Memento Mori

Sundials in Roman and Byzantine Mosaics (1st – 9th Century AD). A scientific monograph. The sundials on ancient mosaics have not been the subject of scientific studies so far. The author has gathered together  in this  publication  the sundials  already known (Torre Anunzaiata, Sarsina, Trier, Saint-Romain-en-Gal, Antiochia and Brading; Figs. 1, 2, 4, 5, 7, 9) and those which have  not  previously  been  identified.  Thanks  to  the author’s  new  identifcations,  the  catalogue  has  been enlarged  by  six  new  sundials (Grand,Tarsus, Antioch – interpreted by H. Pamir; Figs.  3, 6,  8, and 10. Tayibat al-Imam, Jerusalem and Umm al-Rasas (Sebastis); Figs. 10, 11, 12) and three monumental gnomes-columns with multiple functions that were used as monumental sundials [Madaba (Jerusalem), Umm al-Rasas (Kastron Mefaa) and Rome (Jerusalem); Figs. 13–15]. In addition, recognizing fully John H. Humphrey’s  interpretations,  the  author  enriches  the catalogue  by  eight  ancient  mosaic  representations  of obelisks in  circuses (Lyon, Barcelona, Volubilis, Piazza Armerina - two mosaics, Girona, Carthage and Gafsa; Figs.  16–23).  They  performed the roles of monumental sundials. In this way, the catalogue includes  twenty-three  mosaics with  the representations of sundials. They come from the Western and Eastern Provinces of the Roman Empire. The first mosaic is dated to the beginning of the 1st century AD and the last dates to the 9th century AD. The author, after  a  short  description  of each monument,  summarizes the issue discussing the role of sundials in Roman and Byzantine society, their complex signifcance and symbolic difficult linked with the progress of time on which nature and human life are dependent.

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.

This paper examines ways in which identity in the later Middle Ages could have been displayed through the means that paradoxically seemed to dissolve the very idea of identity – the image of the decomposed body. In the following pages it is argued that the transi monuments were considered to represent the true portraits of deceased individuals, emphasizing that those buried beneath were experiencing purgatorial pains. Special attention is devoted to the mechanisms which were employed in order for the transis to be fashioned as individual portraits. Even though cadaver monuments were not part of the experience of Italian art of Trecento and Quattrocento, it is argued that, albeit all the differences from its northern counterparts, the tomb slab of Antonio Amati should be considered as a true transi tomb as well as the true portrait of the deceased.

Chapters:
1. Purifying decay
2. Of flesh and clothes
3. Sum quod eris vs. memento mori
4. Epilogue

In the Victorian era, photography was relatively a new invention which was taking over the paintings of the time to give a true picture of what is, rather than an interpretation. Spirit photography became the new medium of Memento Mori becoming the new vogue of the Victorian age even though this practice was seen as fraud. It wasn’t long before the ‘photographic artists’ were using skills of painters to manipulate photographs and the actual magical process was being diluted for self gain not for artistry yet the Victorians saw photographs as an aid to mourning and memory not as artistry.

The vanitas theme with skulls, hourglasses and other reminders of man’s mortality is ubiquitous in portraits from the 16th century on, and also in still-life painting from the early 17th century, especially in the Low Countries. In 'Vanitas Still Life with Skulls' of around 1640-62 by the Utrecht painter Aelbert Jansz van der Schoor we see six skulls, bones, an hourglass, wilting roses and a nearly extinguished candle beneath a shelf with books and sealed documents – symbols of learning and authority. Musical instruments, empty glasses, coins or pearls, and perhaps a globe or crucifix are also often included and embody the transience of life, learning, beauty, wealth and earthly pleasure. In shrill contrast to the wealth displayed in Dutch homes, these sombre reminders suited the moralising tendencies of patrons in the Golden Age.
Yet while mortality is represented by the skull, Death himself does not appear in vanitas paintings as he does in the Danse macabre – and in Dutch genre scenes of the period. Much has been written about Peter Paul Rubens’s copies of Hans Holbein’s 'Images of Death', but scant attention has been paid to Dutch re-interpretations of the Danse macabre in the Golden Age. Nonetheless, this popular motif inspired major artists such as Rembrandt, Jan Lievens, Jan Steen, Abraham Bloemaert, Judith Leyster and Adriaen van de Venne. In paintings, but especially in drawings and prints, they show Death arriving unexpectedly to summon the rich miser, the lovers and the merrymakers: archetypal sinners oblivious of their own death or the hereafter. With hourglasses, flowers and coins as added symbols, these scenes have much in common with the vanitas genre.

