Ephemeral art

Ever since William Henry Fox Talbot used his plaster replica of the Bust of Patroclus (from 1842) as a model for the photographic invention he was developing, photography has had a long and entwined relationship with sculpture. It was not seen as a mortal threat (in the way that it occasioned proclamations of the death of painting), but rather a field of possibilities where the perception and meaning of sculpture could be explored. Whilst, in the 1960’s, sculpture experienced an expansion of its terms, photography was consigned to a predominantly visual and scopic functionary of documentation; capturing representations of fixed moments in time.

This fine-art and practice-based research enquiry considers the relationships between photography: of sculpture, into sculpture and as sculpture, proposing that there may exist a preposition of ‘photography with sculpture’. As photography continues to develop its own expansion of terms, with a movement away from the digital and representational toward a materialist and phenomenological expression, this research explores if there may exist a conjoining of these expanded fields.

With a specific focus on ephemeral sculpture and camera-less photography, the problematised question of time and the expression of the temporal are brought into sharp relief. Here a sculpture may transpose itself from a 3-dimensional to 2-dimensional form (where the “photograph” may yet retain an object status), and where the sculpture may change over time, its representation may follow, tethered, continually inviting us – after Robert Morris – into a “present-tense” of photography. In this manner new readings may become possible with implications for our understanding of both disciplines.

With rigorous documentation and reflection in the form of research diaries, a number of artefacts have been developed combining ephemeral salt sculptures with salt photography, reducing photography to the elemental nature of light sensitised surfaces, more or less fixed, with salt, to create unstable images.

Gabriela Cleveston Gelain, gabrielagelain@gmail.com
Doutoranda em Comunicação e Práticas de Consumo
Escola Superior de Propaganda e Marketing

Daniel Zacariotti, danielzacariotti@gmail.com
Mestrando em Comunicação e Práticas de Consumo
Escola Superior de Propaganda e Marketing

Pensando as estratégias de audiovisibilidade (ROCHA, 2019) de Walter Mercado, primeiramente a partir do documentário “Ligue Djá, o lendário Walter Mercado”, lançado pela Netflix em 2020 e, em profundidade, a partir da página do Facebook Walter Mercado e de suas interações, o presente artigo visa discutir as possibilidades epistemológicas e um
olhar sobre a figura de Walter Mercado - tendo como ponto de partida o giro das ideias iconofágicas (BAITELLO, 2014) e iconoclastas (BESANÇON, 1997).
Acreditamos que a (re)apresentação de Walter Mercado no espaço documental e digital, perpassada pela quebra e reconstrução de símbolos religiosos, ou seja, pela
iconoclastia, possa gerar um processo de construção de conhecimento centrada na ruminação, seguindo Ferraz (2015). Desta forma, a partir da construção e agrupamentos de símbolos religiosos feita pelo astrólogo porto-riquenho, seria apresentado o que aqui chamamos de uma epistemologia performática iconoclasta, ou seja, uma performance que destrói realidades religiosas para construir um novo caminho de fé - voltando ao sentido de ruminação, uma fé
própria de Mercado.

1 Disponível em: https://www.facebook.com/waltermercadotv. Acesso 10/02/2021.

2 A iconofagia, como apresentada por Norval Baitello (2014), é o processo em que ora as imagens devoram os
sujeitos e ora eles as devoram, este processo acontece muitas vezes de maneira simultânea. A ideia é trazida
como apoio à discussão de proliferação das imagens e do abando do corpo em sentido de uma vida a partir de
imagens, uma existência nas imagens repetidas.

3 A ideia de iconoclastia, como apresentada por Alain Besançon (1997), remonta ao movimento iconoclasta
presente no século VIII, durante o Império Bizantino, que ficou conhecido por destruir ícones religiosos, em
especial católicos, após o distanciamento da ideia de Deus do mundo apresentado na Bíblia. Na
contemporaneidade, o conceito descreve a quebra de ícones - fugindo da exclusividade religiosa.
4 O termo (re)apresentação foi desenvolvido por Adriana Amaral, Camila Barbosa e Beatriz Polivanov (2015), o
conceito mostra a (re)apresentação como uma abordagem entre a apresentação e a representação. Um termo que possibilita o entendimento da realidade como apresentada e presentificada a partir de um outro olhar, redefinida, neste caso a redefinição acontece a partir dos objetos empíricos.

Além disso, ao observarmos o astrólogo, a ideia de quebra de ícones se faz presente também em relação às questões de gênero; existe uma reconstrução de uma performance de gênero própria a partir da quebra com normatizações. Em outras palavras, Walter Mercado
subverte as lógicas binárias de gênero a partir de uma performance ruminante. Também compreendemos que Walter Mercado e sua presença televisiva pode estar associada ao
conceito de “Ephemera” de Esteban Muñoz (1996).
Em sequência, também focamos na questão iconofágica, em outras palavras, o fenômeno exercido pela audiovisibilidade de Mercado em que existe um movimento contínuo de consumo das imagens pelos corpos e de consumo do corpo pelas imagens. Neste sentido, se daria uma desconstrução da incorporação em si - pensando a incorporação, no sentido trazido por Taylor (2003), como o espaço ligado às construções performáticas de saber, ou seja, o saber presente nas repetições e transmissões corpo-orais da sociedade.
Nesta lógica, aliando as duas ideias aqui propostas, Mercado, ou seguindo melhor, a (re)apresentação audiovisível de Walter Mercado no espaço documental e digital geraria um processo de desconstrução/reconstrução do sujeito a partir das imagens, em especial, de
imagens de gênero e religião. A iconoclastia e a iconofagia são usadas como armas de
construção de uma epistemologia a partir da performance; a partir de sua relação de
desconstrução e apropriação de ícones e do audiovisual em si, Mercado colabora com uma
nova prática de conhecimento centrada em seu corpo, na incorporação do audiovisual na
relação entre tela e sujeito.
Sendo assim, a partir da observação das imagens de Walter Mercado tanto no espaço
do documentário quanto da página do Facebook, acreditamos que seja possível pensar em
uma prática epistemológica, centrada na ruminação de ícones - através da iconoclastia e da
iconofagia -, exercida por Mercado.

