The Postcolonial Avant-Garde and the Claim to Futurity: Edwar al-Kharrat’s Ethics of Tentative Innovation

2018 ◽  
pp. 147-163
Author(s):  
Adam Spanos
Keyword(s):  
Social Change ◽  
Historical Time ◽  
The West ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
History Of ◽  
Cultural Expressions

This chapter delinks the avant-garde from the contingent cultural expressions of imperialism prevalent at the time of its emergence in Europe and speculates on the possibility of an avant-garde not aggrandized by foreign domination. Like his Surrealist counterparts in the West, Egyptian writer Edwar al-Kharrat aimed to produce total social change by means of obscure rather than didactic references. He did so not to shock his compatriots out of bourgeois complacency, however, but to stimulate them to more autonomous thinking about the history of their subjection to neocolonial and dictatorial forms of authority. Al-Kharrat arranged a literary mosaic comprising scenes of transhistorical suffering without causal narrative, leaving readers to produce a representation of historical time adequate to understanding them. Al-Kharrat’s work suggests the terms of an avant-garde relying on humility rather than egoism for its effect, and mobilizing anachronism rather than

The Avant-Garde of System-Cybernetic Governmentality

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eglė Rindzevičiūtė
Keyword(s):  
Market Economy ◽  
Systems Approach ◽  
Free Market ◽  
Self Regulation ◽  
Free Market Economy ◽  
The West ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
History Of ◽  
Soviet Russia ◽  
Complex Question

This epilogue addresses the complex question of the link between system-cybernetic governmentality and the neoliberal transformation of post-Soviet Russia. Although the system-cybernetic governmentality and economic neoliberalism did not share institutional origins, they were linked during the post-Soviet transformation as a result of historical momentum: the members of the Soviet systems approach community were best positioned to conduct the transfer of the models of the market economy from the West at a time when neoliberal ideas on the free market economy were gaining popularity. However, this should not mean that the pre-1980 history of system-cybernetic governmentality should be tainted as neoliberal; rather, this reveals the extent to which scientific governance can be appropriated by different economic and political regimes. If anything, the pre-1980 history of system-cybernetic governmentality is a history of a rather liberal governmental technology, underscoring the conditions of autonomy, self-regulation, and government at a distance.

Kobro and Strzemiński: Łódź – Warsaw – Paris (1956–1957)

Ikonotheka ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 26 ◽  
pp. 137-166
Author(s):  
Iwona Luba
Keyword(s):  
Modern Art ◽  
Foreign Affairs ◽  
State Agency ◽  
Central Bureau ◽  
Public Attention ◽  
Art Exhibitions ◽  
Strong Response ◽  
The West ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
History Of

From December 1956 to December 1957, no fewer than four exhibitions presenting the oeuvre of Katarzyna Kobro and Władysław Strzemiński were organised: the Posthumous Exhibition of Władysław Strzemiński’s and Katarzyna Kobro’s Oeuvre, shown fi rst in Łódź (16 December 1956 – 14 January 1957) and then in Warsaw (18 January – 10 February 1957), and two exhibitions in Paris: 50 ans de peinture abstraite at Galerie Raymond Creuze (9 May – 12 June 1957) and Précurseurs de l’art abstrait en Pologne: Malewicz, Kobro, Strzemiński, Berlewi, Stażewski at Galerie Denise René (22 November 1957 – 10 January 1958). All received a strong response, both in Poland and abroad. Research focused on these exhibitions has brought some surprising results. None of them had been planned until 1956, and only after the events of October 1956 was it possible to show the works of Kobro and Strzemiński in Warsaw in 1957. The exhibition at the Łódź Division of the Central Bureau of Art Exhibitions was prepared with exceptional care and is immensely important, as it occasioned the fi rst attempt at preparing a catalogue of both Kobro’s and Strzemiński’s works, of Strzemiński’s biography and a bibliography of texts authored by Strzemiński and Kobro. In addition, it was there that Strzemiński’s treatise Teoria widzenia fi rst came to public attention; it was published only two years later. The exhibition was transferred, quite unexpectedly, to the Central Bureau of Art Exhibitions in Warsaw, which was the chief institution involved in exhibiting modern art in Poland; this gave offi cial sanction and a considerable status to the oeuvre of both avant-garde artists. The exhibition entitled Précurseurs de l’art abstrait en Pologne became, paradoxically, the fi rst-ever offi cial exhibition of Polish avant-garde art to be held abroad and organised by a state agency, i.e. the Central Bureau of Art Exhibitions, under the aegis of the ambassador of the People’s Republic of Poland in France. It was also the only exhibition in which Kazimierz Malewicz was regarded as a Pole and presented as belonging to the history of art in Poland; the mission initiated by Strzemiński in 1922 was thus completed. The institutions involved in arranging the loans of Malewicz’s works for this exhibition were the Ministry of Culture and Art, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and its subordinate Polish embassies in Paris and Moscow. This was the fi rst time that the works of Kazimierz Malewicz were presented in the West, thanks to the efforts and under the aegis of the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs during the period of the post-Stalinist thaw; notably, this happened before their presentation at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam (29 December 1957).

