After the Event New Perspectives on Art History

The event occurs in time; the aftermath concerns the traces, which are frozen into images, objects, re-presentations. Traditionally, art history accommodates only the aftermath. A different perspective on the visual arts is opened up when scholars insist on exploring the status of the event itself, allowing temporality to remain in place. By focusing on the event, recognition of the traces becomes all the more evident, producing enhanced emphasis on the notion of representation itself. This book opens up debates on art history and theory to a broad range of perspectives, offering fresh approaches to art history and media culture alongside diverse investigations into cross-cultural and non-Western art practices. The essays draw together a wide and regionally diverse range of scholars from numerous areas, including film and documentary studies, philosophy, intellectual and cultural history, media theory and performance studies, as well as art history and theory.

Charles Merewether is an art historian and Director of the Institute of Contemporary Arts, Singapore. John Potts is Associate Professor in Media, Music and Cultural Studies at Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia.

Introduction Charles Merewether and John Potts * Part One: Rewriting Global Visual Culture *  Boris Groys: Two Cures: Making Art Visible *  Mitchell Dean: Land and Sea: ‘In the Beginning All the World Was America’ * Ackbar Abbas: Migration as Spatial Fantasy * Paul Carter: Masters of the Gap: Art, Migration and Eido-Kinesis * Rex Butler: The World Is Not Enough * Part Two: New Art Histories: Other Modernities * Lolita Jablonskiene: Wins and/or Losses in Recent Eastern European Art History * Zdenka Badovinac: Interrupted Histories * Antje Denner: Aesthetic Experience and the Power of the Network * Lee Weng Choy: Intellectual Activism?:  Crisis and Convening * Part Three: Memory: Documentary and the Archival * Charles Merewether: Archival Futures: On Kawara and the Date From Which All Things Begin, Again * Geeta Kapur: Mortal Remains * Michael Renov: Expressivity: The Art of Documentary Practice * Kathryn Millard: Documentary in the Age of the Remix * Laleen Jayamanne: Contact Lenses: Cinaesthesia in the Museum * Part Four: The Event and Re-Enactment * John Potts: The Event and its Echoes * Peter Osborne: The Truth Will Be Known when the Last Witness is Dead: Art as Evidence, or, History not Memory * Edward Scheer: ‘What if Someone in New Zealand Wants to See It?’ Performance Art’s Cover Versions * Jane Goodall: When the Present Comes to Get You * Notes on Contributors * Index