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Papers by Elisa Adami
‘This Is No Longer That Place: A Public Discussion’ took place across the Showroom and Tate Brita... more ‘This Is No Longer That Place: A Public Discussion’ took place across the Showroom and Tate Britain, London 5-8 March. Published on Art Monthly 425, April 2019.
Art Monthly
Review of Akram Zaatari: Against Photography – An Annotated History of the Arab Image Foundation,... more Review of Akram Zaatari: Against Photography – An Annotated History of the Arab Image Foundation, Macba Barcelona 7 April to 25 September. Published in Art Monthly 407, June 2017
Art Monthly
Review of Jumana Manna's exhibition at Chisenhale, London, 18 September to 13 December. Published... more Review of Jumana Manna's exhibition at Chisenhale, London, 18 September to 13 December. Published in Art Monthly 391, November 2015.
Journal of Visual Culture, 2015
Focusing on the events of the Arab Spring, this essay considers the visual language of the protes... more Focusing on the events of the Arab Spring, this essay considers the visual language of the protest within geopolitical contexts characterized by violent repression and state monopoly on information media. The author looks at the ways new technologies – namely mobile phones and social media – are used to produce and disseminate counterdocumentation that actively challenges states of invisibility and conditions of deformation. The regime of visibility and visuality of the protestors’ statements are analysed in their relation to existing systems of power and to the channels of distribution of information through an examination of the material conditions of their production and reception, and through an attempt at retracing their erratic and multiple trajectories – from YouTube’s unsanctioned and unchecked collections, to international news broadcasts, to their re-presentation in public screenings and in works of art.
Published in Third Text (January, 2017), issue on Social Reproduction and Art, pp. 79-95
In an article written for the French newspaper Libe ́ration, Jean-Luc Godard described his latest... more In an article written for the French newspaper Libe ́ration, Jean-Luc Godard described his latest film, Nume ́ro deux (Number Two, 1975), made in collaboration with his partner, the film-maker Anne-Marie Mie ́ville, as an attempt to ‘think the home in terms of the factory’. Drawing on theories of social reproduction, this article examines how this metaphor plays itself out within Nume ́ro deux, as well as Godard and Mie ́ville’s film-making practice more broadly, especially the pro- duction methods that they developed in the 1970s. In particular, it focuses on how their use of video and their foregrounding of the space of film postproduction serves to challenge traditional notions of film pro- duction, editing and authorship – briefly examining the editing room as a historically gendered place of work. We conclude by reading Godard and Mie ́ville’s television works, particularly their strategy of amateurisation and their investment in the domestic, in relation to the category of the ‘home movie’. The place of the home and their practice of small-scale film production, it is argued, represents an attempt to explore an alterna- tive mode of production to the one that the metaphor of the factory typically designates.
This is a study of different artistic approaches to the legacy of unfinished ruins of the Soviet ... more This is a study of different artistic approaches to the legacy of unfinished ruins of the Soviet Era. It is an analysis of the different ways in which artists re–elaborated these architectural fragments after the collapse of the Soviet Union. These unfinished ruins encompass incomplete buildings, unrealized plans, partial housing blocks and unbuilt monuments of the Russian artistic avant–garde. This study debates the possibility of re–activating the latent potential of these ruins in the present. In such a way, it necessarily engages with issues of utopian planning, and entails a reconsideration of the concept of progress and of the architectural practice itself.
This interdisciplinary research emerges at the crossroad between art history, contemporary art practice, political history and architecture.
This essay explores the relationship between photography and memory, comparing analogue and digit... more This essay explores the relationship between photography and memory, comparing analogue and digital imagining technologies. Much of the discussion focuses around matters of materiality and immateriality and the ways in which material supports act as a grounding for processes of memory retrieval and recollection. The immaterial forms of consumption of digital photography, however, generate inedited possibilities to deal with photographic memories, both in terms of presentational forms and image rhetoric. These new properties are outlined and throughly discussed in the essay, through the particular cases of digital frames, online photographic albums and technologies of digital manipulation.
