Leonardo Reviews
Leonardo Reviews of observation, two different viewers nologies, Terminal (2008), and Living Editor-in-Chief: Michael Punt stepped in front of Jill Scott’s The Electric in Sim (2009). However, as one viewer Managing Editor: Bryony Dalefield Retina (2008) and—experiencing remarked, this parody has already pene- the work in a manner I suspect Scott trated the commercial market, as simi- Associate Editors: Dene Grigar, never thought of—looked at the pro- larly marked jars are available in novelty Martha Blassnigg, Hannah Drayson jector light. While this may have acci- shops. This produced a lack of tension A full selection of reviews is pub- dentally resulted in some knowledge in the piece that softened the critique lished monthly on the LR web site: of the malfunction of the eye, what the of pharmaceutical companies’ social
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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/LEON_r_00066 by guest on 30 September 2021 different users were intriguing, while know whether it is living or not. Choos- Drawing together so many people others simply took them as inconstant ing not to check the cell and simply to from the digital media, biological arts interactivity. With such different use- maintain a list of mediums that includes and new media scholarship communi- result patterns, we might speculate that living materials puts us in a precarious ties, the installation issues point to the if we could have seen the objects in position, one that may convert an inter- need to consider whether documenta- Heiss’s hands they might have become est in encountering the living materials tion is enough, or if for one to really something else entirely. The phenom- into a guessing game not dissimilar experience these artworks they need ena of the differences in workability from the Schrödinger’s cat proposi- to be “working.” Just as other formerly of technologies fit in easily with Lucy tion. Schrödinger’s suggestion is that, new media have tested the boundaries Suchman’s analysis of Kismet: The tech- although we may not know that the cat of the art system, these works offer new nological object’s agency is relational is dead without checking, we in essence technical challenges. If we value these [1]. Suchman’s work makes one won- know that it is dead because of the novel forms of engagement and the der how an emotional technology such conditions under which we have placed content and questions these artworks as Drift functions when Heiss herself is it. If viewers become aware that, as in can offer us, we have to be prepared for handling these glowing pods. the case of NoArk II, lists of mediums the technical demands that are specific Two pieces in the show featured that include “living” cells are not to be to them. living material: Donna Franklin’s Fibre trusted, the frame the viewers have for Reactive (2004), a fashion piece grown encountering the piece may be ren- References and Notes from fungi, and Tissue Culture & Art dered mute. 1. Suchman, Lucy. 2004. “Figuring Personhood in Project’s (TC&A) NoArk II (2008). The problem comes down to whether Sciences of the Artificial,” published by the Depart- NoArk II delves into questions about the art practitioners working with science ment of Sociology, Lancaster University, Lancaster construction of classification systems and technology should place value on LA1 4YL, U.K., at
and its related digital CO2 and heat views, but at evoking conversations. and victims—and, of course, propo- regulation monitors. It seems worth At Superhuman, those conversations nents. Much of this material is available considering whether biological art that might be about how science is categoriz- on the Internet, and indeed the film is contains a living component means ing liminal life or how we think about particularly interesting in how it incor- something different to us when we what we are hearing in a heartbeat. porates these Internet searches into
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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/LEON_r_00066 by guest on 30 September 2021 the actual structure and content of the calculated evil behind this and other Returning to France, Robin inter- documentary. It reveals, incontestably products and their connections to views a French scientist, Robert Belle of it would seem, mendacious criminal genetically modified crops simply de- CNRS. Belle describes how his labora- fraud and collusion between big busi- fies the imagination. For instance, in tory found that using doses of Roundup ness and governments, so much so that one scene Robin accesses a Washington far below the supposed acceptable lev- it exceeds what even the most jumped- Post article from 2002. There she dis- els created genetic instability, a process up conspiracy any conspiracy theorist covers that the company and the U.S. that provokes the first stages that lead could imagine in their worst psychotic government purposely hid the fact that to cancer. To his amazement, he was nightmare. they knew Roundup was toxic and that ordered by the French government not If it were not for the science and the factory in Anniston, Alabama, was to alert the public specifically in order the lack and perversion thereof, for poisoning the community all along. to protect the GMOs that were then in the dire consequences for the victims For instance, in leaked (“stolen”) inter- the process of being introduced into globally, for the systematic persecution nal classified documents, made avail- the European market. Returning to the of those scientists who have dared to able on-line, she shows that despite U.S., she interviews John Hoffman, a reveal the scientific evidence of the tox- the knowledge that PCB has systemic farmer and then Vice President of the icity of the herbicide Roundup, which toxic effects and causes hepatitis, “We American Soybean Association, who is marketed in tandem with Monsanto [Monsanto] can’t afford to lose one espouses the economic advantage of GMO seeds, and arguably its raison dollar. . . .” growing genetically