Eva Kernbauer | Universität für Angewandte Kunst Wien (original) (raw)
Books by Eva Kernbauer
21: Inquiries into Art, History, and the Visual, 2023
This text foregrounds performativity as entailed in both academic and artistic approaches to writ... more This text foregrounds performativity as entailed in both academic and artistic approaches to writing or depicting history. Discussing the recent performative and historiographical “turns” in art as com plementing and reinforcing each other, the term apódeixis, as con ceptualized in Johann Gustav Droysen’s theory of history to connect research and representation, is proposed to describe contemporary artistic engagements with history. The examined works by Wen delien van Oldenborgh, Erika Tan, and Bouchra Khalili critically engage with performativity and historiography. They also address the problem of “speaking for others”, introducing a critical debate from art and cultural theory and thus serving as examples of how art may fruitfully contribute to history writing today.
KEYWORDS
Gegenwartskunst; Geschichte; Performativität; Wendelien van Oldenborgh; Erika Tan; Bouchra Khalili; Johann Gustav Droysen; Apódeixis.
Art, History, and Anachronic Interventions Since 1990 (Routledge), 2021
This book examines contemporary artistic practices since 1990 that engage with, depict, and conce... more This book examines contemporary artistic practices since 1990 that engage with, depict, and conceptualize history. Examining artworks by Kader Attia, Yael Bartana, Zarina Bhimji, Michael Blum, Matthew Buckingham, Tacita Dean, Harun Farocki and Andrei Ujica, Omer Fast, Andrea Geyer, Liam Gillick and Philippe Parreno, Hiwa K, Amar Kanwar, Bouchra Khalili, Deimantas Narkevičius, Wendelien van Oldenborgh, Walid Raad, Dierk Schmidt, Erika Tan, and Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Art, History, and Anachronic Interventions since 1990 undertakes a thorough methodological reexamination of the contribution of art to history writing and to its theoretical foundations. The analytical instrument of anachrony comes to the fore as an experimental method, as will (para)fiction, counterfactual history, testimonies, ghosts and spectres of the past, utopia, and the "juridification" of history. Eva Kernbauer argues that contemporary art—developing its own conceptual approaches to temporality and to historical research—offers fruitful strategies for creating historical consciousness and perspectives for political agency. The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, historiography, and contemporary art.
online here: https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/oa-mono/10.4324/9781003166412/art-history-anachronic-interventions-since-1990-eva-kernbauer and here: https://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/50518
Kunstgeschichtlichkeit, 2015
Art, History and Anachronic Interventions Since 1990, 2021
We require a history that will educate us to discontinuity more than ever before; for discontinui... more We require a history that will educate us to discontinuity more than ever before; for discontinuity, disruption, and chaos is our lot. 1 Hayden V. White, "The Burden of History" Artworks can represent, narrate, and perform history; relate it to the present; and situate it historically. At the same time, they are part of history; they refer to it; they intervene in it. Art shapes history just as art is shaped by history. This study investigates the different forms, methods, instruments, and interests of what I term "artistic historiography"-art that explores history-with a view to the complex relationship between art and history, propelling the conversation beyond purely content-based or thematic perspectives of artworks. "Historiography" literally means the writing or drawing of history, referring equally to the academic, artistic, literary, or mythological telling, writing, or representation of history. 2 This book situates artistic historiography within the context of engagements with history more generally, a politically controversial and heterogeneous field in terms of its actors, subjects, media, institutions, and forms of dissemination. Within this broader context, artistic explorations of history have played an increasingly important role over time, not limiting themselves to illustrating or counteracting existing historical narratives but developing their own forms and instruments of historical research as well as their own historiographical narratives and imaginations. This process has, in turn, led to new concepts of how we experience time-or, more precisely, how past, present, and future relate to one another. Such an active and involved understanding of historiography requires dismissing two overly simplistic divisions: first, that of events from their representations, which transforms art into a container and history into its contents; second, that of a temporally distant "yesterday" of history from the "now" of contemporary art. Exploring the past means continuously creating it anew. Historical events-when they become the subject of representations-are not "over"; they are instead situated in a historicised "now." Artistic historiography is thus particularly well suited to making visible the experiences of heterochronies and anachronies that are ultimately inherent in every historical experience, narrative, or representation. Countless exhibitions and publications dedicated to the relationship between art and history in recent years portray an unsettled bond marked by repeated diagnoses of crisis. 3 This is, at least in part, the legacy of postmodern cultural theory's successive proclamations of the end of narration, the end of art, and the end of history. The resulting evaluation of artistic and popular transformations of history as well as of
Art, History, and Anachronic Interventions Since 1990, 2021
Art, History, and Anachronic Interventions Since 1990, 2021
