The article presents an analysis of the activities of formal and informal art associations in the space of contemporary art in Russia and China. The two countries actively cooperate in the field of art, including at the institutional level, which actualizes the appeal to the work of existing creative unions. The object of attention in the framework of the study is the modern art associations of the two countries, and the subject is the relationship between the structure and activities of (...) official and informal art associations of China and Russia. The aim is to analyze the features of the activity of art associations in the conditions of the modern art space of their countries. The analysis of the state and directions of development of both official structures and informal art groups is carried out. The former in both Russia and China, as a rule, are the continuers of the traditions of the former structures, but the original function of the guide of the political course of the leadership of the countries in them remained at different levels, mostly decreasing. The latter are communities of artists who unite by creative interests or around a common exhibition space for them, in particular galleries. Moreover, both forms successfully exist in both states, reflecting the trends of artistic life and at the same time influencing it. (shrink)

continent. 1.2 (2011): 136-140. In early 2011, Cow Heavy Books published The Official Catalog of the Library of Potential Literature , a compendium of catalog 'blurbs' for non-existent desired or ideal texts. Along with Erinrose Mager, I edited the project, in a process that was more like curation as it mainly entailed asking a range of contemporary writers, theorists, and text-makers to send us an entry. What resulted was a creative/critical hybrid anthology, a small book in which each page (...) opens to a new iteration of textual desire. These texts explore the material possibilities of the book. Somewhat parallel to the call of N. Katherine Hayles who, in her book Writing Machines , urges literary theorists to take up the practice of Medium Specific Analysis (to account for the way the medium in which it is presented conditions or at least bears on a literary text). I see in the imagined works of The Official Catalog a call for the innovative writers of today to become Medium-Responsive. This would mean thinking through the specific (materially constrained) possibilities offered by the media in which texts are presented, and in thinking of the literary text as a kind of art in the greater context of other arts and the book as a medium situated within the context of many other media. In doing so, the contemporary writer refutes the chorus of critics who lament the death of the book by consistently reinvigorating literary innovation. The following are selections from The Official Catalog of the Library of Potential Literature that show possible paths for (thinking about) new writing that engages with its medium. —Ben Segal, Editor THE CUBE Even the most radical non-linear texts have tended to exploit or subvert only the sequential possibilities of print—from the continuous loop of Joyce's Finnegans Wake to the shuffled cards of Marc Saporta's Composition No. 1 —but The Cube takes such multiplicities to an entirely new level. Set in a grid, the book's words can be read conventionally, across the page, as well as down each column—with either route making complete grammatical sense. But they can also be read as stacked strata and mined like lexical core samples through the layered pages of the book. Each path tells the same story from a different perspective (the narrative, naturally, hinges on the potential outcomes of a throw of cubed dice). By opening up the z-axis to reading in this way, The Cube recognizes the book as a three-dimensional sculptural space. Taking its lead from Armand Schwerner's (If Personal) and Raymond Queneau's Cent mille milliards de poèmes , The Cube reads like a experiment by Christian Bök precision printed by Emily McVarish. Craig Dworkin is the editor, most recently, of The Consequence of Innovation: 21st Century Poetics (Roof Books, 2008), The Sound of Poetry/The Poetry of Sound , with Marjorie Perloff (U. Chicago Press, 2009), and Against Expression: An Anthology of Conceptual Writing , with Kenneth Goldsmith (Northwestern UP, 2010). He teaches at the University of Utah. HE GOES In He Goes , we read notes, letters and e-mails from a scholar father to his novelist daughter. We read of the father's musings on Beckett, on Pinter, on Anne Frank; his description of a woman hanging laundry from a line. We read about his journey toward dying, followed by a brief, third person account of his death, and his obituary. Then a long series of blank pages that demand to be read in real time, non-sentence by non-sentence, blank page by blank page. Finally—and it is here that this peculiar little book begins to soar—the dead father writes to his as-of-yet-still-living daughter. He does not write from death. He does not write from life. The words unprint, unstamp, unkindle. Still, they require no translation. The father "writes" (for lack of a better word) about the serendipitous, the commonplace; he recommends another book. He jokes. He asks his daughter how her stomach is. He says forget about presence in absence, darling; screw words as memorial and the guys in garbage cans and loss as redemption and I can't go on I must go on. He goes, "Love, Fodder." He goes, "incidentally." He goes, "I thought you might like to know." Elizabeth Graver is the author of a story collection, Have You Seen Me? , and three novels: Unravelling ; The Honey Thief ; and Awake . Her work has been anthologized in Best American Short Stories , Best American Essays , and Prize Stories: the O. Henry Awards . She teaches at Boston College. THE PAPER ARCHIVIST A stunning package and a triumph of imagination, The Paper Archivist at times looks to be less a book than an abstract expressionist painting. Softly bound, its contents unfold to a single sheet of uneven thickness and texture—a canvas splattered with colored lines, stickers, broken sentences, and nonsense pictographs. But by following the directions to fold, dip, smell, rub, scratch, and tear the sheet according to the contingencies of the weather and using only the objects at hand, the reader slowly brings the forces hidden in the noise into a glorious sculptural convergence, processing a different story and shape each time. This is the rare book that continues to stir, whirl, and pop on every new reading. Sean Higgins blogs at BOMBlog where he is responsible for the column Volumes and Territories, as well as Ghost Island , a fledgling collaborative intellectual collective. THE SLOW BOOK The Slow Book , written by an anonymous author at the dawn of literacy, on a minor planet (otherwise notable only as the source of that exceptionally hardy, not very tasty grain called “shef” sowed on hostile planets as an early step to colonization), and encoded into a series of punctures on a strip of copper coiled inside a clever device, something between a player piano and an old-fashioned film projector, is being released into print, as was the author’s intention, at a rate of one word per century (local time). Each word is, across the Forty Galaxies, agreed to be uncannily apt for the century in which it appears—even “of,” in a century during which the highest value was attached to fidelity, whether to ideals, worlds, or romantic love; even “the,” which governed two centuries, one extraordinarily materialistic, during which advances in propulsion and navigation accelerated the exchange of exceptional objects between the remotest planets of the Forty, and one in which the central concern, both of philosophers and the common man, was whether, in an age of rapidly proliferating hypothetical worlds, anyone or anything concretely existed at all. Even those words published long before interstellar contact can be seen in retrospect to have transgalactic pertinence. As a result, attempts to abstract the machine from its publishers, Hobson & Hui, in order to “predict the future” for insight or gain by “fast- forwarding” the copper strip have been many and ingenious. While, in centuries of skepticism (“maybe”), or of unrest (“go”) the book has been nearly forgotten, in others it seems to haunt every thought, every deed, despite the fact that the subject of The Slow Book is still unclear. So far only a few sentences exist in print; everyone knows them, can quote them, offer the standard exegeses and assorted heresies; yet certainties are the stuff of adolescence; mature readers are forced to acknowledge that these sentences are probably only a preamble to the main argument. They contain no proper nouns, nor can we identify any definite theme. There is even disagreement about their tone, whether coolly ironic, as some insist, or ardent. The appearance of an unusual grammatical case, sometimes called the future pluperfect continuous, used to describe events that at some future point will have always been true (but are not yet)—hitherto known to appear only in the synthetic dogmas of the Thanatographical Society, and in certain highly circumscribed religious contexts—has suggested to some scholars that the Slow Book was originally intended for ritual use, but the proximity of the usage to a term designating a small hand plow that, as Pott and Mielcke have convincingly shown, would have borne a distinctly obscene double meaning in its culture of origin in the author’s time, argues otherwise. It is likewise unclear whether the situation that seems to be—with teasing incompleteness—sketched out in these few lines is intended as an illustration of general principles, a case study, a dramatic scene, or an extended metaphor. In short, we have no idea what The Slow Book is about. In our own time, we believe that it is almost certainly a work of fiction, but that may be because we live in the century of “if”. In each age, perhaps, we see the book we most need to read. Some have dared to suggest that the metal strip is blank until, with millennial fanfare, it advances into its new