This reading of a single poem from the last collection of verse John Ashbery published before his death in 2017 sees it as an example of a concept of “presentism” that differs from modernist or postmodern accounts o...This reading of a single poem from the last collection of verse John Ashbery published before his death in 2017 sees it as an example of a concept of “presentism” that differs from modernist or postmodern accounts of the “present” associated with abstraction or immanence. Rather, Ashbery’s presentism is historical in being based on overlapping and discontinuous linguistic and experiential frames. Ashbery’s poetic use of the content of experience is always mediated through its presentation as information, ranging from high to low values and often employing “low-mimetic,” pop cultural elements. What results is a suspension of certainty in which meaning is structured and informed by its status as information. Thus leaving open questions of knowledge, Ashbery’s poetry does not represent a fully present consciousness but relies on forms of cognition and information processing that are nonconscious, operating in the background and informed by decades of his practice as a poet. A brief comparison with the late paintings of Willem de Kooning, who experienced cognitive disability at the end of his life, points out similar nonconscious forms of cognition such as motor skill and even aesthetic judgment. The reading is thus informed by information theory, cognitive science, and neurophysiology in showing how Ashbery’s late style makes a present that is historical and structured on his entire oeuvre.展开更多
In defining“the global archive,”this essay refers,first of all,to the historical development of exhibitions in Germany that address a global horizon,a distinct cultural project since at least the Enlightenment.After...In defining“the global archive,”this essay refers,first of all,to the historical development of exhibitions in Germany that address a global horizon,a distinct cultural project since at least the Enlightenment.After 1945,modem art,which had been removed from public view by the Nazi state,was reintroduced as a project of reeducation as much as aesthetics.Documenta,beginning in 1955,exhibited modem and later artists in the destroyed buildings of the city of Kassel,and expanded its formal and cultural address to a global scale over its fifty-year history.Documenta itself became a kind of continuous archive of its own exhibition history,a mode of formal presentation that increasingly relied on the works it presented.Here I read in detail the archival strategies and form of dOCUMENTA 13,arguably a highpoint of this effort to archive globality as it emerges.Theorists from Michel Foucault,Fredric Jameson,and Aijun Appadurai to the“critical regionalism”of Cheryl Herr and the“negative globality”of Alberto Moreiras assist in the project of comprehending the“archive as form,”seen in a series of artists working on a global scale.展开更多
This essay is a part of a longer work on literary and visual modernism at the“moment”of destruction in 1945:Stunde Null or Zero Hour.Here,I focus on the t4constructedness,'of universals via the material,psycholo...This essay is a part of a longer work on literary and visual modernism at the“moment”of destruction in 1945:Stunde Null or Zero Hour.Here,I focus on the t4constructedness,'of universals via the material,psychological,and political destruction in Germany at war's end.At this moment,destruction and universals interconnect in three temporal modes:anticipatory,punctual,and retrospective.For“punctual”universals,I read Lee Miller’s war journalism,published in Vogue,in relation to her war and Holocaust photography,as uniting modernist aesthetic values and the“event”of destruction.For the construction of“anticipatory”universals,I discuss the work of Hannah Hoch,dada painter and collagist,who emerged from internal exile in Berlin to participate in the first modernist exhibitions in the destroyed city after Stunde Null.Finally,the anonymously authored A Woman in Berlin,documenting the survival strategies to mass sexual predation by Soviet troops immediately at and after Stunde Null,extends from punctual accounts of destruction to a retrospective narration.In each case,modernist visual and verbal forms-and an ethical imperative to keep interpretive horizons open-negotiates between the“radical particularity”of the lived experience of destruction and universal values.The constructedness of universals in modernist works anticipates the construction of political,ethical,and aesthetic universals in the global order after 1945.展开更多