Roman objects and art has been a fruitful source for discussion between scholars and the development of subsequent theories. Traditional research has been influenced for instance by Winckelmann and the Kopienkritik. These theories have been useful in understanding Roman art, but lack an objective approach. Archaeology takes advantage of a multidisciplinary approach and this objective way is found in Panofsky’s work within art history. In 1939, Erwin Panofsky published his book Studies in Iconology. He introduced a three-levelled approach to get a structured iconographical analyses, applied to Renaissance art. This article investigates the application of Panofsky’s three-levelled approach to a Roman Memento-Mori mosaic to see whether it is useful for understanding archaeological objects. The aim is to develop a multidisciplinary, contextualised visual analysis of the object with a crossover of techniques between archaeology and art history, in order to assess its suitability for the interpretation of past material culture.

This study is an attempt to make sense of family photographs that are circulating in antique markets in Turkey. The phenomenon of "dispossessed family photographs" is examined on the basis of the critical literature on photography mainly by Walter Benjamin and Roland Barthes. Depending on this theoretical framework, this study examines the discourse of antique sellers/collectors about "dispossessed family photographs" and the field that these photographs are circulating in. The discourse of antique sellers/collectors suggests that, "dispossessed photographs" have an elusive quality both in the minds of people and in the antique domain. That is why the word "specter" is used to emphasize the "spectral quality" of "dispossessed family photographs" as the word evokes the indefinite, untraceable and hard to frame quality of such images. Also the term "specter" invokes the physical state of family photographs in the sense that they fade and get pale as if referring their mysterious ghost-like presence in the market.

The recent trends in cinema navigate the audience towards an active viewing stance similar to how post-modern literature necessitates the reader’s active interpretive efforts. One of such so-called puzzle films is 'Memento', which presents a backwards narrative that gives the reader an inconclusive beginning of the fabula at the end of the film. This essay argues that both 'Memento' and its source, the short story “Memento Mori,” engage the viewer’s and reader’s interests and challenge them mentally to emphasise and bring the main themes to a more personal level. This is firstly done by employing a style and narrative structure that imitate the protagonists’ condition of anterograde amnesia, causing the reader to struggle with the sense-making of the fabula. Secondly, the fragmented structure corresponds to the protagonists’ construction of identity, in which the protagonists serve as an exaggerated mirror to the viewer’s own daily identity struggle. Lastly, the situation of narrator and focalisor present the viewer with the issue of not only constructed identity, but also constructed reality. The narrators and focalisors are unreliable and the audience is unable to reconstruct a coherent conclusive fabula from the fragments. While the short story provides less information about the fabula but some sense of closure, the film gives more and conflicting information and prevents closure. This is achieved by presenting different versions of reality through different characters, which denies the viewer the satisfaction of understanding the true nature of the fabula.