position, that no ur-text exists, that the book itself is brought into being—written—by our need. But that is exactly the sort of thing we would believe, in 7645. Shelley Jackson is the author of the story collection The Melancholy of Anatomy , the novel Half Life , and hypertexts including Patchwork Girl . The recipient of a Howard Foundation grant, a Pushcart Prize, and the 2006 James Tiptree Jr Award, she has also written and illustrated several children's books, including The Old Woman and the Wave ; Sophia, the Alchemist's Dog ; and Mimi's Dada Catifesto . Her stories and essays have appeared in Conjunctions , McSweeney's , The Paris Review , and Cabinet Magazine . In 2004 she launched her project SKIN , a story published in tattoos on 2095 volunteers. THE BOOK OF SOUNDS The Book of Sounds is just that: a book of sounds made when letters are construed in new ways to bring forth out of the alphabet new forms of speech. A book meant to be read out loud, The Book of Sounds is not unlike Laurie Anderson's O Superman or Brian Eno's Music for Airports in its attempt to make music out of the most primary and simplest of methods. It breaks language down to its barest bones and makes out of the page a drum that has never before been beaten upon. Peter Markus is the author of a novel, Bob, or Man on Boat (Dzanc Books) as well as two books of short fiction, Good, Brother and The Singing Fish , both of which were published by Calamari Press. A new collection of stories, We Make Mud , is now available from Dzanc Books. PARADISE OF THE BLIND by Celan Solen Although the reclusive Celan Solen published his first and only book in 1963—paying out-of-pocket for a limited edition of the slim collection No One May Have the Same Knowledge Again —he remained in American obscurity for almost three decades. In 1992 a micro-press in Istanbul brought out No One in Turkish. A German translation followed in 1995. Soon it became clear in literary circles Solen was a world-class (if highly unclassifiable) artist—lyrical, dense, enigmatic—who could undo the conventional short story in 397 words by inventing impossible worlds housed in impossible whirls (in “Small Sadnesses,” a single chartreuse tree frog in Borneo unknowingly holds time together by its very presence in the universe, while each letter of its tale refers, not to itself, but to the one preceding it in the alphabet). By his disappearance last year, Solen was considered master by a generation of writers and critics (except, alas, for those gentlemen in the Swedish Academy). Imagine, then, that generation’s delight at the discovery, locked away in the author’s safe-deposit box, of his second and final composition. Had Lynch’s Lost Highway been book instead of film, and had it been penned by Beckett at his least certain, revised by Barthelme at his most formally deranged, and typeset by Derrida at his most semiotically catastrophic, the result might have been something like Paradise of the Blind : interlacing narratives of a man composed of borrowed organs (whose most cheerless and difficult to locate, god, could only have been invented by an empty heart), a nonexistent medieval painting blamed for the ruin of future hope, and the spread of a philosophy that holds earth a mistake constantly recurring in the dream of a fish lying on the floor of the Atlantic (if the fish wakes, our world winks off)—all contained in a text packed with typed-over passages, torn postcards, poems that can be deciphered only when held up to a mirror, pages ornamented with trompe-l'œil paperclips and coffee stains and buzzing houseflies, some busy with illegible runes that dissolve when exposed to light, three that smell like roses or lemons (depending on whether a man or woman is reading), two that stain with the bloody fingerprints of the those who handle them, one that ignites when brushed with breath, thirteen sewn from baby skin, one that moans when touched, and one that screams—yet all without mass, unimaginable, and invisible. Lance Olsen is author of more than 20 books of and about innovative fiction, including, most recently, the novels Calendar of Regrets (2010) and Head in Flames (2009). He teaches experimental narrative theory and practice at the University of Utah. SUPERSTRUCTURE! by Barbara D'Albi As soon as I opened the third drawer of Barbara D'Albi's wooden novel, everything became hopeless. Now in Ithaca, there was no going back. And it wasn't just the intricate series of shelves, hinged doors and locked drawers which D'Albi layered into the book, no, lo, I was constructed anew by the story. Who else but D'Albi to imagine a God who becomes a carpenter and gets killed?! And makes it good! You want stories? D'Albi is a skyscraper, built with planes and levers. Momentarily I wondered where I could shelve this book, and then I thought: no matter; I couldn't put it down. Adam Robinson lives in Baltimore, where he runs Publishing Genius. He is the author of Adam Robison and Other Poems and Say, Poem. 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Street art has exploded: it pervades our back alleys, surrounds us at bus-stops, covers billboards, competes with advertising and generally serves as urban wallpaper in most cities. But what is street art? A far cry from mere graffiti, street art has gained some social acceptance, but it remains neither officially sanctioned like public art, nor institutionally condoned, like its more traditional artistic cousins in museums. Somewhere in between these two extremes, street art has emerged, occupying a metaphysically suspect grey area (...) between illegal activity and bona fide art. This paper explores the nature of this emerging art form and draws out some of the differences between street art, public art and ‘mere’ graffiti. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Children in the Visual Arts of Imperial RomeJenifer NeilsJeannine Diddle Uzzi. Children in the Visual Arts of Imperial Rome. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. xiv + 252 pp. 75 black-and-white ills. Cloth, $80.As anyone who has looked at images of the Christ Child in early medieval art or Baroque portraits of young royalty knows, the imagery of children is highly constructed and a minefield of interpretive challenges. In (...) classical art, [End Page 289] representations of children are never as straightforward as they might at first seem. A girl on a swing painted on an Athenian vase, for instance, is not an innocent child at play but an expiation rite for Erigone, the daughter of Ikarios, who after her father's murder committed suicide by hanging herself. Except for funerary memorials, children are rare in classical art, and their presence usually connotes a special event or situation, often one with dire consequences. The earliest images of children in Greek art are those shown on Geometric funerary vases mourning a dead parent or the slaughter of the innocents at Troy. Likewise, in Roman art children appear not as principal players but as adjuncts to ceremonial events or military exploits.Although ancient Roman childhood has been thoroughly investigated of late, most notably by the social historian Beryl Rawson, studies of the depictions of children in Roman art are not numerous. By its title, Uzzi's book might seem to fill the void, but its contents are limited to children depicted on coins, historical reliefs, sarcophagi, and one silver vessel—some one hundred thirty in all. Chronologically it covers the reign of Augustus to the Severan dynasty, and it excludes as much it includes, namely, mythological children, slaves, camilli/ae, and, perhaps most surprisingly since the author claims to examine only official art, children who can be identified as members of the imperial family. A more apt title might be something like Narratives of Roman Identity: Roman and Non-Roman Children on Historical Reliefs.The basic premise of this book is the visual distinction between Roman and non-Roman children, which Uzzi relates to narratives of inclusion and exclusion—or, what it means to be Roman. In brief, Roman children are generally shown with their fathers in public rituals such as those of imperial largesse (congiarium, alimenta, liberalitas), adlocutiones, processions, games, and sacrifices. By contrast non-Roman children are depicted in rites of submission, as captives in triumphal processions, and in scenes of military activity often with their mothers (e.g., on the two helic columns in Rome). These distinctions are particularly evident on the Column of Trajan because it includes scenes of both Roman and non-Roman children. Scene XCI uniquely shows both together in a scene of sacrifice made upon the arrival of the emperor: three children in Roman dress are accompanied by male figures at the front, nearest to Trajan, while the three provincial children, in non-Roman attire, are farther back with women. While it is not surprising among the Dacians to find only mothers tending their children (all the able-bodied fathers presumably being actively engaged in combat), it is noteworthy that Roman children, both boys and girls, make public appearances with their fathers in Dacian territory. Are they simply led out to see the emperor (as we line up our children to see the presidential motorcade) or is there another agenda here, a process of Romanization, as Uzzi suggests?In the introductory chapter, Uzzi considers modern theories and definitions of nationhood, setting the background for her inquiry into Roman identity. In the next chapter, entitled "Primary Sources," she in fact surveys the secondary literature on Roman children and their imagery (Rawson, Currie, Kleiner), [End Page 290] various methodological approaches to Roman art (Zanker, Evans, Gregory, Hannestad, Brilliant, Beard), and definitions of childhood (Carp, Eyben, Pleket, Locke, Foucault). She then goes on to identify markers of ethnicity, namely, hairstyle and costume. For the purposes of this study she identifies children as "those figures who are approximately one-half to two-thirds the size of adults of the same gender (if known), with round faces and bodies (again, if possible to determine), and without... (shrink)

