leonardo reviews

editor-in-chief Michael Punt associate editors Hannah Drayson, Dene Grigar, Jane Hutchinson A full selection of reviews is published monthly on the Leonardo website: .

EXHIBITIONS ambivalent “moral autonomy” with work of artists such as Jasper Johns, respect to historical relations with Robert Rauschenberg and Andy LEON GOLUB POWERPLAY: both capitalism and modern (mass) Warhol—did much to undermine THE POLITICAL PORTRAITS society. A self-critique of the arts as a the dominance of formalist theory. curated by Jon Bird. National Portrait form of essentialism frequently took Others have joined critics such as Gallery, London, U.K., 18 March–25 the form of an opposition between Rosalind Krauss and Carol Duncan, September 2016. Exhibit website: representation and abstraction. Inter- who attacked modernism’s myths of . existential capacity of art to operate as hegemony in dismantling Greenberg’s Reviewed by Giovanna Costantini. a method of individuation along with paradigm. Email: . the pursuit of effects of detachment “historic moment” as relevant in and depersonalization, mechaniza- reconstructing a definition of mod- doi:10.1162/LEON_r_01363 tion and technology; an emphasis on ernism and to confront the role of Suppose someone comes along surface reflexivity; a tendency toward history as the canyon (versus the who does not know “bridge,” and transcendentalism; and attention to canon) of art’s operative field. In there is no bridge to which I could the internal ordering and relationship this field, modernism’s aestheti- point and utter the word. I would of parts in tension with, in paint- cism should be tempered, indeed then draw an image of the scheme ing, undifferentiated composition. of a bridge which of course is It is from such values that one (to already a particular bridge, just many minds) dominant exclusionary Reviews Panel: Nameera Ahmed, Fred to remind him of some schema monolith of modernism came to be Andersson, Jan Baetens, John F. Barber, Roy Behrens, K. Blassnigg, Catalin Brylla, Annick known to him such as “transition” erected (one that paralleled American postwar hegemony of the 1950s and Bureaud, Chris Cobb, Ornella Corazza, from one side of the river to the Giovanna Costantini, Anna B. Creagh, Edith other [1]. 1960s), a superstructure considered Doove, Hannah Drayson, Phil Dyke, Amanda by many to be at odds with the Egbe, Anthony Enns, Jennifer Ferng, Enzo Despite the many psychological and movement’s resistance to totalitar- Ferrara, George Gessert, Allan Graubard, semiotic re-codings of American ian extension. Dene Grigar, Rob Harle, Craig Harris, Harriet modernism, it continues to bear Most critics recognize that it was Hawkins, Paul Hertz, Craig J. Hilton, Jung A. Huh, Jane Hutchinson, Amy Ione, Boris imprints of Clement Greenberg’s during the 1960s that the central Jardine, Richard Kade, Valérie Lamontagne, “canon” of 1939–1940 that derived tenets of American modernism began Mike Leggett, Will Luers, Roger Malina, from the 19th-century European to erode, at the height of Greenberg’s Jacques Mandelbrojt, Florence Martellini, tradition of l’art pour l’art allied to and Michael Fried’s self-conscious Elizabeth McCardell, Eduardo Miranda, a reactionary academic and social Robert A. Mitchell, Michael Mosher, Sana defense of abstraction. Greenberg Murrani, Frieder Nake, Maureen A. Nappi, program. Greenberg identified three and Fried’s formalist emphasis on Martha Patricia Nino, Claudy Opdenkamp, principal features of American mod- unitary integration and impersonal Jack Ox, Jussi Parikka, Ellen Pearlman, Ana ernism that in certain ways amalgam- flatness was marginalized by persis- Peraica, Stephen Petersen, Michael Punt, ated the tendencies that had evolved tent figuration and postwar European Kathleen Quillian, Hannah Rogers, Lara in Europe from Édouard Manet to Schrijver, Aparna Sharma, George K. Shortess, expressionism; by kitsch and realism’s Brian Reffin Smith, Yvonne Spielmann, Paul Cezanne, Pablo Picasso, Wassily “recomplication” of the pictorial field; Eugenia Stamboliev, Elizabeth Straughan, Kandinsky and Kazimir Malevich. and by new propositions bound to Malgorzata Sugiera, Charrisa N. Terranova, These were: aesthetic innovation and minimalism, process and anti-form. Eugene Thacker, Yvan Tina, Flutur Troshani, originality within a given cultural John Cage’s challenge to authorship, Rene van Peer, Stefaan Van Ryssen, Ian and formalist grammar; tendencies Verstegen, John Vines, Robert A. Vonlanthen, materiality and internal structure— Claudia Westermann, Cecilia Wong, Martyn that reflect the process and societal seen also in Alison Knowles’s “Make Woodward, Jonathan Zilberg impact of modernization; and an a Salad” of 1962, as well as in the

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/LEON_r_01365 by guest on 27 September 2021 reconceived, less in terms of purifica- Alfaro Siqueiros to Max Beckmann, who interrogates modern art’s alle- tion and autonomy than in terms of Jacob Riis to Dorothea Lange. In this gorical impulse, asserts postmod- purgation and cultural reckoning. light, the positioning of modernism’s ernism’s distance from history and In the United States, in the aftermath claims of subjectivity and psychologi- an emptying of original meaning of the two world wars, the year 1968 cal introspection—to say nothing of attached to emblematic signs that is signaled a “historical moment,” an its grammatical stylizations—against indicative of an absence of artistic instant in which the product of his- postmodernism’s anti-aesthetic and intuition. Daniel Bell refers also to tory is universalized as the human its polemical, process-driven resis- “the eclipse of distance” that substi- condition. That year marked a frac- tance, ignores a shared thematic tutes impact and sensation for con- ture comparable to the outbreak of unity within the confines of the 20th templation and cultural judgment; a World War I in Europe (an event century. Such unity constitutes mod- concern with personality rather than whose reverberations of disillusion- ernism’s essential, reflective quality in moral character; and an emphasis on ment still resound throughout the the presence of history, a centenary the self over consensual standards modern world)—for 1968 was the history that is bound by pluralities of as signs of modernism’s exhaustion. year of the My Lai Massacre and critique. Jürgen Habermas insists on modern- the Tet Offensive in Vietnam; of the This distinction—between modern ism’s resistance to failed propositions assassinations of Martin Luther King, and postmodern—should be replaced of the past and advocates an aesthetic Jr., and Robert Kennedy; of student with an enlarged, assimilative view of modernity dedicated to “communica- riots and general strikes in France; of modernism that asserts both the his- tive rationality” as a societal impera- the invasion of Czechoslovakia by the torical as well as the dramatic char- tive. Frederic Jameson refers to the U.S.S.R.; and of the death of the artist acter of the art of the 20th century “bracketing” of history, the substitu- Marcel Duchamp. The year 1968 is over its scenic adaptations. I propose tion of simulacra for the original, often cited as the crucible of Ameri- that one interpretation of modernism the waning of subjectivity and emo- can modernism: It coincides with the be based on a model of Aristotelian tion. My position does not oppose onset of American disillusionment tragedy outlined in Aristotle’s Poet- concepts that inform postmodern owing to the loss of humane leader- ics as a performance aimed at the criticism; its divisive, variegated ship, a prolonged and ever-escalating pursuit of universal truth through the perspectives; and its deconstructive military conflict and the growing exercise of aesthetic judgment. Such complexities. Rather it seeks to iden- awareness that the United States was a model of tragedy, distinct from tify a more coherent art-historical involved in a war that could never be Nietzschean prototypes of Dionysian and cultural framework for modern- won. Just as Europe recoiled in the subjectivity and existential isola- ism, one that reasserts the unitary aftermath of Auschwitz, for many aes- tion, seeks determination of moral social bases of art as articulated by theticism became indefensible follow- purpose through actions that are of Meyer Schapiro [2]. These are foun- ing the carpet bombing and chemical a certain magnitude with respect to dations that engage aesthetically from defoliation of Vietnam. Lying as it the particulars of history, actions within a specific temporal history and does beyond the canon, Maya Lin’s advanced by an artist-protagonist as reflect T.J. Clark’s call for art that is Memorial of 1982 may present a fit- a corporeal member of a generational created in relation to wider currents ting closure to Greenbergian mod- and interdependent society. Herein, of society, especially historical cur- ernism, for it lies beyond the limits of the 20th century represents a scene of rents that have continued to erode its ruinous history where it mourns contest and bodily suffering, a site of the social fabric from which common the loss of once young and vigorous disfigured realism in which to effect experience and meaning is generated lives. It recalls Fried’s remark about anagnorisis—discovery—along with throughout the modern age. Frank Stella: “He wanted to paint like catharsis—a cleansing of the body or One of the bridges joining mod- Velasquez but he realized he could the spirit through purgation. This is ernism to postmodernism must be only paint stripes.” a site moreover in which to move the located in the historical particulars The line of demarcation dividing viewer from ignorance to knowledge of social realism. Hannah Arendt in modernism from postmodernism, by means of recognition, the recog- “The Social Question” calls attention dividing the cult of originality and nition of moral purpose that tragic to a reality associated with a feeling of transcendence from pluralism and magnitude requires of all art that is injustice stemming from a condition kitsch, should be abolished. We all born of a dehumanizing era. It is this of darkness that lay behind appear- know that modernism’s mystical socially reflective quality that joins ances. This sort of realism, one that trajectory extends from František Philip Evergood to Jacob Lawrence, lends itself to an understanding of Kupka to Vija Celmins with a path Käthe Kollwitz to Gerhard Richter, the human condition in extremis, is of abjection running from Duchamp and Santiago Sierra to Carrie Mae described by Renato Poggioli in The to Damian Hirst. The early 20th Weems. Theory of the Avant-Garde as infra- century is no less diverse than the Varieties of postmodern views realism, a quality bound to dehuman- 19th in its permanence of realisms reflect underlying historical relation- izing tendencies that lower reality from George Grosz to Ben Shahn, ships to modernism. Craig Owens, to the level of the “raw, unformed,