modified soybean d’être in the first place, one might if Monsanto hid this information from and using Roundup. unawares be tempted to dismiss this the public and was protected in doing Having established the fact that as the insane work and testimony of so by the U.S. government. Looking Roundup is not “biodegradable” red-eyed Luddites and environmental into this perverse collusion of industry or “safe,” and after a short science activists refusing the march of progress and government, Robin visits the Annis- lesson explaining how GMOs are and the fruits of biotechnology and ton community to record the long-term created—that they are transgenic ignorantly resisting a second green effects on the community’s health. The plants that contain microbial DNA revolution while denying the supposed cemetery filled with those who died pre- resistant to Roundup—she asks the benefits of the first. maturely tells all, as do the community obvious question: “Were they [GMOs] At the time of filming, there were meetings in which the residents relate tested for safety?” To do so, she turns 7,570,000 critical on-line documents on their illnesses, the medications and costs to Dan Glickman, formerly Secretary Monsanto and Monsanto-related prod- and one by one the phenomenal levels of Agriculture. She learns from Glick- ucts, specifically on the relevant lawsuits of PCB in their blood and tissues. Mon- man that even in his position he was and problematic issues. In a simple, santo settled the charges against the “slapped around” and forced by ingenious and most unusual way of company out of court for $700,000,000. members of the administration and building a documentary plot, the film No one was ever held accountable, and especially by the U.S. Trade Represen- is structured around scenes of Marie- the fact has had no negative feedback tatives not to pursue the issue. So she Monique Robin typing in the company on the production and sale of the chem- turns to James Myransky, former Bio- name, a chemical term or an issue or ical except in a requirement to modify Technology Co-Director of the Food combination thereof into a Google the advertising through removing the and Drug Administration. He candidly search. In each unfolding drama, after word “biodegradable.” admits that the decision not to create a clicking on one of millions of the most Robin then interviews David Car- special set of laws for GMOs was a politi- utterly compromising documents you penter of the University of Albany, who cal, not a scientific, decision: The gov- can imagine, she reveals herself a con- explains the well-known fact that the ernment had already decided that summate investigator. whole world has been contaminated there were sufficient relevant laws The film begins in a rail-side garden by PCBs and that they are known to be in place to circumvent regulation. As outside Paris. An old man in his garden carcinogenic. Returning to the com- we learn later, this was necessary so as is reading the label on the back of a puter, Robin types in “Roundup”; we to evade the application of the precau- green spray bottle of Roundup. The learn that according to Monsanto it is tionary principle required for all new label reads “biodegradable” and states not only “biodegradable” but “good food products and pharmaceutical that the herbicide is not toxic if used for the environment.” So she types in drugs. “appropriately.” What we learn in the “Roundup biodegradable”. Amidst In this ever-deepening revelation of rest of the film is that it is indeed “bio- the many hits, she focuses on two that mendacity, we become privy to some degradable” in that after 28 days, 2% report that the company was twice of the fascinating inner workings of of it will degrade. In what follows you found guilty of false advertising for industry and government manipulat- will learn that Roundup is a glycostat these claims, the first time in 1996 in ing law and science. Specifically, the ring molecule—a PCB, basically dioxin. New York and the second time in 2007 introduction of GMO products was Sold as a harmless biodegradable weed in France. What this shows is the stub- facilitated through the manipulation of killer, it is a form of Agent Orange, and born insistence of business and govern- language as to avoid regulation through as we know all too well from Vietnam, ment to continue in the collusion of the a conveniently invented notion of the it causes cancers, extreme birth defects sale of toxic chemicals in the name of “principle of substantial equivalence.” and many other problems leading to advancing biotechnology in the quest Thereby, GMO products were defined illness and eventually death. for increased food production and as being food substances, proteins, The extraordinary history of docu- arguably above all profit at the expense that are “substantially similar” to other mented lies and fraud, the dirty tricks of the environment and people’s health crops. Following up on this critical and dark collusion between multina- despite the obverse food security dis- point of policy and law, Jeffrey Smith, tional business and governments, the course. Michael Hansen and Jeremy Rifkin are
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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/LEON_r_00066 by guest on 30 September 2021 introduced next. Dr. Smith notes that While the casual reader of this review Books it is a “deception” to claim that these or viewer of the film might not be foods are not meaningfully different. shocked enough to be spurred into He clarifies that obscure language was becoming an anti-GMO activist, maybe Gerhard Richter deliberately introduced to make it pos- if you knew what was in your next glass edited by Benjamin H.D. Buchloh. sible for legalized deception through of milk, thanks to Monsanto, you would The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, this and the associated ambiguous term think again. U.S.A., 2009. 200 pp., illus. Trade, “generally recognized as safe.” Michael Take another Monsanto product, paper. ISBN: 978-0-262-01351-2, Hansen, however, argues that because Posilac, that is, Bovine Growth Hor- ISBN: 978-026-251312-8. GMOs are not “substantially similar,” mone (BGH), a transgenic chemical being in fact qualitatively new and dif- that increases milk production by Reviewed by Amy Ione, The Diatrope ferent crops, being “transgenic,” that 20%. In cows, Posilac causes mastitis Institute, Berkeley, CA 94704, U.S.A. they should have been treated as food and an increase of the size of ovaries E-mail:
