The Incurable-Image

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tarek Elhaik
Keyword(s):  
Conceptual Art ◽  
Body Politic ◽  
Ethnographic Film ◽  
Curatorial Practice

This chapter introduces concept of the ‘incurable-image’: a species of images that throws us into clinical, ethical and pedagogical struggle. A limit to both ethnographic and curatorial practice, this struggle is symptomatically devalued, concealed, and discouraged by what can be called our ‘states of curation’. The chapter considers three lessons that can be learned from the work of the incurable-image and shows how concept-work and conceptual art gradually emerge as anthropology's incurable-images. It also examines the opening sequence from Rubén Gámez's experimental ethnographic film La Fórmula Secreta: Coca Cola en Las Venas (1965), which provides us with an incurable-image and an intriguing point of intrusion into the diseased body politic of the post-Mexican condition, as well as the autopsies and modalities of intrusion celebrated by the curatorial platforms it has affinities with.

International Indeterminacy: George Maciunas and the Mail

ARTMargins ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 57-85 ◽  
Author(s):  
Colby Chamberlain
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Attorney General ◽  
Conceptual Art ◽  
New York State ◽  
John Cage ◽  
Power Structures ◽  
Mail Art ◽  
Art Object ◽  
Curatorial Practice ◽  
History Of

The term “network” has often been used to characterize Fluxus's internationalism and to identify its membership. This has led a number of scholars to argue that Fluxus anticipated forms of artistic exchange now associated with Internet-based art. More recently, it has cast Fluxus as a precedent for applying a network model to other transcontinental avant-gardes, particularly in curatorial practice. Yet in the rush to relate Fluxus to contemporary discourses on global connectivity, insufficient attention has been paid to the specific apparatuses that facilitated its cohesion. This article stages an intervention into Fluxus studies (and by extension Conceptual art, mail art, and other transnational movements associated with communication and the “dematerialization” of the art object) by drawing on the field of German media theory to analyze the “paperwork” that makes up much of the movement's material production. Specifically, it focuses on how the artist George Maciunas's engaged the postal system in order to facilitate Fluxus's collectivity, as well to insinuate Fluxus's methods of experimental composition into larger power structures. After an opening discussion of Maciunas's important diagrammatic history of Fluxus's development (a.k.a. the John Cage chart), the article tracks Maciunas's deployment of newsletters to organize Fluxus activities, his infamous mail-based sabotage proposals, his collaborations with Mieko Shiomi and Ben Vautier, and his “Flux Combat” with the New York State Attorney General.

Conceptual and Performance Interventions

Collections ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 7 (4) ◽  
pp. 405-414
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
Conceptual Art ◽  
Curatorial Practice ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Performance Interventions ◽  
The 1960S

Considers a variety of examples in which curatorial practice intersects and blurs with interventionism in art, including using billboards as a medium for artistic interference in public space (Shaked), translating and re-activating Regina Galindo's activist performances (Carolin), analyzing the overlapping and divergent agendas of conceptual art and curatorial practice in Zagreb and Paris during the 1960s and 1970s (Bago), and the “re-possession of perception” through curating carnival and procession (Tancons).

Drawing as a Creative Approach to Researching Extant Garments: A Case Study Involving John Ruskin's Clothing

Costume ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 54 (2) ◽  
pp. 202-221
Author(s):  
Ingrid Mida ◽  
Sarah Casey
Keyword(s):  
Research Tool ◽  
John Ruskin ◽  
Lake District ◽  
Curatorial Practice ◽  
Dress History ◽  
Absent Presence

Reading the clues embedded in extant clothing demands both imagination and patience since the subtle marks of wear, use and alteration may only become evident with extended observation and reflection. During the course of a project undertaken in conjunction with the bicentenary celebrations of John Ruskin's birth culminating in the exhibition of Sarah Casey's drawings in Ruskin's Good Looking! (8 February–7 April 2019), the authors studied the garments of John Ruskin at Brantwood, his former home in the Lake District. The life-sized drawings of these garments produced by Casey mapped the absent presence of the former wearer, allowed visitors the opportunity to better see and reflect on Ruskin's clothing, and also revealed the hidden histories of Ruskin's garments. Drawing, the making of marks with meaning, is not an obvious research tool in dress history and curatorial practice but, as this case study shows, can expose subtle details and reveal new insights.

‘Good enough for a spot of lippy anyway’: Rape and the Body Politic in My Brother Tom

2013 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 358-373
Author(s):  
Louise Wilks
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Abuse ◽  
Female Body ◽  
Body Politic ◽  
The Body ◽  
Sexual Violation ◽  
Female Protagonist ◽  
British Cinema ◽  
Hollywood Movies ◽  
Contemporary Cinema ◽  
Rape Narratives

The representation of rape continues to be one of the most highly charged issues in contemporary cinema, and whilst many discussions of this topic focus on Hollywood movies, sexual violation is also a pervasive topic in British cinema. This article examines the portrayal of a female's rape in the British feature My Brother Tom (2001), a powerful and often troubling text in which the sexual violation of the teenage female protagonist functions as a catalyst for the events that comprise the plot, as is often the case in rape narratives. The article provides an overview of some of the key feminist academic discussions and debates that cinematic depictions of rape have prompted, before closely analysing My Brother Tom's rape scene in relation to such discourses. The article argues that the rape scene is neither explicit nor sensationalised, and that by having the camera focus on Jessica's bewildered reactions, it positions the audience with her, and powerfully but discreetly portrays the grave nature of sexual abuse. The article then moves on to examine the portrayal of sexual violation in My Brother Tom as a whole, considering the cultural inscriptions etched on the female body within its account of rape, before concluding with a discussion of the film's depiction of Jessica's ensuing methods of bodily self-inscription as she attempts to disassociate her body from its sexual violation.

Receptions of the Past: Commemoration, Racism, Desire

Somatechnics ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 288-303
Author(s):  
Michael Connors Jackman
Keyword(s):  
Critical Point ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
White Privilege ◽  
Body Politic ◽  
The Body ◽  
Race And Racism ◽  
Lesbian And Gay ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Of

This article investigates the ways in which the work of The Body Politic (TBP), the first major lesbian and gay newspaper in Canada, comes to be commemorated in queer publics and how it figures in the memories of those who were involved in producing the paper. In revisiting a critical point in the history of TBP from 1985 when controversy erupted over race and racism within the editorial collective, this discussion considers the role of memory in the reproduction of whiteness and in the rupture of standard narratives about the past. As the controversy continues to haunt contemporary queer activism in Canada, the productive work of memory must be considered an essential aspect of how, when and for what reasons the work of TBP comes to be commemorated. By revisiting the events of 1985 and by sifting through interviews with individuals who contributed to the work of TBP, this article complicates the narrative of TBP as a bluntly racist endeavour whilst questioning the white privilege and racially-charged demands that undergird its commemoration. The work of producing and preserving queer history is a vital means of challenging the intentional and strategic erasure of queer existence, but those who engage in such efforts must remain attentive to the unequal terrain of social relations within which remembering forms its objects.

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