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/LEON_r_01365 by guest on 27 September 2021 subhuman and vile.” Such a formula concept,” one that treats artistic phe- their brutality elicit fear as well as for infrarealism is identified by José nomena not so much as an aesthetic pity. These are the self-same emotions Ortega y Gasset as a characteristic of fact as a sociological one, we would required by Aristotle to effect cathar- avant-garde poetry, one that displays do well to view such work more sis, the purging of emotion on which a taste for the denigrating image. The centrally in light of its entanglements all tragedy depends. denigrating image utilizes derogatory of dominance, power and moral Aristotle considered fear and pity imagery not only satirically but also deprivation. We should also bear to be complex states of mind that lyrically, to render impurities of real- in mind the importance of Gustave require a comprehension of the full ity from which emotion ultimately Courbet’s “Realist Manifesto” to the measure of another’s distress and springs. It employs the pejorative re-envisioning of history painting as the projection of that condition image not only as a vehicle for gro- the prototype for modernism’s collec- upon ourselves—a form of call and tesque representation, but also as an tive rebellion. response in which the call of human instrument to disfigure or transfigure In a 1981 interview with Matthew suffering elicits the response of feel- the subject to produce a radical meta- Baigell, Golub describes his work as ings of compassion. In the modern morphosis. The denigrating image realist art “because it essays to show age it is by no means certain that references Jean-François Lyotard’s power, to make power manifest as it society retains the capacity to experi- belief that realism always stands is frequently encountered. . . . This is ence compassion for the suffering somewhere between academicism how it is,” he says, “this is how power of others or to express Aristotelian and kitsch, as does Walter Benjamin’s is configured in events and actions, passion and emotion in any but the call for a flash of recognition, a truth and perhaps this is how it’s abstractly most self-gratifying form. What that appears in a moment of danger structured in our society.” Power is counts in Golub’s transfigured realism and is never seen again [3]. reconfigured in Golub’s painting to is not so much the modern gestural- Against a backdrop of the New collapse canonical tenets of original- ism of the artist—the self-expression York School’s “pure” painting, ity, moral autonomy and essentialism of the individual soul in conflict—as Leon Golub illustrates one form into “more or less active” inversions it is art’s gesture on behalf of human- of infrarealism that bridges the of social and art-historical order; it ity—an archaic instinct directed distance between modernism and perverts canonical modernism and toward the goal of relationship and postmodernism. Golub enjoins the transfigures it in terms of the action social union, a union that seeks to traditions of realism and history of an Aristotelian tragedy. Golub’s abolish the distance between artist painting to chronicle modernism’s Vietnam series reechoes the agonism and viewer, society and the indi- passage from the active to the pas- of the avant-garde through figures vidual. For Golub such an instinct, sive voice. His figurative tableaux that are both brutal and victim- born of a memory of value, resists mediate between high American ized by humiliation and torture, as effacement through insistent figura- abstraction and postwar European well as objectified, distanced and tion. We recognize in Golub’s trans- expressionism to expose the inad- charged with the psychic tension figured realism its capacity to convey equacy of autonomous abstraction of the individual and the artist. The compassion, the bridging element to portray the depths of the psyche, figures address the duress and rup- necessary not merely to unite mod- the dehumanization to which his- ture of contemporary experience, its ernism with postmodernism but also tory has succumbed. With vitriolic cuts and erosions, accumulations of to pursue the sensus communis, the irony, Golub invokes a “grand” style surface bravura exposed with a meat enlarged thought, the reflective moral popular in academic art of the past, cleaver to reveal the canvas’s wounds. purpose of the 20th century. “The one that seeks to depict great events, They paraphrase the text from Franz magic of compassion,” writes Han- frequently with allegorical, religious Kafka’s “In the Penal Colony” in nah Arendt, “was that it opened the or military import. Paradoxically, which the officer describes the effi- heart of the sufferer to the sufferings these are subjects that Joshua Reyn- cacy of the punishment apparatus on of others, whereby it established and olds considers venerable, “familiar its victim: “You have seen how dif- confirmed the ‘natural’ bond between and interesting to all without being ficult it is to decipher the script with men. . . . Where passion, the capacity degraded by the vulgarism of ordi- one’s eyes,” boasts the officer, “but our for suffering, and compassion, the nary life in any country.” Derived man deciphers it with his wounds.” capacity for suffering with others, from the patriarchal and imperial Golub’s figuration looks past formal ended,” she offers, “vice began” [4]. traditions of Greece and Rome, reductionism to a condition of moral Ortega y Gasset describes an epider- Golub’s series such as Riot and Mer- reduction, a condition that assaults mal relationship to the human family cenaries attack the past even as they our sensibilities and impoverishes by means of an analogy to persons parody pretensions of the present decency. Unflinching and confronta- present at a dying man’s bedside. such as the heroic, transcendent tional, his dramatis personae render Wife, doctor, reporter and painter aspirations of the American sublime. history through horrendous mimesis, witness one and the same event, yet To the extent that avant-garde art has a misshapen and redundant dimen- each is impressed in a different way been considered by some a “historical sion based in grotesque acts that in so that their several aspects have

