erotic spectacle irrevocably lost in a time already passed by european modernism. as scholars have observed, orientalism moved in the opposite direction, as well, going from east to west.33 in fact, orientalism created space for indigenous privileging of the oriental over the occidental. in his 1937 “manifesto of the neo-orientalists,” egyptian painter kamel telmisany declared, “we believe that our personal, strictly oriental ideas and perceptions are likely to give rise to a genuine art form only if we experience an authentic oriental sentiment, freed from occidental conceptions.”34 related to shelley’s temperament toward the past, telmisany sees this “inspiration” as “contained within the nile valley,” which has “persisted unchanged throughout the centuries, since the feet of the first pharaonic artist tread upon this brown earth.”35 while similar to shelley in tone, telmisany nevertheless did have an actual encounter with what he invokes, basing his aesthetic inspiration on his lived experience in egypt—an orientalism with a critical difference. likewise, algerian-born azouaou mammeri provides another example. his canvas vue de fez (1920) (fig. 4) is demonstrably influenced by his french tutelage;36 its modernist composition, sun-soaked color palette, and the various elements of its subject matter— architectural ruins, a sand-filled landscape, and a lone traveler and camel—stylistically accord with the continental orientalist tradition. his reliance on shared tropes with western orientalists notwithstanding, his work can be seen as offering an important corrective as his depiction of the moroccan city fez is, according to benjamin, “exact and technically conservative.”37 his immigration to morocco in 1916, a recently established french colony, was motivated by his belief that morocco’s cultural authenticity was less spoiled by colonialism than 32 linda nochlin, the politics of vision: essays on nineteenth-century art and society (boulder, co: westview press, 1989), 45. 33 more recent work by art historians such as roger benjamin, zeynap çelik, and mary roberts, among others, has put forth this argument. see jill beaulieu and mary roberts, eds., orientalism’s interlocutors: painting, architecture, photography (durham, nc: duke university press, 2002). 34 kamel telmisany, “manifesto of the neo-orientalists,” trans. emma ramadan, in modern art in the arab world: primary documents, ed. anneka lenssen, sarah rogers, nada shabout (new york: the museum of modern art, 2018), 86. 35 ibid. 36 roger benjamin, orientalist aesthetics, 223–24. 37 ibid., 229. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 1 1 c o no r m o y n i h a n contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 8, no 1 (2019) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2019.272 algeria’s.38 therefore, we see once more an imaginative eastward orientation motivating this work, imaginative because mammeri went west to find it just as delacroix went south. however, as benjamin comments, “mammeri follows the strategy of most orientalist art addressing a european audience: focusing on indigenous traditions, he pretends the invader is absent.”39 in other words, mammeri opted to render morocco as timeless as the west imagined it to be, marking a stark equivalence between mammeri’s temporality and that of orientalism and discounting the effects of colonization that would have been extant at the time.40 thus, orientalism has always been a multidirectional, cross-cultural, cross-temporal exchange couched within an east and west binary, in which the latter signified progressing modernity and the former timelessness. within this temporalized, spatialized, and aestheticized binary—at once racial and sexual—a movement from one point to the other 38 as benjamin observes, “it was commonly thought (and still is) that morocco, far more than algeria managed to preserve a large part of its traditional culture as well as its ancient architectural fabric.” ibid. 39 ibid., 226. 40 my analysis of mammeri is entirely indebted to benjamin’s. i put forth his argument to point toward how it overlaps with my interest in temporality. this is merely a matter of my emphasis. for more on benjamin’s analysis of mammeri’s work, see his chapter “mammeri and racim, painters of the maghreb” in orientalist aesthetics, 221–48. figure 4 azouaou mammeri, vue de fez, 1920. oil on canvas. 70 x 92 centimeters. musée d’orsay, paris, france.  artepics/age fotostock. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 1 2 t i m e l e s s ne s s a nd p r e c a r i t y i n o r i e n t a l i s t t e m p o r a l i t y contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 8, no 1 (2019) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2019.272 involves not only a transition of cultures (i.e., west to east) but also a transition of temporalities (i.e., from being in time to being out of time). even mammeri, who sought to correct orientalism’s misconceptions, adopted the same signifiers of temporal alterity. binary reversals of orientalism’s logic always run the risk of entrenching it further by simply turning over the paradigm without negating it, permitting the orientalist aesthetic to fix—like sand— the orient in time and space. from either angle, this fixity disables the east’s agential capacity to being in time with the west by only allowing for the west to discover the image of wreckage in the east. working from sara ahmed’s queer phenomenology, orientalism’s west-east line of demarcation can be queered and denaturalized by looking at this binary “obliquely,” from the vantage of mixed-race embodiment if we follow the hyphen line of connection in mehdigeorges’s work.41 as a detour, it is equally important to note that orientalism, sometimes recognized as such and sometimes not, has continued to be a driving force in modern and contemporary art production and criticism; for example, pablo picasso’s fifteen-painting series les femmes d’alger (1955), which were cubist revisions of delacroix’s original canvas. the art critic leo steinberg explicates this series to map the ways that picasso remained invested in his cubist representational project long after his initial les demoiselles d’avignon (1907). steinberg discusses how picasso perfected his earlier interest in portraying a woman from both the front and the back at the same time as not just monstrous but as erotically desirable. yet, he does so without ever addressing why delacroix’s orientalist picture proved to be an ideal model for picasso to work from in realizing this motif. as steinberg writes, “the quest embodied above all in the sleeper [in les femmes d’alger] is for the form that satisfies both the impulse of erotic possession and, at the same time, the most systematic investigation of the plane surface as a receptacle of information.”42 while steinberg does not acknowledge as much, it is pertinent to question why delacroix’s orientalist fantasy was the “form” that picasso was best able to leverage to erotically possess—both frontally and posteriorly—his female subject. further, his analysis equally makes no mention of the colonialist and orientalist implications of picasso’s appropriation of a harem scene. more recently, nigel lendon provides an insightful example of contemporary orientalism in his critically important debunking of arte povera artist alighiero boetti. in particular, he dispels the myth that boetti influenced the evolution of carpet production and artistic culture in afghanistan (via boetti’s mappe series, produced between 1971–1994) by showing that it was, in fact, the other way around.43 lendon draws attention to the ways that the “boetti literature,” like other forms of contemporary art discourse, operates on unacknowledged and undiscussed orientalist terms. working from said, lendon notes that the literature on boetti “characterize[s] [the artist’s] engagement with afghanistan and pakistan as if it is with an archaic, romantic, mysterious, culturally ‘other’ and dangerous world” and that this mythology “begins to construct the framework of a contemporary orientalism.”44 following this explication, lendon insists that one of the most important aspects of “boetti’s afghan enterprise” to critique is how the artist has risen to prominence because of “[the afghan carpet makers’] anonymous, abstracted and mystified representation” in the art discourse, resulting in “but the latest version of a contemporary form of orientalism.”45 as the absences in steinberg’s analysis and lendon’s critical re-evaluation indicate, we have moved away from dealing with orientalism as it has been typically discussed under, perhaps, the false understanding that it has ceased to be a factor post-said. nonetheless, we are still left to 41 ahmed, queer phenomenology, 92, 152. 42 leo steinberg, other criteria: confrontations with twentieth-century art (london: oxford university press, 1972), 234. 43 nigel lendon, “a tournament of shadows: alighiero boetti, the myth of influence, and a contemporary orientalism,” emaj, no. 6 (2011–2012): 1–32. 44 ibid., 18. 45 ibid., 26. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 1 3 c o no r m o y n i h a n contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 8, no 1 (2019) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2019.272 contend with its aftermath, aesthetically and ideologically. in agreement with lendon, i elucidate mehdi-georges’s work as an example of how we may interrogate the tropes of orientalism from within. aesthetics of disorientation as the hourglasses reveals, mehdi-georges lahlou shares with the early orientalists an interest in temporality and timelessness. his i used to be nefertiti (2014) (fig. 5) is a selfportrait bust in the style of the famous statue of queen nefertiti. as a plaster cast mold of mehdi-georges’s own visage, the work is an example of his performative self-portraiture. in addition to the egyptian queen’s headgear, collar necklace, and dark eyeliner, mehdi-georges has rouged his lips. like a piece of temporal-historical drag, the self-portrait is humorously queer, presenting the artist as the famously beautiful queen of egypt. this oblique mixing of differently temporalized genders and the feminization of his own arab masculinity conform with what joseph boone has argued to be the latent homoeroticism always already within the discourse of orientalism.46 this work also reveals his queer play with gender, appearing in the bust as both he himself and she the queen, especially as his representation of the bust does not fully dissolve him into the form of nefertiti. we could interpret this presentation as the artist’s claim to identify with an ancient egyptian heritage, substantiated by his arab-islamic inheritance. indeed, following this line, mehdi-georges has a more authentic claim to eastern identity as a source of artistic inspiration than orientalists such as shelley or delacroix and thus has more right to position himself as the heir to egypt’s wellspring of ancient symbolic meaning. but this reading does not hold up either. his work, which often defies gender, temporal, and spatial binaries, troubles this interpretation, as he incessantly deconstructs all claims to authenticity. as a child in france, mehdi-georges was unaware of his arab and muslim heritage: “ce n’est qu’à huit ans que j’ai connu mon père. avant, je ne conaissais rien de la culture arabo/musulmane. une sorte de choc de cultures, j’étais assez désorienté.”47 the revelatory knowledge of his father in unison with his subsequent move from france to morocco, where he was exposed to arab-muslim culture for the first time, disoriented how he had previously understood himself. geographically disoriented, sexually queer, and culturally hyphenated, mehdi-georges seems to be answering judith butler’s famous question: “what are the possibilities of politicizing disidentification, this experience of misrecognition, this uneasy sense of standing under a sign to which one does and does not belong?”48 building from butler, josé esteban muñoz argues that disidentification is a strategy for surviving within the space between 46 joseph boone, describing the homoerotic orientalist trope of the beautiful boy: “with the establishment of european photographic studios in egypt, tunisia, and morocco specializing in erotic, and sometimes explicitly homoerotic, images of indigenous life, the topos of the beautiful boy entered a new realm of visual representation, mass circulation, and potential exploitation, as attested by the hundreds of nude or seminude photographs of questionable age produced for a european clientele.” joseph a. boone, the homoerotics of orientalism (new york: columbia university press, 2014), 65. 47 translation: “it was not until i was eight years old that i knew my father. before then, i knew nothing of arab/muslim culture. a sort of culture shock, i was quite disoriented […].” mehdi-georges lahlou, interview by juan dario gomez, in “les talons d’allah,” pref mag: le magazine gay, insolent & différent (january/february 2011): 77. 48 judith butler, bodies that matter: on the discursive limits of “sex” (new york: routledge, 1993), 219. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 1 4 t i m e l e s s ne s s a nd p r e c a r i t y i n o r i e n t a l i s t t e m p o r a l i t y contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 8, no 1 (2019) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2019.272 cultural belonging and not belonging.49 in his work, muñoz foregrounds the ways that queers of color in particular find ways of surviving and thriving in cultural spaces not initially intended for them. for muñoz, following butler, disidentification can be seen when the tropes of dominant culture are picked up and assumed with a critical difference—such as how mehdigeorges made time move differently in the hourglasses or when he only partially assumes the visage of a pharaonic queen in i used to be nefertiti. following this queer lineage, we can see mehdi-georges’s work, forged from his own disorienting experience of misrecognition and occupation of a complex spatio-temporal middle ground, to be queer through his disidentification with orientalist tropes by performing them with a difference. his practice, though, suggests a corporeal queerness that defies simple discursive explanation, requiring us to attend to the mattering of race in his oeuvre. in “mama’s baby, papa’s maybe: an american grammar book,” hortense spillers demonstrates how the slave 49 josé esteban muñoz, disidentifications: queers of color and the performance of politics (minneapolis: university of minnesota press, 1999), 1–35. figure 5 mehdi-georges lahlou, i used to be nefertiti, 2014. plaster, gesomonite, polystyrene, and paint. +/60 by 24 x 45 centimeters, unique. image courtesy of the artist and galerie transit, mechelen, belgium. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 1 5 c o no r m o y n i h a n contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 8, no 1 (2019) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2019.272 trade through the middle passage violently reduced black bodies into commodified and queerly sexualized objects, clarifying “value” in the grammar of (white) history to be the captured, mutilated, and stolen black body. she names this situation “pornotroping,” whereby black bodies are reduced from personhood to fungible commodity and, at the same time, to sexualized objects for consumption.50 flesh, as spillers argues, is the material substrate that precedes the body, and pornotroping is the rendering of the body into flesh stripped of personhood for sexual and violent consumption. in i used to be nefertiti, mehdi-georges conjures his body into a “hieroglyphics of the flesh” that signifies his body as outside of modern time.51 like a hieroglyph, a sign that signifies an inaccessible but visible temporal and spatial alterity, he leverages nefertiti’s timeless beauty to signify his body-as-bust as a desirable object. mehdi-georges’s situation is arguably incomparable to that of the middle passage as described by spillers, but if we were to recognize that the bust of nefertiti (and mehdigeorges’s copy) presents a head torn from a body, fixed in place, with the left eye absented, a shared resonance of racialized violence emerges. significantly, then, nefertiti, whose likeness resides in berlin, not in egypt, as a highly commodified object, is therefore also captured, mutilated, and stolen—pornotroped. in her analysis of “mama’s baby, papa’s maybe,” disability studies scholar nirmala everelles posits “that spillers’s essay is as much about the materiality of racialized violence as it is about disability.” from this recognition, everelles then “situate[s] disability not as the condition of being but of becoming, and this becoming is a historical event, and further, it is its material context that is critical in the theorizing of disabled bodies/subjectivities.”52 in particular, everelles was discussing the historical event of the transatlantic slave trade but, as an event, it parallels the colonization of north africa. from here, we can see mehdi-georges as pornotroped, approaching blackness in the white imaginary. as ahmed describes, “to become black through proximity to others is not to be black; it is to be ‘not black’ by the very extension of the body toward blackness.”53 as nefertiti, mehdi-georges also performs the fleshy substrate—his distance from whiteness, heterosexuality, masculinity and what these identity traits enable—that precedes, exceeds, and queers his own embodiment. furthermore, his use of a wreck of a bust with limbs and eye missing suggests that we must attend to the ways that an “extension of the body toward blackness” involves and invokes the disabling aspects of racialized violence, as inscribed on the flesh, even when this violence is seemingly drolly recuperated within an aesthetic project. 50 while there are departures from how spillers first theorized “pornotroping” and how i am using it here, i see many parallels to how differently racialized bodies are violently rendered to flesh and therefore am relying on her analysis. she explains the process as follows: “1) the captive body becomes the source of an irresistible, destructive sensuality; 2) at the same time – in stunning contradiction – the captive body reduces to a thing, becoming being for the captor; 3) in this absence from a subject position, the captured sexualities provide a physical and biological expression of “otherness”; 4) as a category of “otherness,” the captive body translates into a potential for pornotroping and embodies sheer physical powerlessness that slides into a more general “powerlessness,” resonating through various centers of human and social meaning.” hortense j. spillers, “mama’s baby, papa’s maybe: an american grammar book,” in “culture and countermemory: the ‘american’ connection,” special issue, diacritics 17, no. 2 (summer 1987): 67. 51 ibid. 52 everelles, disability and difference in global contexts, 26. 53 ahmed, queer phenomenology, 128. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 1 6 t i m e l e s s ne s s a nd p r e c a r i t y i n o r i e n t a l i s t t e m p o r a l i t y contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 8, no 1 (2019) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2019.272 moving from his flesh to the flesh of watermelons in stupidité contrôlée ou autoportrait à la pastèque (fig. 6),54 performed in venice in 2011, mehdi-georges sat upon a black metal stool with a bowl of watermelon slices arranged in a white bowl on a table by his side. dressed in a black-and-white diamond patterned taqiyah and red stilettos, mehdi-george ate slice after slice of watermelon before rising to stand, arms akimbo, holding a hollowed-out watermelon husk with a hole bored through it in his mouth. this performance centralizes the fleshiness of the watermelon as a consumable commodity and his repeated acts of eating slice after slice down to the husk evokes colonization’s endless appetite to consume the colonized. while the watermelon carries many racial signifiers, especially linked to the racist minstrelsy tradition in the united states, it also suggests colonialist consumption, as france in recent years has been a significant importer of moroccan watermelons, highlighting how france’s appetite is still satiated by its former colonies.55 this dynamic bears strong parallels to the hegelian master/slave dichotomy in which the slave self-reflexively realizes his individuality through negation by watching the marks of his labor be consumed by the master.56 as butler explicates, “the working of the slave is thus to be understood as a marking which regularly unmarks itself, a signatory act which puts itself under erasure at the moment in which it is circulated, for circulation here is always a matter of expropriation by the lord.”57 the watermelon, grown in 54 translation: controlled stupidity or self-portrait with watermelon. 55 zineb el mehcrafi, “sharp growth of moroccan watermelon exports in europe,” morocco world news, may 23, 2015, https://www.moroccoworldnews.com/2015/05/159102/sharp-growth-of-moroccanwatermelon-exports-in-europe/. 56 judith butler, the psychic life of power: theories in subjection (stanford: stanford university press, 1997), 34–53. 57 ibid., 38. figure 6 mehdi-georges lahlou, stupidité contrôlée ou autoportrait à la pastèque (detail), 2011. performance. zattere, venice. courtesy of the artist and galerie transit, mechelen, belgium. (photo: bert de leenheer). http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 1 7 c o no r m o y n i h a n contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 8, no 1 (2019) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2019.272 morocco and consumed in europe, materializes within the contemporary master/slave hegelian dialectic supposedly already surpassed in western historical time. being nominally both lord and slave in stupidité contrôlée, mehdi-georges places his own hyphenated identity into a venetian setting, at once cityscape and seascape, known for being a centuries-old trade conduit between east and west. his presence there complicates this trade flow, as his hyphenated identity places him on either side of this circulation.58 literal and implied, the hyphen is a central component of his disorienting aesthetics. as the linkage of the arab-moroccan name “mehdi” and the french moniker “georges” suggests,59 mehdi-georges embodies a disorienting position that always already signifies elsewhere—spatially and temporally—extending into blackness through his african heritage just as he extends this racial difference into the west via his european lineage.60 in france, he signifies timeless morocco; in morocco, he signifies france and its form of modernity. the orientalist orientation mandates a spatio-temporal distinction between, building from ahmed’s phenomenology,61 here-ness and there-ness, where the here represents the modern colonialist gaze and the there signifies the timeless object of colonization. in contrast, the hyphen in mehdi-georges performatively 58 i see hyphenation in mehdi-georges’s practice working similarly to homi bhabha’s theory of hybridity. homi k. bhabha, the location of culture (new york: routledge, 1994). 59 my theorization of the performative role of the hyphen in the context of mehdi-georges’s work is indebted to jean-françois lyotard’s work on the hyphen (french: trait d’union). lyotard argues, “the white space or blank, the one that is crossed out by the trait or line uniting jew and christian in the expression ‘judeo-christian.’” lyotard goes on to argue that the hyphen—or the trait—becomes an “abyss” that is “an unpronounceable proper name.” as lyotard also maintains, a hyphen simultaneously unites that which cannot be pronounced and dis-unites. jean-françois lyotard and eberhard gruber, the hyphen: between judaism and christianity, trans. pascale-anne brault and michael naas (amherst, ny: humanity books, 1999), 13–14. 60 mehdi-georges lahlou, interview with author, november 11, 2013, chicago, illinois, audio recording. 61 ahmed, queer phenomenology, 25. figure 7 mehdi-georges lahlou, walking 30km with red high heel shoes between 2 art spaces (detail), 2009. from galerie transit, mechelen to lokaal 01, antwerp, belgium. 9-hour performance. image courtesy of the artist and galerie transit, mechelen, belgium. (photo: bert de leenheer). http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 1 8 t i m e l e s s ne s s a nd p r e c a r i t y i n o r i e n t a l i s t t e m p o r a l i t y contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 8, no 1 (2019) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2019.272 brings together the there-ness of the east and here-ness of the west by crossing out the gap between them. becoming the slash between master/slave, mehdi-georges consumes the fleshy watermelon in venice, a city that literalizes the hyphen between the east and the west, desirously consuming a commodity both meant and not meant for his own consumption. in other words, he performs disidentification. emblematic of his aesthetics of disorientation, this critical and queer act of expropriation confounds the teleology of hegelian dialectics. mehdi-georges’s performance walking 30km with red high heel shoes between 2 art spaces (2009) (fig. 7) also functions like a hyphen. for this performance, he walked in his signature shoes over the course of nine hours between galerie transit and lokaal 01 as part of a group exhibition at the latter. during the video documentation, mehdi-georges begins to visibly limp, his toes turning inward as his steps become shorter. as the video continues, mehdi-georges is seen leaning against whatever happens to be next to him at that moment—a building, a stone wall, a fence—with increasing need of its support. at one moment, capturing what seems to be a step shortened by discomfort, he stands beneath a blue and white disability-accessible parking sign on a nearby wall (fig. 8). a coincidence, but a productive one because he appears, as the debilitating performance goes on, not only to be resting but to be entirely maintaining his precarious verticality by leaning heavily into the supporting structures around him.62 at the end of the performance, mehdi-georges arrives at lokaal 01 to the celebratory cheers of the audience. having pushed his body to such an extreme, he nevertheless gives the audience a broad smile, lifts his arms in victory, and concludes his performance (fig. 9), which immediately masks the unwitnessed pain his body endured to produce this highly sexualized work and erases—or, makes timeless—the labor his body endured to produce this performance. there is a gap between the performance itself and the way that it was situated into the exhibition, as the audience, at the moment of encountering the performance for the first time, could only see the artist upon his celebratory arrival at lokaal 01. they could not bear witness to all the struggling and limping steps that brought the artist there wearing red stiletto shoes. mehdi-georges, consequently, became the consumable art object assimilated into the art gallery, merging sexuality with debilitating movement into a single commodified moment for 62 this analysis of mehdi-georges lahlou’s performance is based on hershini bhana young’s analysis of verticality and horizontality in william pope.l’s the great white way, 22 miles, 9 years, 1 street (2001-2009). hershini bhana young, “william pope.l: the great white way, 22 miles, 9 years, 1 street” (presentation, movement, publics, and borders: a roundtable discussion, buffalo, ny, november 14, 2017). figure 8 mehdi-georges lahlou, walking 30km with red high heel shoes between 2 art spaces (detail), 2009. from galerie transit, mechelen to lokaal 01, antwerp, belgium. 9-hour performance. image courtesy of the artist and galerie transit, mechelen, belgium. (photo: bert de leenheer). http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 1 9 c o no r m o y n i h a n contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 8, no 1 (2019) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2019.272 the pleasure of the viewers. what is erased at that moment, therefore, is the physical tribulations the artist himself endured to become the object of another’s pleasure. his precariously inappropriate shoes—in terms of hegemonic gender conformity and suitability for such an extensive walk—were nonetheless objects designed to generate desire. if we think of the shoes as prosthetics, drawing from disability studies, this performance achieves a new tenor. as hershini young argues: “the prosthetic was a way of dealing with the limitations and weaknesses of fleshy bodies that ‘failed’ in particular ways.”63 working from young’s definition, we might understand the prosthetic as any device used to make a body meet normative standards of embodiment. in such a case, the red heels modify mehdi-georges’s gait to a feminine sway, becoming a prosthetic that eroticizes his body to suit the orientalist homoerotic fantasy of arab masculinity.64 however, this is not to imply that the use of prosthetics is meant primarily for the user’s benefit and pleasure. in many ways, the prosthetic is meant for the viewer’s pleasure, fulfilling normative expectations of embodiment and eliding the discomfort or pain they may cause the user in the process. nonetheless, the red stiletto shoes disorient our view of him, causing us to see him differently by presenting his labor as happening in time, revealing a temporality orientalism otherwise seeks to mask in a mirage of timelessness. 63 hershini bhana young, “inhabiting inherited structures of representation: nelisiwe xaba’s fremde tänze,” women and performance: a journal of feminist theory, forthcoming special issue on nelisiwe xaba: n.p., courtesy of young. 64 nick rees-roberts, french queer cinema (edinburgh: edinburgh university press, 2008), 10. figure 9 mehdi-georges lahlou, walking 30km with red high heel shoes between 2 art spaces (detail), 2009. from galerie transit, mechelen to lokaal 01, antwerp, belgium. 9-hour performance. image courtesy of the artist and galerie transit, mechelen, belgium. (photo: bert de leenheer). http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 2 0 t i m e l e s s ne s s a nd p r e c a r i t y i n o r i e n t a l i s t t e m p o r a l i t y contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 8, no 1 (2019) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2019.272 disorienting orientalism’s disqualification mehdi-georges’s aesthetics of disorientation opens up the legacy of orientalism to reevaluation. building from maurice merleau-ponty, ahmed queries the possibility of remaining in disorientation’s nausea and giddiness with “the awareness of our contingency, and the horror with which it fills us”;65 provocatively, she suggests that “if we stay with such moments then we might achieve a different orientation toward them; . . . we might even find joy and excitement in horror.”66 a “politics of disorientation . . . registers that disorientation shatters our involvement in a world,”67 and mehdi-georges’s aesthetics of disorientation shatters our being in an orientalist world. finding giddiness and joy in the horrors of its aftermath solemnizes the material consequences of orientalism while orientating oneself to new possibilities. rather than approaching orientalism from the vantage of either the west (delacroix, gérôme) or the east (telmisany, mammeri), mehdi-georges approaches obliquely, from across the hyphen, queerly temporalizing the east’s timelessness from the dizzying angle of the west. this slanting perspective is world shattering, calling into question the very affective responses to alterity that orientalism naturalizes. 65 maurice merleau-ponty, phenomenology of perception, trans. colin smith (london: routledge and kegan paul, 2002), 296. quoted in ahmed, queer phenomenology, 4. 66 ahmed, queer phenomenology, 4. 67 ibid, 177. figure 10 mehdi-georges lahlou, stupidité contrôlée, ou autoportrait en équilibre à la tajine (detail), 2011. performance. croxhapox, gent, belgium. image courtesy of the artist, galerie transit, mechelen, belgium, and galerie rabouan moussion, paris, france. (photo: bert de leenheer). http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 2 1 c o no r m o y n i h a n contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 8, no 1 (2019) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2019.272 these disorienting and world-shattering aesthetics emerge profoundly in autoportrait en équilibre à la tajine (2011) (fig. 10).68 performed in belgium, mehdi-georges donned his stilettos with portions of tajine, a maghrebi food, placed in rows on the ground around him.69 positioned as it is, the tajine becomes a hurdle for the artist to jump over. after taking a running start, mehdi-georges leaps over each row—impressively, while wearing his heels—to land only momentarily before leaping once more to clear each subsequent row. after completing this queer athletic act, mehdi-georges does not pause to rest but runs back around the rows of tajine, heels clicking on the pavement rhythmically, to start the circuit again. mehdi-georges repeats this act many times over, growing increasingly exhausted, failing to leap as high or as far as the performance continues just as his landings become progressively unstable. the tenor of the performance transitions from humorous absurdity to intimidating precarity—audience members can be heard laughing in the initial part of the documentation, only to grow tensely quiet as mehdi-georges begins each new round. by getting his audience to laugh at and then anxiously anticipate his bodily precarity, he performs disidentification by inhabiting a spectacle of racial alterity. the act deconstructs the orientalist fantasy by hyphenating queerness to disability, creating a temporal, embodied experience felt by others at an affective level, inducing both giggles and nervous silence. this proximity to potential bodily harm generates what ato quayson calls “aesthetic nervousness,”70 the affective response produced within a viewer or reader through an encounter with disability in aesthetic representation or, in the case of tajine, an audience’s encounter with the possibility of harm to come, in real time, to the performer.71 mehdi-georges is not an artist with a disability, but his performances pivot on the potentiality of harm, incapacity, and debility. in her critique of the category of disability, jasbir puar proposes the terms capacity and debility at the global level in lieu of disability. she sees disability as having obtained a position of unique privilege via legal rights in comparison to other forms of unrecognized yet nonetheless sanctioned incapacitations, to which she aims to draw attention. she argues that “capacity and debility entail theorizing not only specific disciplinary sites but also broader techniques of social control, marking a shift in terms from the regulation of normativity (the internalization of self/other) to what foucault calls the regulation of bodies.”72 from this vantage, mehdi-georges’s performances implicate forms of reduced capacity and debility that colonization produced (and continues to produce) and that orientalist art aestheticized. his work then draws a pointed connection between the aesthetics of orientalism as a regulatory apparatus and the production of bodily harm (if not in the present tense, then certainly as a future potentiality). working from this disciplining rubric, his aesthetics of disorientation draw attention to what tobin siebers describes in disability 68 translation: self-portrait in equilibrium with tajine. 69 while i am writing about a specific performance, mehdi-georges has performed very similar performances, sometimes under different titles, to the one i detail here. 70 ato quayson, aesthetic nervousness: disability and the crisis of representation (new york: columbia university press, 2007), 15. 71 this shift in focus on the disability to come is from robert mcruer’s important analysis of disability, futurity, and the global. likewise, this argument is predicated on the global turn in disability studies as put forth by nirmala everelles. see robert mcruer, crip theory: cultural signs of queerness and disability (new york: new york university press, 2006), 199–208; nirmala everelles, disability and difference in global contexts: enabling a transformative body politic (new york: palgrave macmillan, 2011). 72 jasbir k. puar, the right to maim: debility, capacity, disability (durham, nc: duke university press, 2017), 21. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 2 2 t i m e l e s s ne s s a nd p r e c a r i t y i n o r i e n t a l i s t t e m p o r a l i t y contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 8, no 1 (2019) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2019.272 aesthetics as “the aesthetics of human disqualification,” the “symbolic process [that] removes individuals from the ranks of quality human beings, putting them at risk of unequal treatment, bodily harm, and death.”73 orientalism disqualified non-european bodies spatially and temporally, naturalizing colonization that furthers and magnifies bodily risk.74 performing his own vulnerability through orientalist tropes, mehdi-georges’s aesthetics of disorientation disorient the aesthetics of human disqualification; he highlights the potential for harm to disorient the fantasy that perpetuates it. these aesthetics of disorientation do not reverse the terms of the colonialist gaze—the sightline of disqualification; rather, they stage affectively and make absurd the aestheticized tropes of orientalism that naturalize colonization. by soliciting an empathetic response from his viewers, he puts himself at risk of becoming harmed, showing how orientalism was always already an aesthetics of disablement. returning to shelley’s poem, his words already pictured ozymandias—“that colossal wreck” fixed in place by “lone and level sands”—as disabled by, and for, the mirage of orientalist aesthetic pleasure. mehdi-georges takes us back to the timelessness beneath orientalism’s disabling sand to, as quayson writes, “encourage us to lift our eyes . . . to attend more closely to the implications of the social universe around us.”75 shattering orientalism’s timelessness by positioning its atemporal temporality back in time, the aesthetics of disorientation remake the world in the wake of orientalism’s disabling effects. with equal measures of horror and giddiness, mehdi-georges’s aesthetics of disorientation enables a renewed encounter with the broken pieces beneath the sands of time, dispelling the orientalist mirage of timelessness so as to address the ongoing disabling effects of colonization. new articles in this journal are licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 united states license. this journal is operated by the university library system of the university of pittsburgh as part of its d-scribe digital publishing program, and is co-sponsored by the university of pittsburgh press. 73 tobin siebers, disability aesthetics (ann arbor: university of michigan press, 2010), 22–23. for more on disability and aesthetics, see also michael davidson, concerto for the left hand: disability and the defamiliar body (ann arbor: university of michigan press, 2008). 74 for more on the intersections between colonization, precarity, and risk, see jasbir k. puar, the right to maim: debility, capacity, disability (durham, nc: duke university press, 2017). 75 ato quayson, aesthetic nervousness, 31. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/ http://www.pitt.edu/ http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/ http://www.upress.pitt.edu/upressindex.aspx http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ timelessness and precarity in orientalist temporality mehdi-georges lahlou’s aesthetics of disorientation timelessness and precarity in orientalist temporality mehdi-georges lahlou’s aesthetics of disorientation directionality and temporality in orientalist painting aesthetics of disorientation disorienting orientalism’s disqualification contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture vol 8, no 1 (2019) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2019.298 http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu erratum jacqueline m. lombard erratum to: miramontes olivas, a., & garcilazo, g. (2019). from axayácatl to el chapo: rethinking migration and mexico’s war on drugs in gabriel garcilazo’s dystopic magical codex. contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture, 8, 98118. https://doi.org/10.5195/contemp.2019.284 the original publication of this article included a misspelling of gabriel garcilazo's last name in its title. the original article has been updated to reflect this change. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ https://doi.org/10.5195/contemp.2019.284 contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 8, no 1 (2019) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2019.298 new articles in this journal are licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 united states license. this journal is operated by the university library system of the university of pittsburgh as part of its d-scribe digital publishing program, and is co-sponsored by the university of pittsburgh press. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/ http://www.pitt.edu/ http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/ http://www.upress.pitt.edu/upressindex.aspx erratum contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture vol 8, no 1 (2019) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2019.287 http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu sacred substantiations lincoln casts and statuary in the american imagination ramey mize abstract on march 31, 1860, abraham lincoln waited in the studio of leonard wells volk as a plaster mold hardened around his face and head. after one hour, volk removed the mold; he later repeated the process for lincoln’s hands. the resulting life casts elicited profound emotional reactions in those who saw them. augustus saint-gaudens recognized and capitalized on their invaluable status as candid indexes of lincoln’s likeness in his 1887 chicago monument, abraham lincoln: the man. in the words of sculptor lorado taft, “it does not seem like a bronze. . . . one stands before it and feels himself in the very presence of america’s soul.” it was also saint-gaudens who amplified the casts’ influence through the manufacture of a prized series of thirty-three bronze replicas. the actual and imagined characteristics of these casts—their sense of possessing a “soul,” and their physical manifestation of lincoln’s touch— all warrant consideration of their place within the larger tradition of holy relics. this paper posits the lincoln casts as “contact relics” and establishes the generative potential of such a numinous categorization for american audiences, especially in the wake of the civil war. volk’s direct impressions of lincoln’s visage and hands provided the “blueprints,” so to speak, for an astonishingly wide variety of sculptural manifestations—from the iconic lincoln memorial (1920) by daniel chester french to abraham lincoln (1917) by george grey barnard. this essay argues that the cultural impact of this sculptural genealogy is largely indebted to the casts’ material substantiations of lincoln’s bodily presence and touch. indeed, by situating these objects between medieval and modern modes of viewing, it will become clear that the casts, as progeny of the original life molds, afforded an affective, even remedial, authenticity for subsequent lincoln monuments in the american imagination. about the author ramey mize is a doctoral student in art history at the university of pennsylvania. from atlanta, georgia, she holds a ba in art history from the university of north carolina, chapel hill and her ma from the courtauld institute of art in london. the majority of her research and publications to date examine the intersection of nineteenth-century visual culture, war, and landscape across europe and the americas. her scholarship has been supported by the national endowment for the humanities, the andrew w. mellon foundation, and the buffalo bill center of the west. previously, she has served as the anne lunder leland curatorial fellow at the colby college museum of art in waterville, maine, a summer fellow at the philadelphia museum of art’s center for american art, and a guest curator and curatorial assistant at the pennsylvania academy of the fine arts. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 8, no 1 (2019) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2019.287 on march 31, 1860, abraham lincoln waited patiently in the sculpture studio of leonard wells volk as a plaster mold hardened around his face and head.1 little by little, the plaster assumed the imprint of his defining features—high cheekbones, conspicuous nose, and prodigious ears—along with more intimate aspects, such as the wrinkles across his forehead, the deeply etched nasolabial folds, down even to the delicate texture of his pores and eyebrows. after one hour, volk struggled to remove the mold; in a published recollection of the process in 1881, the sculptor admitted that “it clung pretty hard, as the cheek-bones were higher than the jaws at the lobe of the ear. [lincoln] bent his head low and took hold of the mold and gradually worked it off without breaking or injury; it hurt a little, as a few hairs of the tender temples pulled out with the plaster and made his eyes water.”2 a short while later, volk would also furnish those same hands, which had successfully detached the life mask, with casts of their own (fig. 1). the distinctive casts elicited profound emotional reactions in those who encountered them. even lincoln, upon viewing the finished life mask, supposedly exclaimed, “there is the animal himself!”3 their value grew immeasurably following the president’s murder by john wilkes booth during a performance at ford’s theater on april 14, 1865. lincoln, the sixteenth president of the united states, was the first to perish by assassination; the notorious event, which transpired five days after the conclusion of the civil war, shook the union to its core. out of the ensuing anger and grief, experienced predominantly by americans in the north, lincoln emerged as a kind of martyr or saint, thoroughly christ-like.4 many construed lincoln’s death as the “ultimate sacrifice” and the key to the country’s sanctification. the sunday after lincoln’s untimely death, reverend henry ward beecher, in a memorable sermon at brooklyn’s plymouth church, proselytized: “and now the martyr is moving in triumphal march, mightier than when alive. the nation rises up at every stage of his coming. . . . disenthralled of flesh, risen to the unobstructed sphere. . . he begins his illimitable work. his life is now grafted upon the infinite and will be fruitful as no earthly life can be.”5 the christian dimensions of lincoln’s 1 grant holcomb, “leonard wells volk: life mask and hands of abraham lincoln,” in seeing america: painting and sculpture from the collection of the memorial art gallery of the university of rochester, ed. marjorie searl (rochester, ny: university of rochester press, 2006), 67. for more information on volk’s biography, see f. lauriston bullard, lincoln in marble and bronze (rutgers, nj: rutgers university press, 1952), 91. 2 leonard wells volk, “the lincoln life-mask and how it was made,” century magazine 23 (december 1881): 226. 3 quoted in holcomb, “leonard wells volk,” 67. 4 kimberly n. kutz projects lincoln as “the chief ghost in a nation of ghosts.” she explains that because the civil war witnessed an “unprecedented loss of life” (with a staggering 620,000 total fatalities), “lincoln’s sudden and devastating death seemed the average soldier’s death writ large, and americans projected their desire for the souls of their sons, husbands, and fathers into the national process of mourning.” see kutz, “chief of a nation of ghosts: images of abraham lincoln’s spirit in the immediate post-civil war period,” journal of american culture 36 (2013): 112. 5 quoted in lloyd lewis, myths after lincoln (new york: harcourt, brace and company, 1929), 117. sacred substantiations lincoln casts and statuary in the american imagination ramey mize http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 4 1 r a m e y m i z e contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 8, no 1 (2019) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2019.287 historical persona found a symbolic complement in george washington, and the two were often biblically interpellated by authors and artists, with washington as the “creator” and lincoln as the “redeemer” of the young nation.6 an 1865 mezzotint print by john sartain entitled abraham lincoln, the martyr victorious renders this cultural fantasy in vivid detail: lincoln is pictured at the moment of his arrival at the celestial landscape of heaven, where george washington and a host of angels welcome and usher him to eternal life (fig. 2). although lincoln’s life mask and hand casts fell from public view for a time, they later resurfaced in the home of the artist wyatt eaton in 1887. douglas volk, leonard’s son, had entrusted them to eaton some years before.7 augustus saint-gaudens instantly recognized and capitalized on their invaluable status as candid vectors of lincoln’s likeness in his chicago monument, abraham lincoln: the man (standing lincoln) (1887) (fig. 3).8 saint-gaudens also 6 in further testimony to this fact, a number of banners displayed at lincoln’s funeral bore the phrase: “washington the father, lincoln the savior.” merrill d. peterson, lincoln in american memory (oxford: oxford university press, 1994), 27. 7 burke wilkinson, uncommon clay: the life and works of augustus saint-gaudens (san diego, ca: harcourt brace jovanovich, 1985), 161. 8 bullard, lincoln in marble and bronze, 4–5. saint-gaudens was the first artist to reference the casts for the purposes of a monumental sculpture. it was richard watson guilder, poet, essayist and editor, who brought volk’s casts to the attention of saint-gaudens, after having first glimpsed them at wyatt eaton’s residence. in a letter gilder wrote to saint-gaudens’s son, the author relates his discovery: “one figure 1 leonard wells volk (american, 1828–1895), casts of abraham lincoln’s face and hands, 1860. plaster. mask: 7 in x 8 1/2 in x 9 in; 17.78 cm x 21.59 cm x 22.86 cm. right hand: 3 5/8 in x 5 1/4 in x 6 1/8 in; 9.1948 cm x 13.335 cm x 15.5956 cm. left hand: 2 3/4 in x 4 1/4 in x 6 5/8 in; 6.985 cm x 10.795 cm x 16.8148 cm. gift of thirty-three subscribers, 1888, division of political and military history, national museum of american history, smithsonian institution. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 4 2 s a c r e d s u b s t a n t i a t i o n s contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 8, no 1 (2019) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2019.287 night i saw at wyatt eaton’s, who was living on the south side of washington square, a life-mask of lincoln of which i had never heard. i got your father and one or two others to form a committee, and we purchased the original cast of that and of the two hands, from douglas volk, his father having taken them and given them to him. and we presented these originals, with bronze copies, to the national museum at washington. for those who subscribed for the bronze copies of the set, at seventy-five dollars, your father had made in his studio inscriptions with the name of the subscriber. this wonderful life-mask was, of course, of use to him in the lincoln.” see augustus saint-gaudens, the reminiscences of augustus saint-gaudens, ed. homer saint-gaudens (london: andrew melrose, 1913), 355. figure 2 engraved by john sartain (american, 1808–1897), abraham lincoln, the martyr, victorious, published by w. h. hermans, new york, 1866. mezzotint. image: 46.2 x 35.4 cm; sheet: 70.2 x 55.1 cm. courtesy of the library of congress, prints and photographs division, washington, d.c. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 4 3 r a m e y m i z e contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 8, no 1 (2019) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2019.287 figure 3 augustus saint-gaudens (american, born ireland, 1848–1907), abraham lincoln: the man (standing lincoln), 1884–87. reduced 1910; cast 1911. bronze. 40 1/2 x 16 1/2 x 30 1/4 in. (102.9 x 41.9 x 76.8 cm). purchase, tyson family gift, in memory of edouard and ellen muller; the beatrice g. warren and leila w. redstone, and maria dewitt jesup funds; dorothy and imre cholnoky, david schwartz foundation inc., joanne and warren josephy, annette de la renta, thomas h. and diane demell jacobsen ph.d. foundation, and felicia fund inc. gifts, 2012. metropolitan museum of art, new york, 2012.14a,b. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 4 4 s a c r e d s u b s t a n t i a t i o n s contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 8, no 1 (2019) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2019.287 amplified the casts’ influence through the manufacture of a series of bronze replicas; a significant motivating force behind the acquisition of these copies was the common belief that lincoln “was divined through volk’s mask and casts” (fig. 4).9 for example, laurence hutton, a prolific collector of life and death masks, testifies to such reverence in this observation regarding his personal lincoln mask: “i have watched many an eye fill while looking at it for the first time; to many minds it has been a revelation; and i turn to it myself more quickly and more often than to any of the others, when i want comfort and help.”10 he continues: “what whittier wrote to james t. fields of the marshall engraving of lincoln may be said of the lifecast. ‘it contains the informing spirit of the man within.’”11 lorado taft took this notion a step further. in a published interview, the sculptor opined: “it does not seem like a bronze: there is something human, or shall i say?— superhuman about it. one stands before it and feels himself in the very presence of america’s soul.”12 9 peterson, lincoln in american memory, 211. 10 laurence hutton, portraits in plaster from the collection of laurence hutton (new york: harper & brothers, 1894), 250. 11 ibid. 12 lorado taft, “american sculpture and sculptors,” the chautauquan 22 (january 1896): 390. figure 4 casts of the face and hands of abraham lincoln, original plaster made by leonard wells volk (american, 1828–1895) in 1860, bronze made under the direction of augustus saint-gaudens (american, born ireland, 1848–1907) in 1886. face: 8 3/8 x 7 5/8 x 5 1/2 inches (21.3 x 19.4 x 14 cm) right hand: 6 1/4 x 4 7/8 x 3 3/8 inches (15.9 x 12.4 x 8.6 cm) left hand: 6 5/8 x 4 3/8 x 2 1/2 inches (16.8 x 11.1 x 6.4 cm). gift of the fairmount park art association, philadelphia museum of art, 1932-66-1a–c. www.philamuseum.org http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ http://library.princeton.edu/libraries/firestone/rbsc/aids/c0770/ex40.jpg https://collection.cmoa.org/objects/babc5476-c0bb-4227-98d1-da31b0b0cc78 4 5 r a m e y m i z e contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 8, no 1 (2019) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2019.287 to numerous observers, these objects possessed a dense aura of vitality, or affective power, which thickened over the course of their trajectory and proliferation. lincoln’s historical significance, coupled with his posthumous attainment of a christ-like identity as a martyr for liberty, is essential to the casts’ numinous verve.13 indeed, the actual and imagined characteristics of the casts outlined thus far—their palliative, emotive effects, their endowment with lincoln’s “spirit” or “soul,” and their physical manifestation of his touch—all evoke hallmarks of holy relics. cynthia hahn defines the relic as “a physical object understood to carry the virtus of a saint or christ, literally ‘virtue’ but more accurately ‘power’ of a holy person.”14 to be specific, these casts align most closely with hahn’s conception of a “tertiary” relic, “an object that has touched a relic and thus now carries the transferred . . . [or] ‘contagious’ virtus.”15 this paper will posit the lincoln casts as such, as “contact relics,” and will interrogate them according to the germane, intersectional facets of early christian and nineteenth-century american material culture.16 three central questions will be explored: how do the unique properties of casts, especially those of a legendary figure’s face and hands, map onto those of prototypical relics? in what ways do facture and materiality intensify their enlivenment? finally, to what extent does their vitality shift or grow when the casts become exemplars for other sculptures? the formal and symbolic associations of the casts will be scrutinized as well as their journey from plaster to bronze, and finally, their embedment in public monuments. by situating these objects between medieval and modern modes of viewing, it will become clear that the bronze series made after volk’s casts, as the progeny of the original life molds, afforded a profound and affective authenticity for subsequent sculptures of lincoln in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. facing lincoln’s mask, grasping lincoln’s hands “if you wish to have a face of a man or woman, of any rank, adopt this method.”17 so begins the section entitled “how to take a life mask” in the technical handbook il libro dell’arte by cennino d’andrea cennini (c. 1370–c. 1440). these instructions appear in the manual’s final chapter, which is “devoted to methods of casting.”18 the procedures required for the life mask as set forth by a late medieval artisan vary little from those performed by the nineteenthcentury sculptor: the subject’s face is anointed with oil, breathing tubes or “quills” are inserted into their nostrils, plaster is applied carefully over their features, allowed to set, and then removed. the artist is left with this “waste mold” which is filled with fresh plaster for the 13 peterson, lincoln in american memory, 29, 35. 14 cynthia hahn, strange beauty: issues in the making and meaning of reliquaries, 400–circa 1204 (university park, pa: the pennsylvania state university press, 2012), 9. 15 ibid. deborah lutz also draws this distinction: “a cast was a ‘negative’ image . . . of the face and made direct contact with it. but then the mask itself, made from this cast, would be a ‘positive’ image, which would have touched the cast but not the flesh itself.” see deborah lutz, relics of death in victorian literature and culture (cambridge: cambridge university press, 2015), 190. 16 peter brown explains that “the fullness of the invisible person could be present” just as much in these “contact relics” as in fragments of the saint’s physical remains. see peter brown, the cult of the saints: its rise and function in latin christianity (chicago: university of chicago press, 1981), 88. 17 cennino d’andrea cennini, the craftsman’s handbook: il libro dell’arte, trans. daniel v. thompson, jr. (new york: dover, 1960), 125. 18 ibid., xxvii. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 4 6 s a c r e d s u b s t a n t i a t i o n s contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 8, no 1 (2019) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2019.287 ultimate cast.19 the eyes are typically covered last, or else openings are left in the plaster, so as not to disturb the sitter’s eyesight. volk adopted this tactic for lincoln’s mask, which serves as explanation for the oddly shaped, rough-hewn cavities over the eye area.20 this method remains the same for death masks; both versions were practiced in ancient egypt, rome, and greece, fell from consistent use during the middle ages, but became standard again by the sixteenth century.21 john henri isaac browere (1790–1834) popularized the technique in the united states, executing a prodigious array of life masks of political leaders, among them thomas jefferson (1743–1826) and john quincy adams (1767–1848), for the purpose of portrait busts.22 acting upon browere’s precedent, volk, too, appropriated lincoln’s mask as an ancillary tool for the production of a formal bust.23 together, the casts arrest lincoln’s clean-shaven carriage and sturdy hands, poised at the brink of his presidency and all that came after—the duress of the civil war, the deliveries of the gettysburg address and the emancipation proclamation as well as his eventual assassination and cultural apotheosis. it may be said, therefore, that the casts capture the soon-to-be president’s dynamic potentiality in material form. the singularity of the mask enhances its impact, revealing lincoln’s facial attributes in startlingly graphic detail— the tender veins at his temples, the harsh scar to the lower left of his mouth, the curvature of cartilage in his ears. a photograph of lincoln, taken by william marsh in the same year the cast was taken, testifies 19 i have compiled this description from both cennini’s handbook as well as the instructions included in laurence hutton’s nineteenth-century catalogue portraits in plaster, xv–xvi. 20 holcomb, “leonard wells volk,” 67. 21 philippe aries, hour of our death, trans. helen weaver (oxford: oxford university press, 1981), 128. deborah lutz adds that the taking of masks on a thoroughly intimate level—of family members, spouses, lovers, or friends—did not emerge until the end of the eighteenth century. see lutz, relics of death, 191. for more information on death masks, see iris gibson, “death masks unlimited,” british medical journal 291 (december 1985): 21–28. 22 for more information on browere’s biography, technical innovations, and oeuvre, see david meschutt, a bold experiment: john henri isaac browere’s life masks of prominent americans (cooperstown, ny: new york state historical association, 1988) and charles henry hart, browere’s life masks of great americans (new york: doubleday and mcclure, 1899). 23 thayer tolles, “abraham lincoln: the man (standing lincoln): a bronze statuette by augustus saint-gaudens,” metropolitan museum journal 48 (2013): 226. figure 5 william marsh (american, 1850s-1860s), abraham lincoln, may 20, 1860. salted paper print from glass negative. image: 5 11/16 in. (19.9 x 14.5 cm). gilman collection, joyce f. menschel gift, 2005. metropolitan museum of art, new york, 2005.100.89. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 4 7 r a m e y m i z e contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 8, no 1 (2019) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2019.287 to the force of these features, all of which comprise a thoroughly striking and idiosyncratic facial landscape (fig. 5). other than to realize hyper-accurate, three-dimensional portraits, why might there have been a general urge to take casts of faces? what special resonance has historically been affiliated with the face or head, and in what ways have relics been implicated? across cultures and time, the head has been venerated as the preeminent part of the body, the “vital seat” of an individual’s power and identity, the “primary vehicle” of one’s “expression, emotion, and character.”24 plato conceived of the head as the “dominant and divine” site in which the soul dwells and even thrives past death.25 he elaborated on this philosophy in timaeus: “and so in the vessel of the head, they first of all put a face in which they inserted organs to minister in all things to the providence of the soul, and they appointed this part, which has authority, to be by nature the part which is in the front.”26 as charles t. little points out, a significant number of medieval theologians subscribed to plato’s view of the head as a holy “vessel” for the soul, from calcidius in the fourth century to the scholastic philosopher william of conches in the twelfth.27 by the thirteenth century, the head’s importance had largely supplanted that of the heart— an alternative site for the soul, as proposed by aristotle.28 the head’s incorporation of the body’s predominant “sense organs” and expressive facial features was instrumental to the conviction of its primacy.29 richard brilliant eloquently summarizes: “the human head is like a package whose contents have spilled out, revealing the face, the prime vehicle of expression, the principal marker of personal identity.”30 the corresponding antique and medieval conceptualizations of the head as a “vessel” and the face as the mediator of its holy “contents” are especially meaningful in terms of relics and reliquaries. reliquaries, by necessity, enshrine and mediate relics, and frequently instate a formal dialectic between interiority and exteriority, visibility and concealment.31 alfred gell, in his assessment of internal conceptions of agency in relation to holy objects (idols, reliquaries, etc.), identifies this dynamic as a “primordial inside-outside relation,” with the human body as the index.32 there is, of course, no “objective form” to the mind or soul, yet gell acknowledges that “even if we cannot depict the mind, we can at least depict the possibility that there is a mind we cannot depict.” according to gell, as long as the “crucial feature of concentricity and 24 charles t. little, “introduction: facing the middle ages,” in set in stone: the face in medieval culture, ed. john p. o’neill (new york: metropolitan museum of art, 2006), xv. see also “image and identity: the role of the mask in various cultures,” ucla museum of cultural history (los angeles, ca: museum of cultural history, university of california, 1972), 4. 25 little, “introduction,” xv. 26 plato, timaeus, trans. benjamin jowett (new york: the liberal arts press, 1949), 27. 27 little, “facing the middle ages,” xv. 28 aristotle, de anima, trans. r. d. hicks (cambridge: cambridge university press, 1907), 274. see also esther cohen, “the meaning of the head in high medieval culture,” in disembodied heads in medieval and early modern culture, ed. catrien santing, barbara baert, and anita traninger (boston: leiden, 2013), 70. 29 cohen, “meaning of the head.” 30 richard brilliant, “faces demanding attention,” gesta 46 (2007): 91. 31 hahn, strange beauty, 9. 32 alfred gell, art and agency: an anthropological theory (oxford: clarendon press, 1998), 133. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 4 8 s a c r e d s u b s t a n t i a t i o n s contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 8, no 1 (2019) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2019.287 ‘containment’” is evident in an object, with visibly apparent “routes of access to this inwardness,” then it is possible for “agency” to be attributed to an otherwise inert article.33 equipped with gell’s formulation of this “internalist theory of mind,” it is reasonable to submit that lincoln’s life mask, as a metonym for his head, effectively denotes agency through these requisite traits of concentricity and containment. laurence hutton remarks on the life mask’s verism: “it cannot flatter, it cannot caricature. it shows the subject as he was. . . . in his mask he is seen, as it were, with his mask off.”34 in this sense, the life mask, as an artless facsimile, unveils the “true” or unguarded face of the sitter. the face, with its various sensory organs (or “routes of access”), implies containment and narrates interiority, allowing for the conclusion that the life mask evinces lincoln’s soul and inner animation. to a certain extent, the hands, too, signal interiority through their palpable substantiation of the sharp, skeletal armature bulging under the skin. james mellon, in his compendium of photographs of lincoln, makes this illustrative observation concerning the late president’s countenance: “it is a face at times strangely unaware of itself, revealing an inner as well as an outer dimension . . . sometimes the very embodiment of holiness— a face whose masks at once beckon and forbid.”35 the life mask, as an interceding entity, therefore, operates in much the same way as a reliquary, and through its incorporation of touch, potentiality, and vitality, it is also evokes a relic; indeed, it hovers tantalizingly between the two. volk took the casts of lincoln’s hands on may 19, 1860, the day after the politician received the republican nomination. the condition of his right hand bore discernible testimony to this coincidence—volk observed that it was “swollen as compared with the left, on account of excessive hand-shaking the evening before.”36 in order to mitigate the hand’s inflamed and distorted appearance, the sculptor requested that lincoln grasp some kind of thin object. the item, which can be seen clenched between the fingers in the plaster cast, is the top portion of a broom handle, which lincoln selected, cut, and whittled smooth for this very purpose.37 the hand casts equal the mask in their uncanny conservation of such superficial markings. lincoln’s scar, the gossamer webs of skin between his fingers, the sharp knuckles and protuberant veins—are all registered in the plaster in forensic detail. rather than capture the hands at rest, volk cast them in an active state. each hand forms a taut fist; the strain is exceptionally palpable in the puffy right hand, which forcefully seizes the broom handle. the fists make cutaneous contact with themselves, while simultaneously touching both the mold and the broom handle. finally, as hands, they incarnate tactility writ large. in this way, the cast hands operate as material echoes, mirroring and channeling the action that imbued them with sanctity and relic-hood in the first place. sacred touch defined a relic, but a relic, radiating with agency, could also touch its devotees. since the early christian period, pilgrims demonstrated an avid desire to handle relics, but reliquaries increasingly moderated this tactile engagement.38 while technically a barrier to the rawness of the relic within, the reliquary nevertheless allowed for its own variety of haptic interaction. thiofrid of echternach attests to the reliquary’s essential permeability in this excerpt from the twelfth century: “as the soul itself in the body cannot be seen and yet 33 ibid., 132–33. 34 hutton, portraits in plaster, xiv. 35 james mellon, the face of lincoln (new york: the viking press, 1979), 12. 36 volk, “the lincoln life-mask,” 228. 37 harold holzer, the civil war in 50 objects (new york: viking, 2013), 41. 38 hahn, strange beauty, 158. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 4 9 r a m e y m i z e contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 8, no 1 (2019) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2019.287 works its wonders therein, so the precious treasury of dust [relics] works unseen. . . . who with fast faith touches the outside of the container whether in gold, silver, gems, or fabric, bronze, marble, or wood, he will be touched by that which is concealed inside.”39 mark paterson defines the term “haptic,” which derives from the greek word haptesthai, as “of, pertaining to, or relating to the sense of touch or tactile sensations.” he continues: “‘haptic’ commendably expands the reach of touch from cutaneous surface to more inwardly-oriented senses.”40 the relic is thus empowered to “touch” the handler through the reliquary on an affective level; for touch, out of all the senses, is “most linked” with sentiment.41 accordingly, as grant holcomb and many others have recognized, the casts of lincoln’s hands radiate their own “startling emotional power.”42 the hand, like the face and head, signifies an individual’s expressive activity, personality, and influence. indeed, the intellectual and the manual often culturally intertwine, with the hand presenting itself as “the physical analogue of our freeroving mind.”43 deborah lutz makes much of the hand and head’s saturation with “being,” alleging that they are “prime candidates for shining with undeath, or thingness that maintains the vitalism of the postperished.”44 this perception of the arm, and by extension, the hand, resonates with the prevailing view in the central middle ages. for example, one twelfth-century document itemizes the relics translated from saint mammes to langres, among them an arm, “through which work is perceived,” and a head, “so that he might speak, since thinking, speaking, and acting are communicated through the collarbone and the arm.”45 in her study of shaped, body-part, or “speaking” reliquaries, cynthia hahn devotes attention to the arm reliquary, such as the extraordinary example in the metropolitan museum’s collection, namely because it was apprehended in this way—as “the site of work or action” in the saint’s body (fig. 6).46 irrespective of contents, the special arm form was prioritized for reliquaries because of its aura of activity. touch, therefore, as a means of contact and an index of causality, was paramount 39 quoted in ibid., 24. from thiofridi abbatis epternacensis: flores epytaphii sanctorum, ed. michele camillo ferrari (turnhout: brepols, 1996), 2.3.37. 