The past in the present: Understanding David Claerbout’s temporal aesthetics

2011 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 286-303 ◽  
Author(s):  
Timothy S. Barker

David Claerbout’s recent video and photographic works generate a distinct temporal aesthetic. In particular, these works experiment with time by situating the historical past not as a discrete moment in time, but rather as an actively engaged part of the present moment. Through the use of digital technologies Claerbout re-presents, experiments with, and opens up time as non-linear and complex, in effect producing a new experience of temporality through a mediation of the past. Using Gilles Deleuze’s concepts of time, informed by Michel Serres’ and Roland Barthes’ work on photography, I explore a theory of time through these artworks in which the past is understood as transpiring within the present, attempting to understand Deleuze’s temporal concepts aesthetically, not just philosophically.

Author(s):  
Daniel Bishop

In the tumultuous era of the late sixties and early seventies, several currents of American art and culture coalesced around a broad sensibility that foregrounded and explored the immediacy of lived experience as both an aesthetic and political imperative. But in films set in the historical past, this sensibility acquired complex additional resonances by speaking to the ephemerality of the present moment through a framework of history, myth, nostalgia, and other forms of temporal alienation and distance. The Presence of the Past explores the implications of this complex moment in Hollywood cinema through several prominent examples released in the years 1967 to 1974. Key genres are explored in detailed case studies: the outlaw film (Bonnie and Clyde and Badlands), the revisionist Western (Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, McCabe and Mrs. Miller), the neo-noir (Chinatown), and the nostalgia film (The Last Picture Show and American Graffiti). In these films, “the past” is more than a matter of genre or setting. Rather, it is a richly diverse, often paradoxical concern in its own right, whose study bridges diverse conceptual territories within soundtrack studies, including the sixties pop score, myth criticism, media technologies, and the role of classical music in compilation scoring. Against a broader background of an industry and film culture that were witnessing a stylistic and aesthetic diversification in the use of music and sound design, The Presence of the Past argues for the film-philosophical importance of the soundtrack for cultivating an imagined experiential understanding of the past.


Author(s):  
Anke Walter

In the Histories, the fourth-century historian Ephorus engages with one of the central aetia of the past: the story of how Apollo founded the oracle in Delphi (F 31b). Ephorus shifts the emphasis from the continuity of archaic time to the more dynamic time of the history of men on earth. In his discussion of the Spartan constitution and its origin (F 149), Ephorus uses aetia to give a nuanced picture of the interplay of continuity and change in human affairs. Callimachus, in the story of Acontius and Cydippe in his Aetia, juxtaposes the reference to the continuity of Acontius’ line with the eventful history of Acontius’ island of Chios, thus raising the question how stable the aetion can actually be. Rather than the aetiological formula, the beauty of the young couple, made immortal in Callimachus’ poetry, guarantees the story’s eternity. In Callimachus’ Hymn to Apollo, aetia are prominent in creating an intense moment of the sacred presence of the god, in which the present moment of the performance is just as much involved as the historical past of the city of Cyrene and the mythical past of Apollo’s deeds on earth. The aetia employed in Apollonius Rhodius’ Argonautica function as hinges between the earlier foundational deeds of the Olympian gods and the new earth-bound time-frame of the Argonauts, which is carefully measured out in terms of the days and nights the Argonauts spend at sea or on land. Overall, however, the aetia of the Argonautica emphasize continuity and eliminate further change, creating a present that is remarkably stable, while being anchored in several layers of the past


Author(s):  
Kris McDaniel

This chapter develops a version of ontological pluralism that respects two common intuitions about time: that the present moment is metaphysically distinguished but not in such a way that the past is unreal. The version of ontological pluralism developed—presentist existential pluralism (PEP)—embraces two modes of being, the mode of being that present objects enjoy and the mode of being that past objects enjoy. The author argues that this view fares at least as well, and probably better, than other views in which the present is metaphysically distinguished. The chapter also introduces another form of ontological superiority called “levels of being.”


2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Rakesh E. Mutha ◽  
Anilkumar U. Tatiya ◽  
Sanjay J. Surana

Abstract Background Natural plants and plant-derived formulations have been used by mankind from the ancient period of time. For the past few years, many investigations elaborated the therapeutic potential of various secondary chemicals present in the plants. Literature revealed that the various secondary metabolites, viz. phenolics and flavonoids, are responsible for a variety of therapeutic action in humans. Main body In the present review, an attempt has been made to compile the exploration of natural phenolic compounds with major emphasis on flavonoids and their therapeutic potential too. Interestingly, long-term intake of many dietary foods (rich in phenolics) proved to be protective against the development and management of diabetes, cancer, osteoporosis, cardiovascular diseases and neurodegenerative diseases, etc. Conclusion This review presents an overview of flavonoid compounds to use them as a potential therapeutic alternative in various diseases and disorders. In addition, the present understanding of phenolics and flavonoids will serve as the basis for the next scientific studies.