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/LEON_r_01365 by guest on 27 September 2021 hardly anything in common. The ment, to life beyond itself, and to the to explore emerging global music wife is not simply “present” in the sensus communis of posterity—might scenes. scene, he notes, “she is in it. She does be conceived in terms of conscience With this year’s theme of geog- not behold it, she lives it.” The doc- rather than of grandeur, in terms of raphy, it wasn’t hard to find oneself tor, a professional, is several degrees a transfigured social realism rather considering the on-the-ground removed from the emotional center, than of transcendence. impacts of living in a globally con- while the reporter, in his objectivity, nected world. Cross-cultural dialogue has lost all emotional contact with References takes on a new resonance when close the dying man. Ortega y Gasset then to everyone’s mind are the realities comes to the painter, whose purely 1 Hannah Arendt, Lectures on Kant’s of refugee crises, mass migration Political Philosophy (Chicago: University perceptive attitude fails to perceive of Chicago Press, 1982) p. 83. prompted by climate change, revolu- the event in its entirety through a tion and war and an apparent move 2 Meyer Schapiro, “The Social Bases of maximum of distance and a mini- Art,” in David Shapiro, ed. Social Real- toward right-wing politics—all of mum of feeling intervention [5]. ism: Art as a Weapon (New York: Freder- which seem to forecast an uncertain Golub’s transfigured realism succeeds ick Ungar, 1973) pp. 118–127. future economically, physically and in bridging this gap, modernism’s gap, 3 Walter Benjamin, “Theses on a Philos- psychically. For those not forced between being within the connective ophy of History,” in Illuminations (New to move, economic crashes have in tissue of humanity and being purely York: Schocken Books, 1968) p. 255. many places cost a generation of perceptive to its history as a pictorial 4 Arendt [1] p. 261. young people their international agent. His empathic force is indebted mobility and perhaps their creative 5 Arendt [1] pp. 16–17. to the idea of human solidarization, freedom at a time when support an ultimately libertarian idea born of for young artists and musicians is French Revolutionary ideology that RITUALS increasingly corporate-sponsored, equates virtue with the welfare of the by Vincent Moon. Commissioned by if available at all. people. As a moral imperative it raises CTM and CTM X New Geographies, With such things at stake, the compassion to the highest political Berlin, Germany, 30 January–7 February importance of dialogue with, or virtue, for it is formed out of sym- 2016. Festival website: . such shared spaces as party- or the vulgar and the marginalized— Reviewed by Hannah Drayson. Email: dance-music culture, requires more groups of people not dissimilar from . than ever an intellectually informed the victims of Golub’s mercenaries. honesty and awareness of privilege doi:10.1162/LEON_r_01364 Yet conceived in terms of metaphoric that treats the originators of these formalism, Golub’s work unites itself There is plenty to say about this year’s movements and their work as nei- with modernism, for it elevates grim installment of Club Transmediale ther exotic nor naïve. The panel reality to a field saturated with vivid (CTM), the Berlin-based annual discussion “Roots to Routes; How to color, where the intrinsic power of festival devoted to “adventurous Research, Document and Mediate the artwork and not the critical edi- music and art.” The festival pays Music Today,” moderated by Florian fice still holds the capacity to ennoble. close attention to (and champions) Sievers, with Wendy Hsu, Christo- Here modernism hovers between movements in new and canonical pher Kirkley, Sarah Abunama-Elgadi abstraction and representation, experimental music—particularly and Thomas Burkhalter, gave an between monolithic centeredness and underground online, club and dance excellent overview of the concerns, the pluralism of all that is to follow. music scenes. It turns an insightful approaches and issues faced by artists, In Golub’s moving reenactments, eye on movements in technology, ethnomusicologists and label owners we encounter a space of redoubled contemporary culture and politics, regarding their own contributions power, a reflective space in which to and somehow rather successfully to this liminal cultural space. As ponder the limits of insensibility. avoids simply attending to what is the panel title indicates, a change in Arnold Hauser, in The Philosophy (about to be) in style. This year’s awareness regarding diasporic music of Art History, describes the notion program, under the title New Geog- scenes, as well as the local global of “style” in art-historical parlance raphies, included talks, seminars and music scenes, means that, at least as a musical theme of which only an exhibition and attended to a range among more discerning audiences, variations may be known because a of questions raised by the notion of the idea of a homogeneous “world sum can never include more, and an diversity—whether of race, gender or music” as a genre in itself no longer abstraction always includes less, than geography—in contemporary music makes sense, given the range and the whole from which it was derived. culture. New Geographies was curated dynamism of the forms of new music In this spirit, perhaps the overarching in collaboration with research organi- being “discovered” and popularized movement of American modern- zation Norient, a group of ethnomu- (apparently at ever-increasing speed). ism—its aspiration to aesthetic judg- sicologists who use online publishing World music, as a category defined by

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/LEON_r_01365 by guest on 27 September 2021 what it is not—“Western”—suggests these films are the vessels for cultural trance, altered states of conscious- a “them and us” binary that cannot actions that are intended to transcend ness, visions, hypnosis, mediumship, and should not be maintained; it their own histories and futures and ecstasy, dreams.” Something of a overlooks the deep cross-pollination seemingly—in the polyphony of catchall then, and it’s worth noting, among musical styles (and legitimizes voices, drums, whistles and drones, as suggested by the list above, that theft); and it naïvely assumes that in the passive faces and mid-distance trance is to some extent a product of the producers of “world music” are eyes—provide a quality of assurance, culture. Deep understanding, famil- themselves unaware of their own the feeling of an agency that is both iarity and culture shape our ability place in the global marketplace. The familiar and other. While the quality to do many things: I can go and sing CTM exhibition at Bethaniel in the of “trance” or “possession,” depicted to the mountain, but to fully be the Kunstraum Kreuzberg featured video (at least in the films I saw) in its most vessel for the song that greets the sun and interview documentation from recognizable sense, seems clearly is not a role that can be dropped into. numerous local music scenes that in stated in the twitching limbs of a Losing oneself, authenticity, familiar- recent years have been increasingly Javanese boy—his eyelids flickering ity and tradition are presented to us accessible online through reissues beneath thick blue eyeshadow—and as outsiders rather than as potential and new releases on Western record in a woman’s shoulders shaking as she participants. What Moon’s instal- labels such as Soundway [1]. These dances, her face slack, both entirely lation made me wonder, especially local music scenes offer interesting absorbed and completely present, it when watching it in a room with materials for researchers interested in can also perhaps be detected in other, 30 or so other spectators, was this: the interplay between tradition, cul- more inward manifestations that How many of us have rejected or ture and technology, and a theme that pull us into the subject’s worlds—a overlooked similar traditions in our recurs at CTM is the often-surprising woman’s voice rising to meet the sun own home cultures? Are we looking variety of ways in which communica- as it licks the edge of a mountain, her with perhaps a little desire at things tion technologies are used by indi- voice returning from the shadowed we would reject if they were our own vidual scenes and artists to produce hillside. Or are the apparent similari- inheritance? The question is perhaps and distribute music. The ongoing ties simply artifacts, as imagination not “What are we looking for?” but proliferation of information networks casts around for continuity, looking “Why are we looking?” and perhaps and tools, the Web, mobile comput- for resonance where there is little this is simply an issue of consumer- ing, cheap information storage and more than you would normally ism, the romantic ideal that there services such as WhatsApp allows expect? is something authentic in ourselves artists and their publics to distribute Moon’s beautiful films are incred- that might be actualized by a “true” music files and contribute to the vis- ibly engaging and left me troubled, encounter: the exoticism of tribal and ibility of some musical cultures that perhaps because of the way the selec- spiritual customs but at a safe dis- would otherwise remain unknown to tions do show us the worlds within tance—and perhaps for good reason? a wider public. which these rituals take place, while In one sense there is an honesty to Also incorporating an ethno- at the same time their informants this that perhaps might not at first graphic imperative was Vincent are not able to explain from their come to mind; one’s own rituals are Moon’s Rituals, the three-screen video own perspective what they mark or not only terribly banal, but by avoid- installation at HAU 2 that showed how we should see. The clips neither ing them we avoid the claims that our specially edited selections from introduce their subjects nor do they culture might have on us. What Ritu- Moon’s documentary work depict- acknowledge the presence of a cam- als doesn’t show us is the preparation, ing ritual practices filmed in diverse era; preamble, welcome and explana- the hierarchy imposed and reinforced geographic and cultural settings. The tion are not included. The leveled by the ritual, the control of the young clips were shown on each screen in a view of the clips is perhaps intended and old by the past, its structuring random order and, while this strat- to erase the differences between the of thought and action. What is the egy avoided the dilemma of how to apparently timeless human actions price of having these kinds of ritual arrange such a large body of material, they depict. The shift between docu- traditional practices in our lives? it also, both in the visual and sound mentary and artwork makes our own What comes with them? And when mix, worked well to prompt a mul- troubled impulses as viewers all the they become negotiable, is something tilayered reading of the work with more apparent; Moon leaves us with a left behind? How do we balance quest space for reflection. The consistent feeling that we have stumbled across narratives with narratives of loss and, quality of the films themselves aided something barely understood. perhaps overlooked, choice? this; the footage is professional and The curatorial statement for Ritu- cinematic. als describes trance as an “essential Note The somewhat elusive thread that quest for our generation” but isn’t connects these scenes might be quali- 1 Better-known genres that have “broken specific about what that generation through” in this way include Portuguese ties associated with the trappings and or trance itself might constitute, Kuduro and Shangaan Electro from performance of ritual. The people in citing “poetic trance, possession South Africa.

