The Persistence of the Image, the Lacunae of History: The Archive and Contemporary Art in Algeria (1992–2012)

Author(s):  
Fanny Gillet ◽  
Patrick Crowley

In Algeria , the War of Independence (1954-62) and civil war of the 1990s are the two events which have marked the history of the country due not only to the extent of the violence but also the ideological manipulation of both events. The anamnesis effect identified by academic analysis with respect to these conflicts is observed in the production of a generation of contemporary artists for whom memory, in its broadest sense, is no longer about an untouchable past but instead has become a means to construct, and be active in, the present in a way that is not overdetermined by a single notion of identity. In drawing upon the archive — such as film, documentary or photograph — contemporary Algerian artists such as Ammar Bouras, Mustapha Sedjal, Sofiane Zouggar, or Dalila Dalléas Bouzar bear witness to a ‘need for history’ which has to be situated both at a national and transnational level. If, for artists, the use of the archive is as much a mark of authenticity as a reminder of the collective memory, its reappropriation questions the role of the image in the construction of collective imaginary of the post-independent Algerian society. Based on interviews with the artists this chapter problematizes the process of a return to the archive.

Chapter One deals with several central issues with regard to understanding the role of religious motifs in contemporary art. Besides being a repetition of imagery from the past, religious motifs embedded in contemporary artworks become a means to problematise not only the way different periods in the history of art are delimited, but larger and seemingly more rigid distinctions as those between art and non-art images. Early religious images differ significantly from art images. The two types are regulated according to different sets of rules related to the conditions of their production, display, appreciation and the way images are invested with the status of being true or authentic instances of art or sacred images. Chapter One provides a discussion of the important motif of the image not made by an artist’s hand, or acheiropoietos, and its survival and transformation, including its traces in contemporary image-making practices. All images are the result of human making; they are fictions. The way the conditions of these fictions are negotiated, or the way the role of the maker is brought to visibility, or concealed, is a defining feature of the specific regime of representation. While the cult image concealed its maker in order to maintain its public significance, and the later art image celebrated the artist as a re-inventor of the old image, contemporary artists cite religious images in order to reflect on the very procedures that produce the public significance and status of images.


2018 ◽  
Vol 48 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 215-222
Author(s):  
Lenuta Giukin

This introduction offers an overall framework for the eight articles in this issue of the Journal of European Studies, which focus on Romanian identity and consciousness. It looks at the general history of Romania and the Republic of Moldova to show the evolution of consciousness over a century, since the formation of ‘Great Romania’ in 1918 to the present day. Aspects such as collective memory, migration, the change in the role of women, the crisis of the contemporary state, education and religion, as well as an overall crisis of patriarchy within a globalized context are discussed based on the analysis offered by the authors in their articles.


2015 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 60
Author(s):  
Karen Campbell Nelson

The meaning of testimony and truth play an important role in both a legal/judicial discourse and a religious, particularly Christian discourse. I trace the history of testimony in legal discourse, beginning with the Hammurabi Code and its influence on ancient legal codes of Mesopotamia, including that found in the Pentateuch and continue with a discussion of multiple meanings of testimony in Augustine and French philosopher, Paul Ricœur that begin to lay the groundwork for bridging the two discourses. Contributions from feminist theology, particularly the validation of women’s experience as a source of theology, the role of immanence, and the shift from understandings of power as “power over” to “power with” as well as a transitional justice framework help make the case for dialog between these two discourses so they can enhance and strengthen each other. I include in sections of the article my own narrative to accent the theme of testimony. Keywords: Kesaksian, kebenaran, konteks hukum, pengadilan, konteks iman, hermeneutik.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Fabrizio Bertolino ◽  
Gianni Nuti ◽  
Manuela Filippa

The aim of the present study is to highlight and to critically discuss the role of the secondary and silent historical sources in the reconstruction of the biography of Maria Montessori, a century and a half after her birth. The collective memory, both at a national and international levels, has preserved the figure of the pedagogist into a series of celebratory objects. Picture card, notes and coins, stamps maximum cards, phone cards or, more recently, doodles are accessible to the wide community. Constructing a narrativity of a public celebrity means capturing the important features, and transforming them into symbolic constructs. We therefore propose to identify the overmentioned constructs in the light of the official biographies of Maria Montessori. Moreover, we aim to follow the iconographic traces of a micro-history which is often overlooked from the primary sources. However, this micro-history represents the heart of a collective and popular belief, widespread and educating, which preserves the memory and heritage of this “Personality to Remember".