The preceding chapters have foregrounded different artistic approaches to history that explore th... more The preceding chapters have foregrounded different artistic approaches to history that explore the archive; the historian's role and tasks; concepts and practices of representation; historical narratives; and the complexities of temporal experience and temporal conceptions-especially the anachronic. A final look at the present moment indicates that, in the face of the immediate urgency of environmental politics, the need to explore the categories of history is undiminished. Our historical present has become part of a new historiographical chapter, the Anthropocene: that epoch in which humans have been recognised as the decisive force initiating atmospheric, biological, and geological planetary changes. The immediate impact of conceptualising our present as part of the Anthropocene, however, has led to a revival of posthumanism and posthistoire concepts, which sometimes strikingly recall postmodernist theories of stagnation. But let us start first with exploring the potential of the Anthropocene as a concept: In the 1930s Henri Cartier-Bresson remarked indignantly, "The world is going to pieces and people like [Ansel] Adams and [Edward] Weston are photographing rocks!" With his condemnation of the inorganic as an unworthy subject for photography, we understand Cartier-Bresson to be arguing for a more socially engaged art practice. 1 This anecdote appears at the beginning of the volume Art in the Anthropocene, edited by Heather Davis and Etienne Turpin. The artists and theorists presented therein advocate for an increased attention of critical art to rocks and, more generally, to geological, geophysical, and ecological issues. It is easy to agree that the anthropocentric understanding of socially engaged or political art expressed by Cartier-Bresson in this quotation is limited. Distinctions between human and natural history become invalid in view of the insight that humans not only make "their" history but also that of nature-indeed that of the entire planet. On the one hand, this has led to the recognition of a shift in the scale of human activity: for centuries, artists have turned to the aesthetics of the ruin to demonstrate the supposed futility of human efforts to leave lasting, monumental traces upon history. But now the power imbalance is reversed: human history inscribes itself, in a highly destructive way-on a geospatial scale-into the "big time" 2 of the Anthropocene. On the other hand, however, the traditional focus on the human subject as an agent of history is increasingly questioned by the realisation that our planet may well (and would, probably, much better) exist without us and that the Anthropocene, therefore, is only one geological epoch among many. The structuralist conviction that man is not the only measure of history is returning in theories of accelerationism, in a rescaling of history towards cliodynamics, and in the reappearance of concepts such as Gaia, the personified goddess Earth. 3
Art, History, and Anachronic Interventions Since 1990
The technical, mass media-driven explosion of the documentary since the 1990s has led to an expan... more The technical, mass media-driven explosion of the documentary since the 1990s has led to an expansion of its instruments, procedures, and genres: fictionalisation, staging, reenactment, preenactment; docudrama and mockumentary approaches; essay film and vérité modes 1 ; performance, repetition, and appropriation-all are common artistic practices deployed in order to engage with history. The interweaving of documentary and fiction is not limited to the presentation, narration, or communication of historical content; it already permeates the research and processing of sources, data, and discourses: the work on the archive of history. The term "archive" and the "general and interdisciplinary science" of archivology comprise various scholarly and artistic interests, agendas, and approaches to working with the past. 2 In its Foucauldian sense, further developed by Derrida, the archive is that epistemological and discursive construct that designates documents as such. It is a place of production (rather than representation) of knowledge, of structures of selection and ordering, designating a material-and process-oriented instead of a representation-oriented approach to history. Nothing to See Here: Walid Raad and the Negative Documents of The Atlas Group The archive as a site of production and discourse is at the centre of a well-known project by Lebanese-US artist Walid Raad that was first prominently shown at documenta 11 in 2002. According to Raad, The Atlas Group was a project undertaken "between 1989 and 2004 to research and document the contemporary history of Lebanon, with particular emphasis on the Lebanese wars of 1975 to 1990." 3 Its "archive" combined made and found film footage, photographs, prints, and collages presented by Raad as documents of Lebanese history. The historiographical-and, with it, political-claim of this archive is expressed in the collective "we" designating a "group" as the author of what was actually Raad's art project. Fictionalisation thus not only characterised the archived "documents", but also this gesture of anonymising and collectivising authorship in order to conceive the project as global and transnational. 4 One of the earliest works to be found in the archive of The Atlas Group exemplarily questions scientific historiography and functions as the artistic foundation of the archival structure. It is described as a prime example of speculative historiography in Peter Osborne's exploration of artistic historiography. 5 Missing Lebanese Wars. Notebook Volume 72 (Figures 4.1-4.2) was first published as a contribution to the journal Public Culture.
Art, History, and Anachronic Interventions Since 1990
The theoretical contributions to modern historiography discussed in Chapter 1 differ in many resp... more The theoretical contributions to modern historiography discussed in Chapter 1 differ in many respects yet are united in their attribution of specific roles to the historian. Assumed to be male in most of the texts discussed herein, he is envisioned as a mastermind of universalization and synthetization; an impartial guarantor of objectivity; a practical politician anchored in the present; an emphatic interpreter able to incarnate historical subjects; and a distant, anachronic observer of his contemporaries. Each of these assigned roles represents a distinct methodical approach to and practice of history. But despite this performative foregrounding of the historian's role, historical scholarship in and of itself has produced surprisingly little authorship criticism. Artistic historiography, on the other hand, comes with a rich-albeit ambivalent-art-theoretical legacy that places immense weight on the role of the artist. Art that deals with history thus provides abundant material for reflection on authorial (self-)conceptions and on how various (artistic) subjectivities might handle the "raw material" of history-its documents, persons, and stories. Examining the works of three female artists working in the field of history, this chapter illustrates how artistic, auctorial subjectivity and the author's task of representing absent voices can be negotiated, especially when encountering other historical subjects.
