Studies in Visual Arts and Communication an International Journal
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
Studies in Visual Arts and Communication an international journal Volume 2, No 1 – June 2015, online issue http://journalonarts.org/ Table of Contents & Abstracts 'Kinesthesis' and Cinematic Montage: An Historical Examination of the Film Theories and Avant-Garde Mediation of Slavko Vorkapich in Hollywood Sheri Chinen Biesen Los estados de ausencia como experiencia estética Juan Carlos Meana Nalini Malani, a global storyteller Christine Vial Kayser A practical assessment of the modes of visual narratives in the art of Benin in Nigeria Sweet Ufumwen Ebeigbe International informalism versus Latin American constructivism (1950-1965) Marcelo Mari Suspended Subject Positions: Cai Guoqiang and the Medium of Gunpowder Kristine Nielsen Telling the Stories of Left-behind Children in China: From Diary Collection to Digital Filmmaking Janice Hua Xu Studies in Visual Arts and Communication – an international journal Volume 2, No 1 – June 2015, online issue The Texture of Interiority: Voiceover and Visuals Swarnavel Eswaran Pillai Family Expressions of Pain in Postmortem Portraiture Lauren Summersgill Art criticism: The transformation of a moral matter into a global free speech Joana Isabel Martins Navarro La relación creativa de Amalia Avia y Lucio Muñoz Eva Asensio Castañeda Perspectives of social in Brazilian contemporary art: discussing project Comboio, Favela Moinho, 31st Bienal de São Paulo Michelle Sommer Présence et Absence. La Corporalité dans l’art contemporain Ilinca Stoiciu Art by Telephone: Communication and Control in 1969 Chicago Lucy Hunter Espacio arquitectónico e imagen fotográfica: metalepsis visuales Architectural space and photographic image: visual metalepsis María José Prada Rodriguez "Oneiric communication" as a way of constructing one’s identity. Around Richard Kwietniowski’s Flames of Passion Ewelina Twardoch Oscillations of Otherness: Disinterestedness and the Capacity of Affect in Trinh T. Minh-ha’s Reassemblage Andie E. Shabbar 2 http://journalonarts.org/ Studies in Visual Arts and Communication – an international journal Volume 2, No 1 – June 2015, online issue Diasaféo. Illustrations as envisioning or interpretation of the Holly Book in the works of Marc Chagall and Robert Crumb Sînziana Șerbănescu Immaterial Interruption: Paul Chan’s New New Testament Sara Collins ------ Suggested citation / bibliographical reference: Author Name, Title of Paper, Studies in Visual Arts and Communication - an international journal, Vol.2 No.1, June 2015, online ISSN 2393 – 1221, http://journalonarts.org/ Read online [open access]: http://journalonarts.org/ Call for papers: http://journalonarts.org/call-for-papers/ The corresponding e-mail address (info, contact, submissions) is journal.on.arts at gmail.com 3 http://journalonarts.org/ Studies in Visual Arts and Communication – an international journal Volume 2, No 1 – June 2015, online issue 'Kinesthesis' and Cinematic Montage: An Historical Examination of the Film Theories and Avant-Garde Mediation of Slavko Vorkapich in Hollywood Sheri Chinen Biesen, PhD Abstract Early film theorist Slavko Vorkapich, a talented European émigré who became one of the first avant- garde filmmakers in the United States, articulated his conception of cinema as a unique, distinctive artistic endeavor. I will historically examine extensive original primary archival materials from the Slavko Vorkapich Collection to historically contextualize his film theories, montage techniques, and investigate how he envisioned his cinematic philosophy and visual aesthetic in his theoretical writings on motion pictures regarding “Film as a Visual Language,” “The Motion Picture as an Art” and “Motion and the Art of Cinematography” in 1926 which he went on to stylistically employ in his independent avant-garde films, such as The Life and Death of 9413 – A Hollywood Extra (Slavko Vorkapich and Robert Florey [with Gregg Toland]; US, 1928), and in montage sequences for an extensive number of Hollywood studio films, including What Price Hollywood? (George Cukor, RKO Pathé; US, 1932). Vorkapich’s diverse array of work embodies the dynamic representation of his aesthetic philosophy encompassed in both his studio and independent productions. Notable is that he manages to successfully bridge the conceptual economic and artistic abyss between the dominant commercial industry and the avant-garde. Moreover, an analysis of montage sequences in the commercial film What Price Hollywood? reveals how his avant- garde stylistic mediation functions to transform the overall narrative film text by appropriating his innovative experimental aesthetic techniques expounded on in his film theories within the mainstream commercial production environment of the classical