Since the 1960s, James Deetz and other archaeologists have attributed the appearance of the cherub icon on colonial-period gravemarkers to religious movements such as the Great Awakening or diminished Puritan influence during the eighteenth century. The cherub has been interpreted by many scholars as a symbol of a heavenly being that reflects freer perceptions on life and the afterlife. This article challenges the long-held religious connotations of the cherub icon. Instead, this article demonstrates that the icon relates to the wider Rococo artistic trend that was the prime influence on the forms and decorations of contemporary material culture. In this artistic fashion, the cherub is a putto, a Classical allegorical element that remained common in architectural and mortuary sculpture. The use of the putto comes with a number of additional contemporary elements and shows that consumer choice connected to the latest fashion instead of changing religious attitudes being the driver behind iconographic and decoration change on colonial gravemarkers.

Nancy Spector, comisaria de la exhibición que protagonizó en el Museo Guggenheim de Nueva York en 1995 y encargada también del comisariado de su representación póstuma en el Pabellón de Estados Unidos en la Bienal de Venecia de 2007, arrancaba de Félix González Torres, solo un año antes de su muerte, la siguiente confesión (traduzco): "Este trabajo se originó en mi miedo a perderlo todo.

The paper examines viewer's perception of the fresco program in the ossuary of the Bachkovo monastery as a particular form of somatic experience.

Chapters:
1. Preparing to pass the threshold
2. Virtual experience of bodily resurrection
3. Upon leaving the ossuary

The centrality of the embodiment of mind, self, and values for the later Nietzsche is widely acknowledged. Here, I reconstrue Nietzsche’s HL to show that he uses his drive model of the mind already in this early text. The “historical sickness” central to HL is diagnosed in the form of failures of embodiment and drive control. First, I argue that a precursor to Nietzsche’s figure of “the last human” is already the target in HL. Second, I offer working definitions for terms such as ‘drives’, ‘affects,’ and ‘values,’ which are crucial to Nietzsche’s heuristic diagnostic framework. I then focus on the neglected passage that contrasts the medieval memento mori with a modern memento vivere, showing that the former functions as an embodied mechanism of willing and self-control, which Nietzsche claims the moderns have been unsuccessful in replacing. Finally, I draw on recent research in embodied cognition and identify two causes—“overload” and “semantic embodiment”—of the modern “historical sickness” that undermines flourishing.

The obsession with death is a constant and recurring theme in contemporary art. Not surprisingly, in some recent exhibitions, many works by Damien Hirst are displayed together with paintings and sculptures that belong to the tradition of memento mori. Apparently this is a legitimate comparison because the symbolic representation of the duality of life and death is a rigid designator of artistic representation. However, Jean Baudrillard accurately defined the different values taken on by death in modernity, when it was gradually marginalized as irreconcilable with the principles of bourgeois rationality: individual values, unlimited progress of science, domination of nature on everything. This world view created a sort of collective unconscious that is expressed in many of his recent works, including The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living. It is a conceptual model reproduced in many of Damien Hirst works, also re-emerging in the “wreck aesthetic” of Kiefer and Boltanski that helps us understand the contemporary iconology Cogita mori, and the unavowed anxiety of the myth of progress. In order to evoke the icons and symbols of our time, artists do not only rely upon the use of images and objects, but make interpretation easier conveying its meaning and their intendments by the use of accurate captions, explanatory statements and interviews.

El propósito del presente texto es estudiar las imágenes de vanitas del barroco hispano como metaimágenes que proponen una reflexión moralizante sobre la propia práctica de la pintura. Tomando como punto de partida un lienzo anónimo cuzqueño que representa a Cristo niño pintando las postrimerías en el corazón del ser humano, el texto analiza la valoración de la práctica de la pintura como un memento mori que despliega distintas creencias sobre el papel de las imágenes y la memoria que la retórica visual barroca desplegó en su política propagandística y persuasiva.