Referências:
AMARAL, A.; BARBOSA, C.; POLIVANOV, B. Subculturas, re(a)presentação e
autoironia em sites de rede social: o caso da fanpage “Gótica Desanimada” no Facebook.
Lumina, v. 9, n. 2, 1 dez. 2015.
BAITELLO JUNIOR, N. A era da iconofagia: reflexões sobre imagem, comunicação, mídia
e cultura. Paulus, 2014.
BESANÇON, Alain, 1997. A Imagem Proibida: Uma História Intelectual da Iconoclastia.
Rio de Janeiro: Bertrand Brasil.
FERRAZ, Maria Cristina Franco. Ruminações, Cultura Letrada e Dispersão
Hiperconectada. Rio de Janeiro: Garamond, 2015.
MUNÕZ, José Esteban. Ephemera as Evidence: Introductory Notes to Queer Acts. Women
& Performance: a journal of feminist theory: Vol. 8, No. 2, pp. 5-16.
ROCHA, Rose de Melo. Críticas do audiovisível. RuMoRes, v. 13, n. 25, 13 jun. 2019, p.
50-65.
TAYLOR, Diana. The archive and the repertory: performing cultural memory in the
Americas. Durham: Duke University Press, 2003.

Der Beitrag gibt einen historischen Überblick über die unterschiedlichen Möglichkeiten, die Flüchtigkeit von Tanzbewegung mit der Transitorik von Blumen zu verschränken. So wird im Bühnentanz das Auf- und Verblühen von Blumen verkörpert, etwa im Romantischen Ballett (»Théa, ou La Fée aux Fleurs«, 1847) oder in diversen Blumenchoreographien des Ausdruckstanzes. Umgekehrt erfahren Blumen trotz ihrer Sessilität eine kulturelle Zuschreibung von Tanzbewegungen, etwa bei William Wordsworth (»I wandered lonely as a cloud«, 1807) oder Hans Christian Andersen (»Die Blumen der kleinen Ida«, 1835), und fast immer wird auch hier die besondere Vergänglichkeit von Blumen mithilfe der Metapher des flüchtigen Tanzes reflektiert.

15 This relationship is further elaborated by Claire Bishop: "Installation art presupposes a viewing subject who physically enters into the work to experience it, and that it is possible to categorise [sic] works of installation by the type of experience that they structure for the viewer. Of course, it is possible to say that all art presumes a subject-insofar as it is made by a subject (the artist) and is received by a subject (the viewer). The case of traditional painting and sculpture, however, each element of this three-way communication (artist-work of art-viewer) is relatively discrete. By contrast, installation art from its inception in the 1960s sought to break radically with this paradigm: instead of making a self-contained object, artists began to work in specific locations, where the entire space was treated as a single situation into which the viewer enters." Ibid., 10.

The things we want are transformative, and we don't know or only think we know what is on the other side of that transformation. [...] artists should 'open doors and invite in prophesies, the unknown, the unfamiliar ... get you out into that dark sea.' 1 There are few better starting points for a consideration of the work of artist collective WE (Wilson-Eflerová ) than Rebecca Solnit's musings on the importance of losing our bearings and getting lost. Video artist Kye Wilson and performance artist Helena Eflerová have been collaborating on site specific video installation work for almost a decade and what binds their practice is exactly that quest for the transformative and the consequent opening of conceptual doors. Their shared work plays with the human experience of time and space, slowed to explore its meaning as self in transition, 'extending the boundaries of the self into unknown territory ... becoming someone else '. 2 This article focuses on the WE installation, Anima/Animus, an integrated performance and video piece that took place in Winchester Cathedral in 2013 informed by an awareness of changing practices in site specific artwork. It is significant, not only because it is a striking piece in its own right but because it is innovative in its development of the collective art practice in an increasingly digital world.

In relation to the wider theme of this journal, this paper explores how ephemeral arts investigate basic ecocritical questions around experience, presence, and loss, through a literal language of fragility and disappearance. Ephemeral art is used here to define a category of artworks which physically exist within a limited timeframe and for which this fixed duration clearly frames the work. Through creating landscape interventions, the three artworks discussed, explore the relationship with what is manmade and artificial, and the physical environment in which they are placed. The conversation the works enable is both with and about our relationship to our physical surrounding. It is an exploration of place and (be)longing through the temporary materialization of an uncertain presence which jarringly subverts the expectation of what fits and what lasts. Specifically, the argument is put forward that ephemeral art through its staging of limited material duration is a coping tool within the Anthropocene which both expresses and confronts the human condition.

Araştırmanın amacı; 20. yüzyılın başlarından bugüne efemeral kaynakların kullanıldığı çalışmaları, değişen gerçeklik algısı kapsamında ele alıp, bu doğrultuda efemeranın kültür taşıyıcılığı rolünü ve geçmişin kültürel yaşantısı ile günümüz düşünsel yapısının çağdaş sanat kapsamında bir araya geldiği yeni ifade biçimini ilişkisel olarak analiz etmektir. Bu doğrultuda örnekleme alınan çalışmalar üzerinden efemera kullanımındaki sorunsallar, seçilme nedenleri, yerleştirme özellikleri, nitelikleri ve kapsamları değerlendirilmekte, bu belgelerin sanat nesnesine dönüşümü farklı dönemler ve farklı kullanım özellikleri ile karşılaştırmalı analiz edilmektedir.
Küreselleşen dünya ve değişen gerçeklik algısı, modernist düşüncenin egemenliğine son vererek yerini postmodern kültüre bırakmış, bu kültürün bir ürünü olan postmodern sanat ve sanat akımları dahilinde kültür kavramının farklı anlamları ve farklı gösterge biçimleri ortaya çıkmıştır. Bu doğrultuda kapitalist düşünce yapısının bir ürünü olan Pop Sanat (Richard Hamilton, Roy Lichtenstein vd.) popüler kültür imgelerini sanatın merkezine yerleştirmiştir. 20. yüzyılın başlarında tüketim nesneleri kompozisyonun biçimsel ve göstergesel dili iken aynı yüzyılın sonlarına doğru geçmişin tüketim nesneleri ve popüler kültür imgelerinin efemeral bir değer olarak yerleştirme sanatı ve kavramsal sanat işlerinde kullanılması söz konusudur. Yani yüzyılın başlarındaki popüler kültür imgeleri, yüzyılın sonlarına gelindiğinde efemeral belgeler haline gelmiştir. Günümüz post-truth toplumlarında sanatçı algısı ve sanat eserleri de köklü bir başkalaşım yaşamış, teknoloji efemeral kaynaklarla bir arada kullanılmış, gene belirli bir ileti taşısa da bu kez nesnel gerçeklik izleyenin duygu ve anlamlandırma boyutunun önüne geçememiştir. Çağdaş sanat içerisinde efemeranın kullanımı ikiye ayrılmaktadır; ilkinde sanatçı efemerayı kendi özgün anlamından ve biçimsel bağlamından uzaklaşmadan vitrin yerleştirmeleri şeklinde sanat izleyicisine sunmakta ve nesneler yoluyla tanıtmak istediği kişiyi, hatırlatmak istediği olguyu, düşünceyi, ifadeyi ya da dönemi aktarmaktadır (Christian Boltanski, Nicola Tyson ve Cengiz Çekil). İkincisinde, efemeral değer taşıyan belgelerin mekan içerisinde daha büyük bir örüntünün bir parçası olma durumu söz konusudur (Gülsün Karamustafa, Nil Yalter, Christian Boltanski vd. mekan düzenlemeleri). Araştırma kapsamında örnekleme alınan sanatçılar belirtilen süreçleri en güçlü yansıtan çalışmalara sahiptir.

