Revista de História da Arte (2023) n.º 16
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- Curating as Care in Performance and Live Art: A case study of Lithuanian and Sámi artPublication . Griniuk, MarijaThis research is focused on the development of a new methodology to curate political performance art from the Baltic countries and Sápmi. Sámi and Baltic artists share a colonial history connected to their traditional lands, which is often why they work with such politically loaded themes. A more complete understanding of their artworks by audiences can contribute to opening up a social dialogue about these issues, which could have the effect of lessening the notion of Other and erasing the hierarchies of cultural centre and periphery. Performance and live artwork can generally be experienced by the audience only once. Thus, the audience has only one chance to grasp the artwork and understand it. Here, the curator’s task is to establish a close dialogue with the artist and shape the meeting point with the audience in order to lower the barriers between the artist (and their artwork’s content) and the audience. How can curators work with live art and performances by Baltic and Sámi artists themed around postcolonial memory and decolonisation to give international audiences a more coherent understanding of such artwork? The results of my research, key points towards a new curatorial methodology, are useful for the education of curators. The methodology developed could be used by art institutions such as art centres and galleries that work with performance art and present artwork from the Baltic region and indigenous Sámi artists, which often deals with the themes of decolonisation and postcolonial memory. Lastly, the methodology could increase engagement and connectedness with audiences to the performance artwork they experience.
- The Vulnerable Body in the Archive: Matriculating Oral Herstories of Art with (Self-)carePublication . Reznik, ZofiaDrawing from a research project focusing on women artists active in Wrocław in the 1970s, I propose an interdisciplinary approach for current and future art histories that is based on a combination of methods from various fields (cultural anthropology, social history, archival studies) and driven by feminist theory, activism for social and historical justice, and the politics of care. Considering Wrocław’s historical and cultural context in the second half of the 20th century – being the main but extensively destroyed city of the so-called regained territories, populated almost entirely by people resettling from the Eastern Borderlands and Central Poland – and shifting the disciplinary focus from the objective (artefact) to the subjective (personal narrative), I would like to bring more attention to the multitude of diverse women’s stories that have not been incorporated into what we know as conventional art history. This approach, based on inclusion and collaboration, involves mutual discovering, creating, archiving, and disseminating of what I eventually name ‘oral art herstories’, combining ‘oral history’ as the main research method with ‘art herstories’ as the project’s more activist output and goal. The research evolved slowly from 2014 and had a chance to bloom with substantial funding obtained in 2018 from the National Science Centre (NCN). Unfortunately, it was violently interrupted by the COVID-19 crisis. The risk of endangering the elderly artists willing to share their stories caused critical revision of the project and resulted in a withdrawal from outcome-oriented pursuits. This became the clarifying turning point where the project’s underlying values suddenly emerged: personal connection, mutual trust and care, establishing collective knowledge and shared agency. This could become an ethical agenda for an engaged art history, willing not only to rescue and reclaim the value of the overlooked or forgotten (initially after Ewa Domańska), but also to become mindfully inclusive and empowering for the living, resisting the neoliberal urge of academic production and perhaps becoming ‘relational art history’.
- A darker, better placePublication . Ramos, Martima darker, better place is a visual project (video and photography) that I created during an artist residence at the Centre for Urban History (Lviv, Ukraine, 2019) with a grant from the British Council. The work is the outcome of research into the CUH archives, namely TV reels from the 1960s, and comprises a video installation in addition to still images retrieved from the reels. The assembled material portrays a semi-fictional community that, sometime in the 1960s, somewhere in Ukraine, turned their backs on the perils of a world on the brink of disaster. They decided to build a place of their own, secreted away from the Cold War and Space Race rhetoric. They aimed to voyage to the centre of the earth, reaching for a darker, better place. The images retrieved are overlayered stills, unintentional and fleeting passages between two different shots that gather as a single composite image for one 24th of a second. The words accompanying the piece seek to reflect on the following questions: How can appropriation and intervention on archival footage, within the realm of artistic practice, retrieve content from its original purpose and, in so doing, generate new readings? Secondly, to what extent do these interventions on archival material bridge between the past and the present? These questions will be addressed in articulation with the work of authors such as Joan Fontcuberta (on the realms of real and fiction), Marianne Hirsch (on the distinctions between history and memory), and Ariella Aïsha Azoulay (on the possibilities inscribed within archives).