Art, History, and Anachronic Interventions Since 1990
Art, History, and Anachronic Interventions Since 1990, 2021
Art that deals with history is frequently accompanied by the appropriation and/or transformation ... more Art that deals with history is frequently accompanied by the appropriation and/or transformation of familiar popular or academic presentation formats: (artists') books, photographs, films, and videos are its predominant media, both in documentary and other approaches. Fictionalisation, reenactment, and counterfactual history, too, are modes employed by scholarly and art works. Mark Godfrey has explored the connections between these in his essay "The Artist as Historian," 1 which uses the well-known phrase "The artist as …" to illustrate the ever-expanding range of tasks performed by artists. Godfrey's essay is mainly dedicated to artist Matthew Buckingham, who explicitly deals with the theory and methodology of academic history. With references to the research of Hayden White, 2 Reinhart Koselleck, 3 Siegfried Kracauer, and Walter Benjamin, Buckingham explores experimental approaches to history that are of lasting influence on contemporary art. In an art-historical review, Godfrey observes that, generally speaking, conceptual art and appropriation art-even when taking up historical topics and materials-were more interested in questions of representation. He locates a shift only in the 1990s, in the works of Steve McQueen, Santu Mofokeng, Fiona Tan, Anri Sala, Jeremy Deller, and Walid Raad, which, while still making use of conceptualist approaches, explicitly formulated an interest in the exploration and representation of history. While I agree to this observation in principle, it should not be used as a strict art-historical timeline. Important works on history, such as Gerhard Richter's painting series 18 October 1977 (1988) and William Kentridge's animated film series Felix in Exile (1989-99), were committed to their own genealogies (namely, a critique of media and the examination of political memory). 4 Artistic explorations of history emerge at different moments out of distinct contexts, social urgencies, and interests. Since the beginning of modernism, the relationship between artistic and scholarly history has been characterised by ambivalences: connected by common interests and, often, methods, practitioners still attempted to remain separate whenever seriously tested. For art, turning to history entailed delving into a field of interest established as a scholarly discipline only in the course of the Enlightenment, initially by way of an expansion of philosophy. History was often viewed as closely aligned to the (visual) arts but, in the course of the trend towards its establishment as a science, tried to emancipate itself from these unwanted ties. This chapter will explore how this close but fraught relationship was constantly negotiated and modified during the nineteenth century, and which roles and functions were ascribed to art within the newly emerging practice of history during this transformative period, when it emerged as an academic ("scientific") discipline.
Art, History, and Anachronic Interventions Since 1990, 2021
The Explosion of the Documentary Among the theoretical positions on historiography mentioned so f... more The Explosion of the Documentary Among the theoretical positions on historiography mentioned so far, Siegfried Kracauer's double conceptual structure of history as both recording and shaping reality most closely corresponds to documentary film and photography, which have been a foundation of both artistic and academic historiography for decades. The documentary incorporated artistic aspects, both conceptual and technical, from its very beginnings, which has led to contradictions and paradoxes that regularly inform art-theoretical discussions to date: "'Documentary' is often taken as the antonym to 'artistic,' yet it stems primarily from the artistic field-beyond art, yet very much a part of it." 1 Analyses of the history and concept of the documentary illustrate its ambiguous relationship to art; this has, more often than not, led to a rejection of any potential kinship. 2 Close associations of art with the documentary were often, from a defensive stance similar to that of historical methodology, perceived as a threat to its realism and its scientific, exact nature. This alone suggests that, among all artistic genres and methods, the documentary is closest to history. Its paradoxes are thus best answered by pointing out history's double nature: recording and shaping reality are not opposite procedures, but correspond exactly to both the course of events and the depiction thereof. Documentary practices are situated in the midst of a constantly changing constellation of art, science, bureaucracy, journalism, justice, and truth politics. As an artistic genre, it has been criticized frequently because it shares procedures with ethnography, the police apparatus, and information technology, partaking in their identification procedures and normative-and often-restrictive-logics. Important impulses for furthering and critiquing uses of the documentary in art were put forward by documenta X (1997)curated by Catherine David with a focus on conceptualist methods in contemporary art-and by documenta 11 (2002)-under the direction of Okwui Enwezor-which situated the documentary as the lingua franca of political art in the age of globalization at the centre of contemporary art while initiating a thorough critique and reassessment of its practices that continues to this day. 3 This critique focuses on the documentary's often-ostentatious factism and its inherent paradoxical promise of direct representation and control of reality, which brings together the two irreconcilable poles of "factishness" (the fetishization of facts): 4 to "find" and "fabricate" at the same time. Documenta 11, in particular, presented numerous artworks exploring the possibilities and aporias of the documentary. 5 This inspired an intensive examination of the documentary's artistic roots, with new and experimental practices critiquing the fetishization of historical material. At the same time, a comprehensive examination of the metaphorology of memory and temporal experience emerged; this became particularly significant in the context of the "historical media" photography and film. 6 Wang Bing's West of the Tracks (2003), a film project dedicated to the two "eroding"
Art, History, and Anachronic Interventions Since 1990, 2021
Many of the artworks discussed in this book employ anachronic concepts as a means to critically e... more Many of the artworks discussed in this book employ anachronic concepts as a means to critically explore and activate history. This chapter takes a closer look at artworks that address the historiographical "scandalon" of anachronism so that we might consider anachrony and anachronism, and their relationship to each other.
Art, History, and Anachronic Interventions Since 1990, 2021
The previous chapter considers the precariousness and opacity of documents as well as the structu... more The previous chapter considers the precariousness and opacity of documents as well as the structuring policies of historical knowledge and representation. In this chapter we turn to the methodological aspect of showing, narrating, and displaying historical materials, beginning with the significance of testimonies. Situated at history's origin-atzero, witness accounts emerge directly from viewers of an event yet sometimes prove as impenetrable as other raw or unprocessed historical sources. As pieces of evidence, testimonies can be used in court proceedings in a manner similar to how material traces are employed. I start, therefore, with the question of how opaque linguistic testimonies and silent objects can be used to establish narratives beyond their integration into documentary procedures.