40 mark paterson, the senses of touch: haptics, affects and technologies (oxford and new york: berg, 2007), 4. 41 susan stewart, “from the museum of touch,” in material memories, ed. marius kwint, christopher breward, and jeremy aynsley (oxford: berg, 1999), 31. stewart elaborates: “to be ‘touched’ or ‘moved’ by words or things implies the process of identification and separation by which we apprehend the world aesthetically.” 42 holcomb, “leonard wells volk,” 69. bronze casts of lincoln’s hands were “much sought after by lincoln lovers.” see truman bartlett, “the life mask of lincoln,” the magazine of history 40 (1930): 14. 43 hugh aldersey-williams, anatomies: a cultural history of the human body (new york: w. w. norton and company, 2013), 190. the author continues: “the pre-socratic philosopher anaxagoras believed that man was more intelligent than beasts because of his hands. aristotle, nearly a century later, believed roughly the opposite, that our hands only become necessary with intelligence. either way, they were in agreement that manual dexterity and intelligence were closely connected.” 44 lutz, relics of death, 81. 45 quoted in cynthia hahn, “the voices of the saints: speaking reliquaries,” gesta 36 (1997): 20; from the original source “canonicus lingonensis,” in exuviae sacrae constantinopolitanae, ed. count riant, 3 vols. (geneva, 1877–98), i, 33–34; cited and translated in c. w. solt, “romanesque french reliquaries,” studies in medieval and renaissance history 9 (1987), 179. see also hahn, strange beauty, 135–36. 46 hahn, “the voices of the saints,” 21. hahn also stresses that arm reliquaries are among the most prevalent type still extant and are accompanied by a rich supply of supporting documentary texts. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 5 0 s a c r e d s u b s t a n t i a t i o n s contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 8, no 1 (2019) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2019.287 to the complex functional and metaphorical significance of the medieval arm reliquary.47 indeed, touch often effected healing, as alluded to earlier in the passage by gregory of nyssa. guibert of nogent corroborates touch’s miraculous and salutary capacities in another, more specific twelfth-century miracle story: the monk’s cousin, after falling ill, sought a cure and found it in the precious arm-reliquary of the martyr st. arnoul; his health was restored after receiving the “touch of the holy arm,” which “pressed [the body] hard.”48 although lincoln’s hand casts were not implemented in such expressly salvific practices following his death, they were certainly redolent of the president’s past actions, many of which were widely regarded as redemptive. holcomb explains: “we are looking, after all, at the ‘actual’ hands that swung the axe and would, in the next few years of their life, write the gettysburg address and sign the emancipation proclamation.”49 as hahn emphasizes, relic arms “had acted in life,” and, for medieval viewers, this past action instilled within the limb a power “that remained available in death.”50 furthermore, touch, like no other sense, can be perceived in real time; susan stewart argues that touch constitutes a “threshold activity” 47 ibid., 33. susan stewart investigates the conflation of touch and causality: “the temporal aspect of touching also implicitly bears a notion of causality. the pressure we feel when touching a material thing— a pressure toward and against the thing and toward and against ourselves as well— brings about an idea of causality, or something having happened or made another thing to happen. only touch yields immediate perception of pressure.” see stewart, “from the museum of touch,” 32–33. for more on touch and causality, see david malet armstrong, bodily sensations (london: routledge and paul, 1962), 29. 48 self and society in medieval france: the memoirs of abbot guibert of nogent (1064-1126), ed. j. f. benton, trans. c. c. swinton bland (new york: harper and row, 1970), 226. the full account is as follows: the arm of the martyr of st. arnoul was kept in the town from which i came. after it was brought to this place by someone, the townspeople became doubtful about it and it was thrown into a fire to test it, but it immediately leaped out. some time elapsed and then a cousin of mine, one of the nobles of the castle, was stricken with a very serious disease. when the arm of the blessed martyr was laid on him, the complaint shifted its ground at the touch and settled in another part. and when its virulence was put to flight and the touch of the holy arm pressed it hard, and in the end after running up and down his face and limbs, the whole force of the disease flowed into the region of the throat and shoulders, the skin being a little raised like a mouse, and gathering into a ball it vanished without any pain. 49 holcomb, “leonard wells volk,” 69. 50 hahn, “the voices of the saints,” 26. hahn clarifies: “even when, as was sometimes the case, arm relics were not sheltered in arm-shaped reliquaries, still the limbs are preserved with a special reverence.” figure 6 arm reliquary, c. 1230. silver, gilded silver, niello, and gems; wood core, 21 1/2 x 6 1/2 x 4 in (64.8 x 16.5 x 10.2 cm). meuse valley, south netherlands. the cloisters collection, metropolitan museum of art, new york, 47.101.33. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 5 1 r a m e y m i z e contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 8, no 1 (2019) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2019.287 because “there is a kind of carrying-over from experience to experience of the experience, a kind of doubling which finds its illustration in the image of a living thing bringing a dead thing to life through the transitivity of touch.”51 touch implicates the “thresholds of self and other,” blurring the boundary between the two; it is liminal and, as a consequence, well-suited for relics and their own liminal operations between earthly and heavenly realms.52 in the casts, lincoln’s hands make deliberate contact with themselves and the broom handle, and to behold these acts of holding, as it were, ignites an acute impression of their intentionality, their liveliness. a vital likeness: volk’s casts as vera icon on april 24, 1865, lincoln’s funeral train arrived at city hall in manhattan, the fifth stop of a stately procession that would conclude in oak ridge cemetery in springfield, illinois, on may 4—a full twenty days after the assassination.53 lincoln’s body was considered public property from the moment he was shot until the internment and was stabilized through embalming into a visually coherent entity for citizens to witness.54 augustus saint-gaudens, then just seventeen, joined the seemingly “interminable” line, intent on paying his last respects (fig. 7).55 the sculptor recalled how the experience proved so captivating that it warranted a repeat visit: “i saw lincoln lying in state . . . and i went back to the end of the line to look at him again.”56 nineteen years later, the memory of this forceful visual encounter would resume a pressing relevance; in 1884, saint-gaudens received a $40,000 commission from the chicago lincoln memorial fund for what would become his widely celebrated standing lincoln monument. during the summer and fall of 1885, the artist marshaled as many relevant source materials as possible: photographic portraits of lincoln, a live model of lincoln’s size and proportions, various speeches and publications by the late president, his own memories, and, significantly, the life casts by volk.57 51 stewart, “from the museum of touch,” 33. for more on the cultural history of touch as an empathetic and quickening activity, see george l. hersey, falling in love with statues: artificial humans from pygmalion to the present (chicago: university of chicago press, 2009) and constance classen, the deepest sense: a cultural history of touch (urbana, il: university of illinois press, 2012). 52 patricia cox miller offers this useful characterization of relics as betwixt and between: “neither wholly material nor wholly spiritual— ‘living dust’ as paulinus of nola called them— relics occupied a signifying field that mediated between matter and spirit and so subdued the potential dichotomy between them.” see patricia cox miller, “‘the little blue flower is red’: relics and the poetizing of the body,” journal of early christian studies 8 (2000): 214–15. miller also cites peter brown’s identification of this as a “paradox of the linking of heaven and earth,” 215. see brown, cult of the saints, 78, for further elaboration on this point. 53 for an in-depth chronicle of lincoln’s funeral train, see richard wightman fox, lincoln’s body: a cultural history (new york and london: w. w. norton and company, 2015), 97–123. 54 gary laderman, the sacred remains: american attitudes toward death, 1799–1883 (new haven and london: yale university press, 1996), 158. 55 saint-gaudens, reminiscences of augustus saint-gaudens, 51. saint-gaudens had also glimpsed the president-elect in new york in 1861: “what remains in my mind is seeing in a procession the figure of a tall and very dark man, seemingly entirely out of proportion in his height with the carriage in which he was driven, bowing to crowds on each side,” 42. 56 ibid. 57 tolles, “abraham lincoln,” 223–26. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 5 2 s a c r e d s u b s t a n t i a t i o n s contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 8, no 1 (2019) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2019.287 figure 7 currier & ives, the body of the martyr abraham lincoln lying in state at the city hall, new york, april 24th, 25th, 1865. lithograph. 17.75 x 13 in (19.68 x 33.02 cm). courtesy of the library of congress, prints and photographs division, washington, d.c. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 5 3 r a m e y m i z e contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 8, no 1 (2019) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2019.287 the first sculptor to draw upon these artifacts, saint-gaudens “made extensive use” of their intimate anatomy for his own work.58 diana strazdes has even proposed that the “necessarily relaxed facial features” of lincoln’s mask may have “encouraged the contemplative attitude for the developing figure of lincoln.”59 indeed, the introspective bearing of lincoln’s countenance, physical frame, and gestures represents one of the final sculpture’s most striking attributes. rather than position lincoln in an authoritative, declamatory state, saint-gaudens elected to present him standing before a ceremonial, klismos-style chair of state, head bowed, right hand in a soft fist behind his back, the other gripping his lapel; the sculpture captures lincoln in the quiet, thought-gathering pause, perhaps “weighing his words,” before a public address.60 following its ceremonial unveiling and dedication on october 22, 1887, saint-gaudens’s standing lincoln was met with an outpouring of critical accolades, securing its place as a paradigm of lincoln statuary. a resounding refrain emerged amid this approving chorus—one that held the sculpture’s authentic likeness as the defining feature and in highest esteem. the renowned art critic mariana griswold van rennselaer, for example, found the pose “simple, natural, individually characteristic—as far removed from the conventionally dramatic or ‘sculpturesque’ as from the baldly commonplace. neither physical facts nor facts of costume are palliated or adorned. . . . what we see are realities. . . suffused with poetic thought. . . and ennobled though not altered by the subtle touch of art.”61 the chicago daily tribune pronounced that the “counterfeit presentment was indeed abraham lincoln,” and concluded that “the entire aspect is so like the man, so devoid of artifice or paltriness that, in spite of the homely features, it becomes majestic.”62 58 wilkinson, uncommon clay, 161. john h. dryfhout invokes the use of these casts as evidence that realism was “a necessary ingredient to saint-gaudens,” in the work of augustus saint-gaudens (hanover and london: university press of new england, 2008), 32. see also kathryn greenthal, augustus saint-gaudens: master sculptor (new york: the metropolitan museum of art, 1985), 126. 59 diana strazdes, “recasting history: word and image in augustus saint-gaudens’s standing lincoln monument,” word and image 26 (2010): 134. thayer tolles claims that saint-gaudens “adopted from the mask the high forehead, large ears, deep-set eyes, and facial structure, to which he added the familiar tousled hair, bushy eyebrows, and trimmed beard,” “abraham lincoln” 226. 60 tolles, “abraham lincoln,” 227; christopher a. thomas, the lincoln memorial and american life (princeton, nj: princeton university press, 2002), 9. the speech before which the figure in standing lincoln hesitates is generally thought to be the gettysburg address. the sculpture is set within the context of an elaborate base, across which inscriptions may be read; indeed, the monument was born from a collaborative effort, with the base designed by the architect stanford white (1853–1906) and the inscriptions written by richard watson gilder (1844–1909). for a sensitive, comprehensive reading of the monument as a whole, see strazdes, “recasting history.” 61 m. g. van rensselaer, “saint-gaudens’s lincoln,” the century illustrated monthly magazine 35 (november 1887): 39. 62 “eli bates, great gift: saint gaudens: colossal statue of lincoln,” chicago daily tribune, october 20, 1887, 2; and “the martyr president: unveiling his statue at lincoln park yesterday,” chicago daily tribune, october 23, 1887, 9. lincoln’s unique carriage was generally deemed “homely,” awkward, and elusive; as james mellon avers, “lincoln’s features were the despair of every artist who undertook his portrait.” lincoln himself was quite aware of this fact—so aware, that, upon an accusation of being “twofaced” during the lincoln-douglas debates, he allegedly retorted, “if i had another face, do you think i’d wear this one?” see mellon, the face of lincoln, 159. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 5 4 s a c r e d s u b s t a n t i a t i o n s contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 8, no 1 (2019) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2019.287 such encomiums speak to the driving force behind the sculpture’s exceptionality for nineteenth-century audiences: its powerful resemblance, an authenticity afforded by volk’s life molds.63 for period viewers, the monument’s majesty, indeed its sanctity, is an explicit byproduct of its verism, and, in this way, saint-gaudens established a precedent. f. lauriston bullard, in his discussion of the artist’s use of the casts, contends that “since the erection of his standing lincoln at chicago in 1887, many, perhaps nearly all, of the sculptors have had the advantage of the use of that famous mask.”64 volk’s direct impressions, or “true” images, of lincoln’s visage and hands, provided the “blueprints,” so to speak, for an astonishingly wide variety of sculptural manifestations, from the iconic lincoln memorial (1920) in washington, dc, by daniel chester french, to abraham lincoln (1917), another standing bronze in cincinnati by george grey barnard.65 a final medieval topos will shed light on this point, especially in relation to the casts’ ready provision of an “original” relic from which a multitude of referential objects and images stem and proliferate. two artifacts “of special authority” were thought to represent the “holy face” of christ during the incarnation: the cloth of edessa, or the mandylion, in the east, and the veronica, or vera icon, in the west.66 according to the earliest documentary texts, the “holy face was an impression of christ’s features on a veil or linen cloth, created directly by contact.”67 because christ’s body had ascended to heaven, not a single corporeal relic remained, thereby establishing the “contact relics” of the holy face as all the more precious and symbolically complex. these tertiary relics do not proffer an artistic likeness of christ’s face; they instead retain the outline of his countenance, “not made with human hands,” 63 tolles, “abraham lincoln,” 226. 64 bullard, lincoln in marble and bronze, 4–5. 65 volk himself engaged his casts for the production of a lincoln monument in washington square in rochester, new york. see holcomb, “leonard wells volk,” 69. 66 herbert l. kessler and gerhard wolf, eds., the holy face and the paradox of representation: papers from a colloquium held at the bibliotheca hertziana, rome and the villa spelman, florence, 1996 (bologna: nuova alfa editoriale, 1996), ix. this text opens with a description of the two preeminent relics and their provenance: “the mandylion healed king agbar of edessa, who was converted by it; and it protected his city from destruction and occupation. the emperor constantine porphyrogennetos, in turn, sought the edessa face for his palatine chapel in constantinople, where it became the city’s palladium. in rome, where spiritual and political power converged in the pope’s hand, the veronica was housed in st. peter’s; the chance to see it motivated millions of pilgrims.” 67 ibid., x. figure 8 hans memling (german, 1430–1494), saint veronica [obverse], c. 1470/1475. oil on panel. 12 5/16 x 9 5/8 inches (31.2 x 24.4 cm). samuel h. kress collection, national gallery, 1952.5.46a. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 5 5 r a m e y m i z e contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 8, no 1 (2019) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2019.287 impregnated within the cloth—a remarkable trace that echoes the impression made in the original plaster mold and immortalized through the casts of lincoln.68 the “venerable originals” of the mandylion and the veronica, however, circulated primarily in the guise of copies and often as two-dimensional renderings.69 nevertheless, these derivatives were regarded as legitimate and holy in their own right by virtue of an “iconographical formula,” which explicitly visualized the existence of their “ecclesiological” referent: in general, as seen in the national gallery’s fifteenth-century painting on panel by hans memling, christ’s neckless head is depicted against a luminous, white cloth, held outspread and aloft by st. veronica (fig. 8).70 the mandylion and the veronica boast an extraordinarily rich textual and iconographic history, but gerhard wolf engages one aspect that has striking parallels in this study. according to wolf, the western cult of the veronica, between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries, mobilized “images of a new kind,” not simply cult images, but “images of another image.”71 he explains: the face on the cloth is as it were a symbolic form or the immanent condition for this process. the original is a product of touch; but the artists who pictured the face of christ certainly did not paint with sacramental blood, but rather in a mimetic act. . . . the role of the original (transferred from jerusalem to rome) is that of a screen open to projections, which guarantees the transposition of the primordial touch . . . into a visual contact offered by the copy.72 the original, in this case, is both generous and fecund, spawning countless generations of equally impactful simulations. if the vera icon is a “screen open to projections,” then the lincoln masks themselves serve as “molds” from which new renditions of proportionate virtue may be made. as harold holzer incisively points out, “few modern viewers realize that the marble hands grasping the throne-like chair of the lincoln memorial and the hand clutching his lapel in the great monument at lincoln park in chicago owe their inspiration—and their lifelike detail—to volk’s pioneer castings. . . . [the casts] live primarily in the work of many others.”73 each variation is indelibly tethered to and empowered by the cast originals. their genealogy is indebted to the casts’ material substantiations of lincoln’s bodily presence and touch. conclusion: “from the living face” fragments of lincoln’s body and personal possessions, or “lincolniana,” have widely been regarded and collected as conventional relics since the president’s death over 150 years ago. for instance, dr. edward curtis, while cleaning the surgical instruments used in lincoln’s autopsy, discovered “a tiny splinter of bone from president lincoln’s head,” which had been 68 ewa kuryluk, veronica and her cloth: history, symbolism, and structure of a “true” image (oxford: basil blackwell, 1991), 5–6, 144–50. 69 according to baert, the “prototype of the neckless face, such as the greek acheiropoietos of abgar, the mandylion, arrived in the west at least in the thirteenth century,” disembodied heads, 187. 70 kessler and wolf, holy face, 156 and 177. the cult of veronica was fomented by innocent iii (1160–1216) in rome; see baert, disembodied heads, 187. 71 gerhard wolf, “from mandylion to veronica,” in holy face, 177. 72 ibid., 176–77. 73 holzer, civil war, 42. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ https://www.medicalmuseum.mil/index.cfm?p=exhibits.current.collection_that_teaches.lincoln.page_03 5 6 s a c r e d s u b s t a n t i a t i o n s contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 8, no 1 (2019) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2019.287 driven into the brain by the bullet.74 curtis immediately packaged the fragment and mailed it to his wife, augusta l. curtis, for safe-keeping; richard wightman fox aptly observed that “she became the proud possessor of the most eagerly pursued type of body relic in the christian west since the fourth century: a sliver of the martyr’s bone.”75 this relic is now housed in the national museum of health and medicine, along with other precious remnants, the most visceral of which is undoubtedly the fatal bullet. as this study has shown, lincoln’s life mask and hand casts by leonard volk merit the same, if not greater, hallowed accreditation. the correlative interplay between nineteenthcentury and medieval material cultures engenders a more nuanced comprehension of the potency of these objects, and such an interpretation concretizes their place within an american “relictual” tradition. the casts even patently demand this recognition by way of an inscription, or, in medieval lexicon, an “authentic.” the bronze “after-casts” all bear the same demonstrative message, inscribed within the metal substrate on the back of the mask and the truncated surface of the hands’ wrists. as in the copy held in the collection at the philadelphia museum of art, the label reads: “this cast was made for fairmount park association, a subscriber to the fund for the purchase and presentation to the united states government of the original mask made in chicago april 1860 by leonard w. volk from the living face of abraham lincoln. this cast was taken from the first replica of the original in new york city, february 1886.” this pronouncement leaves no doubt as to the casts’ authenticity, their sacred provenance, and their perpetuation, dissemination, and enlivenment of lincoln’s likeness, and to some degree, his very presence, long after death. in the words of the poet richard watson gilder: “this bronze doth keep the very form and mould of our great martyr’s face.”76 new articles in this journal are licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 united states license. this journal is operated by the university library system of the university of pittsburgh as part of its d-scribe digital publishing program, and is co-sponsored by the university of pittsburgh press. 74 this quotation derives from a sworn affidavit signed by augusta l. curtis, dated may 11, 1926, and quoted at length in helen r. purtle, “lincoln memorabilia in the medical museum of the armed forces of pathology,” bulletin of the history of medicine 32 (january–february 1958): 72–73. 75 wightman fox, lincoln’s body, 64. teresa barnett details one such lincolnania collection that was put up for auction in 2007 and included: “fragments of the hearthstones of cabins lincoln lived in as a boy, his rail-splitting maul . . . strands of his hair, a pair of his spectacles, the tablecloth on which he ate his last meal, bloodstained bits of his pillow slip, bandages, and shirt collar, and handles from his coffin.” see teresa barnett, sacred relics: pieces of the past in nineteenth century america (chicago: university of chicago press, 2013), 194–95. 76 this excerpt comes from richard watson gilder’s poem, “on the life-mask of abraham lincoln,” which begins: “this bronze doth keep the very form and mold of our great martyr’s face,” and was first published in century illustrated magazine 33 (november 1886): 37. edmund clarence stedman devoted verse to the casts of lincoln’s hands as well in “the hand of lincoln”: “look on this cast, and know the hand that bore a nation in its hold; from this mute witness understand what lincoln was—how large of mold,” in the poems of edmund clarence stedman (boston and new york: houghton mifflin company, 1908), 435. to read each of these poems in full, see appendices a and b. both poems as well as many others on lincoln are reproduced in osborn h. oldroyd, the poet’s lincoln: tributes in verse to the martyred president (washington, dc: published by the editor, 1915). http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ https://www.medicalmuseum.mil/index.cfm?p=exhibits.current.collection_that_teaches.lincoln.page_03 http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/ http://www.pitt.edu/ http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/ http://www.upress.pitt.edu/upressindex.aspx http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ sacred substantiations lincoln casts and statuary in the american imagination sacred substantiations lincoln casts and statuary in the american imagination facing lincoln’s mask, grasping lincoln’s hands a vital likeness: volk’s casts as vera icon conclusion: “from the living face” vol 10, no 1 (2025) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2025.348 http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu reparation and healing through materiality in the work of aya haidar dustyn bork about the author dustyn bork is professor of art at lyon college. he earned his master of fine arts from indiana university and a bachelor of fine arts from the university of michigan. in arkansas, bork won the prestigious fellowship for painting. his work has been exhibited extensively including at site: brooklyn in new york city; manifest gallery in cincinnati, ohio; the torpedo art center in alexandria, virginia; and the hunterdon museum among others. bork has participated in artist residencies in argentina, latvia, belgium, italy, and bulgaria. his work was published in new american paintings no. 148. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 10, no 1 (2025) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2025.348 aya haidar, a contemporary lebanese artist, adds a tactile and personal response to the destruction caused by a massive explosion in beirut. contextually, embroidery physically repairs the fabric and has overt connotations of fixing or mending—actions inherent to the nature of fabric. on august 4, 2020, 2,750 tons of confiscated ammonium nitrate exploded in beirut, wreaking mass havoc. the explosion killed at least 220 people and injured over 7,000. this horrific day was further impacted by governmental failure, mismanagement, and obstruction of the resulting investigation. compounding the tragedy was its occurrence at the height of the covid-19 pandemic. figure 1 ouda. embroidery on linen by aya haidar, 2024. 41 x 32.5 x 5 cm. from the shattered series. https://www.ayahaidar.com/portfolio/shattered-2024. aya haidar reimagines spaces damaged by the blast. the series shattered offers a restorative response to a deadly event. in this series, haidar first prints black-and-white photographs—taken after the explosion by her friends and family—on linen fabric. she then adds colorful hand embroidery to highlight the broken pieces of destroyed objects. her prismatic line creates a cacophony of accumulation, countering the starkness of the images with a sense of hope and healing. these works use mending to unveil their emotional impact. reparation and healing through materiality in the work of aya haidar dustyn bork http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 4 2 r e p a r a t i o n a n d h e a l i n g t h r o u g h m a t e r i a l i t y i n t h e w o r k o f a y a h a i d a r contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 10, no 1 (2025) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2025.348 haidar’s work conveys urgency through her ties to beirut amidst the larger political strife in the region. she invites the viewer to enter these spaces by painstakingly tracing every shard of glass, reiterating the cataclysmic impact. the resulting artworks reveal and obscure the blast, freeze time, and challenge us to consider the unimaginable. shattered presents liminal spaces; the thin, diaphanous fabric reveals and hides the image simultaneously. according to walter benjamin, a work of art viewed through the lens of photography is indicative of the present. haidar’s tactility and addition of color embroidery transmute the reproduction as an image, and her shattered series transcends the place upon which it is founded.1 benjamin posits that photographic techniques are evidence of the physical object, whereas a reproduction of the image loses authenticity; a loss between the lens and the print is always at play in mechanical reproduction. over time, that transformation further evolves, and the subject is removed or degraded as a result of chemical development. however, in shattered, the blast is evident through the tactility of the thread, which adds presence. if anything is degraded from the original photograph, the subject matter is also made clearer by the foregrounding of the materials. the duality of the material is transformed by stitching, presenting an act of healing and reparation. the alteration in shattered narrows the distance between now and august 4, 2020. haidar has modified the image, and our perspective changes with it. haidar says of her work, “it really depends on what you try to retain, what you choose to retain, and what you choose to forget.”2 in another work from the same series, salon (figure 2), commemoration after the explosion becomes palpable. although haidar’s shattered series is visually dissimilar from edvard munch’s frieze of life series, both series share a commonality: what connects us in salon pulls us out of reality, just as in a munch painting. in this work, haidar instills a lingering nostalgia for a beirut that no longer exists, “the paris of the middle east.” the symbolic and forlorn former city provides healing. however, not all memories can be returned. 1 walter benjamin, “the work of art in the age of its technological reproducibility [first version],” trans. michael w. jennings, grey room, no. 39 ([1935] 2010): 11–38, http://www.jstor.org/stable/2780942413-17. 2 art dubai, “art dubai portraits: aya haidar,” posted june 20, 2017, youtube video, 1:00, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=njwabj9_q0g. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=njwabj9_q0g 4 3 d u s t y n b o r k contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 10, no 1 (2025) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2025.348 figure 2 salon. embroidery on linen by aya haidar, 2024. 41 x 32.5 x 5 cm. from the shattered series. https://www.ayahaidar.com/portfolio/shattered-2024. spaces can be restored, but lives and the places they occupy are irrevocably lost. a futile attempt to return architectural spaces to their former state is a reminder of the beirut conflict from 1975 to 1990 and of its exponential displacement and loss, reminding us of what is at stake in lebanon. manipulated images, such as reproductions or altered photographs, create ambiguity: the place is changed, resulting in a suspension of disbelief. when haidar contrasts the monochromatic scene with punctuated color in salon, the work becomes a phenomenological surface imbued with undercurrents of political and historical events. we sense volatility when we are confronted with sublime images of destruction. this is a specific place, beirut; at the same time, considering larger shifts in globalism—and the interconnectedness of economies, health concerns, and connections through the internet and social media—beirut carries the zeitgeist. haidar’s work gestures toward formlessness to harness beauty, as revealed through a theoretical reading of immanuel kant: “the beautiful in nature is a question of the form of the object, and this consists in limitation, whereas the sublime is to be found in an object even devoid of form, so far as it immediately involves, or else by its presence provokes, a representation of limitlessness, yet with a super-added thought of its totality.”3 viewing the works of haidar in this context conjures an iconic viral 3 immanuel kant, critique of judgment, trans. james creed meredith, oxford university press, [1781] 2009, 77–78. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ https://www.ayahaidar.com/portfolio/shattered-2024 4 4 r e p a r a t i o n a n d h e a l i n g t h r o u g h m a t e r i a l i t y i n t h e w o r k o f a y a h a i d a r contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 10, no 1 (2025) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2025.348 video featuring a bride, from the exact date and location of the explosion.4 with both, we observe beauty in juxtaposition to the impact of the blast. the permeability of thread and linen, both soft materials, contrasts with hard-edge industrial and domestic architecture. haidar speaks to the symbolism in sewing. “the physical act of mending works towards an emotional repair,” she says. “because craft is slow, considered, repetitive, and thoughtful.”5 shattered reveals the aggressive rip of the explosion, yet the malleability of the thread restores. in these works, stitching serves as a metaphor for renewal and healing after upheaval, becoming an elegiac reminder of palpable tragedy and healing. 4 mahmoud nakib, “beirut explosion rocks bride’s photoshoot,” august 4, 2020, reuters, youtube video, 0:28, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_l7slqdtrnc. 5 katie treggiden, “back for good: the fine art of repairing broken things,” the guardian, august 22, 2021, 3, 18, https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2021/aug/22/back-for-good-the-fine-art-ofrepairing-broken-things. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_l7slqdtrnc https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2021/aug/22/back-for-good-the-fine-art-of-repairing-broken-things https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2021/aug/22/back-for-good-the-fine-art-of-repairing-broken-things 4 5 d u s t y n b o r k contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 10, no 1 (2025) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2025.348 new articles in this journal are licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 united states license. this journal is published by pitt open library publishing. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ https://www.library.pitt.edu/e-journals contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture vol 9, no 1 (2021) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2021.329 http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu colored plexiglass: irving and aaronel deroy gruber foundation gallery inaugural exhibition irving and aaronel deroy gruber foundation gallery paulina pardo gaviria exhibition review exhibition schedule: irving and aaronel deroy gruber foundation gallery, pittsburgh pa, january 24 – september 1, 2020. about the author paulina pardo gaviria is a lecturer in the school of art at california state university, long beach, and specializes in the history of modern and contemporary art of the americas. her scholarship focuses on the introduction of experimental artistic strategies and the artistic networks created around institutional venues of modern and contemporary art in brazil beginning in the 1970s and at a time of military dictatorship. in 2020, paulina received her ph.d. from the history of art and architecture department at the university of pittsburgh; her dissertation is titled "letícia parente: embodying new media art strategies in 1970s brazil." paulina is currently a lecturer in the school of art at california state university, long beach. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 9, no 1 (2021) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2021.329 the inaugural exhibition of the irving and aaronel deroy gruber foundation gallery showcases kinetic artworks that aaronel deroy gruber created in collaboration with and against the background of a city informed by steel mills, furnaces, and cokeprocessing plants. the exhibition at the deroy gruber foundation gallery, which opened on january 24, 2020, in pittsburgh, pa, presents a large selection of the vibrant works that deroy gruber created at the peak of her artistic career, between the 1960s and 1980s. for many visitors, particularly friends and colleagues of the artist, the opening of this exhibition felt like a celebration of her prolific career. for many others, including myself, it offered a fascinating introduction to the production of a local female artist who made sophisticated use of colorful materials and translucent supports. organized loosely in chronological order, the exhibition of the deroy gruber foundation gallery contains nearly one hundred works currently in the foundation’s and the family’s collections, ranging from painting to print, sculpture to photography. this exhibition opens with a handful of abstract paintings that deroy gruber created in the early 1960s. these paintings give way to the central section of the exhibition, which offers an array of movable plexiglass sculptures and silkscreen prints with geometric forms and neon colors. toward the back of the gallery, five plexiglass sculptures on individual pedestals are accompanied by architectural photographs that deroy gruber took throughout her life, and by ephemera documentation and an original maquette of deroy gruber’s public art projects. curated by the foundation’s executive director, brittany reilly, the inaugural exhibition of the deroy gruber foundation gallery can be visited online through a permanent virtual 360 tour. this exhibition of works by deroy gruber, a life-long member of the associated artists of pittsburgh (aap), was concurrent with two other exhibitions of aap members, past and present, organized by the university of pittsburgh art gallery (uag). the exhibition of the deroy gruber foundation gallery together with mary ethel mcauley: behind the german lines and three artists (three women) at the uag demonstrate the breadth and quality of professional practices that women artists have carried out in pittsburgh since the early 1900s. born and raised in pittsburgh, aaronel deroy gruber (1918–2011) produced most, if not all, of her work in conversation with pittsburgh’s industrial developments. she graduated from carnegie institute of technology (now carnegie mellon university) with a bachelor of science degree in 1940, five years before andy warhol enrolled in the same program. the year deroy completed her professional education, she married irving gruber, a steel forgings executive who would become president of american forge and manufacturing company, a steel company located along pittsburgh’s allegheny river. in the early 1960s, deroy gruber, a prominent participant in the aap annual exhibitions, established contact with sculptor david smith, who, while serving as a juror for the aap annual exhibition, visited american forge and manufacturing company looking for a steel supplier for his own practice. subsequently, deroy gruber and smith cultivated a friendship based on collegiality and maintained through personal correspondence. their friendship, and smith’s influence, is evident in deroy gruber’s production of industrially manufactured geometrical sculptures that, since the 1960s, have been included in collective and solo exhibitions across the eastern united states and in the art collections of new yorkand appalachia-based corporations. deroy gruber heavily relied on manufacturing processes and products for her artistic creations at a time when plastic was the future and before an era of environmental awareness. colored plexiglass: irving and aaronel deroy gruber foundation gallery inaugural exhibition irving and aaronel deroy gruber foundation gallery paulina pardo gaviria http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ https://my.matterport.com/show/?m=uzyfwrplete 1 0 1 p a u l i n a p a r d o g a v i r i a contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 9, no 1 (2021) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2021.329 as shown in the inaugural exhibition of the deroy gruber foundation gallery, for her sculptures, based on steel and aluminum, two pillars of pittsburgh’s centuries-old industry, deroy gruber bent acrylic sheets to produce airy volumes filled with vibrant colors. during the 1970s, her studio was located on the premises of engineered products inc. (epi), and her assistant was a retired steel worker. in her epi studio and with access to industrial machinery, deroy gruber prepared wood-frame molds for the plexiglass sculptures that she processed through valves, presses, vacuums, and room-size ovens with the help of her assistant and plant technicians. [figs. 1–3] figure 1 photographer unknown, artist aaronel deroy gruber polishing completed vacuum-formed plexiglas sculpture in her studio at engineered products inc., pittsburgh, pa., approximately 1970. digitized photograph. image courtesy of the irving and aaronel deroy gruber foundation, pittsburgh. figure 2 photographer unknown, artist aaronel deroy gruber preparing custom wood framework and molds in her studio at engineered products inc., pittsburgh, pa., approximately 1970. digitized photograph. image courtesy of the irving and aaronel deroy gruber foundation, pittsburgh. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 1 0 2 co l o r e d p l e x i g l a s s : i r v i n g a n d a a r on e l d e r oy g r u b e r f ou n d a t i o n g a l l e r y i n a u g u r a l e x h i b i t i o n contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 9, no 1 (2021) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2021.329 figure 3 photographer unknown, artist aaronel deroy gruber and technicians preparing to lower vacuum-forming and heated press at engineered products inc., pittsburgh, pa., pa., approximately 1970. digitized photograph. image courtesy of the irving and aaronel deroy gruber foundation, pittsburgh. made of acrylic and aluminum, moment in time (1968) and life of its own (1972) exemplify deroy gruber’s use of industrial materials for the creation of geometric sculptures defined by clean-cut lines, solid hues of rainbow-like colors, and the incorporation of movement, either through electrical motors or optical illusions. these works, along with numerous plexiglass sculptures that deroy gruber created using vacuum-forming techniques, are at the core of the inaugural exhibition of the deroy gruber foundation gallery. mounted on an opaque black plexiglass pedestal designed by deroy gruber, moment in time (14.5 x 14.5 x 18.5 in) symmetrically displays the plastic possibilities of acrylic sheets. in this sculpture, six sheets are organized in a vertical composition. two solid, clear blue outer sheets sandwich two orange and two deep green sheets at the core. all six sheets are curved at the center, with half-circle protuberances that fit into each other to create inner-circle balloons of superimposed color shades. similarly, life of its own is composed of a transparent cube that contains within it an additional smaller, grey-shaded, translucent cube. the outer cube is suspended from an aluminum arm attached to a squared chrome-plated base. both cubes are tilted, resting on one of their corners. this 34 x 27 x 26–inch sculpture is illuminated from its base, and an electrical mechanism constantly rotates both cubes on their axes. adding to the formal complexity of this work, each side of the cubes features deroy gruber’s signature form: a rounded square expanding the volume outward and puffing out colored plexiglass as if filling the work with air. the half-circle and rounded square volumes formed in otherwise flat acrylic sheets are achieved with industrial vacuum techniques. although far removed from today’s ecological concerns, deroy gruber was highly aware of the economic and political tensions contained in the plastic material and the time-consuming nature of its production. in the artist’s text “creating a sculpture in plastic,” written in the early 1970s and currently filed in the foundation archives, deroy gruber states, “at present due to the oil shortages the monomers used in making plastics are in short supply. this has resulted in less available plastic, increased cost of material, and production of a limited number of transparent colors.” the combination of industrial processes of shaping and dying plastic, a central feature in deroy gruber’s colorful works, can be especially appreciated in life of its own, displayed near the entrance of the exhibition and using the original motor, wiring, and lightbulbs. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 1 0 3 p a u l i n a p a r d o g a v i r i a contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 9, no 1 (2021) | issn 2153-5914 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp/2021.329 throughout the deroy gruber exhibition, several other sculptures echo these vibrant acrylic bubbles, reproducing them in different scales and colors; among the smallest is a 3 x 3–inch, orange and pink sculpture filled with liquid and hanging from a chain. identified as pendant necklace this plastic work of jewelry gestures toward the jewelry store that the deroy family operated in pittsburgh for several generations and conjures the wearable, small-scale mobiles of alexander calder. deroy gruber’s artistic production can further be compared––in her use of neon colors, industrial materials, and electric motors––to the work of both parisbased venezuelan artist carlos cruz-diez and colombian radical artist feliza bursztyn. closer to pittsburgh, between the 1960s and 1980s, deroy gruber was conversant, for instance, with the plexiglass sculptures of heinz mack, les levine, dewain valentine, and craig kauffman (the last two associated with the light and space movement), with whom she participated in the 1968 exhibition made of plastic at the flint institute of arts and the 1969 plastic in editions at the jewish museum in new york. created amid pittsburgh’s mills and currently displayed in the exhibition of the deroy gruber foundation gallery, deroy gruber’s artistic production is a fantastic testimony to the industrial processes developed in us urban centers and the individual creations of one of the few recognized female artists that brought colorful light to these smoky cities. new articles in this journal are licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 united states license. this journal is operated by the university library system of the university of pittsburgh as part of its d-scribe digital publishing program, and is co-sponsored by the university of pittsburgh press. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/ http://www.pitt.edu/ http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/ http://www.upress.pitt.edu/upressindex.aspx colored plexiglass: irving and aaronel deroy gruber foundation gallery inaugural exhibition irving and aaronel deroy gruber foundation gallery colored plexiglass: irving and aaronel deroy gruber foundation gallery inaugural exhibition irving and aaronel deroy gruber foundation gallery microsoft word 119-142 compelled by the diagram 7-27.docx vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.143 http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu compelled by the diagram thinking through c. h. waddington’s epigenetic landscape matthew allen abstract between 1940 and about 1960, conrad hal waddington produced several illustrations to explain a concept central to his theories of developmental biology. the concept waddington explained, the epigenetic landscape, was not based on settled science, and its implications were not easy to grasp. unlike proponents of the most successful contemporary biological theory, waddington was committed to including all biological phenomena–no matter how complex or unusual–in a single theoretical system. his intellectual style and use of images matched his ambition. waddington used compelling images to get his readers to engage with and work through his theories. his images used a shifting, even contradictory, set of metaphors and analogical models, from train yards to crafted topological surfaces. through an analysis of waddington’s images and theories, i show that taking a close look at what scientific images show and how they show it is important for the historiography of science. images can be effective at drawing viewers in, confounding them, and prodding them to ask questions; this is one reason images are necessary for science. about the author matthew allen is a phd student at the harvard graduate school of design who studies the history of architecture and computation. he has taught at the university of toronto and published articles in harvard design magazine, domus, log, and elsewhere. contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.143 the images used by conrad hal waddington (1905-1975) to explain what he called the epigenetic landscape have received significant scrutiny in the past decades, both inside the field of biology and out.1 their allure is understandable. though these illustrations depict simple, realistic things (such as balls about to roll down surfaces), they are central to the almost miraculous cognitive process through which a viewer comes to understand a complicated set of concepts. the last of waddington’s illustrations of the epigenetic landscape (fig. 1) shows a ball poised at the top of an undulating surface. the paths the ball may take represent the branching process of cellular differentiation that occurs during embryonic development. beyond this type of theoretical content (which i will unpack below), waddington’s images carry connotations of the intellectual context in which they were produced. they suggest, for example, that someone–the experimental biologist–has handson control of the developmental process. thus waddington’s illustrations are alluring because they serve as a focal point, both for biologists hoping to understand development and for historians who want to understand waddington’s intellectual project. in scientific practice, allure is sometimes necessary.2 waddington’s images were a crucial part of his intellectual project, which i will show through an analysis of what they represent and how this relates to waddington’s style of reasoning.3 though it perhaps became increasingly unusual through the course of the past century, waddington’s style of reasoning belongs to a recognizable type. waddington has been described as a “true twentieth-century polymath”; one reviewer notes that “no modern funding agency would allow any individual to undergo so many changes of interest and direction.”4 waddington began his career in the 1930s as an experimental biologist, publishing articles in specialist journals such as nature and the journal of experimental biology. in the 1950s and 1960s, waddington wrote ever more frequently about ethics and the role of science in society, and, like many scientists, towards the end of his career he 1 for their reception in biology, see, e.g., scott f. gilbert, “epigenetic landscaping: waddington's use of cell fate bifurcation diagrams,” biology and philosophy 6 (1991): 135-154; and melinda bonnie fagan, “waddington redux: models and explanation in stem cell and systems biology,” biological philosophy 27 (2012): 179-213. waddington’s diagrams also had an influenced in, for example, architecture in the early 1990s; see sanford kwinter, “soft systems,” in culture lab 1, ed. brian boigon (princeton, nj: princeton architectural press, 1996), 207-228. this paper focuses on biology; the influence of waddington’s images, intellectual project, and style of reasoning on thinkers in other disciplines will be a topic for future research. 2 for a discussion of the necessity (or not) of images in science, see, e.g., michael ruse, "are pictures really necessary? the case of sewell wright's 'adaptive landscapes,'" in symposia and invited papers, vol. 2 of psa: proceedings of the biennial meeting of the philosophy of science association (1990), 63-77; james r. griesemer, "must scientific diagrams be eliminable? the case of path analysis," biology and philosophy 6 (1991): 155-180; and laura perini, "diagrams in biology,” the knowledge engineering review, 28, no. 3 (2013): 273-286. 3 i am sympathetic to ian hacking’s “styles project.” ian hacking, “’language, truth and reason’ 30 years later,” studies in history and philosophy of science 43 (2012): 599-609. 4 jonathan m. w. slack, “conrad hal waddington: the last renaissance biologist?,” nature reviews genetics 3 (november 2002): 889-895. compelled by the diagram thinking through c. h. waddington’s epigenetic landscape matthew allen 1 2 1 m a t t h e w a l l e n contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.143 tackled broad questions ranging from philosophy to art.5 early on he picked up a dialectical style of thinking from the philosopher alfred north whitehead, which manifested itself in his conversational style of prose. waddington is often described as “ahead of his time”–he is best known as a grandfather figure for the evo-devo movement, which remains controversial.6 because his work was against the grain, and thus in constant danger of being dismissed, waddington employed images to draw viewers in and get them to unpack and think through his theories. he used images to keep possibilities open in a situation in which his audience might otherwise settle on simple–and, in waddington’s view, false–certainties. figure 1 the epigenetic landscape, from conrad hal waddington, principles of development and differentiation (new york: macmillan, 1966), 49 (photo: author). two styles biology in the 1930s, the period of waddington’s intellectual formation, was dominated by the modern evolutionary synthesis.7 the neo-darwinian evolutionary theory that was an outcome of the synthesis has proved extremely successful–so successful that popular understanding has dropped the “neo-“ and equated the modern synthesis biologists’ theory with darwinism itself.8 the modern synthesis embodied a distinctive style. richard lewontin, a prominent twentieth-century biologist, offers this description: “the modern skeletal 5 for waddington’s bibliography, see alan robertson, “conrad hal waddington. 8 november 1905 – 26 september 1975,” biographical memoirs of fellows of the royal society 23 (november 1977): 575-622. 6 “evo-devo” refers to a combination of evolutionary biology and developmental biology; see, e.g., corey s. goodman and bridget c. coughlin, ed., "special feature: the evolution of evo-devo biology," proceedings of the national academy of sciences 97, no. 9 (2000): 4424-4425. 7 it is also referred to as the “modern synthesis,” the "evolutionary synthesis," the "neo-darwinian synthesis,” etc. 8 see, e.g., vassiliki betty smocovitis, unifying biology: the evolutionary synthesis and evolutionary biology (princeton, nj: princeton university press, 1996). 1 2 2 c o m p e l l e d b y t h e d i a g r a m contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.143 formulation of evolution by natural selection consists of [several] principles that provide a purely mechanical basis for evolutionary change, stripped of its metaphorical elements.”9 the theory was bare-bones for a reason. by paring it down to essentials, proponents of the modern synthesis minimized conflicts between its major elements, mendelian genetics and darwinian evolution. theorists of the modern synthesis used a strategy of compromise and diplomacy to create an atmosphere in which to hash out theoretical details.10 the trouble with the modern synthesis was that “an immense amount of biology was missing.”11 most notably missing was waddington’s own field, developmental biology. the history of how and why the modern synthesis excluded developmental biology is now a matter of disciplinary myth. it was thought that macroevolution could explain microevolution and that there would be no need for morphology or developmental biology to bridge between the two.12 one consequence was that the finer points of how genetics and evolution fit together were never really worked out.13 waddington’s speculation often concerned these very details. the choice between leaving theoretical minutia for later or trying to work through them with the limited means available is a matter of style; both are legitimate ways of doing biology. but style affects substance in subtle ways. an exchange between waddington and ernst mayr, a leading figure of the modern synthesis, highlights the contentions stylistic differences can cause. in 1961, mayr wrote a widely read essay that divided the biological sciences into distinct domains by mapping approaches to biology onto types of causality.14 he argued that there are two legitimate types of causal explanation and two ways of doing biology: evolutionary biologists argue from proximate causes while functional biologists argue from ultimate causes. though they appear to be talking about the same things, evolutionary biologists and functional biologists are in fact using the same words to talk about entirely different phenomenon – “talking past one another,” in mayr’s words. the differences between biologists’ forms of explanation stem, according to mayr, from fundamental differences in values and questions: the functional biologist is vitally concerned with the operation and interaction of structural elements, from molecules up to organs and whole individuals. his everrepeated question is 'how?'... the evolutionary biologist differs in his method and in the problems in which he is interested. his basic question is 'why?'15 mayr goes on to explicitly reject one last type of causal explanation: final causality, or the idea that nature is somehow planned or designed. mayr makes a “clear-cut separation” 9 richard c. lewontin, “not so natural selection,” london review of books, may 27, 2010, accessed june 25, 2015, http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2010/may/27/not-so-natural-selection/ 10 this included agreeing on terminology and “changing attitudes;” see ernst mayr, “prologue: some thoughts on the history of the evolutionary synthesis,” in the evolutionary synthesis: perspectives on the unification of biology, ed. ernst mayr and william b. provine, (cambridge, ma: harvard university press, 1980), 1-48. 11 lewontin, “not so natural selection.” 12 m. b. adams, "through the looking glass: the evolution of soviet darwinism," in new perspectives in evolution, ed. l. warren and h. koprowski (new york: liss/wiley, 1991), 37-63. 13 scott f. gilbert, "diachronic biology meets evo-devo: c. h. waddington’s approach to evolutionary developmental biology," american zoology 40 (2000): 729-737. 14 ernst mayr, “cause and effect in biology,” science, 134, no. 3489 (november 10, 1961): 1501-1506. 15 ibid., 1502. 1 2 3 m a t t h e w a l l e n contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.143 between individuals, who can exhibit goal-directed behavior because they have been “programmed” by their dna to do so, and “the overall harmony of the organic world” (the domain of evolution), which cannot.16 mayr raises very reasonable points–his prose reads as a model of reasonableness. mayr proposes the type of simple, clear-cut distinctions that allowed the modern synthesis to create a working consensus and eventually to triumph over competing theories of evolution.17 it is no surprise that waddington wrote a response to mayr’s essay in the following issue of nature: by 1961 waddington had been in the habit of writing opinionated letters to the journal for more than two decades, and mayr’s distinctions cut to the heart of waddington’s theories. but waddington’s engagement went beyond the usual letter. waddington also circulated mayr’s essay before a conference he organized in 1966 – and he later published it in the conference proceedings bookended by two critical essays of his own. here is part of his response, on the topics of final causes: it is becoming inadequate to point out, as mayr does, that natural selection is not purposive. in itself it is of course no more purposive than is the process of formation of interatomic chemical bonds. but just as the latter process is the basic mechanism underlying the protein syntheses which are integrated into the quasi-finalistic mechanism of embryonic development, so natural selection is the basic mechanism of another type of quasi-finalistic mechanism, that of evolution. the need at present time is to use our newly won insights into the nature of quasi-finalistic mechanisms to deepen our understanding of evolutionary processes.18 waddington demands that “chemical bonds,” “embryonic development,” and “natural selection” be taken into account, all at the same time. for waddington, there is no way to separate functional biology from evolutionary biology, and he adds to these a third approach to biology that mayr ignored entirely: developmental biology. while mayr argues for theoretical synthesis by way of diplomatic compromise, waddington asks for speculation unencumbered by practical divisions. mayr later mentioned that embryologists failed to create a “viable bridge” between disciplines, implying that if a concept from developmental biology was not useful for evolutionists, then its exclusion from the synthesis was justified.19 this is the context in which waddington argued for what he calls “theoretical biology.” he objects to mayr's “cleavage between types of phenomenon,” and he suggests that the “newly won insights” of developmental biology may offer a way to bring all of biology back together.20 the epigenetic landscape to say that waddington and mayr employed different styles is to say more than that their prose is different. waddington and mayr also had different ways of constructing and 16 ibid., 1504. 17 darwinism was one among several competing theories of evolution circa 1930; mayr, “prologue,” 4. 18 conrad hal waddington, “the basic ideas of biology,” in towards a theoretical biology: vol. 1: prolegomena, ed. conrad hal waddington (chicago: aldine, 1968), 7. 19 mayr, “prologue,” 40-42. 20 waddington, “the basic ideas of biology,” 7. 1 2 4 c o m p e l l e d b y t h e d i a g r a m contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.143 testing theories, which lead to different ways of using images.21 if a skeletal theory like the modern synthesis is developed through logical propositions, more fleshed-out theoretical styles often employ analogical models. the place of models and metaphors in scientific inquiry was a subject of heated debate in the 1950s and 1960s.22 critics of logical positivism noticed the slippery relation between features of models and theoretical propositions.23 thinking of an atom as being something like a solar system, for example, helps explain some theoretical observations (which is why ernest rutherford and niels bohr proposed the model in the first place), but it also raises questions. the planetary model may help describe hydrogen atoms, but what about atoms with more than one electron? testing questions raised by models is often productive, sometimes by leading to a new model and different questions (as happened with the bohr-sommerfeld model and eventually the schrodinger model of the atom). models, metaphors, and thought experiments pervade science, but some scientists engage with them more than others. waddington was a serial modeler, a strategy which supported his approach to theory. the concept waddington is best known for, the epigenetic landscape, was developed through analogical models over the course of four decades. waddington first used the term, which he coined, in 1940. it drew on familiar associations. epigenesis was a common concept from eighteenth-century biology, and biologists in the mid-twentieth-century would also have known of sewall wright’s adaptive landscape, which explained adaptation as a genetic drift up and down humps and pits on a topological surface (fig. 2).24 waddington’s major theoretical contribution was to insist that a complex “landscape” acts as the mediator between genes and an adult organism, emphasizing that all of the “environmental” (or “epigenetic”) influences that occur during development cannot be ignored (as they would be by a geneticist thinking in terms of population, as the modern synthesis biologists were). waddington used a handful of illustrations to help explain his concept, drawing on metaphors of train tracks, streams of water, and, of course, landscapes. his images and metaphors changed as his theories evolved, and they contradict one another in various ways. it is not always clear whether or not a feature of one of his illustrations refers to something important about his concept; the author of waddington’s retrospective in nature notes that “scientists are still confused by this today.”25 as i explain below, this tension between concept and representation does important cognitive work for waddington. 21 the different ways images are used by biologists is a matter of emphasis rather than clear-cut distinction. though an analysis of, e.g., mayr’s use of images is beyond the scope of this study, a quick look at his publications suggests that he uses illustrations of analogical models less frequently than waddington. while waddington typically includes a wide variety of analogical imagery, mayr’s canonical 1942 text, systematics and the origin of species, for example, has only one that clearly falls into this category: a rather straightforward depiction of a phylogenetic tree. 22 roman frigg and stephan hartmann, "models in science," the stanford encyclopedia of philosophy (fall 2012 edition), ed. edward n. zalta, accessed june 25, 2015, http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2012/entries/models-science/. 23 for a critical introduction to the contradictions of logical positivism, see frederick suppe, “the search for philosophic understanding of scientific theories,” in the structure of scientific theories 2nd ed., ed. frederick suppe (urbana: university of illinois press, 1977), 1-241. 24 anya plutynski, "the rise and fall of the adaptive landscape?," biology and philosophy 23 (2008): 605-623. 25 slack, “conrad hal waddington,” 892. 1 2 5 m a t t h e w a l l e n contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.143 figure 2 the adaptive landscape, from sewall wright, "evolution in mendelian populations," genetics 16 (1931), 358 (photo: author). in research leading up to the epigenetic landscape, waddington sought to work out the mechanisms by which an animal develops from a single cell into an organism with groups of specialized cells. first the single cell divides, and then the resulting two divide, then the resulting four, and so on. at certain points, cells begin to specialize: one region in the developing embryo becomes brain cells, another becomes liver cells, etc. waddington began illustrating this process with cell-fate bifurcation diagrams (fig. 3).26 his explanation is that cellular specialization occurs as a “series of branching decisions, taken under the control of genes.”27 this explanation was based on his experiments with fruit flies–experiments in which a mutant gene would, for example, make a leg develop on a fly's head in place of an antenna (fig. 4).28 waddington suggests that the mutant gene flips a switch, causing a different developmental pathway to be followed. grizzly as these experiments were, waddington's diagram of the process is relatively straightforward. that is, its semantic content is limited; waddington could easily have described all the paths and switches in words. but his images also carry unstated connotations that nudge the viewer down particular interpretive paths and incidental features that suggest areas for further investigation. the importance of representational choices becomes evident when the different images waddington used to describe the same concept are compared. one other illustration waddington used in this early period was a photograph 26 gilbert, “epigenetic landscaping.” 27 conrad hal waddington, organizers and genes (cambridge, uk: cambridge university press, 1940), 12. 28 ibid., 83. 1 2 6 c o m p e l l e d b y t h e d i a g r a m contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.143 of a train yard (fig. 5). the most important theoretical point that comes along with this new metaphor is not apparent in the image, but it comes out in the text: the switching and branching takes place as the train cars move down a hill. as waddington says: figure 3 organisers in the chick, from conrad h. waddington, organizers and genes (cambridge, uk: cambridge university press, 1940), 12 (photo: author). you are looking at an incline called the hump. the wagons are pushed over the hump and go running downhill and are sorted out by the systems of points into the various sidings. now an embryo is in some ways analogous to a set of trucks sliding down the hump.29 this is waddington’s first use of the landscape metaphor (a hump, after all, is a landscape feature), and it raises some new questions. what is the biological equivalent of gravity? what are biological switches made of, and who is switching them? in the era before the discovery of dna, how exactly something could be “under the control of genes” was a matter of speculation.30 a satisfying description of developmental pathways (which waddington represented as lines in a drawing or tracks in a photograph) turned out to be illusive at mid-century. techniques did not exist to conduct the required experiments.31 but waddington suggested some possibilities. to describe where and how shifts in developmental pathways occur, he presents another diagram (fig. 6), noting that “one can interpret [the action of the mutant 29 conrad hal waddington, how animals develop (london: allen and unwin, 1935), 96. 30 on the history of the gene concept, see evelyn fox keller, the century of the gene (cambridge, ma: harvard university press, 2000). 31 slack, “conrad hal waddington,” 891. one famous failure in which waddington took part was the “gold rush” to find the “miraculous substance” called the organizer; see j. a. witkowski, "optimistic analysis: chemical embryology in cambridge 1920–42," medical history 31 (1987): 247-268. 1 2 7 m a t t h e w a l l e n contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.143 gene] in two ways; either it affects both the [secondary] tracks, or it acts much earlier and shifts the whole track system including the branch point.”32 in this diagram, the dotted lines represent one of waddington’s interpretations of how the track system is affected by a mutant gene; the thin solid lines represent the other. the visual possibilities of the diagram itself, either shifting the branches or just their endpoints, seem to have suggested to waddington how the biology might work. the train tracks and the black lines participated in the conceptual development. this is an example of the productivity of images of analogical models. figure 4 antennae of the different allelomorphs of aristopedia and of some compounds, from conrad h. waddington, organizers and genes (cambridge, uk: cambridge university press, 1940), 80 (photo: author). 32 waddington, organizers and genes, 82. 1 2 8 c o m p e l l e d b y t h e d i a g r a m contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.143 figure 5 whitemoor marshalling yard, l.n.e.r., from conrad h. waddington, how animals develop (london: allen and unwin, 1935), 97 (photo: author). figure 6 the aristopedia developmental track system, from conrad h. waddington, organizers and genes (cambridge, uk: cambridge university press, 1940), 83 (photo: author). 