The "art of being free" is an essential part of democracy. It involves, Mark Reinhardt believes, bringing into being the multiple spaces in and practices through which individuals and groups help to constitute their lives, their selves, their worlds. Americans are presently witnessing a contraction of officially sanctioned spaces for citizen action. It is now crucial, Reinhardt argues, to identify ways of opening new spaces for the direct practice of democratic politics. Reinhardt treats the writings of Alexis de Tocqueville, Karl (...) Marx, and Hannah Arendt as exemplary sources for an expansion of political possibility. These writers indicate where and how the new spaces can be brought into being, and they reveal acts of making space as some of the prime moments of politics. Reinhardt's extended readings of these writers, never previously treated together, are quite unlike the familiar understandings of their thought. "Taking liberties," he brings the literary and political sensibility usually associated with postmodernism to a sympathetic if critical encounter with eminently modern thinkers. The result is a strong and idiosyncratic book, accessible and stylish, that mixes acute readings of canonical thinkers with more practical applications and illustrations. Reinhardt combines attention to textual detail and nuance with concern for contemporary politics, discussing as an unusually inventive example the AIDS activist group ACT UP. (shrink)

What is street art? This paper offers a definition of street art as an art kind or art form based on its essential value: its subversiveness. It argues that street art is essentially subversive in virtue of using public space as a technical resource. By hijacking a portion of the urban landscape with its colourful forms and witty designs, street art challenges familiar ways of practising the city, while creating a ‘temporary autonomous zone’ of free expression. There, corporate control over (...) the city’s visible surfaces is ridiculed and people reclaim their right to use the city. In this sense, street art functions as a carnivalesque tactic of social resistance, favouring the emergence of alternative ways to imagine our urban life and our uses of public space. By considering its subversiveness, one can also explain how street art (i) significantly differs from official public art; (ii) includes graffiti as its original and most radical style. (shrink)

In recent years, inter-medial studies have attracted increasing attention in arts theory. The notion of 'inter-mediality' presupposes that each established art - such as theatre, painting, and cinema - indicates the existence of a particular medium, which preserves its distinct features in translations from art to art and, especially, in its combinations with others in single works. Nonetheless, this field of research is presupposed already in the traditional studies of 'ekphrasis', which focus on the verbal accounts of nonverbal works of (...) art; and in Wagner's notion of Gesamtkuntswerk. This renewed interest generated new fields of research, such as (a) the likelihood of the arts reflecting common grounds; (b) the necessity of a shared metalanguage; (b) the possibility of inter-medial translation; and (d) the inter-medial coexistence within a single work of art, without hindering the reading, interpreting and experiencing abilities of receivers. In honor of Eli Rozik, Ph.D., professor emeritus, former head of the Department of Theatre Studies, and Dean of the Faculty of Arts, Tel Aviv University, this collection provides overviews of all these theoretical issues, and tackles the contemporary practical questions that arise from attempts to transgress the boundaries between the established disciplines of arts studies. Considering first the theoretical aspects of inter-art, inter-mediality, and nonverbal literacy, Exploring the Common Grounds of the Arts goes on to discuss by means of performance analysis; dialogues between the arts within a single work; and correspondences between visual and auditory stimuli in musical contexts. It concludes with a discussion of practical examples of inter-mediality in religious representations, official processions, and public performances. (shrink)

It is about analyzing the connection between just memory, narration and art, using an approach that mixes philosophy and visual arts. We will start from the perspective of the French philosopher Paul Ricoeur on fair memory, presented in his work Memory, History, Oblivion (2000), according to which there is an institutionalized ideologization of memory in which narrations are silenced or distorted by the so-called official history. In the process of recovering fair memory, these narratives need to be heard, recognized (...) and valued, deconstructing abusive mechanisms that silence them with the aim of producing oblivion or that manipulate them involve distorting the facts to benefit hegemonic discourses. Next, we will discuss how the myth of Brazilian racial democracy is an example of institutionalized ideologization of memory, considering mainly the reflections of Brazilian philosophy Sueli Carneiro in Device of raciality (2023). Finally, we will show how Elian Almeida's pictorial counter-narratives, especially the Vogue series (2020), work to strengthen and disseminate unofficial narratives about Brazil that have been suffocated by official history. (shrink)

The State, envisioning a social function reserved for the fine arts, is engaged in driving the artistic destinies of the country. These politics were imposed as the example of a religion of the state. . . . But the slow instruction of the masses that has endured since 1908 deviated from the interest of our artists that was formed in the course of these twenty-three years.The cooperative movement began in Egypt in 1908, but up to now it has not taken (...) the necessary steps. Among the reasons are the sluggish ignorance of the masses, and its neglect by the elite and its weakness of character. The chief cause is that the cooperative movement is mostly official, for which civil servants work, and the civil servants do .. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Art of Forgetting: Disgrace and Oblivion in Roman Political CultureCynthia DamonHarriet I. Flower. The Art of Forgetting: Disgrace and Oblivion in Roman Political Culture. Studies in the History of Greece and Rome. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006. xxiv + 400 pp. 75 black-and-white ills. 1 map. Cloth. $59.95.Despite its title, this book is not really about forgetting. Forgetting, as Tacitus knew to his cost, (...) cannot be done to order, whether the order be one's own or another's. Erasure, rather. Indeed erasures of a wide variety, from official memory sanctions mandating the removal of names from inscriptions and imagines from funerals, to spontaneous erasures on or of monuments associated with the disgraced, to literary attacks targeting posthumous reputations. The emphasis is on the first category; the book is structured around a chronological survey of official memory sanctions and the physical traces thereof from the early Republic [End Page 599] up to the first year of the principate of Antoninus Pius, but the other types are well integrated into the discussion. The Art of Forgetting is a fascinating study of the battle between the living and the dead or disgraced for prime turf in the memory space of the Roman elite.As with so much of Roman history as we can know it, the "memory wars" and "memory games" treated in this book are an elite phenomenon. The erasures discussed (and, happily, often pictured) here are most accessible to us when they are accomplished in the same enduring media to which the Roman elite entrusted its public record and reputation. The title of Flower's first chapter, "Clementis' Hat," alluding to the chance survival of a photographic testimonial for Czech politician Vladimir Clementis, captures Flower's early assertion that we can only know the incompletely successful erasures (12), but this seems to me to collapse an essential distinction, preserved elsewhere in the book, including its subtitle, between memory and reputation. The senate-mandated erasure of the man accused of Germanicus' murder is accomplished both by chiseling his name out of the dedication of a statue of Germanicus and by chiseling it into the empire-wide inscriptions on which the senate's verdict in his trial was recorded. The former deprives him of prime memory space; the latter assigns him space on the wrong side of the tracks, so to speak. Both oblivion and disgrace are weapons in the memory wars, and their relative salience varies.The chronological survey of the Roman evidence is preceded by a contextualizing chapter on memory sanctions in the Greek world, particularly in the Hellenistic world, in which Rome's elite saw first hand the battles over what went into the monumental record that followed (or even preceded) battles for territory. Early-attested sanctions such as the razing of a disgraced person's house seem to combine practical and symbolic ends: displacement of the individual and his immediate family and erasure of an avatar. The record of sanctions in democratic Athens, which adds to house-razing the expulsion of remains and the erection of stelai publicizing the names and crimes of offenders against the demos, already shows the complementary effects of oblivion and disgrace later exploited at Rome. A helpful distinction is drawn between amnesties such as that of 403 B.C.E. Athens, in which "a new start was made by promising not to use the past as a political weapon" (23), and the kind of memory politics manifested in sanctions. The discussion of the Hellenistic world establishes the connection, later relevant to the treatment of Rome's imperial women, between extravagant honors and harsh penalties in the symbolic realm: in the rhetoric of relations between cities and kings, for example, a ruler in favor is honored as a god, while a ruler out of favor may find his cult appropriated, his record erased, and his memory cursed.Rome had its own long-standing traditions of memory sanctions. Or at least by the Augustan age it felt it had. Chapter 3 tries to get back beyond the triumviral phase of Roman memory sanctions, citing fifth- and fourth-century house-razings for "citizen traitors" (45... (shrink)