"El discurso cinematográfico no ha dejado de luchar por adaptarse y competir con las pantallas rivales que le han surgido con la revolución digital, lo cual ha transformado su propia textura. Podemos clasificar estas transformaciones en dos grandes órdenes. Por un lado, la puesta en escena y la propia concepción del raccord han dado lugar a lo que denominaremos hiperencuadre, en el que la pantalla fílmica se ofrece como receptáculo de todas las pantallas con las que rivaliza (ordenador, vídeos de vigilancia, imágines de satélite, etc.). Por otro lado, el cine posclásico opta por la deconstrucción de la linealidad narrativa y el despliegue de distintas tramas y niveles de acción y representación que nos llevan a la noción de hiperrelato

The film discourse has constantly fought to adapt and struggle with the competitor screens that have arisen with the digital revolution, which has transformed its own texture. We can sort these transformations in two large kinds. On the one hand, the staging and conception of the raccord have given rise to what we'll denominate hyperframe, in which the cinematic screen is being offered as enclosure of all the screens that contends with (computer, video surveillance, satellite images, etc. ). On the other hand, the cinema postclassic chooses the deconstruction of the narrative linearity and the deployment of different plots and levels of action and representation that lead us to the notion of hipernarration"

La práctica de fotografiar a los muertos no está circunscrita a reportes policiales o estudios forenses solamente; tampoco es una simple nota al pie en la historia de la fotografía. Debido a su historia y cultura, este fenómeno es particularmente predominante en México, y ha incluso permeado el trabajo de artistas extranjeros que han trabajado en el país. Este ensayo analiza fotografías postmortem de diversas fuentes: una colección de memento mori mexicanos, el trabajo de Joel-Peter Witkin y la cobertura mediática de la “Guerra contra las drogas”, a fin de elucidar el papel de este fenómeno en la sociedad.

Cuban artist Félix González Torres (1957-1996) devised a physically consumable and fleeting artistic production in order to create a broad and spine-chilling symbolism infused with the transience of life. Although he is one of the most significant artists in the latter part of the 20th century, whose practice is related to Minimalism and Conceptual Art, his artwork and its dramatic intensity are deeply rooted in a Baroque painting genre par excellence: vanitas. Cloaking his artistic production in a moralizing tone, González Torres encourages viewers to take pieces of his artwork with themselves out of the galleries, thereby instilling in himself a detachment from material possessions, since these are ephemeral and do not remain after death.
Through an iconographic analysis comparing some key issues of this 17th century religious genre and González Torres’ installations, it is possible to draw a visual parallel between the characteristic elements of vanitas and this artist´s repertory of objects, which are a metaphor in absentia of the human body and flesh. Thus, these artistic objects (which include bulbs, candies, cheap wall clocks, photographs of an empty bed on billboards and large offset prints on paper) keep an ordinary and everyday appearance in the emptiness of the exhibition galleries or even on the streets. However, when the exhibition visitors are invited to take pieces of some of these installations, the artworks exhaust themselves, creating a heartbreaking metaphor: the relentless advancement of time, the deterioration of flesh, the dramatic loss of life and the pain caused by the absence of things we appreciate and people we love.

The practice of taking pictures of the dead is not only circumscribed to police reports or forensic studies, nor is it merely a footnote in the history of photography. Due to the country’s history and culture, this phenomenon is particularly prevailing in Mexico, and has even permeated the work of foreign artists working in the country. This paper analyzes postmortem photographs from different sources: an archive of Mexican memento mori, the work of Joel-Peter Witkin and the media coverage of the “War on Drugs,” in order to elucidate the role of this phenomenon in Mexican society.

The relevance and interpretative potential of understanding post- mortem photographs as fetishes has been established. Since a loss, an absence is the center of every fetish, and photographs, according to Barthes, are directly connected with death, the photograph of a dead body, of a corpse, as a fetish, constitutes an object particularly saturated with death. In accordance to the logic of the fetish, these objects are created in order to substitute an absence at the same time as they signal the void at their center.

This paper discusses the inclusion of the characteristic verses from the Legend of the Three Living and the Three Dead on funerary inscriptions of the Orthodox Christians in the Late Middle Ages. It also discusses reasons for the hostility toward the macabre images in the East, as well as the possibility of interpreting certain Byzantine depictions as the appropriate doubles for the western macabre imagery.