1 2 9 m a t t h e w a l l e n contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.143 these illustrations were the precursors to the epigenetic landscape. waddington’s first description of this new concept came in 1939, without his neologism attached. it occurs in the middle of a long discussion of the branching pathways of cellular differentiation: [w]e have to remember that each branch curve is affected not only by the gene whose branch it is but by the whole genotype. we can include this point if we symbolize the developmental reactions not by branching lines on a plane but by branching valleys on a surface. the line followed by the process… is now the bottom of a valley, and we can think of the sides of the valley as symbolizing all the other genes which co-operate to fix the course of the time-effect curve.... one might roughly say that all these genes correspond to the geological structure which moulds the form of the valley. genes… which have their main effect at certain branching points are like intrusive masses which can divert the course of the developmental process down a side valley.33 waddington introduces the metaphor of a geological surface because the metaphor of branches and switches does not convey the fact that some genes have an effect beyond particular switch-points – they “mould” the landscape more broadly. waddington’s first illustration of the epigenetic landscape, and his first use of the term, was on the first page of organizers and genes (fig. 7). here waddington refines the landscape metaphor by illustrating development as a branching system of streams. the flow of water and the gradual erosion of earth replace the mechanical movement of switches, tracks, and trains. but the illustration is not perfect. in his text, waddington mixes his metaphors: [t]he system of developmental paths has been symbolized in two dimensions as a set of branching lines. perhaps a fuller picture would be given by a system of valleys diverging down an inclined plane.... [development] only takes place during a certain period of time. during this period, the developmental track can be represented as a valley with gently sloping sides; if the course of development is disturbed, the point representing its disturbed state will be somewhere off the track, and if it is still within the valley, the process will regulate by running down the side of the valley until it reaches the normal track at the valley bottom.34 waddington’s description fits neither water nor trains: the developmental process is something that can go off its track, up the side of a valley, and return neatly to the track. this misalignment of metaphors is a signal that something complex and difficult to explain is at work. waddington's research at the time suggested that developmental pathways are somewhat flexible. waddington called this phenomenon “buffering” or “canalization,” a concept which has proven to be one of waddington’s most important theoretical contributions.35 the metaphor of a valley conveys part of the idea: if development is pushed off its normal path and up the valley wall, gravity will bring it back. but the valley metaphor is imperfect: it does not make sense to think of water leaving the streambed. the metaphor of a branching system of streams does, however, capture the fact that cellular bifurcation happens along all paths at once. there is no single path in development; cellular specialization proceeds towards many specialized cell-types at the same time. and, generally 33 conrad hal waddington, an introduction to modern genetics (london: allen and unwin, 1939), 182-183. 34 waddington, organizers and genes, 92-93. 35 willem scharloo, "canalization: genetic and developmental aspects," annual review of ecology and systematics 22 (november 1991): 65-93. 1 3 0 c o m p e l l e d b y t h e d i a g r a m contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.143 speaking, this new metaphor suggests a natural process: while trains and tracks are controlled by an outside force, a valley is created by the flow of water itself, just as evolution happens through the process of natural selection without outside intervention. figure 7 the epigenetic landscape, from conrad h. waddington, organizers and genes (cambridge, uk: cambridge university press, 1940), frontispiece (photo: author). 1 3 1 m a t t h e w a l l e n contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.143 there are a few ways waddington’s 1940 illustration of the epigenetic landscape could be elaborated or changed. one would be to show the stream swelling as it proceeds through the valley (embryos grow, after all). waddington chose to focus attention elsewhere: on the mechanics of buffering. to do this he switched to yet another metaphor. waddington’s next illustration of the epigenetic landscape, from 1956, represents the developmental process as the path followed by rolling eggs (fig. 8).36 unlike a stream of water, which can split and recombine, and soil, which would require a feat of engineering to control, this new image suggests well-defined paths and hands-on control. it implies that someone will release the eggs at the top and watch them roll down. the surface looks like a crafted artifact that could be altered to create different developmental pathways. the suggestion of hands-on control hints at the life of an experimental biologist at mid-century, tweaking the developmental environment and running trials on millions of fruit flies. figure 8 the ‘epigenetic landscape,’ from conrad h. waddington, principles of embryology (london: allen and unwin, 1956), 351 (photo: author). waddington produced several versions of this illustration. the most refined, published in 1957 in waddington’s best-known book, the strategy of the genes, shows a single ball and a single set of branching paths as well as the system of “guy ropes” attached to “pegs” that shape the surface from below (fig. 9). while the first illustration of the epigenetic 36 conrad hal waddington, principles of embryology (london: allen and unwin, 1956), 351. 1 3 2 c o m p e l l e d b y t h e d i a g r a m contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.143 landscape varied line-type and tone to create a naturalistic image, the ones that followed look like highly stylized engravings of artificial surfaces. these latter illustrations employ a linear technique popularized in the nineteenth-century with fine art reproductions (fig. 10).37 this style of engraving was developed so publishers could ensure consistency across illustrations even if more than one engraver was employed. every line looks the way it does for a reason; no artistic license is involved. by using illustrations following this technique, waddington implies that his epigenetic landscape is as logical and under control as the lines cut into steel plates by a team of engravers. if the earlier drawing of a system of streams fits the big-picture holism of nineteenth-century evolutionary biology, the engraved version fits the hard-nosed experimentalism of mid twentieth-century developmental biology.38 because waddington’s work was aimed at both camps, it is no surprise that he used illustrations with both connotations. but the fact that he settled on illustrations suggesting precise experimental control reveals his deepest disciplinary affiliation. figure 9 37 william ivins, how prints look: photographs with a commentary (new york: metropolitan museum of art, 1943), 76. 38 the rift between experimentalists and those who “worked with whole organisms” began in the middle of the nineteethcentury and grew in the early twentieth; see mayr, “prologue,” 6. part of an epigenetic landscape and the complex system of interactions underlying the epigenetic landscape, from conrad h. waddington, the strategy of the genes (london: allen and unwin, 1957), 29 and 36 (photo: author). 1 3 3 m a t t h e w a l l e n contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.143 waddington used his illustrations to raise questions and to convince others that these questions would be productive avenues of research. for a question to be productive to an experimentalist, it must be precise enough to be tested. waddington used topographical diagrams with connotations of precision and control to make his most controversial theoretical points. figure 11, for example, shows a black line that remains in a fixed position in space while the landscape around it is shifted. waddington used this to help explain an unusual phenomenon, genetic assimilation. this is now an accepted concept: faced with changes in their environment, organisms have the capacity to physiologically adapt to these variations by modifying the epigenetic landscape. genetic assimilation is the subsequent stabilization by genetic variations of this initial physiological adaptation.39 figure 10 robert nanteuil, enlarged detail from engraved portrait of jean loret, from william ivins, how prints look: photographs with a commentary (new york: metropolitan museum of art, 1943), 75 (photo: author). 39 michel morange, "what history tells us: xvii: conrad waddington and the nature of life," journal of bioscience, 34 (june 2009): 196. 1 3 4 c o m p e l l e d b y t h e d i a g r a m contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.143 figure 11 a diagram of ‘genetic assimilation,’ from conrad h. waddington, the nature of life (london: allen and unwin, 1962), 95 (photo: author). genetic assimilation runs against neo-darwinian common sense. normally, the same set of genes would reliably create identical adult organisms (this is why there are identical twins and clones). these adults are then subject to natural selection. because there is normally a direct relationship between genes and adult organisms, natural selection is essentially selecting for genes, with an adult acting as a proxy. waddington uses images such as figure 11 to help explain that, in some unusual cases, the developmental process that mediates between genes and adult characteristics cannot be ignored. changing the developmental environment–shifting the landscape–can sometimes cause the same genes (represented by the black line) to be expressed in different ways (development “rolls” into a different “side valley,” leading to a different adult organism). in the context of the modern synthesis, this idea was heretical. waddington argues that something only subtly different from phenomena known to be impossible–like the neck of a baby giraffe being longer because its parents stretched to reach leaves (the inheritance of acquired characteristics or “soft inheritance”)–is, in fact, possible. because he was operating in dangerous intellectual territory, waddington was often accused of basic theoretical errors. modern synthesis biologists later justified the exclusion of waddington’s theories, which they acknowledged to be the “missing chapter” of the 1 3 5 m a t t h e w a l l e n contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.143 synthesis, because everyone had “difficulty in explaining” them.40 they seemed to exist in the questionable “borderline field of science and philosophy.” waddington’s style matched the situation in which he found himself. waddington adopted a direct, conversational style because he needed to provoke enough engagement from his colleagues for him to be able to explain his convoluted theories. repeatedly in his writing he refers to “well-established” theoretical points that “we know,” but which have apparently been forgotten by the people around him. his shifting, contradictory descriptions of the epigenetic landscape should be seen as part of a conversation spanning decades between waddington and his colleagues (or perhaps the institution of science more generally). waddington proposed, elaborated, and abandoned metaphors as it suited the shifting conversational terrain; it was his complex and ambiguous images that allowed him to do this. figure 12 normalising and canalising (stabilising) selection and the effects of change of environment, from conrad h. waddington, the strategy of the genes (london: allen and unwin, 1957), 76 (photo: author). some of waddington’s illustrations require heroic feats of interpretation. figure 12, for example, shows cross-sections of a morphing epigenetic landscape. in the accompanying text, waddington walks his readers through each of these and related curves (e.g. fig. 13) in terms of the biological events they depict, some of which implied heretical phenomena such as genetic assimilation.41 another example is figure 14, which shows the feedback loops that 40 viktor hamburger, “embryology and the modern synthesis in evolutionary theory,” in the evolutionary synthesis: perspectives on the unification of biology, ed. ernst mayr and william b. provine (cambridge, ma: harvard university press, 1980), 110. 41 waddington, the strategy of the genes, 76. 1 3 6 c o m p e l l e d b y t h e d i a g r a m contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.143 shape the epigenetic landscape.42 waddington explains how the arrows in another diagram (fig. 15), match up with one of these arrows.43 toggling conceptually between the cybernetic metaphor of the former diagram and the landscape metaphor of the latter is no mean feat. waddington’s concepts have not gotten any easier to explain. updated versions of these diagrams (e.g. fig. 16) involve the same convoluted causality.44 to engage with these diagrams and the concepts they explain, readers have to slow down and think their way carefully through a complicated theoretical terrain. even the shortcomings of waddington’s images reveal key aspects of his theory. compelled by the diagram we can now see the efficacy of waddington’s particular visual practice. waddington created a set of illustrations of a series of (contradictory) analogical models to condense a career-spanning theoretical conversation into a set of visual “proofs” that required unpacking, effectively drawing out the duration of his colleagues’ engagement with his concepts. waddington’s diagrams focused and directed the conversation. they gave him and his colleagues something to ponder, something to talk about. the effect of a compelling diagram, and why it is said to be compelling, begins with the capturing of a reader’s attention. historians of science have tended to downplay the importance of singular, compelling images. bruno latour sums up the reasoning: “one should not isolate the scientific imagery and shoehorn it into the types of questions raised by iconography. there is nothing visual in scientific visual imagery. literally, there is nothing to be ‘seen.’”45 latour and others argue that images are typically used by scientists as links in chains of reasoning, and that they are meaningless outside of these chains.46 latour makes one exception: the (in his view rare) case in which “one isolated image extracted out of the chains as ‘the definitive proof’ of the phenomenon they wish to describe,” for “pedagogical purposes.” i suggest that images are more often meant to be seen (and, more to the point, grappled with, thought through, and questioned) than latour allows. images can put a theoretical proposition “all in one place,” rather than spread throughout a text. this condensation is a powerful feature. what latour identifies as the “pedagogical” use of images is really the function of analogical models: to condense theories and multiply questions. and, analogical models are pervasive in scientific practice.47 illustrations such as waddington’s only work if the reader feels compelled to pause, look closely, and work through the details– that is, to pull the image momentarily out of the chain to which it belongs and to treat it iconographically. 42 conrad hal waddington, new patterns in genetics and development (new york: columbia university press, 1962), 7. 43 conrad hal waddington, the nature of life, (london: allen and unwin, 1961), 95. 44 kevin n. laland et. al., "cause and effect in biology revisited: is mayr’s proximate-ultimate dichotomy still useful?," science 334 (2011): 1515. 45 bruno latour, “the more manipulations the better,” in representation in scientific practice revisited, ed. catelijne coopmans et. al. (cambridge, ma: mit press, 2014), accessed june 25, 2015, http://www.brunolatour.fr/sites/default/files/p-158-woolgar-image.pdf 46 james elkins makes a more refined version of this argument; james elkins, “introduction,” in visual practices across the university, ed. james elkins (munich: wilhelm fink, 2007). emphasis original. 47 for a related discussion of metaphors, see george lakoff and mark johnson, metaphors we live by (chicago: university of chicago press, 1980). 1 3 7 m a t t h e w a l l e n contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.143 figure 13 an asymmetrical canalisation cross-section, from conrad h. waddington, the strategy of the genes (london: allen and unwin, 1957), 128 (photo: author). figure 14 epigenetic action system of cell, from conrad h. waddington, new patterns in genetics and development (new york: columbia university press, 1962), 7 (photo: author). 1 3 8 c o m p e l l e d b y t h e d i a g r a m contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.143 figure 15 'organic selection' (the baldwin effect) and genetic assimilation, from conrad h. waddington, the strategy of the genes (london: allen and unwin, 1957), 167 (photo: author). what makes an image or illustration or diagram compelling? understanding this requires a description of what exactly is being seen and the cognitive work of seeing.48 there are two dangers along this analytical route. first, the analyst may appear to be appreciating visual features for their own sake. second, he may seem to be projecting his thoughts into another’s head. i think these dangers are unavoidable and that the analytical results justify the means. anthropologist alfred gell has gone further down this route than most. in his 1998 book, art and agency, gell attempts to explain the cultural phenomenon of decorative patterning. why put a complex pattern on a persian rug? his answer is that the viewer feels a “pleasurable frustration” when trying to decipher the pattern.49 figuring out one part of the pattern (one figure/ground relationship, for example) means losing sight of another. the viewer is drawn into the pattern on the rug as she tries and fails to hold everything in mind at once. as gell explains it, “we are drawn into the pattern and held inside it.... the pattern is a mind-trap....”50 trying to match up features of an illustration of an analogical model to concrete biological phenomena is a similarly frustrating, pleasurable, and productive mental exercise. waddington’s reason for putting complex diagrams in his books is not so different from the reason someone might want a decorative pattern on her rug: “the application of a decorative pattern to an artefact multiplies the number of its parts and the density of their 48 incidentally, these are exactly what latour has suggested not doing, though his approach is becoming more pluralistic; see bruno latour, an inquiry into modes of existence (cambridge, ma: harvard university press, 2013). 49 alfred gell, art and agency: an anthropological theory (oxford: clarendon, 1998). 50 ibid., 80. 1 3 9 m a t t h e w a l l e n contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.143 internal relationships.”51 one final example from gell, trying to understand a type of indian chalk drawing (fig. 17), describes the end result: [e]ven if one 'knows' (intellectually) that this design is made up of four separate, but identical loops differently oriented, it is extremely frustrating to attempt to abstract individual loops from the overall design. ... where simple geometric figures are concerned, 'seeing' (a triangle, say) is tantamount to mentally intending or projecting the construction of the figure, line by line. but this is impossible to do with complex figures like this kolam.52 analogously, when presented with a complex illustration of an analogical model, the viewer assumes, as a precondition of trying to decipher it, that the concept being represented makes sense. to decipher the illustration, she must feel compelled to close the gap between knowing that it means something and knowing exactly what it means (including the limits of this meaning). the process of deciphering may require the surrounding text, other illustrations, other concepts, other books, experimentation, and so on. the illustration, if it is compelling, serves as a focal point of this cognitive work. figure 16 matthew allen, graphs depicting the causal pathways involved in the evolution and development of traits: a modern developmental perspective, after the diagram published in kevin n. laland et al., "cause and effect in biology revisited: is mayr’s proximate-ultimate dichotomy still useful?," science 224 (2011), 1513 (photo: author). 51 ibid., 76. 52 ibid., 85. 1 4 0 c o m p e l l e d b y t h e d i a g r a m contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.143 waddington used a strategy that involved compelling diagrams because he was committed to the project of including all biological phenomena within a single theoretical system; this was the point of his late-career work on “theoretical biology.” he wanted biologists to be able to talk about genes, development, and evolution at the same time. complex images helped him manage this process. again, gell describes the intention: patterns, by their multiplicity and the difficulty we have in grasping their mathematical or geometrical basis by mere visual inspection, generate relationships over time between persons and things, because what they present to the mind is, cognitively speaking, always 'unfinished business.'53 waddington’s diagrams and concepts present biological phenomena as complex “patterns” that cannot be distilled into simple rules. thinking of biology this way is a matter of style. waddington’s distaste for pragmatic compromise and his preference for inconclusive conversations matched his visual practice. figure 17 matthew allen, kolam threshold design: the pattern as topological snare and the constitutive element of the kolam, after a diagram in alfred gell, art and agency (oxford: clarendon, 1998), 85 and 86 (photo: author). conclusion taken together, waddington’s illustrations of the epigenetic landscape suggest an unusual type of synthetic project. while modern synthesis biologists produced a simple framework for dividing up biological knowledge, waddington sought to bring all biological phenomena together in a way that does not always make immediate sense. he insisted that, in principle, nothing should be left out. the legacy of logical positivism in analytical philosophy and history of science continues to privilege well-formed sentences, explicit argumentation, and conclusions that follow one another in a linear way. by contrast, a compelling illustration condenses a great deal of 53 ibid., 80. 1 4 1 m a t t h e w a l l e n contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.143 conceptualization into a small, non-linear space. sometimes waddington’s most important questions are raised by his illustrations. looking again at a diagram of the epigenetic landscape (fig. 1), the questions multiply. where exactly is the embryo? what represents the cell? what is the role of time? what is the landscape itself, in biological terms? because these questions are not always raised explicitly in the accompanying text and a satisfying answer may not exist, they may be ignored rather than thought through. against explicit, step-by-step argumentation, waddington favors the risky move of raising too many questions to answer. he gambles that biologists will not settle for simplified, straightforward explanations in the meantime. in answer to the perennial question of whether images are necessary for science, i propose that images function effectively at drawing viewers in, confounding them, and prodding them to ask questions. images are often thought of in science and technology studies as links in chains of reasoning, but images do not always play the role of providing positive bits of information. as i have shown here with waddington’s epigenetic landscape, sometimes images get in the way of knowledge by bringing up inconvenient complications and suggesting alternative interpretations. compelling images draw out the process of understanding and help ensure that conclusions are not jumped to too quickly. 1 4 2 c o m p e l l e d b y t h e d i a g r a m contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu vol 4, no 1 (2015) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2015.143 new articles in this journal are licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 united states license. this journal is operated by the university library system of the university of pittsburgh as part of its d-scribe digital publishing program, and is co-sponsored by the university of pittsburgh press. agency in motion agency & reenactment in visual culture ! volume 5 fa l l 2016 !co nt em po ra ne it y hi st or ic al p re se nc e in v is ua l c ul tu re ! featuring ! ! stephen gilchrist ! elizabeth hawley! annemarie iker ! gary kafer! carlos kong! jodi kovach! ingrid nordgaard! erin peters ! loretta ramirez ! henry f. skerritt! ! ! vol 5, no 1 “agency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2016.185 http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.185 just what is “agency”? is it a scholarly method or orientation? something we possess or exercise as humans? or, do objects, networks, environments, and time exert agency as well? is it always related to power and freedom, or is vulnerability an expression of agency? is “agency” determinate, or is it kinetic—as only set into motion or into be ing when in connection to someone or something else? we encounter this term in a popular context as expression (as artistic agency) or as power (as political agency) and, in academic scholarship, we encounter it often, but with different resonance and meaning across disciplines. while agency per se has not always been the explicit focus of inquiry , recent discourse on violence, politics, sovereignty, and facture indicate a scholarly embrace of a more conscientious, inclusive approach to bodies and things as they move throughout the world and time. it also compels a closer examination of this prevalent, yet elusive, concept by emerging scholars in the field. in our call for the first thematic edition of contemporaneity: historical presence in visual culture, we asked scholars to put the concept of agency into motion. true to our broadest interpretation of “agency,” we have invited scholars working through this concept across disciplines to suggest, demonstrate, and provoke in their terms how agency can be brought to bear on visual culture. while we expected a variety of approaches from our contr ibutors, we were thrilled with the many registers across which agency resonated for scholars of photography, performance, and film, including curatorial and pedagogical perspectives. here, the reader will find a prismatic approach to agency, rather than a universal definition. we do not discredit its previous uses, nor do we police its borders. instead—and as we hoped a thematic issue would convene—this edition is the result of conversations that naturally arose among, between, and because of the articles. ingrid nordgaard and elizabeth hawley consider how artists recover the agency of subjugated or suffering individuals through intertwined photographic and performative practices. hawley examines the performance piece take a picture with a real indian in which luiseño artist james luna pivots from the historic tensions between the agencies of photographers and native american subjects, and turns the tourist and museum-goer’s cameras on himself. in her examination of pain and performance in post-soviet ukraine and contemporary russia, nordgaard suggests the photograph is an extension of the subjects ’ embodied agency, a means of owning, recasting, then sharing their suffering through performance and photographic distribution. agency in motion editorial statement nicole f. scalissi and annika johnson http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 2 n i c o l e f . s c a l i s s i a n d a n n i k a j o h n s on c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.185 photography turned out to be the key “medium” through which contributors mobilized questions of agency in this edition, perhaps indicating a broader trend in agency scholarship. the language around photography—expose, capture, pose, shoot, reproduce, take, se ll, document, discover, bare, etc.—proposes opposition, transaction, and the dynamism of relationships that for a moment cluster around the camera and continue to shuffle throughout a photograph’s afterlife. trevor paglen’s photographs of top secret government sites expose the limits of our knowledge and rub up against the aesthetics of abstraction. yet, as gary kafer proposes, it is paglen’s practice of telephotography in remote locations in which the artist exercises political agency. as illuminated by annemarie iker, art historian georgiana goddard king enlisted photography to envisage spanish medieva l architecture through the eyes of religious pilgrims and her own—an innovative and experiential approach to architecture history. jodi kovach examines cuban artist carlos garaicoa’s drawingphotograph diptychs, finding a dialogue in and through multiple frames of temporality in garaicoa’s reimagining of lost architectural sites and his delicate layer ing of the past and present—opening up new beginnings through temporal disarray. a special section on curatorial agency addresses how curators might enliven art objects and engage viewers with their many pasts and embodied cultural knowledges. they invite a practice that sets objects and the viewing public into motion, challenging traditional notions of curatorship through unexpected collaboration. erin peters factors museum visitors into the mix of exhibition-related agents: curators must recognize their capacity to co-create, which requests a fundamental readjustment of how specialist knowledge factors into the display of objects and their reception. in the criticism section, loretta ramirez and carlos kong parallel this proposal, both pursuing an expanded agency of the viewer in their reviews of two recent exhibitions. ramirez reviews david lamelas's the desert people (hammer museum, los angeles, 2016) and thinks through the relevance and role of authenticity in the performance of cultural identity. kong asserts the necessity of subversion and a truly “queer” queerness in his assessment of superqueeroes — our lgbti* comic book heroes and heroines (schwules museum*, berlin, 2016). curators of aboriginal australian art henry skerritt and stephen gilchrist discuss “indigenizing” the museum, which for gilchrist “is about doing; manifesting, instantiating, and running our own race on our own terms.” when asked to assess audience reception of the indigenized museum, gilchrist hesitates: “it’s so hard to be objective.” this gives us pause: is "objectivity," with all its associations to western ethics, history, and science, the only means to produce knowledge? or, might there be an approach to agency that makes room for the subjective, affective, fleshy reality of the scholar? c an there be a way to at once express agency, with its rich texture of subjectivity, and still contribute meaningfully to an understanding of the world and its inhabitants? or, as skerritt simply put it: “well you don’t have to be objective.” this serves as a reminder to practitioners of art history of our potential to act in new ways, as well as the power invested in our scholarly actions. an activation of professional agency is the power to challenge silos and re-district disciplines, to invest or restore real agency to underrepresented communities or regions, makers and viewers, and objects themselves. we encourage our readers to formulate their own questions and share them with us through submissions, letters to the editors, and social media. agency in motion was a collaborative effort. our authors, editors, and interview subjects generated and shaped exceptional content. artists, archivists, peer reviewers, and galleries engaged with contributors at all levels to bring their material to light. th e hard work and support of our coeditors in chief meredith north and ben ogrodnik, our editorial board, advisory board, and intern victoria sterling; the generous contributions of donors in our 2016 engagepitt fundraising campaign; and the intellectual community housed in the http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 3 a ge n cy in mo t io n : e d i tor ia l s ta teme n t c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.185 department of history of art and architecture at the university of pittsburgh have made this vision possible, and secure its future. we share with you below our first vision statement, which establishes contemporaneity as a platform for scholars to develop and voice their ideas through a rigorous and constructive editorial process. as we continue to diversify our content and perspective s across traditional divides of discipline, historical eras, and media, we seek to produce points of connection among different fields in a shared effort to better understand the world through its visual registrations. nicole f. scalissi, coeditor in chief phd candidate, history of art and architecture, university of pittsburgh arts & sciences fellow, university of pittsburgh annika johnson, coeditor in chief phd candidate, history of art and architecture, university of pittsburgh predoctoral fellow, smithsonian american art museum vision statement contemporaneity is an open access journal that publishes scholarly and artistic explorations of how the complexities of being in the world have found visual form throughout time. editorial leadership is based in the department of the history of art & architecture at the university of pittsburgh where the journal is enriched by its innovative constellations program. we publish question-driven research that resonates across disciplines, interrogating diverse visual material from across time using multiple methods. our editor ia l board seeks to: x adhere to high publishing standards that preserve the integrity of scholarship x bring junior and senior scholars and editors together through a constructive, double-blind peer-review process x generate content of lasting intellectual interest to emerging and tenured scholars x provide a forum for junior and senior scholars to develop under-researched topics and experimental methodological approaches x make scholarly writing free and accessible online x lead critical discussions around current publications and developments in curatorial and artistic practice in flexible formats x link art historical practice to a global discussion of visual cultures across disciplinary and methodological boundaries x encourage non-traditional formats http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ http://www.haa.pitt.edu/research/constellations http://www.haa.pitt.edu/research/constellations 4 n i c o l e f . s c a l i s s i a n d a n n i k a j o h n s on c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.185 new articles in this journal are licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 united states license. this journal is operated by the university library system of the university of p ittsburgh as part of its d-scribe digital p ublishing p rogram, and is co-sponsored by the university of p ittsburgh press. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/ http://www.pitt.edu/ http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/ http://www.upress.pitt.edu/upressindex.aspx http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ vol 5, no 1 “agency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2016.170 http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu james luna and the paradoxically present vanishing indian elizabeth s. hawley abstract james luna’s performances interrogate how representations of native americans have been made to fit western assumptions about the “real indian.” using his recognizably native body as a marker of both presence and endangered existence, luna links peggy phelan’s conception of performance as the presence of loss with the centuries-old stereotype of native americans as the “vanishing race”—a stereotype that continues to exert influence. in take a picture with a real indian (performed in 1992, 2001, and 2010), he invites viewers to have their photograph taken with him wearing one of three options: war dance regalia, a loincloth, or khakis and a polo shirt. few people choose the third option. the performance foregrounds what has become a tradition of native americans performing/posing the ir native -ness as otherness for the camera, strategically employing imagery that plays to nostalgic western views of native peoples as perpetually vanishing. i argue that luna’s performances comment not only upon western preconceptions of native americans, but also upon the ways that native americans have historically reasserted their agency by manipulating such expectations, staging themselves to fit the stereotype. about the author elizabeth s. hawley is a phd candidate in art history at the cuny graduate center. her dissertation analyzes the art production in santa fe, new mexico in the early twentieth century, putting the works of american modernists who visited the area into dia logue with the works of native artists from the surrounding pueblos. hawley earned her ma from the courtauld institute of art, and her ba from harvard university. she recently completed a museum research consortium fellowship at the museum of modern art, new york , where she undertook research on frank lloyd wright’s use of native and meso-american forms in his architecture and decorative designs. she is currently teaching art history courses at york college and st. francis college. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.170 take a picture on october 12, 1911—columbus day—ho-chunk artist angel decora took to the podium at a society of american indians conference to give a talk on native american art. she argued for the development of the “decorative instinct of the indian to modern methods” in response to the rapid and continual renegotiation of her people ’s position in society and history.1 decora concluded her rousing speech with the assertion that “the indian in his native dress is a thing of the past, but his art that is inborn shall endure.”2 nearly a century later contemporary luiseño performance artist james luna used the occasion of columbus day to stage a work that indeed proved decora’s prediction of the endurance of what she termed “indian art” prescient, albeit in a postmodern, parody -laced manner that continued to incorporate the native dress decora already assumed anachronistic. in the performance, provocatively titled take a p icture with a real indian (2010), luna placed three life-size, black and white cardboard cutouts of himself at the base of the columbus memorial, a park-like traffic circle adjacent to the capital grounds in washington, d.c. that houses a huge statue of the man who cla imed to have discovered america (fig. 1). the memorial immediately calls forth stereotypes of the indian against which luna positions his own work: on the west side of the sculpture, an unnamed american indian kneels at columbus’s feet, and an inscription claiming that columbus “gave to mankind a new world” leaves unacknowledged the fact that american indians had inhabited this land for centuries, and further denies them a place in the euro-american conceptualization of “mankind.” against this backdrop luna positioned three cutouts of himself clad in different clothing: in one he wears a buckskin breechcloth and moccasins; in the next, he sports regalia including feathered headwear and a beaded breastplate; and in the third, he appears dressed in khakis and a polo shirt. luna then stepped onto the makeshift stage that had been placed between the cutouts three times, each time wearing a version of the costumes depicted in the cutouts, and each time reciting, “take a picture with a real indian. take a picture on this beautiful sunny day. take a picture with a real indian on one of the saddest days of our history . . . america needs to face up to reality. america needs to put down the romanticism.”3 he explained to audience members that they could only have the ir picture taken with him once by one of the professional photographers he hired for the occasion. the photographers would produce two polaroids, one to be left with the artist, and one for the audience member to keep as a memento. viewers then approached the stage to have the ir 1 a ngel decora, “native indian a rt,” in report of the executive on the proceedings of the firs t annual conference of the society of american indians held at the univers ity of ohio, c olumbus, o hio (o ctober 12-17, 1911), 1: 84. for further information on dec ora see e lizabeth hutchinson, the indian craze: primitivism, modernism, and transculturation in american art, 1890-1915 (durham: duke university p ress, 2009). 2 dec ora, “native indian art,” 87. 3 james luna, take a picture with a real indian performed in 2010, washington d.c . national museum of the a merican indian performance recording, accessed from http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=10100243886416480. james luna and the paradoxically present vanishing indian elizabeth s. hawley http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 7 e l i z a b e th s . ha w l e y c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.170 photo taken with whichever clothing-designated iteration of the artist that they felt best represented a “real indian.”4 perhaps inevitably, most participants chose to be photographed with luna while he was wearing his regalia. figure 1 james luna, take a picture with a real indian, 2010. live performanceins tallation with photographs, washington, d.c . p hotographer unknown. image courtesy of james luna. take a picture is particularly pointed in its interrogation of the pose and the photograph, and how both native and non-native peoples are implicated in and affected by the resulting stereotypes: native peoples are expected to adhere to the stereotypic construction of indian identity, but in performing this role, they reify the stereotype. at the same time, non-native peoples perpetuate the problematic cycle by only characterizing as “indian” those native peoples that adhere to the stereotype that non-native peoples have constructed and come to expect. this article addresses the ways in which luna’s performance engages with the history of such constructions, their problematic persistence in the present, and the evolution of theoretical discourse around these issues. luna often restages his works, and the 2010 performance of take a picture was itse lf a reenactment. the cardboard cutouts of luna depict him as a younger man and can be seen in a photograph of his original performance of the piece at the whitney museum of art in 1991 (fig. 2). as amelia jones observes, “re-enactments remind us all that present 4 when i use the term “real indian” in the following artic le, i am alluding to luna’s conception of an indian identity that fits—or is constructed to fit—non-native expectations. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 8 j a m e s lu n a a n d th e p a r a d o x i ca l l y p r e s en t v a n i s hi n g i n d i a n c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.170 experience, including . . . the apprehension of things called ‘art’ or acts called ‘performance,’ is only ever available through subjective perception.”5 luna’s performance at the base of the columbus monument doubled such subjectivity: he staged a long-standing stereotype of the native american and did so within the context of a performance that has had previous iterations. nearly twenty years after the first performance, he tested whether the outcome of the 2010 version would be less starkly stereotypical in terms of audience subjectiv ity. he perhaps expected participants to be less inclined to deem his regalia-clad self the real indian, since such categorization is a fallacy, and none of the three characters performed by luna can be declared more “indian” than the others. the performance, however, played out much as it had two decades before, which he had described thus: it . . . was leading—there was an indian in a breechcloth with everybody going ‘oh wow, there's an indian.’ then i came out in my street clothes and they said, ‘oh, there's a guy.’ but when i came out in my regalia, i knew that it would get that response from the audience. everybody went for it. there was a big ooh and aah when i stepped up on that pedestal with my war dance outfit. they forgot about all the rest and really lined up to have their picture taken. this is the memento that they really wanted. even people that were art savvy fell for it.6 figure 2 james luna, take a picture with a real indian, 1991. live performance-installation with photographs, whitney museum of a merican a rt. p hotographer unknown. i mage courtesy of james luna. 5 a melia jones, “‘the a rtist is present’: a rtistic re -enactments and the impossibility of p resence,” tdr: the drama review 55, no. 1 (spring 2011): 42. 6 kenneth r. fletcher, “james luna,” smithsonian magazine (a pril 2008), http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/james-luna-30545878/. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 9 e l i z a b e th s . ha w l e y c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.170 of course, having his audience members “fall for” this outcome was crucial to the message of the work; in order to point to the persistence of native stereotypes, luna had to create a situation in which they are unlikely to be overcome. his use of the term “leading” is telling, for the manner in which the work was presented ensured a certain scripted outcome, and failure to achieve this outcome would have detracted from the artist’s intended message by rendering it an overstatement. the cutouts informed viewers which costumes luna would don during the performance and by saving the best for last, so to speak, he set up a situation in which the majority of photographs would be taken of his last appearance, both because this costume is the most visually striking and because it was the last chance to take a photograph—the grand finale of the performance. agency, here, was with the artist; luna was in control, manipulating audience members to achieve a more powerful statement with the work. but in doing so, he re-inscribed the stereotypes of indian identity against which the work was ostensibly aimed. then again, while the “art savvy” people may have been duped, they also may have been consciously participating in luna’s performance of parodic, scripted stereotypes. perhaps aware of luna’s intended message, it is possible that these viewers played the role of uninformed audience members ignorant of contemporary native american experiences and concerns, as expected—needed even—by the artist. luna mentions these savvy spectators because, as with most of his works, he first performed take a picture in a museum. staging the work outside of the museum context in 2010 marked an intriguing departure from his usual practice and caused a change in the scripted quality of the piece. it gave viewers both more and less command over the ir own actions: more in that luna could not control unauthorized photographs of a performance staged in a public space, and less in that some viewers stumbled upon the work, thus receiving only a fragmentary explanation of it and what their actions might signify.7 and while the towering columbus monument provided a politically suggestive backdrop to the performance that took place on a controversial national holiday, i argue that as a public space it also foregrounded the significance of photography in the work.8 luna’s earlier performances of the piece include the aforementioned 1991 whitney museum location, as well as a 2001 staging at the herbert f. johnson museum of art at cornell university.9 in these contexts, the “take a picture, leave a picture” component of the performance could be better enforced, since museum photography policies and the guards who enforce them would have discouraged participants from taking their own photographs. indeed, the institutional setting protected luna and his performance from concerns varying from copyright infringement to potential heckling. in the open space of the monument, however, luna’s posed body became subject to unauthorized photographs taken by anyone in the area. holly stewart, social media coordinator of the national museum of the american indian, noted that “the setting was inspired,” and described “a second ring of audience 7 the performance was sponsored by the smithsonian’s national museum of the a merican indian in association with “v antage p oint: the contemporary native a merican a rt collection,” an exhibition that highlighted the work of twenty-five contemporary native a merican artists working in all media, inc luding performance. 8 that morning, the u .s. marines had held their annual ceremony in honor of c olumbus day and had placed wreaths of flowers on the other s ide of the s tatue. this evidence of their nationalistic reverence s tood in s tark contrast to luna’s subsequent performance on the oppos ite s ide of both the s tatue and t he ideology to which it bears witness. 9 a curtailed version of the work was also s taged in t imes square, new york c ity in 1994 as part of the 42nd street art project. in this piece, the three cutouts were placed in a small s torefront window and an audio element ins tructed passersby as to the intent of the work. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 1 0 j a m e s lu n a a n d th e p a r a d o x i ca l l y p r e s en t v a n i s hi n g i n d i a n c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.170 participants snapping photographs from taxis and tour buses.”10 the photographs resulting from this outer edge of action were a consequence of the public setting as well as contemporary image culture itself, in which nearly anyone with a phone has the capability of quickly documenting moments, memorable or not, from their day-to-day experiences. such was not the case at the original staging of take a picture, both because the museum context set a tone of respectful audience obedience in terms of documentation, and simply because cameras were less common and more obtrusive. attempting to regulate images of their work has become increasingly difficult for performance artists, particularly for pieces performed in public. the 2010 version of take a picture created a mise-en-abyme of photos—carefully composed by luna’s professional photographers, amusedly taken by friends of the participants who ventured onstage, and hastily snapped by confused but intrigued passengers in cars swinging around the traffic circle. luna’s performance here thus a lluded to both our contemporary conceptualization of photography and documentation, as well as to luna’s loss of control concerning the image of himself and his art. reading photographs of native americans the latter aspect speaks to a long history of non-native photographers turning native americans into the unknowing, hesitant, or unwilling subjects of their images. scholars in the 1980s and 1990s frequently referenced these histories in their analyses of photographs depicting native peoples, often comparing the photographer’s camera to the colonizer’s gun: vine deloria, jr. calls early twentieth-century photography “a weapon in the final skirmishes of cultural warfare in which the natives of north america could be properly and finally embedded in their places in the cultural evolutionary incline.”11 comanche curator paul chaat smith takes this analogy a step further, arguing that just as the walker colt revolver was “a machine designed for one purpose: to kill comanches . . . there should have been a special camera invented to shoot indians as well, given the tremendous influence photography has had on us.”12 smith observes, “those [indian coffee-table] books and the photographers behind them are like big game hunters on safari and their big game is the real indian.”13 the hunters ignore the “fourteen year old boy in baggy pants” and the “fat guy with the marine haircut,” just as take a picture participants seldom desired a picture with luna in his khakis.14 the so-called real indian sought by the camera-wielding hunters described by smith was, and continues to be, the regalia-clad version of the real indian in luna’s performance—the spectacle of otherness. many native americans balked at the intrusive cameras, for a variety of reasons, but their desires to remain un-photographed were ignored. some feared the implications of having their image replicated on paper; lucy lippard observes that the “transfer of a black and-white likeness to paper meant to some that a part of their lives had been taken away, to 10 holly stewart, “james luna: take a p icture with a real indian,” the national museum of the american indian blog, o ctober 12, 2010, http://blog.nmai.si.edu/main/2010/10/james-luna-take-a-picture-with-areal-indian.html. 11 v ine deloria, jr., introduc tion to c hristopher m . lyman, the vanishing race and other i llus ions: photographs of indians by edward s. curtis (new york: p antheon books, 1982), 11. 12 paul c haat smith, “ghost in the machine” in strong hearts : native american vis ions and voices , ed. p eggy rolf (new york: a perture, 1995), 6 -7. 13 ibid., 7 . 14 ibid. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 1 1 e l i z a b e th s . ha w l e y c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.170 others that their vital power had been diminished.”15 however, this fear should not be overstated; the stereotype that native americans feared cameras would “steal the ir souls” has become an enduring and inaccurate perception. other native americans objected to this exploitative photography not out of fear, but in protest against its intrusiveness. jane alison analyzes the literalized rhetoric of non-natives taking photographs of natives, emphasizing that these images are taken, not requested.16 james c. faris examines unequal photographic encounters at length, pointing to images like navajo children (ca. 1925), which shows a missionary student and two young boys tightly grouped together as though to avoid the photographers that close in on them (fig. 3). the younger boy hides in the skirts of the student, as she and the older boy look away from both the photographer in the image, as well as the unknown photographer from whose view we access the scene. just as the student and children avoid the immediate threat of the camera-wielding photographers, so too do they avoid the gaze of contemporary viewers, thus implicating the v iewer in the invasive scene. their evasion is echoed in three navajo girls wearing blankets (ca. 1936-1941), which shows three young native american women, two with their heads turned and a third who casts her eyes downwards, refusing the gaze of the camera (fig. 4). faris notes that this refusal is seen over and over again in photographic archives, and that “such photographs are often labeled ‘shy women’—that is, in terms that do not condemn the photographer.”17 figure 3 photographer unknown, navajo children, ca. 1925. image courtesy p alace of the governors. p hoto a rchives (nmhm/dca), #53801. 15 lucy r. lippard, introduc tion to partial recall: photographs of native north americans (new york: the new p ress, 1992), 30 -31. 16 jane a lison, introduction to native nations: journeys in american photography (london: barbican a rt gallery, 1998), 14. 17 james c . faris , navajo and photography: a critical his tory of the representation of an american people (a lbuquerque: university of new mexico p ress, 1996), 47. lucy lippard also c omment s on t h i s v i sua l phenomenon, noting that, “[i]n the archives, there are many photographs of native people h i d i ng t he i r faces or otherwise trying to avoid the camera . . . soon it was recognized as the ultimate invasion of social religious, and individual privacy.” lippard, partial recall, 29 . http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 1 2 j a m e s lu n a a n d th e p a r a d o x i ca l l y p r e s en t v a n i s hi n g i n d i a n c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.170 figure 4 helen m . p os t, three navajo girls wearing blankets , ca. 1936-1941). gelatin s ilver print, 8 x 7 15/16 in. image courtesy of the a mon c arter museum, fort worth, tx, p 1985.50.837. of course, not all native americans objected to cameras, and scholars should refrain from assuming that any image of a native person is a portrayal of victimhood. if some native americans shunned cameras and photography, others were curious and used them to their advantage. scholars in the last fifteen years have moved beyond analyzing the presumed objectification of native subjects to instead examine native cognizance, collaboration, and participation in the photographic process. frank h. goodyear argues that lakota leader red cloud exploited photography and the western fascination with his image to emphasize his continued existence and relevance in contemporary society.18 in his study of h. h. bennett’s photographs of members of the ho-chunk nation, steven d. hoelscher argues that while photography has “served as a technology of domination to subdue indigenous peoples . . . it has also worked to provide those very peoples a medium for the ir cultural survival, endurance, and renewal—for their survivance.”19 this concept of survivance, along with the related theories of contact zones and v isual sovereignty has shifted the framework of analysis for such imagery. gerald vizenor defines survivance as “an active sense of presence, the continuance of native stories, not a mere reaction, or a survivable name,” arguing that “native survivance stories are renunciations of 18 frank h. goodyear, red cloud: photographs of a lakota chief (lincoln: university of nebraska p ress, 2003). 19 steven d. hoelscher, picturing indians: photographic encounters and touris t fantas ies in h. h. bennett’s wiscons in dells (madison: the university of wisconsin p ress, 2008), 10. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 1 3 e l i z a b e th s . ha w l e y c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.170 dominance, tragedy, and victimry.”20 native peoples do not just survive, they actively recalibrate cultural mores in ways that honor the past, accept the present, and anticipate the future. this takes place within social spaces that mary louise pratt has termed contact zones. she acknowledges the imbalanced power relations, coercion, and conflict associated with such zones, but also notes, “while a subjugated people cannot readily control what emanates from the dominant culture, they do determine to varying extents what they use for their own, and what they use it for.”21 while luna cannot change the invasive way that american indians have been photographed, he can take this technology and use it for his own purposes—namely, to reference these photographic histories, the stereotypes that they reveal, and to question the way stereotypic attitudes toward and expectation of native peoples circulate in the present. michelle h. raheja has coined the term visual sovereignty to describe the tactics native americans have used “to confront the spectator with the often absurd assumptions that circulate around visual representations of native americans, while also flagging their involvement and, to some degree, complicity in these often disempowering structures of . . . dominance and stereotype.”22 in raheja’s study of representations of native american s in cinema, she considers both native participants in early films produced by non -natives, as well as contemporary native filmmakers, noting that stereotypic images of native americans have become a part of native history, especially since native americans at times participated in the creation of such stereotypes.23 rather than reject such imagery, contemporary filmmakers and performance artists grapple with the implications of collusion. of course, there are shades of gray within the spectrum of sovereignty. lippard references the case of lillie benally, a navajo woman who allowed laura gilpin to photograph her in 1932, but did not consent to the publication of the image. upon hearing that the amon carter museum in fort worth, tx was using the photograph in museum publicity materials in 1984, she sued.24 benally’s case points to the complex web of legal and cultural issues surrounding photographs of native americans. her simultaneous control and loss of control over her image—she posed for the photograph but did not consent to its publication—can be productively compared to luna’s performance. his “take a photo, leave a photo” policy permits audience members to go home with a souvenir photograph of themselves with luna, while also ensuring that luna comes away with a copy of the same image. there is a sense of reciprocity, in that both parties are given a copy of the photograph, and both are present in the image. but this reciprocity broke down in the 2010 performance due to the busy public area in which the work was staged. what luna gained in terms of the symbolism of the site, he lost in terms of control over the dissemination of his work. 20 gerald v izenor, manifes t manners: narratives on pos tindian survivance (lincoln: university of nebraska p ress, 1999), vii. 21 mary louise pratt, imperial eyes: travel writing and transculturation (london: routledge, 1992), 6 . p ratt approaches “contact zones” in terms of their relevance to language and literature, but the term has been more recently put to use in pos tcolonial theory and native s tudies. 22 michelle h. raheja, “reading nanook’s smile: v isual sovereignty, indigenous revisions of e thnography, and "a tanarjuat (the fast runner)” american quarterly 59, no. 4 (december 2007): 1160. 23 ibid., 1162. 24 lippard, partial recall, 31. benally’s case is also briefly discussed in john henry merryman and a lbert edward e lsen, law, ethics , and the visual arts (new york: kluwer law international, 2002), 552-53. the federal dis trict court dismissed the case because it lacked personal jurisdiction, and while an appellate court reversed the dismissal, it did not rule on the merits of the case. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 1 4 j a m e s lu n a a n d t h e p a r a d o x i ca l l y p r e s en t v a n i s hi n g i n d i a n c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.170 photographs and film stills that document luna’s performance at the columbus monument show the artist, cutouts, and participants, with the addition of the photographers and gathered crowd (fig. 5). documenting the audience and outdoor location is crucial to the 2010 iteration of take a picture; luna reveals the continued perception that a real indian can be discovered amongst the three characters he proffers. when luna attired himself in khakis and a polo shirt he disrupted broad cultural expectations, becoming a member of the group philip j. deloria has termed “indians in unexpected places.”25 by choosing instead to take a picture with luna in his war dance regalia, participants upheld the problematic notion that native americans can only be seen one way, as romantic figures of peoples ’ past. luna ensured that their choice designated this character the most “real” of the three indian identities proffered, indicating that he must thus pose in this manner to gain himself a position in the realm of contemporary western conceptions of the real. luna does not aim to confirm or deny the realness of any depiction of indian identity; he rather exposes the very concept of the real indian as a construct with a complex visual history. figure 5 a udience documenting james luna’s take a picture with a real indian performed in 2010, washington d.c . film s till from national museum of the a merican indian performance recording, accessed from http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=10100243886416480 edward s. curtis and the legacy of the pose take a picture draws on a long tradition of native americans being staged and staging themselves to fit western audiences’ expectations. such preconceptions were both represented and produced by edward s. curtis’s early-twentieth-century photographs of native americans. luna has long been aware of curtis and his methods: “curtis ’s images were first highlighted for me in the late 1960’s . . . they represent that image of the indian that people feel comfortable with and then, later on, i came to learn that some were posed, 25 p hilip j. deloria, indians in unexpected places (lawrence, ks: university press of kansas, 2004), 4 . http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 1 5 e l i z a b e th s . ha w l e y c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.170 with the same regalia on two different guys, for example.”26 his comments on curtis’s photographs and the conditions of their production necessitate a closer look at these iconic yet problematic images. curtis’s photographs have come to define indian imagery to the extent that even now, as luna’s piece has documented, most viewers only see a real indian before them if s/he dresses in recognizably native clothing. in anthropological terms, this attitude reflects the outdated idea of an ethnographic present, the artificial construction of a pre-contact people and the expectation that their modern descendants look and behave within the confines of the construction.27 paige raibmon notes that the fallacious notion of authenticity is judged by the degree to which native peoples recognizably adhere to the expectation of this construction.28 roland barthes defines this culturally contingent recognition by way of the pose, a specific way of staging oneself, and/or the objects around oneself, to ensure that photographs conform to certain societal connotations.29 curtis was adept at posing: he photographed native americans in artificially staged settings and stances, and he carefully culled his collection of markers of modernity before publishing his portfolio. curtis a sserted at the start of his project, “above all, none of these pictures would admit anything which betokened civilization, whether in an article or dress or landscape or objects on the ground.”30 like many of his contemporaries, curtis viewed native americans as a “vanishing race,” and he set out to document as many native peoples as he could before their presumed extinction. in his published portraits of native americans, the sitters somberly stare out from the photos, with raking light thrown across their faces that gives a ll but the youngest sitters an aged appearance, as can be seen in strike on his head, crow indian, montana (fig. 6). the figures in his photographs sit upright, giving their statures a k ind of ethnographic, pseudo-scientific verity.31 many of these portraits were, however, highly posed. faris has described curtis’s “legacy of posing,” noting that in his images of navajos, the photos were “completely set up, using not only ‘phony’ costumes, additions, and poses . 26 james luna, “james luna,” in staging the indian: the politics of representation, eds . jill d. sweet and ian berry (saratoga springs, ny: the tang teaching museum and a rt gallery, skidmore college, 2002), 73 . 27 see johannes fabian, time and the other: how anthropology makes i ts object (new york: c olumbia university p ress, 1983). 28 p aige raibmon, authentic indians: episodes of encounter from the late-nineteenth-century northwest coas t (durham: duke university press, 2005). 29 he observes that when the pose is used, “the photograph c learly only s ignifies because of the exis tence of a s tore of s tereotyped attitudes which form ready-made elements of s ignification.” barthes further notes that in the pos ing of objec ts , “the meaning comes from the objec ts photographed (either because these objec ts have . . . been artific ially arranged in front of the camera or because the person responsible for lay-out chooses a photograph of this or that objec t).”roland barthes, “the photographic message,” in image – mus ic – text, trans . stephen heath (london: fontana p ress, 1977), 22. in his analysis of pos ing, s tereotypes, and the use of photography in identity formation, barthes considers the photographic genre as a whole, not jus t images of native peoples. 30 edward s. c urtis , quoted in hans christian a dam, “edward s. c urtis and the north a merican indians,” introduc tion to the north american indian: the complete portfolios (new york: taschen, 2001), 26. 31 for analys is of these o thering s trategies, see christopher m . lyman, the vanishing race and other i llus ions: photographs of indians by edward s. curtis (washington, d.c .: smithsonian institution p ress, 1982), 61. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 1 6 j a m e s lu n a a n d th e p a r a d o x i ca l l y p r e s en t v a n i s hi n g i n d i a n c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.170 . . but, indeed, in some cases, actual phony navajo.”32 not only did curtis insist on removing any signifier of assimilated western customs, he also emphasized their native-ness through the use of objects and activities that ancestral navajos would have found as foreign as the ir descendants did, but that served as markers of real indians for western audiences. catherine c. robbins observes that “he posed indians in the fashion of his time in sometimes fanciful contexts; his hopi women ground corn in ceremonial dress.”33 in the photo to which she refers, four women kneel in the time-honored task of grinding meal, but instead of donning their typical day-to-day clothing, the women have adorned themselves in the jewelry, blouses, and side-buns usually reserved for ceremonial occasions (fig. 7). whether they are doing so of their own accord or at curtis’s instruction, the activity is clearly staged: all four women are in the exact same position, as though the backbreaking work of producing cornmeal would be synchronized. a bowl of already ground meal has been placed in the center of the foreground, to further define the activity for uninitiated viewers. nothing in the photograph is materially or temporally inaccurate, but the image collapses different facets of hopi culture into one visually readable and formally pleasurable pose. figure 6 edward s. c urtis , strike on his head, crow indian, montana, ca. 1908. digital file from original. library of c ongress, p rints & photographs division, edward s. c urtis collection, [lc -usz62-106763]. 32 faris , navajo and photography, 107-108. 33 c atherine c. robbins, all indians do not live in teepees (or cas inos) (lincoln: university of nebraska p ress, 2011), 244-245. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 1 7 e l i z a b e th s . ha w l e y c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.170 figure 7 edward s. c urtis , the mealing trough – hopi, ca. 1906. digital file from original. library of c ongress, p rints & photographs division, edward s. c urtis c ollection, [lc -dig-ppmsca-05085]. recent scholarship on curtis seeks to move beyond the critique of his posing and staging activities because, as aaron glass notes, “it has tended to grant curtis sole authorship and control, completely ignoring the active participation and possibly strate gic agency of the indigenous people who chose to sit and post and dress up for him.” 34 g lass instead examines the motivations of kwakwaka’wakw sitters pictured in volume ten of curtis’s extensive book series the north american indian. he focuses on george hunt, a figure of english and alaskan tlingit descent who married into the kwakwaka’wakw, concluding that hunt’s own ethnographic interests as well as his desire to fit into his wife ’s culture likely influenced his decision to pose for curtis. in a similar singular study of a sitter, shamoon zamir analyzes curtis’s portrait of alexander b. upshaw, a crow man who studied at the carlisle indian school, married a white woman, and became a respected advocate for tribal rights (fig. 8). in earlier portraits, upshaw is depicted in a suit and tie, hair neatly 34 a aron glass, “a c annibal in the a rchive: p erformance, materiality, and (in)v isibility in unpublished edward c urtis photographs of the kwakwaka’wakw hamat’sa” visual anthropology review 25, no. 2 (fall 2009): 130. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 1 8 j a m e s lu n a a n d th e p a r a d o x i ca l l y p r e s en t v a n i s hi n g i n d i a n c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.170 parted. but in curtis’s photo, upshaw sports a feathered crow headdress as well as an elaborate crow necklace over his bare chest. figure 8 edward s. c urtis , upshaw – apsaroke. ca. 1905. b&w film copy negative. library of c ongress, p rints & photographs division, edward s. c urtis collection, [lc -usz62-124178]. if luna’s take a picture voids the validity of the designation real indian, so too does upshaw’s attire. noting the precipitous drop in the crow population and the cultural practices that had atrophied or been outright banned by the american government, zamir argues that for upshaw, “the donning of costumes and the rehearsal of tribal beliefs and practices . . . constituted a use of tradition to legitimize a contemporaneous project of social, economic, and political survival.”35 he further observes that for figures like upshaw, “the border between ‘invented’ and ‘lived’ tradition was no doubt a fluid one, if it was experienced as real at all.”36 curtis may have posed his sitters, but they also participated in active self-fashioning that affirmed native tradition as a part of—rather than a negation of—native modernity. the descendants of these sitters are often thankful to have these images. gros ventre curator george p. horse capture, whose grandfather was photographed by curtis, declared: “real indians are extremely grateful to see what their ancestors look like or what they did and we know they are no stereotypes. no one staged the people. and we see them at the ir c lassic finest.”37 35 shamoon zamir, “native a gency and the making of the north american indian: a lexander b. upshaw and edward s. c urtis” american indian quarterly 31, no. 4 (fall 2007), 637. 36 ibid., 637. 37 george p . horse c apture, foreword to native nations: firs t americans as seen by edward s. curtis , ed. c hris topher c ardozo (boston: little, brown and c ompany, 1993), 17. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 1 9 e l i z a b e th s . ha w l e y c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.170 the archival logic of the museum ethnographers also photographed luna’s ancestors. in the interest of i l lustrating her article on luiseño indians, constance goddard dubois took a photo of luna’s greatgrandmother maria soledad apish trujillo and her young daughter (fig. 9).38 unlike curtis, who had artistic as well as ethnographic intentions, dubois allowed e lements of western influence to enter the image just as they had the lives of the people she was documenting. trujillo and her daughter are thus pictured in the cotton dresses that had become typica l day-to-day wear for many native american women by the turn of the twentieth century. nonetheless, trujillo’s posture is rigid and her expression somber, conveying the same k ind of ethnographic verity that curtis sought in his portraits. whether or not trujillo was instructed by dubois on the proper position to assume, her young daughter’s inquisitive look and the half-hidden presence of a young boy curiously looking on from the shadows add a familial, human element to an otherwise ethnographically distancing pose. figure 9 c onstance goddard dubois, trujillo's wife & children, potrero (valley center, san diego county, california) 1906. c ontact print on photographic paper, 5 x 4 in. c ons tance goddard dubois c ollection, san diego museum of man. c opyright 2016 san diego museum of man. to see this photograph, luna must visit the san diego museum of man where it has been categorized, catalogued, and duly archived. jane blocker has effective ly discussed luna’s oeuvre in archival terms. she concentrates her analysis on the artifact piece (1987), a work first staged at the same institution housing the photograph of luna’s great 38 c onstance goddard dubois, “the religion of the luiseño indians of southern c alifornia” univers ity of california publications in american archaeology and ethnology 8, no. 3 (berkeley: the university p ress, 1908). http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 2 0 j a m e s lu n a a n d th e p a r a d o x i ca l l y p r e s en t v a n i s hi n g i n d i a n c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.170 grandmother, linking ethnographic interest in his ancestors to the continued western epistemological obsession with archiving the other (fig. 10).39 in the work, luna, s lightly sedated, lay wearing a breechcloth in a sand-covered museum display case, his body framed by museum labels that rhetorically ruptured romantic preconceptions of the indian. for example, one described an unsuccessful marriage, stating: “sk in callous on ring finger remains, along with assorted painful and happy memories.” the description of a physical callous and the memories it evokes for the artist brought luna’s native body into the present and his life into the contemporary context, as did one of the vitrines placed near his body (fig. 11). contained within was a personal potpourri of mementos from the artist’s own history, including a driver’s license, diploma, divorce papers, tapes and records of contemporary musicians, political buttons, comic books, and small figurines.40 by providing information about luna’s own life, the placards and the vitrine spoke to what serge gruzinski has called the mestizo mind and blocker terms a history of mélange; that is, a society that exhibits ambiguously ambivalent signs of a composite cultural identity.41 such signs are generally repressed in the institutional context to what jean fisher calls “the necrophilous codes of the museum.”42 museums’ visual and rhetorical cues often represent indigenous peoples as anachronistic to modern life, perpetually vanishing because they are characterized as already of the past. as blocker notes, the western institutional archive favors bones over flesh, the ancients over their living descendants.43 luna’s intervention was thus to rupture this archival assumption of pastness by bringing his own bodily presence into the museum, emphasizing the present by parodying the institutional insistence on the past.44 performance proves a particularly apt strategy for disrupting the western fantasy of the “vanishing race,” for, as peggy phelan notes, absence always underlies the presence of performance.45 her point is particularly poignant for native performers who stage the constructed aspect of native identity, as the ir audiences often paradoxically view them as part of a vanished culture, despite the performers’ physical presence. if take a picture insists on the presence of a khakis-clad contemporary native american even while highlighting the way in which most audience members designate the regalia that of the real indian, the artifact piece stresses the lived presence and physica l 39 jane blocker, “a mbivalent entertainments: james luna, p erformance, and the a rchive,” grey room 37 (fall 2009): 55 -62. 40 for a more complete list, see jennifer a. gonzalez, subject to display: reframing race in contemporary ins tallation art (c ambridge, ma: the mit p ress, 2008), 40. 41 serge gruzinski, the mestizo mind: the intellectual dynamics of colonization and globalization, trans . deke dus inberre (new york: routledge, 2002), 9; blocker, 61 . these terms are part icularly pertinent in discussing luna’s work, as he identifies as both luiseño and mexican-american has addressed his multiple rac ial identities in other works . 42 jean fisher, “jimmie durham,” in matoaka ale attakulakula anel guledisgo hnihi, exhibition catalogue (london: matt’s gallery, 1988), 12. 43 blocker borrows her use of the “flesh over bone” archival logic from rebecca schneider, who asserts that, “in the archive, flesh is given to be that which s lips away. flesh can house no memory of bone. o nly bone speaks memory of flesh.” blocker, 54; rebecca schneider, “a rchives: p erformance remains” performance research 6, no. 2 (summer 2001): 102. 44 he does so by way of the pose and, though i do not discuss them here, mimic ry and masquerade —and the discourses s urrounding such s trategies—are also important aspects of his work. a rtis ts with feminist agendas have long used these s trategies; indeed, luna learned them from e leanor antin, a feminis t artis t and ins tructor at the university of c alifornia, i rvine while he was a s tudent there. 45 p eggy phelan, unmarked: the politics of performance (new york: routledge, 1993), 146-166. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 2 1 e l i z a b e th s . ha w l e y c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.170 present-ness of a contemporary native american through the stereotypical staging methods of the museum, which are usually used to stress the historical past-ness of the cultures on display. luna asserts native agency by parodying the typical lack thereof in the institutional context. figure 10 james luna, the artifact piece, ins tallation view, 1987. live performance-installation, san diego museum of man. p hotographer unknown. c opyright 2016 san diego museum of man. figure 11 james luna, the artifact piece, ins tallation view (vitrine), 1987. live performance-installation, san diego museum of man. p hotographer unknown. c opyright 2016 san diego museum of man. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 2 2 j a m e s lu n a a n d th e p a r a d o x i ca l l y p r e s en t v a n i s hi n g i n d i a n c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.170 luna’s contemporaries luna’s work is often compared to coco fusco and guillermo gómez-peña’s two undiscovered amer-indians visit the west (1992-1994), another performance piece that plays off stereotypes of essentialized native identity in order to reveal them as such. in the work, the artists presented themselves as amer-indians from an island in the gulf of mexico that had somehow escaped western discovery (fig. 12). in various public spaces such as museums, public squares, universities around the world, they had themselves presented in a cage containing assorted material markers of their fictional everyday lives. so-called experts were on hand to answer questions about them. like the vitrine of contemporary objects included in luna’s the artifact piece, fusco and gómez-peña’s performative project included a number of props that applied pressure on the notion of indigenous authentic ity; tour ist badges, plastic sunglasses, a laptop, a bottle of coca-cola and more made up what caroline vercoe calls “their living cargo-culture diorama.”46 fusco recalls that upon seeing this assortment, “a native american elder from the pueblo tribe of arizona . . . said that our performance was the most real thing about the native americans displayed in the whole museum. he said the installation and performance ought to be permanent to give people a very clear idea of the native american experience.”47 however, other viewers questioned the legitimacy of natives possessing commercial items. the artists were surprised by the negative reactions. while they assumed their commentary would be clear as a construct, many people engaged with the performance believing that the artists actually were natives from guatinaui, their fictional homeland. figure 12 c oco fusco and guillermo gómezpeña, two undiscovered amer-indians vis it the west, 19921994. live performanceins tallation, c olumbus plaza, madrid, spain. c opyright coco fusco. 46 c aroline vercoe, “a gency and a mbivalence: a reading of works by c oco fusco,” in the bodies that were not ours , and other writings , ed. c oco fusco (new york: routledge, 2001), 233. 47 c oco fusco, qtd. in a nna johnson, “c oco fusco and guillermo gómez-peña” bomb 42 (winter 1993), accessed may 4, 2012, http://bombs ite.com/issues/42/articles/1599. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 2 3 e l i z a b e th s . ha w l e y c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.170 part of the performance involved the sale of polaroid images to audience members who posed with the so-called savages for souvenir pictures, a strategy that links the project to luna’s take a picture—which he had performed just one year before fusco and gómez-peña first staged two undiscovered ameri-indians—and points to a western history of using the othered body for entertainment. luna’s contemporary zig jackson (mandan, hidatsa, arikara) also bitingly commented on the continued tourist tendency to photograph traditional native american culture in his indian photographing tourist photographing indian series from 1991 (fig. 13).48 the tourists, clad in cargo shorts, blue jeans, and anoraks, view the ceremonial dance through their expensive cameras, clicking away, seemingly oblivious to their own intrusion and jackson’s doubled documentation. formally, the layering of lens views in his images echoes those of images taken by bystanders of luna’s take a picture as well as navajo children; in each instance the resulting imagery shows native bodies being photographed. the identities of the photographers documenting the native peoples, and the photographers documenting the documenters shift from photo to photo, but the native body as other is central to all three images both pictorially and rhetorically. figure 13 zig jackson, untitled from indian photographing touris t photographing indian series, 1991. silver gelatin print, 16 x 20 in. image courtesy of zig jackson. 48 for more on this projec t, see “social identity: a v iew from within, p hotographs by zig jackson,” in strong hearts : native american vis ions , ed. p eggy roalf (new york: a perture, 1995), 34 -37. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 2 4 j a m e s lu n a a n d th e p a r a d o x i ca l l y p r e s en t v a n i s hi n g i n d i a n c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.170 conclusion james luna’s oeuvre accommodates the historiographical shift in discourse on images of native americans from the exploited native body towards the more complex account of indigenous agency. examining the work—and the evolving reception thereof—of native american artists like luna allows for a nuanced analysis of this shift, and illuminates the role that indigenous cultural producers have played in steering the dialogue towards an acknowledgement of native agency. explaining the impetus behind take a picture, luna stated, “i saw some indian selling his red ass to sell jewelry, and i was ashamed but i knew what he was doing—he was working. i’ve worked too . . . as indians we have all been on the tourist line.”49 his sentiment echoes that of paul chaat smith, who describes the experience of being a native american as partially “our own frequent willingness to lead the searchers in their quest for the real indian.”50 viewed sequentially, the various iterations of take a picture thus bring to light dual visual historical narratives: the stereotypical depictions of native americans by non-natives, and the way native americans have posed themselves to f it and challenge these western stereotypes. the history of native self-staging to fit western expectations productively problematizes a shortsighted reading of luna’s work. louis kaplan argues that, “if we take a picture of another person or of a group, we pose them in a relationship with exteriority—exposing them to the look of others and even to themselves as other.”51 the complex relationships between identity, agency, and the other—particularly as enacted in the pose and the photograph—are fraught for native americans whose past continues to be colonized by western representational epistemologies that encroach on their lived present. yet, as catherine robbins notes, echoing george horse capture’s appreciation for curtis’s photographs, “some of curtis’s ‘vanishing’ indians—alive and well today—admire his portraits.”52 posed though they may be, photographs like curtis’s are a part of native american history and can be admired for their visual pleasure, even with an awareness of their construction. 53 extrapolating from an earlier version of take a picture, blocker asserts that, “even as the ethnographer, curator, and historian take a picture, they also leave a picture.”54 in her estimation, this “trade,” while potentially exploitative, allows for continued native presence in the face of “a visual discourse working hard to make them disappear.”55 c haracter iz ing such interactions as a “trade” acknowledges the agency of native americans who may have strategically posed for documentary photographs. indeed, even while curtis characterized his sitters as the “vanishing race,” those sitters insisted on their continued existence, their survivance, by agreeing to pose for him. regardless of the participants’ selection of rea l 49 luna, quoted in blocker, “failures of self-seeing: james luna remembers dino,” paj: a journal of performance and art 23, no. 1 (january 2001), 31. 50 smith, “ghos t in the machine,” 9 . 51 louis kaplan, “being exposed: thinking photography and c ommunity in spencer tunick’s naked world through the lens of jean-luc nancy,” in photography: theoretical snapshots , eds . j.j long, a ndrea noble, and edward welch (new york: routledge, 2009), 128. 52 robbins , all indians , 245. 53 in a way, such pos ing was inevitable; lippard notes that “the pose is an imposition, s ince native people had not traditional way of s itting for a portrait or a photograph; self-representation in that sense was not part of the cultures.” lippard, partial recall, 39 . 54 blocker, “a mbivalent entertainments,” 73. 55 ibid. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 2 5 e l i z a b e th s . ha w l e y c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.170 indian to be photographed with in take a picture, luna’s very presence reminds his audience that native peoples have not disappeared. while the photograph and the pose are key to luna’s take a picture, the multiple performances of the work also necessitate a consideration of different forms of reenactment. colloquially speaking, to reenact is simply to act or perform again. in this sense, luna can be seen to reenact two aspects of reenactment: first, since most audience members e lect to have their photograph taken with luna in a headdress, the performance can be interpreted as a reenactment of stereotypical western conceptions of the real indian. second, luna’s purposeful participation in this performance indicates that it is a reenactment of the way native americans have frequently re-appropriated western stereotypes for various reasons. but these forms of reenactment could be carried out with a single performance; the multiple restaging points to a third and fourth aspect of reenactment pertinent to luna’s work: thirdly, luna insists on the enduring presence of the so-called vanishing race by continuing to reenact take a picture, for while absence may underlie the presence of performance, performances that are staged again and again disrupt disappearance. fina lly, because no performance can ever be repeated exactly, and no performance can ever replicate past attitudes exactly, reenactments have an emancipatory potential. in his debordian essay “an arena in which to reenact,” sven lütticken notes: “operating within contemporary performative spectacle, if from a marginal position, art can stage small but significant acts of difference. from this perspective, historical reenactment and living history too may constitute a potential waiting to be activated.”56 in this sense, take a picture does not just re-inscribe stereotypical attitudes through reenactment. rather, the restaging of the performance allows for intervention, for potentially changing these attitudes. luna’s staging strategy for take a picture thus far seems to encourage viewers to choose the character in regalia as the real indian, thereby pointing to the continued circulation of native american stereotypes. yet the work also provides for potentially different reactions: despite pushing viewers to choose his regalia-attired indian, luna seems to paradoxically hold a simultaneous expectation with each restaging that this time, the outcome will be different. while stereotypic imagery will always be a part of native american history, future attitudes regarding native americans may change. perhaps in performances of take a picture with a real indian yet to come, audience members’ choices will be more evenly distributed amongst the three constructions of indian identity; since the very designation “real indian” is a fallacy, none of these constructions represent the real indian, and yet, in a way, they all do. 56 sven lütticken, “a n a rena in which to reenact,” in life, once more: forms of reenactment in contemporary art (rotterdam: witte de with, c enter for c ontemporary art, 2005), 60. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 2 6 j a m e s lu n a a n d th e p a r a d o x i ca l l y p r e s en t v a n i s hi n g i n d i a n c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.170 new articles in this journal are licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 united states license. this journal is operated by the university library system of the university of p ittsburgh as part of its d-scribe digital p ublishing p rogram, and is co-sponsored by the university of p ittsburgh press. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/ http://www.pitt.edu/ http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/ http://www.upress.pitt.edu/upressindex.aspx http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ vol 5, no 1 “agency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2016.149 http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu photographs of the “dust of the highway” georgiana goddard king’s way of saint james annemarie iker abstract this article explores the use of photography in american art historian georgiana goddard king’s the way of saint james (1920). king’s genre-defying book on the camino de santiago pilgrimage intertwines art historical insights with literary commentary, historical examinations, geographical observations, and travelogue. but despite king’s rich, groundbreaking scholarship on medieval spain in the way of saint james and other monographs, her legacy has been overshadowed by subsequent art historians, chief among them her peer arthur kingsley porter. here, it is suggested that king’s emphasis in the way of saint james on personal experiences of pilgrimage—both historical and contemporary — diminished the value of her work in the eyes of her colleagues, particularly when compared with porter’s supposedly objective studies. these differences in approach to the c amino de santiago, visually manifest in king’s and porter’s respective deployment of photographic evidence, have implications for medieval, historiographic, and feminist art historical inquiries. about the author annemarie iker is a doctoral student in the department of art and archeology at pr inceton university. she received her ma in art history from williams college. her research focuses on artistic and scholarly connections between southern europe, northern europe, and the americas in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and she has a special interest in the historiography of spanish medieval art. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.149 following the mysterious disappearance of art historian arthur kingsley porter from the coast of donegal, ireland in 1933, his former doctoral student kenneth conant mourned the loss of “one of the truly great medievalists of our time.”1 conant, by then a professor of architecture at harvard university, credited porter (b. stamford, ct, 1883; d. inishbofin, ireland 1933) with challenging the regional classifications governing the study of early medieval art and architecture. through monographs like romanesque sculpture of the pilgrimage roads (1923) and spanish romanesque sculpture (1928), porter expounded a model of stylistic development and transmission facilitated by the pilgrimage to santiago de compostela, in the spanish province of galicia. “of enduring value,” conant noted, “was his new emphasis on the importance of spain.”2 while porter is remembered today as an—if not the—american leader in the study of spanish medieval art and architecture, the iberian peninsula was hardly “new” to georgiana goddard king (b, west columbia, wv, 1871; d. los angeles, ca, 1939), founding chair of the department of art history at bryn mawr college (fig. 1).3 a path-breaking art histor ian, king taught the first graduate courses on spanish art in the united states and produced scholarship of noted breadth, depth, and ingenuity. king’s intellectual commitment to the iberian peninsula long predates the 1923 publication of porter’s romanesque sculpture of the pilgrimage roads. by 1923, king had already released an annotated edition of george edmund street’s gothic architecture in spain (1914); a scholarly re-issue of street’s writing, george edmund street, unpublished notes and republished papers (1916); a brief account of the military orders in spain (1921); and a three-volume text on the camino de santiago, the way of saint james (1920).4 in addition to these book-length studies, king, also prior to 1923, had published numerous articles on spanish castles, cloisters, and churches in the most distinguished 1 kenneth conant, “arthur kingsley porter,” speculum 9 (1934): 95. 2 ibid. 3 scholars began to revisit king’s legacy at the turn of the twenty-first century. see madeline h. caviness, “seeking modernity through the romanesque: g.g. king and e.h. lowber behind a camera in spain c. 1910-25,” journal of art historiography 11 (2014): 1-30; alba del pozo garcía, “una pionera de hispanismo: georgiana goddard king (1871-1939),” informes usa 14 (2013); ana hernández, “georgiana goddard king (1871-1939), pionera de la historia del arte medieval en galicia,” in as mulleres na historia de galicia. actas do i encontro interdisciplinar de historia de xénero , ed. miguel garcía-fernández, silvia cernadas martínez, aurora ballesteros (santiago de compostela: andavira, 2012), compact disc; hernández, “saint mary of melón por georgiana goddard king,” quintana 7 (2008): 203-207; janice mann, “‘hark the herald angels sing’: here’s to georgiana goddard king (1871-1939)” in women medievalists and the academy, ed. jane chance (madison, wi: university of wisconsin press, 2005), 111-126; mann, “georgiana goddard king and a. kingsley porter discover the art of medieval spain,” in spain in america, ed. richard l. kagan (champaign, il: university of illinois press, 2002), 171-192; and susanna terrell saunders, “georgiana goddard king (1871-1939): educator and pioneer in medieval spanish art” in women as interpreters of the visual arts, 1820-1979, ed. claire richter sherman and adele m. holcomb (westport, ct: greenwood press, 1981), 209-238. 4 note that king appears to have largely completed the way of saint james in 1917 when she submitted the manuscript to her editors. she further edited the manuscript in 1919 while in spain. see caviness, “seeking modernity through the romanesque,” 18. photographs of the “dust of the highway” georgiana goddard king’s way of saint james annemarie iker http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 2 9 a n n e m a r ie i k e r c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.149 academic journals in the united states.5 as her bryn mawr colleague harold wethey would observe in king’s obituary, american art historical scholarship on spain f lourished under porter and his followers. but if porter came to overshadow king in her lifetime, and eventually, to eclipse her entirely, it was not always so: “the american pioneer in this r ich field was a woman,” wrote wethey, “professor georgiana goddard king.”6 figure 1 unidentified photographer, professor georgiana goddard king at bryn mawr college, c . 1910. spec ial collections, bryn mawr c ollege library, bryn mawr, pa. c ourtesy special collections, bryn mawr c ollege library. king’s obscurity relative to porter, ironically, may be attributed to her best-known book, the way of saint james. across three illustrated volumes, king explores the monuments and traditions of the camino de santiago. early reviewers noted that the way of saint james interlaces art history with literature, history, archeology, folklore, geography, and travelogue, forming king’s “own personal genre.”7 the resulting weave is thick , with each strand maintaining its apartness. the close formal analysis of monasteries, churches, and cathedrals along the camino de santiago lies beside the recounting of long-ago battles, recitation of archaic poems, description of landscapes, and even reports of the author’s present-day dealings with her fellow pilgrims. indeed, king acknowledges in the introduction 5 among early articles published by king are: “three unknown churches in spain,” american journal of archaeology 22 (1918): 154-165; “spanish cloisters,” journal of the american institute of architects 7 (1919): 481-8; “castles in spain,” journal of the american institute of architects 10 (1921): 377-382; and “some churches in galicia,” art studies 1 (1923): 55-64. in 1923—the same year as the publication of porter’s romanesque sculpture of the pilgrimage roads—she published sardinian painting (new york: longmans, green and co.); the following year, the long-researched pre-romanesque churches of spain (new york: longmans, green and co.); and in 1927, mudéjar. in 1941, her heart of spain, a collection of essays edited by agnes mongan, was published posthumously. 6 harold e. wethey, “an american pioneer in hispanic studies: georgiana goddard king,” parnassus 11 (1939): 33. 7 ibid. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 3 0 p h o to g r a p hs o f th e “d u s t o f th e h i g h w a y ” c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.149 to the way of saint james that the aim of her project shifted considerably from start to finish: the intention, as the reader will see, has grown long since from a mere pedantic exercise in architecture, to a very pilgrimage, to following ardently along the ancient way where all the centuries have gone.8 over the course of the way of saint james, king forgoes “mere pedantic exercise[s] in architecture” for evocation, and impartiality for ardor.9 most significantly, she grants the same attentiveness to sensory apprehension and shifting internal states as she does to art and architecture. choir screens, vaults, and tympana yield often to the chronicling o f experience—to, as king intended, the “very pilgrimage” itself. king, in the way of saint james, and porter, in romanesque sculpture of the pilgrimage roads, trace the same pilgrimage road. nonetheless, their scholarship diverges sharply in focus, perspective, and tone. porter himself broached this divergence in a review of his student conant’s early architectural history of the cathedral of santiago de compostela (1926). surveying the existing literature on the cathedral, porter writes, miss king [in the way of saint james], while bringing much new light had her hands far too full with the vast subject of the pilgrimage roads to be able to undertake the thousands of patient measurements, the conscientious checking up of results, the stone-for-stone study of the building required for an architectural monograph.10 implicitly, porter aligns himself with the “patient” and “conscientious” “stone -for-stone study” practiced by his student, conant—the very approach labeled “mere pedant[ry]” by king.11 the self-consciously differing objectives and methods of the art historian as envisioned by king and porter, then, are readily apparent in their respective writing. but as distinctive as each medievalist’s prose, i suggest, is his or her mobilization of visual evidence. though king, like porter, engaged deeply with images and objects, her own production of images and objects—namely, photographs and illustrated scholarly publications—has received less attention.12 here, this topic is addressed through photographs featured by king in the way of saint james. i propose that these photographs deserve 8 georgiana goddard king, the way of saint james, 3 vols. (new york: g.p. putnam’s sons, 1920), 1:23. 9 ibid. 10 arthur kingsley porter, “santiago again,” art in america and elsewhere (february 1927): 5-6. 11 conant wrote a fond review of king’s heart of spain (1941), a book published two years after her death. in the review, he praises king’s “flashing mind, her keen artistic judgment, and her warm appreciative intelligence” and calls her “one of the choicest critics among american critics, historians, and teachers of medieval art.” see conant, “heart of spain [review],” the art bulletin 24 (1942): 110. 12 there are important exceptions, however. on the topic of king’s usage of photography, see caviness, “seeking modernity through the romanesque.” for more on porter’s usage of photography—better documented than king’s, like his career at large—see christopher r. lakey, “contingencies of display: benjamin, photography, and imagining the medieval past,” postmedieval: a journal of medieval cultural studies 7 (2016): 86-87; kathryn brush, “imag(in)ing medieval stones: arthur kingsley porter, photography, and the study of romanesque sculpture after world war i” (paper presented at “photo archives and the photographic memory of art history,” part iii, institute of fine arts, new york university, new york city, march 25-6, 2011); friedrich kestel, “the arthur kingsley porter collection of photography and the european preservation of monuments,” visual resources 9 (1994): 361-381; and james ackerman, “the visual arts collections: manifold resources,” in the invention of photography and its impact on learning: photographs from harvard university and radcliffe college and from the collection of harrison d. horblit, ed. louise todd ambler and melissa banta (cambridge, ma: harvard university library, 1989), 62-71. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 3 1 a n n e m a r ie i k e r c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.149 careful consideration as interpretive tools working in tandem with the text around them. moreover, i believe that they are contrasted productively with photographs featured by porter in romanesque sculpture of the pilgrimage roads. for it is through examination of king and porter’s treatment of the same subject, the camino de santiago, that differences in their scholarship emerge most starkly. these differences can be observed at once v isually and textually: while the photographs included by porter in romanesque sculpture of the pilgrimage roads demonstrate his commitment to what he termed “stone-for-stone study,” those included by king in the way of saint james, by contrast, reveal her stated intention to approximate, in book form, a “very pilgrimage.” to be sure, king and porter alike were precocious in their early adoption of photography. both learned to photograph to aid their research, and both included reproductions of photographs by themselves, family, friends, and commercial photographers in their various publications. nonetheless, photographs included in their monographs on the camino de santiago betray fundamentally dissimilar conceptions of the practice of art history —and, i argue, shed light on the reasons for porter’s enduring luster and king’s eventual anonymity. first, though, it merits emphasis that i discuss neither king nor porter as a photographer. rather, i focus on king’s strategic use of photographic illustrations in the way of saint james, and arrive at new insights by comparing her approach toward illustrations with that of porter in romanesque sculpture of the pilgrimage roads. in part, my motives are practical: while porter attributes photographs to himself, to his wife, and to commercial photographers, king, unfortunately, does not specify the source of her photographs and photogravures.13 recent scholarship by madeline caviness indicates that many were purchased from commercial photographers.14 given the range of photographic authorship in porter’s volumes and the remaining uncertainty regarding attribution in king’s, i do not stress the identity of those behind the camera. instead, i foreground the rhetorical deployment of photographs as art historical evidence by king—evidence in support of a history of art, perhaps, less familiar to us today than that presented by porter. santiago de compostela: two views of the puerta de las platerías one of the few sites along the camino de santiago documented visual ly in both king’s way of saint james and porter’s romanesque sculpture of the pilgrimage roads is its culmination, the cathedral of santiago de compostela.15 santiago emerged as a pilgr image destination for european christians in the ninth century, nearly a thousand years after the 13 in romanesque sculpture of the pilgrimage roads, porter includes photographs attributed to himself (“a.k.p.”), to his wife (“l.w.p.”), and to professional photographers whose images he purchased. featured in this paper are photographs porter attributes to the barcelona-based photographer roselló mas and the madrid-based photographer j. roig. see porter, romanesque sculpture of the pilgrimage roads (boston: marshall jones company, 1923), 1:357. 14 as caviness writes in “seeking modernity through the romanesque,” both king and her partner and travel companion, edith lowber, were active, accomplished photographers. even so, most of the photographs featured in the way of saint james appear to have been purchased from commercial photographers or engraved after photographs already published, indicates caviness (19). to further complicate matters, few of the many photographic negatives or prints deposited by king and lowber at bryn mawr college and at the hispanic society of america can be decisively attributed to either woman. caviness, quoting patrick lenaghan, curator of photography at the hispanic society, suggests that these negatives and prints, some of which went on to appear in king’s books, all be labeled “photos from the king-lowber expeditions.” see caviness, “seeking modernity through the romanesque,” 6. 15 for many historical and contemporary pilgrims, the camino de santiago has concluded at the cathedral of santiago de compostela. other pilgrims, however, have continued beyond the cathedral to finisterre, a peninsula on the west coast of spain whose name comes from the latin finis terrae, “end of the earth.” http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 3 2 p h o to g r a p hs o f th e “ d u s t o f th e h i g h w a y ” c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.149 remains of saint james—an early apostle of christ, who purportedly preached the gospel in spain, and was martyred in jerusalem—were said to have appeared miraculously off the coast of galicia.16 by 896 a modest church containing saint james’ tomb began to attract small numbers of pilgrims.17 so began the practice of journeying overland or by sea to the remote northwestern corner of spain, a practice king calls “hugeous, incredible.”18 even porter, a more restrained writer, professes that the “actuality of the pilgrimage, like a cosmic phenomenon, overwhelms with the sense of its force, its inevitability.”19 as more recent scholarship has stressed, though, there was nothing “inevitable” about santiago’s rise to the ranks of longstanding christian pilgrimage destinations like jerusalem and rome. the construction of the present cathedral of santiago de compostela, begun in 1078 under the lea dership of alfonso vi, king of castilla, león, and galicia, and the local bishop, diego peláez, serves as a particularly dramatic example of the promotion of pilgrimage by interested parties.20 for scholars of early medieval art and architecture, the cathedral’s southern entrance, the puerta de las platerías (silversmiths’ portal), holds particular interest as it appears to be the structure’s only remaining romanesque façade.21 porter, significantly, includes eighteen 16 for an account of the myth and life of saint james in relation to the cathedral of santiago de compostela, see kenneth conant, the early architectural history of the cathedral of santiago de compostela (cambridge: harvard university press, 1926), 4. for a contemporary perspective on the cathedral, its origins, and its traditions, see josé-luis senra, en el principio: génesis de la catedral románica de santiago de compostela. contexto, construcción y programa iconográfico (santiago de compostela: teófilo edicións, 2014). 17 according to conant, a new church built around saint james’ tomb was begun under the leadership of king alfonso iii (king of asturias, león, and galicia) and bishop sisnando menéndez in 879, completed in 896, and dedicated in 899 (conant, cathedral of santiago de compostela, 6). more recent scholarship has emphasized the role of eleventh-century bishop diego peláez in nurturing the cult of saint james and conceiving the present cathedral of santiago de compostela. see for instance senra, génesis de la catedral románica de santiago de compostela. 18 king, the way of saint james, 1:25. 19 porter, romanesque sculpture, 1:171. 20 the construction of the cathedral of santiago de compostela had firmly established religious, political, and financial motivations. karen rose mathews in “reading romanesque sculpture: the iconography of the south portal sculpture at santiago de compostela” (gesta 39 [2000]: 3-12) addresses the role of local archbishop diego gelmírez in commissioning the puerta de las platerías and shaping its vision of ecclesiastical might. mathews situates the construction of this south portal in a moment of tension between gelmírez, and townspeople and lay leaders. likewise, barbara abou-el-haj explores the cathedral of santiago de compostela as an expression of gelmírez’s political ambitions in “santiago de compostela in the time of diego gelmírez,” gesta 36 (1997): 165-179. additionally, christabel watson re-dates significant portions of the western facade and interior—long attributed to a single “master mateo”—to the tenure of gelmírez, expanding his already considerable importance to the early development of the pilgrimage to santiago. see watson, “a reassessment of the western parts of the romanesque cathedral of santiago de compostela,” journal of the society of architectural historians 59 (2000): 505-521. 21 m.f. hearn writes, “all that remains of three great façade ensembles [at the cathedral of santiago de compostela] is to be found on the south transept façade, known as puerta de las platerías” (142). he suggests that the portal has undergone at least six major renovations since the twelfth century, leaving the portal program a “meaningless jumble.” m.f. hearn, romanesque sculpture: the revival of monumental stone sculpture in the eleventh and twelfth centuries (oxford: phaidon press, 1981), 145. porter also considered the portal a puzzle: “no order is traceable in the composition as a whole. little statues, big statues, pieces of statues are walled in helter-skelter” (212). he proposed that two major renovations have occurred. see porter, romanesque sculpture, 212. more recently, claudia rückert has argued that one discrete sculptural element on the puerta de las platerías, the so-called “woman with the skull,” sheds light on the architectural transformations undergone by this southern portal. according to rückert, the sculpture originally appeared on the romanesque northern portal, destroyed in the eighteenth century, and was subsequently integrated into the southern portal. this move, she writes, was one of many reconstructions during the medieval, early modern, and modern periods, leading to the portal’s “disturbed appearance.” rückert, “a reconsideration of the woman with the skull on the puerta de las platerías of santiago de compostela cathedral,” gesta 51 (2012): 130. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 3 3 a n n e m a r ie i k e r c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.149 photographs of the puerta de las platerías alone in romanesque sculpture of the pilgr image roads. the first plate, captioned puerta de las platerías, relief in western buttress. a ferocious lion, depicts its subject in great detail (fig. 2). with its head swive led toward the viewer, a sculpted lion strides forward intently along its stone backdrop and casts a menacing glance to the right. the lion’s muscled haunches and blocky head project from the façade with force, while the pocked granite makes its hollowed eyes seem wild and its hide mangy. figure 2 j. roig, puerta de las platerías , relief in wes tern buttress . a ferocious lion, from a rthur kings ley p orter, romanesque sculpture of the pilgrimage roads , vol. 6 , castile, as turias , galicia (bos ton: marshall jones c ompany, 1923), plate 674 (photo: author). but in relation to the decorated portion of the façade at large, this beast is marginal, even diminutive. the lion slinks atop a stringcourse to the left of the portal, peripheral to the elaborate figurative sculpture extending across the tympana, spandrel, and jambs (fig. 3). indeed, the photograph itself supplies much of the menace. the tight focus and oblique angle used by the photographer, for example, amplify the lion’s size and accentuate its heft.22 the creature in a ferocious lion appears ready to pounce out of its frame: its toenails nearly scrape the photograph’s lower border, and its back leg, caught mid-stride, flexes with potential. seen as one component of the larger portal program, however, the lion is less a fearsome predator and more a ready guard. figure 3 c athedral of santiago de c ompostela, la c oruña, spain, begun c . 1075, view of the puerta de las p laterías (photo: josé luis filpo c abana, wikimedia c ommons). 22 porter attributes a ferocious lion to “j. roig,” likely juan roig, a commercial photographer based in madrid. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 3 4 p h o to g r a p hs o f th e “d u s t o f th e h i g h w a y ” c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.149 king, in the way of saint james, also includes a photograph of the famed puerta de las platerías. in her image, titled simply puerta de las platerías, porter’s “ferocious lion” becomes an inconspicuous housecat (fig. 4). far from magnifying a single sculpture, puerta de las platerías includes the entirety of the cathedral’s southern transept. the photographer captures the full vertical extent of the façade, from the steps leading to the porta ls, to the first level’s portals and spandrel, to the second level’s paired windows, and finally to the roofline’s balustrade.23 the photograph also features a section of the cloister, to the le ft of the staircase, and the clock tower, to the portal’s right. thus while a ferocious lion portrays a self-contained entity removed from its portal context, puerta de las platerías emphasizes the portal’s embeddedness in its broader architectural site. figure 4 unidentified photographer, puerta de las platerías , from georgiana goddard king, the way of saint james , vol. 3 (new york: g.p . p utnam’s sons, 1920), page 145 (photo: author). in addition to the difference in scale, king’s puerta de las platerías bears traces of the circumstances behind its making. to the right of the photograph a broad shadow cast by the protruding clock tower sweeps across the cathedral, leaving recessed doorways and windows in varying degrees of darkness according to their depths and distances from the spire. the uneven lighting draws attention to other idiosyncrasies contained within the photograph, from its slightly slanted and plunging perspective to the sole open door in the le ft porta l. unlike porter’s ferocious lion, the photograph selected by king prompts consideration of the time and place of its own manufacture. already, king and porter’s distinct photographic approaches to the same monument, puerta de las platerías, indicate substantial differences in their art historical projects. a ferocious lion, like nearly all of porter’s 1,540 photographs in romanesque sculpture of the pilgrimage roads, isolates a single sculptural element from its broader programmatic setting (figs. 5 and 6). according to christopher lakey, porter’s tendency toward tightly cropped photographs allowed him to “reproduce aspects of medieval sculpture that would normally 23 as with other photographs and photogravures in the way of saint james, king does not credit the photographer of puerta de las platerías. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 3 5 a n n e m a r ie i k e r c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.149 escape the eyes of modern viewers.”24 this approach, he continues, resembles that of walter hege and richard hamann, german photographers contemporary with porter who also trained their cameras on medieval sculpture.25 like the photographs of hege and hamann, those included by porter in romanesque sculpture of the pilgrimage roads demonstrate a high degree of visual precision. porter, for instance, notes in his text that the ferocious lion possesses “peculiar paws” and a “sardonic expression,” and that its “tail [is] cur led around behind his leg.”26 all of these traits are visible in porter’s photograph but impossible to discern in king’s puerta de las platerías. figure 5 lucy p orter, puerta de las platerías . western portal, wes tern jamb. moses , from a rthur kingsley p orter, romanesque sculpture of the pilgrimage roads , vol. 6 , castile, as turias , galicia (bos ton: marshall jones company, 1923), plate 682 (photo: author). the remaining seventeen of porter’s eighteen photographs of the puerta de las platerías in romanesque sculpture of the pilgrimage roads move carefully across the cathedra l’s southern façade. frame by frame, the images proceed from west to east across the spandrel, then west to east across the tympana, and finally, west to east across the jambs and buttresses. after a ferocious lion, for instance, appears upper zone, western end. apostles, st. peter, expulsion, angels (fig. 7). as the title indicates, this photograph encompasses a small portion of the leftmost part of the spandrel. the largest-scale photograph, puerta de las platerías, upper portion. apostles, st. james, christ, god the father, apostles , depicts the central segment of the spandrel (fig. 8). more typically, however, porter’s photographs portray single figures, like a bishop, or small figural groupings, like apostles, angels, st. peter, an apostle (figs. 9 and 10). 24 lakey, “contingencies of display,” 87. 25 for a critical perspective on hege’s photography, see markus hundemer, “reiter & co.—der fotograf walter hege (18931955) und der bamberger dom,” in dem himmel entgegen: 1000 jahre kaiserdom bamberg exh. cat., ed. norbert jung and wolfgang f. reddig, 183-192. 26 porter, romanesque sculpture of the pilgrimage roads, 1:213. here, citing their formal similarities, porter argues that santiago de compostela’s two lions (one has disappeared, according to porter [1:213]) were copied some 50 years later by the sculptor who executed the lion of saint mark on the papal throne at the cathédral d’avignon. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 3 6 p h o to g r a p hs o f th e “d u s t o f th e h i g h w a y ” c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.149 figure 6 j. roig, puerta de las platerías . eas tern tympanum. adoration of the magi; doubting thomas, crowning with thorns , flagellation, betrayal, from a rthur kings ley porter, romanesque sculpture of the pilgrimage roads , vol. 6 , castile, as turias , galicia (bos ton: marshall jones company, 1923), plate 680 (photo: author). figure 7 lucy p orter, puerta de las platerías . upper zone, wes tern end. apos tles , st. peter, expuls ion, angels , from a rthur kings ley p orter, romanesque sculpture of the pilgrimage roads , vol. 6 , castile, as turias , galicia (bos ton: marshall jones c ompany, 1923), plate 675 (photo: author). http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 3 7 a n n e m a r ie i k e r c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.149 figure 8 roselló mas, puerta de las platerías , upper portion. apos tles , st. james , chris t, god the father, apos tles , from a rthur kings ley p orter, romanesque sculpture of the pilgrimage roads , vol. 6 , castile, as turias , galicia (bos ton: marshall jones c ompany, 1923), plate 676 (photo: author). here, the mutual dependence of image and text best demonstrates porter’s underlying intent in romanesque sculpture of the pilgrimage roads. he begins his chapter on the puerta de las platerías by noting formal similarities in specific sculptural elements between this portal in santiago de compostela and the western portal of saint-sernin, in toulouse. after dismissing the notion that a single “master” executed them both, he notes that “[i]t is, however, evident that one must have influenced the other. which is the original?”27 in the chapter that follows, porter places the cathedral of santiago de compostela in a spatial and temporal genealogy extending along the camino, a “chain which stretched from santiago to the remote ends of europe.”28 he relates the galician cathedral to developments in sculpture and architecture to be found from lombardy, in italy, to languedoc, in france. but the means by which he does this merit close attention. after posing the question of which cathedral came first, santiago de compostela or saint-sernin, porter’s next sentence proves equally revealing: “the documents do not determine the question” (emphasis added).29 what will, porter leaves unstated, is the meticulous formal analysis and comparison facilitated by his vast repository of visual evidence—that is, photographs. 27 porter, romanesque sculpture, 1:211. 28 ibid., 1:225. 29 ibid., 1:211. it should be noted, however, that porter in fact placed great importance on documentary evidence in dating (see for instance “the chronological problem,” romanesque sculpture, 1:3-17). he simply considered the existing documentary evidence inadequate in the case of the puerta de las platerías. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 3 8 p h o to g r a p hs o f th e “d u s t o f th e h i g h w a y ” c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.149 figure 9 roselló mas, puerta de las platería. eas tern portal, wes tern jamb. a bishop, from a rthur kings ley p orter, romanesque sculpture of the pilgrimage roads , vol. 6 , castile, as turias , galicia (bos ton: marshall jones c ompany, 1923), plate 683 (photo: author). porter, in the preface to his earlier book, medieval architecture (1909), writes that he has “preferred photographs whenever available as being more accurate and presenting architectural forms as they actually appear.”30 the ratio of plates to text in his scholarship reflects this belief in the “accuracy” of photographs. medieval architecture features 1,010 pages of text to 289 plates; in lombard architecture, the numbers climb to 1,838 pages of text to 954 plates; and in romanesque sculpture of the pilgrimage roads, photographs vastly outnumber prose, with 1,540 plates, and 412 pages of text.31 this latter book fills ten volumes, one of them devoted exclusively to prose and the other nine, remarkably, devoted exclusively to full-page photographs. while the prose and photographs in romanesque sculpture of the pilgrimage roads appear in distinct volumes, porter links them tightly by making frequent reference to plates. in his chapter on the puerta de las platerías, for instance, porter notes, “[t]he same extraordinary mixture of subjects exists to-day in the tympana (ill. 678-680)” directing readers to visual confirmation of the tympana’s heterogeneity across three different photographs.32 the plates themselves, moreover, feature long titles which systematica lly locate the sculptures by city, province, monument, and position within the monument. titles also provide iconographic explication, as in this example from the puerta de las p later ías: “santiago de compostela [city], (la coruña) [province], catedral [monument]. puerta de las platerías, western jamb [position within monument]. creation of adam; god reproves adam 30 porter, medieval architecture: its origins and development (new york: the baker and taylor company, 1909), viii. 31 for the source of these figures on the ratio between images and text in porter’s scholarship, see friedrich kestel, “the arthur kingsley porter collection of photography and the european preservation of monuments,” visual resources 9 (1994): 365. 32 porter, romanesque sculpture, 1:213. emphasis added. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 3 9 a n n e m a r ie i k e r c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.149 and eve; angels, prophets [iconography].”33 unsurprisingly, just the list of illustrations accompanying porter’s 1,540 photographs fills tens of pages. porter, to be sure, argues as much through images as words. figure 10 j. roig, apostles , angels , st. peter, an apos tle, from a rthur kings ley porter, romanesque sculpture of the pilgrimage roads , vol. 6 , castile, as turias , galicia (bos ton: marshall jones c ompany, 1923), plate 688 (photo: author). king, though, displays a different attitude toward photography. she writes in the forward to the way of saint james, “spain is a long way off, and pictures are not always explic it.” 34 certainly, king makes less use of photographs than porter: the way of saint james reverses his ratio of images to prose, with 37 plates and 1,687 pages of text. king, furthermore, embeds photographs into her three volumes. unlike porter, she intersperses her text at varying intervals with illustrations—some, full-page photogravures, and others, photographs that share the page with words. often, these illustrations bear no direct relation to the prose nearest to them, and searching for relevant passages requires considerable page-thumbing. perhaps most noticeably, while porter’s photographs focus exclusively on sculpture, k ing includes a much wider array of imagery. among the subjects of photographs included in the way of saint james are mountain ranges, plazas, bridges, markets, and farmers; many photographs, moreover, contain landscape, architectural, and human elements in a s ingle composition (figs. 11 and 12). figure 11 unidentified photographer, a little town in leon, from georgiana goddard king, the way of saint james , vol. 2 (new york: g.p . p utnam’s sons, 1920), page 235 (photo: author). 33 porter, romanesque sculpture, vol. 6, illustrations: castile, asturias, galicia, 7. 34 king, the way of saint james, 1:iii-iv. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 4 0 p h o to g r a p hs o f th e “d u s t o f th e h i g h w a y ” c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.149 figure 12 unidentified photographer, the thursday market in es tella, from georgiana goddard king, the way of saint james , vol. 1 (new york: g.p . p utnam’s sons, 1920) opposite page 326 (photo: author). king’s photographs in the way of saint james number fewer than porter’s in romanesque sculpture of the pilgrimage roads. they also appear less methodically ordered and titled. even so, they express her purpose as aptly. puerta de las platerías, for instance, permits factors external to the façade to intercede in its representation (fig. 4). contingencies like shadow, sunlight, and perspective each mark the cathedral’s southern entrance, generating speculation as to the photographer’s viewpoint, the time of day, the season, and even weather conditions. while this may be true of all photographs, a composition like ferocious lion purposefully minimizes circumstances beyond its subject. it is these very circumstances, by contrast, from which puerta de las platerías derives some of its most significant visual qualities. in the forward to the way of saint james, king rather strikingly states her interest in social, religious, historical, and circumstantial factors external to the works of art and architecture she encounters. there, she directs readers “who desire to secure facts while avoiding the context” to her index. “this makes it possible,” she continues, “for the learned to look up a church unmolested by the dust of the highway.”35 but king herself is as interested in the “dust of the highway” as the church. better put, she is as interested in the church and how “dust” shapes perception of the church—and, for that matter, perception of all else that is to be found along the highway. 35 king, the way of saint james, 1:v. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 4 1 a n n e m a r ie i k e r c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.149 king’s recounting of the twelfth-century pilgrimage to santiago de compostela by french monk aimery picaud exemplifies this interest.36 of particular relevance is a passage in which she interweaves speculation about the physical appearance of the cathedral of santiago de compostela in the twelfth century with her imaginative reconstruction of picaud’s experience there: for him, the crypt has become fabulous: there lies s. james in a marble ark, in a fair vaulted sepulcher, wonderful for size and workmanship; it is lighted heavenly-wise with carbuncles like the gems of the new jerusalem, and the air is kept sweet with divine odours; waxen tapers with heavenly radiance light it and angelic service cares for it.37 as in the photograph puerta de las platerías, this passage portrays the site at hand—the crypt below the ground level of the cathedral, with a tomb supposedly containing the remains of saint james38—through layers of sensory apprehension. king’s sensitivity to scale, texture, light, and even smell conjure the crypt as a space experienced rather than a purely architectural space. if puerta de las platerías evokes a clear, bright morning due to the shadows stretching west across the façade away from the eastern clock tower, this passage, helped by king’s liberal use of adjectives like “fabulous,” “fair,” “sweet,” and “divine,” casts the scene in a wondrous, deeply felt aura of religious marvel. king’s dedication to conveying experience in the way of saint james encompasses individuals with less historical import than picaud, presumed author of the famed camino de santiago guide-book, the codex calixtinus. once in santiago de compostela, for instance, king observes a shortage of religious faith. there, she perceives “gravity, but on the whole little devotion.”39 while her description of the cathedral’s crypt as beheld by p icaud bathes the scene in beatitude, lay worshipers in santiago receive rougher treatment. “at the shr ine you see men kneeling a little awe-struck,” she says, but, “at the gold, or at the age?” likewise, she writes, “[y]ou find a group of women saying litanies. but s. james means nothing to them, he is only the means of making magic.”40 this frank ascription of transactional motives to worship—and significantly, the appeal of material opulence— indicates the range of people and the breadth of experience that king considers worthy of study. from pious medieval monks to calculating contemporaries, she extends her thought to both the lofty ideals and complex realities of faith. two additional images of santiago de compostela in the way of saint james, the fountain at santiago and a beggar by the puerta santa, make evident king’s curiosity, 36 aimery (or aymeric) picaud, a monk and scholar from poitou, undertook the pilgrimage to santiago de compostela around 1140 (though king says, “not later than 1138” [58]). he is credited by historians with authorship and/or editorship of the codex calixtinus (occasionally called the book of saint james), five volumes on the camino de santiago containing liturgies, reports of miracles, and a traveler’s guide. see jan van herwaarden, between saint james and erasmus: studies in late-medieval religious life (leiden: brill, 2003), 356-361. millán bravo lozano also offers a helpful introduction to and contextualization of the codex calixtinus in guía del peregrino medieval. introducción, traducción, y notas (sahagún: centro de estudios del camino de santiago, 1990). for a gripping, recently published work of historical fiction in which picaud appears, see lucy pick, pilgrimage (new york: cuidono press, 2014). 37 king, the way of saint james, 3:59. 38 to the question of whether saint james’s remains are actually in the tomb at the cathedral of santiago de compostela, conant answers, “[t]he middle ages were much surer that he was than we can be.” conant, cathedral of santiago de compostela, 4. 39 king, the way of saint james, 3:23-24. 40 ibid., 3:24. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 4 2 p h o to g r a p hs o f th e “d u s t o f th e h i g h w a y ” c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.149 empathy, and expansive gaze. in the fountain, two women gather water at the fuente de los caballos (fountain of the horses), in the plaza immediately adjacent to the cathedral’s puerta de las platerías (fig. 13). the women perform a prosaic chore, indifferent to the ir proximity to one of christianity’s most sacred sites. the woman at the left stands as stout and imperious as her monogrammed, bell-shaped jug, and the younger woman to the r ight leans against the fountain’s lip, concealing what appears to be a grimace with her hand. curiously, these women recall an earlier description of santiago’s faithful. king, in a passage already quoted, observes “little devotion” in santiago “except,” she continues, “sometimes in the case of women: young women, who are afraid of life and take precautions: or elder ones who have suffered in life, and look for anodyne.”41 this written sketch is in no way paired formally with the fountain. still, its inclusion of another human dimension to fa ith—adding the alleviation of fear and suffering to the attraction of “gold,” “age,” and “magic” —seems applicable to these women, one younger and palpably timid, and the other, older and outwardly hardened. figure 13 unidentified photographer, the fountain at santiago, from georgiana goddard king, the way of saint james , vol. 3 (new york: g.p . p utnam’s sons, 1920), oppos ite page 54 (photo: author). in a beggar by the puerta santa, like the fountain, architecture provides the backdrop to human life (fig. 14). the “beggar” advances along the cathedral’s east entrance, which plays a meaningful role in lived ritual at santiago de compostela. the puerta santa (holy door) opens to the public only during saint james holy years; through the portal, the public may enter the rear ambulatory, behind the altar, and descend the staircase leading to saint james’ crypt (fig. 15).42 but the left edge of the photograph included by king aligns a lmost 41 king, the way of saint james, 3:24. 42 the puerta santa is opened to the public during años santos jacobeos (also called años santos compostelanos), years in which july 25 (saint james’s day) falls on a sunday. miguel taín guzmán gives an account of the social history of the puerta santa and festivals associated with it in “arquitecturas festivas catedralicias: los castillos y las fachadas de los fuegos del apóstol santiago,” ciencias sociais e humanidades 22 (2010): 495-518. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 4 3 a n n e m a r ie i k e r c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.149 precisely with the right edge of the puerta santa. this effectively eliminates the portal from view. in fact, all that is visible of the puerta santa in a beggar by the puerta santa is s ix of the twenty-four sculpted doormen comprising the portal’s frame.43 the photograph’s flat lighting and slanted angle, moreover, cause the sculptures to recede into their alcoves. figure 14 unidentified photographer, a beggar by the puerta santa, from georgiana goddard king, the way of saint james , vol. 3 (new york: g.p . p utnam’s sons, 1920), page 109 (photo: author). in a beggar by the puerta santa, it is not the famed and titular portal that occupies the most space. instead, the stone paving of the plaza de la quintana and the unarticulated eastern façade of the cathedral loom large. of course, these elements serve to highlight the photograph’s real subject, its “beggar.” not coincidentally, it seems, he bears a striking physical resemblance to the sculpted saint james who presides over the out-of-frame puerta santa (fig. 16). like the sculpture of saint james, the passerby has long hair, a staff, and a wide-brimmed hat which he has removed, in apparent acknowledgement of the photographer. intriguingly, the man grasps his staff just like the nearby sculpture of saint james: the two fingers closest to his thumb wrap around his walking stick, while the remaining two curl beneath it. a beggar by the puerta santa, with its preference for the human figure over the sculpted figure, typifies king’s commitment to portraying experience. rather than a photograph of the celebrated puerta santa and its revered saint james, she instead chooses to feature a humble pilgrim passing perpendicular to his stone look-alike. 43 emilia lamelas and jesús maría cendán discuss the seventeenth-century puerta santa and its sculpted doormen in greater detail in their article on its restoration, “la nueva puerta santa, catedral de santiago de compostela,” restauración & rehabilitación 93 (2004): 58-63. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 4 4 p h o to g r a p hs o f th e “d u s t o f th e h i g h w a y ” c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.149 figure 15 c athedral of santiago de c ompostela, la c oruña, spain, begun c . 1075, view of the puerta santa (holy door) (photo, 1960: william keighley, a rtstor). figure 16 c athedral of santiago de c ompostela, la c oruña, spain, begun c . 1075, view of saint james , p uerta santa (holy door) (photo, 2006: wikimedia commons). king and the “pilgrim’s perspective” in 1913, at bryn mawr college, king offered the first graduate course on spanish art in the united states.44 until her death in 1939, king would teach and publish tirelessly on secular and ecclesiastical medieval art and architecture of the iberian peninsula.45 for king, the appeal of iberia lay in the opportunity for discovery: in her assessment, medieval spain had not yet “become a part of the general scheme of things as siena.”46 despite her early 44 saunders, “georgiana goddard king,” 210. 45 though king dedicated much of her career to the medieval art and architecture of spain, her interest turned toward portugal near the end of her life. at the time of her death, she was working on a manuscript on portugal that remains unpublished and can be found among her papers at bryn mawr’s canaday special collections library. see saunders, “georgiana goddard king,” 230. 46 mann, “georgiana goddard king,” 113. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 4 5 a n n e m a r ie i k e r c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.149 contributions to medievalism, however, many historiographies of the field omit king altogether, focusing instead on luminaries like arthur kingsley porter, his french sparring partner emile mâle, and his students kenneth conant and walter muir whitehill.47 according to janice mann, one of the few art historians to offer a critical reappraisal of king in the twenty-first century, “king and her work have all but vanished from current scholarly memory.”48 despite the tendency to attribute king’s neglect to gender bias, a dif ferent factor appears equally significant. this factor—itself gendered, to be sure—is the early twentiethcentury conceptualization of art history as an academic discipline distinct from amateur aesthetics and connoisseurship. porter, though removed from the german formation of a scientific art history, or kunstwissenschaft, contributed to and benefitted from its inroads in the united states.49 indeed, kathryn brush credits porter’s growing interest in artistic attribution, dating, and provenance in the 1920s to his recent immersion in german scholarship. as she writes, romanesque sculpture of the pilgrimage roads “needs to be interpreted as the first major american rejoinder, or even rival, to certain established genres of german art history.”50 porter’s relationship to german kunstwissenschaft was hardly simple or stagnant. still, the title of the first chapter in romanesque sculpture of the pilgrimage roads—“the chronological problem”—indicates the degree to which his art historical imperatives a ligned with those gaining purchase within the academy both stateside and abroad. in his recent survey of the “modern origins of romanesque sculpture,” for instance, robert maxwell has demonstrated that the early twentieth-century search for the genesis of medieval sc ulpture caused many art historians to focus on classification according to date, region, material, and style.51 the question porter asked of the cathedrals of santiago de composte la and saint sernin—“which is the original?”