Showing papers in "Third Text in 2011"
TL;DR: The Militant Image as discussed by the authors is a special issue of Third Text, which maps out a relational geography which takes as its nexus the radical politics and filmmaking practices of revolutionary decolonisation since the late 1960s and 1970s, with the aim to bring into productive proximity a series of dialogues between scholars and theorists, filmmakers, artists and curators.
Abstract: The special issue of Third Text maps out a relational geography which takes as its nexus the radical politics and filmmaking practices of revolutionary decolonisation since the late 1960s and 1970s. The essays investigate the archives and afterlives of liberation struggle and revolution, with the aim to bring into productive proximity a series of dialogues between scholars and theorists, filmmakers, artists and curators thinking through what Okwui Enwezor has called 'the transnational public sphere' of militant, non-aligned and Third Cinema. The special issue includes a number of texts by filmmakers including Solanas and Getino, Eduard de Laurot and Margaret Dickinson that have not been published in English before or have been long overlooked, accompanied by scholarly contextualising essays.
The Militant Image contributes to an important emergent body of work by artists, filmmakers and curators (Hito Steryl, The Otolith Group, Renee Green, Florian Zeyfang) re-assessing militant avant-garde work so that it might function as a resource for contemporary artistic and anti-capitalist activity. It brings together new international research on the aesthetics and cine-cultural politics affiliated with the non-aligned liberation struggles and revolutions of the late twentieth century. It includes new translations and reprints of key texts and manifestos, and theorises how the digital afterlives of militant films can re-animate moments of political intensity, renewing their relevance to contemporary art.
The Militant Image constructs an alternative cartography of cine-cultural practices associated with the liberation struggles and revolutions of the late twentieth century. It thus calls into question the political constitution of the present through critical analysis and artistic responses to the aesthetics of Tricontinental liberation. Following on from the work of Okwui Enwezor, Kristin Ross and Nicole Brenez, among others, it produces new theoretical vocabularies through which to analyse and articulate the subjectivities, aesthetics and strategies of militant filmmaking so as to map out a transnational public sphere constituted through affliliation to Tricontinental politics and experimental film language.
28 citations
Journal Article•
TL;DR: The authors examines the history of the creative writing doctorate in Australia and traces how its form became more radical over the last 25 years and makes a case for the further radicalisation of the PhD to meet requirements for new research standards.
Abstract: This article examines the history of the creative writing doctorate in Australia and traces how its form became more radical over the last 25 years. The work of Edward Cowie, who established the first creative writing doctorate, is placed in context of developments which followed his pioneering degrees. Considering ERA, a case is made for the further radicalisation of the creative writing PhD to meet requirements for new research standards. Keywords: exegesis, creative writing PhD, DCA, ERA
23 citations
TL;DR: This article contextualised Apichatpong Weerasethakul's practice with reference to Thai political and cultural histories, as well as some touchstones in Western modernism, and provided a survey of his feature filmography in terms of Western art cinema aesthetics, and sometimes of a ‘New Asian Cinema'; at worst, it descends into exoticism.
Abstract: Commentary on Apichatpong Weerasethakul's work to date leaves much to be desired. At best, it affords a survey of his feature filmography in terms of Western art cinema aesthetics, and sometimes of a ‘New Asian Cinema’; at worst, it descends into exoticism. Despite his experimental leanings, and constant appearance in galleries and biennials, engagements from the side of contemporary art have done little to deepen the ahistorical contemplation of his work. This article seeks to contextualise Apichatpong's practice with reference to Thai political and cultural histories, as well as some touchstones in Western modernism. Taking as a starting point his first feature-length film (Mysterious Object at Noon, 2000), the author begins by establishing an ethno-political background for his practice, and follows this with two detours: the first, art historical, explores Apichatpong's putative alignment with a certain Surrealism; the second is psycho-geographic, and brings into relief a poetics of itinerancy in his w...
17 citations
TL;DR: The Pan African Cultural Festival of Algiers (1969) as mentioned in this paper was the first pan-African cultural festival, which gave rise to a collective film directed by William Klein, which takes the form of an essay which gives coherence to a huge range of visual materials: posters, photographs, drawings, archive footage of African anti-colonial struggles as well as sequences taken from the 1969 festival, such as interviews, rehearsals, concerts and speeches.