Parigi, per l'impagabile disponibilità. Mentre il saggio attendeva di essere pubblicato è scomparso Michael Kitson del Paul Mellon Center (Università di Yale, Londra), uno dei più autorevoli studiosi del Gellée che mi espose la sua ipotesi di postdatare la data di nascita di Claude. Ma il ringraziamento più vivo e sentito lo devo a Giovanna Perini che da tempo incoraggia i miei studi guidandoli con le sue continue attenzioni e i suoi preziosi consigli.

Through a close reading and reconstruction of technical recipes for ephemeral artworks in a manuscript compiled in Toulouse ca. 1580 (BnF MS Fr. 640), we question whether ephemeral art should be treated as a distinct category of art. The illusion and artifice underpinning ephemeral spectacles shared the aims and, frequently, the materials and techniques of art more generally. Our analysis of the manuscript also calls attention to other aspects of art making that reframe consideration of the ephemeral, such as intermediary processes, durability, the theatrical and transformative potential of materials, and the imitation and preservation of lifelikeness.

This PhD dissertation concerns the challenges of cataloguing volatile art-works and vast collections. In 2011, KUNSTEN Museum of Modern Art in Denmark acquired Danish artist Mogens Otto Nielsen’s (b. 1945) mail art archive with material from approximately 600 artists from the international mail art network. The research question of the dissertation is fairly simple: How can an art museum catalogue mail art archives? The answer, however, entails an extended analysis of the archive material as well digital and curatorial method development. The analysis combines museology, art theories, phenomenology, anthropology, and new media theory with experimental and exploratory work with museums, scholars, programmers, and interactive designers.
In the first half of the dissertation, I analyse the archive material’s relation to the mail art network. In the second half, I analyse the material’s relation to the museum institution and its organizing principles. In-between chapters, readers follow in the footprint of the researcher and the hands-on work in the archive. The last two chapters suggest two possible strategies towards cataloguing mail art archives. First, the museum should catalogue the material of mail art archives by mapping relations and associations. Second, the cataloguing system should make it possible to re-enact and re-imagine the associative network of the archive. These reactivations, I suggest, should be carried out by digital mapping as well as curatorial re-enactments and re-arrangements of the archive.

Characterizing mail art and its network
Chapters 1-5 concern the archive’s relation to the mail art network from the 1960’s and onward. All kinds of mediums and materials such as collages, drawings, visual poetry, photos, sound recordings, and small objects were circulating between artists via the common postal system. The mail art pieces tap into several previous and concurrent art practices such as Dada, Fluxus, and Performance Art, technological changes, political, social, and cultural strategies, spirituality, and a newfound interest in networks as a means of exchange and artistic creation.
Chapters 6 and 7 concern the principles behind the exchanges in the network. Research into Nielsen’s archive shows that the principles of gift-exchange economy entailed social obligations and unwritten rules that would work against the recurring rubberstamped anti-rules of “no rules, no jury, no return.” Yet, excess and the adaptive nature of mail art suggest that the exchanges were based on sharing. In chapter 7, the mail art network is characterized as acts of impure sharing that mixes gift exchange logics with principles of sharing. The network was far from power-free or non-hierarchical, but these structures were – via address lists – continuously circumvented. The numerous address lists in Nielsen’s archive are traces of a “database logic,” described by Russian media theorist Lev Manovich, that shares principles with today’s digital peer-to-peer network in terms of modularity, variability, and transcoding.
Chapters 8-11 study the mail art archive’s relation to the museum institution. In chapter 8, Nielsen’s Pocket Museum is described as a reconfiguration of pre-modern cabinets or curiosity as well as modern museums. The desire to categorize and chart every corner of the world is described by academic texts, protocols, as well as literature. The analysis is supplemented with studies of the principles and procedures of the universal archive by German-Russian philosopher Boris Groys as well as French philosophers Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida.
Chapter 9 retraces mail art pieces in Nielsen’s archive to the Stasi archive. Research in these archives shows the archival logics in operation. In its most absurd form, the neat and detailed forms and reports reveal a clear difference between the archive and the mail art network. However, the fondness for bureaucracy within the network disturbs this image of order on one side and anti-order on the other.
  Chapters 10 and 11 describe Nielsen’s archive as an “anarchive.” German historian Wolfgang Ernst’ definition of anarchives points to those counter-archives that mean to circumvent the orders of the archive. However, as Ernst points out, these creative archives are still tied to the logic of the archive. American performance scholar Diana Taylor’s notion of repertoires and French historian Pierre Nora’s distinction between history and memory sites extend the analysis in order to point the anecdotic, myopic, multiple, volatile and material character of mail art pieces. They have to be enacted and re-enacted for it to be passed-on within a culture or community.
Chapter 12 shifts perspective and considers the mail art archive as an actor-network along the line of French sociologist Bruno Latour. However, this image of networks is counterbalanced by Scottish anthropologist Tim Ingold’s notion of the meshwork. In Ingold’s phenomenological counter-image, mail art pieces are not merely created and reworked in nodes, but in constant transformation.
Chapters 13 and 14 propose two solutions to the challenge of cataloguing mail art archives. The museum’s categories and methods of archiving are hinged on the preservation of fixed and autonomous material, not networks, meshworks, or movements. Yet, the duality of mail art pieces as materials and motion, i.e. materials in motion, reveals the restrictions of the museum institution’s methods for cataloguing. Drawing on American performance scholar Rebecca Schneider, I characterize mail art pieces in Nielsen’s archive as “poses.” Archivists can preserve a piece of the entire “dance” or “correspondance,” but would need to re-enact the piece by different means. In the case of mail art archives, the cataloguing must attend to the movement of material by reactivating and re-arranging material.
The methods for preserving and exhibiting via re-imagination are illustrated and concretized with the exhibition design for Nielsen’s archive. The swarm quality, modularity and viability, and the concept of re-enactments were integrated into a wall installation with modular cases. The digital database and its prototypes, however, would enable users to see a corner of the mail art network structure.

