The Re- and Dematerialization of the Object (of Art) Through the Analysis of Hungarian Examples from the Late 20th and 21st Century (original) (raw)
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THE DEMATERIALIZATION OF SOCIETY AND ITS ART OBJECTS
Kaiera #3, Criticism and Writing, Peio Aguirre (Hrsg.), Tabakalera, San Sebastian, 2018
These quotations from the artist, Hanne Darboven, and the philosopher, Srećko Horvat, each assert in the context of their time a valid concept of dematerialization. Darboven conceives the process of dematerialization in its completed state of an assumed immateriality as a characteristic quality of the idea-the idea of the individual that is exchanged, that is stimulating communication, underlying an artistic process or inciting a revolution-it is fleeting, impalpable; it can withdraw. Horvat, by contrast, describes a mechanism of virtual economy underlying global finance capitalism. The gesture, possibly precisely controlled, the rumour put into circulation, occasions a fluctuation in profits and losses located likewise in virtuality. These profits and losses, however, are transposed with effects on the material existence of the individual through accumulation or debt. At this point it is important to differentiate the notion of dematerialization from immateriality. While dematerialization describes a process of reducing materiality, which does not necessarily end up in immateriality, but instead addresses the implications of material and the abandonment of it and allows for a critical reflection on the status of things and objects. In more current approaches of media theory, the concept of immateriality is clearly rejected. 1 This is particularly relevant, when we talk about the materiality of digital technologies, which is indeed below the radar of human perception. Although there is no innate digital materiality-code and electrical signals have no physical tactile matter-strictly speaking it is not immaterial either, because information is on the one hand mediated by hardware and on the other hand it consists of the fluid materiality of bits and bytes. 2
Conference, 2023
Introduced in 1902 in response to a polemical article by Strzygowski, the category of haptic formulated by the Viennese theorist Alois Riegl enjoyed a remarkable critical fortune, exquisitely interdisciplinary, throughout the 20th century and beyond. A critical fortune that, not infrequently, has taken the form of a complex and radical reinterpretation of the "optical device”, postulated by Riegl, reflecting on the construction of space in Egyptian bas-relief. Since the 1990s significant new interpretations have been made in Film Studies field by authors such as Antonia Lant, Noël Burch and, in a more openly subversive, transcultural and gender-based key, by scholars such as Laura U. Marks, Jennifer M. Barker and Giuliana Bruno. Although the research that has converged in the Film Studies field still needs systematic recognition, this branch of studies is partially known. Otherwise, the adoptions and interpolations this notion has received in contemporary art criticism and historiography still constitute a widely unexplored field. Given this scenario, this contribution aims at tracing how the notion of haptic has entered the lexicon of contemporary theory and criticism through the modernist period. It will try to record affinities, interpolations and reinterpretations of the Rieglian model to stress the theoretical malleability and vitality of this category. Through the rediscovery of some forgotten sources, such as Louis Danz's prodromic study on Picasso Guernica (1937) published in 1941, this study aims at analyzing critically how this notion has been experienced by authors such as Herbert Read, Clement Greenberg, Lucy Lippard and Jole De Sanna. Tracing essays and theories is intended to show how this category has become an eccentric critical tool to disorientate and dismantle the Modernist epistemic framework.
新的理解在藝術的創作 Until now, in the West, appreciation of the nature of art was derived from archaic and classical values. This was then augmented with the rise of modernism which introduced the ‘interpretation’ of art as meaningful and significant because of its value when interpreted. But new digital technologies are changing the parameters of the discussion about what matters in terms of the display and exhibition of art. By examining new ideas of ‘entrainment’, where immersivity, resonance, and synchronicity and direct response become the factors that reveal art to a contemporary audience, I wish to re-examine how an art object or event functions with special regard to the identity of digital high-resolution technologies. As the worldwide audience develops beyond cultural definitions presented by either East or West this paper seeks to examine and reveal new ideas and concepts around the production, distribution, exhibition and display of art. Here are the active links from the paper in the order they appear in the text: http://www.visualfields.co.uk/ANSELembed.html http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/gaze/ http://www.visualfields.co.uk/cannaregio.htm http://www.visualfields.co.uk/carnivalembed.htm http://www.visualfields.co.uk/TORPORTRAITS.htm
The Painter of Dematerialization
This article begins by re-conceiving dematerialization in relation to On Kawara's Date Paintings (1966–2009) rather than to the Conceptualist practices that first prompted Lippard and Chandler to invoke the term in 1968. In this view, the concept's synchronic link to a generation of artists unfolds into a longer history. In such a history, phases are marked by technologies that change the material basis of the property form, thereby prompting intellectual property law to try to extend the law's protections to the newly configured media. This article considers the introduction of the VCR and the ensuing lawsuits as one phase of dematerialization. But the VCR emerged alongside Conceptual art practices, and in those practices too, dematerialization entailed revisions and augmentations of property law. Ultimately, On Kawara's practice helps us to sketch a prehistory of digital culture, which has seen the most rapid and aggressive expansions of the law that governs creative practice.
The Contemporary Dematerialization of Art
Many artists have turned away from making objects as the end-object; instead they set art in real life, as lived experience in concert with other people and groups. This contemporary dematerialization of art—conceptually and economically necessary—is tied to artists themselves living in financial precarity. This essay discusses contemporary NYC activist and performance work in relation to conceptual art practices and US social movements of the late sixties and early 70s.