Leeslijst
In the Presence of Absence
Verder lezen — 2 sep 2020 — Fadwa Naamna & Britte Sloothaak
Deze literatuurlijst met introducties en citaten is een bundeling van teksten van schrijvers, kunstenaars, wetenschappers, curatoren, historici en filosofen die zich bezighouden met de thema’s die worden onderzocht in de tentoonstelling In the Presence of Absence: Voorstellen voor de museumcollectie. Deze publicaties behandelen onderwerpen als archiveren, storytelling, geschiedschrijving, cultureel geheugen, kennisproductie en collectie-, selectie- en categoriseringsmethodes.
Mahmoud Darwish, In the Presence of Absence (2011)
Het laatste boek dat Mahmoud Darwish voor zijn dood in 2008 publiceerde bevat zowel poëzie als proza, waarin de auteur nadenkt over leven en dood, thuis en ballingschap, familie, liefde en herinneringen. Darwish’ boek vormde de inspiratie voor de titel voor de gemeentelijke kunstaankopen 2020.
RODNEY CARTER, ‘OF THINGS SAID AND UNSAID: POWER, ARCHIVAL SILENCES, AND POWER IN SILENCE’ (2006)
‘This article examines the dynamics of silence in archives. It argues that silences are, in part, the manifestation of the actions of the powerful in denying the marginal access to archives and that this has a significant impact on the ability of the marginal groups to form social memory and history. Archivists and researchers can read archives “against the grain” and begin to highlight these silences and give voice to the silenced. This, however, may be a difficult and contentious activity and one that should not be entered into lightly. The article then examines how silence can be a method used by the marginalized to deny the archives their records as a way to exercise their power over the powerful.’
CHIMAMANDA NGOZI ADICHE: ‘THE DANGER OF A SINGLE STORY’
Tijdens haar TED Talk in 2009 sprak de Nigeriaanse schrijfster Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie over de gevolgen en gevaren van het terugbrengen van een verhaal tot één dominant narratief. Ze put uit haar eigen ervaringen, zowel in eigen land als daarbuiten, wanneer ze op reis is voor werk of onderzoek.
IRIT ROGOFF, ‘LOOKING AWAY: PARTICIPATIONS IN VISUAL CULTURE’ IN AFTER CRITICISM: NEW RESPONSES TO ART AND PERFORMANCE (2005)
‘It seems to me that within the space of a relatively short period we have been able to move from criticism to critique to criticality - from finding fault, to examining the underlying assumptions that might allow something to appear as a convincing logic (as in the case of all the aforementioned work on and in museums), to operating from an uncertain ground which, while building on critique, wants nevertheless to inhabit culture in a relation other than one of critical analysis; other than one of illuminating flaws, locating elisions, allocating blames.’
ARIELLA AÏSHA AZOULAY, POTENTIAL HISTORY: UNLEARNING IMPERIALISM (2019)
‘In this theoretical tour-de-force, renowned scholar Ariella Aïsha Azoulay calls on us to recognize the imperial foundations of knowledge and to refuse its strictures and its many violences. Azoulay argues that the institutions that make our world, from archives and museums to ideas of sovereignty and human rights to history itself, are all dependent on imperial modes of thinking. Imperialism has segmented populations into differentially governed groups, continually emphasized the possibility of progress while it tries to destroy what came before, and voraciously seeks out the new by sealing the past away in dusty archival boxes and the glass vitrines of museums.’
Gevouwen foto van Palestijnen die in 1948 uit Ramle worden verbannen. Afkomstig uit Ariella Aïsha Azoulay’s tentoonstelling ‘Potential History’, 2012, verschillende locaties. Foto: Michael Paninski. Courtesy Ariella Aïsha Azoulay.
INTERVIEW MET ARIELLA AÏSHA AZOULAY
Azoulay legt uit hoe, door haar manier van werken, ‘[s]he refuses the role of the scholar who, as the expert, assigns meaning and ‘discovers’ new knowledge. In practice, this involves tracing, cropping, cutting, juxtaposing, annotating, and erasing the texts from history’s totalizing narratives.’
HANNAH ARENDT, THE HUMAN CONDITION (1958)
‘A life spent entirely in public, in the presence of others, becomes, as we would say, shallow. While it retains its visibility, it loses the quality of rising into sight from some darker ground which must remain hidden if it is not to lose its depth in a very real, non-subjective sense.’