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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/LEON_r_00066 by guest on 30 September 2021 their subject matter and by themselves While Richter is a traditionalist tech- view with Buchloh from 2004. Richter submitting to a quasi-photographic nique-wise, his works acknowledge cur- talks extensively about his Strukturen mode of “objective” representational rent political events and have embraced [Structures] paintings. Inspired by mimesis (p. 95). newer forms of image-making as source microscopic photographs, these images This view, he tells us, is also a material. Indeed, one of his most include many devices from Richter’s response to the notion of “the aes- challenging works is October 18, 1977, earlier work (blurriness, monochro- thetic” offered by an art historian, Paul a series based on photographs that maticity, etc.) and yet have a visual Wood. In all honesty, while some of the charted a well-known event in Germany dynamic that is strikingly fresh. I was essays were lively, Hal Foster’s for exam- that took place on that date. Briefly, not surprised to learn how much he ple, much of the academic sparring three young German radicals, mem- has relished producing them. He tells seems a bit contrived when compared bers of the militant Baader-Meinhof Buchloh: to the visual aliveness of Richter’s work. group, were found dead in a Stuttgart One much-discussed topic is the I waited far too long for a motif to prison. Although they were said to be finally fall into my hands that fascinated relationship between painting and suicides, many people suspected that me, that I absolutely wanted to paint. photography, since Richter has often the state police murdered them. Eleven This is how the four large new paintings used photographs as source material. years after this traumatic event, Rich- came about. I called them Strukturen Another theme that has captivated ter created the 15 paintings known as [Structures] because they happen to form kind of a structure. And because the contributors is where the superb the October 18, 1977 series, based on in some cases I don’t even know what paintings of Gerhard Richter “fit” in a photographs of moments in the lives kind of substance the illustration is culture where painting is now “dead.” and deaths of four members of the Red supposed to depict. Only the original, Foster delves into this through Michael Army Faction (RAF), a German left- the microscopic photograph from the Fried’s work and the debates about the popular science magazine, has any wing terrorist group that perpetrated claim to illustrating science (p. 167). death of painting in the 1970s, which a number of kidnappings and killings no doubt Richter was aware of early throughout the 1970s. His paintings For inexpensive introductions to in his career, since his first exhibition were based on newspaper and police contemporary artists, the October Files in the U.S.A. took place at the Rein- photographs, and he reworked these series is a winner. These books give the hard Onnasch Gallery in 1973. Even documentary sources to create dark, general public access to the work of the product description looks at the blurred and diffuse works. (Images of this artist of the postwar period, who achievements of Richter within the the works in this series are available on has altered our understanding of art in “painting is dead” frame, characterizing Richter’s web site:
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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/LEON_r_00066 by guest on 30 September 2021 sonic form. Rarely does one think of constant availability of the voice” (p. the opportunity to tell a story, another the sonic qualities of the spoken word. 46). Where Biswas feels writing is an theme of the collection. Each con- But, as Cathy Lane, co-director of Cre- invaluable aid to memory “but . . . can tributor is trying to tell a story through ative Research in Sound Arts Practice also be misleading” (p. 45), Joan La the inclusion of sound, generally the (CRiSAP) at the University of the Arts, Barbara describes how she begins her human voice, the voice of the story- London, notes, there is a broad and composition of music with stream-of- teller, in their works. Missing, however, deep body of work undertaken in this consciousness writing, listing all the is that sound, the aural qualities of the area by John Cage, William S. Bur- words she can determine as possible speakers’ voices knocking at the win- roughs, François Dufrêne, Kurt Schwit- inspiration for the new composition. dow of our cochlea. It would seem of ters and Henri Chopin—and other For La Barbara, writing is the basis for additional interest to actually hear these sound poets, text sound artists, compos- sound. In addition to words, her note- voices, rather than just read about the ers and verbal experimenters. books also include graphic shapes to process of their inclusion. Where once such work was under- help her visualize the energy of a par- taken in relative isolation, there is now ticular sound, or the mood of a section. The Metamorphosis of an interconnected and well-established The combination of words and imagery Plants community who freely share ideas and helps her “transmit a more precise inspiration. Many of these contem- sense of the trajectory, energy, and by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe; porary practitioners are included in delivery of the sound” and allows listen- introduction and photographs by Lane’s edited volume Playing with Words: ers to re-create her sonic idea in their Gordon L. Miller. The MIT Press, The Spoken Word in Artistic Practice. Each own minds (p. 56). Cambridge, MA, U.S.A., 2009. 155 pp., has been asked to engage with the moti- Composer Trevor Wishart notes the illus. Trade. ISBN: 978-0-262-01309-3. vating ideas and artistic concerns that “richness and complexity of everyday inform their work, and how to translate sounds,” especially those associated with Reviewed by Wilfred Niels Arnold, the elusive qualities of their work with the human voice, and says, “The voice University of Kansas Medical Center. sound into the fixed medium of print. connects with so many things. When E-mail:
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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/LEON_r_00066 by guest on 30 September 2021 of the scientific side of his wide-ranging Delete is a strongly political book, work and dates from 1790. which goes against the grain of much The current 8-×-6-inch edition is cyber-utopian writing on digital remem- handsomely produced on quality paper. bering, and it makes a strong and The 60-plus photographic images are valuable contribution to the debates the fine work of Miller. This edition on privacy rights and, more generally, is obviously a labor of love. It will be a on the relationships between citizen pleasant encounter on many a coffee and state. Written in very accessible table. One worries about the extent of language and targeting a very broad the audience that will pursue histori- audience, it is a good example of what cal aspects of botany and philosophy modern public debate can be. The beyond browsing the beautiful pictures author gives also an excellent overview and recognizing the occasional para- of the responses that can be given to graph. the threat of an almost dictatorial con- As a graduate student at Cornell Uni- trol by software and the people capable versity in the late 1950s I enjoyed the of using (and controlling?) it. Neverthe- general excitement surrounding the less, these responses are weak: “digital growth of a complete and fertile carrot abstinence” for instance, that is, to plant from a small disc of root tissue. decide to keep certain information out Plant scientists, there and elsewhere, of the Internet, may sound interesting, were soon doing it with single cells, but is not always an option; “full contex- thus proving that all the morphological tualization” of data is not a real possibil- information resided in the genome of ity either; and even more problematic is a somatic cell. The culture media were “cognitive adjustment”—a changing of complex—containing all sorts of yet mentality in regard to the status of digi- to be discovered growth factors—but at the National University of Singa- tal data. Therefore Mayer-Schönberger this scientific benchmark did take the pore’s Lee Kuan Yew School of Public proposes a solution that he considers wind out of the somewhat mystical sails Policy, this book analyzes the dangers simpler and more efficient, namely the of metamorphosis à la Goethe. None of perfect remembering in the digital introduction of expiration dates on of this should inhibit naturalists with a age. It analyzes the history of external information. genuine interest in the past and a curi- memory and the increasing possibility One has to admire the author’s initia- osity about the formative years of bot- of “complete” and “infinite” remember- tive to put on the table a dramatically any. This edition might have benefited ing through digital techniques and a important yet still underestimated from a closing essay about aspects that culture that makes not only storage but problem: the growing impossibility to have or have not stood the test of time. also retrieval and access of the past easy, get free of the past, even if this past The photographic images are the cheap and almost inescapable. has been long forgotten or even if all highlight of the book. There are two This book, however, does not only those concerned would gladly accept watercolors, an engraving and several provide a technical approach to this forgetting it. Yet the solution that he figures from the time of Goethe— phenomenon. It also offers a cultural proposes does not convince-––first, unfortunately, the publisher neglected and legal analysis, for it tackles the because it seems at odds with the con- to include an overall list. A modest less positive side effects of the grow- temporary awareness of the dangers of index contains some 240 items. Gordon ing impossibility of forgetting. Mayer- forgetting (the author does not really Miller is the director of the interdisci- Schönberger’s analysis is cultural to discuss the hot issue of crimes against plinary environmental studies program the extent that it foregrounds the humanity and the claim that certain at Seattle University. He has edited or necessity, not only of remembering, things may “never” be forgotten: How co-authored five other books on eco- but also of forgetting. Referring to the to trace a line between what deserves to logical subjects. paradigmatic case of the Borges char- be forgotten and what should be kept acter Funes, incapable of forgetting, in memory?); second, because even the author stresses the inherent link a narrow interpretation of expiration elete he irtue D : T V between the impossibility of forgetting dates (6 months? 3 years? a decade?) of Forgetting in the on the one hand and conservatism will not prevent the abuses and scandals Digital Age and lack of efficiency on the other. that the digital impossibility of forget- by Viktor Mayer-Schönberger. The analysis is also legal, since Mayer- ting has been causing. The real scandal Princeton University Press, Princeton, Schönberger also gives examples of the is not (only) that a student having NJ, U.S.A., 2009. 256 pp. Trade, e-book. painful and often absurd consequences passed her exams is refused her degree ISBN: 978-1-4008-3128-9. of the remembering of far-gone events, because of a so-called compromising images and thoughts that have been (but in fact absolutely innocent) pic- Reviewed by Jan Baetens. E-mail: forgotten by everyone except by the ture, but that people can rely on laws