scholarly journals The reception of Soviet music in the west: A history of sympathy and misunderstandings

Muzikologija ◽  
2012 ◽  
pp. 125-137
Author(s):  
Levon Hakobian
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
The West ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
History Of ◽  
Soviet Music

In this concise survey, the evolution of Western attitudes to Soviet music is retraced: from a certain interest in the early Soviet avant-garde, through ?Cold War? attempts to keep alive the works banned under Stalin, to the support of the Soviet avant-garde of the ?60-70s and the recent vogue for Soviet music of a stylistically ?moderate? kind, which has never been popular among Russian connoisseurs. Side by side with manifestations of sympathy, some typical misunderstandings are pointed out.

The Stage History of Roar China!: Documentary Drama as Propaganda

1980 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-13
Author(s):  
Walter J. Meserve ◽  
Ruth I. Meserve
Keyword(s):  
Social Change ◽  
Communist Party ◽  
The West ◽  
Communist Party Of China ◽  
Opium War ◽  
History Of ◽  
Republican Government ◽  
Foreign Governments ◽  
Treaty Ports ◽  
Documentary Drama

During the 1920's China was undergoing great political and social change. The Republican government under the leadership of Sun Yat-sen struggled against warlord factions and watched the birth of the Communist Party of China (1921). It was a time of turmoil and unrest, as newspapers headlined frightening incidents of murder, banditry, illegal taxation, military skirmishes and plundering. Added to China's problems was the recent appearance on her rivers of boat patrols by foreign governments who vowed to protect their commercial interests at any cost. That presence was an embarrassing, even an insulting situation. Finally, on the eve of 1924, Sun Yat-sen announced that China would look toward Russia for help. China would turn away from the West—particularly Britain, America, France and Germany, all of whom had participated in the division of China into foreign legations and treaty ports after the Opium War (1840–42) and had enjoyed great economic advantages as a consequence.

A note on John Hawkins (1761–1841) and the Hawkins archive

2000 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 261-268
Author(s):  
R. J. CLEEVELY
Keyword(s):  
Major Part ◽  
Reference Lists ◽  
The West ◽  
History Of ◽  
The 1960S

A note dealing with the history of the Hawkins Papers, including the material relating to John Hawkins (1761–1841) presented to the West Sussex Record Office in the 1960s, recently transferred to the Cornwall County Record Office, Truro, in order to be consolidated with the major part of the Hawkins archive held there. Reference lists to the correspondence of Sibthorp-Hawkins, Hawkins-Sibthorp, and Hawkins to his mother mentioned in The Flora Graeca story (Lack, 1999) are provided.

Fictive Mode, ‘Journey to the West’, and Transformation of Space: ‘Ali Mubarak’s Discourses of Modernization

2007 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 331-358
Author(s):  
WEN-CHIN OUYANG
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Transformation ◽  
Recent History ◽  
Theoretical Principle ◽  
Time And Space ◽  
The West ◽  
Arab Culture ◽  
History Of ◽  
Journey To The West

I begin my exploration of ‘Ali Mubarak (1823/4–1893) and the discourses on modernization ‘performed’ in his only attempt at fiction, ‘Alam al-Din (The Sign of Religion, 1882), with a quote from Guy Davenport because it elegantly sums up a key theoretical principle underpinning any discussion of cultural transformation and, more particularly, of modernization. Locating ‘Ali Mubarak and his only fictional work at the juncture of the transformation from the ‘traditional’ to the ‘modern’ in the recent history of Arab culture and of Arabic narrative, I find Davenport's pronouncement tantalizingly appropriate. He not only places the stakes of history and geography in one another, but simultaneously opens up the imagination to the combined forces of time and space that stand behind these two distinct yet related disciplines.