Abstract: The First Pan‐African Cultural Festival took place in Algiers in July 1969 and gave rise to a collective film directed by William Klein. This film, The Pan‐African Festival of Algiers (1969), takes the form of an essay which gives coherence to a huge range of visual materials: posters, photographs, drawings, archive footage of African anti‐colonial struggles as well as sequences taken from the 1969 festival, such as interviews, rehearsals, concerts and speeches. The making of The Pan‐African Festival of Algiers coincided with the emergence of films from the Third World at a global level, often circulating alongside the films of the new waves that emerged from the end of the 1950s and the early 1960s onwards. Another trend found its second wind at this time: militant cinema with revolutionary aims of social intervention entered a golden age around the second half of the 1960s and into the 1970s. For most of the personalities who appeared in The Pan‐African Festival of Algiers it was necessary to g...
13 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors introduce their discussion of "militant cinema" and show the links between the theoretical manifestos and the practical experience of the screening of the films for political purposes during the first years of Cine Liberacion's work.
Abstract: The manifesto ‘Toward a Third Cinema’ is the best known document of the group Cine Liberacion; in it Fernando Solanas and Octavio Getino introduced their concept of three types of cinema and of ‘cine‐accion’ (film event). However, because of its early appearance in October 1969, this manifesto did not fully take into account the experience of the screening of political cinema. A later document, ‘Militant Cinema: An Internal Category of Third Cinema’, written for circulation in March 1971, develops the concept of militant cinema. In this document, for the first time, Cine Liberacion expanded on the practical experience of the screening of The Hour of the Furnaces and other materials, and clarified its ideas. This article introduces their discussion of ‘militant cinema’ and shows the links between the theoretical manifestos and the practical experience of the screening of the films for political purposes during the first years of Cine Liberacion’s work.
11 citations
TL;DR: This paper argued that the ideals embodied within contemporary art's "global turn" can be effectively advanced through modes of regionalism that recognise the contingency of things, arguing that the complexity of art in this region possesses the capacity to complicate, and even to trouble how contemporary art is generally understood.
Abstract: In the past decade, contemporary art has become one of art history's most urgent questions. The question has special urgency in light of art's globalisation, a phenomenon that might be usefully analysed through the works identified as ‘Contemporary Southeast Asian art’. Compared with its East Asian counterparts, Southeast Asian art has been relatively invisible in discussions of contemporaneity, yet the circumstances of this lack of visibility have much to say about contemporary art. Moreover, the sheer complexity of art in this region possesses the capacity to complicate, and even to trouble how contemporary art is generally understood. Finally, this article defends the use of terms like ‘Southeast Asian art’, contending that the ideals embodied within contemporary art's ‘global turn’ can be effectively advanced through modes of regionalism that recognise the contingency of things.
10 citations
TL;DR: Dickinson as mentioned in this paper described her experiences of teaching film editing to absolute beginners in newly independent Mozambique, and provided background information about both Mozambica and ACTT, where elements within the ACTT proposed nationalisation as a solution to problems of the British film industry; the union commissioned a detailed report, which was hotly debated but then shelved.
Abstract: These texts by Margaret Dickinson consist of a short article written in 1979 for the journal of the UK film trade union, the ACTT, and explanatory notes written in 2010. While the main article is about the author's experiences of teaching film editing to absolute beginners in newly independent Mozambique, the notes provide background information about both Mozambique and ACTT. In the early 1970s elements within the ACTT proposed nationalisation as a solution to problems of the British film industry; the union commissioned a detailed report, which was hotly debated but then shelved. In Mozambique after independence in 1975 the government decided to develop cinema on the basis of partial nationalisation and established a national film institute, the Instituto Nacional de Cinema (INC), for the purpose. There was also a personal connection between ACTT and Mozambican cinema through the film‐maker and radical thinker, Simon Hartog, who wrote the ACTT report and was subsequently employed in Mozambique ...
10 citations
[...]
TL;DR: In this article, the authors highlight the critical practices taking place in Southeast Asia during the 1970s, a time when the idea of a Southeast Asia was rising amidst prevailing discourses of international politics, in particular with Cold War ideologies and the project of decolonisation after World War II, which emphasised the rhetoric of the independent nation-state.