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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/LEON_r_00066 by guest on 30 September 2021 fundamental question is not raised in conceived in the Yuan dynasty. In the this book, which therefore misses (part third edition, this work is credited to of) its target. Ni Tsan, titled The Jung-hsi Studio and noted as conceived during the Yüan dynasty. I suppose to those who work The Arts of China with Chinese art and history on a regu- Fifth Edition, Revised and Expanded lar basis these differences amount to by Michael Sullivan. University of knowing that the American “airplane” is California Press, Berkeley, CA, U.S.A., essentially the same word as the British 2009. 368 pp., illus. Trade, paper. ISBN: “aeroplane.” (I was amused to also find 9780520255685; 9780520255692. that Sullivan uses British spellings in the third edition but American in the fifth.) Reviewed by Amy Ione, The Diatrope Another thought I had while reading Institute, Berkeley, CA 94704, U.S.A. was that the use of sidebars or a page E-mail:
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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/LEON_r_00066 by guest on 30 September 2021 ures were found in Sanxingdui in the Century and Beyond,” by immediately plexities of the process of archiving our Sichuan province. What these remark- reading Sullivan’s Art and Artists of international motion picture heritage, able pieces from the Shang (c. 1650– Twentieth-Century China. bringing together, like the filmmak- c. 1050 bc) and Western Zhou (c. 1050 ers who generated it, aesthetics and its –256 bc) dynasties tell us is not yet expression, tekhne. From Grain to Pixel: quite clear. The earliest monumental As an academic with the University he rchival ife of stone sculpture discovered in China T A L of Amsterdam and Curator with the dates from the Western Han dynasty Film in Transition Dutch Film Museum, the author brings (c. 202 bc–6 ad)-––surprisingly late by Giovanna Fossati. Amsterdam a wealth of knowledge both theoreti- in the history of one of the major University Press, Amsterdam, NL, cal and practical. Consolidated under civilizations, and suggestive of cultural 2009. Framing Film series. 336 pp. the International Federation of Film influences from western Asia. Another Paper. ISBN: 978-90-8964-139-7; Archives (FIAF) in 1938, the field is a remarkable discovery was the life-size e-ISBN: 978-90-4851-069-6. site of rivalries, jealousies and disagree- pottery warriors that were found in the ments that the author negotiates by lay- 1970s during archaeological excava- Reviewed by Mike Leggett, University of ing out the principal approaches taken tions of the tomb of the first emperor Technology Sydney. E-mail:
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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/LEON_r_00066 by guest on 30 September 2021 logical research into each artifact, with innovative book, but this is undoubtedly distinction between modernism as a extensive preparation and negotiation one of the stronger monographs I have time-ruled (and hence historical) para- before a frame of film is passed to the read recently. Although the theme of digm and postmodernism as a space- laboratories. Earlier chapters provide the book seems quite ordinary (there ruled (and hence ahistorical, if not up-to-the-minute surveys of how the have been a lot of publications on antihistorical) paradigm as theorized technical practice of production and speed and velocity in the year we cel- by Jameson in much of his writings on archiving are shifting with the associ- ebrate the first centennial of the Futur- contemporary culture. Although the ated problems of establishing standards ist Manifesto), it brings such a new focus of The Speed Handbook is not at all in the digital field; later in the descrip- breadth and depth to the theme that on postmodernism, Duffy makes very tion of archival practice, the relative one can only conclude that we have clear that notions of space and place stability of analogue material and the here a really groundbreaking study on are definitely at the very heart of mod- re-assertion of photo-chemical tech- a topic we falsely believed we already ernism, including at the very heart of its niques are convincingly presented, knew too well. obsession with the seemingly temporal supported by a number of case-studies Duffy’s larger framework is much aspects of movement and speed. In the recording the retrieval, stabilization, indebted to Fredric Jameson: The wake of his basic assumption of moder- restoration and re-presentation of some Jamesonian axiom of “always histori- nity as a geopolitical situation deprived key works from the more recent past, cize” is the basic stance of the book, of any external frontier (since the vari- such as Dr. Strangelove. together with the desire to fully politi- ous empires covered the whole world by The changing expectations of audi- cize the stakes of whatever historical around 1900), Duffy argues that space ences are well covered, requiring less data are put forward by the historical and place are not “ignored” or “margin- the didactic, “chaperoned” model of analysis. Moreover, Duffy shares many alized” by the dominantly temporal or presentation and more the interac- of Jameson’s visions on modernity, chronological paradigm of modernism tive negotiation afforded by DVD and commodification, alienation and, more as innovation, but that the very notion website. Perhaps an indicator of this importantly, on the necessity of read- of speed (as well as the related notions tendency is the implied expectation of ing history and society from a Marxist of movement, progress, innovation, contemporary authors for their readers point of view. Finally, and totally in etc.) can only be read as a specific to use web-search engines to extend accordance with Jameson, Duffy accepts answer to the destruction of place and their knowledge. There are only a few the dialectic relationships of time and its