Digital re-enactments
The dissertation presents two digital prototypes from the research project. They are the preliminary results of the method development of digital databases and digital maps.
Prototype one was partly based on the idea of the rhizome and the meshwork. The patterns and curved lines between nodes were created at random within a specific range of numerical values. The recreation of the archive as a digital meshwork was never sufficiently realized. However, the experiment resulted in a functional prototype of visual database. 
Prototype two represents Nielsen’s archive without lines of connections. In the “Mapping the Archive” project, I collaborated with a small group of digital designers, dramaturges, and professionals from museums of art, cultural heritage, and natural history. The material was re-imagined as clusters of small “microbes” where size and proximity represent relations. In addition, the project experimented with categorizations of colour and emotions. The pieces are attracted to a specific category, sometimes suspended between two or more, thereby re-imagining the vibrating nature of Nielsen’s archive.
In shorter intermediating texts between chapters, I describe and reflect upon the practical work in the archives, its movements, and uncertainties. The texts account for a small part of the “Erleben” and “aesthetics of presence,” as described by German-American literary scholar Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht, one might experience when cataloguing and consulting these vast collections of volatile art. This wonder is a driving force for the analyses of mail art pieces in-between creative exchange and archival order.

The field of free style Ikebana today has expanded to incorporate many themes in common with contemporary Western art, in particular with installation and assemblage. From 1980 to 2001 Hiroshi Teshigahara explored the possibilities of installation through his bamboo works. Focusing on his unique attitudes toward the natural materials and his creative strategies of repetition and accumulation, this paper agues that his site specific installations fall within the context of the contemporary Western art, moving beyond the underlying Japanese cultural and spiritual traditions.

Festival arenas and parade streets, which provided architecturally choreographed settings for massive political rallies, advanced to becoming the two most essential components of every city’s urban redesign, serving solely to celebrate highlights of a newly, autocratically imposed political calendar. These celebrations were to provide a commonality of experience, promote unified national identity and quickly and permanently establish tradition and ritual.
These political Nazi celebrations were meticulously organized, aesthetically calculated and hence, psychologically manipulative – whether they were designed in the form of mass rallies or smaller public events. Like the title suggests, their structures and meaning were determined by two criteria, the organisation of space and the employment of iconographically significant material.
The opening chapter, “A New Order of Time and Space”, deals with the phenomenon of festival culture, whose socio-political and psychological significance had already been articulated by the National Socialist Party as early as in the 1920s and were soon strictly regulated by specific propaganda departments of the government. After the Nazi’s seizure of power in 1933, public life therefore underwent a huge transition. After all, in order to psychologically mobilize an entire nation, strategies had to be developed that weren’t located on the level of logical observation and rational reflection but that triggered subconscious feelings by creating “sensuous”, communal experiences.
Besides establishing a cyclical political calendar, specific cultic rituals were created and permanently installed. For these specific purposes alone, cultic sites, political symbols and other highly effective aesthetical elements were designed. These political “ambiences” served in removing the masses – both geographically and psychologically – from everyday life  in order to ensnare them in the totalitarian system of “leader” and “followers”.
The second chapter, “Urban Cult Sites”, focuses on sites within cityscapes, such as in Berlin and Munich. Mono-functional areas on the other hand, like the rally grounds on the outskirts of Nuremberg, pose an exception but follow the same principles structurally and architecturally, in order to represent autocratic intentions. Until the outbreak of war, festival sites and streets were aggrandized with immeasurable dimensions following those very characteristics, in a way that has, in general, only become of such significance in totalitarian regimes. Adjoining parade streets were of equal relevance, being part of the cult site’s infrastructure. Thus, cultic space was constituted not only by reconstructing and analyzing the permanent architecture, but by use of the specific utilized ephemeral materials.
It was therefore of further major relevance to determine how ephemeral materials, in opposition to solid and durable materials, constituted disparate semantic levels. Especially because in most of the secondary literature the materials of ephemeral stagings are merely treated as “cultic props”.
Political rallies however, were not confined to architectural settings in urban areas, but were also executed in the countryside, amplifying and utilizing hereby the “natural” ambiance. This is subject in the third chapter, “Political Cult Sites in Nature”, in which prominent aesthetical features illustrate which calculating propagandistic connotations were sought, by instrumentalizing these natural habitats and their regional materials. In addition, the Nazis also selectively enhanced and propagandized certain topographies, such as visible historical structures, silhouettes and skylines, which were either negated or an ennobling vicinity was sought to justify political ideologies.
The fourth and final main chapter on lighting effects begins with a chapter on fire, “Lumen Naturale – Fire Spectacles”. This chapter which covers different techniques of utilizing natural fire as a political medium and covers many different locations as its use was of almost pyromaniac nature and whose contrasting mythical and religious features were utilized for ideological purposes. Electric light, as the ephemeral design tool par excellence, took on a primary role in the designing and reorganization of space at political rallies, which constitutes a major part of the forth chapter, “Lumen supranaturalis – Lighting Effects”. Albert Speer’s “Lichtdom” was the cultic highlight of the entire, meticulously organized Reich’s party rallies in Nuremberg.
The final chapter is a summary of superordinate phenomena that epitomize specific characteristics of Nazi cult sites and its materials, the instrumentalization of specific environments, thus elevating them to political landscapes.

