RESEARCH, WRITING, TEACHING, ADVISING
My new book Paik’s Virtual Archive: Time, Change, and Materiality in Media Art has been brilliantly reviewed by Dr Gregory Zinman of the Georgia Institute of Technology in this month’s issue of Art Bulletin (Vol. 100, Nr. 2). Next to Zinman’s review of my book, the “Screens and Projections” section of the journal features reviews by Kevin Hatch on Erika Balsom and Kate Mondloch on Meredith Hoy’s new book. What an amazing company to be in.
The Summer Institute for Technical Studies in Art (SITSA) takes place for the second time at the Harvard Art Museums in Cambridge, MA (June 18–29, 2018). Headed by Francesca Bewer, research curator for conservation and technical study programs at the Harvard Art Museums, SITSA will unite expert faculty to engage a group of 15 students in close looking, art making, and the scientific investigation of objects from the museums’ collections. For more information, follow this link.
I am currently preparing a paper for the session on questions of authenticity, reproducibility, multiples, and copies in contemporary art. Among this session’s speakers are Kio Lippit, Margo Delidow, Rebecca Uchill, and Gianfranco Pocobene.
The past SITSA (2017), to which I contributed on a topic of translation, has been reviewed in an article published on the Harvard Art Museums website. This article can be accessed here.
I am pleased to be presenting in the seminar Transmissions and Transitions – (Post)media, Museums and Cultural Memory at the Statens Museum for Kunst: National Gallery of Denmark with Sean Cubitt, Dieter Daniels, Sarah Kenderdine, and Anna Ramos.
How can collection, exhibition and distribution practices adapt to and reflect new technological and social realities? Throughout the 20th and 21st century, the position of the museum has been constantly challenged by a number of intersecting cultural patterns and tendencies. At this seminar, we want to take a fresh look at the challenges posed by the impact of (post)media, real-time technologies and a distributed social sphere on art, publics and the museum as an institution. The questions facing museum professionals hinge on the ways that these complex cultural patterns are recognized and realized, affecting both archival and conservation work as well as exhibition, art interpretation and education. In this sense, the (post)medial condition also poses questions about the transition of the social, cultural and political construction of the museum and its contexts. This seminar addresses such questions in the light of state-of-the-art professional and academic practices and imaginaries. How do the instabilities of (post)media and real-time technologies affect museum practices? What does conflicting notions of ephemerality, materiality and intangibility mean for concepts of art, the artwork and cultural heritage and how must museums respond to this? Why, what, and how do we archive and how are the archives best cared for, accessed and actualised? Which ideas of (in)authenticity are expressed in the interplay between archiving, documentation and remediation? How do cultural concepts of media, history and memory underpin the practices and choices of museum professionals and the experiences of the museum visitors? These are all key questions that museums must address in order to move past a representational cultural paradigm towards a more constructive engagement with their surroundings. The seminar seeks to fold this debate into discussions about video art, the art market, animated archives, embodied experience, sound, radio, curation, preservation, debt and our obligations to past and future generations. Confirmed keynote speakers Sean Cubitt (Goldsmiths), Sarah Kenderdine (EPFL Lausanne), Hanna Hölling (UCL London) and Dieter Daniels (HGB Leipzig).
PROGRAM 9.00 – 9.30 Arrival and registration 9.30 – 10.00 Welcome and introduction, Birgitte Anderberg, Morten Søndergaard, Rasmus Holmboe 10.00 – 10.50 Dieter Daniels, HGB Leipzig 10.50 – 11.10 Coffee 11.10 – 12.00 Hanna Hölling, UCL London 12.00 – 13.00 Lunch-break (lunch is not included) 13.55 – 14.45 Sarah Kenderdine, EPFL 14.45 – 15.10 Coffee 15.10 – 16.00 Sean Cubitt, Goldsmiths 16.00 – 17.00 Panel and wrap up
Francesca Bewer and I have been invited to deliver a master class for MA and PhD candidates at Utrecht University which will be followed by a public colloquium. This event will offer a unique opportunity to find out whether the materiality of bronzes has something in common with the unfolding matter of media art. What is the matter, material, and what the materiality in media art? Can time be considered a “medium”?
Casting New Light on Old Bronzes: Matters of Interpretation
Dr. Francesca G. Bewer, Research Curator for Conservation and Technical Studies Programs and Director of the Summer Institute for Technical Studies in Art, Harvard Art Museums
Gazing at bronze sculptures, one could imagine them to have sprung forth, perfectly formed and finished from an artist’s hand, much as Athena is said to have emerged from the head of Zeus. Indeed, traces of the making process are most commonly removed or concealed. But we shall see through a closer look at a diverse sampling of works that they preserve all sorts of clues to the complex translations and transformations that are involved in their production and that bronzes continue to undergo over time. How one might identify such evidence and make sense of it will be discussed as well.
The Medium of Time and Transition
Dr. Hanna Hölling, Lecturer in the History of Art and Material Studies, University College London
“The essence of the medium is time,” maintains the American Video artist Bill Viola referencing artistic video. He continues “Its basic underlying characteristics are change and transformation … The medium unfolds itself in time.” Taking this statement as a point of departure for the analysis of intermedia on the intersection of art theoretical, historical and conservation discourses, my presentation examines how the affirmation of the transitoriness of artworks offers a fruitful ground to scrutinise this portion of cultural heritage which refuses fixity and stasis. Using examples of video, film, and multimedia, I will argue that the legacy of intermediality not only challenges the established rhetoric of material authenticity that for a long time dominated conservation and the museum collecting and exhibiting practices but it also radicalises time. Time, here, becomes an indicator of these works’ identity.
