Parergon Research Papers - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

In the year 2015, a discovery shook the artworld. After an x-rays analysis, two other images and an inscription were found under “Black Square,” Kazimir Malevich’s iconic painting. The largest “crack” on the already cracked painting... more

In the year 2015, a discovery shook the artworld. After an x-rays analysis, two other images and an inscription were found under “Black Square,” Kazimir Malevich’s iconic painting. The largest “crack” on the already cracked painting suddenly opened after the following words in Russian appeared: Битва негров в темной пещере глубокой ночью, roughly translated as Negroes battling in a dark cave at deep night. How are we to even begin to interpret this “zero point of painting,” for many the avant-garde masterpiece? Is there anyone who would laugh today at this “joke” and are we too quick to dismiss Malevich as yet another racist?

The display of artefacts always implies an external mediation that influences, and often codifies, the reception of the exhibits. Objects are manipulated, restored, appropriated, staged, in short displayed, through various... more

The display of artefacts always implies an external mediation that influences, and often codifies, the reception of the exhibits. Objects are manipulated, restored, appropriated, staged, in short displayed, through various representational strategies that include pedestals, labels, and showcases. These elements, which we could define as parerga, are often ignored because of their utilitarian function. Yet, they play an important role in the history of the artefacts and define the setting in which the objects can exert their agency. They not only shape their meaning, but also determine the effect that these artefacts have on their viewers. Framing devices create the conditions for interactions between the individual and the object to take place. This publication aims to explore the relation between artefacts and viewers as they are manifested in framing devices, and to develop a new theoretical framework for thinking about the power of objects on display.

En el presente trabajo intentaremos problematizar la ruptura de fronteras entre producción, obra de arte y consumo en la medida en que nos permiten reflexionar sobre experiencias estéticas contemporáneas, para ello utilizaremos la figura... more

The correspondence exchanged by Edward I of England and Llywelyn ap Gruffydd, Prince of Wales, in the late thirteenth century has traditionally been read for its legal and jurisdictional implications. However, as Rees Davies noted,... more

The correspondence exchanged by Edward I of England and Llywelyn ap Gruffydd, Prince of Wales, in the late thirteenth century has traditionally been read for its legal and jurisdictional implications. However, as Rees Davies noted, language was itself a weapon in medieval Anglo-Welsh conflict. From this assumption, I examine a single letter exchange to investigate the construction and function of royal epistolary language. I suggest that traditional and formulaic elements were adapted to strategic expression of the authority and longevity of royal power, and that silences were equally intentional and rhetorically forceful weapons in the campaign to dominate Wales.

This chapter emerged from my curatorial research on contemporary video practices in Southeast Asia. I analyse some short, independently made film and video works, each of which deals with minor (and/or obsolete) languages, and marginal... more

This chapter emerged from my curatorial research on contemporary video practices in Southeast Asia. I analyse some short, independently made film and video works, each of which deals with minor (and/or obsolete) languages, and marginal identities, which have been suppressed in monolithic constructions of modern, national history. I focus on the subtitle as the site of a subversive play that not only undermines the hegemony of official-national language, but might also destabilize the transnational circuits and structures of exhibition in which such moving images increasingly circulate. With reference to anthropologically informed theories of mediation and Jacques Derrida’s figure of the parergon, I
highlight how tactical translation and mistranslation operate at both formal and linguistic levels. Finally, in a detailed reading of Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s short film 'The Anthem' (2006), I explore the still more
subversive possibilities when the cinematic parergon itself is subjected to such formal re-framing. This essay was later revised as ‘Unframing the Nation: Parergon and Radical Allegory’ in David Teh, “Thai Art: Currencies of the Contemporary” (Cambridge, MA and London: MIT Press, 2017).

The frame as a parergon substantiates what it frames as representation. Materially, glass cooperates closely with the frame demarcating works of art from what is outside of them. It may be overlooked how such ordinary, colorless, and... more

The frame as a parergon substantiates what it frames as representation. Materially, glass cooperates closely with the frame demarcating works of art from what is outside of them. It may be overlooked how such ordinary, colorless, and transparent glass underpins representation. The fundamental role of glazing in protecting a painting’s surface secures the field of representation, while the glass reflection disturbs viewing and contemplating the painting. Is glass a parergon? Does its presence/absence affect the constitutive agency of the frame, and, if so, how? This paper addresses these questions by examining works that critically explore the structural conditions of making representation distinctive, autonomous, and meaningful.