Hollywood studio system. Keywords Slavko Vorkapich, film theory, avant-garde montage cinema, Hollywood history Sheri Chinen Biesen, PhD Associate professor of Film Studies at Rowan University, USA 4 http://journalonarts.org/ Studies in Visual Arts and Communication – an international journal Volume 2, No 1 – June 2015, online issue Los estados de ausencia como experiencia estética Juan Carlos Meana, PhD Resumen El artículo desarrolla el análisis de una experiencia estética sobre los estados de ausencia que se reconocen como un estado necesario dentro del proceso para la creación artística. Se ha de entender estado como el desarrollo de una disposición específica dentro del amplio proceso creativo en el que se destaca una determinada situación y ausencia como una desaparición o, más bien, la aparición de un vacío que resulta ser productivo para la creación artística. Se ha utilizado el acto de caminar y la deriva por un territorio desconocido como procedimiento para una pérdida de control de la voluntad, dejando así que haga aparición una experiencia diferente que ubique la percepción en otro orden. La percepción en el acto de caminar implica no solo los sentidos, sino todo el cuerpo. El cuerpo en movimiento, el desplazamiento, supone una experiencia donde se confronta la memoria y registros del pasado junto a la percepción del presente que se está viviendo al caminar. Esto permite la aparición de un nuevo enfoque que interrelaciona sentidos nuevos. Se pretende ahondar en un estado donde hacen aparición unos motivos y situaciones que transforman la percepción de la realidad desbordando la lógica de la certeza y la verosimilitud. Todo ello predispone para la experiencia estética, tanto en la creación como en la recepción. De igual modo advertimos un posicionamiento de cierta resistencia desde la actitud de negación, del no hacer, que posibilita la entrada en otras potencialidades creativas encaminadas a no dar respuesta inmediata a modo de los sistemas hiperproductivos. El artículo se desarrolla a partir del análisis de la experiencia de caminar llevada a cabo por el autor y que ha quedado reflejada en el libro de reciente publicación La ausencia necesaria. Palabras clave: ausencia; experiencia estética; proceso creativo; caminar; deriva; paisaje; territorio; aparecer; contemplación; cuerpo. Juan Carlos Meana, PhD Professor, Departamento de Pintura, Facultad de Bellas Artes, Universidad de Vigo (España) 5 http://journalonarts.org/ Studies in Visual Arts and Communication – an international journal Volume 2, No 1 – June 2015, online issue Nalini Malani, a global storyteller Christine Vial Kayser, PhD Abstract Nalini Malani is an Indian contemporary artist who lives in Mumbai. Her work is constructed as a narrative that interweaves Eastern and Western mythologies and aesthetics forms to address interreligious violence in India, especially on women. Her emphasis on the feminine figure as a topos of violence, both received and produced, and as an ambivalent figure, both caring and destroying, locates her art within feminist discourses. Yet she claims to be beyond this linkage and to be using mythical images of Medea, Cassandra or Sita as images of conflicts and violence within human psyche, both feminine and masculine. This paper purports to present her work and the mechanisms of its reception in order to evaluate its potential cathartic role on collective consciousness regarding communal violence in India and elsewhere, both for and Indian and international audience, a function which she claims for her art. Key words: Nalini Malani; contemporary Indian art; Partition; mythology and art; feminism and art; Collective Unconscious; catharsis; chora; Julia Kristeva; the abject. Christine Vial Kayser is a museum curator and art historian involved in the study of global art from the view point of the role of the body in the phenomenology of perception. She is associate researcher with Paris 1- Sorbonne and teaches at Institut Catholique de Paris. 6 http://journalonarts.org/ Studies in Visual Arts and Communication – an international journal Volume 2, No 1 – June 2015, online issue A practical assessment of the modes of visual narratives in the art of Benin in Nigeria Sweet Ufumwen Ebeigbe, PhD Abstract African narrative art is characterized by a complexity of style, iconography and functions, hence scholars of sub-Saharan African art often find it difficult to identify, interpret and appraise this fundamental genre of African art. This is especially true of scholars who utilize Western yardstick in their interpretations. Thus scholars pay a cursory glance at this aspect of African art or ignore it outright. Consequently, there is a dearth of literature on the nature and cultural significance of this genre of African art and little is known of it outside the continent. It is therefore