The fatalism by which incomprehensible death was sanctioned in primeval times has now passed over into utterly comprehensible life.The noonday panic fear in which nature suddenly appeared to humans as an all-encompass...The fatalism by which incomprehensible death was sanctioned in primeval times has now passed over into utterly comprehensible life.The noonday panic fear in which nature suddenly appeared to humans as an all-encompassing power has found its counterpart in the panic which is ready to break out at any moment today:human beings expect the world,which is without issue,to be set ablaze by a universal power which they themselves are and over which they are powerless.展开更多
文摘This reading of a single poem from the last collection of verse John Ashbery published before his death in 2017 sees it as an example of a concept of “presentism” that differs from modernist or postmodern accounts of the “present” associated with abstraction or immanence. Rather, Ashbery’s presentism is historical in being based on overlapping and discontinuous linguistic and experiential frames. Ashbery’s poetic use of the content of experience is always mediated through its presentation as information, ranging from high to low values and often employing “low-mimetic,” pop cultural elements. What results is a suspension of certainty in which meaning is structured and informed by its status as information. Thus leaving open questions of knowledge, Ashbery’s poetry does not represent a fully present consciousness but relies on forms of cognition and information processing that are nonconscious, operating in the background and informed by decades of his practice as a poet. A brief comparison with the late paintings of Willem de Kooning, who experienced cognitive disability at the end of his life, points out similar nonconscious forms of cognition such as motor skill and even aesthetic judgment. The reading is thus informed by information theory, cognitive science, and neurophysiology in showing how Ashbery’s late style makes a present that is historical and structured on his entire oeuvre.
文摘In defining“the global archive,”this essay refers,first of all,to the historical development of exhibitions in Germany that address a global horizon,a distinct cultural project since at least the Enlightenment.After 1945,modem art,which had been removed from public view by the Nazi state,was reintroduced as a project of reeducation as much as aesthetics.Documenta,beginning in 1955,exhibited modem and later artists in the destroyed buildings of the city of Kassel,and expanded its formal and cultural address to a global scale over its fifty-year history.Documenta itself became a kind of continuous archive of its own exhibition history,a mode of formal presentation that increasingly relied on the works it presented.Here I read in detail the archival strategies and form of dOCUMENTA 13,arguably a highpoint of this effort to archive globality as it emerges.Theorists from Michel Foucault,Fredric Jameson,and Aijun Appadurai to the“critical regionalism”of Cheryl Herr and the“negative globality”of Alberto Moreiras assist in the project of comprehending the“archive as form,”seen in a series of artists working on a global scale.
文摘This essay is a part of a longer work on literary and visual modernism at the“moment”of destruction in 1945:Stunde Null or Zero Hour.Here,I focus on the t4constructedness,'of universals via the material,psychological,and political destruction in Germany at war's end.At this moment,destruction and universals interconnect in three temporal modes:anticipatory,punctual,and retrospective.For“punctual”universals,I read Lee Miller’s war journalism,published in Vogue,in relation to her war and Holocaust photography,as uniting modernist aesthetic values and the“event”of destruction.For the construction of“anticipatory”universals,I discuss the work of Hannah Hoch,dada painter and collagist,who emerged from internal exile in Berlin to participate in the first modernist exhibitions in the destroyed city after Stunde Null.Finally,the anonymously authored A Woman in Berlin,documenting the survival strategies to mass sexual predation by Soviet troops immediately at and after Stunde Null,extends from punctual accounts of destruction to a retrospective narration.In each case,modernist visual and verbal forms-and an ethical imperative to keep interpretive horizons open-negotiates between the“radical particularity”of the lived experience of destruction and universal values.The constructedness of universals in modernist works anticipates the construction of political,ethical,and aesthetic universals in the global order after 1945.
文摘The fatalism by which incomprehensible death was sanctioned in primeval times has now passed over into utterly comprehensible life.The noonday panic fear in which nature suddenly appeared to humans as an all-encompassing power has found its counterpart in the panic which is ready to break out at any moment today:human beings expect the world,which is without issue,to be set ablaze by a universal power which they themselves are and over which they are powerless.