Misreading Egypt

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jesse Schotter
Keyword(s):  
New Media ◽  
Narrative Form ◽  
Experimental Film ◽  
Tower Of Babel ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Sergei Eisenstein ◽  
History Of ◽  
The One ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Modern Technologies

The first chapter of Hieroglyphic Modernisms exposes the complex history of Western misconceptions of Egyptian writing from antiquity to the present. Hieroglyphs bridge the gap between modern technologies and the ancient past, looking forward to the rise of new media and backward to the dispersal of languages in the mythical moment of the Tower of Babel. The contradictory ways in which hieroglyphs were interpreted in the West come to shape the differing ways that modernist writers and filmmakers understood the relationship between writing, film, and other new media. On the one hand, poets like Ezra Pound and film theorists like Vachel Lindsay and Sergei Eisenstein use the visual languages of China and of Egypt as a more primal or direct alternative to written words. But Freud, Proust, and the later Eisenstein conversely emphasize the phonetic qualities of Egyptian writing, its similarity to alphabetical scripts. The chapter concludes by arguing that even avant-garde invocations of hieroglyphics depend on narrative form through an examination of Hollis Frampton’s experimental film Zorns Lemma.

Aesthetic Dilemmas of Adaptation and the Politics of Subjectivity: Animating the Chinese ClassicJourney to the West

2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 34-46 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chengcheng You
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Modern China ◽  
Historical Time ◽  
The West ◽  
The Real ◽  
Quest For Meaning ◽  
National Allegory ◽  
Canonical Text ◽  
The Fantastic ◽  
Monkey King

This article reviews four major Chinese animated adaptations based on the classic Journey to the West. It shows how these adaptations, spanning four historical phases of modern China, encapsulate changes in Chinese national identity. Close readings underpin a developmental narrative about how Chinese animated adaptations of this canonical text strive to negotiate the multimodal expressions of homegrown folklore traditions, technical influences of western animation, and domestic political situations across time. This process has identified aesthetic dilemmas around adaptations that oscillate between national allegory and individual destiny, verisimilitude and the fantastic quest for meaning. In particular, the subjectivisation of Monkey King on the screen, embodying the transition from primitivistic impulse, youthful idealism and mature practicality up to responsible stewardship, presents how an iconic national figure encapsulates the real historical time of China.

Sea Urchins and Circuses: The Modernist Natural Histories of Jean Painlevé and Alexander Calder

2018 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 187-211
Author(s):  
Patricia E. Chu
Keyword(s):  
New Media ◽  
Sea Urchins ◽  
Life Sciences ◽  
Three Dimensional ◽  
Machine Age ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
History Of ◽  
And Performance ◽  
The One ◽  
Natural Historian

The Paris avant-garde milieu from which both Cirque Calder/Calder's Circus and Painlevé’s early films emerged was a cultural intersection of art and the twentieth-century life sciences. In turning to the style of current scientific journals, the Paris surrealists can be understood as engaging the (life) sciences not simply as a provider of normative categories of materiality to be dismissed, but as a companion in apprehending the “reality” of a world beneath the surface just as real as the one visible to the naked eye. I will focus in this essay on two modernist practices in new media in the context of the history of the life sciences: Jean Painlevé’s (1902–1989) science films and Alexander Calder's (1898–1976) work in three-dimensional moving art and performance—the Circus. In analyzing Painlevé’s work, I discuss it as exemplary of a moment when life sciences and avant-garde technical methods and philosophies created each other rather than being classified as separate categories of epistemological work. In moving from Painlevé’s films to Alexander Calder's Circus, Painlevé’s cinematography remains at the forefront; I use his film of one of Calder's performances of the Circus, a collaboration the men had taken two decades to complete. Painlevé’s depiction allows us to see the elements of Calder's work that mark it as akin to Painlevé’s own interest in a modern experimental organicism as central to the so-called machine-age. Calder's work can be understood as similarly developing an avant-garde practice along the line between the bestiary of the natural historian and the bestiary of the modern life scientist.

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