Thomas W. Gaehtgens, Gregor Wedekind (Hgg.), Le culte des grands hommes 1750–1850, Paris: Editions de la Maison des sciences de l'homme, 2009, S. 71–102. , 2009
Der Platz des Publikums Modelle für Kunstöffentlichkeit im 18. Jahrhundert , 2011
Öffentlichkeit ist ein Schlüsselbegriff der Aufklärung und zugleich eine zentrale Bewertungs- und... more Öffentlichkeit ist ein Schlüsselbegriff der Aufklärung und zugleich eine zentrale Bewertungs- und Legitimationsinstanz von Kunstwerken. Die Einführung regelmäßiger Kunstausstellungen in England und Frankreich führte in Kunsttheorie, Kunstkritik und bildlichen Darstellungen zu intensiven Auseinandersetzungen mit dem Publikum als reales Gegenüber und imaginäres Konstrukt, die nicht nur an künstlerische Strategien zur Erreichung bestimmter Adressatenkreise, sondern auch an geschichtsphilosophische Fragestellungen rührten. Das Buch verfolgt den spannungsgeladenen Wandel der Diskursfigur Kunstöffentlichkeit von ihrer Entstehung aus der absolutistischen Ruhmestradition hin zum revolutionären Konzept im späten 18. Jahrhundert.
Beate Fricke, Markus Klammer, Stefan Neuner (eds.), Bilder und Gemeinschaften. Studien zur Konvergenz von Politik und Ästhetik in Kunst, Literatur und Theorie, München: Fink, pp. 204–234. , 2011
Der Sturm auf die Bastille am 14. Juli 1789 gehort aus heutiger Sicht zu den Grundungsereignissen... more Der Sturm auf die Bastille am 14. Juli 1789 gehort aus heutiger Sicht zu den Grundungsereignissen der Franzosischen Revolution. Von den zeitgenossischen KunstlerInnen wurde die Besetzung des Staatsgefangnisses des Ancien Regime durch die Pariser Volksmenge selten thematisiert: Welcher franzosische Maler, fragt Philippe Bordes, hatte zu Beginn der Revolution auf die Idee kommen konnen, die Szene eines Volksaufstandes zu verherrlichen?l Die aktuellen politischen Ereignisse fanden Platz in zahlreichen Zeitungs-und Zeitschriftenartikeln und dementsprechend bald in der Druckgraphik, nicht aber in den Gemalden und Skulpturen der Salon-Ausstellungen der Revolutionsjahre, wie zeitgenossische Kommentatoren verwundert bemerkten. 2 Die rasche Abfolge und Komplexitat der Ereignisse erschwerten die kunstlerische Umsetzung, und zudem folgte der politischen Instabilitat die Erschutterung der kunstpolitischen Verhaltnisse: An wen sollten sich solche Darstellungen richten, wer sollte sie finanzieren?
Lucie Kolb/Barbara Preisig/Judith Welter (eds.), Paratexte. Zwischen Produktion, Vermittlung und Rezeption, Zürich: diaphanes, pp. 51–70, 2018
In der zeitgenössischen Kunst entstehen Werke, die in der paratextuellen Form von Einladungskarte... more In der zeitgenössischen Kunst entstehen Werke, die in der paratextuellen Form von Einladungskarten, Ausstellungskatalogen, Zeitschriften, Webseiten und ähnlichem in Erscheinung treten oder die, scheinbar losgelöst vom Werk, nur noch in Form von Erzählungen weiter bestehen. Heute können Kunstwerke nicht mehr unabhängig von ihrem Rezeptionskontext gelesen werden, und Formen der Vermittlung selbst sind in die künstlerische Produktion eingegangen. An der Schnittstelle von Rezeption, institutioneller Rahmung und künstlerischem Format angesiedelt, verschränken sich in ihrer Gestaltung und Konzeption oftmals künstlerische, kuratorische und theoretische Praktiken. Im vorliegenden Buch werden paratextuelle Phänomene in der Kunst diskutiert; gleichzeitig wird dieser von Gérard Genette entlehnte Begriff auf die Möglichkeiten und Grenzen seiner Verwendbarkeit für die Untersuchung zeitgenössischer künstlerischer Praxis hin untersucht.
Marzia Faietti, Gerhard Wolf (eds.), Linea II – Giochi, Metamorfosi, Seduzioni della Linea , Florenz: Giunti Editore, 2012, pp 272–293. , 2012
Dietmar Kammerer (Hg.), Vom Publicum. Das Öffentliche in der Kunst, 2012
Kunstgeschichtlichkeit. Historizität und Anachronie in der Gegenwartskunst, 2015
Bibliografische Information der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek verz... more Bibliografische Information der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek verzeichnet diese Publikation in der Deutschen Nationalbibliografie; detaillierte bibliografische Daten sind im Internet über http://dnb.d-nb.de abrufbar. Alle Rechte, auch die des auszugsweisen Nachdrucks, der fotomechanischen Wiedergabe und der Übersetzung, vorbehalten. Dies betrifft auch die Vervielfältigung und Übertragung einzelner Textabschnitte, Zeichnungen oder Bilder durch alle Verfahren wie Speicherung und Übertragung auf Papier, Transparente, Filme, Bänder, Platten und andere Medien, soweit es nicht § § 53 und 54 UrhG ausdrücklich gestatten.