2021 ◽  
pp. 002216782110180
Author(s):  
Luke Hockley

This article explores what it means to feel film. It does so through an exploration of the interconnections between Bergson, Deleuze, and Jung. Central to the argument is the ontological status of the image in these different philosophical and psychological traditions. In particular, image is seen as an encapsulation of coming into being, or what Bergson terms durée. To feel film is to engage with its therapeutic capacity to bring us into being. In the consulting room and in the cinema, this process is embodied and in some way created either between client and therapist or viewer and screen. The elusive present moment is the site at which the past permeates the present, creating as it does feeling toned entry into the process of becoming. Jung thought of this as central to individuation and Bergson as central to being. Feeling film from this perspective becomes a way of finding ourselves in both the world of the film and in our individual psyche.


Organization ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 71-89 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fabio James Petani ◽  
Jeanne Mengis

This article explores the role of remembering and history in the process of planning new spaces. We trace how the organizational remembering of past spaces enters the conception (i.e. planning) of a large culture center. By drawing on Henri Lefebvre’s reflections on history, time and memory, we analyze the processual interconnections of his spatial triad, namely between the planned, practiced, and lived moments of the production of space. We find that over time space planning involves recurrent, changing, and contested narratives on ‘lost spaces’, remembering happy spaces of the past that articulate a desire to regain them. The notion of lost space adds to our understanding of how space planning involves, through organizational remembering, a sociomaterial and spatiotemporal work of relating together different spaces and times in non-linear narratives of repetition.


Author(s):  
Jennifer Rushworth
Keyword(s):  
The Past ◽  

Taking three terms which represent different ways of relating to experience, time, and narration, this chapter proposes attention to what remains, in the form traces, against the pressure of conversion which requires, instead, a complete break with the past. Traces are here understood as vestiges or footprints, with literal and metaphorical implications inspired by Sigmund Freud’s reading of Gradiva’s footsteps in his essay on Jensen’s novel, and followed back to Beatrice’s footsteps in Vita Nova and Inferno. Just as Freud understands Pompeii as a symbol of a force which is at once destructive and preservative—in other words, repression—, so this chapter shows that palinody in Dante is a mechanism that conserves as well as hides. The resultant understanding of Dante’s works is volcanic as well as non-linear.


1923 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 90-92
Author(s):  
V. V. Miloslavsky

Hardly any other branch of medical knowledge has ever faced greater challenges, more pressing questions, than hygiene does at the present moment. The past war has uprooted about 6 million healthy, strong individuals - a direct sacrifice on the altar of Mars. To this should be added about 50 million premature deaths caused by an increase of mortality and those who were not born as a result of a decrease in the birthrate. For Russia, the total loss had already reached 21 million souls by the end of 1920, with 25 million disabled.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anastasia Palamarchuk ◽  
◽  
Ekaterina Terenteva ◽  
Sergey Fyodorov ◽  

The monograph is a study of main trends of emergence and evolution of the national historical writing in Western Europe in the XVIIth century. Based on a complex analysis of several phenomena which defined the development of the Early Modern historical writing, it provides a comparative analysis of the regional schools of historical writing (particularly those of the English antiquaries and French érudits) in the process of their respective growth and formation accomplished by the end of XVIIth century with the advent of the national historiography. The conceptual unity of the book is verified within the context of the rise of the national states in England and France, which stipulated a consistent demand for reinforcing the nationally orientated discourses not only in a historical writing but also in legal and political thought. The perception of England as an empire, entrenched in the insular historical and legal consciousness, recurring during the reigns of the Stuarts and extending to the whole British archipelago, determined the establishment of chorography as a prevalent form characteristic of the English historiography. Chorographic structure of the narrative unfolding the space of the territorial “empire” to the reader corresponded to the method of “intellectual appropriation” of the British Isles by the English antiquarians which could be defined as “cultural-historical”. A considerable role was devoted to reactualization of ethnogenetic myths at different levels: while some of them (primarily – the Galfridian myth) were regarded as relevant to the pan-British cultural and historical past, others emphasized autonomous dimensions of the past and present of distinct composites (Scotland, Ireland, Wales) The continental French variant of proto-national historiography also utilized the idea of empire but in a different mode defined by the formula “rex in regno suo imperator est”. The emerging school of érudits modelled principles of its narratives on patrimonial structures rooted in the feudal medieval society (dynasty; royal family; aristocratic lineages; seigneurial rights and vassal obligations; the system of offices created by the monarch stemming from the royal household etc.). The unity of the subjects of the French kingdom was ensured not by the shared territorial commonality but by their loyalty to the king. Therefore, the French variant of “intellectual appropriation” was developed in a socio-political direction in contrast to the territorial.


1994 ◽  
Vol 31 (4) ◽  
pp. 1103-1109 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rob J. Hyndman

Continuous-time threshold autoregressive (CTAR) processes have been developed in the past few years for modelling non-linear time series observed at irregular intervals. Several approximating processes are given here which are useful for simulation and inference. Each of the approximating processes implicitly defines conditions on the thresholds, thus providing greater understanding of the way in which boundary conditions arise.


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