- The Bird’s Eye From Up Above or From Down Below: Changing Perspectives on Aerial Photography of Indigenous Lands in the Brazilian AmazonPublication . Marer, MarcellaAerial photographs in which indigenous people are attempting to defend themselves by pointing their bows and arrows toward the airplane are ingrained in the social imaginary when considering isolated communities. As these people occupy territories from the Brazilian Amazon rainforest that are disputed by many players, the prevailing narrative associated with the aerial images is often warlike, with “the dangerous savages” pitched against “the workers and conquerors victimised by a people who do not work”. This article proposes re-examining overhead shots of Brazilian indigenous lands by referencing editorials widely published in both local and international press since the 1940s, thereby transforming these images into visual stigmas that depict peoples in isolation. Conversely, it is analysed how techniques of aerial photography have been employed by indigenous peoples over the last decade and how perceptions are altered when the bird’s-eye perspective is used by groups belonging to the regions photographed. By presenting proposals for reconfiguring the relations between spectators, image-makers and photographed subjects, this work fosters counter-narratives to photographic points of view that have historically served a colonial perspective. Thus, it is argued that indigenous aesthetics are yet to be incorporated into the spheres of knowledge, governance, self-representation and cultural production.
- Final(?) DISPOSITION (Restless Objects ) A Ride from the Storage to the PalacePublication . Ophir, HagarImagine a group of people joining the art delivery transportation services responsible for moving objects from the old Ethnographic collection house in Dahlem (Berlin) to the new building of the Humboldt Forum. The transportation vehicle suddenly stops and the two drivers ask the people who joined them to step out along with the artefacts in their crates. Imagine those people standing in the middle of the city with the crates in their hands – what would they do now? Where should they take these objects? What are the tools they have to make decisions? In October 2021, I performed one such ritualistic rehearsal towards a possible act of emptying the museum of heritage. My performance, part of the Moving the Forum project – a participatory dance residency programme at the Humboldt Forum Berlin – unfolded in parallel with the long-running and complex operation of transferring thousands of artefacts from the Ethnological Museum of Berlin to their new ‘permanent home’ inside the reconstructed imperialistic Berlin Palace. During my performative ritual, which consisted of a series of imaginings towards a counter course of action, the public was invited to witness members of the restoration team and art handlers emptying the display cases in the new exhibition spaces. I conceived this performative act as a pre-enactment, a proposal for physical and mental training in reassessing and unlearning the relationships between caretakers of objects in imperial museums and the future and possible fate of plundered objects. In this article, I discuss notions of training, imagining, and repetition as ways of reassessing and transforming the relationships between imperial institutions acting as caretakers and violently plundered objects. The article offers a fictional script of this ride from the Ethnological museum in Dahlem to the Humboldt forum, drawing on months of field research conducted in preparation for this ritualistic ceremony, Restless Objects of emptying the Forum, during which I closely observed the operational and political aspects of the relocation procedures and examined the structural powers at the basis of imperial collections.
- Beyond the Material: A Case Study of the Yaawo Beaded Hair Combs for Repatriating AgencyPublication . Madaleno Alves, BeatrizYaawo beadwork culture has a significant presence in the archives of the British Museum. So far, object biographies of John Moir’s collection of Yaawo beaded hair combs at the British Museum indicate they were acquired through ‘consensual’ commercial dealings. By approaching the complexity of cultural repatriation in praxis, this article aims to explore the following: How should we think of seemingly ‘consensual’ commercial transactions between colonisers and the colonised in the context of cultural repatriation? In what ways can the socio-philosophical boundaries of ‘return’ be expanded in these cases? This research is further proof that early colonial era trade relations are embedded in ethically ambiguous terms of negotiations that cannot always be clearly judged from a contemporary perspective. Cultural objects acquired in this manner face multiple legal constraints when they are discussed in relation to cultural repatriation. Lastly, the article calls for expanding cultural repatriation beyond the materiality of cultural objects, with a redirection towards cultural agency
- Afterlives: On the Art Periodical’s Return through Anthologies and Special IssuesPublication . Salvaneschi, CamillaIt is common practice in art periodical publishing to retrace one’s steps, to rethink trajectories, to revise the impact the periodical has had on art, art history, and criticism. Occasionally, going back relates to a mere sense of accomplishment: a celebration offered against the ephemeral and precarious nature of the art periodical. At other times, it has to do with memory, with the untangling of topical stories and a reminder of their influence on the contemporary art field. Ultimately, reflecting on the past is often intertwined with considerations of the future, legacy, immortality, and the enduring impact one leaves behind. Reading the anthologies and anniversary issues published by two contemporary art periodicals –October, Afterall – alongside those of Artforum, e-flux and The Exhibitionist, the article aims to understand the ways through which periodicals develop their own legacy and review their hegemonic position in Western art histories to produce more inclusive narrations
- Re-turnsPublication . Sliwinska, Basia; Ramos, Afonso Dias; Instituto de História da Arte (IHA); Instituto de História da Arte/FCSH-UNL