substitution by abstract space. The URLs provided for key sources such space as the most fundamental issue in vanishing of any frontier produces both as FIAF, which actually lists some 150 the development and understanding a destruction of the heterotopic utopia member archives around the world. of modernization. Yet The Speed Hand- of the colony and of the place formerly This includes the National Film and book is not at all a simple application called home (which can no longer be Sound Archive in Australia, which, by of Jameson’s thinking to the period of defined in contrast to a heterotopia way of meeting the changing expecta- high modernism (1900–1930), which that no longer exists), while at the same tions flagged by the author, provides is central in this book (despite some moment the concreteness of all these detailed information for citizens about smaller excursions to previous and later places starts to be replaced by abstract how to look after family and private periods). notions of movements between points collections and even permits on-line First of all, the author does not fully in space. This terribly unsettling evolu- downloads of parts of its holdings. adopt all of Jameson’s critical paradigm tion, which disintegrates traditional This thorough, well-illustrated schol- as developed in his theory of “cognitive subjectivity, is then compensated for by arly volume will be invaluable to all mapping,” in which Jameson interprets something completely new: speed as investing time and resources into the some of Modernism’s strangeness in pleasure. viewing, making or preserving of films geopolitical terms, that is, as a side-effect in analogue or digital form. The theory of the gap between life at home and the of archival practice proposed charges colonies abroad. What Duffy puts for- public institutions with the responsibili- ward is something completely different: ties of negotiating and reflecting the The Speed Handbook takes as its starting inevitable transitions occurring in the point that at the end of the 19th cen- production and preservation of our tury there are no longer blank spots on motion picture culture. the map. It argues that the complete colonization of the world through West- ern empires has created a new situa- he peed andbook T S H : tion, in which the disappearance of any Velocity, Pleasure, real frontier provokes phenomena of Modernism more intense colonization (Duffy uses by Enda Duffy. Duke University Press, the term “endocolonization,” or “inte- Chapel Hill, NC, U.S.A., 2009. 320 rior” colonization), no longer of places pp., illus. Trade, paper. ISBN13: 978- out there but of the citizen’s sensorium 0-8223-4430-8; 978-0-8223-4442-1. and body. This rereading of modernism as endocolonization is an important Reviewed by Jan Baetens. E-mail: step forward in the materialist history
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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/LEON_r_00066 by guest on 30 September 2021 For Duffy, speed is defined as the behavior and to yield the subject to the pleasure of driving (a car) fast, and it is constraints of modern commodified absolutely essential to stress the cultural life. Speed, in this sense, is dramatically and political underpinnings of this political. definition. This very short overview of what I Speed is not just an increase of move- consider the main lines of this excep- ment and velocity, for this evolution tionally dense book cannot do justice had started much earlier. In the begin- to all of Duffy’s thinking. The author is ning of The Speed Handbook, readers may also, besides being a thrilling writer, a be astonished by the almost absolute great close-reader. The Speed Handbook distinction the author makes between considerably renews our interpreta- traveling fast (by train) and driving tion of books such as Heart of Darkness fast (in a car), but page after page the (read as a complaint against slowness, nature of this distinction becomes obvi- and hence much more ambivalent in ous: In the former case, the traveler is its attitude against Western modernity) being transported and does not control or Crash (read as an example of going speed herself; in the latter, it is the backwards into the future, the analogy subject himself who becomes capable of sex and crash culture preventing us of going faster and faster. Speed is then from seeing what is really new, namely a pleasure because it produces a self- the crash). Most of all, it is an impres- produced thrill, a kick, an excitement sive attempt to reconstruct the speed that goes beyond all known experiences culture as it emerged at the end of the and is opened to a much broader pub- 19th century in all possible cultural lic than ever before. spheres: publicity, journalism, popular springs from a foundational base of Yet speed is not only a historical culture, philosophy and the social fab- human functioning to be understood novum; it is also a deeply politicized ric in its whole. as an ordering principle. Conceived of experience and practice. Not only Speed is the basic constraint of a in the earlier book as gestalt simplicity, because it redefines all traditional reviewer’s commitment: to read and the second edition of Arnheim’s Power notions of time and space, but also write fast is a must, otherwise books differs from the first in advancing his because speed as pleasure plays a role are in danger of falling into oblivion argument from the primary features in the social structure and organiza- before they even get a chance to reach of salient artworks to the analytic tion of culture and subject. Speed was their public. The Speed Handbook is one resources of psychology rather than offered as a mass cultural pleasure of those works that make the reviewer the other way around. He takes as his (the production of assembly-line- a little ashamed of doing what he is underlying thesis a belief in the power produced cars started in 1896) and doing. For Duffy’s study may prove one of compositional devices to elucidate clearly functioned as a compensation of those that really