Time out of joint : recall and evocation in recent art

2009·3.9 MB·English

by  Whitney Museum of American Art. Edited by Luigi Fassi, Lucy Gallun, and Jakob Schillinger.

Recall and Evocation in Recent Art
Digitized by the Internet Archive
2013
in
http://archive.org/details/timeoutofjointre11whit
Time Out of Joint
Edited by Luigi Fassi, Lucy Gallun,
and Jakob Schillinger
WhitneyMuseumofAmericanArt,NewYork
YaleUniversityPress,NewHavenandLondon
TIME
OUT OF
JOINT
Recall and Evocation in Recent Art

Contents
VI Preface
Artists
Fikret Atay Maryam Jafri
KaderAttia Tellervo Kalleinen &
Yael Bartana Oliver Kochta-Kalleinen
Ronnie Bass Jennifer Phang
Johanna Billing Katefina Seda
Keren Cytter Kevin Willmott
Kajsa Dahlberg
27 KeyWords
Temporality Crisis
Space Hesitation
Ideology Rupture
Evocation
37 Rewriting as Spirit of Cleavage:
Common Sense and Social Transformability
Luigi Fassi
49 Interstitial Potential:
A Conception of Spatio-Temporalities
Lucy Gallun
67 Time is Money and Freedom is Free:
Curatorial Practice, History, and the Erotics of Freedom
Roya Rastegar
85 Recessional Aesthetics:
Artistic Practice and the Chrono-Logic of Capitalism
Jakob Schillinger
107 Works in the Exhibition
109 Acknowledgments
Preface
Toarticulatethepasthistoricallydoesnotmeantorecognize
it"thewayitreallywas."Itmeanstoseizeholdofamemory
asitflashesupatamomentofdanger.
Foreveryimageofthepastthatisnotrecognizedbythepresent
asoneofitsownconcernsthreatenstodisappearirretrievably.
—WalterBenjamin,"ThesesonthePhilosophyofHistory," 1940
Time OutofJointexaminesartisticpracticesthatemployevocationas
a mode ofconnecting the present to the past. By evoking, we mean
the calling forth ofpast emotions, desires, frustrations, and memo-
riesintothepresent.Whiletheconventionalapproachtohistoryisto
put the past ata distance as historical fact, evocation makes the past
present.The artists in this exhibition bring past and present into a
constellationthattransformsboth;the actofevokingmakespossible
a rupture, a condition that challenges historical assumptions and in-
grained systems ofdomination, on both a personal and also a wider
sociopolitical scale.
In otherwords,howwe considerhistory and how we conceive of
the relationship ofthe past, the present, and the future is fundamen-
tally entangled with structures ofpower.Take the rhetoric of"crisis"
for example, so prevalent today, in which political leaders project
images ofa dark future that require the present to be sacrificed in
order to avoid this impending threat.The artists in this exhibition
seek, in unexpected ways, to reclaim this lost present.Through evo-
cation they demonstrate that historical rupture does not just hap-
pen, but neither is it an idea so great and abstract that it lacks any
connection to the individual and the everyday; it is latent in each
moment.To recognize this latency, to understand the connection of
the personal to history, is the precondition to unfolding and activat-
ing this dormant potential and to creating the possibility forradical
change to occur.
Some artists in the exhibition engage with hesitation, not as a dis-
empowering force, but rather as a means ofresistance and a mode
of considering and creating possibilities for change. Other artists
included here are concerned with disrupting social conventions
around individuality, by transforming the personal into the collec-
tive.This union of multiple voices enables collective identification
and sociopolitical awareness. Artists also explore the ideological
Preface
imprints ofparticular places and events.The strategy ofevoking a
specific landmark or momentous past episode works to recall not
onlyitsownparticularities,butalsovisitsanewthepotential ofthese
incidents in the present.
Our curatorial approach is theoretically informed byWalter Ben-
jamin's "Theses on the Philosophy ofHistory." Benjamin points out
thatboth thefunctioningofpowerand radical change are fundamen-
tally entangled with temporality. His concept ofrupture is thus rele-
vantwith regard to thecurrentrhetoric ofcrisis,inwhichthepresent
has nopresence and constantly disappears in the transition to the fu-
ture. In orderto bringabout a rupture that thwarts the chrono-logic
ofcrisis, one must break this suspension ofthe present in the name
ofa future, thereby transforming the present into a space ofaction:
into "the now."This can onlyoccur, Benjaminwrites,through an act
ofevocation that refers the present to the past, to a history of sup-
pressed desires and rights, and counters the invocation of a future.
— —
The act ofcalling forth or evoking past instances (whether these
be instances ofoppression and injustice, or ofstrength) serves to en-
ergize efforts towardchange inthe currentmoment.
We have chosen to contextualize the works ofthis international
group ofemergingartists by, in some cases,showingmore than one
work in orderto give a sense ofartist's practice rather than singling
out a particular piece that "fits" the subject ofthe show.The exhi-
bition thus highlights a shared mode of operating instead of sim-
ply compiling works with ostensibly similar subject matter. In this
catalogue, we introduce the practice of each individual artist or
collective within the specific context of the exhibition, while also
elaborating on the theoretical framework ofthe exhibition through
short entries on several key words. Each of the curators contrib-
utes anessaythatfurtherexpandstheimplicationsofthe exhibition:
Luigi Fassi considers issues ofideology and the Gramscian concept
ofcommon sense; Lucy Gallun discusses the presence ofpossibil-
ity in terms of spatiotemporal conceptions; Roya Rastegar's essay
parallels the Benjaminian framework of our exhibition with femi-
nistintellectual legaciesoftheoriesoffreedomand affect;andJakob
Schillinger takes up the example ofartist Paul Chan to discuss the
religious chrono-logic ofcapitalism and the emancipatorypotential
ofart.We hope that this exhibition and catalogue open a space for
viewers to relate their own experiences and desires, and put forth
the persistentpossibilityofradical change.
TimeOutofJoint