Book Reviews by Elisa Adami
‘This Is No Longer That Place: A Public Discussion’ took place across the Showroom and Tate Brita... more ‘This Is No Longer That Place: A Public Discussion’ took place across the Showroom and Tate Britain, London 5-8 March. Published on Art Monthly 425, April 2019.
Art Monthly
Review of Akram Zaatari: Against Photography – An Annotated History of the Arab Image Foundation,... more Review of Akram Zaatari: Against Photography – An Annotated History of the Arab Image Foundation, Macba Barcelona 7 April to 25 September. Published in Art Monthly 407, June 2017
Art Monthly
Review of Jumana Manna's exhibition at Chisenhale, London, 18 September to 13 December. Published... more Review of Jumana Manna's exhibition at Chisenhale, London, 18 September to 13 December. Published in Art Monthly 391, November 2015.
Journal of Visual Culture, 2015
Focusing on the events of the Arab Spring, this essay considers the visual language of the protes... more Focusing on the events of the Arab Spring, this essay considers the visual language of the protest within geopolitical contexts characterized by violent repression and state monopoly on information media. The author looks at the ways new technologies – namely mobile phones and social media – are used to produce and disseminate counterdocumentation that actively challenges states of invisibility and conditions of deformation. The regime of visibility and visuality of the protestors’ statements are analysed in their relation to existing systems of power and to the channels of distribution of information through an examination of the material conditions of their production and reception, and through an attempt at retracing their erratic and multiple trajectories – from YouTube’s unsanctioned and unchecked collections, to international news broadcasts, to their re-presentation in public screenings and in works of art.
Published in Third Text (January, 2017), issue on Social Reproduction and Art, pp. 79-95
In an article written for the French newspaper Libe ́ration, Jean-Luc Godard described his latest... more In an article written for the French newspaper Libe ́ration, Jean-Luc Godard described his latest film, Nume ́ro deux (Number Two, 1975), made in collaboration with his partner, the film-maker Anne-Marie Mie ́ville, as an attempt to ‘think the home in terms of the factory’. Drawing on theories of social reproduction, this article examines how this metaphor plays itself out within Nume ́ro deux, as well as Godard and Mie ́ville’s film-making practice more broadly, especially the pro- duction methods that they developed in the 1970s. In particular, it focuses on how their use of video and their foregrounding of the space of film postproduction serves to challenge traditional notions of film pro- duction, editing and authorship – briefly examining the editing room as a historically gendered place of work. We conclude by reading Godard and Mie ́ville’s television works, particularly their strategy of amateurisation and their investment in the domestic, in relation to the category of the ‘home movie’. The place of the home and their practice of small-scale film production, it is argued, represents an attempt to explore an alterna- tive mode of production to the one that the metaphor of the factory typically designates.
This is a study of different artistic approaches to the legacy of unfinished ruins of the Soviet ... more This is a study of different artistic approaches to the legacy of unfinished ruins of the Soviet Era. It is an analysis of the different ways in which artists re–elaborated these architectural fragments after the collapse of the Soviet Union. These unfinished ruins encompass incomplete buildings, unrealized plans, partial housing blocks and unbuilt monuments of the Russian artistic avant–garde. This study debates the possibility of re–activating the latent potential of these ruins in the present. In such a way, it necessarily engages with issues of utopian planning, and entails a reconsideration of the concept of progress and of the architectural practice itself.
This interdisciplinary research emerges at the crossroad between art history, contemporary art practice, political history and architecture.
This essay explores the relationship between photography and memory, comparing analogue and digit... more This essay explores the relationship between photography and memory, comparing analogue and digital imagining technologies. Much of the discussion focuses around matters of materiality and immateriality and the ways in which material supports act as a grounding for processes of memory retrieval and recollection. The immaterial forms of consumption of digital photography, however, generate inedited possibilities to deal with photographic memories, both in terms of presentational forms and image rhetoric. These new properties are outlined and throughly discussed in the essay, through the particular cases of digital frames, online photographic albums and technologies of digital manipulation.