In his book Byzantine Art in the Making; Main Lines of Stylistic Development in Mediterranean Art 3 rd–7 th Century, Ernst Kitzinger describes three types of subjects represented in a group of ivory plaques most likely executed in the same Roman workshop c. 400. He begins with the famous pair of ivory panels inscribed with the names Nicomachi (Paris, Musée Cluny) and Symmachi (London, Victoria and Albert Museum), two of the old Roman senatorial families known for their efforts and actions (...) to preserve and protect pagan rites during the final decades of the fourth century in Rome [fig. 1]. Each of the two panels shows a priestess performing a rite before an altar. Kitzinger's main interest was in the classicistic style of the settings and figures, recruited to emphasize the patrons' purposes. He compares the priestess diptych with the official ivory diptych of Rufius Probianus. There in each part Probianus, vicarius of the city of Rome, is seen seated on a throne flanked by two notaries [fig. 2]. Below, two patricians stand in acclamation pose. The devotional pair of ivories and the official one, says Kitzinger, are closely related. The borders of the first diptych, made of “delicately wrought palmette ornament” are identical with the frames of the second one, including the borders dividing the Probianus panels into upper and lower zones. (shrink)

Preview: /Commentary: Richard Shusterman, Ars Erotica: Sex and Somaesthetics in the Classical Arts of Love, 436 pages./ I think “it is official” now. Ars Erotica will become some sort of classic. There are several reasons why. Some, just cannot stop giggling when they hear the word sex. Many will grab the book out of curiosity, and maybe some, although I do not believe that many, will even do it for camp reasons. Many of these readers have a neurotic and/or (...) complicated relationship to sexuality, and hopefully at least some of them will find the book helpful, as they reflect on themselves and their sexual lives through the text. On the other hand, I cannot imagine anyone in aesthetics or with a scholarly interest in sexuality who would not find the book helpful. Nothing comparable on the relationship of aesthetics and sexuality has been done and the book embraces the topic globally – featuring Shusterman’s vast and deep knowledge – about not just Western philosophy and culture, but also Chinese and Japanese thinking among others. (shrink)

Not long before the change of Government in Britain in 1997, the then Heritage Secretary, Virginia Bottomley, made a speech in which she praised British contemporary art, describing it as the most exciting and innovatory in the world. Unexciting as it seemed, her observation was profoundly innovatory, indeed in its small way historic. To my knowledge no British Cabinet Minister, still less a Conservative, has ever given an official seal of approval to what is conventionally regarded as avant-garde art. (...) The Labour Government has echoed its predecessor's praise at a higher volume, as if determined to out-do it. The sanctification by the state of works of contemporary art has now become part of the discourse of officialdom. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This article advances a critical approach to the analysis of social policy texts drawing on the philosophical perspectives of hyperrealism, surrealism, ethics, and Critical Discourse Analysis. Drawing on official government texts and speeches on the continuing development of Singapore’s education policy, the paper examines the way metaphors of flexibility, diversity, choice, and opportunity are used within an evolving ideological context that work to continually produce truth conditions as justifications for inequality. In doing this, the analysis foregrounds a functional (...) aspect of policy metaphors as divisive mechanisms of neo-liberalism through associating individuals with the appearance of discriminatory forms of economic materiality which does not in fact exist in reality. (shrink)

This book reveals how, when, where and why vitalism and its relationship to new scientific theories, philosophies and concepts of energy became seminal from the fin de siècle until the Second World War for such Modernists as Sophie Tauber-Arp, Hugo Ball, Juliette Bisson, Eva Carrière, Salvador Dalì, Robert Delaunay, Marcel Duchamp, Edvard Munch, Picasso, Yves Tanguy, Gino Severini and John Cage. For them Vitalism entailed the conception of life as a constant process of metamorphosis impelled by the free flow of (...) energies, imaginings, intuition and memories, unconstrained by mechanistic materialism and chronometric imperatives, to generate what the philosopher Henri Bergson aptly called Creative Evolution. Following the three main dimensions of Vitalist Modernism, the first part of this book reveals how biovitalism at the fin de siècle entailed the pursuit of corporeal regeneration through absorption in raw nature, wholesome environments, aquatic therapies, electromagnetism, heliotherapy, modern sports, particularly rugby; water sports, the Olympic Games and physical culture to energize the human body and vitalize its life force. This is illuminated by artists as geoculturally diverse as Gustave Caillebotte, Thomas Eakins, Munch and Albert Gleizes. The second part illuminates how simultaneously vitalism became aligned with anthroposophy, esotericism, magnetism, occultism, parapsychology, spiritism, theosophy and what Bergson called "psychic states", alongside such new sciences as electromagnetism, radiology and the Fourth Dimension, as captured by such artists as Juliette Bisson, Giacomo Balla, Albert Besnard, Umberto Boccioni, Eva Carrière, John Gerrard Keulemans, László Mohology-Nagy, James Tissot, Albert von Schrenck Notzing and Picasso. During and after the devastation of the First World War, the third part explores how Vitalism, particularly Bergson's theory of becoming, became associated with Dadaist, Neo-Dadaist and Surrealist notions of amorality, atemporality, dysfunctionality, entropy, irrationality, inversion, negation and the nonsensical captured by Hans Arp, Charlie Chaplin, Theo Van Doesburg, Kazimir Malevich, Kurt Schwitters and Vladimir Tatlin alongside Cage's concept of Nothing. After investigating the widespread engagement with Bergson's philosophies, Vitalism and art by Anarchists, Marxists and Communists during and after the First World War, it concludes with the official rejection of Bergson and any form of Vitalism in the Soviet Union under Stalin. This book will be of vital interest to gallery, exhibition and museum curators and visitors plus readers and scholars working in art history, art theory, cultural studies, modernist studies, occult studies, European art and literature, health, histories of science, philosophy, psychology, sociology, sport studies, heritage studies, museum studies and curatorship. (shrink)

Since the mid-20th century, there has been a noticeable shift of interest in topics related to disability, illness, old age and the discourse of exclusion, both in practice and theory. Numerous artists, who often employed diverse strategies and aesthetics in their works, would confront similar themes, engaging in activities aimed at counteracting various forms and manifestations of social ostracism. This article describes and analyzes selected projects by Polish representatives of critical art and independent theatre which address these issues. The primary (...) aim of this text is not to catalogue as many artistic undertakings as possible but to highlight a certain trend and demonstrate the significance and purpose of art that boldly explores disability, illness, and deteriorating, ageing and dying bodies. Such themes are often taboo in consumer culture, while the task of art is to expose the mechanisms of exclusion and stigmatization and to draw public attention—often in a highly debatable manner—to topics that are omitted in the official discourse. The artistic projects discussed in the text demonstrate that persons with disabilities can be successful artists, dancers, performers, and actors. (shrink)

This article analyses the interplay between the International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements (IFOAM) standard, Buddhist socio-economic imaginaries, and values within the global production network (GPN) of organic rice. It asks, _“How do transnational standardisation and local values interact in the global production network of organic rice?”_ Little research has been conducted on the imaginaries and values embedded in the GPNs of organic food. This research aims to fill this gap by examining the transition to organic agriculture among two prominent (...) organic rice farming communities in Thailand, namely the Naso Producer Group and the Ban Thap Thai Organic Agricultural Cooperative. The article draws on a combination of desk research; interviews with governmental and non-governmental officials, standard experts/certifiers, and representatives of the IFOAM; focus group discussions and photo-elicitation sessions with organic rice farmers; on-site observations; and participant observations of mindfulness meditation courses and interviews with Buddhist monks. The results show that Buddhist socio-economic imaginaries have informed the way in which Thai organic rice farmers reconnect to their arable land through an organic farming method, enabling them to live meaningfully and mindfully. This implies that the connectivity of the GPNs of organic rice is not created purely by standards and certifications formulated by transnational private actors; rather, it is also shaped to a large extent by community values and shifts in local mindsets. This article contributes to the literature on food philosophy in the developing world and the governance of the GPNs of organic rice. (shrink)

