The Uses Of History (and contemporary Art) week 3

Hi,
thanks for your attendance last week. Hopefully it was clear that we were referring occasionally back to the first session (when I glossed my PhD extract called 'Giving Forms To History') then lightly reading through Bourriaud's 'Altermodern' essay to see how he is linking a rejuvenation of History to contemporary artist's practices.

We then went off on a reading tangent, looking at the art of Jimmie Durham and comparing his museological works with a nice extract from J.D, Sallinger's classic American novella 'The Catcher In The Rye'. I'm not sure what I expect you to do with that but I like the qualities of the link and the way that stories keep getting wrapped up with histories, literature with art and history etc. -enjoy' as they say.

Durham's recent car pieces were used as a great example of the way that the passage of time has very different values in different cultures, while the earth and its inhabitants may also have very different 'notions' of time, so that we might not call them 'History' at all.

The idea that history may not be to do with the past but what we called 'the consequences of the present' was illustrated, both by Durham's works and by the clearly political or ethical purposes of Bourriad's writing.

Finally we read some of W.G. Sebald's 'Rings Of Saturn' which nicely linked the theme of 'combustion' as a historical force in both Durham and Bourriaud.
We ran out of time before getting to read Sebald's epiphany scene in Austerlitz, so I hope you have been able to read that during the week. It is a wonderful thing.

This week, we can start by reflecting on all this, and then I want to turn to what will necessarily be a very close and shared reading of Walter Benjamin's 'Theses on a Philosophy of History'. You can find it in the collection 'Illuminations' and elsewhere but I will again provide photocopies.

Actually, there are many links to the whole texts and numerous debating sites, but here is one that looks easy to use -perhaps we can use it in class because what I am hoping to do is see if you can hare my enthusiasm for solving these riddling little paragraphs (aphorisms) of Benjamin's and feeling your mind bend about History as you do so:
http://www.sfu.ca/~andrewf/CONCEPT2.html#Carthage

We will need to clarify the distinction made between 'Historicism' and 'Historical Materialism' running through this text. and it would be good to consider Benjamin's 'Arcades Project', his essay on Surrealism, and his relationship to History, modernity and theology in general if we have time.

Hopefully, we will get to talk about Benjamin as a whole, why he has been so influential in the past 20 years, and again, try to find contemporary art and artists who relate to these materials.

Though we seem to be transported back to the 1930s with this text, I hope you will see that its questions, and their unusual form, make their suggestions just as interesting to contemporary art and artists today as they might of been for their time (when in fact they were probably not utilised or appreciated).

Again, we can make clear links between the extremely influential Benjamin and recent cultural contributors like Bourriad and Sebald.

see you on Thursday.