—fits comfortably within this paradigm. but king’s photographs, as much as her prose, reveal the gulf between her own art historical objectives and methods, and those of her peers and successors. if king has effectively “vanished” (or, been vanquished) why return to her and her genre-defying book, the way of saint james? madeline caviness, janice mann, and susanna terrell saunders, king’s three recent champions in the united states, offer a variety of reasons. for mann, king’s writing provides a barometer of rapid changes within art history in the first half of the twentieth century. as she writes, “[b]y the 1930s the personal grounding 47 porter and mâle famously disagreed over the origins of romanesque sculpture, with mâle arguing for the primacy of languedoc and toulouse, and porter emphasizing the pilgrimage roads as transnational carriers of artistic and architectural styles. see porter’s review of mâle’s l’art religieux du xii siècle en france (1922), “spain or toulouse? and other questions,” the art bulletin 7 (1924): 2-25. 48 mann, “georgiana goddard king,” 111. for a historiographic study of spanish medieval art and architecture that explores the evolution of what mann terms “current scholarly memory,” see john w. williams, “spain or toulouse? a half century later, observations on the chronology of santiago de compostela,” in actas xxiii congreso internacional de historia del arte. granada. 1973 (granada: universidad de granada, 1976), 557-567; and williams, “the emergence of spanish romanesque sculpture: a century of scholarship,” in current directions in eleventhand twelfth-century sculpture studies, ed. robert a. maxwell and kirk ambrose (turnhout: brepols, 2010), 188-196. 49 for an account of porter’s attitudes toward developments in german art history, see brush, “german kunstwissenschaft and the practice of art history in america after world war i. interrelationships, exchanges, contexts,” marburger jahrbuch für kunstwissenschaft 26 (1999): 12-14. 50 brush, “german kunstwissenschaft,” 14. 51 robert maxwell, “modern origins of romanesque sculpture,” in a companion to medieval art, ed. conrad rudolph (malden, ma: blackwell publishing, 2006), 334-356. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 4 6 p h o to g r a p hs o f th e “d u s t o f th e h i g h w a y ” c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.149 of much of king’s scholarship caused it to lose credibility with the next generation of art historians, whose art historical methods were more regimented and scientif ic.”52 saunders strikes a similar note, suggesting that king’s “‘passionate’ attachment to spanish culture, ironically, tended to restrict the effectiveness of her art historical scholarship.” 53 caviness, meanwhile, identifies king’s life and work as another example of what she describes elsewhere as the “symbiosis between modern artists and medievalists.”54 she sees king, and her joint research and photographing expeditions in spain with edith lowber, her partner and travelling companion, as “part of a drive toward modernity.”55 crucially, both caviness and mann highlight king’s forgotten career as a symptom of the status of women within art history and academia at large. for cav iness, k ing’s “is a ta le about the silencing of women.”56 mann, moreover, stresses that it was king who first sparked porter’s interest in the pilgrimage to santiago de compostela. according to mann, a lecture given by king at haverford college in 1914 inspired porter’s research for romanesque sculpture of the pilgrimage roads57—a book, it bears repeating, frequently credited with introducing anglo-american intellectuals to medieval spain. this story, and porter’s apparent failure to properly acknowledge king, would seem to confirm judith bennett’s observations about the conflicted status of women medievalists in her article “medievalism and feminism.” there, she explains that female scholars achieved earlier and greater acceptance in medieval studies than other fields; even so, she writes, “women have been kept segregated from an d subordinated to the mainstream.”58 another reason to revisit king and particularly, the way of saint james, looks forward from king’s era into the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. new directions in romanesque scholarship suggest that king’s writing in fact prefigured many contemporary art historical concerns. caviness, for one, writes that king’s career can be seen not only as part of the “drive toward modernity” but even as “presaging a post-modern breaking down of disciplinary boundaries.”59 certainly, the way of saint james—not to mention, king’s other books—resist straightforward classification as art history given their historical, literary, archeological, and religious insights. revealingly, the very eclecticism that troubled severa l of king’s critics now seems prescient. remember that porter, for instance, felt king “had her hands far too full with the vast subject of the pilgrimage roads to be able to undertake the thousands of patient measurements, the conscientious checking up of results, the stone-forstone study of the building required for an architectural monograph.”60 in other words, porter 52 mann, “georgiana goddard king,” 121. 53 saunders, “georgiana goddard king,” 231. 54 caviness, “broadening the definitions of ‘art’: the reception of medieval works in the context of post-impressionist movements,” in hermeneutics and medieval culture, ed. patrick j. gallacher and helen damico (albany, ny: state university of new york press, 1989), 259-282. 55 caviness, “seeking modernity through the romanesque,” 4. 56 ibid., 3. 57 mann observes that porter discretely credited king with having shown him helpful photographs in “the development of sculpture in lombardy in the twelfth century” (1915). see mann, “frontiers and pioneers: american art historians discover medieval spain,” in romanesque architecture and its sculptural decoration in christian spain (toronto: university of toronto press, 2009), 21. 58 judith m. bennett, “medievalism and feminism,” speculum 68 (1993): 313. 59 caviness, “seeking modernity through the romanesque,” 4. 60 porter, “santiago again,” art in america 15 (1927): 5-6. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 4 7 a n n e m a r ie i k e r c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.149 felt that king’s broad, interdisciplinary exploration of the camino de santiago hindered her ability to undertake serious art historical research and to produce sound art historical scholarship. now, king’s writing appears newly relevant, and even complementary to that of porter. as remarkable as king’s precocious transgression of disciplinary boundaries, though, is her attentiveness to both historical and contemporary beggars, worshipers, and pilgr ims. paula gerson, in “art and pilgrimage: mapping the way” (2006), writes that early art historical scholarship centered along medieval pilgrimage routes long focused exclusively upon images, objects, and buildings. more recently, however, scholars have moved away from the description, classification, and morphological designation of these works. now, of greater interest is how residents and visitors have perceived them. “rather than imposing an artificial model on monuments,” she summarizes, “today’s scholars prefer to understand pilgrimage from the pilgrim’s point of view.”61 likewise, for christopher lakey, “a comprehension of a medieval ‘way of seeing’ is probably more important now than ever before.”62 king, of course, trained her eye and her pen on medieval and contemporary experience. she readily adopted a “pilgrim’s point of view,” although this distanced her scholarship from what lakey terms the “art historical ‘way of seeing’”63 then gaining traction among her colleagues. king considered individual experience a valid, even essential, line of art historical inquiry. her dedication to experience—past and present, her own and others’— is evident throughout the three volumes of the way of saint james.64 indeed, both mann and saunders have observed king’s “personal grounding” (mann’s term) and “‘passionate ’ attachment” (saunders’ term) in her writing on the camino de santiago. but king’s photographs, it should be noted, expose these traits just as readily. this is particularly evident in king’s approach to a carved capital in the clo ister of san pedro de la rúa, in the camino town of estella. here, text and image prove complementary, with prose offering a straightforward iconographic reading of the capital, and the photograph supplying a jolt of subjective authenticity. from king’s verbal descriptions of the histor iated capitals, the one photographed can be identified as the entombment of christ. capita l at estella would seem to offer an uncomplicated view of this sculpture, characterized succinctly by king as depicting a “carved sarcophagus, set high on four legs” (fig. 17).65 closer inspection of capital at estella, though, reveals a more personal approach. the sarcophagus itself and the sculpted figures beside and above it are actually difficult to discern: rather than a level, tightly cropped view of the sculpture—as porter likely would have supplied—the photographer replicates the familiar view that results from looking upward at a capital. because of the tipped-back perspective, other elements feature in the composition—a sliver of the arcade’s ceiling, the underside of its rounded stone arch, the 61 paula gerson, “art and pilgrimage: mapping the way,” in rudolph, a companion to medieval art, 610. 62 lakey, “contingencies of display,” 89. 63 ibid. 64 king shared her interest in experience, perception, and consciousness with phenomenologists such as edmund husserl, martin heidegger, maurice merleau-ponty, and jean-paul sartre. unfortunately, i have found no concrete evidence that king followed the development of phenomenological thought in the early twentieth century. still, given king’s postgraduate coursework in philosophy, research into her awareness of phenomenology and other philosophical currents would no doubt improve our understanding of her art historical scholarship. 65 king, the way of saint james, 1:341. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 4 8 p h o to g r a p hs o f th e “d u s t o f th e h i g h w a y ” c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.149 neighboring capital, and treetops in the courtyard. though it fails to provide a clear image of the sculpture in question, capital at estella captures something else: the point of view of the photographer, and likewise, those who have craned their necks in a cloister. the effect, it goes without saying, is quite different from porter’s desire to facilitate what lakey terms an “art historical ‘way of seeing’” rather than a “medieval ‘way of seeing.’”66 figure 17 unidentified photographer, capital at es tella, from georgiana goddard king, the way of saint james , vol. 1 (new york: g.p . p utnam’s sons, 1920), page 349 (photo: author). king, unlike porter, considered herself a pilgrim and wrote transparently about the sensory layers between her and the monuments she encountered. often, these layers are unpleasant: king openly admits to experiencing the fatigue, hunger, boredom, and general discomfort of pilgrimage. in one passage, she describes the tedious landscape approaching león: “the tawny upland is dotted with brown church towers all just alike: you look up after an hour and think you are come back in a circle.”67 few art historians would admit the occasional repetitiveness of their research, but for king, this imbues the eventual “spires of leon” with an “unguessed grace, a charm, a spell of the exquisite.”68 put another way, it is passing through the unrelieved castilian plains that makes sight of león’s cathedral feel like deliverance. elsewhere, king directly addresses the loneliness of solitary research, particularly for women. of winter nights in pamplona, home to the raucous running of the bulls during summertime sanfermines, king says: for a woman alone, they are hard. she has been out seeing things while the daylight lasted and is honestly tired; moreover, most churches close at nightfall 66 lakey, “contingencies of display,” 89. 67 king, the way of saint james, 2:176. 68 ibid., 2:177. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 4 9 a n n e m a r ie i k e r c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.149 and the rest have nothing by any chance worth seeing even were they not wrapped in a midnight of their own, just starred with votive candles.69 photographs like eunate and el sepulcro evoke the intermittent solitude and melancholy along the camino de santiago (figs. 18 and 19). in el sepulcro, a c luster of children and birds gather at the east end of a church in torres. while they are not the focus of the photograph, they are impossible to overlook. king’s description of her v isit to the church expresses similar ambivalence. an earlier art historian had warned king about the children in torres and their tendency to interrupt work; she writes, somewhat unkindly, “[t]hey are indeed tiresome as gnats, but not bad-hearted . . . their elders rebuked and dispersed them a dozen times, but always they gathered again, filling the open doorway of the empty church, and blotting out the patch of sunlight on the floor.”70 for king, with her measuring tape and camera, the children and their antics prove a nuisance. still, the chosen photograph creates a subtle layering of human lives against a church that king goes on to characterize as layered itself, with greek, roman, romanesque, and “oriental” sources, and french, italian, and mudéjar craftsmanship, all “gathered up by the side of the way.”71 figure 18 unidentified photographer, eunate, from georgiana goddard king, the way of saint james , vol. 1 (new york: g.p . p utnam’s sons, 1920), oppos ite page 230 (photo: author). a photograph taken in front of the cathedral of santiago de compostela’s puerta de las platerías encompasses the emphasis on experience, the pilgrim’s perspective, and the se lf reflexivity characteristic of the way of saint james. the pilgrim in santiago stands before the platerías portal, but with the photographer shooting away from the portal and toward the fuente de los caballos at the base of the steps (fig. 20). the photograph’s rightward t ilt echoes that of the pilgrim: the slight inclination of his body suggests the incessant push forward of the camino, albeit come to an end in santiago de compostela. as one might expect, king reveals that his traditional dress inspired the photograph. the pilgrim wears a dark robe studded with scallop shells, the symbol associated with saint james and the camino de santiago, and he bears its customary accessories, the wide-brimmed hat and staff. struck by the similarity of the man’s appearance to saint francis, king writes, she 69 king, the way of saint james, 1:261. 70 ibid., 1:310. 71 ibid., 1:321. “mudéjar” refers to architecture influenced by the moorish settlement of spain. king’s mudéjar (1927) focuses exclusively on the significance of north african, middle eastern, and central asian style and craftsmanship to medieval and early modern spanish architecture. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 5 0 p h o to g r a p hs o f th e “d u s t o f th e h i g h w a y ” c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.149 requested a portrait. he “readily yielded; then asked an alms. why not? g ive and take is fair.”72 throughout the way of saint james, king strives verbally and visually to access different perceptions of the same monuments and traditions along the camino de santiago. nonetheless, she tacitly acknowledges that she will be the one to relay these perceptions through prose and photographs. indeed, in images like a pilgrim in santiago, the specif icity of individual experience becomes manifest: king’s photo-op is another man’s charity-op, and her medieval reverie comes to an abrupt halt with their monetary exchange. time and again, king maneuvers between her commitment to portraying experience and her recognition that any experience aside from her own, whether medieval or contemporary, remains to some degree unattainable. as the way of saint james makes plain, this too is part of the “give and take” of art historical writing—a give and take, king would be gratif ied to learn, ever more important to students and scholars today. figure 19 unidentified photographer, el sepulcro, from georgiana goddard king, the way of saint james , vol. 1 (new york: g.p . p utnam’s sons, 1920), page 311 (photo: author). figure 20 unidentified photographer, a pilgrim at santiago, from georgiana goddard king, the way of saint james vol. 2 (new york: g.p . p utnam’s sons, 1920), page 483 (photo: author). 72 king, the way of saint james, 3:23. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 5 1 a n n e m a r ie i k e r c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.149 acknowledgements for early guidance on this paper, i would like to thank peter low at williams c ollege. paul park and my peers in his writing seminar at williams read early versions of this paper and their comments greatly improved it. i am especially grateful to my anonymous peer reviewers, and to my editors at contemporaneity, jacqueline lombard and elizabeth morrissey, for their encouragement and suggestions. lastly, i extend my gratitude to marianne hansen at bryn mawr college’s special collections for helping me navigate georgiana goddard king’s papers and providing me with her portrait. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 5 2 p h o to g r a p hs o f th e “d u s t o f th e h i g h w a y ” c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.149 new articles in this journal are licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 united states license. this journal is operated by the university library system of the university of p ittsburgh as part of its d-scribe digital p ublishing p rogram, and is co-sponsored by the university of p ittsburgh press. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/ http://www.pitt.edu/ http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/ http://www.upress.pitt.edu/upressindex.aspx http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ vol 5, no 1 “agency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2016.161 http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu documenting the invisible political agency in trevor paglen’s limit telephotography gary kafer abstract taken from up to forty miles away, trevor paglen's limit telephotography images of covert military bases in the american southwest are blurred by dense atmopshere, dust and debris. in effect, his photographs are highly illegible, and thus the military bases escape any sort of revelation. following this logic, if one cannot see these top secret locations, then these images are in fact not politically effective at disclosing confidential federal information. rather, paglen asserts that the political agency of his can be located not in the image, but in the practice of performing limit telephotography—standing on public land and excercising the right to photograph. in turn, paglen relocates the documentarian potential of his images into an agency formulated by a relational aesthetic, one in which the communal effects of creating the image and interpreting it generate the possibilities of enacting further practices of political resistance. about the author gary kafer is phd student in the department of cinema and media studies at the university of chicago, where he received his ma in 2015. his research examines issues of surveillance art practices in our post-privacy culture, as well as questions surrounding digital media aesthetics and contemporary visuality. he graduated phi beta kappa from the univer sity of pennsylvania in 2014 with a ba in cinema studies and visual studies, wherein he concentrated in visual neuroscience and perceptual psychology. his honors ba thesis examined stan brakhage's plastic montage by using models of motion perception to understand how he generates a type of cinematic illusionism. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.161 ”there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. we also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are things we do not know. but there are also unknown unknowns—the ones we don’t know we don’t know. donald rumsfeld1 more often than not, there is nothing to see in trevor paglen’s limit telephotography series, photographs which attempt to document the “black sites” of the united states militaryindustrial complex. top secret and highly confidential military bases far removed from populated areas, such black sites are typically buried deep in the extreme recesses of the american southwest, and thus inaccessible and indiscernible to the naked eye and even state-of-the-art cameras. manipulating technology conventionally used for photographing astrological phenomena, paglen developed a unique lens system to capture these black sites by mounting his standard-issue canon digital slr with telescope lenses ranging in focal length from 1,300 mm to 7,000 mm.2 armed with this image-making apparatus, paglen is able to capture subjects at incredibly long distances, usually up to s ix ty -five miles away. there is, however, an inverse relationship between distance and clarity: using increasingly powerful equipment to see further and further magnifies and distorts large spans of air, dust, and smog that linger in the humid atmosphere. such optical interference renders his photographs blurry and nondescript, thus precluding full study of the targeted military bases. yet, at times paglen’s work is surprisingly detailed; small jets, hangar bays, and reaper drones appear palpably close, as men can be seen dismounting planes holding cell phones to their ears and briefcases to their sides. however, most other photographs are far more unintelligible, merely depicting blurred shapes of architectural structures and vehicles disappearing beneath a haze of atmospheric and desert debris. in his own writing, paglen argues that rather than documenting military bases, his artistic practice in fact attempts to document the limitations of using photography for revealing hidden truths in federal and military confidentiality. insisting on this point, paglen remarks, “[m]y images are not produced in order to be evidence of some kind, or to reveal any kind of information at all. these are art photos.”3 here, paglen expresses a certain anxiety over the limitation of using images to produce knowledge about c lassif ied federa l information. instead of claiming that his photographs can in fact operate as evidence in his documentary practice, paglen seems to suggest that limit-telephotography does not document military sites, but rather epistemic boundaries. 1 infamous s tatement given by the secretary of defense donald rumsfeld in response to a ques tion about the lack of evidence linking the i raqi government with weapons of mass des truction at the department of defense news briefing in february 2002. donald rumsfeld, "department of defense briefing," (p ress c onference, white house, february 12, 2002), c -span, http://www.c -span.org/video/?1686461/defense-department-briefing. 2 a typical telephoto lens for this camera model has a focal length of about 300 mm. 3 mark p ritchard, “t revor p aglen reveals the ‘blank spots on the map’,” the rumpus , a pril 7 , 2009, http://therumpus .net/2009/04/trevor-paglen-reveals-the-blank-spots-on-the-map/. documenting the invisible political agency in trevor paglen’s limit telephotography gary kafer http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 5 5 g a r y k a f e r c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.161 one might question, then, the possibilities for political agency in paglen’s documentation, and whether or not it is belied by the representational limits of his image making practice. if one cannot legibly read the spaces that paglen attempts to document in his work, are these photographs in fact resistive, in the sense that they might expose t opsecret military operations? further, even if one is able to detect such bases and hangar bays in his photographs, are these images revealing any information that might jeopardize such federal activities? and perhaps more generally, is it the case that rather than contributing to his political agenda, paglen’s aesthetic register in fact neutralizes it? however, such questions narrow the agential possibilities in paglen’s work by reinforcing the binary between aesthetics and evidence in the documentary tradition— namely, that highly aestheticized objects have difficulty serving as forms of evidence. rather, paglen remarks that it is his practice of limit-telephotography that constitutes a form of resistance: “i have always conceived of this photography in terms of performance. the act of taking a photograph of a black site is just as important, if not more, than the photograph itself. to take a photograph is to insist on the right to photograph.”4 paglen thus not only locates the political agency of his limit-telephotography in the images, but also in their production. here, the process of creating his work, from collaborating with amateur astronomers to turning his camera on classified terrain, becomes inflected with a political intonation. by emphasizing the practice of limit-telephotography, it may be possible to conceive of a model of resistance that operates through a visual aesthetic, as well as a relational one. in order to advance this claim, i will consider the potential for limit-telephotography to mobilize resistive agency through conversations around the politics of relational art practices between nicolas bourriaud and jacques rancière. at the intersection of the two, attention will be given to the ways in which the dialectics of political demonstration can be understood as a spatial discourse, which for paglen registers his work as an “experimental geography.”5 such a practice rearticulates the documentation of material space along alternative perceptual systems, while also gesturing to a spatial understanding of knowledge production. in this way, paglen’s limit telephotography series attempts to understand how political effects can be located at the site of production, rather than purely in the image. at the same time, as a relational aesthetic, limit-telephotography reconsiders how documentation can contribute to political agency at the site of encounter with the image. understanding how collaborative art practice can function as a form of documentation relieves the image from political responsibility, and gestures outwards to the ways in which limit-telephotography can mobilize different processes of civic engagement against the black world. the black world: democracy, visibility, and secrecy targeting confidential military facilities, paglen’s limit-telephotography emerges within a set of concerted discourses crystallized upon the power and violence of secrecy in the federal system. in her introductory essay to paglen’s photographic monograph inv isible: covert operations and classified landscapes, rebecca solnit observes how paglen 4 t revor p aglen, “the expeditions: landscape as p erformance,” tdr: the drama review 55 , no. 2 (2011): 3 . 5 t revor p aglen, “experimental geography: from c ultural p roduction to the p roduction of space,” experimental geography: radical approaches to landscape, cartography, and urbanism, ed. nato thompson and independent c urators international (brooklyn, ny : melville house publishing, 2008), 31. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 5 6 d o c u m e n t i ng th e i n v i s i b l e c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.161 interrogates the precarious necessity for invisibility within democratic regimes, particularly as a defense mechanism, or “shield,” for military procedures.6 not only does invisibility prevent outsider access to top-secret information, thus rendering foreign organizations unable to predict actions and plan counterattacks, but it also protects such classified knowledge, placing it beyond the scope of popular criticism and dissent. invisibility and secrecy then, as solnit concludes, are not only a “strategy or a mode of operation for the military and the cia for the past six decades; they have been its essence.”7 figure 1 t revor p aglen, reaper drone (indian springs , nv, dis tance ~ 2 miles ), from the limit telephotography series, 2010. c -print, 30 x 36 in. c opyright t revor p aglen, courtesy the artist and metro pictures, new york; a ltman siegel, san franc isco. 6 rebecca solnit, “the invisibility wars ,” in invisible: covert operations and class ified landscapes , ed. t revor p aglen (new york: a perture, 2010), 10. invisible not only explores p aglen’s limit telephotography, but also his work tracking top secret satellites (the other night sky series), manipulating the passports and aliases of c ia operatives, and collecting uniform patches affiliated with c lassified military programs and intelligence-industry activities (symbology series). 7 ibid. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 5 7 g a r y k a f e r c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.161 ironically, the military can be said to violate the very fundamental values of democratic discourse and rhetoric—freedom, transparency, and security—that it claims to protect. such a hypocrisy has only been magnified in the wake of the terrorist attacks of september 11, 2001, wherein new policies in surveillance, military technologies, and intelligence programs have opened up space for what it known as the ‘safety state,’ an agenda of public policy and cultural production centered upon information and communication management. within this context, the development of post-9/11 military and intelligence operations resolves to maintain standard levels of public security while at the same time protecting classified federal interests. whereas civilians are becoming increasingly transparent under state surveillance and military espionage, the executive branch of government has extended its claims to power with top secret programs and agencies, many of which are not subject to democratic regulation.8 consequently, contemporary procedures of state security ironically generate forms of insecurity, which david lyon notes is “an insecurity felt keenly by the very people that security measures are supposed to protect.”9 despite the fact that the public has grown increasingly wary of domestic surveillance programs, it is precisely these feelings of insecurity that justify the classified status of military and federal operations. for rancière, in the post-9/11 era, maintaining a community of feeling constellated around fear generates productive modes of civic participation in the state of advanced plutocratic consensus. “insecurity is not a set of facts,” as he claims, but rather “it is a mode of management of collective life; and one that is likely to persist even if our polities and institutions end up agreeing on an acceptable mode of life-in-common.”10 importantly, insecurity is an imagined horizon of affects that the military-industrial complex mobilizes in order to determine the qualities of civic experience. reversing the message proclaimed by media outlets and officia l federal sources concerning the ostensive weapons of mass destruction in iraq in 2003, rancière contends that “imagined feelings of insecurity did not necessitate the war; instead the war was necessary to impose feelings of insecurity.”11 former vice president dick cheney gestured to such a paradox in his remarks on post9/11 federal activities during an interview with nbc’s tim russert on september 16, 2001: we also have to work, though, sort of the dark side, if you will. we've got to spend time in the shadows in the intelligence world. a lot of what needs to be done here will have to be done quietly, without any discussion, using sources and methods that are available to our intelligence agencies, if we're going to be successful. that's the world these folks operate in, and so it's going to be vital for us to use any means at our disposal, basically, to achieve our objective.12 here, invisibility in the “dark side” is not only a method for democratic policy, but rather it is an essential component to the legal and economic dimensions of the federal infrastructure, 8 ina zwerger and a rmin medosch, “goodbye p rivacy! hello p ublicity?,” in ars electronica 2007: goodbye privacy, ed. gerfried stocker and c hristine schöpf, trans . mel greenwald (berlin: hatje c antz, 2007), 1920. 9 david lyon and zygmunt bauman, liquid surveillance: a conversation (c ambridge: p olity press, 2013), 101. 10 jacques rancière, dissensus: on politics and aes thetics (london: c ontinuum, 2010), 108. 11 ibid., 106. 12 “meet the p ress with t im russert: dick c heney,” meet the press , nbc , washington d.c.: nbc news p roduc tions, september 16, 2001; emphas is added. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 5 8 d o c u m e n t i ng th e i n v i s i b l e c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.161 as the standard level of national security. and because this dark side—which includes anything funded by congress’ “black budget,”13 such as planes, space, shuttles, satellites, and drones, as well as radioactive, biological, and chemical technologies — lies beyond the limits of common knowledge, it is largely unacknowledged and uncontested by the public, despite the obvious issue that such measures of invisibility contradict what many would declare to be democratic values. the feelings of insecurity produced by such classified activities thus override and make possible any feelings of threat that might be produced were this dark side not in place.14 as solnit observes: “on purely theoretical grounds, you can argue that invisibility is . . . undemocratic; practically, it is ferociously so, again and again.”15 in his limit telephotography series, paglen attempts to render visible geographic locations associated with the dark side of federal activity, terrain and facilities known as the “black world” or “black sites” of classified defense activity. these facilities are dedicated to anything from special force and cia combat training centers to testing grounds for missiles, manned aircraft, drones, and electronic warfare systems. certainly such black sites are present as actual locations, yet they are simultaneously absent from official forms of documentation and public discourse, thus forming what paglen terms in the title of his 2009 book “blank spots on the map.”16 it is paglen’s project to make visible precisely these locations that resist visibility and in fact require invisibility to maintain standard operating procedures. through his limit-telephotography, paglen not only gestures to the limits of trying to make these sites visible, but also to the limits of translating their presence into forms of knowledge which can then circulate in public discourse. an image with limits this translation performed by paglen’s camera is mired by noise from the surrounding atmosphere, as the high degree of magnification on paglen’s unique camera lens stretches the limitations of the photographic index to a point of abstraction. his practice of limittelephotography thus turns the representational potential of his images, as well as their appeals as documentary evidence, into nonfigurative fields of color, form, and line. associations between paglen’s work and the visual register of abstract expressionism are no doubt apparent. yet, certainly while paglen’s images are abstract, one might question if they are intentionally expressive in the same manner as the layered drips of joan mitchell’s landscapes or mark rothko’s meditative color fields. when encountering surveillance images, blurriness, pixilation, low resolution, scan lines, and glitches are often inflected as markers of a realist aesthetic. specifically in paglen’s work, the hazy veneer that obscures and obliterates representational forms into grainy pastel swaths denotes a particular distance, geography, and climate, which paglen typically articulates in the precise, a lmost c lini ca l, titles reading with the exactitude expected of scientific inquiry and archival research—such as chemical and biological proving ground #2 (2006) and detachment 3, a ir force flight test center (2008). such titles insist on the veracity of the photographs and their fidelity to 13 paglen, “the expeditions,” 3 . 14 solnit notes: “we do not debate the development of new sys tems of killing, the militarization of space, or the cos t of our military budget, and most of us know nothing about the programs in ques tion,” 10. 15 solnit, “the invisibility wars ,” 12. 16 t revor p aglen, blank spots on the map: the dark geography of the pentagon's secret world (new york: dutton, 2009). http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 5 9 g a r y k a f e r c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.161 the surrounding environment and photographic conditions, despite the fact that such a degree of veracity is belied by the representational limits of limit-telephotography. figure 2 t revor p aglen, chemical and biological weapons proving ground/dugway; ut/dis tance approx. 42 miles ; 11:17 a.m., from the limit telephotography series, 2006. c -print, 40 x 40 in. c opyright trevor p aglen, courtesy the artist and metro p ictures, new york; a ltman siegel, san francisco. perhaps then the visual abstraction emergent from paglen’s image-making practice is less expressive than it is indexical. in this sense, it is possible to reconsider the aesthetic of paglen’s limit-telephotography as necessarily indexing the very practice of photographing black sites from extreme distances. here, the visual register of these images do not preclude documentation, but rather makes it possible, thus constituting his images as forms of evidence of the process of limit-telephotography itself. the “limit” in paglen’s photography is negotiated through the unavoidable visual abstraction, which sets boundaries and restrictions on how his practice is able to perform a documentarian function under the guise of a surveillance aesthetic. with abstraction invited into his images, paglen’s practice of limit-telephotography crystallizes a paradox of using photography to reveal certain types of truth about the government’s dark side; he constructs a dual signification of what precise ly is ‘ l imited’ in these images. on the one hand, paglen’s interests lie in making visible those spaces that are http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 6 0 d o c u m e n t i ng th e i n v i s i b l e c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.161 invisible to the naked eye, thus exposing the black sites that are just beyond perceptual limits at extreme distances. as paglen remarks, “these photographs capture not only images of hidden places but images of what it looks like when the physical properties of v is ion are pushed to their limit, and light itself collapses into a jumbled mess.”17 on the other hand, paglen is also confronting the limitations of our epistemic frameworks within the documentary genre. the tension between the unintelligibility of the photograph and the image’s claims to indexicality reinforces the inherent paradox of documentation, one in which aesthetic modes of representation are expected to convey and analyze material realities without distortion or alteration. for paglen, this paradox articulates “a negative dialectic”18 in the ways in which his limit-telephotography can function as both representation and documentation of the black world, such that his images “both make claims to represent, and at the same time dialectically undermine, the very claims they seem to put forth.”19 in conversation with julian stallabrass regarding his aesthetic vocabulary, paglen maintains a certain fidelity to the documentary potential of his limit-telephotography (“here’s x secret satellite moving through x constellation”) at the same time that he reflexively foregrounds their limitations as representational works (“your believing that this white streak against a starry backdrop is actually a secret satellite instead of a scratch on the film negative is a matter of belief”).20 the dialectic nature of this aesthetic system is not one that inevitably produces truth claims, but rather one that internally challenges, destabilizes, and contradicts its own appeals to knowledge production. paglen’s apparent failure of visualizing these sites due to certain abstractions via environmental mediation then simultaneously gestures to the impossibility of acquiring unequivocal truth from documentary practices, as well as the material and immaterial barriers that prevent access to information about the black world. here, paglen extends such skepticism about his limit-telephotography within the documentary genre to certain discourses that have shaped contemporary u.s. involvement in militarized espionage, drone bombing, and war crimes. concerning the infamous video of the apache helicopter airstrike on iraqi civilians that chelsea manning shared with wikileaks on july 6, 2010, paglen states in his interview with stallabrass: “i definitely agree with you that the wikileaks gunship footage is as good as we could reasonably want. but if there were a wrongful death lawsuit with that video as the prime piece of evidence, i wonder whether it would hold up in a courtroom.”21 further referencing the video recording used in the rodney king trial, which failed to testify as a form of evidence, and the photographs from abu ghraib, which donald rumsfeld dismissed as unrepresentative of the larger mil itaryprison system, paglen’s suspicion of representation informs his approach to the documentary image. as he claims: “documentary media can still become social facts, regardless of how faithfully it reproduces reality [but] there’s no magic image or documentation that ex ists outside or beyond the limits of representation.”22 in this sense, it is not the case that paglen 17 t revor p aglen, “sources and methods,” invisible: covert operations and class ified landscapes , ed. t revor p aglen (new york: a perture, 2010), 146. 18 paglen, “sources and methods,” 151. 19 in conversation with stallabrass, p aglen contends: “in terms of art -making, i sympathize with a revised form of negative dialectics as a response to an image-saturated society.” julian stallabrass, “negative dialectics in the google e ra: a n interview with t revor p aglen,” october 138 (fall 2011): 9 . 20 ibid., 11 . 21 ibid., 10 . 22 ibid.; italic s in the original. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 6 1 g a r y k a f e r c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.161 doubts the fidelity of such declassified materials or their unique possibilities to intercept and mobilize political action. rather, paglen asserts that the horizons of knowledge that emerge from any such encounter with the black world is rife with questions of representation, particularly how to represent what federal powers render unrepresentable—what stallabrass refers to as “the limits of democracy, secrecy, visibility and what can be known.”23 yet, for paglen, attempting to photograph these black sites is not mere ly an artistic gesture, but also a form of resistance. his project has political concern at the same time that it invests in a particular aesthetic relationship to the black world. in conversation with the dark side of the federal infrastructure, such resistance often takes the form of visualizing the invisibility of the black world. one way that this form of political agency has historically taken shape is through revealing secret activities and disclosing classified documents—what is commonly regarded as whistleblowing, but constitutionally regarded as treason. in many of these cases, sharing top-secret intelligence constitutes a political opposition to federal power, thus resulting in violent state measures. in 1953, ethel and julius rosenberg were executed for passing on atomic weapons secrets to the soviet union.24 in 1971, daniel ellsberg was tried under the 1917 espionage act for disclosing the united states department of defense history of the nation’s involvement in vietnam from 1945 to 1967, known as the pentagon papers. such allegations of treason have likewise continued in response to individuals who have shared top secret information related to the increase of post-9/11 political-military activity; both whistleblowers chelsea manning and edward snowden were tried under the espionage act as well for disclosing classified federal documents to the public. snowden’s case, due to its engagement with issues of surveillance, is particularly interesting in relation to paglen’s work, as it emphasizes the paradoxical relationship of visibility and invisibility within the democratic discourse on secrecy. among the many top secret activities that snowden disclosed in the leak of national security agency (nsa) documents in june 2013 is prism, a program which allows the nsa to gain direct access to the servers of the world’s top telecommunications companies, including google, facebook, microsoft, yahoo!, apple, and skype, among others. despite federal concern for public security, the type of surveillance observed in prism was made possible by the precise laws implemented in the wake of 9/11 that were designed to protect national security u nder the guise of democratic ideology, specifically the patriot act of 2001. according to journalist glenn greenwald, who collaborated with snowden and documentarian laura poitras on the nsa leak, the underlying insidious nature of surveillance impinges on the r ight to pr ivacy, which he claims is the “core condition of being a free person.”25 in this context, greenwald argues that snowden’s resistance should demonstrate the need to reverse the federal power structure: since the government consists of public servants working in the public sector, federal officials should be subject to complete visibility, while invisibility should be reserved for the private law-abiding individual.26 however, such a position is often contested by more conservative factions. as indicated in cheney’s remarks on the dark side of federal activities, 23 stallabrass, “negative dialectics,” 3. 24 sec tion 2 of the espionage act of 1917, 50 u .s. c ode 32 (now 18 u .s. c ode 794), prohibits transmitting or attempting to transmit to foreign governments information "relating to the national defense." 25 glenn greenwald, no place to hide: edward snowden, the nsa, and the u.s. surveillance state (new york: metropolitan books, 2014), 172. 26 ibid., 209. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 6 2 d o c u m e n t i ng th e i n v i s i b l e c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.161 such forms of invisibility, which justified the passing of the patriot act, are necessary for the economic and legal architecture of post-9/11 national security. like snowden, paglen invests himself through his limit-telephotography in a k ind of resistance based on seeking out and exposing information embedded deep within the network of federal invisibility. for solnit, paglen situates his work as a form of resistance by locating his practice within a critical discourse that maintains the camera as a technology for revealing hidden realities. drawing upon a rich history of photographic journalism, such as robert frank’s the americans and richard misrach’s photographs of remote and classified military sites in the 1980s and 1990s, she underscores the camera as an agent for illuminating unknown phenomena, making familiar those things that are otherwise “unseen in plain view.”27 while photojournalism does not de facto constitute a form of resistance, within the context of the dark side of federal and military activity, paglen’s artistic practice articulates a potential to expose certain forms of knowledge that are otherwise invis ible to the public eye. for solnit, paglen’s work underscores the inherent paradox of the surveillance paradigm: “to see and to make visible is itself often a protracted process of education, research, investigation, and often trespassing and lawbreaking, a counter-spying on the intelligence complex.”28 at close distances, paglen does indeed capture certain kinds of information. yet as a negative dialectic, this kind of resistance upends itself. rather than actually revealing hidden realities, paglen instead metaphorizes the veils of secrecy surrounding the black world by pushing the visual index to its abstracted limits. at extreme lengths, paglen’s images mirror the discourse of federal invisibility; through the index of surveillance aesthetics, information is not disclosed, but made more obscure. as jonah weiner of the new yorker writes, “paglen welcomes distortion in his images because his aim is not to expose and edify so much as to confound and unsettle.”29 in this regard, paglen understands the truth-telling function of the camera merely as a pretense for examining the double-edged sword of counter-intelligence production, one in which surveillance can be used against itself in order to reconfigure the perceptual hor izons of federal invisibility. by using advanced lens technologies to capture classified territory from miles away, paglen introduces a diametric practice of enacting surveillance on precisely those black sites which themselves exercise espionage under a veil of invisibility, thus engaging in his own form of surveillance to observe sites of military espionage. his limit-telephotography thus turns military technologies of surveillance against themselves, exposing surveillance at the same time that it reproduces it. and as surveillance images, paglen’s work enacts a critique of surveillance by way of its own rhetoric. in this sense, the telescope lens, as nie ls van tomme observes, “becomes a device embedded within the very v io lence it seeks to investigate, as such tools of vision are inextricably entwined with the history of, as well as ongoing standard developments within, the military industrial complex.” 30 arguably then, paglen interrogates discourses of power in military operations of surveillance, thus prompting a reconsideration of the perceived objectivity of lens-based media within the context of 27 solnit, “the invisibility wars ,” 10. 28 ibid. 29 jonah weiner, “p rying eyes,” the new yorker. o c tober 22, 2012. http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2012/10/22/prying-eyes. 30 niels van tomme, “the image as machine” in vis ibility machines: harun farocki and trevor paglen, exh. cat., (c hicago: gallery 400, 2015), 4 . http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 6 3 g a r y k a f e r c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.161 military operations, as well as the limitations of deploying surveillance to document our environment. the politics of relational aesthetics yet such a critique of surveillance does not automatically register a resistance to surveillance. if limit-telephotography does not disclose declassified information or reveal hidden realities, then the question for paglen becomes: “how do i situate [a given] project in a productive situation, a political situation, and a discursive situation. or, more tactica lly, how can i position [it] closely to a site of instability in power as possible such that [it] has real effects?”31 as opposed to the type of materials leaked by whistleblowers, it is doubtful as to whether or not paglen’s images could be used as evidence to mobilize politica l action or legislative response. however, while paglen makes explicit that his photographs are “useless as evidence,” he insists that limit-telephotography maintains a specific “politics of production.”32 he develops this term, emphasizing the various important practices that contribute to the production of his images: in the vast majority of my artwork, the research, methods, and processes happening “outside the frame” are just as important (and often more) a s what ends up being shown in a particular image or installation. all of [my] work . . . is the product of countless hours spent in libraries, sifting through documents, conducting interviews, repeated site visits, careful planning and project management, and personal relations developed over years of dedication to the material.33 here, paglen suggests that beyond his images there is a politic by which meaning is produced, a meaning which might be generative of alternative modes of engaging with the geopolitics of the black world infrastructure and its epistemic territories. paglen expands on this politic in a number of ways. on the one hand, he emphasizes the performance of limit-telephotography as a generative site of resistance—namely, on the right to stand in public land outside of the borders of the black world and turn his camera on the hidden realities of military activities. as paglen argues, “[p]hotographing a secret military base means insisting on the right to do it, and enacting that right. thus, we have a sort of political performance.”34 interestingly, then, paglen’s performance of limit-telephotography conceives of this politic as a particular relation to the black world by reversing the very legal terms promoted by state order. on the other hand, he also speculates on the importance of relationships and networked practices that allow for his work to confront the perceptual limits of the black world. in addition to offering expeditions each year for individuals interested in exercising their right to photograph these bases35, he writes: 31 emily e liza scott, “‘invis ible-5’s ’ i llumination of p eripheral geographies,” art journal 69 no.4 (winter 2010): 44. 32 weiner, “p rying eyes”; stallabrass, “negative dialectics,” 6 . 33 paglen, “sources and methods,” 144. 34 stallabras, “negative dialectics,” 6 . 35“i led several desert expeditions each year. these expeditions further developed the overall project, engaging partic ipants as witnesses/spectators in an enac tment of the right to see and to photograph. ins tead of c reating two-dimensional landscapes for galleries and museums, i was bringing people to the ac tual landscapes.” p aglen, “the expeditions,” 3 . http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 6 4 d o c u m e n t i ng th e i n v i s i b l e c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.161 i might be camping out on a mountaintop taking photos of a secret military base, or determining the location of cia “black sites” so i can go photograph them. maybe researching front-companies used in covert operations, or working with amateur astronomers to track classified spacecraft in earth orbit. these are all relational practices and they all have various sorts of politics to them.36 in his emphasis on the possibilities to inspire and organize geopolitical activism through relational practices, paglen invokes nicolas bourriaud’s description of relational aesthetics: “an art taking as its theoretical horizon the realm of human interactions and its social context, rather than the assertion of an independent and priva te symbolic space.”37 in bourriaud’s wake, paglen’s practices can be read as relational in that such performances and relationships relocate the political agency from the image to the production process of limit telephotography. for bourriaud, such practices lie in opposition to hegemonic capitalist regimes of commodity exchange, such that the relational artwork—which is less an object and more a form of social relation—essentially rejects subjugation into a market value system. the artist rather catalyzes sites of experience for collective encounters, bringing to bear new meanings and perceptual experiences as the art form. unlike the passive optic encounter of an object, relational art is able to generate productive human relations, which, for bourriaud, lays the seeds for political action through its emancipatory effects. yet, it is not quite clear that any and all relational practices will lead to political potentials. in bourriaud’s writing, sites of dialogue register forms of interactivity as democratic microtopias. here, claire bishop has called into question the ways in which bourriaud ties the structure of a relational work—its form as social relation—to its ethicopolitical effects while ignoring the veils of power and exclusivity that institutional systems use to acknowledge the communal experience as aesthetically valuable.38 for bishop, participatory art should not be judged based on ethical standards of “consensual collaboration” between artist and audience during the production process.39 rather, the political effects of participatory art emerge from its confrontation with audiences free from ethical fixations. opposed to bishop, grant kester in his 2004 book conversation pieces contends that the ethical framework is imperative to the political effects of participatory work, wherein dialogue between artists and non-artists constitute a consensual space for transformative experience.40 at the nexus of bishop and kester’s writings on the political agency of relational practices lies an impasse between aesthetic autonomy and socio-political concerns. for kim charnley, such a paradox boils down to neutralization of political effects, such that both bishop and kester aim “to erase contradiction in order to maintain a consistent account of the political—and it is in the attempt to be consistent that the political is erased.”41 here, 36 stallabrass, “negative dialectics,” 6; emphas is added. 37 n icolas bourriaud, relational aes thetics , trans . simon p leasance and fronza woods (dijon: les presses du réel, 2002), 14. 38 c laire bishop, “a ntagonism and relational a esthetics,” october 110 (fall 2004): 65. 39 c laire bishop, artificial hells : participatory art and the politics of spectatorship (london: v erso, 2012), 19-20. 40 grant kes ter, conversation pieces: community and communication in modern art (berkeley: university of c alifornia press, 2013). 41 kim c harnley, “dissensus and the politics of collaborative practice,” art & the public sphere 1 , no. 1 (2011): 49. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 6 5 g a r y k a f e r c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.161 politics can only emerge in a critical negotiation between the exclusivity of the artist a long supporting institutional powers and democratic forms of social relations between artists and non-artists. in advancing this claim, charnley draws from rancière’s writings on dissensus, wherein if “dissensus is not viewed as the vital element of socially engaged art then even the most rigorous ethics [via kester] or carefully guarded autonomy [via b ishop] becomes an extension of consensus.”42 important for this claim is the political nature of dissensus. according to rancière, politics should not be thought of as the “exercise of power,” but rather as an intervention in the normative relationship between actions, or ways of doing, and a possible horizon of affects, an aesthetic order that he terms the distribution of the sensible.43 this structural law delineates the general and common modes of participation in the social and the modes of perception that shape the experience of the social order. politics, then, is a re-distribution of the sensible, such that political actions are those that disturb and expose gaps in the rationale underpinning the social body’s implicit perceptual frameworks. political demonstration then, as a dissensus, disrupts the sensible—what is visible and sayable—and brings about a change in the perception of social space, thus making “visible that which had no reason to be seen.”44 it is important to note, however, that rancière is not proclaiming that politics brings to bear new perceptual possibilities in the sense that materials, people, and places, which were previously hidden, are suddenly made visible. this might too easily line up with a model of resistance to the black world based on disclosure of classified information, which paglen’s images in fact do not do. rather, rancière’s interests rest in the ways that certain communities that had previously been denied subjectivity within the common socia l order might emerge, be recognized, and vocalize their perspectives. in his words: politics . . . consists in transforming [the policed public] space of ‘moving-along’, of circulation, into a space for the appearance of a subject: the people, the workers, the citizens. it consists in re-figuring space, that is in what is to be done, to be seen and to be named in it. it is the instituting of a dispute over the distribution of the sensible . . . it consists in making what was unseen visible; in making what was audible as mere noise heard as speech and in demonstrating that what appeared as mere expression of pleasure and pain is a shared feeling of a good or an evil.45 the core of political demonstration then is not just a reorganization of the social order’s perceptual limits; it is also a question of space, of asserting that the communal experiences in private spaces of such unrecognized communities are valid alongside the public policed space of the common social order. it is the production of new spaces in which the previously unheard and unseen are recognized, in which the sensible is redistributed to a llow for new meanings to generated and understood from previously insignificant materials, affects, and sensory experiences. understanding politics as a spatial discourse opens up new resistive possibilities for paglen’s limit-telephotography. it is thus not the case that paglen’s images are resistive in 42 c harnley, “dissensus and the politics of collaborative practice,” 50. 43 ranc ière, dissensus: on politics and aes thetics , 36 . 44 ibid., 39 . 45 ibid., 37-38. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 6 6 d o c u m e n t i ng th e i n v i s i b l e c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.161 that they reveal information previously kept hidden by federal powers. rather, in attempting to render the black world visible, paglen interrogates the limits of what can be made sensible, forcing recognition of those things that federal powers hold beyond the boundaries of what can currently be perceived. he thus relocates the resistive agency of limittelephotography from the aesthetic register of the image to a spatial discourse of its political effects: interrogating the structural invisibility of militarized sites, the dimensional limits of representation through lens-based media, and the territories of knowledge about the black world that is continually rendered inaccessible by mechanisms of secrecy. resistance: experimental geography as dissensus in order to understand the production of limit-telephotography as a spatia l practice, paglen adopts what he refers to as a “critical geographic perspective.”46 under this framework, he examines the two main theoretical underpinnings of geographic study: first, materialism, which employs an analytic approach to the idea that the world is made out o f spatial interactions of materials; and second, the production of space, which refers to the dialectical ways in which space is actively constructed by human activity, and human activity is defined by space. geography for paglen “is not just a method of inquiry, but necessarily entails the production of a space of inquiry.”47 with these two theoretical bases, paglen understands the cultural production of limit-telephotography as necessarily a spatial practice, wherein he not only attempts to represent space by visually acknowledging the materiality of the black sites, but also contributes to the production of the space of inquiry, knowledge, and discourse about covert military operations and federal secrecy.48 by incorporating this approach into his practice, paglen works through what he terms an “experimental geography”: practices that recognize that cultural production and the production of space cannot be separated from each another, and that cultural and intellectual production is a spatial practice. moreover, experimental geography means not only seeing the production of space as an ontological condition, but actively experimenting with the production of space as an integral part of one’s own practice. 49 as a work of experimental geography, paglen’s limit-telephotography sets into relief the two theoretical frameworks of geographic inquiry. on the one hand, paglen complicates the fieldbased perceptions of the landscape’s material dimensions through its intentional abstracted 46 paglen, “experimental geography,” 37. 47 ibid., 31 . p aglen comes to this conclusion by way of the theories of marx and lefebvre. here, he accepts marx’s argument that a fundamental characteristic of human exis tence is “the production of material life itself,” that humans produce their existence in a dialec tical relation to the res t of the world. likewise, following lefebvre, he also accepts that produc tion is a fundamentally spatial practice, that humans c reate the world around them and are in turn c reated by the world around them. thus , in light of both of these arguments , p aglen concludes that “cultural production (like all produc tion) is a spatial prac tice.” 48 p aglen alludes to this analysis in his interview with the rumpus : “i t’s helpful to think about s tate secrecy as a landscape, as a set of ins titutions and fac ts on the ground, in addition to a series of bureaucratic operations. in traditional social s ciences, the way that you think about sec recy is in terms of bureaucracy and culture. i think that if you add geography to that, you can explain how secrecy works in a more robus t way. a nd that also explains some of the failures of overs ight [of] the sec ret s tate, his torically.” 49 paglen, “experimental geography,” 31. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 6 7 g a r y k a f e r c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.161 visual register. on the other hand, he also aims to produce new spaces of knowledge about that black world by questioning and reconfiguring their perceptual limits. through mater ial, perceptual, and epistemic spaces, he exposes gaps in the experiential horizons of the black world, and brings to bear new modes of participation with the black world that are technically legal, yet certainly disapproved. accordingly, paglen’s experimental geography begins to gesture to the ways in which the space of knowledge about the black world that is opened up by limit-telephotography can be inflected with political agency. as paglen remarks, “[i]f human activities are inextr icably spatial, then new forms of freedom and democracy can only emerge in dialectical relation to the production of new spaces.”50 in framing his understanding of artistic production within geopolitics as a spatial discourse, particularly one that is dialectical, paglen seems to echo rancière’s analysis of a dissensual politics. for the latter, politic demonstration registers a dialectical confrontation between the perceptual space of the sensible and imperceptible space of the political body—the result of which “is the construction of a paradoxica l world that put together two separate worlds.”51 for paglen, such a dialectical reading of a spatialized politics allows us to locate the resistive potentials of his work neither in the physical spaces that paglen occupies in order to take his photographs nor the spaces in which one may encounter his works, but rather in the discursive space that critically situates the civic body against the geography of secrecy and invisibility of the black world. this is a dialectical space that emerges from a coming together of public knowledge and federal secrecy when the imperceptible is forced into recognition through a play of spatial discourses (whether in the image, its production, or in critical encounters). as emily eliza scott contends, we might then approach the resistive potential of experimental geography “not in terms of their production of new images, objects, or experiences, but in terms of their production of potentially new spatial-political configurations.”52 alan ingram joins scott in chorus, arguing that geopolitical art functions “not just as a form of resistance, refusal or critique but . . . [as] an index of and contributor to political and spatial transformation.”53 he asserts that while it cannot be assumed that such creative interventions generate critical or radical results, they can produce the potential to represent the ways in whic h discourses shaping social and political life might be reproduced, changed, or disrupted. here, ingram grants particular emphasis to the potential for artistic practices to assume agency in mobilizing other kinds of action, rather than fully encompass the entire possible range of critical intervention or political resistance. citing rancière, ingram continues: “the (geo)political effects of any particular artistic intervention cannot be assumed or inferred, only corroborated by corresponding actions. the question then becomes less what such art works mean than what critical approaches to geopolitics might do with them.”54 adopting a “relational way of thinking” into the spatial discourse of experimental geography insists on the ways in which paglen negotiates and reconfigures the re lations of production involved in creating cultural work about the geography of the government’s black world, and further how that practice of reconfiguration can reveal new political horizons. paglen remarks in this vein that “experimental geography takes for granted the fact that 50 paglen, “experimental geography,” 31. 51 ranc ière, dissensus: on politics and aes thetics , 39 . 52 scott, “‘invis ible-5’s’ i llumination of p eripheral geographies,” 44. 53 a lan ingram, “making geopolitics otherwise: artistic interventions in global political space,” the geographical journal 177, no.3 (sept 2011): 218. 54 ibid., 221. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 6 8 d o c u m e n t i ng th e i n v i s i b l e c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.161 there can be no ‘outside’ of politics, because there can be no ‘outside’ to the production of space (and the production of space is ipso facto political).”55 it is then not the case that paglen’s images contain the radical potential to subvert the discourses of secrecy operative in the black world, but rather that his practice of limit-telephotography produces the very political spaces from which these aesthetic objects may emerge. and because paglen locates the possibilities for a resistive agency in the production of spaces for new human relations, he sets into relief the material and spatial concerns of an experimental geographic approach to the lived experience of producing limit-telephotography—from collaboration with field guides to occupying territory. accordingly, paglen is not attempting to breach federal secrecy by photographing black sites, nor is he exclusively concerned with negating the secrecy that manages black sites, as even the aesthetic register of his images reproduces the veil of invisibility that obscures access to seeing and understanding these spaces. rather, limit telephotography emerges from a new system of relationships with the black world, one that provokes alternative and radical perceptions of the networks and representations of people, spaces, and power in the military-industrial complex. paglen’s documentary practice is one that negotiates the possibilities for rescuing material landscapes and geographic space from the black world in order to inspire the potential for critical engagements in the public sphere, or as margarida carvalho remarks in her work on geopoetics, “to inhabit [space] and make it communal.” 