Abstract: If the contemporary is a practice located within horizontal-synchronic references to the present and social contexts, and the vertical-diachronic autonomy of artistic discourse as it unfolds over time, the 1970s might be a productive point from which to begin discussion. This article highlights the critical practices taking place in Southeast Asia during the 1970s, a time when the idea of a Southeast Asia was rising amidst prevailing discourses of international politics, in particular with Cold War ideologies and the project of decolonisation after World War II, which emphasised the rhetoric of the independent nation-state. Increased access to Euro-American artistic models and the eventual shift towards ‘internationalism’ in the 1950s and 1960s played an equally important role in this process, acting both as examples of what a universal, cross-national artistic idiom might look like, and as forms of expression subject to the objectives of the state.
8 citations
TL;DR: The Atlas Group as discussed by the authors is a fictional documentation of the Lebanese Civil Wars, where viewers are invited to become pedestrians of Beirut whose perceptions of the panorama are transmitted through a gap in comprehension.
Abstract: Walid Raad produces art for his ongoing archival project, the Atlas Group, a fictional documentation of the Lebanese Civil Wars. Raad's project responds to a radical shift introduced in nineteenth-century history painting, according to Wolfgang Kemp, when the viewer becomes ‘sutured’ into the compositional and didactic structure of the work. Raad expands upon this opening up of the tradition in order to address the condition of Beirut, a modern city of ruins. Viewers are invited to become pedestrians of Beirut whose perceptions of the panorama are transmitted through a gap in comprehension. Raad positions Beirut not only as the backdrop, but as the subject of his work in order to suspend the tension between destruction and progress through the tension between reality and fiction. Raad's series of photographs Let's be honest the weather helped (1998) illustrates Kemp's notion of the ‘blank space’ for suture. This series moves towards mapping an understanding of destruction in his video work We can make rai...
8 citations
Journal Article•
TL;DR: Beyond the Frame as discussed by the authors ) is an ongoing research project that seeks to understand the experience of documentary participants and the relationship they develop with documentary filmmakers, which is relevant to our work.
Abstract: Questions of ethics remain central to documentary practice and scholarship. In spite of the growth of literature dealing with the subject, documentary ethics remains a field characterised by a focus on crises and the application of multiple ethical theories and concepts. This discussion considers the empirical study of documentary practice as a foundation for ethical discussion. Give the changing nature of documentary it is suggested that a notion of good practice can best be developed by considering the experiences of those involved. Beyond the Frame is an ongoing research project that seeks to understand the experience of documentary participants and the relationship they develop with documentary filmmakers. As more filmmakers embrace interactive modes of documentary the relationship they develop with participants becomes critical to ethical discussion. This paper will present the results of studies completed to date and outline some future directions.
7 citations
TL;DR: The authors groups these projects and their attitude towards decay under the rubric of "counterpreservation" and suggests that the fascinating spell of counterpreservation is inseparable from the "irresistible decay" that Walter Benjamin associated with ruins.
Abstract: Berlin is dotted with structures damaged by war or eroded by neglect. Since unification, several groups have appropriated such spaces for alternative cultural and social projects, intentionally displaying architectural decrepitude. Cultural centres such as the Tacheles and the Haus Schwarzenberg stand out against freshly painted facades and commercial enterprises. They react against gentrification and urban beautification, both of which have characterised Berlin's urban and architectural makeover since 1989. The display of ruination also attempts to represent a conflicted history, and is related to Germany's fraught relationship to memory. This article groups these projects, and their attitude towards decay, under the rubric of ‘counterpreservation’ and suggests that the fascinating spell of counterpreservation is inseparable from the ‘irresistible decay’ that Walter Benjamin associated with ruins. Through a close reading of the Haus Schwarzenberg building, it teases out the evocative potential of ruined ...
TL;DR: The authors examines the contributions of anthropologists to the study of modern and contemporary Southeast Asian art history and examines the relevance of ethnographic texts in images and how the reliance of ethnography on notions of cultural difference and the 'other' impacts on interpretations of living artists' work.
Abstract: This article examines the contributions of anthropology to the study of modern and contemporary Southeast Asian art history. In looking at a number of studies of Southeast Asian artists by anthropologists, it aims to ask questions about the nature of contemporary art in Southeast Asia in relation to the discipline of anthropology. In particular, it questions the relevance of ethnographic texts in the study of images and how the reliance of ethnography on notions of cultural difference and the ‘other’ impacts on interpretations of living artists' work. Taking Vietnamese performance artists as an example, the article looks at a case where ethnography may act as a substitute for the lack of written art historical sources. The question then is not only of the appropriateness of applying ethnographic methods to Southeast Asian art but also of the appropriateness of Southeast Asian art to the study of ethnography and art history.