This article focuses on the complex ways in which artistic innovation and creativity have been fostered by the experience of living in late apartheid and post-apartheid society. It argues that contemporary South African artists, film-makers and performers have developed highly inventive formal and conceptual vocabularies in their effort to negotiate the ever-changing landscape of contradictory and sometimes irreconcilable realities they encounter on a daily basis, often attaining major international acclaim in the process. Blurring the boundaries between long-established artistic genres, and (...) challenging racial, sexual and other stereotypes, they have refused to abandon the hope of achieving the ideals of a renewal and respacialization of the current socio-cultural landscape. Many of them have done so against the odds of vociferous opprobrium from state officials and legal challenges by the ANC, which in recent years has questioned the right to freedom of expression of a number of artists. (shrink)

The article is devoted to the exhibition and creative activities of representatives of the Juelan Society and figures of Soviet unofficial art – a comparative analysis allows us to see common points regarding the choice of artistic means and techniques, themes and motives, the fate of creative associations. The purpose of the article is to determine the similarities and differences of the process of the origin of unofficial art in China and Soviet Russia. The author's field of attention includes identifying (...) similarities in the choice of genre, composition, artistic means, as well as the semantic content of the images revealed in the works of artists. It is important for the disclosure of the topic to determine the features and common features in the organization of creative activity and communication between members of artistic associations. The study concluded that Chinese and Soviet figures of unofficial art rallied around small associations, "circles", clubs, societies, offering an alternative to the official and, from their point of view, regressive art view of independent creativity. The artists of the Juelan Society sought to instill a modernist vision in Chinese culture, and Soviet conformists decades later developed their own understanding of contemporary art. Their attempts had a strong influence on the work of Chinese painters of subsequent generations and became a phenomenon in the art of their countries, still have an impact on its development. Their ideas and creative findings are the sources of the processes that take place in the artistic worlds that cooperate in the field of culture of Russia and China. (shrink)

The National Institute of Science and the Arts, founded in 1795, consists of parallel academies, concerned with science, literature, the visual arts and so on. In the nineteenth century it represented a unique government-sponsored intellectual authority and a supreme court judgement, a power which came to be resented by innovators of all kinds. The Académie des sciences held a virtual monopoly in representing French science but soon this came to be challenged. In the period of the Second Empire we find (...) a group of men carving out a new career for themselves as professional popularizers of science, commissioned to write regular articles in newspapers and journals. Although they had begun by simply reporting the meetings of the Académie des sciences, they soon widened their scope and even began criticizing the august Académie. Thus they represented the alternative voice of science, distinct from ‘official science’. These independent writers had their counterpart in painting and literature, both of which were developing radical new approaches in mid-century. When the very traditional Fine Art Academy refused to consider their paintings, painters like Cézanne and Manet found an alternative outlet. Writers too asserted their independence from the Académie française. There were not only many parallels between the independent practitioners in science, painting and literature but also new schools of ‘naturalism’ in painting and literature which looked to science as a model. (shrink)

One of the most significant developments in the art world of the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s has been the rise to prominence of art made by minority cultures. Race, Sex, and Gender examines the controversial challenges these groups present to today's artists and critics. Works by African-Americans, feminists, homosexuals, and Latino-Hispanics - once considered marginal - have come to transform contemporary art. As this so-called minority art has moved into a more dominant position, museums - once official symbols of (...) culture - have formed a more secure alliance with the avant-garde. The result is that "minority" art has become, in effect, our most major concern. In this provocative volume, art historian Edward Lucie-Smith seeks to determine how these different groups came to acclaim, and how they have revolutionized the kind of art shown in museums and galleries. Cindy Sherman, Robert Mapplethorpe, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Nancy Spero, Hannah Wilke, Larry Fuente, Cheri Samba, and Martin Puryear are among those artists whose work is pictured and discussed as Lucie-Smith probes issues of racial identity, sexual orientation, and gender politics. Statements from the artists as well as from theoreticians and critics are given, offering additional commentaries on these crucial new topics. Organized by profusely illustrated chapters devoted to specific minority groups, Race, Sex, and Gender is a timely introduction to the issues that are shaping contemporary art. (shrink)

The DangShi manor is located in Hejiashi Village, Baijiajian Town approximately 20 kilometers from the southeast part of Suide County, Shaanxi Province, the unique architecture in Qing Dynasty that has been preserved almost intact in Suide County, a great cultural county, and is an officially protected site in Shaanxi Province. By means of field survey, mapping and taking photos and recording in Dangshi manor, this article acquires the abundant first-hand data about carving art of the manor. With the methods of (...) comparison and induction from the holistic perspective and detailed analysis in the local perspective, this article makes a meticulous analysis and study on the style, content, connotation, moulding and technique of carving art of Dangshi manor and discusses characteristics and protection and inheritance value of carving art of Dangshi manor in a systematic way. (shrink)

Introduction. The article examines the role of youth culture (in particular, counterculture and subculture) in reformatting the modern sociocultural space. As long ago asin the 1970s. the researchers pointed out that young people, showing their active position, change the realities of the socio-cultural space in which their parents lived. The research is based on the materials of the graffiti and street art subculture, as an informal artistic practice. The graffiti subculture emerged among African American teenagers in the 1970s in New (...) York City. The first label that this subculture has been endowed with by society and city authorities is vandalism. However, in the late 1970s early 1980s graffiti is involved in the sphere of the art world institutions activities (private galleries) and becomes in demand among collectors. Street art emerges under its influence. The aim of the study is to reveal due to what characteristics of the socio-cultural space the transition from deviation (vandal practice) to the asserting norm became possible. Methods. The methodological basis of the research is the theory of generations by K. Mannheim and his concept of «fresh contact», which indicates the rethinking of the previously assimilated sociocultural experience by the subjects of culture. Another methodological basis is the concept of rhizome, introduced into scientific circulation by the philosophers J. Deleuze and F. Guattari. Scientific novelty of the research. It is shown how the rhizomatic principle of organizing culture is realized during the transition of youth practice from the space of deviant, in accordance with social norms, actions into the institutionalized space of the art world. Results. Using the example of the metamorphosis that the youth subculture of graffiti underwent in the late 20th — early 21st centuries, the author shows how the boundaries between norm and deviation are shifting in modern society. Conclusions. The rhizom principle, clearly manifested in the organization of the space of postmodern culture, allows graffiti and street art to make the above transition. The fall of the great narrative in the art world leads to the loosening of hierarchies and creates an opportunity for the integration of once marginal phenomena into the space of official art. K. Mannheim’s concept of «fresh contact» is effective in the study of postmodern culture. (shrink)

Probably very few people today would believe that, prior to Japan's modernization during the Meiji period, the Japanese were not able to run. It seems commonsensical that human beings should be able to perform the same body movements such as running—since, of course, we are human beings regardless of whether we live in modern countries. However, it appears, in fact, that people in the Edo Period did not run in the sense of how we run today. There was no need, (...) for example, for farmers to run in the midst of their daily agricultural activities.In addition, it has been also pointed out that, although some premodern Japanese, such as samurai or official messengers... (shrink)

The late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries are known as the Age of Enlightenment, a time of science and reason. But in this illuminating book, Paul Monod reveals the surprising extent to which Newton, Boyle, Locke, and other giants of rational thought and empiricism also embraced the spiritual, the magical, and the occult. Although public acceptance of occult and magical practices waxed and waned during this period they survived underground, experiencing a considerable revival in the mid-eighteenth century with the rise of (...) new antiestablishment religious denominations. The occult spilled over into politics with the radicalism of the French Revolution and into literature in early Romanticism. Even when official disapproval was at its strongest, the evidence points to a growing audience for occult publications as well as to subversive popular enthusiasm. Ultimately, finds Monod, the occult was not discarded in favor of “reason” but was incorporated into new forms of learning. In that sense, the occult is part of the modern world, not simply a relic of an unenlightened past, and is still with us today. (shrink)