BERNADETTE ROCA, ‘NARRATING THE COLLECTIVE: MEMORY, POWER, AND ARCHIVAL SPACE’ (2009)
‘Archives as sites of memory production permit and silence various narrative strands in the collective social fabric, and archivists must recognize their role in shaping the archival record. This essay therefore seeks to analyze the current literature on archives and its relation to memory, power and narrative.’
MARGARET TALI, ABSENCE AND DIFFICULT KNOWLEDGE IN CONTEMPORARY ART MUSEUMS (2017)
‘This book analyzes practices of collecting in European art museums from 1989 to the present, arguing that museums actualize absence both consciously and unconsciously, while misrepresentation is an outcome of the absent perspectives and voices of minority community members which are rarely considered in relation to contemporary art. Difficult knowledge is proposed as a way of dealing with absence productively.’
Ariella Aïsha Azoulay, ‘The Potential History of Palestine’, 2013. Foto: Leevetamar. Courtesy Ariella Aïsha Azoulay.
EDWARD SAID, ‘INVENTION, MEMORY, AND PLACE’ (2000)
‘Memory and its representations touch very significantly upon questions of identity, of nationalism, of power and authority. Far from being a neutral exercise in facts and basic truths, the study of history, which of course is the underpinning of memory, both in school and university, is to some considerable extent a nationalist effort premised on the need to construct a desirable loyalty to and insider’s understanding of one’s country, tradition, and faith.’
JUDITH BUTLER, ‘BODIES AND POWER, REVISITED’ IN FEMINISM AND THE FINAL FOUCAULT (2004)
In haar onderzoek naar Foucaults visie op het vraagstuk van lichamen en macht aan de hand van zijn analyse van discipline en straf, probeert Butler de complexe manieren te ontwarren waarmee macht invloed heeft op het lichaam, en uiteindelijk het lichaam creëert en vormt.
WALTER BENJAMIN, ‘IBIZAN SEQUENCE’ (1932)
‘He who seeks to approach his own buried past must conduct himself like a man digging. Above all, he must not be afraid to return again and again to the same matter; to scatter it as one scatters earth, to turn it over as one turns over soil.’
DIETER ROELSTRAETE, ‘THE WAY OF THE SHOVEL: ON THE ARCHEOLOGICAL IMAGINARY IN ART’ (2009)
‘[A]rt has doubtlessly come to the rescue, if not of history itself, then surely of its telling: it is there to ‘remember’ when all else urges us to “forget” and simply look forward—primarily to new products and consumerist fantasies—or, worse still, inward. Indeed, this new mode of discursive art production boasts an imposing critical pedigree, a long history of resistance and refusal: the eminent hallmarks, as we know, of true vanguardism.’
‘KNOWLEDGE AS PRODUCTION: A DIALOGUE WITH LIAM GILLICK’ (2017)
Liam Gillick en Lucy Cotter schetsen een topografie van artistiek onderzoek dat gericht is op kunstproductie, kenniswerk en arbeid.
GLORIA WEKKER, WITTE ONSCHULD: PARADOXEN VAN KOLONIALISME EN RAS (2017)
Een onderzoek naar een centrale paradox in de Nederlandse cultuur: de passie en agressie die ras oproept, terwijl het bestaan van ras en racisme juist wordt ontkend.
BORIS GROYS, ‘TOWARDS A NEW UNIVERSALISM’ (2017)
‘The anti-immigration politics of contemporary New Right parties is an effect of what can be characterized as the territorialization of identity politics. The main presupposition of the ideology of these parties is this: every cultural identity has to have its own territory on which it can and should flourish—undisturbed by influences from other cultural identities. The world is diverse and should be diverse. But the world’s diversity can be guaranteed only by territorial diversity.’
NAV HAQ, ‘THE INVISIBLE AND THE VISIBLE: IDENTITY POLITICS AND THE ECONOMY OF REPRODUCTION IN ART’ (2015)
Als uitgangspunt neemt Haq de vraag: ‘Waar staan we precies als we nadenken over de dynamiek van macht op het gebied van hedendaagse kunst?’ Hij verdiept zich in de kunst-macht-relaties in de institutionele kritiek in de jaren ’60 en ’70, en in de identiteitspolitiek van maatschappelijk en politiek geëngageerde kunstbewegingen.