TL;DR: In this paper, the case of the first photographs taken of the ruins of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which were banned from publication and ordered to be confiscated, is examined, and the role of these photographs in constructing the memory of an event on the national level in Japan after 1952.
Abstract: In August 1945 the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki vanished in seconds. Due to the American Occupation censorship, visual evidence of this genocide was not to be publicly shown till 1952. This article examines the case of the first photographs taken of the ruins of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which were banned from publication and ordered to be confiscated. Thanks to the risk the authors took to hide the materials, the representations of the atomic annihilation could later be revealed and open a space for memory in Japanese society after the American Occupation ended. This article seeks to examine the role of photographs from Hiroshima and Nagasaki in constructing the memory of an event on the national level in Japan after 1952. It also sets out to rethink their status and previous interpretations.
TL;DR: The authors analyzed the relationship between the current neoliberal hegemony and contemporary art, especially relational aesthetics and interventionist art, in the guise of a more solution-oriented approach and the tactical media approach.
Abstract: With a point of departure in Western Marxism’s idea of art’s ability to contribute to radical social transformation this article analyses the relationship between the current neoliberal hegemony and contemporary art, especially relational aesthetics and interventionist art, in the guise of a more solution‐orientated approach and the tactical media approach. Although the artistic practices associated with these designations contain interesting capabilities the article argues that they remain firmly within the already established horizon of small‐scale adjustments instead of radical transformation. In that regard they do not challenge the neoliberal discourse but only confirm the idea of TINA (‘there is no alternative’).
[...]
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors explore the political and aesthetic potential of "ruins" and question the function of a discourse on failure, which turns on an aesthetic of ruins and its attributes: namely nostalgia, longing and desire.
Abstract: Lahore's celebrated status as the seat of several legendary Muslim rulers and the cultural capital of Pakistan stands in sharp contrast to the dilapidated state of the city's historic Mughal monuments. This article explores the discrepancy between images that capitalise on Lahore's esteemed reputation and concerns for the deterioration of sites associated with a Muslim past. By exploring the political and aesthetic potential of ‘ruins’, this article questions the function of a discourse on failure (in this case to preserve the nation's heritage), which turns on an aesthetic of ruins and its attributes: namely nostalgia, longing and desire. Mounting concerns over the future of Pakistan's heritage can be read as reflecting anxieties around preserving and promoting regional and national identities and critiquing ineffective and exploitative leadership, but they must also be understood in the context of experimentations with and responses to modernisation, globalisation, and Pakistan's image in the ‘war on te...
TL;DR: Transnational Feminism in Film and Media as mentioned in this paper is a rare jewel that successfully reaches different scholarly communities at the same time, but it is not suitable for the general public to read.
Abstract: Transnational Feminism in Film and Media The edited volume of Transnational Feminism in Film and Media is a rare jewel that successfully reaches different scholarly communities at the same time, bu...
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors draw on the need to provide renewed attention to the actual practices of art in relation to culture, society, politics and experiences of everyday life; to the "eventful truthfulness" of art-making.
Abstract: The world of contemporary art is crossing an important junction, leading to the urgent need to foster an art historical awareness capable of producing a real, alternative future for contemporary art in places such as Indonesia. For contemporary art to confront the essential unpredictability of its future, the proposition of contemporaneity, as ‘art to come’, will essentially need to transcend any type of historical validation or historicity. This article draws on the need to provide renewed attention to the actual practices of art in relation to culture, society, politics and experiences of everyday life; to the ‘eventful truthfulness’ of art-making. It does so by looking at the Jakarta-based artists' collective ruangrupa, which between December 2010 and January 2011 celebrated its tenth anniversary under the theme ‘Expanding the Space and the Public’ (Merentang ruang dan publik).