The Australian Football League (AFL) is the premier sporting competition in Australia in terms of capital outlay, breadth of industry associations, public consumption, and arguably cultural significance. The AFL competition is now a domain of specialisations and interests, which provides vast opportunity for both sporting and non-sporting institutions seeking to utilise the game to capitalise on a society of consumption, entertainment and risk. AFL officials expect high standards of their players both on and off the field. These standards are expressed (...) in various forms of Codes and Policies. Off field player misconduct is an ongoing concern not escaping media attention, which is a resounding indication more needs to be done by the AFL to improve responsible player character development. Whether the current education programmes are sufficient to meet the AFL’s own expectations is the central issue addressed in this chapter. As it stands AFL governance is deficient on several counts. In this chapter I will focus on three governance deficiencies: firstly, the AFL Illicit Drug Policy (IDP) contains unnecessary inconsistencies relative to its primary purpose; secondly, the present measures undertaken to ensure players have appropriate education to achieve the expected character development are far from efficacious and so arguably can be vastly improved; and thirdly, the promotion of live-odds gambling during televised games is culturally problematic and inconsistent with its own demands. The ethical grounds central to this investigation are ‘fairness’ and ‘cultural influence’. In order to resolve some of its governance concerns I will explain why the AFL should be characterised as a practice-community and as such should adopt a comprehensive virtue and value-based compliance ethical education programme consistent with its own vision and conduct expectation of its players and officials. I will argue that the AFL as a practice community is much more than simply a game, given its cultural influence, commercial associations and community programmes. (shrink)

This article surveys Filippo Tommaso Marinetti's social utopia from the inception of Futurism until its end during World War II, contextualizing it in relation to the various diffused anarchistic ideologies of European artists and intellectuals. From the second half of the nineteenth century onward radical politics and the artistic avant-garde were in close dialogue. Max Stirner's individual anarchy held a special appeal to modernist artists, including Gabriele D'Annunzio and Marinetti. Marinetti's aim of renovating Italy's cultural and political life initially led (...) him to glorify the destruction of old institutions. At the end of World War I he developed a more or less coherent utopian vision of a new society, based principally on the exaltation of individual freedom and the importance of art. During the Fascist regime, Marinetti abandoned politics and concentrated his efforts on making the Aerofuturism of the interwar years the official art of Fascism, which the Futurists saw as the fulfillment of their “anarchist” dream. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Painting in Tongues:Faith-Based Languages of Formalist ArtKevin Z. Moore (bio)A philosophical problem is created by the incoherence between the earlier state and the later one.—Ian Hacking, Historical OntologyWhatever is happening to evidence-based treatment? When the facts contravene conventional wisdom, go with the anecdotes?—New York Times, "Science Times," February 14, 2006Cephalopods have a visual language that may be considered artful; humans have written and vocalized languages that are sometimes artful; (...) but it is doubtful that there is such a thing as a "language of art," particularly in the sense that twentieth-century formalists and their critics carelessly speak of one or many. Cephalopods flash color-forms on their hides to communicate intents and emotions, maybe even to project plans. They speak in tattooed tongues through neurologically embossed patterns and color field designs displayed on the skin. The large-eyed sea creatures communicate voicelessly in a visual language of pure color-forms, each species perhaps having its own dialect. Though not a full or official language by any means, their color-forms display the ideal that twentieth-century formalist artists sought to graphically realize (referential and conceptual immediacy, emotional coloring, communication via pure, that is, nonpictorial, form). Formalist inspired artists and their critic-expositors describe abstract pattern-painting as though it were a visual language equal to that of the cephalopod. Yet [End Page 40] although we can reasonably imagine cephalopods getting the correct message by observation, we cannot reasonably imagine observers getting any message at all, let alone the intended message, from abstractionist painting. This casts suspicion on the formalists' claims about visual language. Observers cannot and famously do not get anything "out" of formalist pattern paintings, though they do project quite a lot "into" them. The telling difference between octopus and artist? Cephalopods communicate visually—their survival depends on it. Formalists do not, though the survival and flourishing of their art depends upon the belief that they do.Notably, explanations of what exactly a formalist language of art is goes missing from accounts of sense and reference in the relevant literature, where we learn that this or that painting exhibits this or that language of art but never how this or that painting functions as a language of any sort. The "language of art" phrase, it seems, has the same force as mentioning truth or existence: it explains nothing. Talk of a language of art suggests merely that a painting exhibits a communicative intent; it does not explain how that intent is linguistically mediated. The phrase is ostensive and nominal, not descriptive and expository.Prior to the twentieth century there may have been some justification for this language since art was shaped by objective reference, identifiable codes (sign and symbol systems), and recognizable scenes (compositions) that made painting a language-like public media. Observers could see immediately or "read" paintings by observation as though they were reading a language. Images were shaped by observation; reference was fixed by convention. The formalist revolution in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries dismantled the public character of representation in painting. After the revolution, the new art that appeared was a sort of visual humpty-dumptyism, to invoke a language metaphor. Formalist imagery functioned the way words did for Mr. Carroll's Mr. Dumpty: they meant what the artist intended them to mean and not what observation or convention constrained them to mean. Reference and meaning were as arbitrary as the visual forms chosen to bear them. Once a communicative medium, painting became an expressive medium, the values of the latter superseding those of the former wholly or in part. Even when a formalist painting alluded to a conventional arrangement (a landscape or portrait, for example), the composition was as visually parodic of genre as Mr. Carroll's Jabberwocky was verbally parodic of narrative poetry, preserving syntax (form) but not the integrity of the formal agents of communication. Both are forms of nonsense, yet only one intentionally so.Styles of formalism do not facilitate the observation of intended reference; they are not effective forms of communication because they are not languages. If the basic function of a visual art is to communicate a specific... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Ethics and Economies of Inquiry: Certeau, Theory, and the Art of PracticeTony Schirato (bio) and Jen Webb (bio)In this paper we will look at what Certeau, in The Practice of Everyday Life, calls “Theories of the Art of Practice.” Certeau is perhaps best known as a theorist of the ways in which everyday practices inhabit the institutions and sites of power and official culture, while not being (...) in any sense recuperable or explicable to these “proper places.” In “Theories of the Art of Practice” he concerns himself not with cultural practices themselves but, rather, with the specific relationship between theoretical discourse and the object of that discourse. In order to do this he takes as examples certain cultural theorists—most obviously Foucault and Bourdieu—whose work is strongly underpinned by an emphasis on the relation between discourse and practice. He offers a detailed consideration and critique of their theories of practice and the tactics those theorists use to escape the theory/practice dichotomy.In the first two paragraphs of “Theories of the Art of Practice,” Certeau identifies the two points which, taken together, constitute the broad narrative of this section of Practice. The first relates to the theoretical basis from which we can approach practice. “Everyday practices,” he writes:depend on a vast ensemble which is difficult to delimit but which we may provisionally designate as an ensemble of procedures. The latter are schemas of operations and of technical manipulations. On the basis of some recent and fundamental analyses (those of Foucault, Bourdieu, Vernant and Détienne, and others) it is possible, if not to define them, at least to clarify their functioning relative to discourse (or to “ideology,” as Foucault puts it), to the acquired (Bourdieu’s habitus), and to the form of time we call an occasion (the kairos discussed by Vernant and Détienne). These are different ways of locating a technicity of a certain type and at the same time situating the study of this technicity with respect to current trends in research.[43]An important issue here is Certeau’s critique of the extent to which each theorist applies a specific technicity (Foucault’s disciplinary procedures, Bourdieu’s habitus) in an attempt to delimit the field, to reduce the multiplicity of practice—or the theorizing of practice—to a singularity. As he points out in his essay on Nicholas of Cusa [“The Gaze” 6], such “ways of proceeding are subject to a common problematics,” because they inscribe a particular way of thinking and seeing and, in that process, risk excluding other ways of understanding. However, Cusa’s praxis: [End Page 86]does not presuppose a language proper to theory, an autonomous metalanguage that would provide a distinct linguistic space for speculation.... A task related to each singularity liberates, as it were, and develops... the “impulsion” which is integral to each and which is revealed to be infinite by the very impossibility of finding a hierarchical unity among singularities.[“The Gaze” 7]What Certeau looks for in the work of Bourdieu and Foucault is the moment, or the “impulsion,” which allows a theoretical engagement with practice. If practice can’t be called up, defined, or finally explicated, what can be done is to plot the relationships between power and its structures, logics, places, and discourse and the objects of power (practices) it seeks to identify and regulate. This allows us to identify both how power seeks to exclude the heterogeneity that is practice and the ways in which practice, despite these acts of exclusion and regulation, leaves its mark on official places (discourses, institutions, the objective structures of cultural fields). What Certeau does is to explore how others (Foucault and Bourdieu in particular, Vernant and Détienne) have explored this terrain.The second move Certeau makes is to contextualize those theories of practice, not so much as metadiscourses or generalized maps but as practices themselves, specific to a time and place and informed both by their theoretical antecedents and by the politics, logics, and discourses of the field(s) within which they operate. This allows Certeau to exemplify both how bodies of theory (as well as intellectual fields) come about and develop and... (shrink)