ARTMargins ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 69-86
Author(s):  
Ghalya Saadawi

Chad Elias' 2018 book Posthumous Images: Contemporary Art and Memory Politics in Post-Civil War Lebanon attempts to deal with the question of post-civil war representation, image-making and contemporary art from the perspective of memory studies in Lebanon. Dealing with a particular group of artists working since the 1990's in installation, video, film, and performance, the book attempts to create a relation between their artistic propositions and narratives on the one hand, and the post-war reckoning with the missing and disappeared, the history of former Leftist combatants, neglected space programs, reconstruction and urban space, on the other. The book has a series of shortcomings and structural, theoretical blind spots that this review essay attempts to redress. For instance, Posthumous Images has no framework for the notions of communities of witnessing, collective memory, or post-war amnesia that seems to underpin its claims, as they seem to figure only nominally. In these theoretical omissions, the essay argues, the book adopts and furthers the ideology human rights as this relates to the politics of remembrance, as well as to Lebanon's neoliberal post-war realities. Moreover, it lacks a rigorous art historical frame to study the given artworks formally, or theoretically, leaving the book open to a post-historical method that disavows a critical, social history of art needed for an analysis of post-civil war and post-Cold war art forms in Lebanon and beyond.


Arts ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 19
Author(s):  
Déirdre Kelly

It seems inherent in the nature of contemporary artist’s book production to continue to question the context for the genre in contemporary art practice, notwithstanding the medium’s potential for dissemination via mass production and an unquestionable advantage of portability for distribution. Artists, curators and editors operating in this sector look to create contexts for books in a variety of imaginative ways, through exhibition, commission, installations, performance and, of course as documentation. Broadening the discussion of the idea of the book within contemporary art practice, this paper examines the presence and role of book works within the context of the art biennale, in particular the Venice Art Biennale of which the 58th iteration (2019) is entitled ‘May You Live In Interesting Times’ and curated by Ralph Rugoff, with an overview of the independent International cultural offerings and the function of the ‘Book Pavilion’. Venetian museums and institutions continue to present vibrant diverse works within the arena of large-scale exhibitions, recognising the position that the book occupies in the history of the city. This year, the appearance for the first time, of ‘Book Biennale’, opens up a new and interesting dialogue, taking the measure of how the book is being promoted and its particular function for visual communication within the arts in Venice and beyond.


2007 ◽  
Vol 7 (4) ◽  
pp. 78-83
Author(s):  
marjorie ross

Carlos Poveda's Domestic Landscapes are linked to a history of food and art that reaches back to Greco-Roman antiquity and becomes empowered with contemporary artists who sculpt or paint their works in edible materials to be devoured by spectators. Poveda's Landscapes, however, offer food that is symbolic——inedible. He reinvents the organic by using industrial refuse that he converts, colors, and models in a cauldron in a process as akin to alchemy as to cooking. His is not a faithful transcription of meals in the style of classical still lifes, but rather an artistic overlapping of emotions, that surround the idea of the edible. Looking at his sculptures we may feel revulsion, but what sickens us is not so much his creation as the awareness it brings of our intrinsically predatory nature. He gives us an art form that not only fails to provoke appetite but also touches our deepest culinary memories and leads us back to a primal past by asserting the significance of food in our collective memory. Ultimately, our strongest reaction to his work may be the fear that we won't be able to digest the absurdity of our daily life.


Author(s):  
Brooks Blevins

A History of the Ozarks, Vol. 2: The Conflicted Ozarks focuses on the long era of Civil War and Reconstruction, stretching roughly from the 1850s through the 1880s. The book begins with an analysis of slavery (the most thorough examination of the institution in the region to date) and the secession crisis. Almost half the book deals with the four years of civil warfare, including a summary of the formal, battlefield war in the Ozarks and an examination of various facets of the home front, from guerrilla fighters to the role of women. It also features the most comprehensive portrait of the long Reconstruction era in the Ozarks, including a comparison of political Reconstruction in Arkansas and Missouri as well as an extended treatment of social and economic reconstruction that chronicles railroad building, manufacturing, extractive industry, and the development of educational institutions in the postwar years. In addition to the continuation of volume 1’s argument that the story of the Ozarks is mostly an unexceptional, regional variation of the American story, volume 2 is built on the thematic concept of multiple layers of conflict in the region--divisions over slavery, wartime violence and its stubborn continuation in the Reconstruction era, and the continuing conflicted identity of the Ozarks as part southern and part midwestern, part Union and part Confederate, part modern and part backwoods.


2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (9) ◽  
pp. 55
Author(s):  
Andressa Da Silva Machado

O presente artigo apresenta as principais contradições do projeto político nacional da Frelimo, em sua tentativa de construção de uma consciência nacional no pós-independência em Moçambique. É possível  identificar alguns aspectos que interagiam e moldaram a memória coletiva do povo moçambicano com relação à guerra civil, como no romance Ventos do Apocalipse de Paulina Chiziane, onde a autora enuncia, de forma crítica ao governo socialista e unipartidarista em Moçambique, uma narrativa literária que pode ser analisada como fonte histórica.Palavras-chaves: Moçambique. Nacionalismo. Guerra civil. Literatura.Abstract This paper presents the main contradictions of Frelimo's national political project, in its attempt to build a national consciousness post-independence in Mozambique. It is possible to identify some aspects that interacted and shaped the collective memory of the Mozambican people in relation to the civil war, as in the novel Ventos do Apocalipse by Paulina Chiziane, where the author critically enunciates the socialist and unipartisan government in Mozambique, a literary narrative that can be analyzed as a historical source. Keywords: Mozambique; Nationalism; Civil war; Literature; History of Africa


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