Bien avant l’invention du cinéma, les hommes ont cherché à animer images ou objets afin de créer un mouvement ou de simuler une animation. Il n’est qu’à observer des pièces d’une exceptionnelle ingéniosité, et d’un raffinement extrême, comme les horloges-automates et certains surtouts de tables, chefs d’œuvre des orfèvres allemands du XVIe siècle, pour en être convaincu. L’une des plus spectaculaires et emblématiques inventions est certainement la lanterne magique. La projection d’images et leur changement offrent au spectateur une immersion visuelle et un voyage imaginaire sans précédent.

L’enthousiasme suscité par ces images mouvantes ne pouvait que conduire les artisans à tenter d’offrir des divertissements semblables. Plus ou moins modestes, les jeux visuels bénéficient ainsi de multiples déclinaisons, dans leur conception comme dans leur public.

Dès le premier regard cependant, il est indéniable que les objets offrent plus de potentielles animations que ne laissent à priori entrevoir les images sur papier. L’absence de volumes, notamment, paraît interdire toute velléité d’ajout de mécanismes destinés à une mise en mouvement. Mais ces apparentes difficultés ont été vaillamment surmontées par les artisans, graveurs, papetiers et marchands d’estampes au XVIIIe siècle, comme l’attestent les rares témoignages de cette production parvenue jusqu’à nous.
Bien que fragiles, et intrinsèquement éphémères, ces inventions de papier ont bien souvent été réalisées grâce à des techniques modestes : pliage, collage, ou montage simple.
Si l’ambition commune de toutes ces réalisations est à la fois divertissante et décorative, leur observation met en évidence plusieurs catégories d’animation. Le premier ensemble est celui des images dont le jeu est fondé sur la construction de la composition ; un second ensemble réunit les images transformées par des mécanismes complexes et internes. Le dernier ensemble met en exergue les images dotées de « systèmes » permettant la mise en mouvement de l’image.

Part 1 - extract

Although Japanese art influenced many Australian artists in 1960s, Rosalie Gascoigne is regarded as one of a few artists for whom Japanese art was “the gateway” to her own art. Gascoigne studied Ikebana from 1962 to 1972 but became frustrated with its limitations, and started making assemblages. This paper proposes that the order of composition in her assemblages is something she inherited form Ikebana, revealing a possible connection between Ikebana and contemporary art. It also regards her work as a case study of cultural transformation across borders, arguing that Ikebana was more than the gateway for her work.

How does a curatorial art project dealing with the ephemeral nature of performance address the social dynamics associated with the original events? How can documents be perceived not only as mnemonic vehicles of the past, but also as agents nurturing our present times? Two exhibitions will form the groundwork to deal with this question: À la vie délibérée — Une histoire de la performance sur la Côte d’Azur de 1951 à 2011 (Nice, 2011), which gives us an unusual social and artistic view of the French Riviera, and Perder la forma humana. Una imagen sísmica de los años ochenta en América Latina (Madrid, 2012), which addresses the way performative actions expressed ways of living together that were alternative to those imposed by the political situation in which they were produced. I will take account of the uses of documentation in the exhibition context as the materialization of the threshold that remains between art and a wider social domain.
KEYWORDS: DOCUMENTATION | PERFORMANCE | SOCIAL RELATIONSHIPS | EPHEMERAL | EXHIBITION

It is clear that art institutions are constantly changing, and in the past few years quite radically. Museums are now becoming places of direct engagement with artworks and artists and not just for contemplation. Some institutions have shifted their frameworks to be able to accommodate video, large-scale installations, new media art and performance art.
Early in the 20th century, artists started to get involved in performances to defy the object centred art of the time. Since then, performance art has been present in the art world as a valid medium of expression.
However, many museums and galleries were overlooking the significance of this type of art mainly because of the difficulty of integrating it in the traditional museum structure. One of the issues of performance is the absence of a solid material/de-objectification and its transitory and ephemeral characteristics. Nevertheless, performance art is reaching a much more prominent position within the contemporary art museum in the last few years.
Therefore, we must question what changes ought to be done to engage performance art within the foundations of the art museum. Being the art institution the ideal place to conserve, collect and present art, how can an ephemeral art form such as performance be conserved?
This paper will be aiming at the performative arts field, more specifically to performance art, and will demonstrate the challenges that this brings to the art museum. Conservation and collection methods are the main focus, although other points will be referred.

El presente artículo indaga sobre los problemas teórico-metodológicos para el estudio de las manifestaciones artísticas efímeras que configuraron diversas puestas en escena con motivo de celebraciones religiosas y jurídico-políticas en el Jujuy de la Gobernación del Tucumán colonial (siglos XVII y XVIII). De este modo, analizamos la categoría de arte efímero a partir de un recorrido historiográfico en diálogo con un corpus de imágenes provenientes de la Historia del Arte y de trabajos de observación etnográfica en la Quebrada de Humahuaca y ensayamos una nueva definición de arte efímero centrada en el uso y/o refuncionalización de las diversas expresiones materiales dentro del acontecimiento festivo. Dada la naturaleza esquiva de nuestro objeto de estudio, proponemos un instrumental teórico-metodológico que conjuga herramientas de distintas disciplinas (Teoría e Historia del Arte, Antropología, Arqueología) para (re)construir la especificidad material y simbólica (proceso constructivo, uso y funcionalidad) de las manifestaciones artísticas efímeras perdidas.

FOR THE FORMATTED VERSION WITH KENTRIDGE'S DRAWINGS GO TO: https://eternaltiber.net/triumphs-and-laments-research/

This is a guide to the iconography of William Kentridge’s Triumphs & Laments, the 500-meter-long frieze of colossal figures traced into the black accretions on the Tiber Embankments between Ponte Sisto and Ponte Mazzini in Rome in early Spring 2016:  http://www.tevereterno.it/arts/triumphs-and-laments/. The guide was compiled at the request of Kristin Jones, artistic director of the project, and was initially part of a Guidebook cell phone app, which has since been discontinued.