Chapters:
1. Byzantine Macabre?
2. Same Image, Different Meaning
3. Purgatory – Dividing Line.

This article is the aesthetic analysis of interrelationship between image and death in contemporary art. I consider some situations that contemporary art images on death correspond to our community from the start. Furthermore, my analysis critically reconsider that those situations represent the inner mechanism of contemporary art world. Especially, I investigate a particular context which present or evoke tendency of the art works and/or exhibitions associated with death, and create a situation where we imagine the circumstances of our own deaths since the late 1990s.
In the first chapter of the main body of this text, what I concern is the paradigm shift that human consciousness and image presentation have been dealt with life and death, presence and absence, and mortality and immortality from the very beginning of image to contemporary art now. In the second chapter, I shall concentrate on the meaning of death in contemporary society by interpreting some cases of contemporary art works.
Using examples, such as Damien Hirst’s solo show ≪New Religion≫(2005), Omer Fast’s video work <Looking Pretty for God(After G. W)>(2008), and Christian Boltanski’s installation project ≪No Man's Land≫(2010), I argue that images of death in contemporary art scene have the potentiality of reflection on our life which become more and more liquid, unstable, uncertain, and unpredictable. But as long as they do not cause critical thought to the living, as in a TV survival program or a art market, I doubt contemporary art on death is a kind of endgame for art itself.

The purpose of this article is to analyze the aesthetic and literary patterns of the Spanish film Truman (2015), directed by Cesc Gay and recently awarded with the best original screenplay in the 30th Goya Ceremony Awards. According to a comparative methodology, which combines the literary references and underlying narrative patters with the cinematographic material, this study proposes to offer a higher perspective about literary topics: memento mori, journey and movement, with the aim of delving into the relationship between cinema and literature in the light of cultural taboo which persist on our contemporary society. In this sense, the study of the film implies the approach to literary words (Divina comedia, by Dante or La muerte de Ivan Ilich, by Tolstoi), as well as the tie with literary periods with their cultural implications (from the Medieval Age to the contemporary period).

The 17 th century brings along in Transylvania fashionable art movements of the Western and Central Europe, especially of the new artistic current of the Mannerism, a constant of the funeral art to the 70's of the century, continued by the Proto-Baroque. They are an acquisition of aristocratic and urban forms submitted by Venetian and Dutch layers, which meant introducing a new and eclectic language of reassembling forms. The motifs do not hide 'horror vacui', strongly twisted tenants, 'putti', 'rotuli' (rolls), garlands of exotic fruit and flowers, trophies and allegories twined in the theme "vanitas vanitatum". The study proposes a contextual analysis of the motifs from the range of weapons and trophies emerging in this age in the Transylvanian funeral art. Rezumat: Secolul al XVII-lea aduce cu sine şi în Transilvania curente artistice la modă în apusul şi centrul Europei, manierismul, o constantă a plasticii funerare până spre anii `70 ai secolului, şi apoi protobarocul. Ele sunt o preluare a formelor aristocratice şi urbane ale epocii transmise prin filonul veneţian, dar şi cel de sorginte olandeză, care au însemnat introducerea unui limbaj nou şi eclectic al reasamblării formelor. Motivele nu ascund ‚horror vacui', tenanţi puternic contorsionaţi, ‚putti', ‚rotuli', ghirlande de fructe şi flori exotice, trofee şi alegorii îngemănate în tema ‚vanitas vanitatum'. Studiul îşi propune o analiză contextuală a motivelor din gama armelor şi trofeelor care ţâşnesc în această epocă în arta funerară transilvană, cu răsfrângeri în Ţara Românească.