21: Inquiries into Art, History, and the Visual, 2023
This text foregrounds performativity as entailed in both academic and artistic approaches to writ... more This text foregrounds performativity as entailed in both academic and artistic approaches to writing or depicting history. Discussing the recent performative and historiographical “turns” in art as com plementing and reinforcing each other, the term apódeixis, as con ceptualized in Johann Gustav Droysen’s theory of history to connect research and representation, is proposed to describe contemporary artistic engagements with history. The examined works by Wen delien van Oldenborgh, Erika Tan, and Bouchra Khalili critically engage with performativity and historiography. They also address the problem of “speaking for others”, introducing a critical debate from art and cultural theory and thus serving as examples of how art may fruitfully contribute to history writing today.
KEYWORDS
Gegenwartskunst; Geschichte; Performativität; Wendelien van Oldenborgh; Erika Tan; Bouchra Khalili; Johann Gustav Droysen; Apódeixis.
Art, History, and Anachronic Interventions Since 1990 (Routledge), 2021
This book examines contemporary artistic practices since 1990 that engage with, depict, and conce... more This book examines contemporary artistic practices since 1990 that engage with, depict, and conceptualize history. Examining artworks by Kader Attia, Yael Bartana, Zarina Bhimji, Michael Blum, Matthew Buckingham, Tacita Dean, Harun Farocki and Andrei Ujica, Omer Fast, Andrea Geyer, Liam Gillick and Philippe Parreno, Hiwa K, Amar Kanwar, Bouchra Khalili, Deimantas Narkevičius, Wendelien van Oldenborgh, Walid Raad, Dierk Schmidt, Erika Tan, and Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Art, History, and Anachronic Interventions since 1990 undertakes a thorough methodological reexamination of the contribution of art to history writing and to its theoretical foundations. The analytical instrument of anachrony comes to the fore as an experimental method, as will (para)fiction, counterfactual history, testimonies, ghosts and spectres of the past, utopia, and the "juridification" of history. Eva Kernbauer argues that contemporary art—developing its own conceptual approaches to temporality and to historical research—offers fruitful strategies for creating historical consciousness and perspectives for political agency. The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, historiography, and contemporary art.
online here: https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/oa-mono/10.4324/9781003166412/art-history-anachronic-interventions-since-1990-eva-kernbauer and here: https://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/50518
Kunstgeschichtlichkeit, 2015
Art, History and Anachronic Interventions Since 1990, 2021
We require a history that will educate us to discontinuity more than ever before; for discontinui... more We require a history that will educate us to discontinuity more than ever before; for discontinuity, disruption, and chaos is our lot. 1 Hayden V. White, "The Burden of History" Artworks can represent, narrate, and perform history; relate it to the present; and situate it historically. At the same time, they are part of history; they refer to it; they intervene in it. Art shapes history just as art is shaped by history. This study investigates the different forms, methods, instruments, and interests of what I term "artistic historiography"-art that explores history-with a view to the complex relationship between art and history, propelling the conversation beyond purely content-based or thematic perspectives of artworks. "Historiography" literally means the writing or drawing of history, referring equally to the academic, artistic, literary, or mythological telling, writing, or representation of history. 2 This book situates artistic historiography within the context of engagements with history more generally, a politically controversial and heterogeneous field in terms of its actors, subjects, media, institutions, and forms of dissemination. Within this broader context, artistic explorations of history have played an increasingly important role over time, not limiting themselves to illustrating or counteracting existing historical narratives but developing their own forms and instruments of historical research as well as their own historiographical narratives and imaginations. This process has, in turn, led to new concepts of how we experience time-or, more precisely, how past, present, and future relate to one another. Such an active and involved understanding of historiography requires dismissing two overly simplistic divisions: first, that of events from their representations, which transforms art into a container and history into its contents; second, that of a temporally distant "yesterday" of history from the "now" of contemporary art. Exploring the past means continuously creating it anew. Historical events-when they become the subject of representations-are not "over"; they are instead situated in a historicised "now." Artistic historiography is thus particularly well suited to making visible the experiences of heterochronies and anachronies that are ultimately inherent in every historical experience, narrative, or representation. Countless exhibitions and publications dedicated to the relationship between art and history in recent years portray an unsettled bond marked by repeated diagnoses of crisis. 3 This is, at least in part, the legacy of postmodern cultural theory's successive proclamations of the end of narration, the end of art, and the end of history. The resulting evaluation of artistic and popular transformations of history as well as of
Art, History, and Anachronic Interventions Since 1990, 2021
Art, History, and Anachronic Interventions Since 1990, 2021