This paper will focus on the discussion of Tolstoy’s ideas in the late 1920s, right after the 100th anniversary of the writer’s birth, by the State Academy for the Study of Arts (GAKhN) (in a collective volume entitled Leo Tolstoy’s Aesthetics, 1929) and by Mikhail Bakhtin (in his two articles written specially for Tolstoy’s Collected Works). These interpretations were notably influenced by the official commemoration of Tolstoy during the anniversary year and by changes in the prevailing Marxist discourse regarding (...) the creative legacy and ideology of the author of War and Peace. (shrink)

It is not well known that in the context of the unofficial artistic and philosophical scene of the ČSSR there was an aesthetically refined and theoretically differentiated reflection on the different degrees and limits of visibility as well as a rethinking of participation – be it aesthetic, epistemic or political. In this paper I first investigate the relation between history and (in)visibility in its broadest sense: questions such as ‘whose history is present’ and ‘what visual memory building strategies are used’ (...) were highly controversial and deeply politicised. For many artists and philosophers such as Zorka Ságlová or Jan Patočka the very act of remembering and the active, critical engagement with (visual) culture and history thus became an act of resistance. I then explore how artists subtly intervened in and transformed the monitored public space, and often tried to undermine given regimes of visibility. I demonstrate that these manifold ‘dissident’ practices engendered new aesthetic experiences and fostered powerful counter-narratives that deconstructed the official propaganda discourse of the communist regime. (shrink)

:In 1751, Zheng Banqiao wrote his famous calligraphy Nande hutu. Inquiries into the calligraphy reveal different dimensions of the saying. Its most popular interpretation can be found in self-improvement books on “the art of being muddled”. What academic, official, and popular discourses on the saying have in common is their dialectical reasoning and frequent references to other popular related sayings, to quotes from the ancient classics, and to ancient heroes and historical figures. This issue will explore a few interpretations (...) of the saying. Some prove to be critical with regard to the application of its underlying wisdom, while others focus on its philosophical, psychological, and/or sociocultural dimension. This issue will also shed light on its pragmatic interpretation as a popular strategy to navigate more positively through life. (shrink)

Dissent has its own special place in art education. It has two stereotypical, polarized faces. The first is a classical institution modelled on Italian and French academies. As official places, they aimed at elevating art to the rank of science and making it an expression and instrument of power. The opposite image of the school is an oasis of intellectual freedom, a space for inventiveness, a place for applying unusual teaching methods and organizing the academic community. The most famous (...) examples are avant-garde acctivities. This historical division is unreliable in fact. Dissent or even rebellion can be an instrument of morality and principles that could be followed. Quite unexpectedly, a peculiar anarchism can be found in the first art academy run by the Carracci. The name ‘academy’ popularized among the Italian humanists and Marsilio Ficinno, drew attention to the informal nature of scientific associations, opposing the fossilized formula of the university existing since the Middle Ages. It is surprising then that Joseph Beuys just created the Free International University. The very name of school and its understanding indicate a significant dichotomy not only in art education, but also in art theory. The point is not that the model of education has simply loosened over time. The above-mentioned facts reflect great disputes about the essence of art, about its relationship with science, everyday life, and practical application. An analysis of specific programs will allow us to see the sense of the mutual connections between rebellion and principles in modernizing artistic education. (shrink)

Using this bit of dialogue from Oscar Wilde as introduction, we propose to demonstrate the pertinence of the hostess’ remark and to show that the “Fin de siècle” really did mark a certain “Fin du globe”, connoting as it does the decline of art, the end of an era and of the eras in which artistic experience, and even experience of the world, was realized in a specific style. It was indeed the end of what we will here call “globe (...) style”.For a long time the notion of style had a very general significance. The origin of the word can no doubt be traced back to the term stilus, designating the punch that monks used for writing, and also probably an Egyptian etymon signifying a pillar. Through metonymic extensions the name of the instrument (an instrument, nevertheless, used in a highly intellectual activity) and the name of the individual work (but a work of cultural and artistic nature) have been subject to generalization and ultimately designate the specific quality of a phenomenon. Obviously it was necessary that this phenomenon be confirmed and made official through imitation and tradition. As for generalization of the phenomenon of style, its scope has become almost unlimited, taking in all forms of creative activity whether artistic or not, and ultimately almost all beings as long as they have assumed a form hallowed by tradition. (shrink)

This contribution presents a research developed in 2007, based on the data gathered during the first Italian meeting of Philosophy for Children which took place in Padua, with the collaboration of the University of Padua. The application forms and the proposals made during the meeting have been used to draw some guide lines of the Italian P4C outline. It is important to underline that this inquiry does not pretend to be complete because some teachers were not able to be present (...) at the meeting and because members of Italian P4C community are increasing every year. For these reasons the portrait presented, even if useful and careful in our opinion, is not complete. The aim of this paper is to describe the different training courses that are present in Italy and that are officially recognized by the Institute for the Advancement of Philosophy for Children and by the International Council for Philosophical Inquiry with Children , and to present a variety of experiences that were realized in Italian regions in 2006/2007. (shrink)

Cet article propose l’étude d’un cas (dans deux films de Fassbinder) de ce que je nomme l’ iconologie nostalgique. Celle-ci consiste en une certaine manière de faire retour, par le cinéma comme outil d’expertise, sur quelques chefs-d’œuvre de l’histoire de la peinture, le film officiant comme révélateur iconique d’invention pour les figures peintes et nous permettant de voir et d’interpréter, par rebonds, le tableau pour la première fois, c’est-à-dire d’un regard jamais actualisé avant l’opération filmique.

In official and unofficial histories, and in cultural memorializations of the 1971 war for Bangladeshi independence, the treatment of women's experiences—more specifically the unresolved question of acknowledgment of and accountability to birangonas, “war heroines” —has met with stunning silence or erasure, on the one hand, or with narratives of abject victimhood, on the other. By contrast, the film Meherjaan revolves around the stories of four women during and after the war, and most centrally the relationship between a Bengali woman (...) and a Pakistani soldier. In this article, I investigate the anxieties underlying the responses to Meherjaan, particularly in association with themes of trauma—its absence or omnipresence—to nonnormative gender frames of national sexuality, and the notion of loving the Other. Drawing from feminist theories of vulnerability, ethics, and love, I want to explore these themes at two levels: the political message the film transmits, and its aesthetic choices and affects. Finally, I want to comment on the potential of this film, as feminist art, in furthering a dialogue around healing and ethical memorialization in relation to 1971 in Bangladesh. (shrink)

Official Dutch food information apparently tries to avoid images but is implicitly shaped by the metaphor that food is fuel. The image of food as fuel and its accompanying view of the body as a machine are not maximally helpful for integrating two important human desires: health and pleasure. At the basis of the split between health and pleasure is the traditional mind–body dichotomy, in which the body is an important source of evil and bodily pleasure is sinful and (...) dangerous. In the search for alternatives, new metaphors are proposed that integrate mind and body as well as pleasure and health. The relevance of metaphors for ethics is at least twofold. (1) Moral thought and theory are at least partly shaped by metaphors. In the light of this growing recognition, the analysis of morality needs innovation. (2) With regard to food, new metaphors, such as slow food, or the image of enjoyment as an art, enable a new search for morally responsible forms of hedonism, based on more love and respect for human as well as animal bodies. But new metaphors are specific and selective, just like old ones. I argue that a search for the best overall metaphor would be misguided, but that more diverse forms of attention to bodily aspects of life, including experiences related to food, will result in richer vocabularies of the body, the mind, and body–mind relations. This holds a promise of moral progress. (shrink)