At the core of Derek Parfit's most famous and influential philosophical work, Reasons and Persons, is a 'short story'. A story about a teletransporter and about a person who gets transported through it -and about who they 'really' are, or about what we should care about this. Parfit argues that his 'thought-experiment' shows that 'personal identity' as (Analytic) philosophy understands it doesn't matter. That, in particular, so long as I know that 'my self' on Mars is unharmed by the teletransporter, then it shouldn't matter to me that I (or 'I') remain on Earth, soon to die. In this paper, a work(s) of literature/film, Priest's and the Nolans' The Prestige, is used to challenge the method and alleged moral of this, Parfit's famous 'branch-line' teletransportation thought-experiment. (Or rather: I suggest that the film, in particular, effects this challenge itself. I am only drawing attention to the nature and effect of it.) By treating Parfit's little tale as a story, a (fragment of a) work of literature, we can more easily see how it need not have the moral that Parfit alleges for it. For

This paper examines the anecdotes of ʿAttār’s Mosibat-nāmeh as temporal phenomena from the perspective of a reader moving progressively through the text; it is argued that that these anecdotes do not function primarily as carriers of dogmatic information, but as dynamic rhetorical performances designed to prod their audiences into recommitting to a pious mode of life. First, the article shows how the poem’s frame-tale influences a reader’s experience of the embedded anecdotes by encouraging a sequential mode of consumption and contextualizing the work’s pedagogical aims. Next, it is demonstrated that these anecdotes are bound together through formulae and lexical triggers, producing a paratactic structure reminiscent of oral homiletics. Individual anecdotes aim to unsettle readers’ ossified religious understandings, and together they offer a flexible set of heuristics for pious living. Finally, it is argued that ʿAttār’s intended readers were likely familiar with the mystical principles that underlie his poems; he therefore did not use narratives to provide completely new teachings, but rather to persuade his audience to more fully embody those pious principles to which they were already committed.

This creative essay was written for "ALL102 - Narrative and Genre", as part of the Bachelor of Arts - Media and Communication course at Deakin University, Melbourne, Australia, in 2005.

The topic for the creative essay was as follows:
In 'Memento', Christopher Nolan casts doubt on the reliability of written texts, photographs, science, character judgement and memory. Based on your understanding of the film, write a short story from the point of view of a police detective using the following scenario: Leonard Shelby has checked out of the Discount Inn and your job is to develop a reasoned murder theory based on evidence he has left behind, using what you imagine to be a hard-boiled policeman's voice. You could in part use his journal entry, or imagine a report to a court. In your critical appendix, consider how and why Nolan's film prevents the audience from doing likewise.

En el período barroco nos encontramos con una vasta producción religiosa, en íntima relación con la doctrina de la Contrarreforma. La Iglesia delimita y ordena las imágenes del período, en pos de evitar la deserción de los fieles. En este contexto ubicamos la obra "Acto de Contrición", pintura que alberga el Museo de Arte Español Enrique Larreta.
           
En el siguiente trabajo se analizará la codificación iconográfica de la muerte y la reflexión sobre la misma en esta pintura teniendo en cuenta que forma parte de un contexto cultural en el que se desarrollaron imágenes que abordan la misma temática. Haremos foco en España entre los siglos XVI y XVII.

La experiencia del encuentro sensible con la pieza artística despierta en nuestro espíritu aquello que el artista vio desde su estremecimiento propio. José Lezama Lima toma la pluma como si fuese pincel y traza en el lienzo de su obra Paradiso una poética narrativa que incita nuestra sensibilidad y transmite una textura imaginaria de lo real. La presencia del vanitas en los capítulos primero y séptimo no busca evocar una simple imagen sino estimular más allá del reconocimiento intelectual de dicha apariencia plástica. La vida como vanidad, el memento mori, transita como temática en estos cuadros descriptivos; transmite el mensaje del desengaño del mundo y toca nuestras fibras más hondas y humanas.