The preceding chapters have foregrounded different artistic approaches to history that explore th... more The preceding chapters have foregrounded different artistic approaches to history that explore the archive; the historian's role and tasks; concepts and practices of representation; historical narratives; and the complexities of temporal experience and temporal conceptions-especially the anachronic. A final look at the present moment indicates that, in the face of the immediate urgency of environmental politics, the need to explore the categories of history is undiminished. Our historical present has become part of a new historiographical chapter, the Anthropocene: that epoch in which humans have been recognised as the decisive force initiating atmospheric, biological, and geological planetary changes. The immediate impact of conceptualising our present as part of the Anthropocene, however, has led to a revival of posthumanism and posthistoire concepts, which sometimes strikingly recall postmodernist theories of stagnation. But let us start first with exploring the potential of the Anthropocene as a concept: In the 1930s Henri Cartier-Bresson remarked indignantly, "The world is going to pieces and people like [Ansel] Adams and [Edward] Weston are photographing rocks!" With his condemnation of the inorganic as an unworthy subject for photography, we understand Cartier-Bresson to be arguing for a more socially engaged art practice. 1 This anecdote appears at the beginning of the volume Art in the Anthropocene, edited by Heather Davis and Etienne Turpin. The artists and theorists presented therein advocate for an increased attention of critical art to rocks and, more generally, to geological, geophysical, and ecological issues. It is easy to agree that the anthropocentric understanding of socially engaged or political art expressed by Cartier-Bresson in this quotation is limited. Distinctions between human and natural history become invalid in view of the insight that humans not only make "their" history but also that of nature-indeed that of the entire planet. On the one hand, this has led to the recognition of a shift in the scale of human activity: for centuries, artists have turned to the aesthetics of the ruin to demonstrate the supposed futility of human efforts to leave lasting, monumental traces upon history. But now the power imbalance is reversed: human history inscribes itself, in a highly destructive way-on a geospatial scale-into the "big time" 2 of the Anthropocene. On the other hand, however, the traditional focus on the human subject as an agent of history is increasingly questioned by the realisation that our planet may well (and would, probably, much better) exist without us and that the Anthropocene, therefore, is only one geological epoch among many. The structuralist conviction that man is not the only measure of history is returning in theories of accelerationism, in a rescaling of history towards cliodynamics, and in the reappearance of concepts such as Gaia, the personified goddess Earth. 3
Art, History, and Anachronic Interventions Since 1990
The technical, mass media-driven explosion of the documentary since the 1990s has led to an expan... more The technical, mass media-driven explosion of the documentary since the 1990s has led to an expansion of its instruments, procedures, and genres: fictionalisation, staging, reenactment, preenactment; docudrama and mockumentary approaches; essay film and vérité modes 1 ; performance, repetition, and appropriation-all are common artistic practices deployed in order to engage with history. The interweaving of documentary and fiction is not limited to the presentation, narration, or communication of historical content; it already permeates the research and processing of sources, data, and discourses: the work on the archive of history. The term "archive" and the "general and interdisciplinary science" of archivology comprise various scholarly and artistic interests, agendas, and approaches to working with the past. 2 In its Foucauldian sense, further developed by Derrida, the archive is that epistemological and discursive construct that designates documents as such. It is a place of production (rather than representation) of knowledge, of structures of selection and ordering, designating a material-and process-oriented instead of a representation-oriented approach to history. Nothing to See Here: Walid Raad and the Negative Documents of The Atlas Group The archive as a site of production and discourse is at the centre of a well-known project by Lebanese-US artist Walid Raad that was first prominently shown at documenta 11 in 2002. According to Raad, The Atlas Group was a project undertaken "between 1989 and 2004 to research and document the contemporary history of Lebanon, with particular emphasis on the Lebanese wars of 1975 to 1990." 3 Its "archive" combined made and found film footage, photographs, prints, and collages presented by Raad as documents of Lebanese history. The historiographical-and, with it, political-claim of this archive is expressed in the collective "we" designating a "group" as the author of what was actually Raad's art project. Fictionalisation thus not only characterised the archived "documents", but also this gesture of anonymising and collectivising authorship in order to conceive the project as global and transnational. 4 One of the earliest works to be found in the archive of The Atlas Group exemplarily questions scientific historiography and functions as the artistic foundation of the archival structure. It is described as a prime example of speculative historiography in Peter Osborne's exploration of artistic historiography. 5 Missing Lebanese Wars. Notebook Volume 72 (Figures 4.1-4.2) was first published as a contribution to the journal Public Culture.
Art, History, and Anachronic Interventions Since 1990
The theoretical contributions to modern historiography discussed in Chapter 1 differ in many resp... more The theoretical contributions to modern historiography discussed in Chapter 1 differ in many respects yet are united in their attribution of specific roles to the historian. Assumed to be male in most of the texts discussed herein, he is envisioned as a mastermind of universalization and synthetization; an impartial guarantor of objectivity; a practical politician anchored in the present; an emphatic interpreter able to incarnate historical subjects; and a distant, anachronic observer of his contemporaries. Each of these assigned roles represents a distinct methodical approach to and practice of history. But despite this performative foregrounding of the historian's role, historical scholarship in and of itself has produced surprisingly little authorship criticism. Artistic historiography, on the other hand, comes with a rich-albeit ambivalent-art-theoretical legacy that places immense weight on the role of the artist. Art that deals with history thus provides abundant material for reflection on authorial (self-)conceptions and on how various (artistic) subjectivities might handle the "raw material" of history-its documents, persons, and stories. Examining the works of three female artists working in the field of history, this chapter illustrates how artistic, auctorial subjectivity and the author's task of representing absent voices can be negotiated, especially when encountering other historical subjects.