Prior to compiling the guide texts, with generous help from dozens of colleagues and students, I had the immense pleasure of serving as Curator of Historical Research for Triumphs & Laments, overseeing the research group at John Cabot University which formulated the chronological database ('timeline') of images from the history of art, cinema, and journalism provided to William Kentridge to inspire his drawings for the frieze. Our research continued and augmented that of Andrea Biagioni and Sara Spizzichino of Tevereterno.

Please share these texts with friends, colleagues, and students. Writing the guide was our labor of love for Rome, for William Kentridge and his work, and for the joy of collective creativity that made Triumphs & Laments a reality.

NOTE: In the pdf version available online before May 20, 2017, the hyperlinks were inoperative. In the current Word document, they work.

1992 rok. Labirynt surowych, wilgotnych ciemni Państwowej Galerii Sztuki w Sopocie. Niska, nieproporcjonalnie wydłużona przestrzeń zasnuta oceanem dmuchawcowego puchu. Mistyczna ciemnia rozproszona snopem światła, światło ujawnia anatomię
delikatnej toni, toń zanika na ciemnym skraju przestrzeni; średniowieczna aura ciszy przenika wszystko, tworząc przejmującą strefą introspekcji... odczucia bliskości tętna życia i białego morza śmierci. Krzysztof Malec był twórcą tej szczególnej wizji Ciszy, swoistego environment konstruowanego od 1991 roku w wielu przestrzeniach i wariantach. Młody artysta puszystymi drobinami nasion pałek wodnych realizował unikatowe, rozedrgane najmniejszym powiewem wiatru oceany spokoju. Instalacje, czułe na ruch skrzydeł motyla, pozwalały zapomnieć o ziemskiej grawitacji, otulając skały tworzyły swoiste odmiany
japońskich ogrodów kontemplacji zen. Puszyste przestrzenie odnosiły się do mikro- i makroskali natury; będąc nieraz przekaźnikiem chłodnego światła, odsyłały podświadomość w luministyczne spektakle Kosmosu.
Niezwykle osobiste, oszczędne działania rzeźbiarza wzbogaciły całokształt zjawisk okresu postmodernizmu. Siła oddziaływania tych instalacji skłaniała do refleksji nad możliwościami wyrazowymi sztuki współczesnej, poszukiwanych technik, przekroczonych granic, nad nośnością powołanych nowych światów. Krzysztofa Malca: kruchych i subtelnych. Pierwsza akcja, wykorzystuj¹ca to szczególne
medium, mia³a miejsce w czasie studenckiego pleneru
w Dłużewie. Impulsem stało się przejmujące doświadczenie
miękkości, jakie Krzysztof Malec odkrył wchodząc bosymi stopami "w dywan" zroszonych poranną rosą dmuchawców. W ciemni zasypanych puchem amfiladowych wnętrz, oświetlony wiązką  światła (obrazu
z projektora), nagi (zanurzony w pramaterii) artysta wykonał performance "Narodziny". W tym samym roku zrealizował pierwszą statyczną wersję "Ciszy": w jasnym wnętrzu, z wydobytej dziennym światłem mglistej toni wynurzały się marmurowe skały. Fotografie zatrzymały obraz idealnego pejzażu dotykanego smugami słonecznego blasku. Krzysztof Malec realizował dwa rodzaje puszystych instalacji, z dostępem światła dziennego oraz w przejmującej ciemności rozpraszanej wiązką światła z projektora uwięzionego w surowej, miękkiej przestrzeni. Odkrywcze instalacje przyniosły rzeźbiarzowi
Prix de Georges Boudaille - główną nagrodę na VI Festiwalu Sztuki Młodych Germinations w Akwizgranie w 1991, szereg znaczących nagród i udział w kolejnych ekspozycjach (m.in. drugiej edycji Germinations
VI w Budapeszcie) oraz pierwszą zagraniczną wystawę indywidualną w Bredzie w 1993. [...] W stronę pustki zwróciły się wielkie nurty i indywidualności sztuki XX wieku: Malewicz, Schönberg, Cage (4'33 w 1952), etc.. Może najbliższa duchowo dla Krzysztofa Malca
była cała poszukująca działalność Yvesa Kleina, jego skok w pustkę, Symfonia monotoniczna (1947), zbudowana z jednego, rozległego, ciągłego dźwięku, po którym następowała równie szeroka, wydłużona, obdarzona nieograniczonym wymiarem, czysta i wzruszająca cisza.
W 1961 roku (na rok przed śmierci¹) Klein pisał:
(...) manipulowałem siłami pustki
(...) rzeźbiłem w ogniu i wodzie, i malowałem z ognia i wody
(...) wynalazłem architekturę i urbanistykę powietrza
- moim pierwotnym celem było zrekonstruowanie legendy
raju utraconego.
(...) Zawsze trzeba tworzyć w nieustającej fizycznej
płynności, aby dostąpić łaski, która umożliwia rzeczywistą
twórczość pustki.
[...]
Rzeźbiarz, oprócz kilku wystaw indywidualnych, brał udział w najważniejszych projektach i międzynarodowych wystawach przełomu wieków.
Cichą twórczością podejmował nieobecny dyskurs, dotykając niewygodnych, okrytych wstydliwym milczeniem, ksenologicznych aspektów ludzkiej egzystencji. Pozostał człowiekiem skrajnie zamkniętym, 1 lipca 2002 roku we własnej pracowni odebrał
sobie życie.
Aranżacja plastyczna Emilii Grubba to interpretacja efemerycznego charakteru puszystych, rozedrganych
instalacji, jak i nietrwałego życia artysty (papirusowe, transparentne kolumny, reagujące na drobne ruchy powietrza powstające z chwilą pojawienia się osoby oglądającej). Tą czułość na obecność przejęły cztery rozwieszone bardzo delikatne formy, uszyte z kalki technicznej o lekko cielistym odcieniu (jak instalacje Krzysztofa Malca), transparentnej, lekko półmatowej - najcichszej z fizycznie istniejących budulców, które można byłoby uznać za nośnik fotograficznych obrazów: pierwszej Ciszy, Wyspy życia, performance'u Narodziny, Instalacji, Puchu. Kalka
techniczna pochodzi z lat 60. (analogia do roku urodzenia artysty), jej cielisty kolor jest przebarwieniem wynikaj¹cym z upływającego czasu.
Wystawę poświęconą pamięci Krzysztofa Malca stworzyły: rzeźby przestrzenne: Akt (1994, gips; prezentowany wcześniej na czterech edycjach wystawy "Ja i AIDS" w 1995 i 1996 r.); "Wyspa życia"
(1991, piaskowiec, woda, metal, aksamit) ze zbiorów
Wydziału Rzeźby Akademii Sztuk Pięknych w Warszawie; ponadto fotografie autorstwa Krzysztofa Malca oraz Danuty Godyckiej, Jana Gaworskiego, Lecha Karwowskiego, Jacka Staniszewskiego i in., ze
zbiorów: Archiwum Muzeum ASP w Warszawie, ASP w Gdańsku, CRP w Orońsku, Muzeum Narodowego w Szczecinie i Zamku Książąt Pomorskich w Szczecinie, Państwowej Galerii Sztuki w Sopocie oraz dwie dokumentacje wideo autorstwa: Leszka Golca (Orońsko, 1996) i Witosława Czerwonki (Sopot, 1992). Instalacje powróciły w jedynej do zrealizowania formie - dokumentacji przywołującej efemeryczne,
nieskończone konstrukcje, które ze strony ich Twórcy nie znajdą kontynuacji. Dyskomfort obcowania z dokumentacji tych
wyjątkowych w historii sztuki współczesnej działań skłania
do refleksji nad wartością indywidualnego życia oraz nad niemożnością zastąpienia, czy dosłownego zrekonstruowania instalacji po śmierci Krzysztofa Malca. Artysta wyznał:
"W swoich pracach używam puchu złożonego z miliardów nasion którymi wypełniam pomieszczenia zacierając ich realne kształty, zmieniając ich charakter i funkcję. Dokonuje się swoiste oczyszczenie przestrzeni
z nadmiaru form, kątów prostych, kolorów. Czasami zabiegi te odnoszące się do funkcji bądź symboliki wnętrza mogą wydawać się polemiczne. Zawsze jednak to marnotrawstwo nasion wiąże się z przyjemnością, jak¹ daje wrażenie spokoju w oswojonym miękką materią, do niedawna obcym świecie". Krzysztof Malec (1965-2002)
Podpisy fot.:
1. Prezentacja w Galerii Kaplica w Orońsku, 2004
2. Narodziny, Dłużew, 1991. Fot. Archiwum Muzeum ASP, Warszawa
3. Cisza, 1992, z wystawy Perseweracja mistyczna i róża, PGS w Sopocie. Fot. Archiwum PGS, Sopot
wybr. przypisy:
Danuta Ćwirko-Godycka, Krzysztof Malec "Działania z naturą, w: Perseweracja mistyczna i róża, [kat.] kurator: Ryszard Ziarkiewicz, PGS, Sopot 1992.
14 XII 2003 w PGS w Sopocie odbyło się spotkanie na wystawie Krzysztof Malec, rzeźba, dokumentacja twórczości z udziałem m.in. Koła Naukowego Studentów Akademii Sztuk Pięknych w Gdańsku.
Prowadzenie: Hubert Bilewicz, Dorota Grubba