TL;DR: The Atlantikwall, a defence line comprising 12,000 bunkers, was constructed along the Western European coastline (1941-1945) to protect "Greater Germany" from an impending allied invasion as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: The Atlantikwall, a defence-line comprising 12,000 bunkers, was constructed along the Western European coastline (1941–1945) to protect ‘Greater Germany’ from an impending allied invasion. Designed by military architects and engineers and erected by slave labourers, the Atlantikwall can be regarded as an embodiment of nationalistic ideology, and as built evidence of Nazi war crimes. Postwar years were marked by the desire to forget, and recovery was equated with erasing the traces left behind. Nevertheless, a slow shift in appreciation towards the bunkers is taking place, as the stories that lay dormant are gradually uncovered. In recent years these ruins have begun to fascinate artists, who, while searching for the ‘forgotten’ and the ‘mystical’, encounter remnants of an abandoned buried history. The bunkers that were built in haste for a short-lived war may ironically prove to be Hitler's lasting legacy, representing the essence of the twentieth century – its barbarity.
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors discuss the relationship between literature and art writing, and find that art critics seem less enamoured of theory than literature and are more enamored of theory.
Abstract: In this article, the author discusses art criticism, literature, theory and global art history. For a few years now, there has been much discussion of ‘global art history’, but the author wonders if one can ever really understand how big the world is. As a way of addressing the sheer vastness of the world, he attempts to consider the relationship between literature and art writing. In the past, critics from Charles Baudelaire to Clement Greenberg wrote about both literature and art. Today's art critics seem less literary. Is it because they are more enamoured of theory? Who reads art criticism any more – especially in the context of the emerging arts discourses within Southeast Asia? Today, everywhere, there is more and more art – more biennales, more art fairs. There is even more art writing: reviews, catalogue essays, art books of all shapes and sizes. Yet there is also more talk about the decline of reading, the decline of university departments of literatures, and the decline of criticism. There is an...
TL;DR: In this article, a survey of contemporary Southeast Asian art through the lens of the market and the role of auction houses and their symbiotic relationship to primary markets is presented, focusing on developments taking place within the past five years and how the auction itself has played an integral role in reifying the idea of a discrete body of contemporary SEA art.
Abstract: This article surveys contemporary Southeast Asian art through the lens of the market and, in particular, the role of auction houses and their symbiotic relationship to primary markets. It pays special attention to developments taking place within the past five years and how the auction itself has played an integral role in reifying the idea of a discrete body of contemporary Southeast Asian art. A secondary issue concerns the role and growing relevance of private collectors and collections. Lacking the kind of extensive public artistic infrastructure found in other countries, many Southeast Asian countries tacitly depend on the activities of private collectors to promote the visibility of works which have only recently emerged as a key force within a contemporary art market whose appetite for expansion seems limitless.
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors focus on the Inka site of Saqsaywaman to understand how the discourse of mystery still exerts a powerful influence over visitors to Inka ruins today.
Abstract: Many Inka sites in western South America were abandoned in the early sixteenth century following the Spanish invasion and colonisation of the Andes. Their ruins provide a starting point from which to consider the discourse of mystery commonly enshrouding ruins today. Despite the fact that the ruination of Inka sites was witnessed and documented, and despite decades of work by scholars to understand Inka technological and cultural practices and belief systems, questions continue to be asked that, in fact, have long been answered. Yet many visitors prefer imaginative speculation and unverifiable postulations over reasoned hypotheses, and so actively work to prolong, rather than solve, the mystery of ruins. Focusing on the Inka site of Saqsaywaman, the author seeks to understand how the discourse of mystery itself, born out of the process of Spanish colonisation, still exerts a powerful influence over visitors to Inka ruins today.
TL;DR: In this article, the authors distinguish two theories of history in art history: the rule of series and the conjunction theory of Foucault, and suggest that they can be combined to yield a model of "devolution" in the global or worldwide transcultural replication of series of visual and material culture.
Abstract: Many practitioners of ‘world art studies’ are sceptical of systematic global models of world art history and of material and visual culture developed by such recent writers as John Onians and David Summers, though such models were common in art history in the past. The article distinguishes two theories of history in ‘liberal’ and ‘radical’ world art history respectively, identified with the historiography of George Kubler and Michel Foucault respectively. Kubler's ‘rule of series’ stresses determined and developmental serial order whereas Foucault's model of ‘conjunction’ stresses contingent occurrence and unintended consequences. Though seemingly opposed, both models can be useful in describing the worldwide topography and chronology of visual and material culture and both have certain limits. The article suggests that they can be combined to yield a model of ‘devolution’ in the global or worldwide transcultural replication of series of visual and material culture – of causally ordered series that are n...
TL;DR: In this article, a key statement of Cinema Engage, focusing on the artistic methodology of prolepsis as a political discourse, is presented, which is to be understood as the power to perceive futurity within the present.