En la Iglesia Museo de la Santísima Trinidad de Atienza, se exhibe un catafalco de madera consistente en un cajón negro levemente trapezoidal. Está decorado en sus cuatro lados y el plano superior con pinturas populares, cuya tosquedad contrasta con la riqueza temática de la representación. Virtualmente inédito, se han publicado algunas fotografías en Internet, citando brevemente el objeto, al que, sin dar razones que avalen semejantes conclusiones, se considera del siglo XV y procedente de México, extremos ambos con los que no estamos de acuerdo. Por otra parte, y según datos que hemos recogido en la propia población, esta pieza estuvo en uso hasta hace unas décadas, empleada como parte de un ceremonial. Nuestro informante ha sido el sacristán D. Antonio Nogelades quien nos relató cómo se empleaba en las exequias locales, y para colocar ante el altar de Ánimas

Christopher Nolan's Memento can be used as a heuristic tool to understand several of the major themes of Adorno's work by examining the purposeful actions and thought processes of the film's main character, Lenny, as well as the structure of the film itself. One of the major motifs of the film is the inability of subjective memories to serve as representations of the objective reality supposedly contained therein. Lenny's life provides the viewer with an example of the problematic consequences that result from the wide-spread and unacknowledged assumption that these memories represent a concrete, existing reality. Although there exists a litany of academic work about the film concerning the subjective mediation of memory, this process of mediation has yet to be connected to the larger forces in society that encourage and even make necessary the reshaping of events to fit into a predetermined world-view or ideology.

Pretende-se neste trabalho dar ênfase a categoria estética do macabro e do horror identificando esse conceito como denominador comum em diferentes momentos da História da Arte. Assim serão analisados de modo sucinto alguns casos desde o período renascentista dando ênfase especial ao contemporâneo. As representações da morte na arte, revelam mais do que um caráter inicial moralizante, há um propósito essencialmente estético, de deleite e fascínio pelo macabro assumindo na contemporaneidade contornos irônicos e até cínicos. Essas visões e emoções podem esconder uma negação diante desse fato inevitável e ceifador na existência humana.

Future pessimism in the Early Modern era? Reflections on Early Modern future imaginations exemplified by the baroque Vanitas motif:

The following bachelor thesis is about the future imaginations of the Early Modern time. The paper follows the question, if there was a factual ‚future pessimism' in the baroque era, trying to exemplify this by the booming Vanitas motif. Therefore, the thesis will examine the history and meaning of the motif compared to the trends of the tumultous 17th century. As will be shown, the Vanitas motif was also an art form as well as a manifestation of a transience-consciousness that manifested itself not least in the form of Vanitas still life and baroque poetry.

1 Wir leben heute bekanntlich nicht nur im Zeitalter der wirtschaftlichen, politischen und kulturellen Unsicherheiten, sondern ebenso auch in der Ära der Simulation und der Täuschung. Dieser durch die Digitalisierung der Lebenswelt, durch neue Kommunikations-und Medientechnologien wesentlich bedingte Umstand findet gerade auch in der Populärkultur, insbesondere im Kino, seinen Niederschlag. Obwohl das Phänomen des lügenden, täuschenden Films historisch schon früh anzutreffen ist, etwa im expressionistischen Klassiker DAS CABINET DES DR. CALIGARI von 1920, und auch Hitchcock in seinem Thriller STAGE FRIGHT von 1950 eine berüchtigte falsche Rückblende einsetzte, lässt sich im globalen Kino vor allem seit den späten 80er Jahren eine deutliche Zunahme von so genannt unzuverlässigem Erzählen beobachten. David Mamets HOUSE OF GAMES, Bryan Singers THE USUAL SUSPECTS, LOST HIGHWAY von David Lynch, M. Knight Shyamalans THE SIXTH SENSE, DONNIE DARKO von Richard Kelly, Laetitia Colombanis A LA FOLIE…PAS DU TOUT oder auch SWIMMING POOL von François Ozon und Marc Forsters STAY -um hier nur einige Beispiele zu nennen -: sie alle zeichnen sich dadurch aus, dass sie den Zuschauer bewusst in die Irre führen und dass man ihren Erzählungen, ihren Bildern und Tönen nicht wirklich trauen kann. Der Film, der heute Abend auf dem Programm steht, Christopher Nolans Rückwärts-Thriller MEMENTO, ist geradezu ein Paradebeispiel des täuschenden Films und daher optimal als Einstieg in diese Reihe geeignet. Es ist bezeichnend, dass MEMENTO nicht nur als abgründiger psychologischer Thriller, sondern auch als raffiniert konstruierter Neo-Noir daherkommt. Denn der Boom des Lügens im Kino hängt eng mit dem Film-Noir-Revival seit den 90er Jahren zusammen. Wie Sie sich im letzten September bei der Stadtkino-Retrospektive zum klassischen Film Noir überzeugen konnten, ist dessen Welt von Doppelspielen, Intrigen und Täuschungen durchsetzt, in der die Dinge nie so sind, wie sie zunächst erscheinen.