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/LEON_r_01365 by guest on 27 September 2021 BOOKS instrument in the (forced) conversion tory, from the elevated and bird’s-eye from small-scale individual farm- views popular in the Manifest Destiny BARNSTORMING THE PRAIRIES: ing to large-scale, state-controlled era to the first photographs taken HOW AERIAL VISION SHAPED agribusiness. While Weems does not from balloons in the 19th century. THE MIDWEST deny this version of history, the story In addition, these views did not sim- by Jason Weems. University of Minnesota he tells in Barnstorming the Prairies ply reflect the point of view of the Press, Minneapolis, MN, U.S.A., 2015. 368 is much more complex and multi- hegemonic power of the times (the pp., illus. Trade, paper; cloth. ISBN: 978- layered and helps to correct a large landlord or the general, for instance); 0-816-67751-1; ISBN: 978-0-816-67750-4. number of stereotypes regarding the their cultural and ideological mean- Reviewed by Jan Baetens. Email: keywords of his study: “aerial pho- ings were much more diverse, if not . tography” and “Midwestern culture.” open to anti-hegemonic reinterpreta- Weems succeeds in doing so by fol- tions: A more or less disembodied doi:10.1162/LEON_r_01365 lowing three paths: first, a historical bird’s-eye view, for instance, capable A book on modernization through overview of the “vertical” view in the of displaying the grid-like structure of aerial photography in the Midwest context of a dramatically “horizontal” land ownership, displayed the funda- in the 1930s? There may be a lot of natural environment; second, a cul- mental equality of all those working reasons to immediately skip it. Isn’t tural studies–inspired reinterpreta- on their part of the land while chal- modernity a quintessentially urban tion of the reception of aerial views lenging the individual and therefore phenomenon that has nothing to as well as the actual experience of hugely biased standpoint of the single do with country life, and certainly flying by local audiences; and third, observer standing on top of the not with country life in the Midwest an interdisciplinary approach to the landscape. Finally, the rapid democ- as we imagine it? And what possible photographic material in which he ratization of flying, as suggested by relationship could there be between links it to sources from other media Weems’s title and the mechanization country life and aerial photography, (pre-photographic drawings, contem- of American urban society in these something we tend to spontaneously porary paintings and architectural years, demonstrates that it is not pos- associate with warfare and, more and urban planning sketches and sible to separate aerial photography generally, power and colonialism? photographs) and provides an excel- from the experience of flying itself, Finally, isn’t there a kind of inher- lent close reading of the material. which many people, even farmers ent contradiction between the terms In this analysis, the crucial term who had never left their county (but “culture” and “Midwest”? The best is of course the “grid,” an icon of who had been enthusiastic drivers response to such biases is the book modernity but also of something since the inception of the Ford Model itself. Jason Weems’s Barnstorming almost premodern, that is, the demo- T), considered to be an exciting and the Prairie is an amazing, refreshing cratic and egalitarian spirit of the liberating experience. It is therefore and thoroughly thought-provoking Jeffersonian ideal of the republic as incorrect, Weems concludes, to study, a study that is not only a major the collaborative effort of many small adopt a dualistic or dichotomizing contribution to our knowledge of independent and landowning farm- approach to aerial photography in the Midwestern culture but also a superb ers, who were each allotted a geo- Midwest—with the intrusive force of example of a broad and interdisci- metrically equal part of the prairie Eastern bureaucrats on one side and plinary examination of what seems at during the westward expansion of the powerless forces of resistance of first glance to simply be a technical the United States in the 19th century. the poor and illiterate farmers on the device: aerial photography. The Land Ordinance that organized other side. Most Midwesterners were The basic situation that Jason the methodical division of the (sup- Weems’s book addresses is this: posedly empty) land in 1785 followed Aerial pictures—that is, vertically perfectly mathematical rules whose recorded panoramic representations philosophical and political underpin- of the (in)famous grid-structure of nings should never be overlooked, the Midwest’s flat and treeless farm- Weems rightfully argues, when ana- land—were used by U.S. agrarian lyzing the often-positive reactions authorities to impose an ambitious of small local Midwestern farmers program of both collectivization to the imposition of large-scale grid and rationalizing of farming in the structures and the accompanying years of the Great Depression as a new structures of production during solution to the negative effects that the 1930s. Moreover, one should not unscientific means of production had forget that the aerial view was nei- had on soil and productivity. The use ther something new nor something of aerial photography has therefore impersonal or purely objectifying. been seen many decades later as an Aerial views have a very long his-

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/LEON_r_01365 by guest on 27 September 2021 sympathetic to the new technologies structure implied. He helps readers ings of philosopher-naturalist Johann of flying and aerial photography, and understand why modern city plan- Wolfgang von Goethe and what there was often an idealizing strand ners could only reject the “broadacre Robert J. Richards calls “Romantic in their reactions to modernization city” ideal (a kind of reinterpretation Biology” [3]. Romantic biologists (nearly all families had aerial pic- of garden city dreams in an egalitar- include an array of figures from the tures in their homes, and they appro- ian and strongly individualizing last three centuries, such as founding priated these images as tools of framework). At the same time, he figure of biology Goethe, biologist community-building). This much makes clear that these failed and and embryologist Haeckel, biologist more nuanced vision of moderniza- largely despised plans for urban Carl Friedrich Kielmeyer, naturalist tion has important political and innovation would be reinvented in and geologist Charles Darwin, physi- ideological consequences, because the postwar years of suburban white- ologist J.S. Haldane, biologist and it radically questions the stereotype collar development. mathematician D’Arcy Wentworth that the Midwestern farmer had Thompson and embryologist Conrad a backward-looking and narrow- BIOCENTRISM AND MODERNISM Waddington. These scientists shared minded worldview, a stereotype that edited by Oliver A.I. Botar and Isabel a belief in the fundamental relation- many have wrongly taken for granted; Wünsche. Ashgate Publishing, Surrey, ship between scientific and aesthetic the reevaluation of this idea allows U.K., and Burlington, VT, U.S.A., 2011. observation. For them, there was a for a very different interpretation of 266 pp. Trade. ISBN: 978-1-409-40050-9. core connection between judgments Midwestern culture in general. Reviewed by Charissa N. Terranova. based on biological function and Weems also looks at Midwestern Email: . judgments rooted in aesthetics. culture as it is reflected in fields other Similar to Goethe’s practice as a than aerial photography. The book doi:10.1162/LEON_r_01366 thinker and writer, which was not includes two thought-provoking A paradigm shift in critical theory hemmed in by the artificial separa- chapters on regionalist painting by and the greater humanities has argu- tion between art and science, bio- Grant Wood and the urban “broad- ably been afoot for at least 20 years, centrism is both a monistic and a acre city” projects by the prominent since the move from linguistic, holistic endeavor. Modernist Midwestern architect semiotic and textual systems to phe- The terms monism and holism Frank Lloyd Wright. Wood, a not-so- nomenological systems and cognitive are central to the discussion of bio- much-appreciated painter nowadays, science–based analytics, catalyzed in centric modernism and, as such, was a premier local as well as national part by philosopher Brian Massumi’s are carefully if not beautifully given artist in the 1930s (to whom Life mag- “The Autonomy of Affect” (1995) and specificity by Botar and Wünsche. azine offered a centerpiece). Weems’s cognitive scientist Benjamin Libet’s While interconnected in meaning analysis in Barnstorming the Prairies groundbreaking research on the and history, the two words are by no is a subtle close reading of Wood’s embodied temporality of conscious- means synonymous. Botar explains clever treatment of the grid and of ness in the early 1990s [1]. Oliver A.I. monism according to how Haeckel Wood’s sophisticated and shifting Botar and Isabel Wünsche’s anthology used the term, as it referred to “the representation of the tension between Biocentrism and Modernism is part essential unity of organic and inor- straight lines and curves, a tension of this ongoing shift in paradigms. ganic nature,” which in turn meant that Weems manages to decipher Made up of 11 essays from art, archi- “that the simplest protoplasmic sub- from a wide range of perspectives. tectural and urban historians, the stances arose from inorganic carbon- Frank Lloyd Wright, still consid- compendium does not so much recast ates through spontaneous generation ered one of the most notable repre- or revise modernism as dig up and [rather than] a miraculous origin” sentatives of Modernist architecture, frame forthrightly the missed and [4]. Holism is a unified perspective had developed around the mid-1930s seminal elements of proto-complex in which art and science are one. For ambitious plans to bridge the gap systems and the biologically inflected Wünsche, holism is closely related to between country and city. He failed strain of the period in art and archi- organic worldviews, which “are anti- however to raise any serious interest tecture. individualistic,” striving “to overcome in these plans, which were discarded In the shoals of the modern, bio- the dualism of matter and mind so as conservative if not blatantly reac- centric modernism dates back to the characteristic of Western thought, tionary given their straightforward coining of the word ecology in 1866 because they consider both to be rejection of the modern city (vertical- by the German scientist, propagator different sides of one and the same ity, concentration, mechanization, of Charles Darwin and consummate nature” [5]. While both are terms of speed, mass culture). Weems shows illustrator Ernst Haeckel [2]. Haeckel, unification, unlike monism’s bridging the profound continuity between a scintillating character, looms large of the organic and inorganic, living these plans, the traditional Jefferso- in this volume. In the deeper longue and nonliving, holism is a more nian grid and the cultural and ethi- durée, biocentric modernism goes general term for the fundamental cal values this typically Midwestern back to the late–18th-century writ- oneness of mind and body.