Abstract: Edouard de Laurot’s essay ‘Composing as the Praxis of Revolution: The Third World and the USA’ was one of five theoretical texts published in the film journal Cineaste between 1970 and 1971 under the name of Yves de Laurot. The essay is a key statement of Cinema Engage, focusing on the artistic methodology of prolepsis as a political discourse. For de Laurot, prolepsis is to be understood as the ‘power to perceive futurity within the present’. For cinema to project the power of the ‘imaginary desirable’, which can only emerge through conflict with what exists, cinema must be understood relationally as a ‘rapprochement’ between film production and revolutionary praxis.
TL;DR: Forgotten in contemporary histories of cinema, Edouard de Laurot was a true fighter who spent his life participating in armed resistance in three European countries during the Second World War and later propagating revolutionary ideas across two continents.
Abstract: Forgotten in contemporary histories of cinema, Edouard de Laurot was a true fighter who spent his life participating in armed resistance in three European countries during the Second World War and later propagating revolutionary ideas across two continents. In 1964 he founded the group ‘Cinema Engage’ in New York, providing a model for later political cinema collectives. He created two masterpieces of engaged art: Black Liberation (1967), inspired by the texts of Malcolm X, and Listen, America! (1970). Author of many articles, interviews, manifestos and scripts, de Laurot contributed to early issues of Film Culture and Cineaste, which in 1971 published his series of articles devoted to establishing practical relations between cinema and revolution.
TL;DR: In the context of the Triptychos Post Historicus exhibition at the Tate Modern in London as discussed by the authors, a number of works in the exhibition were displayed on plinths comprising empty cardboard packing boxes from the supermarket, and the plinth is traditionally used to highlight the importance of the artwork and isolate it from its surroundings.
Abstract: person performance by the artist. Although powerful and indeed emotionally harrowing, its relevance to the exhibition seemed somewhat vague. The same can be said for another ‘heavyweight’, the highly respected French film-maker Agnès Varda, whose award-winning documentary about the poor gathering the discarded and rejected furniture and household items of others, The Gleaners and I ( Les glaneurs et la glaneuse , 2000), is obliquely connected to the remit of the exhibition by dint of the fact that the film was inspired by Jean-François Millet’s ‘pre-Socialist’ painting The Gleaners ( Des glaneuses , 1857), which shows three peasant women ‘gleaning’ the leftover grains of wheat from a field after the harvest. The pioneering conceptual artist Braco Dimitrijevi ’s For Charles Darwin: Potato and a Music Historian (2010), places a small bust of Beethoven in an old suitcase full of potatoes. Dimitrijevi , well known for his provocative juxtapositions of high art and humble fruit or everyday objects, here inflects the ethos of his museum-based ‘Triptychos Post Historicus’ through the prism of the modest potato; the lowest of foodstuffs elevated to the ‘highest’ form of art – conceptualism. Two works in the exhibition more adroitly pinned down the real core of the curatorial concept: Hayley Newman ( The Smelly Hillock , 2010) urged the visitor to take home a piece of discarded food packaging which would otherwise be destined for a landfill site, simultaneously saving the planet and adding to your collection of contemporary art, and Lucy Heyward’s Stalk (2010) invoked the ghost of Constantin Brâncu [ s cedi l ] ’s Infinite Column , this time fashioned from discarded transparent plastic fruit containers precariously wedged between floor and ceiling, containing the stalks of the cherries which they once contained. Both works highlight the fact that it is what is discarded and left over after consumption that survives – the ‘valued’ part is absent; it is the skin, bones, stalks and pips which bear testament to the memory of the feast. It is apposite that many of the works in the exhibition were displayed on plinths comprising empty cardboard packing boxes from the supermarket. The plinth, traditionally used to highlight the importance of the artwork and to isolate it from its surroundings, is here often conflated as part of the artwork itself, both plinth and artwork subverting accepted hierarchies of value, taste and aesthetics.
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors discuss the concept of truth that emerges in Walid Raad's Hostage: The Bachar Tapes (2001) through a variety of representational strategies such as the use of video noise, theatrical re-enactment and digital manipulations.