On 8 December 2017, Prof.Dr. Jeroen Stumpel gave his valedictory lecture at Utrecht University. To thank and honour him a Festschrift was prepared. The project in which I am participating under his supervision treats the illusionism, esp. the rendering of material properties, in seventeenth-century still-life painting. As regards the depiction of food, Willem Beurs (author of the treatise 'The big world painted small') argues it should look appetising. For the Festschrift article I turned this around: it is not about painted peaches that look edible (juicy and tasty even), but it discusses statuettes, artistically made from more or less edible materials, that were dished out for dessert or decoration.

This paper examines the festival culture of the foreign communities based in early modern Rome in a comparative perspective and discusses how religious ceremonies and profane festivities helped to generate and intensify their collective identities. The analysis of engravings, festival books, libretti and other archive sources will demonstrate how both through performative participation in ritual ceremonies and by means of visual arts and music, individuals and institutions from different local origins asserted themselves as natio – in the pre-modern sense of a community that feels connected through common language, traditions and religious rites – and presented themselves to the Roman and European public as a national community.

Rom war im 17. und beginnenden 18. Jahrhundert eines der schillerndsten Kulturzentren Europas. Roma antica und Roma moderna-die Relikte der einstigen Kapitale des Imperium Romanum und die künstlerischen Schätze der Hauptstadt des Kirchenstaats-zogen alljährlich unzählige Kreativschaffende, bildende Künstler, Musiker, Dichter und Denker in die Ewige Stadt.

In 1584 Alfonso II d’Este entered Modena together with his
third wife Margherita Gonzaga. This event belongs to an
established tradition in the dukedom and has been described
in various sources: they include one drawing, attributed to the
architect Gian Maria Menia, devoted to five ephemeral arches
designed for the occasion, and a detailed description of the
ceremonial entry written by the humanist Carlo Sigonio. This
work focuses on these two aspects: on the one hand, the essay
examines the references used by Menia to realize the ephemeral
architectures; on the other, the essay frames the description
of the triumphal ceremonial in the varied interests and in the
antiquarian studies of Sigonio.

Récits en ordre dispersé, 1953-1979

- La rencontre de la petite fille aux allumettes et de l'homme qui plantait des arbres
- La piste du Bombyx
- La femme de Loth
- L'atelier comme un Merzbau organique
- La revanche de l'oignon
- Explosante-fixe
- La becquée
- Anémographomètre
- Petit précis d'alchimie quotidienne
- Être-fleur
- Ne pas conclure
- Ne pas conclure - la suite

Art events in the modern world takes place in a number of stages ranging from exhibition centers, trade fairs, vanity galleries, temporal venues or as travelling exhibitions (e.g. Body Worlds, California). Variety in frequency and occurrences gave rise to the newest of expositions, the Biennale. Emerged as a pilot, Biennale of Venice set a trend that got itself absorbed in the urban fabric causing wavelets of transformations in course of time.
The true nature of urban impacts of Biennale cannot be generalized under one title since the type and origin, the nature of changes the event propagates while it travel across countries and time varies to some extent. Regardless of what happens within the walls of museums and venues, larger effects are evident in the way how the urban realm responses to the event. What can be borrowed from these events that affect the realm outside the walls of exposition is the area of interest here for an urban designer.