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/LEON_r_01365 by guest on 27 September 2021 In addition to Haeckel’s influence, “Rereading Bioromanticism,” Spy- self-management. What makes these biocentric modernism in art and ros Papapetros’s “On the Biology of essays so fascinating and urgent is architecture was also informed by the the Inorganic: Crystallography and how they cogently reveal the palpa- Lebensphilosophie (Life Philosophy) Discourses of Latent Life in the Art bility and urgency of 150-year-old and neovitalism of philosophers and Architectural Historiography biocentrism in the present. Haeckel’s Friedrich Nietzsche, Henri Bergson of the Early Twentieth Century,” monism does not simply foreground and Ludwig Klages and scientists David Haney and Elke Sohn’s “Traces contemporary science, but rings, in Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, Jacob von of Organicism in Gardening and part, true today. Its description of Uexküll, Hans Driesch, Raoul Francé, Urban Planning Theories in Early organismic development according Ernst Mach, Élissée Reclus, Peter Twentieth-Century Germany,” Isa- to a combination of environmental Kropotkin and Patrick Geddes. While bel Wünsche’s “Organic Visions and constraints and the inherent vital- there is no bifurcation at work in the Biological Models in Russian Avant- ism of the organism, what Botar here anthology, certain essays stand out Garde Art,” Allan Antliff’s “Biocen- refers to as Vitalmystik, resonates more strongly than others in their trism and Anarchy: Herbert Read’s with the current foregrounding of the ability to truly carve out a niche for Modernism” and Sara Lynn Henry’s environment within postgenomics biocentrism as a prominent force in “Klee’s Neo-Romanticism: The Wages and the empirical biofunctionalism the opening of a new field of inquiry of Scientific Curiosity.” The contribu- of autopoesis, the idea and reality bridging art and science. tions that do less excavating and more that organic matter is self-generating. There are, thus, two kinds of cataloging of form include Jennifer Biocentrism in history foregrounds essays in the compendium, wherein Mundy’s “The Naming of Biomor- an epigenetic take on culture, or at roughly half confront and discuss phism,” Mark Antliff’s “Organicism least the possibility of one. That a more forthrightly these philosophers Among the Cubists: The Case of scientist, writer, artist or designer’s and scientists and their ideas within Raymond Duchamp-Villon,” Vivian practice is fundamentally shaped, or modernism and the other half fall Endicott Barnett’s “Kandinsky and “canalized” as embryologist Conrad back into the more descriptive tradi- Science: The Introduction of Biologi- Waddington would have it, by eco- tion of balkanized art history. If the cal Images in the Paris Period” and logical forces opens up the discourse one portion does the work of forging Elizabeth L. Langhorne’s “Pollock’s of epigenetics beyond the cellular to new territories by disinterring a lost Dream of a Biocentric Art: The Chal- include the biopolitics of the greater strain of biologism in art and archi- lenge of His and Peter Blake’s Ideal environment. tectural history, the other explains, or Museum.” Beyond these reverberations in sometimes re-instantiates, clichés of As Biocentrism and Modernism is contemporary science, the revela- “biomorphism” and microscopic for- a book on the history of biocentrism tions of biocentrism in the past are malism at work in abstract painting. and modernism, political themes nested within the aforementioned With respect to the second group, and questions in the book pertain to shifts in critical theory, today consist- think here of Alfred Barr’s rather the past. This does not obviate the ing of a series of what one might call simplistic take on biomorphism crucial political importance of the critical materialisms of science. This circa 1930, Kandinsky’s anatomical discourse of biocentrism in the pres- list includes affectivity theory, phi- references in paintings made in Paris ent, to which I return below. In the losophies of embodiment within the during the same decade, and the anthology, the politics of biocentrism digital, speculative realism and object unfortunate misreading of biologi- emerge fitfully around the pivotal ontology. What I am arguing here is cal forces in modern art of the 20th connections between the early ecol- that a discussion of biocentrism as century as, simply put, kitsch. Biocen- ogy movement and the rise of fascism part of the history of modern art and trism, with its full entourage of philo- in Germany. Figures of repute (and architecture is set in relief by contem- sophical voices, makes for a paradigm disrepute) here include Haeckel, the porary critical theory and science—as shift in the present, whereas biocen- botanist Raoul Francé, naturalist they work in conjunction together. trism understood according to Barr’s Jacob von Uexküll and philosopher Biocentrism in modernism, clearly biomorphism, viz. a formal trope in Ludwig Klages, all of whom were seen and relayed as the contributors a sculpture or a curving shape on anti-Semitic. On another front, which do in this book, is not possible with- a canvas, is simply the work of art is less Germanic and more informed out these new allied discourses, which reportage. by the vitalism of French mathema- are further part of the rise, one might Yet in the book, these two strains tician and philosopher Bergson, argue, of mass computational literacy. work in tandem: One side is figure Allan Antliff’s pithy contribution on Complex systems in the present to the other’s ground. The group Herbert Read’s “organic politics of reveal complex systems in the past. of essays bearing a more probing anarchism” comes full circle, recast- These moves in the critical analysis of Germanic biocentrism in ing Haeckel’s biofunctional theories approach to cultural production modernism includes Botar’s “Defin- of organismic self-organization in could be celebrated as the incarna- ing Biocentrism,” Monika Wucher’s terms of a politics of autonomy and tion at long last of Donna Haraway’s