A partire dal tardo Medioevo nelle terre alpine a cavaliere tra Savoia e Delfinato si diffuse l’esistenza dei sanctuaires à répit, luoghi sacri (cappelle, chiese, chiesette campestri) in cui gli infanti nati morti, o deceduti prima della somministrazione del battesimo, venivano portati per ricevere il sacramento che avrebbe consentito loro l’accesso al Paradiso, evitando il confinamento perenne nel Limbo e la sofferenza eterna dell’anima, secondo l’escatologia cristiana.
I cadaverini erano esposti al cospetto della statua della Vergine Maria e si attendeva il “miracolo” della resurrezione, un cenno di “vita” (movimenti veri o presunti dei corpicini in via di decomposizione, perdita di urine, perdita di sangue dal naso) per impartire frettolosamente il battesimo, a cui seguiva la nuova morte e la sepoltura in terra consacrata.
Il rito, erede di una medievalità “selvaggia”, scongiurava il pericolo che l’anima del fanciullo non battezzato potesse vagare senza posa al confine tra il mondo dei vivi e quello dei morti e “multos laedere posset”, come ci fa sapere Burcardo di Worms nell’XI secolo.
Spesso i genitori dei bimbi si accollavano viaggi faticosi della durata di giorni per poter assistere al “miracolo”, poiché i santuari erano sovente in luoghi montani, impervi e aspri, ma la loro volontà era incrollabile, dal momento che l’ipotetica “resurrezione”, oltre che a rimettere il peccato originale dei teneri bimbi, era di conforto alla loro semplice sensibilità religiosa.
La Chiesa spesso avversò tali pratiche, ritenendole opera del demonio, ma esse sopravvissero sino a secoli più recenti e ne restano preziose testimonianze inedite nei documenti delle terre alpine tra Valsusa, Savoia e Brianzonese.
La mia relazione si propone di esaminare alcune delle testimonianze di tale rito alla luce della documentazione inedita sinora da me reperita.

Bu çalışmada Geç Ortaçağ ve Fin de Siecle Viyana’sı (Yüzyıl Sonu) dönemleri içinde ölüm fikrinin ve onun görsel temsilinin geçirdiği aşamalar incelenecektir. Bu bağlamda çalışma, ölümün akılcı bir kültür içinde, Danse Macabre imgelerindeki kitlesel algılanışından, Femme Fatale imgesinin psişik katmanına kadar ne gibi paradigmatik değişimler geçirdiğini ve bu değişimlere neden olan sosyal ve zihinsel gelişimin izini sürecektir. Son bölümde Fin de Siecle Viyana’sında yaşamış ve üretmiş olan Gustav Klimt ve Egon Schiele’nin yapıtları üzerinden bu temsil geleneğinin sınırlarının ne şekilde genişlediği ve bu iki ressamın ölüm alegorilerinin modernizme geçişi sırasında oynadıkları rol ele alınacaktır.