Este artículo plantea el interés de las tarjetas postales ilustradas como nuevos canales de la literatura a comienzos del siglo XX. Profundiza en una colección especial dedicada a las rimas de Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer, impresas por la prestigiosa casa Hauser y Menet. La investigación ofrece nuevas perspectivas sobre el ejercicio de la lectura poética en el siglo XIX.
This article raises the interest of illustrated postcards as new channels of literature in the early 20th century. Further investigation regarding a special collection dedicated to the rhymes of Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer, printed by the prestigious house Hauser and Menet. The research offers new perspectives on the exercise of poetic reading in the 19th century.

Ephemeral art is usually understood as a desire to dematerialize the art object in order to defeat the market, or to democratize or challenge art museums, however, in many artworks something much more fundamental is involved.  In this paper I will explore the hypothesis that the use of ephemerality by some artists is not motivated solely by art world issues of economic and status value but in an understanding of the relationship between ephemerality, mourning and loss.  Focusing on the work of three artists, Zoe Leonard, Felix Gonzales Torres, and Gustav Metzger, I will discuss these in terms of sacrifice - something given up for a greater gain. The works with which I am concerned express - and embody - both the pain and acceptance of transience, and drawing on Freud's 'Mourning and Melancholia' can be read as griefwork.  If the greater gain in the ephemeral art sacrifice is a form of knowledge about mortality, death denial, and terror management, these artworks require us to re-work our cultural requirement for permanence in order to access this knowledge when the works no longer exist.

This paper is about the life and times of François Vatel and hisrelationship with the French court at Versailles. Our starting point is «Vatel», the flm directed by Roland Joffe about this artist’s ephemeral creations, but on the other hand wehave tried to compare his works with those by Leonardo da Vinci at Ludovico Sforza Courtin Milan the previous century.

Bibliografische Information der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek: Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek verzeichnet diese Publikation in der Deutschen Nationalbibliografie; detaillierte bibliografische Daten sind im Internet über http://dnb.dnb.de abrufbar.

En 1652 el ejército de Felipe IV capitaneado por Juan José de Austria recupera el control de la ciudad de Barcelona, zanjando así el enfrentamiento entre Cataluña y la Corona Hispánica que se conoce como Guerra dels Segadors. La noticia oficial de la victoria llega a Cerdeña el 1 de noviembre de 1652. En Cagliari se decretan varios días de fiesta con ceremonias religiosas, música, luminarias nocturnas y torneos.
El objetivo del presente artículo es analizar una relación impresa que describe dichas celebraciones y que representa uno de los escasos ejemplos de relaciones de fiestas en Cerdeña en el siglo XVII. El estudio se centra de manera especial en la figura del promotor de las fiestas: Pedro Martínez Rubio, virrey interino de la isla (1652-1653), eclesiástico muy cercano a la Corte de Felipe IV, partidario y aliado político de Juan José de Austria.

How can we speak of grief and mourning? There are things, events, horrors, place of sorrow and love for which we have no words. Grief, like art, can leave us mute, it can paralyse – there is nothing more to be said, nothing more to be done. And yet, grief can be very eloquent and rather than presenting us with a privileged view, which excludes those who have not shared the experience, can provide a vehicle for understanding. Two art works that act as such a vehicle are Untitled (Portrait of Dad)(1991) by Felix Gonzalez Torres and Strange Fruit (for David)(1992-1997) by Zoe Leonard. These works are ephemeral and embody the experience of mourning. Discussing these works risks losing the central experience, because they demand an engagement that does not sit comfortably with the aesthetic detachment and the wariness of deeply felt personal This chapter, written in two sections, the first in a conventional academic form follow by the same territory explored in narrative form, explores this myth of detachment and relate the experiences of these works to my own local knowledge as an artist and as a mourner.

This Is Not Art Therapy is a studio residency program template designed
to actively—and re/productively—situate artists in community-based
AIDS service organizations (CBAO). This goal of re/productivity explores
the healing possibilities in making and responding to art without reliance on the pathologizing tendencies of "art therapy," and also seeks
to address the increasingly pressured issue of available workspace for artists in inner city environments. This Is Not Art Therapy tests this design at the Toronto People With AIDS Foundation (PWA), one of Canada’s oldest
and largest direct service organizations for people living with HIV/AIDS.
The program evolves from and responds to three threads: 1) the rich and
influential history of arts-based activism that first emerged in the battle
with HIV/AIDS during the initial decade of the pandemic (a critical phase
for recognizing and naming the virus, and the timely development and
dissemination of treatment); 2) PWA strategic planning in response to
urgent client-based requests for arts programming free of therapeutic attachments; and 3) my master’s research project, titled Disco Hospital, an
interrogation of the impact that queer perspectives can have on healing
processes and spaces.

Escogemos para nuestra aportación una artista contemporánea valenciana, Anna Ruiz Sospedra. Ella es constructora de Fallas. Las Fallas son un tipo de obra artística concebida para el espacio público que son quemadas el 19 de marzo como parte de una fiesta declarada Patrimonio de la Humanidad por la UNESCO. Un tipo de obra efímera, que en su caso aborda problemáticas sociales y políticas desde una perspectiva feminista. Además, genera un pensamiento sensible y reflexivo en el público a partir de estéticas y abordajes poco habituales en este tipo de instalaciones tan tradicionales. Anna representa una transgresión cultural en un oficio de artistas dominado por las masculinidades.

In 2004 founded studio in Madrid realizing numerous installations in public space. In 2008 returned to Lisbon and founded MAGstudio (Material, Atmosphere; Gravity) performing artistic and design projects resulting from the crossing of various artistic strategies. Focusing on public space, investigates issues related to participation, memory and citizenship trough out ephemeral spacial installations, light installations and architectural projects that reclaims different senses of perception from the public.