The official documents of the Parisian Faculty of Arts (starting from the Statute of March 1255) show a close identification between the philosophical sciences and the corresponding textbooks: to learn a particular science means essentially to read certain, prescribed books. The case of theology seems to be different, however. In spite of the fact that the Bible served as a paradigm for the ‘textualization’ of all kinds of knowledge, and even of the whole world, it did not fit perfectly (...) the epistemological criteria which Aristotle’s Posterior analytics established as necessary for every science. Already in the second half of the 13thcentury, both Thomas Aquinas and Henry of Ghent tried to construct theology as a science, in the Aristotelean sense, by appealing respectively to the theory of the subalternation of the sciences and to the doctrine of the lumen medium. The different reactions to these two models by Godfrey of Fontaines, Durandus of Saint-Pourçain and Peter Auriol seem to indicate a process in which theology can constitute itself as a true science only through a broadening of its textual basis, outside the scope of Sacred Scripture. (shrink)

This article describes a logic of distinction and succession within the late-twentieth-century Leningrad-St. Petersburg cultural field, whereby consecutive intelligentsia mainstreams were replaced by their avant-garde peripheries. In this dynamic picture of socio-cultural transformations, I propose a working hypothesis of a repeated stratification of the field into an ‘official’, an ‘unofficial’, and a third ‘non-aligned’ intelligentsia. This hypothesis is tested in reference to the ‘non-aligned’ groups founded by the avant-garde artist and ideologue Timur Novikov (1958–2002). Three major shifts are described: (...) from the politicized late-Brezhnevite early 1980s to the apolitical radicalism of Novikov’s New Artists; from this anarchistic underground, through the perestroika era, to the playful ‘classicism’ of the New Academy of Fine Arts in the 1990s; and from this postmodern international orientation to an arch-reactionary, neo-imperial posturing at the turn of the 2000s. Lastly, this ‘non-aligned’ intelligentsia is suggested as a possible precedent, or, indeed, a model for understanding other historically significant avant-garde peripheries, which commonly seek to distinguish themselves from (often mutually-exclusive) centres. (shrink)

Official Dutch food information apparently tries to avoid images but is implicitly shaped by the metaphor that food is fuel. The image of food as fuel and its accompanying view of the body as a machine are not maximally helpful for integrating two important human desires: health and pleasure. At the basis of the split between health and pleasure is the traditional mind–body dichotomy, in which the body is an important source of evil and bodily pleasure is sinful and (...) dangerous. In the search for alternatives, new metaphors are proposed that integrate mind and body as well as pleasure and health. The relevance of metaphors for ethics is at least twofold. (1) Moral thought and theory are at least partly shaped by metaphors. In the light of this growing recognition, the analysis of morality needs innovation. (2) With regard to food, new metaphors, such as slow food, or the image of enjoyment as an art, enable a new search for morally responsible forms of hedonism, based on more love and respect for human as well as animal bodies. But new metaphors are specific and selective, just like old ones. I argue that a search for the best overall metaphor would be misguided, but that more diverse forms of attention to bodily aspects of life, including experiences related to food, will result in richer vocabularies of the body, the mind, and body–mind relations. This holds a promise of moral progress. (shrink)

In various official documents, the European Union has declared its goal to pursue a citizen-centric governance of digital transformation. Through a critical review of several of these documents, here we show how “citizen-centric” is more a glamouring than a driving concept. De facto, the EU is enabling a federated data system that is corporate-driven, economic-oriented, and GDPR-compliant; in other words, a Digital Single Market (DSM). This leaves out societal and collective-level dimensions of digital transformation—such as social inclusion, digital sovereignty, (...) and environmental sustainability—which are acknowledged, but not operationalized, by the EU as pillars of a citizen-centric governance. Hence, the door is open to a complementary approach to the governance of digital transformation. We argue that, while a federated data model can constitute the tech-legal backbone of the emerging DSM, a commoning of data, as an ecosystemic approach that maintains a societal and collective outlook by default, can represent a complement to enact a truly citizen-centric governance. (shrink)

Currently, our official rationality is still of a Cartesian kind; we are still embedded in a mechanistic order that takes it that separate, countable entities (spatial forms), related logically to each other, are the only ‘things’ that matter to us—an order clearly suited to advances in robotics. Unfortunately, it is an order that renders invisible ‘relational things’, non-objective things that exist in time, in the transitions from one state of affairs to another, things that ‘point’ toward possibilities in the (...) future, which mean something to us. I have called such things, hermeneutical–dialogical ‘things’ as they gradually emerge in our back-and-forth, step-by-step relations to the others and otherneses in our surroundings; they consist in the ‘promissory’ things sustaining our trust in each other and in our authorities, in our social organizations and social institutions, and in our culture. Clearly, we need to understand better, not only what robots can, and cannot do, but also the long-term ethical and political implications of inserting robotic activities into our everyday ways of relating ourselves to our surroundings if we are to avoid the dystopian futures envisaged by some. Descartes’ aim of “making ourselves, as it were, masters and possessors of nature,” forgets our larger task of our making ourselves into human beings—of doing together in dialog what we cannot do apart. (shrink)

Erich Fromm was a political activist, psychologist, psychoanalyst, philosopher, and one of the most important intellectuals of the twentieth century. Known for his theories of personality and political insight, Fromm dissected the sadomasochistic appeal of brutal dictators while also eloquently championing love--which, he insisted, was nothing if it did not involve joyful contact with others and humanity at large. Admired all over the world, Fromm continues to inspire with his message of universal brotherhood and quest for lasting peace. The first (...) systematic study of Fromm's influences and achievements, this biography revisits the thinker's most important works, especially _Escape from Freedom_ and _The Art of Loving_, which conveyed important and complex ideas to millions of readers. The volume recounts Fromm's political activism as a founder and major funder of Amnesty International, the National Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy, and other peace groups. Consulting rare archival materials across the globe, Lawrence J. Friedman reveals Fromm's support for anti-Stalinist democratic movements in Central and Eastern Europe and his efforts to revitalize American democracy. For the first time, readers learn about Fromm's direct contact with high officials in the American government on matters of war and peace while accessing a deeper understanding of his conceptual differences with Freud, his rapport with Neo-Freudians like Karen Horney and Harry Stack Sullivan, and his association with innovative artists, public intellectuals, and world leaders. Friedman elucidates Fromm's key intellectual contributions, especially his innovative concept of "social character," in which social institutions and practices shape the inner psyche, and he clarifies Fromm's conception of love as an acquired skill. Taking full stock of the thinker's historical and global accomplishments, Friedman portrays a man of immense authenticity and spirituality who made life in the twentieth century more humane than it might have been. (shrink)

In the Southeast Asian city-state of Singapore, street artist SKLO has come into conflict with the authorities for her sticker bombing and stenciling. Her arrest foregrounds issues about the socio-cultural resonances and broader value of street art in local public discourse. This article explores SKLO’s praxis vis-à-vis the phenomenon of official graffiti, and its structuring of the tightly regulated public realm. Dubbed the “Sticker Lady,” SKLO has been also referred to as “Singapore’s Banksy” by local and international media. Besides (...) prompting questions regarding the value of street art as expressions of local culture, these references shed light on how the figure of Banksy has become a figure of neoliberal urban aesthetics, especially pertaining to urban entrepreneurialism – a globally circulated signifier of a particular image of street art that sees the attachment of monetary value, celebrity and cool to such artistic works of subversion. These references to Banksy also raise a deeper question: can the Singaporean authorities accept the subversive and political aspects of art as the city-state embarks on a neoliberal agenda to present itself as a considerable player in the global art market? (shrink)