Performative Monuments

This book answers one of the most puzzling questions in contemporary art: how did performance artists of the '60s and '70s, famous for their opposition both to lasting art and the political establishment, become the foremost monument builders of the '80s, '90s and today? Not by selling out, nor by making self-undermining monuments. This book argues that the centrality of performance to monuments and indeed public art in general rests not on its ephemerality or anti-authoritarian rhetoric, but on its power to build interpersonal bonds both personal and social. Specifically, the survival of body art in photographs that cross time and space to meet new audiences makes it literally into a monument. Readers interested in contemporary art, politics, photography and performance will find in this book new facts and arguments for their interconnection.

This book examines the recent trend for re-performance and how this impacts on the relationship between live performance and death. Focusing specifically on examples of performance art the text analyses the relationship between performance, re-performance and death, comparing the process of re-performance to the process of mourning and arguing that both of these are processes of adaptation and survival. Using a variety of case studies, including performances by Ron Athey, Julie Tolentino, Martin O’Brien, Sheree Rose, Jo Spence and Hannah Wilke, the book explores performances which can be considered acts of re-performance, as well as performances which examine some of the critical concerns of re-performance, including notions of illness, loss and death. By drawing upon both philosophical and performance studies discourses the text takes a novel approach to the relationship between re-performance, mourning and death.

From the late 1990s until today, China's sound practice has been developing in an increasingly globalized socio-political-aesthetic milieu, receiving attentions and investments from the art world, music industry and cultural institutes, with nevertheless, its unique acoustic philosophy remaining silent. This book traces the history of sound practice from contemporary Chinese visual art back in the 1980s, to electronic music, which was introduced as a target of critique in the 1950s, to electronic instrument building fever in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and to the origins of both academic and nonacademic electronic and experimental music activities. This expansive tracing of sound in the arts resonates with another goal of this book, to understand sound and its artistic practice through notions informed by Chinese qi-cosmology and qi-philosophy, including notions of resonance, shanshui (mountains-waters), huanghu (elusiveness and evasiveness), and distributed monumentality and anti-monumentality. By turning back to deep history to learn about the meaning and function of sound and listening in ancient China, the book offers a refreshing understanding of the British sinologist Joseph Needham's statement that “Chinese acoustics is acoustics of qi.” and expands existing conceptualization of sound art and contemporary music at large.

This book charts the performative dimension of the Holocaust memorialization culture through a selection of representative artistic, educational, and memorial projects. Performative practice refers to the participatory and performance-like aspects of the Holocaust memorial culture, the transformative potential of such practice, and its impact upon visitors. At its core, performative practice seeks to transform individuals from passive spectators into socially and morally responsible agents. This edited volume explores how performative practices came into being, what impact they exert upon audiences, and how researchers can conceptualise and understand their relevance. In doing so, the contributors to this volume innovatively draw upon existing philosophical considerations of performativity, understandings of performance in relation to performativity, and upon critical insights emerging from visual and participatory arts. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Holocaust Studies: A Journal of Culture and History.

"There is no question that art has played a key role in constructing the public understanding of "America." Probing the intersection of art, nature, race, and place, Temporary Monuments examines how art and artists have responded to this legacy by imagining new ways of constructing notions of land, culture, and public space. Zorach demonstrates how art historical tropes play out through and against the construction of race in a series of real and conceptual spaces that are key to how we imagine this country. Ranging from the museum, the wild, and the monument to the garden, the home, and the border, Temporary Monuments incorporates memoir, historical narrative, literary analysis, and close looking at objects that date from significant moments in American history. Works by artists such as Rebecca Belmore, Dawoud Bey, George Catlin, Theaster Gates, Kerry James Marshall, Dylan Miner, Barnett Newman, Postcommodity, Cauleen Smith, and Amanda Williams help to pry open knotty questions about the relationship between the environment, social justice, history, and identity"--

In response to systemic racism and institutions’ implications in histories of colonialism, nationalism, and exclusion, museum curators have embraced new ways of storytelling to face entangled memories and histories. Critical museum practices have consciously sought to unsettle established forms of representation, break with linear narratives of progress, and experiment with new modes of multivocal, multimedia, and subjective storytelling. The volume features analyses of narratives and narration in museums and heritage institutions today, as well as visions for future museum practices on a local, regional, national, transnational, and global scale. It is divided into three sections: Narrative Theory and Temporality, Ruptures and Repair, and Difficult Memories and Histories. Essays from a variety of disciplines in the humanities and social sciences examine museum practices in history, memorial, anthropological, and art museums across six continents. They develop narratological categories, reflect on immersive and virtual narratives, challenge colonial violence and hegemonic forms of representation, query the performance of heritage, parse exhibition design, and unearth techniques to express narratives of social justice.

Fallen Monuments and Contested Memorials examines how the modification, destruction, or absence of monuments and memorials can be viewed as performative acts that challenge prescribed, embodied narratives in the public realm. Bringing together international, multidisciplinary approaches, the chapters in this volume interrogate the ways in which memorial constructions disclose implicitly and explicitly the proxy battle for public memory and identity, particularly since 2015. Acknowledging the ways in which the past — which is given agency through monuments and memorials — intrudes into daily life, this volume offers perspectives from researchers that answer questions about the roles of monuments and memorials as persistent, yet mutable, works whose meanings are not fixed but are, rather, subject to processes of continual re-interpretation. By using monuments and memorials as lenses through which to view race, memory, and the legacies of war, power, and subjugation, this volume demonstrates how these works, and their visible representations of entitlement, possession, control, and authority, can offer the opportunity to pose and answer questions about whose memory matters and what our symbols say about who we are and what we value. Fallen Monuments and Contested Memorials is essential reading for scholars and students studying cultural heritage, history, art history, and public history. It will be particularly useful to those with an interest in public monuments and memorials; colonial and post-colonial history; memory studies; and nationalism, race, and ethnic studies.

Dutch society has undergone radical changes in recent years, due to complex political, social and ethnic developments. Reframing Dutch Culture examines issues of nationality, ethnicity, culture and identity in The Netherlands from an ethnological perspective, linking past traditions and notions of identity with more recent transformations. Weaving in a range of fascinating case studies, contributors provide an interdisciplinary analysis of these changes. The developments are related to wider European and global transformation processes, highlighting the contribution of Dutch ethnology to the international debate. This timely collection provides a fascinating and insightful window on modern Dutch society.