Capital Imagery and the Traces of the Living (original) (raw)

" REPRESENTATION OF REPRESENTATIONS " : CAPITAL AS A MYTHOLOGY IN MOVEMENT

In reading "Seventeen Contradictions and the End of Capitalism" by David Harvey, one thing is clear: through continuous transitions from one material form to another, capital ends up to create a geographical landscape favourable to its own reproduction: once productive landscapes are turned into industrial deserts, old farms are demolished or converted to new uses, small factories and peasant holdings are displaced by industrial agriculture on a large -scale, working-class neighbourhoods get gentrified; offices, iconic cultural buildings and shopping malls proliferate in the urban landscape. But next to this, capital produces symbolic forms and intangibles landscape that consists in our mental concepts of the world and of our place in it: these forms are "representations of representations", e.g. social mythologies such as those studied by Roland Barthes in his Mythologies: the mythical image does not refer directly to things, but to another image. This is the reason why is so hard (but compelling) defuse the contradictions of capital, as in the case of Hong Kong.

Two Modes of Midcentury Iconology

History of Humanities, 2018

A B S T R A C T In this essay, Edgar Wind's and Erwin Panofsky's practices of art historical iconology are interpreted through their respective adaptations of the epistemological premises of American Pragmatism and German neo-Kantianism. By leveraging the history of these intellectual traditions alongside Wind's and Panofsky's programmatic statements, the essay identifies a central and much overlooked difference between Wind's and Panofsky's scholarship that speaks to long-standing questions of hermeneutics. Against this background, Wind's and Panofsky's corresponding yet divergent appeals to the writings of early modern neo-Platonists to make their iconological arguments are interpreted as symptoms of their own twentieth-century philosophical commitments. The implications of the abstract epistemological distinction that is initially drawn between Wind's and Panofsky's scholarship are then tracked through their disagreement over Titian's Venus Blinding Cupid. By culminating with a discussion of Panofsky's and Wind's analyses of this specific painting, this essay attempts to identify two specific instances of the unity of theory and practice within art historical interpretation and to assess the lasting value of Wind's and Panofsky's scholarship.

Artistic Detritus, the Circulation of Power, and Intervening in the Historic Record at The 8th Floor

Sedimentations: Assemblage as Social Repair is the most recent exhibition at The 8th Floor, an alternative art space affiliated with the Rubin Foundation and dedicated to expanding artistic and cultural accessibility in New York City. The title of the exhibition drums up images of geological striations, the historic record, and the trajectory of civilizations, to only name a few reference points. As curator Sara Reisman, Executive and Artistic Director of the Shelley & Donald Rubin Foundation, explains in the opening exhibition statement, the title comes from a 1968 essay written by the influential land artist Robert Smithson. In his text, Smithson broadly explores how humans relate to the earth in every sense. The critical writings and socio-environmental practices of Smithson serve as an important conduit for understanding the cogent narrative of this exhibition and its larger themes. At the same time, I would argue that the essays of the French postmodernist thinker Michel Foucault equally provide an appropriate and useful framework for seeing how the installations on display are linked. Reisman has judiciously brought together a formidable cadre of artists, including El Anatsui, Maren Hassinger, Elana Herzog, Samuel Levi Jones, Mary Mattingly, Lina Puerta, Michael Rakowitz, Jean Shin, Shinique Smith, Mierle Laderman Ukeles, Roberto Visani, and Michael Kelly Williams. These twelve artists of varying art historical moments, media, and motivations are part of an intellectual journey about material usage, objecthood, and artistic intervention/re-purposing in the life of discarded items. Concurrently, the objects and installations in one way or another comment on the visible and invisible systems that operate in our daily lives. The myriad assemblages pulsate a Foucaultian energy and speak to social ills/systems in desperate need of repair, such as waste collection and management; gun regulation; urban planning; emergency response efforts; the fashion industry; museum acquisition policies and cultural patrimony; and the military-industrial complex. The show does much more than raise questions about these systems though; it offers potential remedies to some of the most deleterious socio-political ails of our time. As Reisman explains in the catalogue essay, each “artist offers a methodology that speaks to a crisis, from the personal and intimate to the global and collectively consequent.” I have divided my analysis and assessment of the exhibition into two broad categories, attempting to elaborate on the major themes and issues as one would encounter them while progressing through the gallery space. In the first section, I consider works and themes dealing with the history of civilizations; cultural heritage; gun violence; natural disasters; the circulation of power; natural resources and the U.S. military; and the American judicial system. The latter half is concerned with the fashion industry; the geo-politics of the developing and developed worlds; nature, architecture, and culture; and shared public places and urban social theory.