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/LEON_r_01365 by guest on 27 September 2021 coupling of science fiction and social to disinterested critical thinking, Garde Art,” in Oliver A.I. Botar and reality some 30 years ago [6]. Har- much less poetry or the imagination. Isabel Wünsche, eds., Biocentrism and Modernism (Surrey, U.K., and Burling- away’s declaration that “the boundary In a similar vein, the purview of the ton, VT, U.S.A.: Ashgate Publishing, between science fiction and social globalized free market conveniently 2011) p. 129. reality is an optical illusion” drew miscasts science as singly an efficient 6 Donna Haraway, “A Cyborg Manifesto: attention to the bombast and surreal- and reductive process that makes Science, Technology, and Socialist- ism of President Reagan’s automated hard results and involves little in the Feminism in the Late Twentieth Cen- tury,” in Simians, Cyborgs and Women: ballistics system known as Star Wars. way of perceptive vision or delibera- The Reinvention of Nature (New York: On the perimeter of her coupling, tive skepticism. Biocentrism in art Routledge, 1991) pp. 149–181. there was also the possibility that the and architecture is part of this current very near future held within it a new battle of ideas and skills in an increas- ILLEGAL LITERATURE: TOWARD analytics for the humanities cultivated ingly open marketplace with ever- A DISRUPTIVE CREATIVITY by the science fiction imagination. fewer constraints. It holds a place by David S. Roh. Minnesota University Calibrated by the sublime awesome- for critical thinking in the humani- Press, Minneapolis, MN, U.S.A., 2015. 200 ness of science that is at once fantastic ties, reinvigorates the field of art pp., illus. Trade, paper; cloth. ISBN: 978- and real, this analytics has arrived in and architectural history and holds 0-816-69578-2; ISBN: 978-0-816-69575-1. the present moment, and biocentric steadfast a place for science as the Reviewed by Jan Baetens. Email: modernism is its history. culmination of intuition, imagination . This new friendliness to science and evidence in a global economy of doi:10.1162/LEON_r_01367 within the humanities is not an unfettered capitalism. entirely halcyon affair. First, let us say All of us who do editorial work—and that biocentrism is not just a matter References and Notes who doesn’t?—struggle daily with of history but is also a burgeoning 1 Brian Massumi, “The Autonomy of many forms of copyright issues that field in the present, materializing in Affect,” Cultural Critique No. 31, The Poli- seem all the more absurd because the form of bioart, synthetic biology tics of Systems and Environments, Part the rise of the Internet has radically II (Autumn 1995) pp. 83–109. See also within architecture, bioinformatics Brian Massumi, Parables of the Virtual: modified both the practice of textual in design and the history and theory Movement, Affect, Sensation (Durham, and other reproduction (technically of biology in art and architecture. NC: Duke Univ. Press, 2002); Benjamin speaking, one can copy and circulate Libet, Mind Time: The Temporal Factor in all kinds of information in just one Second, let us not deny their col- Consciousness (Cambridge, MA: Harvard lective presence as a matter of try- Univ. Press, 2004); Chun Siong Soon et click) and the very attitude people ing to eke out a safe place for art, al., “Predicting Free Choices for Abstract have toward the idea of reusing and imagination and subjectivity within Intentions,” Proceedings of the National sharing information (digital-native Academy of Science, (accessed prosumers do not feel that they are does not simply mean liberation but 7 July 2015); and Chun Siong Soon et infringing on copyrights when they also means profit. This anthology sits al., “Unconscious Determinants of Free appropriate texts and images). At within this dialectical present. It is Decisions in the Human Brain,” Nature first glance, David S. Roh’s book Neuroscience 11, No. 5, 543–545 (2008). part of the need to push an “A” into seems to take sides with those who STEM, in order to give us STEAM. 2 E.H.P.A. Haeckel, Generelle Morphologie make a radical plea for the “libera- der Organismen, Vol. 2 (Berlin: Georg Biocentrism in art and architecture is Reimer, 1866) p. 286. tion” of information and data, that the dynamism and energy that turns is, for the dismantling of copyright 3 Robert J. Richards, The Romantic Con- the static connective branch of STEM ception of Life: Science and Philosophy in as it currently exists (yet not in the into the combustive and changeful the Age of Goethe (Chicago: University same way in all countries, for place process of STEAM. of Chicago Press, 2002) pp. 6–8; H.A.M. matters in this context). What makes Snelders, “Romanticism and Naturphi- We can celebrate a new humanist losophie and the Inorganic Natural Sci- this book so interesting, however, is analytics that does not reify science ences 1797–1840,” Studies in Romanticism Roh’s nuanced approach to the stakes as the bogeyman of the capitalist 9, No. 3, 193–215 (Summer 1970); Stephen of “free” information, where “free” state because we want clarity and Jay Gould, Ontogeny and Phylogeny is used in the double sense of the (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press, facts while also embracing the real- 1977) pp. 35–39. word: unlimited by legal and com- ity that the encroachment of science mercial regulations on the one hand 4 Oliver A.I. Botar, quoting Rollo Handy, and technology into the humani- “Ernst Heinrich Haeckel,” in Edwards, and involving no costs on the other ties is without a doubt a post–Great ed., The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, hand. Illegal Literature is not a liber- Recession series of events. The rise p. 399, in “Defining Biocentrism,” in tarian manifesto claiming the right Botar and Wünsche, eds., Biocentrism of art-science-technology holism in and Modernism (Surrey, England, and to reject all that opposes, restricts or the 21st century is an indelible part Burlington, VT, U.S.A.: Ashgate Publish- criminalizes the free use of protected of the attempt on the part of the ing, 2011) p. 33. material, but a sound reflection on humanities to survive a ravenous 5 Isabel Wünsche, “Organic Visions and possible alternatives to the almost- global market that ascribes little value Biological Models in Russian Avant- absolute divide between legal and

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/LEON_r_01365 by guest on 27 September 2021 peter). Finally, the reflection on non- reuse. Once again, however, Roh does canonical and unauthorized reuse of not defend the destruction or the protected material brings Roh to dis- disappearance of the existing cultural, tinguish between three different types economic and legal models. He is of illegal cultural production, namely perfectly aware of the limitations of plagiarism, piracy and parody. For, a “horizontal” distribution system, unlike plagiarism and piracy, parody that is, a system that abolishes the is the only type of illegal literature boundaries between maker and user, that really attacks the heart of the just as he recognizes the foibles of system, which is a combination of the open-source movement and the the author as the unique maker and necessity of acknowledging the merits absolute individual producer of a and rights of individual creators. The work of art and the copyright system model Roh cites as an example of the that prevents any kind of unautho- possible and even fruitful coexistence rized reuse. Plagiarism and piracy of closure and openness is what he do not aim at disrupting the position calls the “versioning” model in open- of author and copyright in this way, access software development, which they only try to use it to their benefit. fosters creativity through reuse while Parody instead is a practice that really not pulling apart the economic and illegal practices, a divide that Roh disrupts author and copyright. legal system that organizes the soft- thinks is damaging for everybody. Before discussing the three case ware business. It is up to the reader to Too strong a divide between the legal studies that complement and illus- imagine what this may represent in and the illegal is not only an obstacle trate his claims, Roh also addresses the field of cultural production. to creativity and innovation, it is the advantages of a more open and Roh’s readers may find inspira- also in the long run problematic for relaxed approach to authorship and tion in the three case studies that are those who currently benefit from the copyright legislation, but he always examined in detail in this book. Each absolute legal protection of creative does so by considering the larger con- of these case studies analyzes a differ- work (authors, publishers, copyright text of these issues, that is, the triple ent angle or perspective of the larger holders). combination of culture (our worship field of cultural parody. First is a case Roh’s book opens with an excellent of the individual author as unique that focuses on the actual work: the discussion on the notion of creativ- genius), economy (the distribution literary parodies (here represented ity, before moving on to some sound system that makes the work of indi- by the double example of parodic arguments on disruptive creativity. vidual creators accessible to a larger rewritings of Lolita and Gone with Concerning creativity, Roh relies audience) and law (the copyright the Wind). Second is a case that fore- upon a subtle and complex but well- system that does not defend the rights grounds the audience: the traditional built theoretical framework that bor- of the users but those of the author but rapidly changing practice of fan rows insights from three fields: first, and the economic agents that benefit culture and fan prosumerism (here cultural studies, where Raymond Wil- from the protection of individual epitomized by the well-tolerated and liams’s distinction between residual, authorship) as well as by examining almost institutionalized practice of dominant and emergent structures the effects of legality and illegality manga parodies). And third is a case of feeling help build an argument in the long run—for there are often that highlights the importance of against essentialism (for instance, the dramatic differences between the the network (via several examples essential difference between “good” short- and long-term consequences of collaborative development and and “bad” writing); second, polysys- of a given policy. According to Roh, file-sharing). All chapters offer a tems theory, as elaborated by Itamar a less-restrictive interpretation of good mix of enthusiastic acclaim of Even-Zohar, who offers a supple and copyright and ownership not only openness (or illegality, according to open way of tackling the interaction profits users, communities and soci- the perspective of those who stick to between canonical and marginal or ety at large, it also profits creativity, a rigid interpretation of authorship peripheral writing; and third, Russian including from an economic point of as ownership) and critical distance Formalism, here studied via Victor view. The more people are allowed to toward naïve libertarianism. Together Erlich’s well-known book, which puts be culturally active—and this activity with the excellent theoretical fram- a strong emphasis on the Bakhtinian often involves illegal or quasi-illegal ing of illegal culture in the broader notions of dialogue and parody. Dis- practices—the more positive effects context of dialogism and parody, ruptive creativity, on the other hand, one can observe on, for instance, this awareness of the pros and cons is also discussed from different points the quality of the works that are of either position makes Roh’s book of view, enabling Roh to maintain a produced and also the sales figures a stimulating contribution to a key certain distance from the neoliberal of the works in the fields that are contemporary debate that is certainly sense of creative destruction (Schum- dynamized by open access and free here to stay for many years.

