Empire, Mimesis, and Infrastructure in Modern Austria and Mexico
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UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA SAN DIEGO “Subheritage” : Empire, Mimesis, and Infrastructure in Modern Austria and Mexico. A Dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in Art History, Theory, and Criticism (Art Practice Concentration) by Francisco Javier Fresneda Casado Committee in charge: Professor Mariana Razo Wardwell, Chair Professor Norman Bryson, co-Chair Professor Brian Cross Professor Page Dubois Professor Ruben Ortiz-Torres 2019 © Francisco Javier Fresneda Casado, 2019. All rights reserved. The Dissertation of Francisco Javier Fresneda Casado is approved, and it is acceptable in quality and form for publication on microfilm and electronically: ___________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________ Co-chair ___________________________________________________________________________ Chair University of California San Diego 2019 iii DEDICATION To Luz. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Signature Page....................................................................................................................iii Dedication...........................................................................................................................iv Table of Contents.................................................................................................................v Acknowledgements.............................................................................................................vi Vita....................................................................................................................................viii Abstract of the Thesis.........................................................................................................ix The Apophenia of the Gods.................................................................................................1 The Skeuomorphism of the Goddesses..............................................................................42 The Smirk of Time.............................................................................................................94 The Mourning of the Road...............................................................................................147 Postscript on Subheritage.................................................................................................191 Selected References.........................................................................................................205 v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This Dissertation reunites the outcome of my activity during the last four years as doctorate student at the Visual Arts Department of UCSD, University of California, San Diego. The research has been supported by CILAS - Center for Iberian and Latin American Studies, The Russell Foundation, and The Visual Arts Department at the University of California San Diego (United States). Institutions such as the Escuela Superior de Artes de Yucatán (Mexico), and Ela - The Ecole Libre d'architecture (France), have been remarkably supportive throughout these years. In parallel, DXIX Projects (United States), Beta-Local and Hidrante (Puerto Rico), Lugar a Dudas (Colombia), and CA2M - Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo (Spain), have graciously hosted the practical outcome of my work. Some persons have to be mentioned here as their commitment, insight and intuition have proved crucial for the academic finalization of this investigation, which relates the labor of defining key concepts such as empire, mimesis and infrastructure according to the interplay of selected historical materials and artistic practice. Without hesitation, I have to express my utmost gratitude to Mariana Botey for her uncompromised support and motivation, and to Norman Bryson for his generous complicity and understanding. Brian Cross, Page DuBois and Rubén Ortiz Torres have provided extraordinary contributions, either theoretical and practical, to this Dissertation. The seminars conducted by Alena Williams, Sheldon Nodelman and Benjamin Bratton at UCSD were highly inspirational; the same goes for Alka Patel and her seminar 'Iconoclasm as Method' conducted at the Getty Center in 2018, and also Robert Grace and his vi initiative within and without Ela - The Ecole Libre d'architecture in Paris (France). Many dearest friends and colleagues have dispensed further motivation for undertaking and sustaining this project: Saul Villa, Omar Said, Leonardo Escalante, Oso Sánchez, Juzadora, Beatriz Santiago, Robert Grace, Marco A. Díaz, Melinda Guillén, Loreto Alonso, Luis Gárciga, Carlos Fernández-Pello, Sara Solaimani, Abe Solaimani, Pedro Zambra, Ludivine Cicolella, Roberto Meira, Aitor Lajarín, James Dean, Gerda Gruber, Mari Carmen Castañer, Nahomi Ximénez, Rosa Arteaga, Ash Eliza Smith, Enrique Minjares, Mat Guzzo, Beta Local, Hidrante, Lugar a Dudas, Seth Ferris, Paloma Checa-Gismero, and my colleagues and students from ESAY – Escuela Superior de Artes de Yucatán (Mexico), are amongst them, for they have encouraged my activity in many different ways. Finally, my work has been safeguarded by Luz and her fortitude, and by Verónica Santiago Moniello on the basis of her unconditional love. A warm mention goes also to Fugaciel and Lu for arriving just in time; like a whisper in a daydream. vii VITA 2008 Bachelor of Arts, Universidad Complutense, Madrid, Spain. 2009 Master of Arts, Universidad Europea, Madrid, Spain. 2019 Doctor of Philosophy, University of California San Diego, United States. FIELDS OF STUDY Major Field: Art Practice. Studies in Art History, Theory, and Criticism. viii ABSTRACT OF THE THESIS “Subheritage” : Empire, Mimesis, and Infrastructure in Modern Austria and Mexico. by Francisco Javier Fresneda Casado Doctor of Philosophy in Art History, Theory, and Criticism (Art Practice Concentration). University of California San Diego, 2019 Prof. Mariana Razo Wardwell, Chair Prof. Norman Bryson, Co-Chair This Dissertation attends to examine the significance of the key notions empire, mimesis and infrastructure through the study of selected historical materials and concepts distilled from my artistic practice. In the former case, the historical deploys a narrative upon the aesthetic and material dimensions of monumental heritage in the Austro Hungarian Empire and the Mexican Second Empire. As for the artistic side, it produces its own diagram, whose material existence ix allows to weave theoretical and practice-based concepts throughout the entire work. In this sense, my approach attempts to treat selected narrative sources as materials rather than themes or periods, relating them by means of transitions, conceptual ramifications and the consequences of systematic critique. In this Dissertation there is no central character nor period, for its main aim is to articulate, through a theoretical pipetting, the interrelations between my artistic practice and the use of historical materials. The notion of mimesis is posited as a medium whose uniformity problematizes the representation of imperial colonialism, establishing a conceptual framework so as to understand it less as an instrument than a medium tending toward isotropy. This hallucinatory dimension of mimesis is explored further by examining the interplay between identity and representation according to its ideological scope, where distinct figures (the subaltern, the minority, the melancholic) unpack fundamental relationships between allegory and death. Understood in material terms, such interplay can be translated according to tensions between the city and the urban, the classical and the baroque, the allegory and the metaphor. The imperial city of Vienna serves as the locus for the materialization of the dilemma between identity and representation, the place where the monuments build the sense of the antique as by-product of the modern. The notion of Empathy proves crucial here as it relates the psychological meaning of architecture and of the modern, but only insofar as it conceals its own hallucinatory dimension, one that articulates the unevenness between manual and intellectual labor. During the Mexican Second Empire, the translation of mimesis into the material becomes radicalized with the implementation of infrastructures such as roads and railways, which are indebted to the ruins of x bygone empires. Finally, the empathy toward monuments acquires a messianic dimension, one that is tracing the promise of an imminent rupture with the imperial sense of time. xi The Apophenia of the Gods The sense is provided, delivered from a previous operation that facilitates certain acts such as to associate, to tell, to relate or to explain. But the sense is preceded by the occult, and without it, the truth would be irresistible in its obscene overabundance, in its inextinguishable ambivalence. To occult is the general principle of the order, which is here the concealment that privileges only one unique factor. In this way, the order would be the repetition of a survival. The order of a column, for example, points to a disintegration index, to other orders, other hypodermic possibilities that become shattered into kindlings and evaporate as rocky sweat during its very inception. The classical orders do exist leaving behind a heap of rocks whose reality operates outside of what the order makes, in the occult. The things