Contemporaneity (E-Journal)
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SYNAXIS
Full text linkHaving emigrated from Russia to the United States in 2003, I recognized new possibilities for myself while strengthening my connection to American culture. My exposure to the American way of life allowed me to re-envision the cultural, social, and political climate of present-day Russia, as well as to reflect, learn, and analyze the interplay of ethnic and geographical influences. In many ways, American culture has shaped my ideas for developing the concept of the “Other.” For me, “othering” became a mental classification for losing some of my spiritual and physical connection with Russian society. Yet, in the United States, I am also regarded as “the Other.” And so, what should “home” signify to and for me?For me, “home” is now a dialogue and negotiated space; it is a process by which I am constantly constructing, defining, and redefining my own cultural identity. Searching for communion and internal revelation, I felt a growing need to explore the sacred art of Russian icons. Being compared to the “gate” between a believer and God, icons represent a dogmatic truth that aims to intimately connect with the viewer. Engaging with this world of sign and symbols, “Synaxis” stands as a metaphor for a borderline (both physical and spiritual) that simultaneously separates and connects all of us in this global community. Observing the complexity of cultural codes, I want to awaken a range of human emotions, encourage a visual recognition and a dialogue of looking, seeing, and realizing that there is no “Other.”
Dreamlands: Immersive Cinema and Art, 1905 – 2016: Whitney Museum of American Art, October 26, 2016 – February 5, 2017
Full text linkEschibition Review:Exhibition catalog: Chrissie Iles, Dreamlands: Immersive Cinema and Art, 1905–2016. New Haven/London: Yale University Press, 2016. 256pp.; 300 color and 100 b/w ills. Hardcover $65.00 (9780300221879) Exhibition schedule: Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY, October 28, 2016–February 5, 201
Boundless: Art and Identification Across Borders
Full text linkEditorial Statement for volume six of Contemporaneity: Historical Presence in Visual Culture
Bentu – Chinese Artists in a Time of Turbulence and Transformation: Suzanne Pagé, Laurence Bossé, Philip Tinari, and Claire Staebler, eds.
Full text linkReview of Pagé, Suzanne, Laurence Bossé, Philip Tinari, and Claire Staebler, eds. Bentu - Chinese Artists in a Time of Turbulence and Transformation: Cao Fei, Hao Liang, Hu Xiangqian, Liu Chuang, Liu Shiyuan, Liu Wei, Liu Xiaodong, Qiu Zhijie, Tao Hui, Xu Qu, Xu Zhen, Yang Fudong, exh. cat. Paris: Fondation Louis Vuitton, 2016. Texts by Suzanne Pagé, Laurence Bossé, Philip Tinari, Pierre Haski, Lu Minjun, Nikita Yingqian Cai, Sun Dongdong, Claire Staebler, Venus Lau, Sasha Zhao, Robin Peckham, Jerome Sans, Liu Tian, Yang Zi, Zhang Xiyuan, Philip Tinari, and Aimee Lin. 179 pp., 83 color ills., Paperback €35 (978 0 300 22238 8
Architectural Ruins and Urban Imaginaries: Carlos Garaicoa’s Images of Havana
Full text linkContemporary Cuban artist Carlos Garaicoa juxtaposes photographic images of Havana’s architectural ruins with timidly articulated drawings that trace the outlines of the dilapidated buildings in empty urbanscapes. Each of these fragile drawings, often composed of delicate threads adhered to a photograph of a site after demolition, serves as a vestige of the sagging structure that the artist photographed prior to destruction. The dialogue that emerges from these photograph/drawing diptychs implies the unmooring of the radical utopian underpinnings of revolutionary ideology that persisted in the policies of Cuba’s Período especial (Special Period) of the 1990s, and suggests a more complicated narrative of Cuba’s modernity, in which the ambiguous drawings—which could indicate construction plans or function as mnemonic images—represent empty promises of economic growth that must negotiate the real socio-economic crises of the present. This article proposes that Garaicoa’s critique of the goals and outcomes of the Special Period through Havana’s ruins suggests a new articulation of the baroque expression— one that calls to mind the anti-authoritative strategies of twentieth-century Neo-Baroque literature and criticism. The artist historically grounds the legacy of the Cuban Revolution’s modernizing project in the country’s real economic decline in the post-Soviet era, but he also takes this approach to representing cities beyond Cuba’s borders, thereby posing broader questions about the architectural symbolism of the 21st-century city in the ideological construction of modern globalizing society
Documenting the Invisible: Political Agency in Trevor Paglen’s Limit Telephotography
Full text linkTaken from up to forty miles away, Trevor Paglen\u27s limit telephotography images of covert military bases in the American Southwest are blurred by dense atmopshere, dust and debris. In effect, his photographs are highly illegible, and thus the military bases escape any sort of revelation. Following this logic, if one cannot see these top secret locations, then these images are in fact not politically effective at disclosing confidential federal information. Rather, Paglen asserts that the political agency of his can be located not in the image, but in the practice of performing limit telephotography - standing on public land and excercising the right to photograph. In turn, Paglen relocates the documentarian potential of his images into an agency formulated by a relational aesthetic, one in which the communal effects of creating the image and interpreting it generate the possibilities of enacting further practices of political resistance
Curator—Curatorial Studies Towards Co-creation and Multiple Agencies
Full text linkErin A. Peters reflects on her objectives as a curator and educator, and the agency of museum visitors as co-creators
David Lamelas’s The Desert People: An Odyssey for Authentic Representation
Full text linkIn The Desert People (1974) by Argentine artist David Lamelas, screened at the UCLA Hammer Museum (January-June 2016), five travelers contribute to an ethnographic documentary about the southeastern Arizonan Papago tribe. However, the travelers’ untimely doom triggers a paradox—their screened interviews could not have been filmed prior to their demise. This paradox prompts audiences to reevaluate the film’s authenticity in the representation of the Papago’s reality. The verdict may be that depiction of human relations in visual culture is inadequate. Yet, might fragmented truths that function to keep alive a dying society still be worthy alternatives to the total disappearance of a Native American culture? The Desert People explores this question
Awakening Objects and Indigenizing the Museum: Stephen Gilchrist in Conversation with Henry F. Skerritt
Full text linkCurated by Stephen Gilchrist, Everywhen: The Eternal Present in Indigenous Art from Australia was held at Harvard Art Museums from February 5, 2016–September 18, 2016. The exhibition was a survey of contemporary Indigenous art from Australia, exploring the ways in which time is embedded within Indigenous artistic, social, historical, and philosophical life. The exhibition included more than seventy works drawn from public and private collections in Australia and the United States, and featured many works that have never been seen outside Australia. Everywhen is Gilchrist’s second major exhibition in the United States, following Crossing Cultures: The Owen and Wagner Collection of Contemporary Aboriginal Australian Art at the Hood Museum of Art in 2012. Conducted on April 22, 2016, this conversation considers the position of Indigenous art in the museum, and the active ways in which curators and institutions can work to “indigenize” their institutions. Gilchrist discusses the evolution of Everywhen, along with the curatorial strategies employed to change the status of object-viewer relations in the exhibition. The transcription has been edited for clarity
