Fiction on Display – A Collection of Collections (original) (raw)
Related papers
Further Fictions in Print, 2011
Documentation and commentary on the body of practical work submitted for the degree of Master of Fine Art. Faculty of the Humanities University of Cape Town 2011 Within the textual discussion of this creative body of work I have articulated some of the ideas and considerations that have taken place over the course of completing the project. I have had to grapple with what Kentridge (2010) calls the “primacy of the image” because my choice of media and images came first, propelled from ideas that had settled like sediment in my unconscious, put there by experiences of screen culture, novels, many films and the process of making the prints. In this text, discoursing has been a task of tunneling into this sediment. I consider these chapters as four discussions of my work. Situating the reader in the current environment of screen technology, chapter one, ‘Technologies’, outlines the nature of what I refer to as screen culture and the impact of simulated reality on our conceptions of the visual as a tool for presenting abstract data. I explain the choice of print as a medium for my works in relation to the succession of analogue to digital translations inherent in technological developments. Katsutoshi Yuasa, Vija Celmins and Christina Baumgartner are three artists that use the medium of woodcut print to interrogate the nature of the photographic image. Chapter two, ‘Sources’, introduces the idea of the jungle as the metaphorical image-screen, a complex signifier of the inner dialogue between Baktin’s “official” and “unofficial” consciousness in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. The print sequences I’m still only in Saigon (2010), I love the smell of Napalm (2011) and Beyond the Pale (2011) are discussed in relation to a close reading of Heart of Darkness, William Golding’s novel Lord of the Flies and Francis Coppola’s film Apocalypse Now. Common to all my sources is a self-conscious criticism of the stability of moral and cultural codes in an alien environment. The discussion in Chapter three, ‘Play. Pause. Rewind’, focuses on the nature of a stilled image derived from a cinematic sequence. This is further explored in a consideration of the work of John Baldessari and Fiona Tan. I relate the cinematic image and woodcut print as media of mechanical reproduction to the theories of Walter Benjamin (1936) who refers to cinema’s mode of reception as one of “distracted contemplation.” I discuss Kent State (1970), a screenprint by Richard Hamilton, and elaborate on Frey’s conception of the cinematic still as an “abstracted condensation” (Frey 1991: 54) of a narrative. In Chapter four ‘Translations’ I consider the regenerative nature of translation. I consider the ways that translating an image through visual mediums becomes a transformative system that can reflect on the nature of illusionary media. I consider the works and processes of Chuck Close, Dan Hays and Sigmar Polke in relation to this conception of translation, which is particularly influenced by William Kentridge’s (2010) notion of analogue memory and Benjamin’s discussion in the Task of the Translator (1923). Kentridge advocates the productivity of the failures of memory, which I have interpreted as a particular type of human subjectivity (Kentridge 2010: online). My project is situated quite particularly within the discipline of print. Within the text itself, wherever possible I have referred to the processes and explained the terms specific to the medium. For more thorough definitions, a glossary of print terms mentioned in the text is included, which is taken directly from Paul Coldwell’s book Printmaking: A Contemporary Perspective (2010).
Catalogue of “Radical Fictions” exhibition, 4th edition of 3M Digital Art Show at Instituto Tomie Ohtake. The exhibition, curated by Gisela Domschke, is an invitation to rethink our future in a society suffering from exhaustion. National and international artists present their critical, experimental or simply imaginary perspectives, which suggest the possibility of alternative paths.
In-Between Fiction and Non-Fiction Introduction
Cambridge Scholars, 2018
This volume invites the reader to join in with the recent focus on subjectivity and self-reflection, as the means of understanding and engaging with the social and historical changes in the world through storytelling. It examines the symbiosis between anthropology and fiction, on the one hand, by looking at various ways in which the two fields co-emerge in a fruitful manner, and, on the other, by re-examining their political, aesthetic, and social relevance to world history. Following the intellectual crisis of the 1970s, anthropology has been criticized for losing its ethnographic authority and vocation. However, as a consequence of this, ethnographic scope has opened towards more subjective and self-reflexive forms of knowledge and representations, such as the crossing of the boundaries between autobiography and ethnography. The collection of essays re-introduces the importance of authorship in relationship to readership, making a ground-breaking move towards the study of fictional texts and images as cultural, sociological, and political reflections of the time and place in which they were produced. In this way, the contributors here contribute to the widening of the ethnographic scope of contemporary anthropology. A number of the chapters were presented as papers in two conferences organised by the Association of Social Anthropologists of the UK and Commonwealth at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, entitled “Arts and aesthetics in a globalising world” (2012), and at the University of Exeter, entitled “Symbiotic Anthropologies” (2015). Each chapter offers a unique method of working in the grey area between and beyond the categories of fiction and non-fiction, while creatively reflecting upon current methodological, ethical, and theoretical issues, in anthropology and cultural studies. This is an important book for undergraduate and post-graduate students of anthropology, cultural and media studies, art theory, and creative writing, as well as academic researchers in these fields.
Journal of Literature and Art Studies Issue 3 Vol.6 March 2016
King's narratives exemplify the themes of the uncanny, of masking and unmasking, of the corporeal otherisation and of the questioning of identity. This paper is an invitation to go beyond what may commonly be thought of as a uniform looking-glass so as to discover King's particular treatment of the body. Far from shying away from sexuality, the American writer depicts it in an ambivalent or disguised manner (Thinner, Mr. Mercedes, Christine, Misery, Cycle of the Werewolf). If the female body is mainly connected with the taboos of rape and incest (Gerald's Game, Dolores Claiborne, Bag of Bones, Under the Dome), or with ungenderisation (The Tommynockers, Rose Madder), the notion of monstrosisation can nevertheless be applied to both male and female bodies (The Shining, Desperation, "The Raft," "Survivor Type"). Oscillating between hypermonstration and avoidance, King pulls the strings of the fragmentation, even of the silencing of the body. The fissure impregnating the characters' identity and bodies is enlightened by the shattering of the very connection between signifiers and signified, inserting the reader into a state of non-knowledge: a mesmerising dance of disembodied bodies within disembodied texts.