Abstract: This article discusses the concept of truth that emerges in Walid Raad's Hostage: The Bachar Tapes (2001). The mediation of images in the construction of historical knowledge is foregrounded by Raad through a variety of representational strategies such as the use of video noise, theatrical re-enactment and digital manipulations. Importantly, in the artist's practice representation is not seen as an obstacle to the achievement of truthful historical knowledge as images are viewed as part and parcel of the real itself and as an essential means by which to reconstruct the past. The article argues that Raad's work articulates a post-Freudian concept of truth that challenges the empiricism of conventional documentary as well as the postmodern relativism of writers such as Baudrillard. The article also investigates the genesis of Raad's work, its precedents and the importance of Jalal Toufic's writings for understanding the artist's practice.
TL;DR: In this article, Baillie Fraser depicted the memorial to the Black Hole of Calcutta in ruins before the pristine Georgian facades of the Writers' Building and Saint Andrew's Church.
Abstract: In A View of the Writers' Building from the Monument at the West End (1824–1826), James Baillie Fraser depicted the memorial to the Black Hole of Calcutta in ruins before the pristine Georgian facades of the Writers' Building and Saint Andrew's Church. Erected in 1760, the monument commemorated the British citizens who suffocated in a cell after they were captured by the Nawab of Bengal in 1756. Significantly, while earlier British representations present the monument as a marker of the origins of Britain's dominion over Calcutta, Fraser's image of the memorial is far more ambiguous. In Fraser's aquatint, its representation as a picturesque ruin appears to impinge on the very status of Holwell's monument as a memorial. Situated before the buildings that symbolise Britain's power and progress in Calcutta, the decaying monument troubles the scene by recalling the fraught nature of British hegemony in a city poised to become the capital of British India.
TL;DR: The SLON collective as discussed by the authors made counter-information films in solidarity with the struggle of the Third World revolutionary movements, which do not separate political content from aesthetic enquiry, demonstrate Marker's aesthetic in which editing represents a political stake.
Abstract: In March 1967 Chris Marker attended a screening of Loin du Vietnam (Far From Vietnam) in support of the long strike at the Rhodiaceta factory that year. From 1967 to 1977 Marker worked with the SLON collective, workers and other film‐makers both on militant films during the events of May 1968 and, equally importantly, on counter‐information films in solidarity with the struggle of the Third World revolutionary movements. These films, which do not separate political content from aesthetic enquiry, demonstrate Marker's aesthetic in which editing represents a political stake. By pushing back the limits of the language of film, rejecting a classical aesthetic and bringing about an encounter between the film‐maker and the filmed through the gaze, Chris Marker makes his work political.
TL;DR: The English translations to date of "Hacia un tercer cine" (Toward a Third Cinema) by Fernando Solanas and Octavio Getino are based on the original publication in Spanish of the article in the October 1969 issue of Tricontinental (Havana) as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: All English translations to date of ‘Hacia un tercer cine’ (‘Toward a Third Cinema’), by Fernando Solanas and Octavio Getino, are based on the original publication in Spanish of the article in the October 1969 issue of Tricontinental (Havana). However, Solanas and Getino published a revised version in 1970, with the same title, which reflected the development of their thinking following the experience of the Cine Liberacion group’s extensive, and often clandestine, screenings of The Hour of the Furnaces. This article translates and discusses some of the most pertinent changes in the previously untranslated (and unacknowledged) revision; in particular, their evolving thought on Third Cinema, militant cinema and the ‘instrumentalisation’ of cinema in the rapidly changing political environment in Argentina at the time.
TL;DR: In this paper, Getino defines militant cinema as practices of film-making, distribution and exhibition that operate as an instrument of specific political organisations, in which the screening becomes a "cine-accion" -a "cinema event" that transforms spectators into political actors participating in a process of liberation.
Abstract: ‘Militant Cinema: An Internal Category of Third Cinema’ and ‘The Cinema as Political Fact’, translated here into English for the first time, were written by Octavio Getino to further elaborate the concept of Third Cinema first defined in the article ‘Towards a Third Cinema’ that Getino wrote with Fernando Solanas in 1969. The text is thus a theoretical reflection on the film‐making practice of Cine Liberacion and other groups, particularly in relation to the Peronist movement in Argentina. Leaving the question of what aesthetic forms were appropriate for militant cinema radically open, Getino defines militant cinema as practices of film‐making, distribution and exhibition that operate as an instrument of specific political organisations. In this form of political practice, the screening becomes a ‘cine‐accion’ – a ‘cinema event’ that transforms spectators into political actors participating in a process of liberation.