56 towards a new documentation as a collaborative art practice of experimental geography, paglen’s limit telephotography series questions itself on the grounds of how well these images serve as forms of documentation of the black world. just as paglen is skeptical about claiming that his photographs are documents of anything, the visual abstraction likewise prevents normative modes of knowledge production at work in the documentary genre. arguably, these images can only serve to index paglen’s physical presence at a particular location proximal to the military facility under investigation, which perhaps is mostly attributable to the precision of the titles of each photograph. in this sense, one might reason that paglen’s work is not only invested in documenting the black world, but also the process of occupying territory, or perhaps even the politics of production of limit-telephotography. yet, such a thesis fails to account for the inability to read this type of documentation in the images themselves. first and foremost, paglen photographs classified military bases in the remotes recesses of the american southwest, and not his own process of creating these images in the form of photographs of expeditions and meetings with astronomers. he does not turn the camera on himself. perhaps then the question becomes not how to documen t a collaborative art practice, but rather how a collaborative art practice can function as a form of documentation. here, paglen remarks that the process of creating these images—from the project planning to the expedition—opens up the critical space from which these images appear: “i try to immerse myself in the ‘world’ of my research to the point where the 55 paglen, “experimental geography,” 32. 56 margarida c arvalho, “a ffective territories,” inflexions journal 3 (2009), 17. c arvalho defines geopoetics as “a dynamic cartography in which localization and route are combined into subversive maps that highlight the c reation of experimental, communal and c reative s trategies for appropriation and trans formation of both media and new technologies—namely those that are central to the current ‘surveillance society’—as a means to enhance the sharing, c reation and free flux of s ignals, things , people, ac tions, and affec tions,” 15. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 6 9 g a r y k a f e r c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.161 materials virtually ‘tell’ me how they want to be expressed.”57 limit-te lephotography thus emerges from the politics of production, not the other way around. yet, to what extent do the politics of production of limit-telephotography—or further, the dialectical dissensus of experimental geographies—apply to other sites of encounter? in many ways, paglen’s consideration of that spatial discourse of relational aesthetics seems bounded to the artist and his creative process rather than extend beyond the production to the viewer who considers his work in a book, website, or exhibition. in these contexts, particular framing devices allow for these images to be located within a political agenda, such as gallery text, paglen’s artist biography, critical publications, and other kinds of paratextual information. yet, at the same time that these devices identify the political potentials of paglen’s experimental geography, they also nullify such effects by situating the vital dissensual properties of limit-telephotography within a consensual critical discourse—that is to say, such images are political because they are proclaimed to be so. figure 3 t revor p aglen, detachment 3, air force flight tes t center, groom lake, nv dis tance approx. 26 miles , from the limit telephotography series , 2008. c -print, 40 x 50 in. c opyright t revor p aglen, courtesy the artis t and metro p ictures, new york; a ltman siegel, san franc isco. 57 paglen, “sources and methods,” 144. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 7 0 d o c u m e n t i ng th e i n v i s i b l e c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.161 perhaps here we approach another ‘limit’ to paglen’s limit-telephotography: the limit of political agency itself. in reflecting on the relationship between dissensus and collaborative art practices, charnley takes special note of rancière’s skepticism of collaborative works that confess themselves to be political “because it confuses the boundary between art and the social.”58 charnley continues: as [rancière] puts it: ‘ . . . the more [art] goes out into the streets and professes to be engaging in a form of social intervention, the more it anticipates and mimics its own effects. art thus risks becoming a parody of its alleged efficacy.’ there is something disappointing about th is avoidance of questions that are raised when art is confronted by a limit, in the moment of attempting to transgress it. at this moment the dissensus is a radical one, in as much as it is a disjuncture between art’s self-understanding and its social reality.59 this limit, however, is not a deficit to paglen’s political aspirations, but rather an important nodal point for locating the resistive possibilities for a dissensual agency, which for paglen, operates through his confrontation with the documentary genre. if the photographs are forms of documentation, then they confront the limit of political demonstration, but fa il to surpass it. because the images obscure evidence of the black world by metaphorizing the discourse of secrecy through the abstract visual register, they can only be political if they are labeled as such and qualified by paratextual information. yet, if we reconsider the collaborative art practice itself as the documentation of paglen’s encounter with the black world, then the visual register of limit-telephotography, which obscures evidentiary claims of the photographic index, should prompt viewers to turn away from thinking about the images as documentation in order to consider how the politics of production of limit-telephotography are attended by a multiplicity of effects, both in terms of their inception and reception, which may suggest or potentiate other kinds of agency. in this case, the encounter with limit-telephotography images would be a kind of partic ipation in paglen’s collaborative network alongside those astronomers and fellow researchers that contributed to their production. the goal of this form of documentation becomes political when it negates the premise of its own appeals to knowledge formation. paglen certa inly doesn’t illuminate anything about the black world, but perhaps he doesn’t have to. when encountering his images, such sites suddenly become palpable, allowing for geographic material to enter into critical discourse. even the most uninformed viewer who takes a sudden interest in the black world can gain political agency in seeking information, questioning sources of data, and joining others in protesting federal operations. thus, while the political agency of paglen’s project cannot be located in the images themse lves, it is possible to rethink how certain forms of engagement with limit-telephotography can reinscribe alternative modes of civic participation with the black world into the field of spatio political meanings articulated by the official aesthetic, legal, and constitutional forms of state power. 58 c harnley, “dissensus and the politics of collaborative practice,” 51. 59 ibid., 5; emphas is added. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 7 1 g a r y k a f e r c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.161 new articles in this journal are licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 united states license. this journal is operated by the university library system of the university of p ittsburgh as part of its d-scribe digital p ublishing p rogram, and is co-sponsored by the university of p ittsburgh press. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/ http://www.pitt.edu/ http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/ http://www.upress.pitt.edu/upressindex.aspx http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ vol 5, no 1 “agency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2016.130 http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu architectural ruins and urban imaginaries carlos garaicoa’s images of havana jodi kovach abstract contemporary cuban artist carlos garaicoa juxtaposes photographic images of havana’s architectural ruins with timidly articulated drawings that trace the outlines of the dilapidated buildings in empty urbanscapes. each of these fragile drawings, often composed of de licate threads adhered to a photograph of a site after demolition, serves as a vestige of the sagging structure that the artist photographed prior to destruction. the dialogue that emerges from these photograph/drawing diptychs implies the unmooring of the radical utopian underpinnings of revolutionary ideology that persisted in the policies of cuba’s período especial (special period) of the 1990s, and suggests a more complicated narrative of cuba’s modernity, in which the ambiguous drawings—which could indicate construction plans or function as mnemonic images—represent empty promises of economic growth that must negotiate the real socio-economic crises of the present. this article proposes that garaicoa’s critique of the goals and outcomes of the special period through havana’s ruins su ggests a new articulation of the baroque expression— one that calls to mind the anti -authoritative strategies of twentieth-century neo-baroque literature and criticism. the artist historically grounds the legacy of the cuban revolution’s modernizing project in the country’s real economic decline in the post-soviet era, but he also takes this approach to representing cities beyond cuba’s borders, thereby posing broader questions about the architectural symbolism of the 21st-century city in the ideological construction of modern globalizing society. about the author dr. jodi kovach is the curator of academic programs at the gund gallery, kenyon college. her scholarship focuses on contemporary latin american art, specifically in the mexican context. she has also taught art and design history, and has contributed to multiple exhibition catalogues, including art of two germanys/cold war cultures (los angeles county museum of art, 2009), the geometry of hope: abstract art from the patricia phelps de cisneros collection (blanton museum of art at university of texas and grey gallery, nyu, 2007), reality bites: making avant-garde art in post-wall germany (mildred lane kemper museum, washington university, 2007), and inside out loud: visualizing women’s health in contemporary art (mildred lane kemper museum, washington university, 2005). http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.130 contemporary cuban artist carlos garaicoa takes the architectural ruins of havana as a point of departure for imagining new urban landscapes in cuba’s post-soviet era. for example, his photograph/drawing diptych, el sueño de algunas ciudades es llegar a convertirse en otras (the dream of some cities is to become another) (2001), shows pedestrians passing through a narrow city street in the heart of havana’s historic district, unencumbered by abandoned sewage trenches and rubble scattered through the passageway (fig. 1). they seem unconscious of the crumbling buildings that are literally collapsing around them—as if they are acquiescent to time’s degenerative process, which has not only taken form in the architecture , but has also shaped their everyday existence.1 this atrophic ethos conveyed through the photograph has a strange, insidious vitality as nature overtakes the remaining fragments of architecture, creating a mass of wooden beams that look more like malignant outgrowths of the languishing buildings than structural supports. in his photograph of the site, garaicoa highlights this corrosive dynamic by framing the image to focus on a makeshift arch of wooden scaffolding that braces the sagging structure against the building directly across from it in a desperate attempt to salvage the remains of the drooping edifice. ironically, he then pairs this photograph with a small pencil sketch of the same scene in which he tamed the ungainly architectural forms by straightening lines and smoothing surfaces, by replacing the wooden buttresses with delicate bridges connecting the buildings, and by drawing a set of stairs leading up to an entryway in place of the beams that prop up the façade. el sueño de algunas ciudades es llegar a convertirse en otras highlights the conceptual underpinnings of a series of photographs for which garaicoa used the deteriorating sectors of havana as a touchstone in his practice of representing and imagining urban architecture through the lens of the ruin. in his depictions, the improvisational construction and persistent decay of these architectural relics culminate in a clichéd baroque tragic beauty that he overwrites with provisional models and modifiable architectural plans. he pairs photographs of dilapidated architecture with drawings of imagined construction to examine the interplay between concepts of ruin and utopia, which have long figured differently in local and foreign perceptions of cuba. intertwined in tourists’ exotic imaginings of cuba’s tragic baroque beauty, and enveloping the historical narratives of oppression and dreams of modern progress that together fueled revolutionary ideology, the ruin/utopia metaphor romanticizes the link between poverty and creativity, mythologizes m etaphors of cuban resilience, and destabilizes the historicity of cuban modernity.2 in the 1990s, however, utopia—the revolution’s ideological dream of a unified, pan-latin american socialist society— 1 benjamin desc ribes the experience of space through architecture—it organizes experience, its presence is received collectively, unconsciously. the relationship is reciprocal: architecture shapes experience but also arises out of it. see walter benjamin, the arcades project, trans . howard e iland and kevin mclaughlin (c ambridge, mass. & london: belknap p ress, 1999). 2 luc ia m . suarez, “ruin memory: havana beyond the revolution,” canadian journal of latin american and caribbean studies 39 , no. 1 (2014): 38 -55. architectural ruins and urban imaginaries carlos garaicoa’s images of havana jodi kovach http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 7 4 u r b a n i m a g i n a r ie s c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.130 figure 1 c arlos garaicoa, el sueño de algunas ciudades es llegar a convertirse en otras (the dream of some cities is to become another), 2001. left, duraflex color photograph, 80 x 60 cm. right, ink and graphite on board, 100 x 70 cm. c opyright c arlos garaicoa. became the catalyst of ruin in cuba.3 the revolution, already defeated following the dissolution of soviet-led economic structure comecon, represented nothing more than the desperate effort on the part of the cuban government to continue its socialist agenda, isolating cuba from the modern globalizing community. the policies of what is known as the período especial (special period) ushered in a devastating economic crisis that cr ippled the country in the 1990s and into this millennium. the galvanizing political slogan of the special period, ¡socialismo o muerte!, in fact turned out to be a grim omen portending the ruin of the cuban economy and its society.4 during this time garaicoa made artwork that cr itically engages his city in ruins: his work appropriates the nostalgia of allegorical ruins to cr itic ize the cuban government’s blind commitment to a defunct ideology, presenting photographic snapshots of contemporary architecture in disrepute alongside hesitantly executed drawings of the same buildings. together, the images that comprise his diptychs suggest the 3 luis suárez salazar and c arlos perez, “the c uban revolution and the new latin a merican leadership: a v iew from i ts u topias,” in “c uba: interpreting a half c entury of revolution and res istance, p art 2 ,” special is sue, latin american perspectives 36 , no. 2 (march 2009): 114-127. 4 geraldine lievesley, cuban revolution: pas t, present and future perspectives (new york: p algrave macmillan, 2004), 4; 161-168. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 7 5 j o d i k o v a c h c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.130 unmooring of the radical utopian underpinnings of revolutionary ideology, and suggest a more complicated narrative of cuba’s modernity, in which tentative construction plans represent empty promises of economic growth that must negotiate the real socio-economic crises of the present. this paper explores how garaicoa intervenes in images of havana’s ruins through diptych photograph/drawings of dilapidated architecture before and after buildings were demolished. in the diptychs of urban scenes in havana discussed here, i investigate garaicoa’s method of writing over the image of a site after a building’s removal. using delicate pencil or thread, he creates ghostly mirages of the demolished structures, thus reimagining what once existed rather than envisioning something new. these timidly articulated visions of reconstruction bear the persistence of havana’s present state of poverty, decay, and disrepair, which garaicoa attributes to blind fa ith in the goals of the cuban revolution and the collapse of eastern european communism. i propose that this strategy for critiquing the goals and outcomes of the special period through havana’s ruins suggests a new articulation of the baroque expression— one that calls to mind the antiauthoritative strategies of twentieth-century neo-baroque literature and cr itic ism. i then show how the lens of havana’s failed modernity has shaped garaicoa’s perception of urban landscapes beyond cuba, particularly in a photograph/drawing diptych in which he features the destruction/imaginary reconstruction of an unremarkable site in los angeles. a comparison of these two works demonstrates how the artist historically grounds the legacy of the cuban revolution’s modernizing project in the country’s real economic decline in the post-soviet era, but also poses broader questions about the architectural symbolism of the 21st-century city in the ideological construction of modern globalizing society.5 garaicoa’s interpretations of ruins share affinities with the work of other contemporary international artists like cyprien gaillard and tacita dean, for example, who represent eastern european modernist architecture in its present dilapidated state to reveal the failure of its ideological underpinnings and to provoke consideration of what these ruins convey about the changes taking place in post-communist european societies.6 garaicoa’s ruins likewise criticize the fallacies of the revolution and its promise of improving cuban society , but his artwork also ironically reconstructs his downtrodden city. this seemingly paradox ical gesture is underscored by a sentiment of ambivalence about the future that has distinguished the work of his contemporaries in cuba since the early 1990s. specif ica lly in garaicoa’s work, it is driven by the concern that development will not happen unless plans for social and economic progress are grounded in cuba’s material reality.7 5 a nthony d. king, writing the global city: globalisation, pos tcolonialism and the urban (new york: routledge, 2016), 75 -79. 6 see francesca p icchi, “modern ruins: intervista con c yprien gaillard/interview with c yprien gaillard,” domus 926 (june 2009), 70 -73; p . a rdenne, “la terre es t ronde – nouvelle narration,” art press 238 (sept. 1998): 72-73; and susan stewart, “tac ita dean,” in the open studio: essays on art and aes thetics (c hicago: university of c hicago p ress, 2005). 7 enwezor explains how contemporary artists working in c uba, while not conforming to a spec ific s tyle or conceptual practice, subvert the rhetoric of the state without completely assimilating to contemporary “western” art. see o kwui enwezor, “between a pparatus and subjectivity: c arlos garaicoa’s p ost-utopian a rchitecture,” in carlos garaicoa: overlapping, ed. enrique juncosa (dublin, i reland: i rish museum of modern a rt, 2010), 16-21. see also abelardo mena chicuri, cuba avant-garde: contemporary cuban art from the farber collection (gainesville: university of florida, 2007), 21 -23. this exhibition suggested that the juxtapos ition of utopia with dys topian realities and ironic humor often found in contemporary c uban art suggests a potential for new beginnings in the troubled pos t-communist era. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 7 6 u r b a n i m a g i n a r ie s c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.130 growing up in havana during the cold war, garaicoa saw the stagnancy of modernization in cuba as a unique moment for critical reflection on the myth of progress that undergirds the country’s modernist plans for societal reconstruction. garaicoa explained: after the fall of european socialism, many cuban construction and architectonic projects were halted or abandoned. in havana, as well as in other cuban cities, idyllic and nostalgic ruins from the colonial and first republic periods coexist with the ruin of a frustrated political and social project. unfinished buildings abound, neglected and in a sort of momentary oblivion. the encounter with these buildings produces a strange sensation; the issue is not the ruin of a luminous past but a present of incapacity. we face a never-consummated architecture, impoverished in its lack of conclusion, where ruins are proclaimed before they even get to exist. i call these the ruins of the future.8 in this statement, garaicoa describes havana’s ruins as the materia l embodiment of cuba’s inability to fully realize its socialist goals for implementing modernizing processes. he explained that as a child he found that the baroque aura of old havana’s ruins, the palpable and material aesthetic of its decay, emanated a gritty authenticity that disclosed real existing conditions under communism: “it was a very intense part of the city, a very poor area, dangerous in some places, but rich in its architecture and people…we would go walk ing in the streets competing to discover places none of us had ever noticed before.” 9 garaicoa’s depictions of old havana’s ruins do not aestheticize poverty and human suffering, nor do his images convey an exotic escape from modern life or express nostalgia for the greatness of a past era. in his work, decay disrupts the utopian imaginings of a society beyond the here and now; it is material, tangible, and present. furthermore, the city is a metaphor for society’s potential and, by contrast, the ruin is a device garaicoa uses to represent the passage of modern time as fragmented and non-linear. this depiction of modern temporality through havana’s deteriorating urban landscape undermines the future-gazing of utopian imaginings. architectural ruins hold particular significance in urban imaginaries, both historical and modern. as a visual form, the ruin expresses the seventeenth-century baroque fascination with decay and destruction. using it to give form to his modernist conception of temporality, walter benjamin explained that the ruin in baroque allegorical expressions concretizes the fragmentary movement of time and gives a layered picture of history.10 the ruin complicates notions of historical time as linear and evolutionary and for this reason is used in postmodern 8 c arlos garaicoa in “c arlos garaicoa by holly block,” bomb 82 (winter 2003), http://bombmagazine.org/article/2523/carlos-garaicoa 9 c arlos garaicoa quoted in marc spiegler, “c ity lights,” in trans(ient) city (barcelona: bom publishers, 2008), 204. 10 the ruin represents the allegorical structure, which benjamin contrasts against the “symbol,” which embodies “momentary totality,” as it is “self-contained, concentrated, s teadfastly remaining itself.” benjamin’s thes is on baroque allegory c riticized affirmative tendencies in the tradition of idealist philosophy and laid the groundwork for what evolved into his modernist sensibility: the allegorical perspective, or a way of desc ribing nature through the fragment as opposed to a unified whole. for benjamin allegory is dialectical, “a successively progressing, dramatic and mobile, dynamic representation of ideas which has acquired the very fluidity of time.” see walter benjamin, the origin of german tragic drama, trans . john o sborne (frankfurt am main: suhrkamp verlag, 1963), 165. for benjamin’s ideas on his torical materialism, see also “theses on the philosophy of h is tory,” i lluminations , 262-263. a s benjamin suggests, “[a] his torical materialist approaches a his torical subject only where he encounters it as a monad. in this s tructure he recognizes the s ign of a messianic cessation of happening, or, put differently, a revolutionary chance in the fight for the oppressed pas t.” http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 7 7 j o d i k o v a c h c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.130 art to question the teleology of modernism. it figured in robert smithson’s critique of modernism in the 1960s and seventies when he depicted the architecture of suburban new jersey as “ruins in reverse,” or monuments to banality that rise, rather than fa ll into ruin, thus making visual the condition of entropy that smithson believed character ized modern society.11 in postmodern expressions, the ruin is often viewed as the antithesis of utopia; it emphasizes the inescapability of a present state of dystopia with the same intensity that utopia reaches toward an unattainably perfect future. while utopia is pristine, intangible, and untouched by time, the ruin is concrete, worldly, and fragmented by time’s ravages.12 in the years between 1995 and 2004, garaicoa documented sites in havana before and after abandoned or neglected architecture was torn down. from these he created a series of untitled diptychs, for which he then pinned red, green, or blue thread on the photographs taken after the demolition, outlining the razed buildings on the sites where they once stood. for example, sin título (hotel san carlos) (untitled [san carlos hotel]) (1995-2004) includes two black-and-white photographs of the same site: a vacant and deteriorating seven -story building (fig. 2). the photograph on the right depicts the timeworn, hollowed-out encasement that was once the hotel. in the adjacent photo of the same site taken after the destruction, garaicoa used red and blue thread to outline the geometric shapes of the slender windows, the superimposed pilasters ornamented with small scrolled capita ls, and the carvings along some of the windowsills, all of which crumble and seem to fade into the surface of the façade. both photographs were taken from the ground looking up, emphasizing the massiveness and verticality of the looming structure in spite of its state of decay. in the earlier photograph, the building hovers above this vantage point in the center of the composition and seems to force the smaller adjoining buildings to the edges of the frame. at the same time garaicoa’s oblique perspective emphasizes the building’s vertica l thrust, delineated by the narrow elongated windows and the lines of superimposed pediments that extend the entire length of the building, which nearly reaches the top of the frame. in contrast to this portrayed grandeur, the building’s dark empty windows ev idence its somber, haunting vacancy. meanwhile a stray electrical wire extends from a streetlight and dramatically intersects the form of the hotel at a right angle, but this thin, tenuous line appears as useless and insignificant as the abandoned building in this completely uninhabited space. cuba’s vernacular architecture, shown by garaicoa in a state of disrepute, also expresses creative adaptation and inspires garaicoa’s ironic visions of reconstruction. 13 the accumulation of multifarious styles, pulled together from european sources and modified for local purposes, is apparent in his diptych sin título (hotel san carlos). here, garaicoa animates this dynamic, showing havana’s architecture simultaneously decaying and 11 jennifer l. roberts , “smithson and stephens in yucután,” in mirror-travels : robert smithson and his tory (new haven & london: yale university p ress, 2004), 110-112. see also robert smithson, “inc idents of m irror-travel in the yucután [1969],” in robert smithson: the collected writings , ed. jack flam (berkeley: university of c alifornia p ress, 1996), 119-133. 12 rahul mehrotra, “simultaneous modernity: negotiations and res istances in u rban india,” in ruins of modernity, ed. julia hell and a ndreas schönle (durham, n.c .: duke university press, 2010), 244-249. see also benjamin, the origin of german tragic drama, 66: “for as an antithes is to the his torical ideal of res toration it is haunted by the idea of catas trophe.” 13 enwezor comments that, “[garaicoa’s ] work is inves ted in the investigation of the different architectural discourses of colonial, modern, and soc ialist c ity-making practices. this analysis subtends the late baroque buildings and enormous squares of spanish colonial urban planning to the modernist experience of twentieth-century architecture and the centralized planning that represents the socialist inheritance of c uba’s pos t-revolutionary period.” see enwezor, 18 . http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 7 8 u r b a n i m a g i n a r ie s c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.130 regenerating in a relentless cycle of ruin, particularly by confounding the order in which the viewer reads the process (did the plans for the building emerge before or after the blighted structure?). by portraying sites in old havana in this way, he reflects more broadly on the growth of cuban vernacular architecture as the product of simultaneous additive and fragmenting processes that reproduce miscellaneous architectural fragments of the urban setting.14 figure 2 c arlos garaicoa, sin título (hotel san carlos ) [untitled (san carlos hotel)], 1995-2004. diptych. p hotographs and drawing with thread. 123 x 100 cm each. c opyright c arlos garaicoa. like many contemporary cuban artists who emerged on the international art scene in the 1990s, garaicoa critiques his country’s communist revolutionary ideology through a specifically cuban artistic voice that he draws from his country’s rich “unoffic ial” aesthetic history, which emerges from havana’s architectural landscape.15 baroque influences have shaped this aesthetic history from the colonial period to the present day. modernist and postmodernist appropriations of baroque aesthetics informed an insurgent modernist perspective in cuba the fifties, sixties, and seventies through neo-baroque literature and critical theory, while more recent iterations—in the work of garaicoa, for example—enable 14 rachel c arley, cuba: 400 years of architectural heritage (new york: whitney library of des ign, 1997). 15 kerry o liver-smith, “globalization and the v anguard,” in cuba avant-garde: contemporary cuban art from the farber collection (gainesville: samuel p. harn museum of a rt, university of florida), 21-23. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 7 9 j o d i k o v a c h c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.130 the subversive critique of the official culture and politics of cuba. 16 neo-baroque literary theory composed in these decades by cuban writers and scholars josé lezama lima (191076), alejo carpentier (1904-80), and severo sarduy (1936-93) spearheaded notions of the new world baroque as evidence of a period of artistic “invigoration” in cuba, and of the origins of peculiarly latin american and cuban modernist sensibilities. as scholar of spanish literature césar augusto salgado has demonstrated, the positive formulation of the new world baroque as a regeneration of the european aesthetic model was augmented by neo baroque theorists in considering how this mutation functioned as a form of resistance within the oppressive regimes of colonialism.17 in the 1950s, lezama lima wrote about the broader significance of the new world baroque and its revival to a pan-latin american modernism. according to lezama lima, baroque expressions created in latin america represented a form of resistance—a counterconquest culture that signaled the onset of a new modern sensibility. in other words, the new world baroque was a collection of cultures operating outside of tradition, and which was concerned with the secular and the present, rather than with the theatrical styles and mystical content that characterize spanish baroque art. the new world baroque aesthetics of rupture that lezama lima identified could then be used as a springboard for formulating a peculiarly latin american modernist expression. according to lezama lima in his essay “la curiosidad barroca,” the “barroco americano” is underscored by plutonismo, which he defined as an eruption of a deep-seated, subterranean creative impulse within an assimilated european style. the metaphor of a volcanic eruption, evoked to describe the productive, as opposed to the destructive, power of the baroque, connotes a resurgence of hidden grotesque impulses that break apart a unified, closed, balanced aesthetic and give way to open and inclusive forms.18 alejo carpentier saw the radical aesthetic qualities of the cuban baroque in temporal terms: he discovered the modern baroque expression in the rhythms of new world 16 o n this topic , monika kaup argues for a transhistorical and transnational conception of the baroque, sugges ting that “we need to replace the notion of a s ingle baroque—usually identified with the european baroque of the c ounter-reformation and absolutism, masterfully analyzed in josé antonio maravall’s culture of the baroque—with that of multiple baroques.” see kaup, “‘the future is entirely fabulous’: the baroque genealogy of latin a merica’s modernity,” in “globalism on the move,” ed. marshall brown, spec ial is sue, mlq 68 , no. 2 (june 2007): 233. 17 c esar augusto salgado, “hybridity in new world baroque theory,” in “theorizing the hybrid,” eds . deborah a . kapchan and p auline turner strong, special issue, the journal of american folklore 112, no. 445 (summer, 1999): 316-331. salgado notes that although new world baroque “often s tands as a formula for a utopian ethnic integration, the neobaroque theoris t also reminds us that this ‘pos itive’ mongrelization of european high s tyles resulted from the painful and incongruous overlapping of foreign and native morphologies in conflict.” 18 josé lezama lima, “la c uriosidad barroca,” en la expres ion americana (santiago de c hile: talleres de editorial universitaria, s. a ., 1969), 34 . lezama lima portrayed the baroque era as the explosive origination of modern latin a merican culture, having s tated that, “…we can say that among us the baroque was an art of counter-conquest.” he described the baroque expression as “el fuego originario,” or the c reative force that dismantled decadent european traditions and opened art to c reative input from many different cultural backgrounds. lezama lima ’s essay la curios idad barroca, which he presented at the national institute at havana in january 1957 and published in his book of essays entitled la expres ión americana that same year, desc ribes the impac t of baroque culture on latin american modernism. h is theses on neo-baroque aesthetics explore how rupture within an ass imilated european artistic language was expressed through heteroglossic forms and poverty, means that opened onto new opportunities for artis tic invention. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 8 0 u r b a n i m a g i n a r ie s c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.130 improvisational forms like jazz. he believed that jazz gave form to variegated temporalities, which undercut the universal concept of time that buttressed power relations between the old and new worlds. as scholar monica kaup has discussed, carpentier focused on a specifically cuban baroque that exemplified the dynamic processes observed by lezama lima in his theorizing of a broader, new world baroque.19 carpentier’s version of an improvised, adaptive art form created by colonized subjects figures in havana’s unwie ldy urbanscape in his 1964 text “la ciudad de las columnas” (“city of columns”), in which he vividly describes an unsystematic, profuse accumulation of eclectic columns that line the streets of the city.20 the spontaneous character of old havana’s vernacular architecture that intrigued carpentier also captivates garaicoa. the artist’s decision to include in the compositions of both photographs for sin título (hotel san carlos), the mudéjar-style façade of the building next to the hotel points to the conspicuous presence of moorish influences in havana’s colonial architecture which contributed to the unwieldy eclecticism of the c uban baroque style. complete with trefoil window arches and elaborate geometric-patterned carvings, this building, juxtaposed with the less-embellished façade of the hotel, the street light, and the layers of sagging structures with arched porticos and awnings, hints at the multifariousness of cuban vernacular architecture that resonates in the diverse architectural styles brought together in havana’s contemporary urban landscape. in photographs such as these, garaicoa reveals havana’s architectural vista as the product of an erratic outgrowth of disparate stylistic fragments that have been modified, adapted, and cobbled together. in his images of architecture, baroque elements, as popular expressions of the cuban people, reside within and beneath the ostentatious, yet crumbling, symbols of the colonial and communist authorities.21 neo-baroque theorists qualified cuban baroque forms as the subversive, creative means for breaking through the voice of authority to express multiple, marginalized perspectives. they developed a concept of the baroque expression in new world contexts to encompass new models of temporality and spatiality in order to represent modern experience in frameworks pertinent to everyday, vernacular experience. severo sarduy expanded on these notions in the 1970s when he conceived the neo-baroque modality as a de-centering force in art and literature that served to critique modernist spatial organizations based on unity and centrality.22 in sarduy’s work, the neo-baroque expression is a form of postmodern intertextuality that cuts through unitary languages. inspired by what he identified in new world baroque art as modalities of cultural assimilation, transformation, and demystification, 19 monika kaup, “‘¡ v aya p apaya!’: c uban baroque and v isual culture in a lejo c arpentier, ricardo porro, and ramón a lejandro,” pmla 124, no. 1 (jan. 2009):156-171. 20 see a lejo c arpentier, “la c iudad de las columnas,” in tientos y diferencias y otro ensayos (barcelona: p laza, [1964] 1987), 40 -48. see also kaup, “‘¡ v aya p apaya!,’” 159. 21 “however, he does not view the phenomenon of abandonment of the old and the enthus iasm provoked by the new soc ialist form as separate entities…[he analyzes] how the architecture of the pas t and that of the present are both symbols of the imagination of other empire-builders at the expense of the c uban people.” enwezor, 18 . 22 severo sarduy, barroco (buenos a ires: sudamericana, c . 1974). see also sarduy “dispersión (falsas notas/homenaje a lezama lima),” and “sobre góngora: la metáfora al cuadrado,” in escrito sobre un cuerpo:ensayos de critica (buenos a ires: sudamericana, 1969). sarduy draws influence from hispanic baroque literature and neo-baroque tendencies in latin a merican pos t-boom literature. sarduy’s novels are labeled pos tmodernist, while his c ritical writings fit into discussions on pos tstructuralism. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 8 1 j o d i k o v a c h c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.130 sarduy sought to destabilize authoritative meaning in literature. this, in theory, could open a space for writers and readers to dissent from the patriarchal tone that the cuban revolution was taking on in the seventies.23 garaicoa taps into the insurgent strategies of the neo-baroque, but moves beyond these authors’ de-colonizing objectives.24 his ruin-gazing complicates a stereotypically baroque fascination with decay and destruction, along with a fragmented version of history and temporality, and with this he confronts cuba’s incapacity to realize its revolutionary goals for social progress by incorporating this history, through images of the ruination of its urban landscape, into depictions of cuba’s current reality. in this way he eclipses the utopian visions of the cuban revolution by refusing to look directly to the future and leave his country’s current state of socio-economic crisis behind. with the image of the ruin, as walter benjamin explained, “history merges into the setting…history is scattered like seeds over the ground.”25 more precisely, the thread drawings garaicoa adds overtop the photographs frame a history lying in rubble.26 the building’s destruction is transformed in his work—it becomes the impetus to rebuild. still, the architectural plans merely repeat the form of the pre existing structure, and thereby serve as a bleak reminder of this part of the city that was destroyed. garaicoa’s architectural imaginaries focus on an absence that, for him, provides a possible framework for invention—yet one that must account for previous attempts at modernization and the problematic outcomes.27 garaicoa explained that the juxtaposition of ruin/utopia in his art should “be understood not as a dream for the future but rather as an immediate action on reality—a lucid and conscious gesture concerning the collapsed present and the urban and po litical fabric of contemporary society.”28 his work shifts between depictions of presence and absence, decay and regeneration, making the concepts of ruin and utopia a provocative pair: because they are intertwined, the images of decay and the architectural plans for the future always beg for more description, complicating notions of real and imaginary, as well as how the city ex ists in the past, present, and future. as a result, ruin/utopia becomes a format for thinking of the city historically, and for inspiring the imagination to explore ways of changing what exists — not for envisioning what lies beyond it. garaicoa’s imaginary of ruins therefore opens onto a revolutionary way of thinking about the present historically; in other words, of thinking of the present as part of a continuum of social, political, and cultural change. his historical perspective reflects on cuba’s position in 23 c arlos garaicoa quoted in inge ruigrok “c uba: c ultural p olicy of non-western c ountries,” the p ower of c ulture, june 2006, http://www.krachtvancultuur.nl/en/policy/cuba.html. 24 severo sarduy and roberto gonzález echevarría, “interview: severo sarduy,” trans . jane e . french, diacritics 2 , no. 2 (summer 1972), 41 -45. 25 benjamin, the origin of german tragic drama, 92 . 26 p revious exhibitions of garaicoa’s work have addressed the inc ipient utopian dimensions of his representations of havana’s visual decline, in which are also embedded dreams of trans forma tion and redemption. see carlos garaicoa: overlapping (dublin: i rish museum of modern a rt, 2010); carlos garaicoa: capablanca’s real pass ion (p rato: gli o ri, 2005); and carlos garaicoa: la ruina la utopia (bronx museum of a rt bogota: biblioteca luis ángel a rango casa de moneda, 2000). 27 a ndreas huyssen, “a uthentic ruins: p roducts of modernity,” in ruins of modernity, 17-28. huyssen discusses “absence” as understood by giovanni battista piranesi, theodor a dorno, and a lbert speer. 28 garaicoa in “c arlos garaicoa by holly block.” http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 8 2 u r b a n i m a g i n a r ie s c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.130 the postmodern world: cuba is slowly emerging from what was formerly known as the third world—the underdeveloped regions of the world that today produce political voices and cultural expressions that stand outside of, and contradict, what are often perceived as the homogenizing processes of globalization. literary critic and marxist political theorist fredric jameson, in considering the continued discrepancies of uneven development around the world, proposed that late capitalism could only come into being fully with the disappearance of the third world. within his theory, however, the third world also prov ides a histor ica l lens, or a chance to gain a historical foothold in the drive for attaining global modernization. without this foothold we lose the capability to understand the conditions that have created real economic disparities, and therefore are unable to bring about susta inable social and economic development on a global scale.29 garaicoa provides this historical lens when he focuses on isolated areas of major cities in the united states that remind him of havana’s decay. in fact, he admits he is incapable of seeing the world through any lens other than that of his lived experience in havana. 30 for example, a work he created similar to sin título (hotel san carlos), entitled sin título, l.a. (untitled, l.a.) from 2004 is a diptych of a condemned office building in los angeles pictured before and after its demolition (fig. 3). figure 3 c arlos garaicoa, sin título, l.a. [untitled, l.a.], 2004. diptych. p hotographs and drawing with thread, mounted and laminated on black gator board. 125 x 175 cm each. c opyright carlos garaicoa. in reference to his earlier photographs of the cuban hotel, garaicoa shot the black-andwhite photographs for this diptych from a low vantage point and filled the frame with, f irst, the structure, and in the second image, nearly the exact same s ite where it once stood. also, he once again included signs of waning urban life: vacant lots, debris like ly le ft from other demolition projects, and street lamps and telephone poles, anchoring electr ical wires that indiscriminately traverse the space around the office building. both photos show the site to be virtually uninhabited, with the exception of a few cars passing at the lower edge of the frame. similar to garaicoa’s representation of the san carlos hotel, the lyon building shown 29 for more on this topic , see santiago c olás, “the third world in jameson’s pos tmodernism or the cultural logic of late capitalism,” in “third world and p os t-colonial issues,” special issue, social text, no. 31/32 (1992): 258-270. 30 see lorenzo fus i, “a c onversation with c arlos garaicoa,” in carlos garaicoa: capablanca’s real pass ion (p rato, i taly: gli ori, 2005), 106. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 8 3 j o d i k o v a c h c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.130 here was ultimately demolished, and the artist resurrects its image through a thread drawing. furthermore, by exhibiting the two photographs of the l.a. site s ide-by-side, he makes it appear as if this building—and all of the stories contained within it—continues to haunt the city block on which it once stood. garaicoa does not forsake the disparities of modernity and inequities of globalization when using the same visual and conceptual strategies to represent havana and los angeles in ruin/reconstruction.31 the ideological underpinnings of the ruinous site in l.a., however, are more ambiguous than those in his havana diptych, and the convolution of history/present/future is more disorienting. the viewer, therefore, must interpret this work in dialogue with the artist’s representations of sites in havana. when comparing the two sets, the emptiness of these sites becomes apparent: closely framed and largely decontextualized from surroundings, and with little indication of human presence, garaicoa directs our attention to the symbolic relationships among the urban architecture, in spite of their different social, political, and economic histories. garaicoa employs the same visual vocabulary for both diptychs, presenting both structures in a perpetual cycle of ruin/re imagination, apparently mirroring cuba’s decline in his response to l.a.’s urban landscape. with this in mind, could these diptychs serve to challenge ideological assumptions about capitalist progress and communist stagnancy that bolstered the u.s. assertion of power and authority during the cold war and have continued, until very recently, to help justify the u.s. embargo on cuba? perhaps garaicoa’s representation of the l.a. ruins therefore suggests an effort to expose and undermine what art historian okwui enwezor describes as the “opposed logics of contemporaneity,” or in other words, the illusion of capitalism’s presumed benefits in contrast to the deficiencies of cuban communism.32according to these images, the legacy of the cold war, underpinned by conflicting myths of progress, afflicts both countr ies—two countries that have only recently begun to normalize diplomatic relations.33 garaicoa reflects upon the ruins of his city as a starting point for envisioning societal renewal. his diptychs are not entirely dystopian; rather, in his work ruin is set against utopia, presence against absence, in ways that offer a layered conception of history. the concept of the ruin on which he expounds appropriates specifically baroque notions about time as a layered process, thus giving history an involuted rather than evolutionary movement. this historical perspective guides viewers to think critically about the economic, 31to nuance this relationship between the local and global, i am extrapolating from ernesto laclau, “universalism, p articularism, and the q uestion of identity,” october vol. 61 (summer 1992): 89. a s laclau says , “[t]he universal emerges out of the particular not as some principle underlying and explaining it, but as an incomplete horizon suturing a dis located particular identity…the universal is the symbol of a miss ing fullness , and the particular exists only in the contradictory movement of asserting a differential identity and s imultaneously canceling it through its subsumption into a nondifferential medium.” 32 enwezor, 16 . 33 see david hart, ins ide/outs ide: contemporary cuban art (wins ton-salem, nc : c harlotte and philip hanes a rt gallery, wake forest university, 2003). see also william m. leogrande and julie m . thomas, “c uba’s q uest for economic independence,” journal of latin american studies 34 , no. 2 (may 2002): 325363. c uba’s alterity to global power operations is unique, particularly within the varied geography of latin a merican economic activity. o ver the course of the pas t two and a half decades, global economic activity has trans formed power s truc tures and polarized national economies within latin america, causing, in recent years, for example, são p aulo to emerge as major center of global finance while countries such as bolivia and v enezuela continue to reinforce national boundaries and identities to protect their economies from liberalization. see also h. m ichael e risman and john m . kirk, ed., redefining cuban foreign policy: the impact of the “special period” (gainesville: university press of florida, 2006). http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 8 4 u r b a n i m a g i n a r ie s c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.130 social, and ideological circumstances that put societies in ruin. rather than simply forgetting the past to imagine utopias of the future, garaicoa cast architectural plans and designs for urban living through the ruins of havana to ground his visions for the city’s regeneration in a concrete history and present socio-economic reality. moreover, the fact that his sketches are easily modified, thus open to creative interpretation, may also suggest the potential to move beyond both the state of ruin and empty utopian promises. new articles in this journal are licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 united states license. this journal is operated by the university library system of the university of p ittsburgh as part of its d-scribe digital p ublishing p rogram, and is co-sponsored by the university of p ittsburgh press. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/ http://www.pitt.edu/ http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/ http://www.upress.pitt.edu/upressindex.aspx http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4. vol 5, no 1 “agency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2016.184 http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu documenting/performing the vulnerable body pain and agency in works by boris mikhailov and petr pavlensky ingrid nordgaard abstract this article explores the concepts of pain and agency in the photography series case history (1997–1998) by the ukrainian photographer boris mikhailov, and in four performance-actions (2012–2014) by the russian performance-activist petr pavlensky. although they represent different generations and respond to different historical contexts, mikhailov and pavlensky share a focus on the wounded body. taking both the documentary and performative aspects of these artworks into account, nordgaard argues that the wounded body stands forth as a body of agency which also reflects the social, political, and historical settings in which it exists. the relational consideration of the two artists therefore offers important insights for understanding post-soviet ukraine and present-day russia, and reflects on the correlation between the private and the public body. by placing mikhailov and pavlensky in dialogue with a broader discussion on spectatorship and the role and significance of “shock imagery” and spectacle in contemporary media, the article further suggests why artworks depicting the body in pain have both an ethical and political function. about the author ingrid nordgaard is a phd student in the department of slavic languages and literatures at yale university. she holds a bachelor of arts in russian studies from the university of tromsø, norway, and in 2013, she completed a master of arts in russian studies at new york university. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.184 in september 2015 when the european refugee crisis was at its most pressing, a photograph of toddler aylan kurdi lying dead on a beach in turkey circulated in international media. as adam withnall of the independent phrased it in a headline: “if these extraordinarily powerful images of a dead syrian child washed up on a beach don't change europe's attitude to refugees, what will?” withnall added, “[t]he independent has taken the decision to publish these images because, among the often glib words about the ‘ongoing migrant crisis,’ it is all too easy to forget the reality of the desperate situation facing many refugees.”1 from whithnall’s point of view, the distressing image moved beyond the confines of the seemingly habitual everyday reporting of human tragedy. shortly after, however, online news sites commented on the image taken by photojournalist nilüfer demir, only this time the headlines did not express a call for mercy and action but were rather set on exposing the truth behind the image: “aylan kurdi’s father denies claims he was a people smuggler and driving boat that capsized and led to son’s death;” “europe’s policy did not kill aylan kurdi;” “'aylan's father just wanted better dental treatment': liberal senator cory bernardi's brutal claim that drowned syrian boy wasn't a 'real refugee'.”2 in the months following the death of kurdi, the french satirical magazine charlie hebdo published several cartoon versions of the image, accompanied by headlines such as “what would’ve become of aylan had he grown up? —a groper.”3 suddenly the tragic fate of the helpless three-year-old was used to complicate the narrative of the european crisis: as if the image caption that once read “this is tragic” now stated “this is tragic, but . . . .” on the one hand, the example above shows how we believe that images could have the power to change attitudes. this stance aligns with william stott’s claims about social documentary photography of the 1930s, which he stated “encourages social improvement” by making us feel implicated through portraying social situations that may be a ltered.4 on the other hand, some of the photograph’s reception suggests that such hopes are futile in the context of contemporary media. in our ever-changing media reality, the distinction between media-producer and media-consumer is increasingly ambiguous: interactive social media frequently intersect with traditional news reporting, and online self-publishing blurs the boundary between critical journalism reporting and opinion pieces. while one may argue that such a media landscape supports openness, transparency, and diverse outlooks, it could also distort the distinction between reality and fiction, and news reporting and 1 a dam whithnall, “i f these extraordinarily powerful images of a dead syrian child washed up on a beach don't change europe's attitude to refugees, what will? ,” independent september 2 , 2015, http://www.independent.co.uk/. 2 respectively, a ndrew griffin in independent, september 13, 2015, http://www.independent.co.uk/; c rispian c uss in al jazeera, september 4 , 2015, http://www.aljazeera.com/; and louise cheer in daily mail, september 8 , 2015, http://www.dailymail.co.uk/. 3 see, for example, a manda meade, “c harlie hebdo cartoon depicting drowned child a lan kurdi sparks rac ism debate” in the guardian, january 14, 2016, https://www.theguardian.com/. 4 william stott, documentary express ion and thirties america (c hicago: university of c hicago p ress, 1973), 21 and 26, respectively. documenting/performing the vulnerable body pain and agency in works by boris mikhailov and petr pavlensky ingrid nordgaard http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/aylan-kurdi-s-father-denies-claims-he-was-a-people-smuggler-and-driving-boat-that-capsized-and-led-10498798.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3225898/liberal-senator-cory-bernardi-says-drowned-syrian-boy-aylan-kurdi-wasn-t-real-refugee.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3225898/liberal-senator-cory-bernardi-says-drowned-syrian-boy-aylan-kurdi-wasn-t-real-refugee.html 8 7 i n g r i d no r d g a a rd c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.184 entertainment, thus slowly erasing the difference between media consumption for informational and for entertainment purposes. this is perhaps especially true in cases that involve human suffering or pain; we have become so accustomed to seeing pain in the media that the potential of an empathic viewing of the tragedy and despair of others seems lost—a statement that has certainly become a cliché, but that still rings true. the fact that the image of aylan kurdi triggered such an overwhelming response discloses how public display of pain is inherently connected to discussions of ethics, voyeurism, general media consumption, and spectacle.5 more important, the photograph reveals how fragile the wounded body is when captured without knowing, unable to give consent to its own visibility or simply becoming part of larger narratives over which it has no control. the appearance of presumed pain in such documentary images may help us conceptualize, understand, and provide photographic evidence for global suffering, but it is also too easy to ignore its presence or to question it—as seen in the case of the syrian toddler. this paper explores the relationships between photography, agency, spectatorship, and pain in works by the ukrainian photographer boris mikhailov (b. 1938) and the russian performance-activist petr pavlensky (b. 1984). these two contemporary artists have addressed the body in pain and its visual presentation using both photography and live bodily performance. representing different generations and working in different social and art historical contexts, mikhailov and pavlensky nevertheless share the goal of capturing bodily vulnerability and revealing the physical impact of social and political injustice on the human body. in mikhailov’s photograph series case history (1997–98), homeless people openly exhibit their wounded, naked bodies in front of his camera. pavlensky, in the performance-actions seam (2012), carcass (2013), fixation (2013), and segregation (2014), mutilates his own body publically in some of the most symbolically laden locations in russia. although what follows is not an explicit comparison of the two artists, a re l ational consideration is productive because both mikhailov and pavlensky refuse to present the wounded body as a powerless victim. instead, i argue that the wounded body in their works represents a way of exposing and contending with external factors that may be harmful not only to the individual, but to all of us. it is my hope that a discussion of the two artists will offer new perspectives on the making and distribution of photographic images of bodies in pain, and on the fraught correlation between the artist, the photographic subject, and the spectator. 5 debord c laims that with the intense focus on produc tion in the modern age, everything has become mere representation characterized by spectacle, “a soc ial relation between people that is mediated by images .” guy debord, the society of the spectacle, trans . ken knabb (berkeley: bureau of p ublic secrets, 2014), 11. indirectly following debord’s notion of the global spectacle, p hil c arney argues that photography is a “soc ial practice of produc tion” and a s trong soc ial force; the photograph produces more than it represents. whether or not photographic images are depicting what is “real” or mere fantasy is bes ide the point, as c arney is more interested in showing how photographic images are parts of how we define our lives . c arney, however, does not linger on the negative impacts of the (photographic) spec tacle, but like debord he points out that it defines the way we live. the reality of soc ial practice can indeed be seen through the photographic spectacle, but it is also produced by it: the photograph must be seen as a performative force. see phil c arney, “c rime, p unishment, and the force of p hotographic spectacle” in framing crime: cultural criminology and the image, eds . keith j. hayward and m ike p resdee (new york: routledge, 2010). susan sontag, among others, has c riticized the concept of spec tacle: “[t]o speak of reality becoming a spectacle is a breathtaking provincialism. i t universalizes the viewing habits of a small, educated population living in the rich part of the world, where news has been converted into entertainment.” see susan sontag, regarding the pain of others (new york: p icador, 2003), 110. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 8 8 v u l n e r a b l e b o d y c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.184 the photographic subject in pain: context and representation before discussing mikhailov and pavlensky on their own terms, some context should be given regarding the photographic medium and photography ’s presumed relationship to pain and its representation. moreover, it is also worth asking what type of response such images may trigger in the viewer. in her famous account on photography (1977), susan sontag claims that photographic images have lost their ability to trigger an ethical response in the spectator, because visual representations of suffering have become commonplace and are inherently linked with sensationalism. in sontag’s account, such images create a “chronic voyeuristic relation” to the world.6 in a similar vein, martha rosler’s 1981 essay “in, around, and afterthoughts (on documentary photography)” offers a substantial critique against the notion that documentary photography can give a truthful account of “reality.” claiming that documentary photography only offers empty remarks about the “conditions of man,” rosler states that the common idea “that documentary precedes, supplants, transcends, or cures full, substantial social activism is an indicator that we do not yet have a real documentary.”7 in other words, documentary photography may pacify the viewer by reaffirming the distance between the photographic subject and the spectator, rather than function as a call for action. the remarks made by sontag and rosler raise important points about the photographic subject and the spectator, contemporary media, and the aesthetic ization of suffering. in addition, it indirectly addresses the issue of agency. according to sontag, the act of taking a picture is somewhat predatory because it violates people by turning them “into objects that can be symbolically possessed.”8 from sontag’s point of view, the photographer is in complete control, whereas the people in the images are objectified and robbed of agency, as both sontag and rosler argue is the case in diane arbus’s photographs of social “outsiders.”9 photographing wounded, differently-abled, and non-normative bodies highlights the nonconformity of these bodies, which emphasizes the photographer’s power but also victimizes the photographic subject. as i understand sontag and rosler, to be victimized is the same as being deprived of personal agency. this is perhaps articulated most clearly in rosler’s essay, which states that traditional documentary photography “carries (old) information about a group of powerless people to another group addressed as socially powerful.”10 6 susan sontag, on photography (new york: farrar, straus , and giroux, 1977), 11. jacques rancière offers a different approach to “intolerable images” and their dis tribution in relation to the ques tion of ethical response. ranc ière convincingly argues that our systems of information do not operate through an overabundance of horrific images, but by “selec ting the speaking and reasoning beings who are capable of ‘dec iphering’ the flow of information about anonymous multitudes . the politics of its images consists in teaching us that not jus t anyone is capable of seeing and speaking. this is the lesson very prosaically confirmed by those who c laim to c riticize the televisual flood of images .” ranc ière, “the intolerable image” in the emancipated spectator, trans . gregory e lliott (london; brooklyn, ny : v erso, 2009), 96. while ranc ière’s observations are an important contribution to the discussion of photographic images and their dis tribution, my paper will not follow his line of inquiry. 7 martha ros ler, “in, a round, and a fterthoughts (o n documentary p hotography)” in decoys and dis ruptions: selected writings , 1975-2001 (c ambridge, ma; london: mit p ress, 2004), 196. 8 sontag, on photography,14 . 9 sontag for ins tance writes: “the ambiguity of a rbus’s work is that she seems to have enrolled in one of art photography’s most visible enterprises—concentrating on vic tims, the unfortunate, the dispossessed— but without the compassionate purpose that such a projec t is expected to serve.” see s ontag, “freak show,” new york review of books 20 , no. 18 (1973), http://www.nybooks .com/articles/1973/11/15/freak-show/. 10 ros ler, “in, a round, and a fterthoughts,” 179. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ http://www.nybooks.com/articles/1973/11/15/freak-show/ http://www.nybooks.com/articles/1973/11/15/freak-show/ 8 9 i n g r i d no r d g a a rd c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.184 in regarding the pain of others (2003), sontag engages with her former work on photography and further grapples with the medium’s ethical implications. commenting on some of the most harrowing images from the past two centuries, sontag struggles with the question of photography’s value. although skeptical of the medium’s ability to convey reality, sontag implores the atrocious images to haunt us, as photography depicting suffering potentially is “an invitation to pay attention, to reflect, to learn, to examine the rationalizations for mass suffering offered by established powers.”11 however, sontag does not explicitly address the photographic subject’s agency, but rather focuses on the spectator’s reaction to the images of wounded bodies. it therefore seems as if sontag is stil l hesitant to approach the body in pain as a body with agency. in the following, i will show how mikhailov and pavlensky challenge such a position as the wounded body in the ir works stands forth as a body that may bear the actions of others, but also has the capacity to act. boris mikhailov’s case history: documenting history and delegating performance as a result of the dissolution of the soviet union, the city of kharkov, ukraine, went through dramatic changes over the course of the 1990s.12 gradually, the city was covered with foreign advertisements—bright and colorful manifestations of the newly accumulated wealth of a fortunate few and in stark contrast to overwhelming signs of poverty. watching his home city change before his eyes, boris mikhailov became astutely aware of a new presence in the modern cityscape: a great number of homeless people. whereas kharkov had undergone the transition from communism to a market economy, neo-libera l reforms, hyperinflation, and the downsizing of social welfare systems, these were the people who had lost their homes and received no state support. wanting to document the historical moment, mikhailov embarked upon a project that took two years to finish and resulted in case history (completed in 1999), a series of more than four hundred life-sized color photographs portraying the lives of homeless people in kharkov.13 an active photographer since the 1960s, mikhailov has received international acclaim for his numerous photography series.14 while his early work to some extent shared the conceptual framework of moscow conceptualism (associated with figures such as ilya 11 susan sontag, regarding the pain of others (new york: p icador, 2003), 117. 12 ukraine gained its independence from the soviet union in 1991. the years to come would be marked by dramatic economic decline. a ccording to the world bank, in 1991 the gdp per capita was $1,490; by 2000 it had fallen to $636. 13 the his torical specificity of case his tory is important. in the soviet union, it was s trictly forbidden to take photos in specific public spaces, to develop photos that might ques tion or c riticize soviet ideology and everyday life, and to photograph naked bodies. explaining his reason for c reating case his tory, mikhailov s tated, “[h]aving these laws and their consequences in my memory, i was aware that i was not allowed to let it happen once again that some periods of life would be erased” in boris m ikhailov, case his tory (berlin: scalo, 1999), 7 . 14 m ikhailov was born in kharkov, ukraine (ussr) in 1938, and began his career as an amateur photographer in the 1960s. by the late 1960s, m ikhailov had finished what is acknowledged as his firs t larger photography series, superimpos itions, and he soon became a figure within the unoffic ial art scene in the soviet union. in 1976, he quit his job and devoted himself entirely to his photographic work. by the early 2000s, m ikhailov had made twenty-six photography series. in 2000, he was awarded the hasselblad foundation international a ward, considered by many to be the most pres tigious recognition in contemporary photography. for a cohes ive account of m ikhailov’s s tylistic and formal development as a photographer, see u rs stahel, “p rivate pleasures, burdensome boredom, public decay—an introduction” in boris mikhailov: a retrospective/eine retrospektive, ed. u rs stahel (zurich: scalo, 2003), 12 –17. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 9 0 v u l n e r a b l e b o d y c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.184 kabakov, erik bulatov, viktor pivovarov, and andrei monastarsky), his post-soviet ser ies speak directly to the state of confusion, disillusionment, and the collapse of order that followed as a result of the dissolution of the soviet union.15 case history marks a pivotal point in mikhailov’s photographic documentation o f post-soviet reality. several of the photographs show explicit nakedness or human suffering, and the series includes photographs of animals, children, mikhailov himself and his family members, objects or rooms, and cityscapes. the images therefore depict not only the situation of the homeless, but also reflect general life in kharkov. figure 1 boris m ikhailov, untitled, from the series case his tory, 1997– 98. c hromogenic color print, 58 7/16 x 39 3/16 in. c opyright boris m ikhailov; courtesy p ace/macgill gallery, new york. 15 for more on m ikhailov’s connection to moscow c onceptualism, see boris groys’s his tory becomes form: moscow conceptualism (c ambridge and london: mit p ress, 2010) and matthew jesse jackson’s the experimental group: i lya kabakov, moscow conceptualism, soviet avant-gardes (c hicago: university of c hicago p ress, 2010). http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 9 1 i n g r i d no r d g a a rd c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.184 although the focus of case history is above all on kharkov’s inhabitants, the series clearly documents a city in decay. in some of the photographs, mikhailov carefully aligns the two, as exemplified by the image of a man lying in a hole in an asphalt road (fig. 1). from its jagged, uneven shape, it is evident that the hole is not carefully designed, but rather the result of natural erosion or caused by rough weather conditions. covered by plants and trash, the hole has clearly remained unattended for quite some time. the man is formally dressed, but his suit is stained and his shoes are worn. his hands are swollen and a large wound is visible on his left wrist. his face is covered in dust and grease. these visual markers suggest that the man is one of the homeless people in kharkov. mikhailov here captures both human and social decline and seems to suggest an almost symbiotic relationship between the homeless man and his environment—one may even speculate whether the man’s positioning within the hole is accidental, or whether mikhailov instructed the man how to lie. for example, his back and shoe bottom run parallel to the right edge of the asphalt, while small indents are visible in the asphalt above his head and above the elbow of the arm on which the man rests his head. he stretches his left arm out in front of his belly, perhaps to provide the spectator the best view of his swollen and wounded hand, an awkward pose that mirrors the irregular shape of the hole. in the upper left corner of the photograph, a large crack appears in the asphalt, and the direction of the crack continues visually through the position of the man’s right forearm and the angle of his extended leg. lastly, the man’s jacket chromatically mirrors the asphalt, and his unwashed face has the color of the dirt and gravel in the hole. considering these compositional features, it is as if mikhailov suggests that man and environment are one, as if the hole has perfectly taken shape around the man’s body. while case history at first glance resembles social documentary photography in the vein of jacob riis, walker evans, roman v ishniac, mary ellen mark, and david goldblatt (to name but a few), it is mikhailov’s careful compositional choices such as these that add a clear artistic component to the series, thus situating case history as both documentary and fine-art photography.16 documenting a specific moment in ukrainian history, mikhailov pays special attention to homeless subjects who are covered in wounds and characterized by deformities, as if the ir bodies bear physical evidence of a society in decline. considering the focus on bodies in pain alongside the title of the series, the spectator is forced to look at the bodies portrayed as though extracted from a medical journal of pathology. this aspect of the work even led one critic to accuse mikhailov of contributing to the creation of a “pornography of pain.”17 although such characteristics point out the complicated issue of voyeurism and the photographer’s potential exploitation of his/her subjects, i challenge the notion that mikhailov’s photographs are set on victimizing or humiliating the subjects whose woun ded bodies are depicted. in one photograph, mikhailov portrays a naked woman with a large abdominal hernia—a physical ailment that causes pain and discomfort that may be increased by basic, everyday movements (fig. 2). the woman’s naked body is centered in the photograph, and the woman 16 o n the connec tion between m ikhailov and documentary photography, see walead beshty, “toward an emphatic resistance: boris m ikhailov’s embodied documents,” afterall: a journal of art, context, and enquiry, no. 12 (a utumn/winter 2005), 80 –88. 17 see henry h itchings, “what’s right in front of you” in times literary supplement, july 18, 2003, 18. the art c ritic and author boris groys has argued against such c ritic ism, noting that on c loser inspection, case his tory “is in fac t concerned with the mise-en-scène of the body—in this case not as an ideologically s taged “soviet” body, but as an erotic body expressing desire” in groys , his tory becomes form: moscow conceptualism, 140. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 9 2 v u l n e r a b l e b o d y c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.184 stands tall, in profile, with a serious look upon her face. her body, covered in sunlight, is aged and worn, and a large scar is visible on her shoulder. the woman’s pose seems contrived and staged, suggesting that she is aware of being photographed. the composition offers the spectator the best possible view of her deformity—exposed by the sun and set against a dark background. it is therefore tempting to argue that mikhailov captured the woman in such a position so that the observer may get the best possible view of her deformity, satisfying our morbid fascination. however, a closer look at other formal, compositional decisions suggests that this is not simply an image of a hernia or a pathologized body. the woman’s body is paralleled by the building structure behind her, as the brick walls are covered with wounds and architectural deformities, thereby evoking the marks that time leaves on everything and everyone. in some places paint is chipping off, and the wall to the right reveals a failed attempt to cover the brick in a different materia l. the beige color of the left wall is similar to the woman’s general skin complexion, while the old paint stains mirror the darker shade of her nipples, her scars, and the mole above her r ight knee. the patterns in the mortar resemble the shapes made by the prominent ve ins in her hand, the creases in her elbow, and the wrinkles on her neck. suddenly, the protruding hernia seems of less significance. instead, in its detail and overall careful composition, the photograph becomes a celebration of lived life, imperfection, and naked vulnerability. figure 2 boris m ikhailov, untitled, from the series case his tory (1997–98). c hromogenic color print, dimens ions variable. c opyright boris mikhailov; courtesy p ace/macgill gallery, new york. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 9 3 i n g r i d no r d g a a rd c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.184 what i am proposing by analyzing this specific photograph in form, content, and context, is that mikhailov is not interested in exposing the wounds or deformities of others simply to shock or provoke the spectator. in case history, the body in pain needs to be considered from a more generous approach that pushes us to look beyond the explicit exhibition of cuts and bruises, and that challenges us to view these bodies as worthy of aesthetic contemplation. more important, mikhailov’s compositional strategies compel viewers to look more closely and consider the stories of the individuals photographed in relationship to their surrounding environment. the homeless in case history therefore should not be viewed simply as objects of a social documentary, but as co-creators in an aesthetic production. this latter point is made even clearer when examining the connection between the documentary and performance in case history. commenting on the creative process of making case history, mikhailov states that he approached the homeless from a journalistic point of view, but that he wanted to avoid doing “pure journalism”—defined by the artist as “taking snapshots of events without interfering.”18 he accomplished this by asking the homeless subjects to reenact situations or scenes he had witnessed, or to strike a pose of their own design. i claim that this should be interpreted as an act of embodied agency since mikhailov’s photographs do not solely document a specif i c historical moment; they also record the agency of kharkov’s homeless through the ir often self-fashioned portraits and reenactments. while i certainly do not propose v iewing case history as performance art, the staged elements of the works, and the complicit contribution of the homeless subjects who were asked to “perform themselves” should not be understated. indeed, a continuum that may be traced in mikhailov’s photographs from the last three decades is his exploration of the fine line between theatrical performance (of everyday life) and documentary—an important aspect of his art that has been pointed out by several critics and is especially apparent in case history.19 the implications of the homeless subjects’ self-performance can be interpreted through claire bishop’s concept of “delegated performance,” defined as “the act of hiring nonprofessionals or specialists in other fields to undertake the job of being present and performing at a particular time and a particular place on behalf of the artist, and following his or her instructions.“20 the people who are hired, according to bishop, are asked to perform their socioeconomic category, whether this is a matter of age, gender, race, disability , or profession. mikhailov’s accounts of the making of case history focus on this element of collaboration between himself and the homeless, but it should be noted that he paid the 18 boris m ikhailov and jan kaila, “a discussion between boris mikhailov and jan kaila” in boris mikhailov: the hasselblad award 2000, ed. gunilla knape (goteborg: hasselblad c enter, 2000), 78 –84. 19 v iktor m isiano and a nna p ilkington give a valuable account of this connection in m ikhailov’s work, coining it “the representation of the everyday and the performative ac ting -out of subjec ts.” see m isiano and p ilkington, “the e thics of v iew: notes on boris mikhailov,” afterall: a journal of art, context, and enquiry, no. 72 (fall/winter 2005): 72 –79. a nne von der heiden also argues that the connection between the documentary and the performative is at the very core of case his tory, and calls it “the most scandalous element of the work as a whole.” see von der heiden,“‘c onsummatum est’ case his tory by boris m ikhailov” in boris mikhailov: a retrospective/eine retrospektive, ed. u rs stahel (zurich: scalo, 2003), 170–172. 20 c laire bishop, “delegated p erformance: o utsourcing authenticity,” october 140 (spring 2012): 91. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 9 4 v u l n e r a b l e b o d y c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.184 figure 3 boris m ikhailov, untitled, from the series case his tory (1997–98). c hromogenic color print, dimens ions variable. c opyright boris mikhailov; courtesy p ace/macgill gallery, new york. homeless for their participation.21 to some degree, this establishes an unequal power relation between mikhailov and the homeless, making it easy to criticize the photographer for exploiting a vulnerable social group. but although such a transaction may affirm the artist’s hierarchical status, it is also a matter of probing singular authorship, delegating power, and entrusting the performers with agency.22 there is a dialogical relation between artist and performer; as bishop emphasizes, “delegation is not just a one-way, downward gesture.”23 to interpret the wounded bodies in case history as exploited subjects who are taken advantage of deprives the homeless individuals of the agency that is manifest in their participation. to be clear, i am not suggesting that the homeless in case history are fully in 21 in the introduc tory notes to case his tory, m ikhailov discusses the fac t that he paid the homeless to partic ipate in the making of the series: “manipulating with money is somehow a new way of legal relations in all areas of the former ussr. a nd by this book i wanted to transmit the feeling that in that place and now people can be openly manipulated. in order to give this flavour of time i wanted to copy or perform the same relations which exist in society between a model and myself.” in boris m ikhailov, case his tory (berlin: scalo, 1999), 9 . the financ ial transaction between m ikhailov and his photographic subjects thus draws awareness to the capitalist system at large, and also speaks to the s ituation of pos t -soviet ukraine in the 1990s, during which time certain groups gained prosperity, while others faced the deepest poverty. 22 bishop, “delegated p erformance,” 110. 23 ibid., 111. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 9 5 i n g r i d no r d g a a rd c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.184 charge of the work’s production and its distribution, but rather that agency should not be reduced to thinking of the photographic subjects as exploited, and the artist as explo iter. instead, the individuals in the series must be acknowledged for their participation in the making of the photographs. an old man who opens his mouth to reveal his missing teeth, pulling back his lip so we can see them better, surely displays an image of someone’s pain and misfortune, but it is also the image of an individual who allowed for such a photograph to be taken (fig. 3). the old man looks straight into the camera as if to tell us that he is not ashamed of his pain, suggesting that being photographed in this setting is a matter of consensus, agreement, and mutual recognition between the photographer and the subject, although this naturally does not do anything to ease his personal tragedy. the confrontational gaze and the matter-of-factness with which the homeless man presents himself affirm his agency. ignoring such an expression of personal agency, i argue, may lead to the further victimization of the photographic subject. my intention so far has been to show how mikhailov combines documentary photography, fine art, and performance in order to record a specific moment in post -soviet history. in addition, mikhailov’s case history presents bodies in pain that are not victimized or robbed of agency, but are rather active participants in the creative process of making the series. nevertheless, in case history, bodily pain as such is portrayed by mikhailov as a consequence of social issues beyond the subject’s control. what, then, of pain that is se lf inflicted and consciously incorporated into artistic action? petr pavlensky: the political potential of pain in november of 2013, news agencies across the world circulated an image of a young man sitting naked on red square in front of the imposing kremlin in moscow with his scrotum nailed to the cobblestones (fig. 4). the young man was petr pavlensky, a professionally trained artist who sees his practice as uniting art and political action, and who in the last five years has emerged as a powerful voice of dissent in russia.24 besides be ing mentioned in news reportage around the world, the persistent coverage of pavlensky in magazines such as artforum, the calvert journal, and 1843 (the economist’s cultural magazine) has made pavlensky a symbol of russian art and activism in the eyes of a western audience. the wide online distribution of pavlensky’s actions and the resulting commentaries triggered by them further speak to the charged relationship between his performances and their documentation, and also raise the question of whether the public aftermath of his actions should, in fact, be interpreted as being part of his overall performance. in the following descriptions, i refer to live performances—events that happened at a certain time and place in front of an audience—but my descriptions are necessarily based on photographs taken during the events. on the one hand, this represents 24 p etr p avlensky is a former s tudent of both saint p etersburg art and industry academy and saint p etersburg pro arte foundation for c ulture and a rts (which he quit for political reasons). together with o ksana shalygina, he is the founder of the journal political propaganda, which publishes material in different media on art and politics. while p avlensky’s art does not always revolve around self-mutilation and a public display of the artis t’s own (naked) body, the works that will be explored here all focus on the wounded body in encounter with public spaces and political power. i t should also be noted that, when referring to his performances, p avlensky uses the russian word aкция (akts iya). this term should be unders tood as an ac t that is the consequence of actionism. by employing this word to desc ribe his art, p avlensky positions himself within the larger artis tic tradition and discourse of v iennese a ctionism of the 1960s and 1970s, but more important, it connec ts him to moscow a ctionism of the 1990s, famous ly personified by figures such as a natoly osmolovsky, a leksandr brener, and o leg kulik. for the sake of s implicity, i will use the english word action when desc ribing pavlensky’s performances. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 9 6 v u l n e r a b l e b o d y c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.184 a methodological challenge, and on the other, it offers a chance to approach pavlensky’s work as twofold: as both performance and as photographic performance documentation, circulated not as art but as news. to each of the performances that will be discussed in my paper, pavlensky invited photographers to document his actions, although no contract existed between the artist and the photographers regarding the future media distribution of the images.25 thus, pavlensky did not view the photographs as being part of the artwork. rather, he used photography to validate and document his performances. figure 4 p etr p avlensky, fixation (фиксация), november 10, 2013. p erformance action with photographic documentation, moscow, russ ia. p hotograph, 36.39 x 56.31 in. p hotographer anonymous , image courtesy of p etr p avlensky. 25 p avlensky in an email to the author, september 4 , 2016. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 9 7 i n g r i d no r d g a a rd c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.184 paul auslander has argued that whenever a performance is documented, the performance may be approached as raw material for documentation, while the document itself emerges as the final product that is widely circulated and known to a larger audience. 26 in a similar vein, amelia jones states that performance art is dependent on documentation “to attain symbolic status within the realm of culture.”27 in pavlensky’s case, this is especially true. not only does the distributed documentation reach an additional audience both nationally and internationally, but it also helps constitute his actions as art: for, as auslander claims, “the art of documenting an event as performance is what constitutes it as such.”28 in the russian political context in which pavlensky operates, such an attribution is o f crucial importance. his actions have been interpreted by the authorities as signs of mental il lness and as acts of vandalism, and as a result pavlensky has been detained, fined, and imprisoned. furthermore, the iconic photographs of his actions may become part of a collective memory of a body that resisted political oppression. the relationship between pavlensky’s actions and their documentation is therefore “viral” in the sense that christopher bedford deploys the term, precisely because the afterlife of his performances “extends the primary act of the performance into the indefinite future of reproduction.”29 although the action on red square was not the first time pavlensky used his own body to express his opposition to the political situation in russia, fixation (фиксация) received massive media attention due to its explicit content and loaded symbolism: the date of the action, november 10, coincided with the national police day, and red square bears special significance in the political history of the russian state.30 regarding what he wanted to achieve with the performance, pavlensky stated: the performance can be seen as a metaphor of the apathy, the political indifference, and the fatalism of russian society. it is not the official lawlessness that deprives society of the possibility to act, but the fixation on its defeats and 26 p aul a uslander, “the p erformativity of p erformance documentation” in paj: a journal of performance and art 28 , no. 3 (2006): 3 . 27 a melia jones, "‘p resence’ in a bsentia: experiencing performance as documentation" in art journal 56 , no. 4 (1997): 13. 28 a us lander, “p erformativity of p erformance,” 5 . 29 c hris topher bedford, “the viral o ntology of p erformance” in perform, repeat, record: live art in his tory, eds . a melia jones and a drian heathfield (c hicago: intellect books, 2012), 77. 30 p olice day—or p olice and internal a ffairs servicemen’s day—is a professional holiday in russia. i t has been celebrated s ince 1962 and is formerly known as m ilitsiya day. o n this day, the police and everyone working in the m inistry of internal a ffairs are honored by their superiors and o ther government officials. red square dates from the late 15th century. for centuries, it func tioned as one of the most central market places in moscow, and was a gathering place for public celebrations and castigations. red square is also the location for russia’s famous military parades. i t should be noted that p avlensky’s action evokes another his torical component: in russ ian prisons, there is a tradition of inmates nailing their scrotums to s tools and benches to protest the prison authorities. see interview with marat guelman in ekow eshun, et. al., “the naked t ruth: the a rt world reacts to p yotr p avlensky’s red square protest,” calvert journal, november 14, 2013, http://calvertjournal.com/articles/show/1768/pyotr-pavlensky-russian-artist-nailsred-square. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ http://calvertjournal.com/articles/show/1768/pyotr-pavlensky-russian-artist-nails-red-square http://calvertjournal.com/articles/show/1768/pyotr-pavlensky-russian-artist-nails-red-square 9 8 v u l n e r a b l e b o d y c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.184 losses nails us even firmer to the pavement of the kremlin, shaping people into an army of apathetic statues—patiently awaiting their fate.31 pavlensky’s statement touches upon a number of characteristic elements of his work: its almost obvious use of metaphors and symbolism; its clear political component; and its desire to comment on the larger social body through the use of the artist’s own body. the likening of the russian people to “an army of apathetic statues” is telling of how pavlensky views his contemporaries: as passive and submissive; easily shaped by the authorities; and as unwilling or incapable of changing their fates.32 nevertheless, the use of the word “army” suggests that pavlensky acknowledges the potential power and inherent agency of russia ’s citizens, and although pavlensky is physically affixed to the square in his performance, the fixation alluded to in the title is also psychological in nature. i therefore argue that pavlensky’s actions do not only reflect the artist’s interpretation of his contemporaneity , but they also call on others to act, even if indirectly. the way in which pavlensky speaks to today’s russia, while simultaneously anchoring his actions in russian history through his careful choice of performance locations and timing, makes his actions function as a reminder: history may be irreversible, but it should not dictate our present. this, of course, does not mean that pavlensky’s actions do not need to be contextualized within the ir own socio-historical moment to be fully understood. following the parliamentary election of december 2011, in which vladimir putin’s party united russia won the majority of the seats in the duma, protests broke out in several cities around the country. for months to come, people regularly gathered in the streets to protest what they considered illicit elections and political and economic corruption—signs of russia moving in a non-democratic direction. on february 21, 2012, five members of the punk rock collective pussy riot staged a performance of their song “punk prayer—mother of god, chase putin away!” in moscow’s cathedral of christ the savior.33 the video of the performance was uploaded to the internet and soon went viral, and with their bright costumes and radical message, pussy riot became a world symbol of the anti-putin opposition in russia. however, 31 “а кцию можно рассматривать как метафору апатии, политической индифферентности и фатализма современного российского общества. не чиновничий беспредел лишает общество возможности действовать, а фиксация на своих поражениях и потерях все крепче прибивает нас к кремлевской брусчатке, создавая из людей армию апатичных истуканов, терпеливо ждущих своей участи.” a uthor’s translation. see, “художник петр павленский прибил мошонку гвоздем к брусчатке на красной площади,” november 10, 2013, http://grani.ru/politics/russia/activism/m.221013.html. 32 a rt c ritic marat guelman for ins tance interpreted fixation as a means of showing soc iety and the oppos ition “that we have los t, that the battle is over: they’ve imprisoned us all and nailed us to the ground.” guelman even added that p avlensky’s action was “the artis tic equivalent of setting yourself on fire,” while the russ ian artist o leg kulik viewed p avlensky as a martyr. see eshun, et al. 33 pussy riot’s choice of location is by no means coincidental. the original c athedral of c hrist the savior was built in the 19th century, but, on the order of joseph stalin, it was demolished in 1931. in 1958, a large outdoor swimming pool was built on the foundation of what was initially supposed to become the p alace of the soviets. the pool operated until 1994, and in the following year, the building of the new cathedral began. the second cathedral of c hrist the savior was consecrated in a ugust 2000. e liot borens tein has argued that the c athedral of c hrist the savior must be unders tood as “the material foundation of the cultural logic of p ussy riot” because it speaks to the concept of his torical ins tability. pussy riot’s performance must therefore be unders tood as a s trong c ritique against the almost symbiotic relationship between the russian s tate and the russian orthodox c hurch—a connection that was made explic itly evident in the months preceding the russian presidential election of 2012 when p atriarch kirill in his sermons encouraged people to vote for p utin. see e liot borenstein, “holy appropriate: why pussy riot and the c athedral of c hrist the sav ior are a match made in heaven,” calvert journal, january 22, 2012, http://calvertjournal.com/comment/show/1983/christ-the-saviour-moscow-pussy-riot. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ http://grani.ru/politics/russia/activism/m.221013.html http://calvertjournal.com/comment/show/1983/christ-the-saviour-moscow-pussy-riot 9 9 i n g r i d no r d g a a rd c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.184 the severe legal persecutions facing the women also made clear how harshly the russian state would punish political dissidents.34 pavlensky’s action seam (шов) of july 2012, was in indirect dialogue with pussy riot and the authority’s treatment of the group’s members. standing in front of the famous kazan cathedral in st. petersburg, dressed in black and with a stoic expression, pavlensky he ld a large placard which read: “the performance of pussy riot was a replication of the famous action of jesus christ (matthew 21:12–13)”35—referring to jesus christ’s expulsion of money changers and merchants from the temple.36 in contrast, the artist’s silence was made explicit and irreversible since his mouth was sewed shut with visible red thread.37 pavlensky’s action thus expressed his support for the members of pussy riot, whose tr ia l was to take place in moscow the same month.38 a year later, in may 2013, pavlensky would once more use his body to address the political situation in russia. in the action carcass (туша), pavlensky lay in front of the main entrance of the st. petersburg legislative assembly bare naked and wrapped inside a large cocoon of barbed wire (fig. 5). as the barbed wire would cut deeper into the artist’s skin with every move he made, pavlensky was forced to lie completely still in the cold, incapacit ated and dependent on law enforcement to be released. carcass was performed as a protest against a number of laws that were discussed (and passed) in the russian duma in the fall of 2012 and spring of 2013, several of which pavlensky and others interpreted as restricting individual freedom.39 pavlensky wished to embody this restriction, and to symbolize “the existence of a person living within a repressive yet law-given system in which every move 34 for more on the aftermath of p ussy riot’s performance, see masha gessen, words will break cement: the pass ion of pussy riot (new york: p enguin, 2014). 35 “а кция pussy riot была переигрыванием знаменитой акции иисуса христа (мф. 21:12–13).” a uthor’s translation. 36 the c itation from matthew 21:12–3 reads: "and jesus went into the temple of god, and cas t out all them that sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew the tables of the moneychangers, and the seats of them that sold doves , a nd said unto them, i t is written, my house shall be called the house of prayer; but ye have made it a den of thieves." p avlensky underlines the symbolical gesture of p ussy riot’s performance, as the offic ials of the russ ian orthodox church are likened to the moneychangers in the temple because of their commercial ac tivities. for more on the russ ian o rthodox c hurch and its economic relations, see n ikolai m itrokhin’s русская православная церковь: современное состояние и актуальные проблемы (moscow: novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 2004). 37 for images and a survey of his ac tions, see shaun walker, “p etr p avlensky: why i nailed my scrotum to red square,” the guardian, february 5 , 2014, https://www.theguardian.com/. 38 a lthough c learly speaking to his present, p avlensky’s choice of ac tion also situated him within a larger corpus of both performance artists and ac tivists who have sewed their mouths shut to s ignal political oppress ion and the s ilencing of certain social groups. david wojnarowicz, bob flanagan and sheree rose, and ron a they are jus t a handful of the artis ts who have had their lips sewn shut during or as performances for diverse reasons, but the ges ture further resonates with those of asylum seekers in a us tralia and great britain as a way of symbolizing unjus t governmental treatment . see amelia jones, “p erforming the wounded body: p ain, a ffect, and the radical relationality of meaning,” parallax 15 no. 4 (2009): 46–47. 39 o ne such example is the russian federation’s law “for the purpose of p rotecting children from information a dvocating for a denial of t raditional family values,” which became known in western media as the “gay propaganda law.” a nother, the law “o n a mendments to legislative acts of the russ ian federation regarding the regulation of the a c tivities of non-profit o rganisations p erforming the functions of a foreign a gent,” s tated that russian ngos receiving donations from abroad must offic ially declare themselves as foreign agents, and that all “political activity” within a given organization must be regis tered with the authorities before being carried out. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 1 0 0 v u l n e r a b l e b o d y c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.184 triggers a strong reaction by the law, and forces its way into the body of the indiv idual.” 40 the title of carcass further suggests that pavlensky’s body should be seen as immobilized and deprived of agency. the performance therefore exhibited the artist’s body as will ingly victimized as pavlensky indirectly delegated some of his initial artistic agency to the people who witnessed his action, and to the ones who cut him out of the barbed wire—a point that will be explored more closely below. figure 5 petr p avlensky, carcass (туша), may 3 , 2013. p erformance ac tion with photographic documentation, st. p etersburg, russia. p hotograph, 24 x 16 in. p hotographer anonymous, image courtesy of p etr p avlensky. as a consequence of his actions, pavlensky’s mental state has been questioned, and the artist has been evaluated by state-appointed doctors and psychiatrists. one might say that the authorities had no choice—exposing or voluntarily seeking out pain goes against social norms, and is usually synonymous with destructive behavior. pavlensky is well aware of this, which can partially explain the location of his (to the date of this publication) last performance involving his wounded body. the action segregation (oтделение ) took place outside the serbsky center, a famous psychiatric hospital in moscow.41 on october 19, 2014, pavlensky sat naked on the wall outside of the serbsky center, and with his only accessory, 40 “существование человека в репрессивной законодательной системе, где любое движение вызывает жестокую реакцию закона, впивающегося в тело индивида." a uthor’s translation. see “художник петр павленский прибил мошонку гвоздем к брусчатке на красной площади,” november 10, 2013, http://grani.ru/p olitics/russia/activism/m.221013.html . 41 in the soviet union, punitive psychiatry was a common way of s ilencing artistic or political dissensus, thus diagnos ing opposition as a mental illness. for more on the topic , see for ins tance sarah marks and mat savelli, eds ., psychiatry in communis t europe (london: p algrave macmillan, 2015), and rebecca reich, “ins ide the p sychiatric word: diagnosis and self-definition in the late soviet period," slavic review 73 , no.3 (2014): 563–84. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ http://grani.ru/politics/russia/activism/m.221013.html 1 0 1 i n g r i d no r d g a a rd c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.184 an enormous knife, cut off his right earlobe (fig. 6). by consciously performing an action that he knew would likely label him as psychologically unstable, pavlensky cha llenged the carefully crafted distinction between the sane and the insane, which separates the healthy from the sick. moreover, by physically cutting off his earlobe (which seems to have disappeared when pavlensky was escorted away from the serbsky center42) from the rest of his body, pavlensky gestured towards the fragile line of demarcation between the part and the whole; the individual and the state. he also evoked the trope of the misunderstood artist-genius—balancing between madness and prophetic clarity, and famously personified by van gogh and his severed ear.43 it is thus the act of cutting as such that is important in pavlensky’s action, not the physical mutilation of his body. figure 6 petr p avlensky, segregation (oтделение), o c tober 19, 2014. p erformance ac tion with photographic documentation, moscow, russia. p hotograph, 72 x 48 in. p hotographer anonymous, image courtesy of p etr p avlensky. 42 marc bennetts, “a c ts of res istance: p yotr p avlensky on p erformance a rt as p rotest,” the calvert journal, december 1 , 2014, http://calvertjournal.com/articles/show/3373/pavlensky-performance-artprotes t. 43 several commentators have connected pavlensky to the figure of the holy fool (юродивый). the holy fool has deep roots in russian o rthodoxy where the term des ignates someone who feigns s tupidity or madness in order to uncover injus tice. the figure also appears frequently in russian literature. for more on p avlensky as an example of the holy fool, see for ins tance dasha filippova, “the russian terrorist: p etr p avlensky,” artslant, june 13, 2016, http://www.arts lant.com/9/articles/show/46065#f4 . i t should be noted, however, that the artis t himself has rejec ted such a comparison: see his interview in новая газета in december 2012, http://www.novayagazeta.ru/arts/71111.html. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ http://calvertjournal.com/articles/show/3373/pavlensky-performance-art-protest http://calvertjournal.com/articles/show/3373/pavlensky-performance-art-protest http://www.artslant.com/9/articles/show/46065#/h http://www.novayagazeta.ru/arts/71111.html 1 0 2 v u l n e r a b l e b o d y c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.184 simply focusing on palvensky’s own body leaves out an important component of his art: the relationship between the social body and the body of an individual, an essential aspect of his work because of its consciously and explicitly public nature. discussing the performance carcass in which the artist becomes completely dependent on others to be freed, pav lensky actively engages with the question of why his performances are so centered on his own body: “why i use the body? because there is a social body—a body that i am also a part of. by using my own body in this act, i am showing what is going on with the social body.”44 i f we take him at his word, pavlensky does not conceive of his actions as disconnected from the lives of his russian contemporaries, but rather seeks to reflect what he considers the state of the social body. pavlensky’s view on the artist’s body here clearly resonates with the projects of other body artists who see the artistic subject as a subject that continuously reaches beyond itself in order to show that identity is always relational, thereby entering the aesthetic realm as a social and political entity.45 in addition, the performed link between the individual and the social body in pavlensky’s actions makes it especially valid to analyze his approach to pain and to ask whose pain this really is. if pavlensky’s body is a metaphor for the larger social body, one may assume that he considers the social body in pain, perhaps even to be pitied or healed. and yet, despite pavlensky’s powerful use of metaphors, such metaphors do not obliterate the fact that, during his actions, the body in pain is indeed his . this raises an important issue regarding his actions: are we (as spectators and as representatives of the social body) somehow to blame for the individual’s suffering? 46 regardless of how one chooses to answer, the question itself shows the importance and potential of paying special attention to pain in pavlensky’s actions.47 i argue that, due to the artist’s blurring of the border between the private and the social body, the experience of pain 44 russ iaforall. “художник пётр павленский о своей акции у за кс спб,” youtube v ideo, 3:41, may 8 , 2013, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ylwaw0brshe. a uthor’s translation. 45 a melia jones, body art/performing the subject (m inneapolis/london: university of m innesota press, 1998), 13–14. see also zdenka badovinac, ed., body and the eas t: from the 1960s to the present (c ambridge, ma: mit p ress, 1999); m ichael feher, “o f bodies and technologies” in discussions in contemporary culture, ed. hal fos ter (seattle: bay p ress, 1981); and nelly richard, “margins and ins titutions: a rt in c hile s ince 1974,” in art & text 21 (1986). for a spec ific account of body art and its soc ial s ignificance in relation to masochism in western performance art, see kathy o ’dell, contract with the skin: masochism, performance art, and the 1970’s (m inneapolis: university of m innesota p ress, 1998). 46 this ques tion brings to mind other performances by artists such as chris burden, gina p ane, and marina a bramovic—artists who have all self-inflicted pain or had others inflic t pain upon their bodies. for an analys is of the “s ilent acceptance” of audience members to such ac ts, see o’dell, contract with the skin; and frazer ward, no innocent bys tanders: performance art and audience (hanover, dartmouth c ollege p ress, 2012). 47 this is not to say, of course, that p avlensky’s actions are about pain as such. when asked about the role of pain in an interview, p avlensky s tated: “i t is not important. in my ac tions i do not attach any conceptual s ignificance to pain, and i do not emphas ize it. the point is not to bring harm upon myself. in general, i relate to pain as i relate to a phobia that must be overcome—like any other fear. the feeling of pain originates in the mind.” a uthor’s translation. for the original quote in russ ian, see evgeniy levkovich, “пётр павленский: ‘моя цель—побудить людей к действию’,” julia&wins ton, november 9 , 2015, http://juliawinston.eu/pavlensky/. while p avlensky seems to want to draw attention away from pain as a component in his ac tions, i maintain that, to the average viewer, the assumed presence of pain s till affec ts how one reac ts to and interprets his actions. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ylwaw0brshe http://juliawinston.eu/pavlenskiy/ 1 0 3 i n g r i d no r d g a a rd c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.184 must be considered as both private and social in nature: the pain of another is also my own; the pain inflicted by another, is also inflicted by me.48 pain rendered public as should be clear from what has been explored so far, mikhailov and pavlensky are not necessarily interested in simply focusing on the pain of one single individual; rather, they use the wounded body to allude to the larger social and political structures that may be causing pain. for both artists, the distinction between the individual and the social body is thereby challenged. because of this, i would like to suggest that the presence of pain in the artworks discussed above indirectly disputes elaine scarry’s study the body in pain, in which she argues that pain is inexpressible; that it resists language and is characterized by its inability to be shared. as scarry puts it, “[t]o have pain is to have certainty; to hear about pain is to have doubt.”49 pain, for scarry, cuts us off from our community and the ability to sufficiently express our emotions, and threatens to destroy our sense of self in the world: our ethics, the promises given by us to loved ones, and our personal integrity. scarry approaches pain as an experience of pure negation; pain as something always appearing as being against the subject, even though the sensation of pain introduces a sense of radical subjectivity.50 scarry’s work has been influential across disciplines, but it has also been cr iticized for giving an ahistorical account of pain, in which pain is presented as an ontological entity of its own—independent of cultural and political signifiers. pain becomes a fact for scarry, rather than something that needs to be interpreted within a more complex framework. 51 histor ian joanna bourke offers an alternative approach and seeks to contextualize pain as a concept and to challenge the notion of it being entirely private in nature. bourke points out that pain can be felt differently depending on how one experiences it, and should be analyzed as a type of event rendered public through language—not as something that happens to the body independently of its environment.52 as bourke phrases it, “pain describes the way we experience something not what is experienced,” and this “way” of experiencing pain is 48 jennifer doyle’s scholarship has explored the importance of the viewer’s affec tive response to artworks of challenging or difficult content. specifically writing on the “difficulty” involved in viewing the performances of the hiv-positive body artist ron a they, doyle notes: “the work is hard because it forces us to keep company with vulnerability, intimacy, and des ire. . . . these are the things that, in fac t, make life hard. they are produc tive and important kinds of difficulty—not because they expand our ideas of what cons titutes art but because they speak to quite fundamental aspects of being a soc ial subject.” doyle’s book is especially useful when interpreting the use of the wounded body in case his tory and in pavlensky’s ac tions, as she argues that the artist’s triggering of an affec tive response in the viewer es tablishes or further s trengthens the political and ideological implications of a given artwork, thus making us aware of our own respons iveness and potential to ac t. see doyle, hold i t agains t me: difficulty and emotion in contemporary art (durham, nc : duke university press, 2013), 20. 49 e laine scarry, the body in pain: the making and unmaking of the world (o xford: o xford university p ress, 1985), 13. 50 ibid., 50 . 51 geoffrey galt harpham, “e laine scarry and the dream of p ain,” salmagundi no. 130–131: 208. 52 joanna bourke, the story of pain: from prayers to painkillers (o xford: o xford university press, 2014). http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 1 0 4 v u l n e r a b l e b o d y c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.184 intrinsically public and political in nature.53 bourke argues that by scrutinizing various painevents from a political perspective, “we are encouraged to explore the political apparatus . . . of pain-events: the discourses, institutions, laws, and medical, scientific, historical, and philosophical structures that underpin knowledges and behaviours associated with being-inpain.”54 however, bourke states, although our experience of pain might be connected to larger systems of power (ideology, the state, the police, etc.), this does not mean that individuals are unable to reconstruct pain-events that may oppose them. the pain-event as a mode of opposition is, i argue, exactly what is being exhibited in case history and pavlensky’s actions. bourke is a helpful interlocutor for understanding the role of pain in the works of both mikhailov and pavlensky because she focuses on the public component of pain. in my reading, the wounded body should here be seen as a body that is already incorporated in and marked by external forces that cause pain. both artists therefore speak to the body’s vulnerability—a topic that has gained a prominent position in judith butler’s scholarship of the last decade. butler has convincingly argued that the body is susceptible to external forces, although this does not mean that it is simply a surface for others to inscribe .55 vulnerability does not speak to a subject’s personal disposition but must be regarded as inherently relational, as an inescapable result of our human condition of living amongst others.56 in recent work, butler pays special attention to forms of politica l resistance that mobilize the fragility of the human body, with the goal of asserting existence through deliberate bodily exposure.57 arguably present in case history as well, this form of political resistance is especially apparent in pavlensky’s actions and adds another level of complex ity to his use of pain as a mode of artistic expression. pavlensky’s physical susceptibility is visually exhibited through his nakedness, the fact that he is performing alone, and through his wounds. it is also reflected in the authorities’ response to his actions, as the ir punitive repercussions confirm pavlensky’s status as an assailable individual, while s imultaneously affirming the control and power of the state. at the same time, however, one may ask why the authorities consider it necessary to respond so strongly to a body in pain that at times is even completely immobilized. does a wounded body really posit a threat to the social order? judging by the reactions of the russian authorities, the answer is yes, and thereby ra ises a certain paradox: by reacting so aggressively to pavlensky’s actions, the authorities actually 53 a melia jones has also challenged the notion that pain is exclusively private in nature. focusing on the presence of the phys ical wound, jones notes that our perception of someone’s wound as actual makes us realize that our own body may be wounded as well. p otentially, the wound can therefore challenge the s tric t boundaries between myself and my other, a notion that may have political implications. see jones, “p erforming the wounded body: p ain, a ffect, and the radical relationality of meaning,” parallax 15 , no. 4 (2009): 55. 54 bourke, the story of pain, 19 . 55 judith butler, frames of war: when is life grievable? (london/brooklyn, ny : v erso, 2009), 33. for other accounts of vulnerability as a shared human condition with a political potential, see debra bergoffen, “february 22, 2001: toward a p olitics of the v ulnerable body” in hypatia 18, no.1 (winter 2003); “exploiting the dignity of the v ulnerable body: rape as a weapon of war” in philosophical papers 38 no.3 (2009); and a driana cavarero’s horrorism: naming contemporary violence (new york: c olumbia university p ress, 2008). the connection between p avlensky’s ac tion and vulnerability was also pointed out by c olleen mcquillen in her conference paper “the v ulnerable body as a p olitical instrument in c ontemporary russian art activism,” presented at the annual convention of the modern language a ssociation, a ustin, texas, january 7 –10, 2016. 56 judith butler, precarious life: the powers of mourning and violence (london/brooklyn, ny: v erso, 2006), 31. 57 judith butler, “rethinking vulnerability and resistance,” paper presented in madrid, june 2014. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 1 0 5 i n g r i d no r d g a a rd c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.184 acknowledge his potent bodily rhetoric and clear political potential. it is here that the power of the vulnerable body truly manifests itself and becomes a body of socia l dissensus and agency. although one may claim that pavlensky’s actions are more explicitly political than mikhailov’s case history, both artists refuse to define vulnerability as a lack of agency. by contextualizing the body in pain socially and historically, they show how pain is relational—in essence, both private and social—which probes us to consider our own pain and our implic it relation to the pain of others. furthermore, mikhailov and pavlensky offer valuable perspectives on what it means to inhabit and depict a wounded body in public. conclusion lying face down on a beach in greece in january 2016, the famous chinese artist activist ai weiwei reenacted the photograph of three-year-old aylan kurdi. the black -andwhite photograph which captured the reenactment—taken by rohit chawla, a photographer for one of the biggest english-news magazines in asia, india today—was part of a larger and exclusive photo shoot that the magazine had with ai. claiming that the image was a tr ibute to kurdi, a press release from india today commented on the reenactment and its public response: “the result is a world exclusive photograph that has gone viral. the whole story is one image, which is what great art is.”58 the photographic documentation and distribution of ai’s reenactment bring us back to the issues with which my paper began, concerning the fine line between journalism and sensationalism; news and entertainment; critical austerity and consumerist concerns in contemporary media, and how photographic representation of the wounded body fits into this landscape. in addition, because the photograph of ai first appeared in a news magazine, the picture introduces another question—whether news images such as these are, or should be considered, art. in regarding the pain of others, susan sontag reflected on viewing wartime photographs exhibited in galleries, noting that such photographs and others automatically become art once they enter the gallery space. sontag claimed that these images merely become stations along a stroll, which may cause us to lose our ability to contemplate what we see.59 as a result, we fail to view the people in the photographs as subjects. jacques rancière has keenly noted that art images do not “supply weapons for battles” but that they can inspire new configurations regarding what can be seen, said, and thought of, as long as “their meaning or effect is not anticipated.”60 this, i argue, applies to the artworks by boris mikhailov and petr pavlensky that have been the focus of my pap er. by showing his case history in some of the most prestigious galleries in the world, mikhailov challenges the viewer to see the wounded bodies of kharkov’s homeless from an aesthetic perspective. moreover, the participants in mikhailov’s series, who str ike poses and willingly perform in front of the camera, are indirectly asking us to look at them and see them as subjects, as people in pain. in a rather different fashion, the wide media distribution of the 58 the release then went on to mention that a full interview with a i and more pic tures from the shoot would appear in the magazine’s next is sue. “a rtist ai weiwei poses as aylan kurdi for india today magazine,” india today, february 1 , 2016, http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/artist-ai-weiwei-poses-asaylan-kurdi-for-india-today-magazine/1/584804.html. 59 sontag, regarding the pain of others , 121. 60 ranc ière, “the intolerable image,” 103. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/artist-ai-weiwei-poses-as-aylan-kurdi-for-india-today-magazine/1/584804.html http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/artist-ai-weiwei-poses-as-aylan-kurdi-for-india-today-magazine/1/584804.html 1 0 6 v u l n e r a b l e b o d y c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.184 photographs documenting pavlensky’s actions, and the attention they elicit, reveals that we are not sure how to approach the wounded body when it is explicitly—and voluntarily— performed. by gaining attention from some of the major news companies in the world, websites and magazines become pavlensky’s personal exhibition space, making the v iewer wonder whether she is witnessing art or international news. this speaks to the aesthetic, political, and social implications of these artists’ engagement with the wounded body. rather than viewing mikhailov’s case history, pavlensky’s actions, and works like them by other artists as romanticizing or sensationalizing suffering, these projects need to be contextualized within a larger (art) historical setting. only then will we fully comprehend the significance of pain in these artworks. while i do not suggest that the representations of pain in mikhailov’s photographs and in the images documenting pavlensky’s performance-actions are more authentic or rea l than others, the wounded body in their art still stands forth as a body of agency and personal volition; as a body that may appeal to our voyeurism, but that simultaneously challenges us to contemplate what we are seeing and why we are watching. the wounded body may provoke and upset, surprise and appall, but it always challenges, always resists. as history takes yet another turn, one may hope that such a body will haunt us. acknowledgements i would like to express my sincere gratitude to my two anonymous reviewers for their invaluable comments, criticism and suggestions. i am grateful to molly brunson for her helpful feedback on a seminar paper on boris mikhailov and for challenging me to think more about his work, and to marijeta bozovic for fruitful conversations on the connection between politics and bodies. for introducing me to the diverse field of performance studies and for his priceless mentorship, i thank joseph roach. thanks also to petr pavlensky for willingly answering my questions and for granting me permission to use his personal photographs. lastly, profound appreciation is extended to my editor, nicole f. scalissi: i could not have asked for a more attentive reader, whose professional insights have greatly benefitted my paper. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 1 0 7 i n g r i d no r d g a a rd c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.184 new articles in this journal are licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 united states license. this journal is operated by the university library system of the university of p ittsburgh as part of its d-scribe digital p ublishing p rogram, and is co-sponsored by the university of p ittsburgh press. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/ http://www.pitt.edu/ http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/ http://www.upress.pitt.edu/upressindex.aspx http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ vol 5, no 1 “agency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2016.183 http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu awakening objects and indigenizing the museum stephen gilchrist in conversation with henry f. skerritt abstract curated by stephen gilchrist, everywhen: the eternal present in indigenous art from australia was held at harvard art museums from february 5, 2016–september 18, 2016. the exhibition was a survey of contemporary indigenous art from australia, exploring the ways in which time is embedded within indigenous artistic, social, historical, and philosophical life . the exhibition included more than seventy works drawn from public and private collections in australia and the united states, and featured many works that have never been seen outside australia. everywhen is gilchrist’s second major exhibition in the united states, fo llowing crossing cultures: the owen and wagner collection of contemporary aboriginal australian art at the hood museum of art in 2012. conducted on april 22, 2016, this conversation considers the position of indigenous art in the museum, and the active ways in which curators and institutions can work to “indigenize” their institutions. gilchr ist discusses the evolution of everywhen, along with the curatorial strategies employed to change the status of object-viewer relations in the exhibition. the transcription has been edited for clarity. about the authors belonging to the yamatji people of northwest western australia, stephen gilchrist is associate lecturer of indigenous art at the university of sydney. he was the australian studies visiting curator at the harvard art museums where he curated everywhen: the eternal present in indigenous art from australia. henry f. skerritt is curator of indigenous art of australia at the kluge-ruhe aborigina l art collection, university of virginia. skerritt is a doctoral candidate in the department of history of art and architecture at the university of pittsburgh. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.183 henry f. skerritt (hs): i’d like to start by discussing your evolution as a curator, and in particular, how it shapes the thinking behind everywhen. stephen gilchrist (sg): well, my work as a curator can be characterized by un-belonging and belonging—working within institutions and without—and the pros and cons that come with both of those opportunities. as a curator i want to keep trying new things by working with different artists, different collections, and different spaces. i’ve worked with australian state and national col lections and at university art museums in north america. for what it’s worth, i consider myself to be a curator of contemporary art and so the everywhen show was an opportunity for me to work more explicitly with historic objects. the invitation for this show was to think about those ideas that i bring about the contemporary, of presentness, of nowness, and to place them in conversation with the history of collections. within this framework, i was hopeful that the show could also be an intervention into those collections. hs: that’s interesting because you’ve already brought up the idea of the histor ica l. at the same time, everywhen to me is a very conceptual exhibition. it’s quite different to any surveys of its kind staged before. what were you trying to do with that show in particular, and what were the particular challenges that it brought up? sg: for me, the provocation of the show is really to imagine the world otherwise: to think through, between, and beyond, what we’ve been presented as the dominant narratives of indigenous art and culture. colonization isn’t the meta-narrative of indigeneity, but people often think that it is, so in this show i wanted to explore other ways of be ing in time; the rhythms of seasonal time, the shape-shifting of ancestral time, the measures of ceremonial time in addition to colonial and post-colonial time. i wanted people to engage not just with the 228 years since colonization, but also with the 40,000 plus years of indigenous residence on the place now termed australia. the invitation for visitors is to become synchronous with the everywhen, even if only momentarily, and by doing so they could lessen the burden of the colonial register in this exhibition. of course colonization is there, it’s never going away, but you can try to blunt it somehow. and to me this methodological approach endorses the potential of indigenization within museums. it is a process of un-assimilation. by making the frames of reference to be wholly indigenous, as much as we can, we are not just decolonizing the space, we are in fact indigenizing it. hs: can you just tease out the distinction there? it strikes me that part of that distinction is one of intersubjectivity. you’re trying to get away from this dialectic that frames the colonizer and the colonized in this kind of mutually dependent power re lationship, is that right? awakening objects and indigenizing the museum stephen gilchrist in conversation with henry f. skerritt http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 1 1 0 a w a k e n i n g o b j e c t s a n d i n d i g e n i z i ng th e mu s e u m c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/cont.2016.183 figure 1 ins tallation view of “seasonality” module from everywhen: the eternal present in indigenous art from aus tralia, harvard a rt museums, c ambridge, ma, curated by stephen gilchrist. works left to right: gulumbu yunupingu, garak iv (the universe), 2004; regina pilawuk wilson, syaw (fish net), 2008; yumutjin wunungmurra, gangan to baraltja (larrakitj), 2005; djirrirra wunungmurra, dhalwangu (larrakitj), 2005; djambawa marawili, dhakandjali—dhupundji (larrakitj), 2006; djirrirra wunungmurra, yukuwa, 2010; and judy watson, bunya, 2011. image courtesy harvard art museums, © p res ident and fellows of harvard c ollege. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 1 1 1 s te p h e n g i l c h r i s t a n d he n r y f . s k e r r i t t c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.183 sg: exactly. the exhibition isn’t merely about time, it is also about power and who gets to claim time, history, place, and cultural memory. the essential question for me is not why are we excluded from cultural texts and institutions, art histories, and formations of nationhood, but why are we part of these systems to begin with. the norm is a disruption for indigenous people, so how can we disrupt this historical violence that has become normative? for me, one possible strategy is to return to the foundational narratives of place, people and practice and to weave those into the internal logic of the exhibition. even though both strategies are necessary and productive, i feel that there is a different inflection between a curatorial practice that privileges philosophies of decolonization over indigenization. for me at least, the former is about undoing something that invariably feels like you are forever playing catch up. indigenization for me is about doing; manifesting, instantiating, and running our own race on our own terms. i am reluctant to say the distinction is between “undoing” and “being” as i don’t want to reproduce unhelpful essentialist tropes, but i think there is something crucial about openness and creating openings to indigenous ways of seeing, knowing, and being. hs: and how is that being received in the usa? sg: it’s so hard to be objective. hs: well you don’t have to be objective. sg: well, there is actually a lot of freedom in doing a show for north american audiences, because many of the signposts that are used and are useful for australian audiences don’t register here. conceptually, i needed to disrespect chronology, to disrespect these colonial geographies, and to disrespect these distinctions between the urban, the remote and the rural, but they were also practical considerations too. i want people to understand the breadth, sophistication, beauty, and politics of indigenous art and i hope that most v isitors get a sense of that. it would be great if visitors could spend time with these unfamiliar ideas that can potentially recalibrate their understanding of indigeneity. hs: let’s get down to more practical questions. can we talk a bit about the show’s evolution? i’m thinking here very much in the practical sense, the way you went through thinking about the collections at harvard, and but also of the other collections that you drew from. what do the practicalities of putting a show like this together look like? sg: my very first visit to harvard university included a tour of the collection storage at the peabody museum of archaeology and ethnology, but at that stage i didn’t really have a clear idea of what i wanted to see, as i didn’t really know what was there. with the collections manager, i was pulling out drawers, looking, seeing, listening to which objects spoke to me and which objects were of interest. one of the first groups of objects that i saw were the beautiful riji (engraved pearl shells) that we have in the exhibition. one in particular was a broken pearl shell, with incised geometric designs that were infilled and rubbed with ochre. what interested me was that it represented a fragment of material culture that was thousands and thousands of miles from where it came from. but it also voiced this promissory moment of reconnection. i wanted the objects to go through this process of somehow returning to the communities from which they came. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 1 1 2 a w a k e n i n g o b j e c t s a n d i n d i g e n i z i ng th e mu s e u m c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/cont.2016.183 museums do represent loss for indigenous peoples, so this object literalized these ideas of brokenness and of being incomplete. i wanted the objects to represent both the ceremonies that never were, the ceremonies that never could be, but also be a conduit of reconnection. sometimes, the information that we have as museum professionals and as indigenous people is not just incomplete, but incompletable. but this process of falling into the unknown brings us closer to who we were, who we are, and who we will be. an important component of this idea of reconnection was touch. and so i chose objects from the peabody’s collection that were and are cradled, woven, worn, held c lose, performed, struck. in this exhibition we have coolamons (vessels), basketry, mats, pearl shells, drums, and three larrakitj (hollow log coffins) to demonstrate a life lived through objects and how the abstracted indigenous body becomes reconstituted. interestingly, we received instructions from a community about who exactly could touch their objects. and it was a great reminder that touch is conditional, relational and it is also a gift. the objects are like the notation but when they come into contact with communities in rea l and symbolic ways, this notation becomes music. hs: i think that’s a segue to talk about objects, because one of the things that str ikes me about this show, everywhen, and crossing cultures and some of the other shows that you’ve done, is that you seem very interested in allowing the objects to speak and allowing them to speak in relation to other objects.1 often there seems to be a feeling with aboriginal art exhibitions that, in order to provide adequate “context,” the exhibitions must include mountains of text, video, audio, and other supplementary material. how do you deal with objects whose meanings are often ambiguous or alien to viewers, particular ly in america, and how can objects in museums speak without the curator speaking for them? sg: i think that is one of the most difficult tasks as a curator. i actually think that we do have a lot of text, almost every object has its own extended label of about 150 words, we do have video interviews with artists in the space and we do have regular guided tours. as a teaching museum, the exhibition had to fulfill certain pedagogical takeaways and i had to give people enough points of access, in multiple platforms for them to respond to the visual, auditory, temporal, and scholarly information in the space. these are fairly traditional ways of communicating information but they don’t by themselves do the work that needs to be done by the visitor or even the object. hs: can you expand on what you mean by that? because i think there is something about your curating that is very respectful to honoring the works and their creators, and their cultures. so what do you mean when you say that it is a really traditional manner? because, i think that term has slightly different connotations in the american and australian contexts. 1 see stephen gilchrist, ed., crossing cultures: the owen and wagner collection of contemporary abor i ginal aus tralian art at the hood museum of art (hanover, nh: hood museum of art, dartmouth college, 2012). http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 1 1 3 s te p h e n g i l c h r i s t a n d he n r y f . s k e r r i t t c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.183 figure 2 ins tallation view of “t rans formation” module from everywhen: the e ternal p resent in indigenous art from a us tralia, harvard art museums, c ambridge, ma, curated by stephen gilchrist. works background, left to right: walter t jamlitjinpa, rainbow and water story, 1972; m ick namararri tjapaltjarri, big cave dreaming with ceremonial object, 1972; ronnie t jampitjinpa, two women dreaming, 1990; and gunybi ganambarr, buyku, 2011. foreground, left to right: unidentified artist, coolamon, c .18961931; unidentified artist, coolamon, c .1896-1931; unidentified artist, coolamon, c .1951; and unidentified artis t, coolamon, c .1951. image c ourtesy harvard a rt museums, © p res ident and fellows of harvard c ollege. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 1 1 4 a w a k e n i n g o b j e c t s a n d i n d i g e n i z i ng th e mu s e u m c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/cont.2016.183 sg: yes, we are talking about two overlapping sets of traditions. as a curator or art historian you can’t be closed to what the object is trying to say to you or to audiences. indigenous people sometimes describe it as “waking up objects,” so the first point of departure is be ing open to these awakenings with objects. and that means having a reverence and a respect for these objects, recognizing that you can unlock this cultural information through these encounters, sometimes through touch, but, also through the other senses as well: looking, smelling, listening, touching. i think that is a traditional indigenous way. i think art museums produce particular ways of thinking and behaving. you read a label that has an authoritative, omniscient voice that is based on the assumption that we’re all children of the enlightenment, and that we want to have these rational, scientific labe ls. i’m not suggesting that there is no reason or intellectualism in indigenous culture, but i am much more interested in different philosophies of perception. there are ways of understanding these objects that aren’t necessarily cognitive. hs: i think this comes back to the idea you’d spoke of earlier about indigenizing the museum. you’ve written about shifting the role of the ethnographic museum to allow for the reaffirmation and reinterpretation of objects for indigenous peoples. how do you think museums can take an alternative role for indigenous peoples, to allow them to get in touch with their pasts and identities? is that possible in a show like everywhen that is so far from the geographic point of origin of the works? and does it require museums to completely rethink that kind of enlightenment way of doing things as well, and to open themselves up to alternative ways of experiencing objects? sg: two of the works in the show are cylindrical-shaped ochred baskets that had become flattened and misaligned over the years. i chose them because they had these great abrasions from the wearer’s shoulders showing the body imprinted on the object. louise hamby who had a visiting fellowship at the peabody museum invited an important elder from milingimbi to look at these works. when we selected them for display, peabody conservators reversed the damage and by putting them on display, the works were awakened. it was through these active and generative encounters with those objects on a cultural but also a material level. even though they are far from home, these objects become renewed through these active encounters. hs: one of the things that strikes me is your emphasis on praxis, and on the active process of indigenizing over the essentialized idea of indigenous curating. i know you’ve spoken about striking a balance between indigeneity as a strategically essentialist mode and a form of active being in the world. i’d like to try and tease out what this looks like in practice in the context of curating. what are the things that institutions might do to move forward in indigenizing their institutions? sg: well, i think it’s about recalibrating their relationship to the objects away from preservation into activation. it is about activating relationships and not de fining them. objects become fully realized through active encounters with their community. the cultural memory of objects resides with the community, and institutions need to be mindful of this. from the beginning, the objects for me weren’t objects at all. they were subjects, and the challenge was how to deploy this subjective status for the viewer and for the institution. at the opening of the show, i spoke about openness and being open. institutions have to be open, and not closed to entering into dialogues about the memory of these cultura l objects http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 1 1 5 s te p h e n g i l c h r i s t a n d he n r y f . s k e r r i t t c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.183 and the custodianship of these objects. i think that is the first step. it’s not necessarily about having indigenous curators or, curators who have an indigenist approach. the museum itself has to be open to this process of indigenization. hs: when you talk about that it sounds like a lot of it operates outside of the exhibition itself. where do exhibitions fit into this? i think of how someone like jens hoffmann has started to refer to himself as an “exhibition maker” as opposed to a curator, in order to draw a distinction between these two practices. but it seems to me, when you talk about curating, you are speaking about it as a much broader activity. sg: like painting is more than painting, curating is more than curating. it is a social practice and a form of activism, and those modalities are engaged within the space, but also, as you say, outside the exhibition space. for me, an exhibition is about “presencing.” it is about being in and with the presence of the ancestors, but it is also about bringing things into view, into focus, into relief. sometimes it is less about the accomplishment of that goal and more about the effort. i’m particularly thinking about the objects whose original names have been erased. we engage with the object and with the community to allow for a surfacing of information that can be presented in the space. we changed the labels to read “unidentified artist” rather than “unknown maker,” and for me this was about presencing the humanness of the makers and perhaps the carelessness of the collectors. within these histories of erasure what can still be presenced? hs: how have the various projects that you’ve worked on before helped you to develop your ideas on the possibilities and the potentials of an indigenized practice, and how do you see the state of the field both locally and globally? sg: yeah, that is a hard question to answer for all kinds of reasons. hs: well, maybe a different way to approach the question is to ask who you would see as mentors, and what you learned from them. but also, how do you think that the challenges are different for an indigenous curator working today as opposed to your predecessors, such as hetti perkins, brenda croft, or djon mundine? sg: yes, they are definitely my curatorial mentors and tormentors and i have learnt so much from them. one lesson is to use the enviable platform that we are given as curators to speak truth to power. but the monopolies of violence over our indigenous communities are even greater today, and the risks of speaking out are high. i worry about the state of indigenous art at the moment. we reached a poin t, i guess in 2008, where there were indigenous curators in every single state art gallery in australia and of course the national gallery of australia. since then, though, we have had a numerica l regression with a number of high-profile senior level curators standing down, i think as a vote of no confidence in these institutions. but we have also had these locational regressions, where the space afforded to indigenous art is shrinking. i guess it comes as no surprise when, as a nation, we have basically been going backwards politically. so i f ind a ll this very troubling. however, there is also a growing interest in indigenous art internationally and i definitely see that continuing. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 1 1 6 a w a k e n i n g o b j e c t s a n d i n d i g e n i z i ng th e mu s e u m c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/cont.2016.183 figure 3 ins tallation view of “remembrance” module from everywhen: the eternal present in indigenous art from aus tralia, harvard a rt museums, c ambridge, ma, curated by stephen gilchrist. works left to right: julie gough, dark valley, van dieman’s land, 2008; v ernon a h kee, many lies , 2004; yhonnie scarce, the s ilence of others (series of s ix) n2360, n2409, n2357, n2394, n1858, n2358; and p addy nyukuny bedford, emu dreaming, 2003. image c ourtesy harvard a rt museums, © p res ident and fellows of harvard c ollege. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 1 1 7 s te p h e n g i l c h r i s t a n d he n r y f . s k e r r i t t c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.183 hs: i know it’s a difficult question, but why do you think that this regression has happened? sg: i do think, on one level indigenous art has been a victim of its own success in australia . indigenous art was everywhere for a while. and, maybe audiences in australia did reach a kind of saturation point and were no longer receptive to what it offered. for me it has been really great working in an international sphere, where aboriginal art is not the other to australian art. it is immediately and necessarily part of an internationalized discussion around the categories of contemporary art and, by virtue of being seen in these new contexts, it creates expansionary movement in our understanding, awareness, and cultura l value. hs: i think that’s an interesting question, about the sort of difference between the loca l to global context. i pulled this quote of yours that i liked a lot, where you said, “the lesson of indigenous art is not that it behaves differently from contemporary art, but rather that contemporary art can no longer be considered a singular entity. like the other myriad alternate forms of contemporary art practice current today, indigenous art must be evaluated on its own terms.”2 i like that quote because it gets to the heart of a lot of the complex challenges that aboriginal art poses in the contemporary art world context. sg: i think maybe that the first wave of indigenous curators were necessarily about visibility. it was about localized resistance to institutions that were refusing to exhibit indigenous art and even refusing to consider indigenous art as fine art, let alone contemporary art. i think new generations of indigenous artists and curators are grappling with not necessarily the politics of exclusion, but the politics of inclusion, as in, how do we position ourselves? now that we’re here, we don’t have to defend who we are, we get to define who we are. we don’t have to be understood in opposition to the dominant culture, but we can be understood in relation to and with ourselves. hs: in your essay “indigenising curatorial practice” you make the point, that attempts to position indigenous art globally often end up implying that indigenous art needs the validation of the western art world.3 but it strikes me that you’re seeing an opportunity in this globalized space to enliven the world. you conclude your catalogue essay by saying, “[t]he everywhen can show us that indigenous art and culture do not merely represent the time before time, but in fact, awaken us to the fullness of it.”4 i wonder if you can speak then to this question of separatism because it seems to me that separatism as a concept makes a lot more sense in australia than it does for a curator in the usa. i guess the question is, where your international experience forces you to take different stances in the australian context than the american context on these ideas. 2 stephen gilchrist and jananggoo butcher cherel, "am i a good painter or not?" in no boundaries, ed. henry f. skerritt (reno and new york: nevada museum of art and prestel, 2014), 48. 3 stephen gilchrist, “indigenising curatorial practice,” in the world is not a foreign land, ed. quentin sprague (parville: ian potter museum of art, university of melbourne, 2014), 55-59. 4 stephen gilchrist, ed. everywhen: the eternal present in indigenous art from australia (cambridge, ma: harvard art museums, 2016), 30. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 1 1 8 a w a k e n i n g o b j e c t s a n d i n d i g e n i z i ng th e mu s e u m c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/cont.2016.183 sg: absolutely. it’s not that the stakes are higher or lower, but the stakes are definitely different. every exhibition is a curatorial exercise in wayfinding, and i think this exhibition has taught me that as i move through the world, relationships are my politics. i t is about intellectual, cultural, and political engagement, and who we can bring with us into this collective and often difficult “we.” i felt that i was also using the institutional armature of harvard university to state something that to me is self-evident. aboriginal art isn’t of the margins. it is something that is self-possessed and deserving of its own value. the work of the viewer is to not just question the canon, but question canonicity itself. the job of the curator is to negotiate the indigenous systems of value that don’t change with those that do. hs: so, in that sense then, do you see yourself having to take on the role of translator, trying to translate one world into another world? sg: translation is definitely part of it but i think it’s also about unsettling one world so it can better recognize the other. hs: critics like tony bennett have made a strong case that the institution of the museum is designed to perpetuate a very modernist and progressive version of time.5 everywhen seems very much an attempt to work against the hegemony of progressive time. returning to the question of indigenizing the museum, how do you think that indigenous cultura l practices can work within or against the in-built temporal frames of the museum? sg: when i was initially thinking about this exhibition and even when we were installing it, i did envision the museum as this site of temporal collapse. but it isn’t about the disintegration or the flattening of time. it is about the possibilities of activating these registers of the past, present, and future. the white-rectilinear galleries that i was given to work with have the ir own histor ies and significations and the only way i could address it was through configuring the exhibition as this endless figure eight which obviously is about non-linearity. the themes of the show are, like time itself, overlapping, dynamic and interactive and as you move through the space, you move through, between, and beyond these indigenous temporal frames. hs: i guess that that is the essence of not fetishizing the museum. i sometimes fee l that there is a danger in hardline foucauldian arguments of reifying the power structures, and then perpetuating their power. but if you don’t let those power structures dictate, then there is the possibility of working within them as well against them. 5 tony bennet, pasts beyond memory: evolution, museums, colonialism (london: routledge, 2004). http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 1 1 9 s te p h e n g i l c h r i s t a n d he n r y f . s k e r r i t t c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.183 figure 4 ins tallation view of “p erformance” module from everywhen: the eternal present in indigenous art from aus tralia, harvard a rt museums, c ambridge, ma, curated by stephen gilchrist. works left to right: doreen reid nakamarra, untitled, 2007; unidentified artist, warup (drum), mid-19th—early 20th century; and dorothy napangardi, karntakurlangu jukurrpa, 2002. image c ourtesy harvard a rt museums, © p res ident and fellows of harvard c ollege. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 1 2 0 a w a k e n i n g o b j e c t s a n d i n d i g e n i z i ng th e mu s e u m c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/cont.2016.183 sg: yes, i mean for me it’s about redirecting energy and modeling these values within a space of discomfort but also a space of reciprocity. your question was about museum framing and seeing? hs: yeah, that’s right, i mean you are still working within a museum context. but it seems to me that everywhen is very successful at working against those frames without necessarily being explicit in the way that it’s doing it. it feels like quite a subtle piece of subterfuge. sg: there’s always a little bit of stealth work that is required and i do think it is probably closer to subversion than inversion. but at the same time, i was very up front about what i was doing and why i was doing it and asking why it hadn’t been done before. the harvard art museums didn’t want me to be curatorially anonymous and so they encouraged me to use my voice and the voicings of the artists to achieve these a ims. with some things like the surfacing of indigenous words for indigenous objects, i didn’t ask permission, but i also didn’t think that i needed to. hs: how would you respond to indigenous american artists or curators who might argue that they face the same problems here, that indigenous australian curators face in australia. i guess this a dual question, how do you think what you’re doing here might be able to have an impact in australia? but also, how do you think it might be able to impact what’s going on in the local context here with indigenous practice, which has really, i think, been neglected in a very big way? sg: oh, yeah, absolutely. at all the talks and lectures and presentations, and film screenings that we have had at harvard, we have begun with an acknowledgement of country. and it’s been really amazing how this small, but important gesture can really change the way people understand the place we are in. some people have found it quite profound, and i ’ve been struck by how necessary those things are because of the neglect of the incredible art practices of native american artists. people have said to me, “you know, this [everywhen] is great, but it’d be great to also see a native american show here.” and i have to say, i completely agree. what we have to do is just to try and show support, and show that we’re trying to unpack some of the same things. so it’s a case of trying to do two things at one time. i’m asking people to think about what happened in australia, but also what happened here as well, so hopefully there’s two takeaways to the show. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 1 2 1 s te p h e n g i l c h r i s t a n d he n r y f . s k e r r i t t c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.183 new articles in this journal are licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 united states license. this journal is operated by the university library system of the university of p ittsburgh as part of its d-scribe digital p ublishing p rogram, and is co-sponsored by the university of p ittsburgh press. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/ http://www.pitt.edu/ http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/ http://www.upress.pitt.edu/upressindex.aspx http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ vol 5, no 1 “agency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2016.182 http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu curator—curatorial studies towards co-creation and multiple agencies erin a. peters abstract erin a. peters reflects on her objectives as a curator and educator, and the agency of museum visitors as co-creators. about the author erin peters is joint lecturer in curatorial studies at the university of pittsburgh and assistant curator in science and research at the carnegie museum of natural history. peters holds a ma in egyptology, a ma in museum professions, and a phd in art history, for which her dissertation, “egypt in empire: augustan temple art and architecture at karnak, philae, kalabsha, dendur, and alexandria,” won the 2015 university of iowa d.c. spriestersbach dissertation prize in the humanities and the fine arts. while completing dissertation research, peters was a metropolitan museum of art chester dale fellow in the department of egyptian art where she was the primary researcher for the digital department’s medialab and egyptian art collaboration, “color the temple.” the collaboration (re)colored the augustan temple of dendur using projection mapping technology to engage museum visitors by showing the temple in a way it had yet to be seen at the met—in (virtual) color. the met’s project is an example of the kind of collaborative work that peters hopes to build on in working towards a robust museum profession for the future. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.182 when asked to contribute an essay about the agency of curatorial practice i thought the timing was ideal for a reflective exercise to inform my own practice and teaching. i recently completed the first academic year of my post as joint lecturer in curatorial studies in history of art and architecture’s (haa) museum studies program at the university of pittsburgh and assistant curator in science and research at the carnegie museum of natural history (cmnh). my position was created as part of a larger project to build a robust collaboration between haa and pittsburgh’s rich cultural institutions funded by an andrew w. mellon foundation grant awarded to haa. my charge within this larger project is to continue to develop my practice as a museum curator in the carnegie museums of pittsburgh (cmp) so that i can be best prepared to teach museum studies students about curator ial practice and the museum field overall.1 the particulars of my placement in cmp, my explorations of the current state of the museum field in preparation for teaching, the run of my spring 2016 course “introduction to museum studies in the carnegie museums of pittsburgh,” and reading the transcript of the 2014 panel “curatorial practice as production of visual and spatial knowledge,” published in contemporaneity edition 4, put me at a perfect prospect to reflect and forecast hopes for my own curatorial practice and teaching curatorial studies.2 beginning with the panel discussion will be a productive start to the exercise. the panel brought together curators of art, science, and digital data for a conversation about how curating creates visual and spatial knowledge in general and in specific disciplines.3 the conversation showed general themes, in which curator of contemporary art dan byers and theorist of curatorial practice terry smith both emphasized the importance of exhibi tion making in curatorial practice.4 curator of the hall of botany, cynthia morton, descr ibed her role as a scientific researcher nominally separated from the exhibit process, instead making her information available in academic/scientific publications.5 thinking through the idea of “digital curation,” alison langmead talked about how making digital data (images) available is “exhibiting” within a digital space.6 i’ll add my own perspective to the mix here. my academic training in egyptology, art history, museum studies, and museum practice as a fellow in the department of egyptian art at the metropolitan museum of art prepared me to be a curator of material culture from egypt as a specialist in which exhibit-making is one part of the job, on equal footing with carrying out an active research agenda as a steward of 1 the c arnegie museums of p ittsburgh is comprised of four dis tinct museums: c arnegie museum of a rt, c arnegie museum of natural h istory, c arnegie science center, and t he a ndy warhol museum. 2 nicole scalissi, et al., “c uratorial p ractice as p roduction of v isual and spatial knowledge: p anel discussion, o ctober 4 , 2014,” contemporaneity: his torical presence in visual culture 4 , no. 1 (2015): 144-163. the panel was part of debating visual knowledge, a sympos ium organized by graduate students in information sc ience and h istory of a rt and a rchitecture departments at the university of p ittsburgh, o c tober 3 -5, 2014. 3 scalissi et al., 144. 4 ibid., 145 and 147. 5 ibid., 145. 6 ibid., 149. curator—curatorial studies towards co-creation and multiple agencies erin a. peters http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 1 2 4 c u r a to r— c ur ato r i a l s tu d i e s c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.182 collections. in my experience, a curator of ancient art (or other historic art) is s ignif icantly different from a curator of contemporary art, and seems to blend practices of art and science curators. in looking for commonalities across curators of contemporary art, science, digita l data, and ancient material culture from the information here, perhaps it can be said a curator generally uses research, knowledge, and opinion to select and collect, and combine elements (objects and ideas) into a different thing than the thing was alone before being collected and combined (in a museum collection, an exhibition, a research publication). in this vein, and in simpler terms, a curator selects a thing as important through research and expertise, cares for and preserves it, interprets it, and makes it available and viewable. two things immediately strike me as missing in such a curatorial practice: the agency of people (audiences) and of objects/things. if looking to reception theory, and agency of material culture, a more nuanced and holistic picture can come into view.7 when looking for the agency of people in the 2014 panel publication, there were few positive a llusions, and panelists were more generally disparaging towards audience participation. for instance, in his published reflection on the panel, dan byers commented that the public remains the most vital voice within any museum, and differentiates it from the academy. knowledge and experience is shared, and in the sharing, culture is made. but as the emphasis is placed on spectacle, and on audience ‘development,’ ‘engagement,’ and ‘participation,’ (all concepts which are very easily bastardized today towards lowest common denominator ends), art museums could benefit from curators who have also spent long years in conversation with artists and researching in private.8 but if we go beyond seeing audience participation in museums as solely something to seek, entice, and therefore control, and also take participation as a given through reception, more productive practices of curator-audience co-creation could be developed. in reception/viewer theory, meaning is made through individual reception and perception, as well as social interaction.9 this meaning-making happens parallel to or apart from constructed meaning imposed through curatorial messages. if we were to appreciate audience self-made meaning as equally valuable as our specialist meaning, and to solicit it in 7 for ins tance, wolfgang kemp adds to reception theories and describes the “beholder” with “preconditions” like specific gender, presence, and his tory, which intrinsically inform an experience with a work of art (which has its own set of preconditions). in kemp’s methodology of reception aesthetics, beholders ac tively converse/participate with a work of art (or an exhibition, etc .), and bring innate meaning that comes from the particularities of a beholder’s and an artwork ’s contexts. wolfgang kemp, “the work of a rt and its beholder: the methodology of the a esthetics of reception,” in the subjects of art his tory: his torical subjects in contemporary practice, ed. m .a . c heetham et. al. (c ambridge: c ambridge university p ress, 1998), 180-96. a lfred gell, art and agency: an anthropological theory (o xford: c larendon press, 1998) remains the primary source for the agency of material culture. 8 a lison langmead, dan byers, c ynthia morton, “c uratorial p ractice as p roduction of v isual and spatial knowledge: p anelists respond,” contemporaneity: his torical presence in visual culture 4 , no. 1 (2015): 161. 9 e .g. c hris tian heath and dirk v om lehn, "c onfiguring reception (dis-) regarding the ‘spec tator’ in museums and galleries," theory, culture & society 21, no. 6 (2004): 43-65; fred myers, "social agency and the c ultural value(s) of the a rt o bjec t," journal of material culture 9, no. 2 (2004): 203-11; rolf steier, p almyre pierroux, and ingeborg krange, "embodied interpretation: gesture, so c ial interaction, and meaning making in a national a rt museum," learning, culture and social interaction 7 (2015): 28 -42. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 1 2 5 e r i n a . p e te r s c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.182 an active process of co-creation, audience participation could be more nuanced than “spectacle.”10 i could not detect the agency of objects/things in the 2014 panel discussion, which is likely a reflection of the curatorial tendency to privilege the “original” context (or life) of an object or idea. indeed, we generally go to great pains to “reenact” the context of the original moment of creation through research and interpretation; this is especially the case for myself and other curators of ancient material culture. this is true across different t ypes of institutions, from anthropology, archaeology and natural history, to art museums. even with different intentions of interpretation and display—i.e. between a didactic presentation that values knowledge and an aesthetic presentation that values the aura of an object— information about the original context (as we understand it) is usually conveyed through reconstruction, recreation, or label data. this kind of reenactment disregards an object’s presence and agency through time, and particularly its contemporary context as a museum object. going forward, if we recognize our understanding of the original context of an object or idea as one story, and present an object as a museum object by using mater ia lity as a museological theory, we can be transparent and egalitarian in our presentation of objects and ideas.11 through transparency and exposure of an object’s lives (a multiplicity of interpretations), we can participate in critical curating,12 and also move beyond institutional critique to become a post-critical and reflexive museum profession by uniting theory and practice.13 in striving to unite theory and practice, and looking back at different understandings of curators and curatorial practice discussed here, i find it important to ask: what does this mean for me as a curator, and for the kind of curating i teach students so they can be best prepared for what curating will look like in the future? towards this question, i will cast the net wider to think how curators function within their larger institutions, communities, and the larger museum field. for this task, museum studies—a fast developing fie ld of study that looks at the whole of the museum profession, from daily tasks to the overarching theoretica l principles of museum practice and operation in and relation to society—can be useful. trends in museum studies can help neutralize and contextualize a curator’s practice to be holistic rather than isolationist. for instance, the trend towards the democratization of museum professions and tasks places curators as one force in a larger interconnected picture, in which exhibitions are one task. but does democratization mean doing away with specialty and rigor? i would say no; in my practice, rigorous scholarly training and practice is the core of what i can contribute. indeed, i see specialist scholarship and research as necessary to the core of museum work so that we can be accountable for the information and experiences that we present. at the same time, i realize my perspective is only one in a web of interwoven and interdependent ones, which, in addition to a vast array of colleagues and publics, also involves objects’ and audiences’ agency. 10 a s in janna graham and shadya yasin, "reframing participation in the museum: a syncopated discussion," in museums after modernism, edited by g. p ollock and j. zemans (blackwell publishing ltd, 2008), 157-72; c atherine evans, “the impact of the p articipatory, v isitor-centered model on c uratorial p rac tice,” journal of museum education 39 , no. 2 (2014): 152-61. 11 p eter h. welsh, "re-configuring museums," museum management and curatorship 20, no. 2 (2005): 116. 12 dorothee richter and rein wolfs , "institution as medium: c urating as institutional critique?" oncurating 8 (2011): 3 . 13 v ic toria walsh, "the context and p ractice of p ost-critical museology," in from museum critique to critical museum, ed. k. murawska-muthesius and p . p iortrowski (burlington, v t: a shgate, 2015), 195-214. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 1 2 6 c u r a to r— c ur ato r i a l s tu d i e s c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.182 through the process of reflection for this essay, i’ve identified a number of e lements that i will strive to make a part of my own work as assistant curator and lecturer of curatorial studies. i will base my practice in rigorous scholar ly research with a research program in which i can participate actively in the fields relevant to ancient material culture in order to be a capable steward for the collections at the cmp. i will relate my research to the collections and also with the larger societal picture of our contemporary world, so that my work is in dialogue with a broad range of people and circumstances. i will be an advocate for the mission-driven model, while supporting missions to be nimble, in dialogue with the past, participating in the present, and with an eye to the future, in order to avoid the entrenched mantra: “we do things this way/don’t do things that way.” i will be transparent, and use difficult information and stories as productive points of dialogue, which may encourage us to take on blame and actively combat the colonial notion that we are here to make people better with art/knowledge by bringing them into contact with objects/ideas that we think are important. i will avoid educating people and interpreting objects, but instead acknowledge and encourage the agency of people and objects as part of curatorial work. rather than seeing myself as a collector/caretaker for objects, space, and ideas, and then creating visual, sensory, scientific knowledge, i will aim to be a facilitator in complexity and practice curation that is ever evolving, seeks many stories, and appreciates a wide range of value systems and expertise. i hope to do this by combining my curator (specialist) authority with object and people/audience agency, both solicited and unsolicited; seeking out the least familiar and the “lowest common denominator” to shock my learned practice from comfortable process, which will ideally generate new methods of approach; and striving for true diversity that is beyond cultural, racial, or ethnic, forcing interaction with ideas i believe to be wrong in order to promote genuine freedom of thought. this kind of curatorial practice may help me prepare the next generation of curators and museum professionals for whatever the future may bring. erin peters in discussion with annika johnson, co-editor-in-chief erin peters’s vantage point at the intersection of multiple disciplines and institutions provides a unique opportunity to consider the ever-changing role of curator. when and how does curatorial agency come into play amidst the thicket of institutional visions, initiatives and everyday operations? how might curators soften disciplinary and institutional borders? peters’ personal mission statement that emerges centers on approach and action, and curatorial agency is here distributed among objects and their lives, and audience participants, who emerge as key co-creators in the mix. to follow up, i asked her a few questions about her experiences enacting this curatorial thinking (annika johnson). aj: how does the physical space of the museum factor in as an agent amidst (and litera lly housing) the tangle of viewer, curatorial, and object agencies? i’m curious specifically about your research on space in ancient egypt and how this has influenced your think ing about museum space and audience agency. ep: excellent question—generally, i see the physical space (specifically the built environment) of the museum as part of object/thing agency, as it is in the realm of the physical/material. just as objects housed within museums are actively charged with a myriad of stories, perspectives, and ways of communicating, so too is the space around them. through this active agency, museum space controls and communicates. your question about physical space makes me think about non-physical space and its agency. of course there is virtual space, but also social space, mental space, ritual space, etc. i am interested in how http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 1 2 7 e r i n a . p e te r s c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.182 these spaces intersect with the physical space of the museum, and ways curatorial practice can engage with them. aj: you mention that we need to move beyond institutional critique, which struck me because self-reflexivity is now pretty standard within museum practice. within the method of curatorial practice you envision, and in your experience working with ancient art, where is institutional critique productive and where does it fall short? ep: you are right, institutional critique/self-reflexivity is a standard in much of today’s museum work and curatorial practice. i see it as continually necessary because we are far from shedding our colonial 18th/19th century roots where museums and “art” are society conditioners, but we seem to be stuck in critique. i would say institutional critique falls short in the forever deconstructing of the museum/the market/the art world. i do think it is important to continue to expose the conditionality of art/knowledge in its economic, political, religious contexts and realities, but i don’t see that critiquing the systems are enough to overcome ingrained structures or renew institutions. rather, to move forw ard, we need to start constructing, which is where i see post-critical museum and curatorial practice as beneficial, as it calls for the development of metadisciplinary views and collaboration. the curatorial practice i hope for (and for our larger world-view) will continue to deconstruct, but also construct, ideally in some way not tied to our modern (enlightenment) western mindset. aj: after reading your innovation studio post “students + staff: moving from experiment to practice,” it seems that your students responded positively to the idea of a curator as an agent rather that the agent in interpreting objects.14 as students of a totally digital generation, did this seem natural to them, or was their some resistance to this idea? what excited them most about the future of museums? ep: indeed, my students not only responded positively to the idea of a curator as an agent, it seemed completely familiar to them, and being the agent seemed foreign. as you note, it is likely that this comes much from their presence in a digital generation, which has democratized and pluralized access and authority through the internet. it seemed what excited them most about the future of museums is where museums can be active and positive participants in societies—as connectors of objects, people, time, and space. in many ways, my students struck me as leagues ahead in thinking about museum work and curatorial practice, and i’m excited to see them as not only future museum professionals, but integral in current and present museum work, by taking experience and moving to exploration, they can help us bring about necessary evolution. 14 erin p eters, “students + staff: moving from experiment to p ractice,” innovation studio (blog), june 30, 2016, http://s tudio.carnegiemuseums.org/students-staff-4/. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ http://studio.carnegiemuseums.org/students-staff-4/ 1 2 8 c u r a to r— c ur ato r i a l s tu d i e s c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.182 new articles in this journal are licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 united states license. this journal is operated by the university library system of the university of p ittsburgh as part of its d-scribe digital p ublishing p rogram, and is co-sponsored by the university of p ittsburgh press. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/ http://www.pitt.edu/ http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/ http://www.upress.pitt.edu/upressindex.aspx http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ vol 5, no 1 “agency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2016.177 http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu superqueeroes – our lgbti* comic book heroes and heroines schwules museum*, january 22-june 26, 2016 carlos kong exhibition review superqueeroes our lgbti* comic book heroes and heroines at the schwules museum*, berlin, january 22-june 26, 2016. about the author carlos kong is a postgraduate student at the courtauld institute of art, london. he researches questions of sexuality, historical memory, and intercultura l encounter across contemporary art, literature, and media. he received his ba from cornell university, and was previously the baden-württemberg foundation fellow at universität heidelberg, germany. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.177 superqueeroes – our lgbti* comic book heroes and heroines at the schwules museum* in berlin (january 22, 2016-june 26, 2016) presents the first major exhibition of queer comics in europe. 1 comprised of works by nearly one hundred comics artists and organized by seven curators, superqueeroes provides a comprehensive survey of comics with lgbti characters and narratives, primarily from europe and the united states.2 the exhibition illustrates the inventiveness and plurality of nonnormative sexual cultures to which comics graphically testify (fig. 1). as a foundational endeavor, superqueeroes raises a two-fold fundamental challenge—narrating sexual diversity through the disparate histories of its literary and visual representation; and curating comics in attunement to the ir histor ica l and material specificity. a critical examination of superqueeroes’s moments of insight and inconsistency is relevant for the future scholarly and artistic work on queer comics that the exhibition will likely inspire. once relegated to the realms of the low and the vernacular within the mass cultural industry, comics have recently and continue to emerge within academic, curatorial, and archival contexts, redefining the scope and methodologies of cultural inquiry. through the ir serial interrelation of images and texts, the manual and the mechanically reproduced, and the autobiographical and the fantastical, comics remain an elusive medium in spite of the ir quotidian ubiquity. while comics share affinities of genre with pop art, diy practices, illuminated manuscripts, serial literature, and filmstrips, they remain graphically unique in literary and visual stylization. in both their industrial norms and depicted content, comics have conventionally reflected and imagined hegemonically heteronormative worlds, particularly through the figure of “the superhero” and its implicit heroization of heterosexuality, male dominance, physical strength, and idealized bodies (superman remains a pr ime example). however, recent comics and their scholarly reception have attenuated this dominant convention, in turn producing and describing the relation between comics and minoritarian historical representation. as literary and comics scholar hillary chute contends, “[c]omics—as a form that relies on space to represent time—becomes structurally equipped to challenge dominant modes of storytelling and history writing.”3 the contestation of dominant historical narration 1 superqueeroes defines “queer comics” as “comics that include lgbti characters and tell lgbti s tories.” this definition elides “queer” and “lgbt i” and uses “queer” as an umbrella s ignifier for “lgbti.” this prefigures my forthcoming comments on the terminological and hi s torical tension between specifically gay politic s and queer as a politic s, evident in the exhibition’s section on mains tream comics. for the purposes of my review, i will continue to use the term “queer comics.” see http://www.schwulesmuseum.de/en/exhibit ions/view/superqueeroes-our-lgbti-comic-book-heroes-andheroines/ 2 while the geographic scope of superqueeroes is europe and the united states, the exhibition includes a sec tion on the important work of gengoroh tagame, a leading japanese artist whose work features gay charac ters and homoerotic, and often violent, graphic narratives in the manga comics tradition. 3 hillary c hute, “c omics as literature? reading graphic narrative,” pmla 123, no. 2 (march 2008): 456. superqueeroes our lgbti* comic book heroes and heroines schwules museum*, january 22-june 26, 2016 carlos kong http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 1 3 1 c a r l o s k o n g c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.177 within the discursive and representational space of comics is most compellingly rehearsed in the exhibition’s transposition of superheroes into the eponymous superqueeroes , positing the figures in comics as sites of heroic queer reimagining and the medium of comics as its privileged form. figure 1 ins tallation view, entrance (from right), superqueeroes – our lgbti* comic book heroes and heroines , schwules museum*, berlin, curated by m ichael bregel, kevin clarke, natasha gross, hannes hacke, justin hall, markus p falzgraf, mario russo. p hotograph courtesy robert m berlin/schwules* museum. in opening wall texts, the curators set the historical parameters of superqueeroes as the late 1960s through the present, encapsulating a period beginning with the stonewall riots of 1969 through the consequent and varied formations of sexual politics in recent history. as the apotheosis of the gay liberation struggles of the 1960s, stonewall symbolically ushered in a new era marked by the personalization of politics, specifica lly the public urgencies of gay and lesbian visibility, gender and sexual self-identification, and communal solidarity. despite the american (us) focus of this narrative, the historical framework of the late 1960s through the present productively structures superqueeroes without feeling reductive or prescriptive, since the exhibition is grouped around various themes—independent queer comics from the united states, independent queer comics from europe, mainstream comics, everyday heroes, the comics author as hero, queer approaches to comics genres (cowboys, cops, adventurers), comics and aids, and the censorship of comics.4 4 superqueeroes also inc ludes a small section on tom of finland (touko laaksonen), whose preand pos t-stonewall homoerotic drawings influenced the exhibition’s post-stonewall comics artists. for an important s tudy on gay graphic arts before stonewall, see thomas waugh, out/lines: underground gay graphics from before stonewall (v ancouver: a rsenal p ulp press, 2002). http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 1 3 2 s u p e r q u eer o es – o u r lg b t i * c o m i c b o o k he r o e s a n d he r o i n es c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.177 the post-stonewall time frame is signified by the exhibition’s displays of the proliferating queer comics culture in the united states, wherein the work of many nowrenowned independent practitioners beginning their careers in the 1970-80s—like mary wings, alison bechdel, jennifer camper, and roberta gregory—was streamlined and published under howard cruse’s gay comix series (1980-1998). in contrast to this linear development in american queer comics history, the european comics presented prov ide an instructive counterpoint to the exhibition’s chronology. created under varying cultural and geopolitical circumstances, the work of the european artists featured, such as ralf könig (germany), nazario (spain), luca enoch (italy), helena janecic (croatia), and beata “beatrix” cymerman (poland), evinces a multitude of queer experience against a s ingular historical narrative. their works emerged autonomously and precariously in loca lly specif ic contexts, often with neither formal networks of queer exchange nor social landscapes of queer acceptance. both american and european independent queer comics challenge dominant histor ies by bearing witness to an astonishing plurality of queer experience—the curators’ most captivating statement. from the quotidian to the spectacular, the asexual to the pornographic, the disabled to the fat to the dressed in drag, the exhibition testifies a politics rooted in a heterogeneity of sexual intersections and erotic encounters that queer comics artists actively reimagine in graphic narrative form. rupert kinnard’s b.b. and the diva (1979) depicts the first gay and lesbian-identified african-american protagonists in comics, while justin hall’s glamazonia (2010) portrays the adventures of the eponymous “uncanny super-tranny.” gaye mae kincaid’s sapphowoman and the greater belfast dykes (1980) references literary history by reinventing sappho, the ancient greek homoerotic poet, as a lesbian superhero of northern ireland. a central section on the aids crisis further articulates the didacticism of independent comics as instruments of safe sex education and stigma fighting.5 these depictions of sexual plurality within the representational and social spaces of independent comics materialize many political worlds of queer life, pleasure, and activism, which superqueeroes convincingly advocates against cultural norms of invisibility and erasure. a section on mainstream comics proves to be less successful (fig. 2). the introductory wall text argues that social progress is evincible through the increased visibility of nonnormative sexualities in mainstream comics. various depictions of lgbti characters and narratives in mainstream comics are presented, yet the central display of the x -men comic books featuring the superhero northstar exemplifies the section’s broader oversights. in 1992, marvel expanded the scope of sexual representation in mainstream comics when writers determined that northstar would come out as gay. twenty years later following the legalization of same-sex marriage in new york, marvel depicted “the first gay wedding” in comics when northstar married his long-term partner kyle.6 superqueeroes celebrates northstar’s narrative as a prime example of cultural acceptance and social change on behalf of marvel comics and its audience. 5 for more information on sex educational comics and censorship during the a i ds c r i s is , s e e d oug la s c rimp, “how to have p romiscuity in an epidemic,” in “a ids: c ultural analy s is /c u lt u r a l a c ti v ism,” e d . douglas crimp, special issue, october 43 (winter 1987): 237-271. 6 for details see matthew p erpetua, “marvel c omics hosts first gay wedding in 'astonishing x -men',” rolling stone, may 22, 2012, http://www.rollings tone.com/culture/news/marvel-comics-hosts-first-gaywedding-in-astonishing-x-men-20120522. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 1 3 3 c a r l o s k o n g c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.177 figure 2 ins tallation view, “mains tream” section, superqueeroes – our lgbti* comic book heroes and heroines , schwules museum*, berlin, curated by m ichael bregel, kevin clarke, natasha gross, hannes hacke, justin hall, markus p falzgraf, mario russo. p hotograph courtesy robert m berlin/schwules* museum. northstar’s story, among others, reflects the departure of mainstream comics from their heteronormative industrial moorings, as well as productively expands the sphere of representations rendered legitimate, both within and beyond comics. nevertheless, one must question whether narratives like northstar’s simply react to a dominant teleology of mainstream gay politics, rather than actively envisioning a politics rooted in the heterogeneity of queer experience.7 while the independent comics presented testify a diversity of desires through affective and imaginative representations derived from lived realities, the mainstream comics section compounds the pragmatic reduction of queer politics into gay visibility.8 this instance counterproductively risks advocating a “homonormative time line,” where linear gay expectations either hegemonically s ingular ize queer lives or further pathologize ones that fail to conform.9 moreover, the challenges raised by the 7 the exhibition does not consider the economic dimension of comic books as commodities, though the inc lus ion of lgbti characters in mains tream comics nonetheless suggests the opening of the comics indus try to new consumer demographics. 8 for a compelling c ritique of the “gay pragmatism” of the marriage agenda as well as an articulation of a utopian hermeneutics of queer representation, see josé esteban muñoz, cruis ing utopia: the then and there of queer futurity (new york: nyu press, 2009), 19 -32. 9 see nguyen tan hoang’s response in c arolyn dinshaw et al, “theorizing q ueer temporalities : a roundtable discussion,” glq: a journal of gay and lesbian studies 13 , no. 2 -3 (2007): 182-185. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 1 3 4 s u p e r q u eer o es – o u r lg b t i * c o m i c b o o k he r o e s a n d he r o i n es c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.177 normatively “progressive” narratives of mainstream comics reflect the exhibition’s broader elision of “queer comics” with “lgbti stories,” whereby queer is conflated with the individual (and unequally distributed) politics of sexuality and gender assumed under “lgbti.” thus in contradistinction to a mainstream gay politics of acceptance and assimilation, which too often stands in for “lgbti,” “queer” antagonistically emerged as a sexual politics of world-building against normativity—both projects being necessary, historically contingent, and irreducible. nonetheless what superqueeroes makes clear, and fails to question, is that mainstream comics follow from mainstream gay politics. beyond the productive questions of sexual representation that surface throughout superqueeroes, one technical limitation of the exhibition lies in the challenges of curating in accordance to the multifaceted medium-specificities of comics. affixed to the gallery walls painted with black frames and yellow backgrounds to imitate a comic strip’s graphic structure, most comic books were represented solely by their covers or were opened to a singular narrative moment, reducing longer stories to their most str iking images (f ig. 2). while comics are at once verbal and visual, they are fundamentally a tactile medium to be flipped through and read closely. moreover, the affective and identificatory power of comics lie in their narrative temporality as well as in the intimate and embodied re lation of comic book to the reader. by excluding the possibility of holding and reading the comics on display, superqueeroes unintentionally undermined both the narrative and tactile dimension of comics as a book form. instead, the exhibition privileged optical experience, images over text, and a selective narrative interpretation, and further necessitated a strong re liance on explanatory wall texts for curatorial cohesion. this could have been easily rectif ied with a small sample of comics available to be actually read, underscoring their circulatory potential as a mechanically reproduced medium designed for reading, sharing, and the building of community and solidarity. the final section on censorship deftly frames the rhetoric of heroization that runs throughout superqueeroes. on display is frederic wertham’s 1954 study seduction of the innocent, where the german-american psychiatrist maintained that comics lead to juvenile delinquency and homosexuality. from his earlier writings through seduction of the innocent, wertham’s work both reflected and contributed to the postwar milieu of public paranoia and fear of external contamination. its exposition and critique of the supposed negative effects of reading comics proffered a stricter revision of the comics code—the industry’s standards implemented by comic book publishers—in addition to further establishing a norm of se lfcensorship among comics artists.10 through an archival mapping of documentary photographs and newspaper articles, superqueeroes visualizes the widespread institutionally organized burnings of comics throughout the united states and europe following wertham’s publication and the tightening of the comics code. the censorship, sexual pathologization, and mass burning of comics that superqueeroes presents, as well as the exhibition’s contextual interpolation into the cultural fabric of berlin, draw an implicit and unsettling twofold parallel to specters of german history—the persecution of homosexuals in nazi germany and the nation-wide book burnings of 1933. while implicating an open and reflective relation to national history, superqueeroes reorients and compounds the courage of recreating queer life in comics—the medium that, as hillary chute argues, makes “vis ible the site of one’s inscriptional effacement.”11 against the inscriptional effacements of censorship, persecution 10 for a detailed his tory of the c omics book c ode, see amy kiste nyberg, seal of approval: the his tory of the comics code (jackson: university of m ississippi press, 1998). 11 hillary c hute, “the texture of retracing in marjane satrapi’s ‘p ersepolis’,” women’s studi es quart er l y 36 , no. 1/2 (spring-summer 2008): 106. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 1 3 5 c a r l o s k o n g c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.177 histories, and heteronormative cultural narratives, superqueeroes illustrates the exhilarating plurality of queer comics and the durability of the lives that they heroically testify. new articles in this journal are licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 united states license. this journal is operated by the university library system of the university of p ittsburgh as part of its d-scribe digital p ublishing p rogram, and is co-sponsored by the university of p ittsburgh press. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/ http://www.pitt.edu/ http://www.library.pitt.edu/dscribe/ http://www.upress.pitt.edu/upressindex.aspx http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ vol 5, no 1 “agency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | doi 10.5195/contemp.2016.176 http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu david lamelas’s the desert people: an odyssey for authentic representation hammer museum, january 30-june 5, 2016 loretta ramirez exhibition review david lamelas’s the desert people at ucla’s hammer museum, january 30-june 5, 2016. about the author loretta ramirez is a lecturer in the chicano & latino studies department at california state university, long beach (csulb). she is dedicated to the study of culture and cultural expression in its various written and visual forms. loretta earned her ba in anthropology from stanford, her ma in english from loyola marymount, and a second m.a. in art history at csulb. she is currently pursuing her phd in english with an emphasis on written and visual rhetoric at university of california, irvine. when loretta is not exploring the academic world, she enjoys promoting culture and art in her native los angeles at the j. paul getty center where she volunteers as a gallery docent. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5, no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.176 zooming in a brilliantly white gran torino sedan along an interstate, dissecting the surrounding desert, five travelers reflect on their five-week visit to the native american reservation of the papago people (tohono o’odham) in southeastern arizona (fig. 1).1 the testimonies of the trave lers (an anthropologist, hippie, journalist, liberal, and papago member) form the forty-four-minute narrative of david lamelas’s film, the desert people (1974), screened at ucla’s hammer museum january 30-june 5, 2016. figure 1 david lamelas, the desert people, 1974. still of title. 16mm film trans ferred to dvd, color, sound, 44:09 min. ins tallation view. hammer museum, los angeles. p urchased through the board of o verseers a cquisition fund. c opyright david lamelas, images courtesy of maccarone, sprüth magers, and jan mot. the accompanying soundtrack of funky beats and tangy electronics, shr iek ing tires, an d roaring engines, paired with a camera that caresses the gran tor ino’s glinting body as it 1 while the term “p apago” is no longer popularly used and the nation prefers the term tohono o’odham, i will be referring to the o ’odham represented in the desert people as “the p apago.” my choice of term is to remain cons istent with the film’s use of “p apago.” for more information about the tohono o’odham nation and how the o ’odham self-identify, see: http://www.tonation-nsn.gov. david lamelas’s the desert people: an odyssey for authentic representation hammer museum, january 30-june 5, 2016 loretta ramirez authorship box http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 1 3 8 e x h i b i t i o n r e v i e w : d a v i d l a m e la s’ s t h e de s e r t p e o p l e c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.176 speeds across scorching asphalt, imbue the film with seventies-era “road movie” ambiance. however, lamelas intercuts these features with documentary-style interview sequences, filmed uncomfortably up-close and from varying angles, making it impossible for the interviewees to escape the viewer’s scrutiny. shifting between flashy genre and seemingly candid study questions the veracity of the travelers’ testimonies. the concept thus at play in the film is an examination of both distortions and accuracies of cultural representations, presented from an outsider perspective after an encounter of differences. screened at the hammer in a black box room with six gray off ice ch airs lined r igidly against the back wall, the desert people was distanced from the single row of audience members by a long stretch of empty space. hammer curator aram moshayedi and curator ial assistant mackenzie stevens designed this rather clinical observational setting to re inforce the desert people’s documentary aspect. this curatorial choice aligned with lamelas’s vision of the screening since lamelas created his early films for museum settings. according to maria josé herrera, lamelas calls these films “movies made by a visual artist.” 2 thus, the hammer underplayed the cinematic value of the desert people while advancing its subject for critical analysis. this curatorial choice also limited the screening to six seated v iewers, giving a sense of exclusivity rather than community. accordingly, visitors might enter the exhibit with expectations to study the film as a documentary, which suggests that an interpretation of papago life as it existed during the 1970s is still relevant. the curators stated in a wall text that lamelas conceived the film in part as a fictional documentary, allowing audiences to wonder which parts are not fiction. this ambiguity is crucial to the viewing experience. i suggest that lamelas, in fact, uses such ambiguity to focus analy sis not on the state of the papago people so much as on the viewers’ awareness of the impact of western temporal and historical constructs on cultural representation. in lamelas’s forty-year career, he has taken up a wide spectrum of mediums, from object-based to light and space, and from film to installation. in these diverse works lamelas consistently constructs his pieces to partially de-stabilize and partially reinforce fragmented truths. this is seen in the desert people, as well as lamelas’s earlier non-filmic works, including office of information about the vietnam war at three levels (1968) in which lamelas featured a room packed with state-of-the-art office equipment, displaying the glamorization of war while exploring the dissemination of news. the luxury modern furniture indicates privilege, safety, and comfort at the receiving end of devastating news of war, thereby questioning the effect of environment on interpretations of current events. office of information dismantles the concept that truth can be disseminated objectively through media; its filtering through time, distance, and perspective alters the reception and further propagation of news. similarly, the desert people critiques dissemination of information via documentary film by offering eyewitness testimonies, the authenticity of which swiftly dissolves under the glamorization of a road movie narrative and the heightened awareness of the cultural distance between the road-trippers and the papago (fig. 2). in this way, lamelas analyzes the manner in which histories are constructed through detached testimony. here, as in many of lamelas’s works, he suggests that viewers consider the accuracy of perceptions. 2 maria josé herrera, “introduction,” in david lamelas: buenos aires (sáenz p eña: universidad nacional de t res de febrero, 2011), 23. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 1 3 9 lo r e t ta r a m i r e z c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.176 figure 2 david lamelas, the desert people, 1974. still of the travelers. 16mm film trans ferred to dvd, color, sound, 44:09 min. ins tallation view. hammer museum, los angeles. p urchased through the board of o verseers acquisition fund. c opyright david lamelas, images courtesy of maccarone, sprüth magers, and jan mot. this investigation into perception is also present in lamelas’s earliest film works. in film, lamelas immediately embraced the recording of time to demonstrate that time cannot, in fact, be captured. in time as activity (düsseldorf) (1969), lamelas filmed city life in three different locations in düsseldorf from a fixed camera angle with no sound or narrative. regarding this work, lamelas has stated, “i was consciously working with time in this piece. the concept was the structure, or deconstruction, of time in düsseldorf, where the f ilm was made and shown.”3 he designed the film’s screening in düsseldorf with the projector present in the room, functioning, according to lamelas, “as a time projector, projecting another time than the real time.”4 hence viewers witness the progress of time spreading across screen, as they consciously spend time, an awareness intensified by the sound and heat of a spinning projector. in this way, time fuses, implying that the past may never be fully regained because the present necessarily impedes our perception of the past. if time is not as s imply linear as broadly conceived in western tradition, might the structures of history be unsupportable? further, this melding of past and present fosters considerat ion of time’s relationship to our own reality and experiences, a consideration revisited five years later with the desert people. 3 a my c appellazzo, “david lamelas: t ime as activity (düsseldorf), 1969,” in making time: cons idering time as a material in c ontemporary video and film, ed. by a my c appellazzo (lake worth: p alm beach ins titute of c ontemporary art, 2000), 62 -63. 4 ibid, 63 . http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 1 4 0 e x h i b i t i o n r e v i e w : d a v i d l a m e la s’ s t h e de s e r t p e o p l e c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.176 here, lamelas addresses elusive pasts through overlapping and partially f ictionalized accounts, perhaps to provoke viewers to contemplate historical narratives and the ir impact on concepts of time and culture. in this way, lamelas moves from an analysis of the broad construction of western time in time as activity, to a consideration of time’s relationship to culture and representation in the desert people. at the same time, he moves from nonnarrative film to fictional documentary. assuming the role of preservationist, the first interviewee in the desert people is a white male anthropologist who shares his studied observations of the papago people (f ig. 3). he believes that, beyond himself, the papago have no champion to secure their history. thus, the film begins with testimony from a non-indigenous person who claims guardianship of the papago’s history. however, as the film progresses with each new interv iew, interspersed amongst interludes of moving cars, the testimonies falter in their consistencies and intent since they speak more of themselves than of the papago. figure 3 david lamelas, the desert people, 1974. still of the anthropologist’s tes timony. 16mm film trans ferred to dv d, color, sound, 44:09 min. ins tallation view. hammer museum, los angeles. p urchased through the board of o verseers acquisition fund. c opyright david lamelas, images courtesy of maccarone, sprüth magers , and jan mot. for example, the white female new york journalist is keen to discuss the reservation women whose community contributions humble the journalist, newly aware of her lesser impact on her own society. meanwhile, the white male californian liberal laments this same tightknit indigenous community, deeming it divisive against outsiders, thus thwarting his hopes to romance papago females. contrasting with these perspectives is the last interviewee, a papago man named manny, who perceives indigenous life as unraveling due to loss of language, tradition, and unity—himself displaced and living off-reservation (fig. 4). for manny, this is a desperate time, as he attests that “much of our culture has died and is dying now.” http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 1 4 1 lo r e t ta r a m i r e z c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.176 figure 4 david lamelas, the desert people, 1974. still of manny ’s monologue. 16mm film trans ferred to dv d, color, sound, 44:09 min. installation view. hammer museum, los angeles. p urchased through the board of o verseers acquisition fund. c opyright david lamelas, images courtesy of maccarone, sprüth magers, and jan mot. while saved for last as the papago’s “true” voice, manny ironically loses authenticity. his testimony is undermined by the film’s heightened dramatics, staged against the desert landscape and brimming with his poetic musings. this contrasts with the three other travelers’ faster-paced testimonies that express less organized ideas, filmed seemingly spontaneously inside a diner or along a busy street. manny is also the only subject to turn his back on the camera in a choreographed melancholic walk toward an empty horizon, rather than the frontal positioning to which the camera exposed the others. finally, with theatrical purpose his speaking is methodically precise, delivered from a carefully crafted script. hence, for audiences, the seemingly most authoritative voice is surprisingly the least convincing, albeit the most poignant. however, manny does not seem concerned with convincing anyone of truths. he is not attempting to inform; rather, his implied purpose is to raise awareness and maintain cultural survival. to achieve this, he considers the methods of his fellow travelers whose efforts he credits: “i suppose it is up to the people themselves to keep the culture—to pull it up. and the only way to pull it up is to listen to and talk to the old people that are left, the ones that really have some storage of what it was like. that’s what these people have done. and i feel it is up to those people, who want to preserve it, to do it.” in manny’s monologue, “truth” is secondary to “representation.” reality is less important than maintaining a story, even a fragmented and partially fictionalized one. manny continues, “[t]his is one way of doing it, i think—performing. perhaps i’m wrong, but my heart is in performing and that is where it’s going to stay.” in this moment, any illusion that the desert people is a documentary film dissipates. manny is a professional actor performing a story that might be related to his heritage—but even that is in question. is he really of the papago people? http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 1 4 2 e x h i b i t i o n r e v i e w : d a v i d l a m e la s’ s t h e de s e r t p e o p l e c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.176 does it matter? if manny’s goal is to keep alive through performance that which he, as a character in the film, views as a dying culture, then his authenticity as a papago person is not relevant. after all, viewers may now be wondering what, exactly, is the state of the papago. is the culture dying, as suggested by manny, the scripted voice of the papago? or, is the portrayal of the culture obscured by manny’s possible outsider assumptions? viewers may also notice that, besides the character of manny, the film includes no papago people and no footage of the reservation. the film is thus not necessarily about the papago, and it does not advance “vanishing race” rhetoric. rather, manny’s monologue about his dying culture invi tes criticism of such rhetoric by exposing a flawed and fictional narrative of cultural representation. accordingly, i propose that the film’s purpose is to undermine the documentary format’s authority to capture a specific reality. concurrently, the film stimulates the viewer’s curiosity and agency to more acutely process their observations, thus freeing them from traditional structures of historical and cultural narratives. such observations may spark future explorations into the papago or similarly underrepresented communities whose portrayals within western culture are also too faulty to believe, yet nonetheless inspire attempts of recovery. it is therefore fitting that lamelas borrows the road movie genre in its countercultural celebration of unbound, open-road freedom, exemplified in the films zabriskie point (1970) by michelangelo antonioni, and two-lane blacktop (1971) by monte hellman. the desert people was lamelas’s first professionally produced film in los angeles, and marks a union between his art and the culture industry.5 on the wall label of the exhibit, the hammer quotes lamelas, who defines this work as “a study on american film production”; thereby lamelas packages his art within a glossy road movie genre that embraces codes of mass culture, an attempt to use popular format to bridge concept with audience. by appropriating the aesthetic of this genre, lamelas underscores the theme of propulsion into new territories and new ways of living and thinking, mental explorations that are consistent w ith his four decades of work in which audience agency inhibits stagnancy and fosters mindfulness of the present. lamelas has expressed hope that his artworks live on, that they “leave me behind. i t’s not about me. it’s about itself . . . it’s not my piece. it’s itself. it evolves in time.”6 art has a life of its own, driven forward by audience interaction. if in the desert people culture becomes partially fictionalized, then culture as a broad concept becomes artistic performance. in lamelas’s vision, this is not an entirely negative fate, but rather a fragmented alternative to authoritative histories. truth is incomplete; authenticity is suspect, but perhaps a thread of the past survives when visual culture cultivates human relations and agency to explore. this, i believe, is the message of the desert people. 5 benjamin h. d. buchloh, “struc ture, sign, and reference in the work of david lamelas,” in david lamelas: extranjero, foreigner, étranger, aus länder (mexico, df: fundac ion olga y rufino tamayo, 2006), 139-142. 6 david lamelas, interview by c atha p aquette, long beach, march 10, 2016, recording by yukiko hole. this interview was arranged, in part, as a preparation for the september 2017 to january 2018 exhibition of lamelas ’s art at the c alifornia state university, long beach university a rt museum, sponsored by the j. p aul getty p acific standard time: la/la initiative. http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ 1 4 3 lo r e t ta r a m i r e z c ontemporaneity: h istorical p resence in v isual c ulture http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu v ol 5 , no 1 “a gency in motion” (2016) | issn 2155-1162 (online) | do i 10.5195/contemp.2016.176 new articles in this journal are licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 united states license. this journal is operated by the university library system of the university of p ittsburgh as part of its d-scribe digital p ublishing p rogram, and is co-sponsored by the university of p ittsburgh press. contemporaneity ed 5 cover editorial statement template revised3 hawley proof final iker proof final kafer proof final kovach proof final nordgaard proof final gilchrist proof final peters proof final kong proof final ramirez proof final