HISTORY CONTEMP ART paper

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WEEK3-SLIDES-hermeneutic_11A20202.pdf

Thinking the Exhibition: Writing, Curating, Making

WEEK THREE

Hans-Georg Gadamer’s

“Hermeneutics and Aesthetics” (1964)

Mary Kelly’s The Practical Past

(2018)

“That we know not how to name what awaits us, is the sure sign that it awaits us.”

- Jean-Francois Lyotard on his 1985 exhibition Les Immatériaux at the Centre Pompidou

Marfa Texas, photo Joseph West

HERMENEUTICS (TRADITIONAL DEFINTION)

“According to its original definition, hermeneutics is the art of clarifying and mediating our own effort of interpretation what is said by persons we encounter in tradition. Hermeneutics operates especially wherever what is said is not immediately intelligible.”

- Hans-Georg Gadamer, “Aesthetics and Hermeneutics.”

Hans-Georg Gadamer: Aesthetics and Hermeneutics (1964)

Fused Horizons: An absolute contemporaneousness exists between the [historical] work and its present beholder. The reality of the work of art and its expressive power can not be restricted to its original historical horizon, in which its beholder seems to become the contemporary creator. Rather, it [the reality of art] seems have its own present. Only in a limited way does an artwork therefore retain its historical origin within itself. P. 124

Hans-Georg Gadamer: Aesthetics and Hermeneutics (1964)

This fresco from Pompeii depicts the Egyptian goddess Isis interacting with the mythical Greek figure of Io. c. 79 AD

Vestiges and Sources: Vestiges [artifacts] are fragments of a past world that have survived and assist us in the intellectual reconstruction of the world of which they are a remnant. Sources constitute a linguistic tradition, and they thus serve our understanding of a linguistically interpreted world. Now where does an archaic image of a god belong? Is it a vestige, like any tool? Or is it a piece of world- interpretation, like everything that is handed on linguistically? [Answer: It is both.] P. 127

Hans-Georg Gadamer: Aesthetics and Hermeneutics (1964)

Historical Subjective: The [historical] work of art says something to the historian: it says something to each person as if it were said to him or her as something present and contemporaneous. Even the ‘nonlinguistic’ work of art, therefore, falls within the province of the proper task of hermeneutics. It must be integrated into the self- understanding of each person. P. 128.

It posits an ever-shifting horizon – a kind of screen - between Past and Present

To be contemporary in any critical way, we must learn to think historically

Why Hermeneutics Now?

Why Hermeneutics Now?

It playfully engages the horizon that hinges art and theory (as a double mimesis)

The task of hermeneutics is to bridge the personal or historical distance between minds

Why Hermeneutics Now?

It allows us to conceive of the following performative: “Curating as a Verb”

Artwork (Subject) – Exhibition (verb) – Discourse (object) Aesthetic Production – Curatorial Hinge – Theoretical Reception

HERMENEUTIC ARTMAKING (A PROPOSITION)

• WHAT IF WE WERE TO REVERSE GADMER’S EQUATION OF A CRITIC LOOKING BACK AT A GIVEN ARTWORK TO THE ARTIST LOOKING BACK AT AN HISTORICAL EVENT?

• MEANING: WHAT IF WE WERE TO EXTEND THE (HERMENEUTIC) PRACTICE OF UNDERSTANDING HISTORICAL ARTWORKS AND ARTIFACTS TOWARDS A CONTEMPORARY PRACTICE OF ART MAKING ABOUT HISTORICAL MEMORY?

Mary Kelly: Circa, 1968, University Art Gallery, UCI, 2004 and exhibition brochure

Right: Hans-Georg Gadamer, Jacques Derrida attend the Heidelberg Conference, Feb 5, 1988. Left: Transcript of Heidelberg Conference, Forward by Jean-Luc Nancy, 2016.

Aesthetics of an Untethered Past

I am terribly preoccupied with the task [of] communicating with others—with the youngest,

first of all, but with those of my age as well. – Hans-Georg Gadamer

What follows the caesura will never be the same as what went before; the end will never again

resemble the beginning. – Jacques Derrida

UNINTERRUPTED DIALOGUE

Gadamer (communal past) ß DIALOGUE à Derrida (anterior future)

Mary Kelly: The Practical Past Circa 1940 (left) and Circa 1968 (right) Susanne Vielmetter, Los Angeles, 2015

Holland House, Archival Photograph, 1940

Mary Kelly, Circa 1940, compressed lint

Marianne of ‘68, Paris, photo by Jean-Pierre Ray

Mary Kelly, Circa 1968, compressed lint

Tahrir Square, February 9, 2011

Mary Kelly, Circa 2011, compressed lint

Mary Kelly, Unguided Tour, 1940, 1968, and 2011 Letterpress prints on blotting paper

27 by 21 by 1 1/2 in. 68.6 by 53.3 by 3.8 cm. (each)

Mary Kelly, Post-Partum Document: Documentation I Analysed Fecal Stains and Feeding Charts, 1974 (and detail)

Installation View, Generali Foundation, 1998.

Mary Kelly, Mea Culpa, Sarajevo 1992 (1 of 4 sections and detail) Postmasters Gallery, New York, 1999

Mary Kelly, Circa 1968 and Circa 2011 (details)

Mary Kelly, Beirut, 1970, 2017 Compressed lint, 41 5/8 by 59 3/8 by 2 in. 105.7 by 150.8 by 5.1 cm.

Mary Kelly, London, 1974, 2017 Compressed lint, 46 1/2 by 59 1/2 by 2 in. 118.1 by 151.1 by 5.1 cm.

Mary Kelly, Tucson, 1972, 2017 Compressed lint, 66 1/2 by 88 7/8 by 2 in. 168.9 by 225.7 by 5.1 cm.