RASHA SALTI, ‘AROUND THE POSTCOLONY AND THE MUSEUM’ (2015)
‘As the research and its transformation into the “Past Disquiet” exhibition revisited a chapter in the history of artistic practice entrenched in the political engagement of the international anti-imperialist solidarity movement of the 1970s, it did not produce a linear and continuous narrative, but rather show cased speculative histories of a turbulent recent past, while overtly engaging with the issues of oral history, the trappings of memory and writing history in the absence of cogent archives.’
SARA UNSWORTH, CHRISTOPHER SEARS AND PENNY PEXMAN, ‘CULTURAL INFLUENCES ON CATEGORIZATION PROCESSES’ (2005)
Dit artikel beschrijft een sociaal-cognitief experiment over hoe verschillende culturen categorisering of classificering benaderen. Het onderzoek werd uitgevoerd met twee groepen, één Chinese en één westerse. De onderzoekers vroegen de deelnemers van de twee groepen om een aantal verschillende voorwerpen te sorteren, om inzicht te krijgen in de logica van de onderliggende categoriseringsprocessen. Ze ontdekten dat de westerse groep op basis van fysieke gelijkheid categoriseerde, terwijl de Chinese methode uitging van zowel onderlinge relaties als fysieke gelijkheid. Als gevolg daarvan waren de selecties van de Chinese groep meer hybride dan de westerse.
CLÉMENTINE DELISS, ‘COLLECTING LIFE’S UNKNOWN’ (2015)
‘The earlier assumption of epistemological authority does not extend comfortably within the post-colonial situation. One can no longer be content to use earlier examples of material culture for the purpose of depicting cultures, ethnic groups, thereby reasserting the logos of ethnos or an existing range of outdated anthropological themes.’
JELLE BOUWHUIS AND NANCY JOUWE, ‘ONTLEREN IN HET MUSEUM’ (2018)
‘We moeten afstappen van de frames waarmee kunstcollecties in musea tot nu toe zijn beschreven en geïnterpreteerd. In plaats daarvan moet de kolonialiteit zichtbaar worden gemaakt, zodat we die stap voor stap kunnen ontmantelen en daar andere narratieven tegenover kunnen stellen om nieuwe, pluralistische uitgangspunten voor het heden te formuleren.’
ROOPIKA RISAM, ‘COLONIAL VIOLENCE AND THE POSTCOLONIAL DIGITAL ARCHIVE’ (2019)
‘Digital archives have been embraced for their promise of openness and access to knowledge, and they seem to offer possibilities for democratizing collections and expanding the digital cultural record. [….] [T]he promise of digital archives is far from guaranteed, since traces of colonial violence appear within them. In the context of the digital cultural record, digital archives hold both the risk of reaffirming colonial discourse and the promise of challenging it through the development of new archives and design practices.’
GRETCHEN JENNINGS AND JOANNE JONES-RIZZI, ‘MUSEUMS, WHITE PRIVILEGE, AND DIVERSITY: A SYSTEMIC PERSPECTIVE’ (2017)
‘Museums are microcosms of the world around us, ecosystems with their own governments, caste systems, policies, and practices that mirror much of our society at large. [...] [Museums] are, at best, human-centered places, where everyone can see their experiences reflected and can find relevance in the content and the way in which it is presented. [...] Museums at worst are reminders of power and privilege, tangible just moments after stepping into the lobby. Here we don’t see a multitude of human experiences represented, we don’t see people who look like us employed, and there is no context for thinking about the world beyond the doors of the museum.’
LAURA MANDELL, ‘GENDER AND CULTURAL ANALYTICS: FINDING OR MAKING STEREOTYPES?’ (2019)
‘Quantitative analyses in sociology proceeded without feminist input at great cost, leaving the field susceptible to “bad science” and “bad description.” […] Writing on the subject of the visual effect of data visualizations more generally, Johanna Drucker argues that the “representational force” of the image “conceals what the statistician knows very well—that no ‘data’ pre-exist their parameterization. Data are capta, taken not given, constructed as an interpretation of the phenomenal world, not inherent in it.” Datasets are never random samples: they are gathered by humans according to parameters, however complex, hidden, unconscious, and subject to chance they may be.’