Join us next Thursday at CAA in Los Angeles for the session:
“OBJECT – EVENT – PERFORMANCE: ART, MATERIALITY, AND CONTINUITY SINCE THE 1960S”
Time: 02/22/2018: 2:00PM–3:30PM
Location: Room 501A
Chair: Hanna B. Hölling, University College London
“Hannah Wilke’s “Homage to a Large Red Lipstick.” Strategies for Theorizing and Exhibiting Dead Objects”
Andrea Gyorody, Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin College
“Sometimes An Onion: Performative Models of Curating and Conserving the Work of Artist-Choreographer Simone Forti”
Megan Metcalf, University of California, Los Angeles
“Untimely Body: Tracing Thek’s Corpse, 1967-1973”
Oliver Shultz, Stanford University
“Dispossessing Form: Felix Gonzalez-Torres’ Aesthetics of Logistics”
Edward Bacal, University of Toronto
ZKM Center for Art and Media in Karlsruhe, Germany has published online a video recording from my recent book presentation (September 15, 2017). The video is accessible by clicking on this link.
This past Tuesday, October 10th, my new book Paik’s Virtual Archive: Time, Change and Materiality in Media Art was launched at the UCL Institute of Advanced Studies in London (link to the event). It was accompanied by a panel discussion – Permanent Impermanence – with Briony Fer (Profesor of Art History at the UCL Department of History of Art) and Sarah Cook (Dundee Fellow and curator at the University of Dundee). Scholarly, curatorial, museological, and conservation perspectives were combined to provide insights into the intricacies and complexities of media artworks. The panel was enriched by interesting questions and comments from the audience. The well-attended event was followed by a wine reception. I was very pleased to see many good friends and colleagues and am grateful for such good reception of teh book! Below are a few visual impressions from the evening.
The book can be purchased following this University of California Press link. If you are interested in reviewing the book contact me at h.holling@ucl.ac.uk.
This Friday, September 15th, 6-8pm, I will present my recently published Paik’s Virtual Archive: Time, Change, and Materiality in Media Art.
Dr. Hanna Hölling, Dozentin für Kunstgeschichte und materielle Kultur am Institut für Kunstgeschichte des University College London, wird am Freitag, den 15. September ihr 2017 erschienenes Buch »Paik’s Virtual Archive« präsentieren, welches die Werke des Urvaters der Videokunst Nam June Paik analysiert.
In »Paik’s Virtual Archive« betrachtet Hölling die Identität von Multimedia-Kunstwerken. Dabei untersucht sie die Rolle der Konservierung für unser Verständnis, was das Kunstwerk ist und welche Funktion es innerhalb und über einen spezifischen historischen Moment hinaus einnimmt.
In Höllings Analyse der Werke von Nam June Paik (1932-2006), des koreanisch-amerikanischen Künstlers, der als der Urvater der Videokunst angesehen wird, erforscht sie das Verhältnis des Konzepts zum Material der Kunstwerke, Theorien musikalischer Darbietung und Performativität, Bergsons Begriff der Dauer sowie die Rolle, die diese Elemente in der Konzeptualisierung von Multimedia-Kunstwerken spielen.
Hölling vereint ihre scharfsinnige Bewertung künstlerischer Techniken mit Konzepten aus der Kunsttheorie, Philosophie und Ästhetik, um Fragen zu den Materialien und zur Materialität zu stellen. Diese Fragen richten sich nicht nur an Paiks Werk, sondern an die gesamte moderne Kunst. Zuletzt schlägt sie vor, dass das Archiv – der physische und virtuelle Raum, in dem alles zu finden ist, was über ein Kunstwerk bekannt ist – die Grundlage für die Identität und Kontinuität jedes Kunstwerks ist.
The website of this event can be accessed here.
On September 8, in an exciting Theory and History session of ICOM-CC Triennial Meeting in Copenhagen, I delivered a paper titled Time and Conservation.
What does time mean in conservation? Is time present in conservation as an implicit or explicit dimension, and how does conservation, if at all, conceptualize time? By proposing a temporal critique of conservation, this paper argues that thinking time has been absent from the narratives of conservation, its episteme, theoretical and research-generating activities, and from its practical theoretical engagement with the material world. Reviewing varying implicit manifestations of time in conservation, it subsequently proposes an alternative way of thinking about time.
The paper can be accessed following this link.
PRESENTATIONS AND PANEL DISCUSSION AT THE GETTY CENTER
“What’s the Matter? Media, Materiality, and Meaning in Film and Video Installations” combines scholarly, curatorial, conservation and artistic perspectives to debate the issues arising from display, maintenance and archiving of media artworks in a broader sense, and film, video, and multimedia installations specifically. The event will interest everyone practically and theoretically engaged in the institutional and non-institutional lives of media artworks, histories of display, processes of musalisation and conservation, and the questions of intentionality and archive.
Presentations by Glenn Phillips, Jennifer West, Mark Gilberg, and Hanna Hölling will be followed by a panel discussion with Q&A open to the public. The panel will be followed by a reception.
Join us on Tuesday, August 22, 2017, from 4 pm – 6 pm at the Museum Lecture Hall
Free | Advance ticket required
Organized with kind support of the Getty Conservation Institute and the Getty Research Institute.
Installation view of Jennifer West: Film is Dead…, at the Seattle Art Museum, 2016. Photo: Mark Woods. Seattle Art Museum