Art, History, and Anachronic Interventions Since 1990
Art, History, and Anachronic Interventions Since 1990, 2021
Art that deals with history is frequently accompanied by the appropriation and/or transformation ... more Art that deals with history is frequently accompanied by the appropriation and/or transformation of familiar popular or academic presentation formats: (artists') books, photographs, films, and videos are its predominant media, both in documentary and other approaches. Fictionalisation, reenactment, and counterfactual history, too, are modes employed by scholarly and art works. Mark Godfrey has explored the connections between these in his essay "The Artist as Historian," 1 which uses the well-known phrase "The artist as …" to illustrate the ever-expanding range of tasks performed by artists. Godfrey's essay is mainly dedicated to artist Matthew Buckingham, who explicitly deals with the theory and methodology of academic history. With references to the research of Hayden White, 2 Reinhart Koselleck, 3 Siegfried Kracauer, and Walter Benjamin, Buckingham explores experimental approaches to history that are of lasting influence on contemporary art. In an art-historical review, Godfrey observes that, generally speaking, conceptual art and appropriation art-even when taking up historical topics and materials-were more interested in questions of representation. He locates a shift only in the 1990s, in the works of Steve McQueen, Santu Mofokeng, Fiona Tan, Anri Sala, Jeremy Deller, and Walid Raad, which, while still making use of conceptualist approaches, explicitly formulated an interest in the exploration and representation of history. While I agree to this observation in principle, it should not be used as a strict art-historical timeline. Important works on history, such as Gerhard Richter's painting series 18 October 1977 (1988) and William Kentridge's animated film series Felix in Exile (1989-99), were committed to their own genealogies (namely, a critique of media and the examination of political memory). 4 Artistic explorations of history emerge at different moments out of distinct contexts, social urgencies, and interests. Since the beginning of modernism, the relationship between artistic and scholarly history has been characterised by ambivalences: connected by common interests and, often, methods, practitioners still attempted to remain separate whenever seriously tested. For art, turning to history entailed delving into a field of interest established as a scholarly discipline only in the course of the Enlightenment, initially by way of an expansion of philosophy. History was often viewed as closely aligned to the (visual) arts but, in the course of the trend towards its establishment as a science, tried to emancipate itself from these unwanted ties. This chapter will explore how this close but fraught relationship was constantly negotiated and modified during the nineteenth century, and which roles and functions were ascribed to art within the newly emerging practice of history during this transformative period, when it emerged as an academic ("scientific") discipline.
Art, History, and Anachronic Interventions Since 1990, 2021
The Explosion of the Documentary Among the theoretical positions on historiography mentioned so f... more The Explosion of the Documentary Among the theoretical positions on historiography mentioned so far, Siegfried Kracauer's double conceptual structure of history as both recording and shaping reality most closely corresponds to documentary film and photography, which have been a foundation of both artistic and academic historiography for decades. The documentary incorporated artistic aspects, both conceptual and technical, from its very beginnings, which has led to contradictions and paradoxes that regularly inform art-theoretical discussions to date: "'Documentary' is often taken as the antonym to 'artistic,' yet it stems primarily from the artistic field-beyond art, yet very much a part of it." 1 Analyses of the history and concept of the documentary illustrate its ambiguous relationship to art; this has, more often than not, led to a rejection of any potential kinship. 2 Close associations of art with the documentary were often, from a defensive stance similar to that of historical methodology, perceived as a threat to its realism and its scientific, exact nature. This alone suggests that, among all artistic genres and methods, the documentary is closest to history. Its paradoxes are thus best answered by pointing out history's double nature: recording and shaping reality are not opposite procedures, but correspond exactly to both the course of events and the depiction thereof. Documentary practices are situated in the midst of a constantly changing constellation of art, science, bureaucracy, journalism, justice, and truth politics. As an artistic genre, it has been criticized frequently because it shares procedures with ethnography, the police apparatus, and information technology, partaking in their identification procedures and normative-and often-restrictive-logics. Important impulses for furthering and critiquing uses of the documentary in art were put forward by documenta X (1997)curated by Catherine David with a focus on conceptualist methods in contemporary art-and by documenta 11 (2002)-under the direction of Okwui Enwezor-which situated the documentary as the lingua franca of political art in the age of globalization at the centre of contemporary art while initiating a thorough critique and reassessment of its practices that continues to this day. 3 This critique focuses on the documentary's often-ostentatious factism and its inherent paradoxical promise of direct representation and control of reality, which brings together the two irreconcilable poles of "factishness" (the fetishization of facts): 4 to "find" and "fabricate" at the same time. Documenta 11, in particular, presented numerous artworks exploring the possibilities and aporias of the documentary. 5 This inspired an intensive examination of the documentary's artistic roots, with new and experimental practices critiquing the fetishization of historical material. At the same time, a comprehensive examination of the metaphorology of memory and temporal experience emerged; this became particularly significant in the context of the "historical media" photography and film. 6 Wang Bing's West of the Tracks (2003), a film project dedicated to the two "eroding"
Art, History, and Anachronic Interventions Since 1990, 2021
Many of the artworks discussed in this book employ anachronic concepts as a means to critically e... more Many of the artworks discussed in this book employ anachronic concepts as a means to critically explore and activate history. This chapter takes a closer look at artworks that address the historiographical "scandalon" of anachronism so that we might consider anachrony and anachronism, and their relationship to each other.
Art, History, and Anachronic Interventions Since 1990, 2021
The previous chapter considers the precariousness and opacity of documents as well as the structu... more The previous chapter considers the precariousness and opacity of documents as well as the structuring policies of historical knowledge and representation. In this chapter we turn to the methodological aspect of showing, narrating, and displaying historical materials, beginning with the significance of testimonies. Situated at history's origin-atzero, witness accounts emerge directly from viewers of an event yet sometimes prove as impenetrable as other raw or unprocessed historical sources. As pieces of evidence, testimonies can be used in court proceedings in a manner similar to how material traces are employed. I start, therefore, with the question of how opaque linguistic testimonies and silent objects can be used to establish narratives beyond their integration into documentary procedures.