count, but whose the human condition epitomized by for the ruthless transformations of richness can only become clear after the interaction of centric (gravitational) modernization (destruction of place many and slow readings. Let’s hope that and eccentric (dynamic) tendencies. His and community, rationalization of time this will be the paradoxical fortune of book argues that pictorial composition management, commodification of the The Speed Handbook. provides evidence of the innate and object, alienation of labor and so on). twofold action of all beings: human At the same time, speed, more specifi- freedom that is aimed at overcoming he ower of the enter cally the way speed was represented, T P C : resistance to weight, also realized as the both as a pleasure and as a danger, was A Study of Composition tension between the generating core of also an instrument in the commodity in the Visual Arts the self and the interaction with other culture as protected and enhanced by by Rudolf Arnheim. 20th Anniversary social centers. He compares this human nation-states. Speed as pleasure trained Edition. University of California Press, condition to the activity of birds and subjects to better participate in com- Berkeley CA, U.S.A., 2009. 250 pp., insects “flying through the air to display modity culture, for the pleasures of illus. ISBN: 9780520261266. their triumph over the impediment of speed had to be bought and enjoyed weight,” with motion the “privilege of as spectacle (Duffy’s analyses are here Reviewed by Giovanna Costantini. living things” (dead things being immo- quite close to certain ideas of Adorno E-mail:
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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/LEON_r_00066 by guest on 30 September 2021 powers.” One section compares the To those schooled on Winckelmann, of the poise required of aesthetic judg- axes of a diagram to the branches of Arnheim’s diagrammatic analysis of ment as the great world spins. a tree or the arms of a person’s body, a selection of predominantly Western wherein he notes that the center European artworks in terms of volumes he ada yborg “breaks up the unity of the horizontal and nodes, vectors and projections T D C : bar and transforms it into a pair of reflects a formalist canon based on Visions of the New symmetrical wings,” with the vertical assumptions of noble simplicity and Human in Weimar Berlin bar barely acknowledging the crossing. Cartesian attributes of stability and by Matthew Biro. University of Minne- In another passage on the attraction instability. Add to this an overly for- sota Press, Minneapolis, MN, U.S.A./ exerted by secondary centers, we are mulaic treatment of perspective London, U.K., 2009. 400 pp., illus. “invited to sense the particular kind of systems, vanishing points, frontal planes Trade, paper. ISBN: 978-0-8166-3619-8; equilibrium into which the partners of and illusionistic renderings in paint- ISBN: 978-0-8166-3620-4. the action have settled.” Further on he ing very much akin to John White’s laments quite purposefully the loss of classic The Birth and Rebirth of Pictorial Reviewed by Kieran Lyons, University the Temple of Vesta’s original crown, Space—comparisons further justified by of Wales, Newport. E-mail:
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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/LEON_r_00066 by guest on 30 September 2021 five Percent Fit for Work (The War Cripples). of disappearance. When, for instance, More than elsewhere, this chapter the cyborg re-emerges after pages of confronts the reader with the visible contextual Weimar politics, we become evidence of the war in its shocked and aware that the concept has floated invis- devastated combatants adapting to the ibly over these political definitions that prosthetic devices they have been fit- have, by now, become equally germane ted with. These body extensions, the to the fundamental aspects of Berlin conjoined identity of machine parts Dada. Dada practice, particularly assem- and bio-organisms that Biro applies to blage and photomontage, has suffered Berlin Dada figuration, most readily from a rather crude reading in which give rise to the “cyborg” appellation. meaninglessness and anarchic anti-art However, his definition includes more grandstanding feature prominently. than the pitiable war wounded or medi- Biro’s contribution is in the nuance cal science’s often dismaying attempts that he brings to this hitherto rather at addressing their condition. Rather, starkly interpreted topic. However, the Biro’s cyborg encompasses a variety of academic telling of what is still a disre- hybrid conditions linked—after consid- spectful, mocking, thoroughly challeng- eration of academic dissatisfactions with ing and unconventional process, with the “hybrid” term—to primitivism, ideas that emerge through the visual feminism and marginalized sexual mis-application of available newsprint groups while offsetting all these within and assembled bits and pieces, has to the centralized military industrial be kept in the foreground while being Was Picabia even aware of it? Picabia, complex that Berlin Dada uncompro- intellectually rationalized and subse- after all, had included or was about to misingly attacked. The final chapter quently academically encoded. Matthew include Hausmann in his own interna- returns to Hannah Höch in an exegesis Biro has written, nevertheless, a very tionally engaged, frequently scurrilous on gender and the colonialism cited good book; binding Berlin Dada “391” review in that same year. And above in an example of extensional into his cyborg master plan does again in Chapter 5 Biro includes a fas- thinking that further demonstrates the not always come off, but it does so suf- cinating discussion on a form of reverse author’s subtle approach to the cyborg ficiently regularly to make it an up- colonialism in Germany, when the conception—before rather surprisingly to-the-minute authority to consult, French army sent Senegalese troops to coming to an end without considering and to recommend to