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/LEON_r_01365 by guest on 27 September 2021 WRITING AND UNWRITING “unwriting” in the title is a thread tangible exploration of the notion of (MEDIA) ART HISTORY: through which one can begin to “unwriting.” Constant investigates the ERKKI KURENNIEMI IN 2048 unravel the work of Kurenniemi. archive of Kurenniemi in the project edited by Joasia Krysa and Jussi Parikka. The idea is taken from Kurenniemi’s Preliminary Work. The chapter looks MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, U.S.A., 2015. thoughts in a letter where he envisions at the efforts to align the idea of the 368 pp., illus. Trade. ISBN: 978-0-262- the possibility of “unwriting poetry,” archive with computational processes 02958-2. a to and fro between the sciences and given the understanding that for Reviewed by Amanda Egbe, University the arts to articulate through one Constant archives are collections of of Bedfordshire, School of Media & practice, or algorithm, that which has materials that are readable, writable Performance. Email: . elsewhere, reformulated with a deft certain ethical standards. Other sec- precision and conciseness. The book tions in the book explore scientific doi:10.1162/LEON_r_01368 brings together many of the frag- and technological shifts that are Writing and Unwriting (Media) Art ments of Kurenniemi’s work, includ- apparent in Kurenniemi’s work and in History: Erkki Kurenniemi in 2048 is ing finished and unfinished projects, society, such as the shift from analog a collection of essays that present the inventions and diary entries—with the to digital; there is also a section on work of artist-engineer Kurenniemi goal of reframing media art history Kurenniemi’s specific contributions to as a locus for thinking about media by developing a better understanding electronic music. art history. The book stems from the of the interconnectedness of art and The book brings together a number major presentation of Erkki Kuren- technology. of approaches and recent scholar- niemi’s work at the dOCUMENTA Sections such as “Archival Life” ship on media archaeology and the 13 exhibition in Kassel in 2012. The present Kurenniemi’s “lifelogging,” archive. The editors note the contra- interconnections between his work, the everyday documentation of diction of disciplinary boundaries now located at the Central Art his life presented across different in relation to the structuring of the Archive at the Finnish National Gal- media—photographs, video, film, book and the interdisciplinary nature lery in Helsinki, and the concept of audio recordings and writings (dia- of their subject. The book is best the archive is just one strand through ries). The section deals with both understood as standing in for just which the reader can engage with Kurenniemi’s own take on his archi- one evocation of a body of work that this book. The work of Kurenniemi val practice, which began in the 1960s is formulated across many media. does not fit neatly into one discipline and had no distinct philosophy, and For the Kurenniemi enthusiast there or another; as the editors highlight, the practice of archiving itself. In the is much material to immerse oneself Kurenniemi was a pioneer of elec- chapter “Fleshy Intensities,” Susanna in, and the book is admirable in its tronic music and computer arts as Paasonen presents the idea that attempts to visualize a project that well as an experimental filmmaker, Kurenniemi can stave off the erasure was the dOCUMENTA 13 exhibition inventor, archivist and futurologist. of life, human existence and annihila- in print. The main proposition of this For the editors of Writing and Unwrit- tion and simultaneously move toward book—that examining the work and ing (Media) Art History, he is the eternal life and the reconstitution of life of Erkki Kurenniemi opens up encapsulation of the artist-engineer himself through his archive in 2048; those discrete disciplinary bound- who elides the traditional academic this, she sees, as his archival fever. aries to the artist-engineer as an and museological categories. The “Visual Archive” section presents exemplar of how media, media arts Editors Joasia Krysa and Jussi pictures, articles and sketches from and art history need to be rethought Parikka see Kurenniemi as illustrative the Kurenniemi archive, offering an of post–World War II art that strad- introduction to Kurenniemi’s work dles numerous disciplinary boundar- for those not familiar with its scope. ies “from the aesthetic to the scientific In the section “Artistic Practice,” and technical.” This book is aimed Kurenniemi’s ideas on art and tech- at those following the various paths nology are developed through his of media archaeology, museology, own writings. Krysa points out that computer arts and electronic music– according to Kurenniemi’s inter- curators, art historians and all those disciplinary perspective, art is just concerned with questions of how we one of many possible outputs for his store and retrieve knowledge. work. Kurenniemi’s ideas are also The book is divided into six explored in the work of the media art sections—“Archival Life,” “Visual collective Constant. “Archiving the Archive,” “Artistic Practice,” “Sci- Databody: Human and Nonhuman ence/Technology,” “Music” and Agency in the Documents of Erkki “Interviews”—and each section is Kurenniemi” is perhaps the standout introduced by a contributor. The chapter in the book in presenting a

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/LEON_r_01365 by guest on 27 September 2021 in the light of scholarship on media both approaches: It is a thoroughly technologies—is well evidenced. The researched study that uses both book is situated within the media academic (often SCOT-inspired) archaeological canon that is currently research and nonacademic sources being constructed, and so readers will (corporate policy documents, no- struggle to find other forms of cul- longer-available digital material, tural, political and aesthetic criticism journalism, fan and hobbyist testi- within this collection. Writing and monies on social networks, etc.). At Unwriting (Media) Art History: Erkki the same time it never loses sight of Kurenniemi in 2048 serves as a source the bigger picture, the permanent document or manual to a set of prac- reflection on the link between com- tices that have been alluded to across modity and culture as well as the the fields of computer arts, expanded attempt to rethink digitization in cinema, electronic music and experi- larger terms. Approaching the music mental film. This text works best in as the canary in the digital coal combination with access to and use of mine, he thus uses the case of digital the archive and work of Kurenniemi music as a springboard toward a phi- either in the museum or cinema losophy of digitalization of culture in mining industry. Three, culturally or online through projects such as general, the central issue being the speaking, the digitization of music Constant’s active archive. shift from artifact and ownership to was not only a musical revolution, it participation in lifestyle communi- was also and above all a cultural rev- SELLING DIGITAL MUSIC, ties. olution, a watershed moment in the FORMATTING CULTURE It is both easy and impossible to shift from musical artifact (the music by Jeremy Wade Morris. University of summarize Selling Digital Music. It as an independent item: a composi- California Press, Berkeley, CA, U.S.A., is first of all easy to do so because tion, a performance or a recording, 2015. 288 pp. Trade, paper; cloth. ISBN: of the extremely clear structure and for instance) and ownership (buying 978-0-520-28794-5; ISBN: 978-0-520- argumentation of the book. Mor- and thus owning such an artifact 28793-8. ris defends three major ideas: One, used to be the traditional way of Reviewed by Jan Baetens. Email: the digital revolution is technically experiencing commodified music) . speaking not a matter of immateri- to something completely other in alization or loss of materiality but of which notions such as musical expe- doi:10.1162/LEON_r_01369 “detuning” and “retuning,” that is, rience and participation are key. An I may be overenthusiastic—the future of stripping away certain aspects of example of this: Instead of purchas- will tell us whether I am mistaken or music as commodified sound and ing a song or an album to add it to not—but having read Selling Digital the progressive invention of new one’s personal music library, the Music, I am truly convinced that this aspects and dimensions that enable contemporary user arranges playlists will become an influential book, as new forms of commodification. An in order to join certain communities important as, for instance, Raymond example of this: We lose the infor- that also enjoy music via nonmusical Williams’s study on Television (1974), mation offered by the artwork on items (such as, for instance, cloth- Bruno Latour’s work on Science the cover of an album (or CD), but ing, furniture or the participation in in Action (1987) or Paul DuGay’s we are now being offered new meta- certain events). edited volume on The Sony Walkman data and new interfaces when doing Selling Digital Music is also easy (1997). In this book, Jeremy Wade something with music on a com- to summarize because of the clear Morris analyzes the digitization of puter. Two, economically speaking, timeline it proposes and follows. commodified music, from the first digitization was not the countercul- Morris convincingly demonstrates audio files of the CD era to the cur- tural disruption of the music indus- that the digital file of the CD may rent transformations of the music try we still think it was—despite of have announced the digitization of industries in the cloud. But he also course many disruptive effects, for commodified popular music, but does much more than that: The book instance on the sales figures of musi- that it was not yet really part of it is first of all a cultural analysis of cal artifacts. It was, on the contrary, because it did not modify existing technology. Morris examines with Morris argues, a logical and perfectly commodified forms. One had to great care the intertwining of the rational aspect of the music busi- wait for other changes, namely the “technological”—that is, the various ness, which is always looking for encounter with the PC, a device that inventions and artifacts of the period newer and better ways to commodify had not been programmed to func- under scrutiny—and the “cultural”— music. An example of this is how the tion as a musical device but which that is, what people actually do with infamous practice of free file-sharing rapidly proved the ideal channel for all these things. Selling Digital Music paved the way for the use (i.e. the new forms of distribution and pro- strikes the right balance between selling) of music as part of the data duction of music. The story of this