Thomas W. Gaehtgens, Gregor Wedekind (Hgg.), Le culte des grands hommes 1750–1850, Paris: Editions de la Maison des sciences de l'homme, 2009, S. 71–102. , 2009
Der Platz des Publikums Modelle für Kunstöffentlichkeit im 18. Jahrhundert , 2011
Öffentlichkeit ist ein Schlüsselbegriff der Aufklärung und zugleich eine zentrale Bewertungs- und... more Öffentlichkeit ist ein Schlüsselbegriff der Aufklärung und zugleich eine zentrale Bewertungs- und Legitimationsinstanz von Kunstwerken. Die Einführung regelmäßiger Kunstausstellungen in England und Frankreich führte in Kunsttheorie, Kunstkritik und bildlichen Darstellungen zu intensiven Auseinandersetzungen mit dem Publikum als reales Gegenüber und imaginäres Konstrukt, die nicht nur an künstlerische Strategien zur Erreichung bestimmter Adressatenkreise, sondern auch an geschichtsphilosophische Fragestellungen rührten. Das Buch verfolgt den spannungsgeladenen Wandel der Diskursfigur Kunstöffentlichkeit von ihrer Entstehung aus der absolutistischen Ruhmestradition hin zum revolutionären Konzept im späten 18. Jahrhundert.
Beate Fricke, Markus Klammer, Stefan Neuner (eds.), Bilder und Gemeinschaften. Studien zur Konvergenz von Politik und Ästhetik in Kunst, Literatur und Theorie, München: Fink, pp. 204–234. , 2011
Der Sturm auf die Bastille am 14. Juli 1789 gehort aus heutiger Sicht zu den Grundungsereignissen... more Der Sturm auf die Bastille am 14. Juli 1789 gehort aus heutiger Sicht zu den Grundungsereignissen der Franzosischen Revolution. Von den zeitgenossischen KunstlerInnen wurde die Besetzung des Staatsgefangnisses des Ancien Regime durch die Pariser Volksmenge selten thematisiert: Welcher franzosische Maler, fragt Philippe Bordes, hatte zu Beginn der Revolution auf die Idee kommen konnen, die Szene eines Volksaufstandes zu verherrlichen?l Die aktuellen politischen Ereignisse fanden Platz in zahlreichen Zeitungs-und Zeitschriftenartikeln und dementsprechend bald in der Druckgraphik, nicht aber in den Gemalden und Skulpturen der Salon-Ausstellungen der Revolutionsjahre, wie zeitgenossische Kommentatoren verwundert bemerkten. 2 Die rasche Abfolge und Komplexitat der Ereignisse erschwerten die kunstlerische Umsetzung, und zudem folgte der politischen Instabilitat die Erschutterung der kunstpolitischen Verhaltnisse: An wen sollten sich solche Darstellungen richten, wer sollte sie finanzieren?
Lucie Kolb/Barbara Preisig/Judith Welter (eds.), Paratexte. Zwischen Produktion, Vermittlung und Rezeption, Zürich: diaphanes, pp. 51–70, 2018
In der zeitgenössischen Kunst entstehen Werke, die in der paratextuellen Form von Einladungskarte... more In der zeitgenössischen Kunst entstehen Werke, die in der paratextuellen Form von Einladungskarten, Ausstellungskatalogen, Zeitschriften, Webseiten und ähnlichem in Erscheinung treten oder die, scheinbar losgelöst vom Werk, nur noch in Form von Erzählungen weiter bestehen. Heute können Kunstwerke nicht mehr unabhängig von ihrem Rezeptionskontext gelesen werden, und Formen der Vermittlung selbst sind in die künstlerische Produktion eingegangen. An der Schnittstelle von Rezeption, institutioneller Rahmung und künstlerischem Format angesiedelt, verschränken sich in ihrer Gestaltung und Konzeption oftmals künstlerische, kuratorische und theoretische Praktiken. Im vorliegenden Buch werden paratextuelle Phänomene in der Kunst diskutiert; gleichzeitig wird dieser von Gérard Genette entlehnte Begriff auf die Möglichkeiten und Grenzen seiner Verwendbarkeit für die Untersuchung zeitgenössischer künstlerischer Praxis hin untersucht.
Marzia Faietti, Gerhard Wolf (eds.), Linea II – Giochi, Metamorfosi, Seduzioni della Linea , Florenz: Giunti Editore, 2012, pp 272–293. , 2012
Dietmar Kammerer (Hg.), Vom Publicum. Das Öffentliche in der Kunst, 2012
Kunstgeschichtlichkeit. Historizität und Anachronie in der Gegenwartskunst, 2015
Bibliografische Information der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek verz... more Bibliografische Information der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek verzeichnet diese Publikation in der Deutschen Nationalbibliografie; detaillierte bibliografische Daten sind im Internet über http://dnb.d-nb.de abrufbar. Alle Rechte, auch die des auszugsweisen Nachdrucks, der fotomechanischen Wiedergabe und der Übersetzung, vorbehalten. Dies betrifft auch die Vervielfältigung und Übertragung einzelner Textabschnitte, Zeichnungen oder Bilder durch alle Verfahren wie Speicherung und Übertragung auf Papier, Transparente, Filme, Bänder, Platten und andere Medien, soweit es nicht § § 53 und 54 UrhG ausdrücklich gestatten.
Brill | Fink eBooks, May 31, 2023
Brill | Fink eBooks, 2015
Brill | Fink eBooks, 2015
De Gruyter eBooks, Apr 25, 2016
De Gruyter eBooks, Apr 25, 2016
Höfische Porträtkultur, 2016
Höfische Porträtkultur, 2016
Ornament, Struktur und Verhalten
Art, History, and Anachronic Interventions Since 1990
Höfische Porträtkultur, 2016
Vortrag bei dem X. Kongress der Deutsche Gesellschaft für Ästhetik, 2018, Offenbach am Main