others. Whether occupy the Rhineland in 1919. This was the implications for contemporary art- in the final analysis it conveys the abra- an action that was calculated to exac- ists who might, with some justification, sive confrontation of Dada is another erbate racial tensions; to illustrate this, feel that the impulse of the narrative is matter. Biro shows Gulbransson’s cartoon of a carried on through their work. All the German girl carried off by a marauding more so since the theoretical argument African gorilla in a French military kepi, runs in a direct line from Georg Sim- without problematizing its origins in an mel’s polemics through the Frankfurt academic sculpture by Émile Frémiet, School, citing Norbert Wiener and Leonardo Reviews made in 1859 but so controversial that finally Donna Haraway’s conceptions On-Line it was first shown at the Paris Salon of postmodern cyborg identities. The of 1887. Such issues could have been rationale for disallowing contemporary addressed but doing so would have art, presumably, lies with the decision April 2010 necessitated an extension of the remit to limit the survey to the metropolitan Architecture & Biomimetics Series 3— of Biro’s inquiry to the interconnected boundaries of Berlin; if Zurich and New The Pangolin’s Guide to Bio-Digital Move- world beyond Berlin. Nevertheless York are to be sidestepped, then so also ment in Architecture by Dennis Dollens. Berlin Dada, in his analysis, emerges as should practice at this remote cusp of Reviewed by Rob Harle. relevant to us today through its method- the 20th/21st century as well. ology and subject matter, as it seemed Although the author makes clear The Blender Gamekit, 2nd Edition: Inter- disturbing and defining to its commen- that his chosen term was never actually active 3D for Artists, edited by Carsten tators and audiences at the time—the used in the Weimar period, uncertainty Wartmann. Reviewed by Michael R. “gallows humour of a perverse and begins to develop over the cyborg inter- (Mike) Mosher. confused epoch” as stated by the largely pretation and whether it is, at times, a sympathetic Berliner Illustrirte Zeitung wishful post hoc reading. Just because, Cyberculture and New Media, edited by (October 1919). since 1960, we have come to see the Francisco J. Ricardo. Reviewed by John The argument is set across five chap- cyborg in related things around us F. Barber. ters of approximately equal length; does not mean that the term can be after an initial survey of the post-war applied with equal ease retrospectively; Darwin’s Camera: Art and Photography in scene, subsequent chapters are devoted and as we have seen, Biro extends his the Theory of Evolution by Phillip Prodger. to the book’s central protagonists, term deep into the reaches of Weimar Reviewed by Amy Ione. Hannah Höch and Raoul Hausmann, Germany. Additionally, the problem with a more peripheral, yet excellent, with finding an overall theory for such Eddy Loves Frank by The Eddy Palermo chapter on “The Militarized Cyborg,” a complex and varied moment in art is Big Band and Fear Draws Misfortune by which situates the trauma of post-war that the claim becomes overextended Cheer Accident. Reviewed by Michael conditions in Otto Dix’s painting Forty- in its broad application—to the point R. (Mike) Mosher.
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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/LEON_r_00066 by guest on 30 September 2021 Interface Fantasy: A Lacanian Cyborg N’Guyen-Thien Dao, Jacques Charpen- Font. The Sourcebook, edited by Nadine Ontology by André Nusselder. Reviewed tier and Tristan Murail. Reviewed by Monem. Reviewed by Amy Ione. by Rob Harle. Giuseppe Pennisi. Ghostlife of Third Cinema: Asian Ameri- Migratory Settings, edited by Murat My Sunshine, Nikola Uzunovski at the can Film and Video by Glen M. Mimura. Aydemir and Alex Rotas. Reviewed by Federico Luger Gallery. Reviewed by Reviewed by Aparna Sharma. Chris Speed. Giovanna Costantini. E-mail:
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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/LEON_r_00066 by guest on 30 September 2021 ANNOUNCEMENT
Re-Launch of Leonardo Electronic Almanac (LEA)
We are pleased and excited to announce the re-launch of Leonardo Electronic Almanac under Editor-in- Chief Lanfranco Aceti and Co-Editor Paul Brown. As of January 2010, LEA is back online in a new format that combines the features of a high-production-value art magazine with the scholarly rigor of an academic journal. This peer-reviewed quarterly journal will be available simultaneously online as a hyperlinked screen-resolution PDF document, as a high-resolution print-on-demand magazine and in a downloadable version for devices like the Amazon Kindle and Mac iPad. LEA is supported by the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at Sabanci University (Istanbul). Its web and print graphics have been designed and implemented by students in the New Media course, part of the Visual Arts and Communication Design program at Sabanci University. The web implementation of the site has been realized in collaboration with Patrick Tresset, Ph.D. researcher at Goldsmiths College, London, and Co-principal Investigator Aikon2, a research project sponsored by the Leverhulme Trust. The LEA online environment will foster research projects between a range of institutions as well as attract students and researchers who would benefit from international collaborations and exchanges on research, fine art projects and curatorial debates at the intersection of art, science and technology. LEA quarterly issues will focus on the convergence of arts, science and technology and combine special front-end features with thematic research and curatorial projects. LEA will combine invited and commissioned essays with peer-reviewed scholarly papers. The target audi- ence for the publication encompasses a broad spectrum ranging from professionals to lay people with a general interest in the contemporary arts, science and technology. Curious? Find it here:
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