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Brill Rodopi, Amsterdam, disinterested contemplation as some and helped demonstrate that music Netherlands, 2015. 174 pp. Paper. ISBN: theorists have argued. Central to the could really be sold as a digital file; 978-9-004-30871-8. conclusions Roald develops from (2) The progressive construction of Reviewed by George K. Shortess, her interview data is intrapellation, metadata, which replaced the sud- Department of Psychology, Lehigh Uni- which reflects the important time- denly missing metadata of the tradi- versity, Bethlehem, PA, U.S.A. Email: dependent character of the aesthetic tional record industry while allowing . experience. Intrapellation is the a more active use of the digital audio process by which the viewer of the files (this chapter and the previous doi:10.1162/LEON_r_01370 artwork first seeks meaning (although one inevitably contain fascinating Tone Roald’s The Subject of Aesthetics it can involve other reactions to the discussions of the skeuomorphism); is a report of an investigation of aes- work), followed by the work provid- (3) Napster, which Morris analyzes thetic experiences based in the visual ing feedback (sometimes a shocking as a venture capital company try- arts. It describes an approach for rupture) to the viewer. This interac- ing to build new business models tapping directly into that experience, tion continues back and forth in a aimed at the exploitation of data using qualitative, empirical methods flexible and rather free manner. Art mining via the traffic generated by that are framed in terms of philo- objects can then be defined as objects file sharing; (4) iTunes, which Selling sophical theories of aesthetics, with that produce this kind of aesthetic Digital Music does not interpret as particular emphasis on the theories of experience, which suggests that the answer to the crisis of collapsing Merleau-Ponty, Jauss and other phe- potentially any object can function sales figures but as a successful strat- nomenologists. in this way for an individual. egy for integrating music into new The Introduction gives the overall The Subject of Aesthetics has a good lifestyles (based also on the purchase framework for the book. Chapters 1 discussion of methodology overall. of new equipment that offered some- and 2 provide a fine overview of the However, it would have been helpful thing more than just the possibility history of the study of aesthetics, in if Roald, in describing her own pro- to enjoy cheap but legally acquired both philosophy and psychology. cedures, had provided more details artifacts); and finally (5), cloud Chapter 3 provides a discussion of about how subjects were recruited applications such as Spotify, where qualitative methodology employed and what their backgrounds were, as participation and collaboration via in the empirical research. Chapter 4 well as more details about where and user-generated content is at the heart reports and interprets the empirical how the interviews were conducted. of the commodification business. data collected. In it Roald develops She does give references, but it would The difficulty in summarizing the idea of intrapellation as a process be useful to have more specific details Morris’s book has to do with its that is central to the aesthetic expe- in the book. Further, because all of exceptional richness. The wealth rience. Chapter 5 provides further the analysis was done by Roald, it of archival material is breathtak- discussion of the aesthetic experience would have strengthened the findings ing, but so also is the depth of the (as outlined in chapter 4) in the con- if a second evaluator had looked at cultural and historical discussion of text of aesthetic theories, followed by the raw data independently. Even in this material. Despite the sometimes a helpful conclusion. Roald’s brief review of empirical aes- highly technical aspects of some As Roald points out, researchers in thetics, a mention of Daniel Berlyne of its pages, Selling Digital Music is empirical aesthetics, in the tradition would have been meaningful, given not at all a book for computer geeks of Alexander Baumgarten, have usu- the magnitude of his influence. or music nerds. It is instead one of ally investigated the characteristics As Roald recognizes, the results are the most sound (no pun intended) of conventionally defined art objects limited by the use of verbal language and thought-provoking analyses of in settings that do not promote the in describing aesthetic experiences. culture I have read in recent years— aesthetic experiences of the viewers Subjects often stated that they were hence the enthusiasm expressed in of these objects. This is somewhat unable to precisely describe the the opening sentence of this review. understandable because science usu- experience. In addition, a significant It is a book that has the courage to ally tackles the easier and more con- component of discussions of aesthetic ask fundamental questions about trollable phenomena first. However, experience deals with the possibility the changes of culture in the digital while interesting in its own right, of experience before consciousness. era, while also managing to avoid this approach tends to avoid trying This suggests the need for other ways

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/LEON_r_01365 by guest on 27 September 2021 JULY 2016 of understanding the experience. Two LEONARDO possibilities are using a new language REVIEWS The Challenge of Surrealism: The Cor- and measuring direct physiological ONLINE respondence of Theodor W. Adorno responses (possibly neural activity) at and Elisabeth Lenk, edited and trans- the time of the experience. Precisely SEPTEMBER 2016 lated by Susan H. Gillespie. Reviewed how to pursue either of these possi- Exposing the Film Apparatus: The by Kieran Lyons. bilities is at present unclear. However, Film Archive as a Research Laboratory, The Curatorial Conundrum, edited by it may be helpful to further develop edited by Giovana Fossati and Annie Paul O’Neill, Mick Wilson and Lucy and extend the approach used in The van den Oever. Reviewed by Mike Steeds. Reviewed by Edith Doove. Subject of Aesthetics to gain additional Leggett. insights into the aesthetic experience. Holograms: A Cultural History by As a cognitive neuroscientist and Handbook of Collective Intelligence, Sean F. Johnston. Reviewed by Jan psychologist with research interests edited by Thomas W. Malone and Baetens. in perception and empirical aesthet- Michael S. Bernstein. Reviewed by Music of Morocco: From the Library ics, I recommend this book to any- Jan Baetens. of Congress, recorded by Paul Bowles, one interested in understanding the The New ABCs of Research: Achieving 1959; edited by Philip Schuyler. aesthetic experience, but particularly Breakthrough Collaborations by Ben Reviewed by Allan Graubard. to those with an empirical aesthetics Shneiderman. Reviewed by Ernest Seen and Imagined: The World of Clif- background. It may help to bridge Edmonds. ford Ross by Clifford Ross; edited by the gap. When Movies Were Theater: Archi- Jay A. Clarke and Joseph Thompson. tecture, Exhibition, and the Evolution Reviewed by Cecilia Wong. of American Film by William Paul. Reviewed by Jan Baetens. JUNE 2016 AUGUST 2016 Adjusted Margin: Xerography, Art, Raqs Media Collective: Casebook and Activism in the Late Twentieth by Jeebesh Bagchi, Monica Narula, Century by Kate Eichhorn. Reviewed Shuddhabrata Sengupta (the Collec- by Mike Mosher. tive); Introduction by Philip Monk. How Games Move Us: Emotion Reviewed by Mike Leggett. by Design by Katherine Isbister. The Scientist and The Forger: Insights Reviewed by James Sweeting. into the Scientific Detection of Forg- The Process That Is the World: Cage/ ery in Paintings by Jehane Ragai. Deleuze/Events/Performances by Joe Reviewed by Brian Reffin Smith. Panzner. Reviewed by Edith Doove.

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