Pub Date : 2020-06-28DOI: 10.5749/futuante.15.2.0081
J. Parks
Abstract:The surge of interest in architectural archives coincides with the development of the historic preservation profession in the United States. Indeed, successive federal laws establishing guidelines for preservation in the twentieth century explicitly mandate the collection of documentation. As public as a finished work of architecture can be, the architectural archive—the one maintained by the architect, not the publicly mandated building records—is a variable beast, subject to many internal and external factors: from the care the architect gave to the material, to the time between creation and collection, and the number of players involved. How do architectural archives develop, what are some of the variables of collecting, how might historic preservationists engage in this process? In the end, the story is less professional and more personal, less like Walter Benjamin and more like the psychological novels of Henry James.
{"title":"Architectural Archives: A Variable Beast","authors":"J. Parks","doi":"10.5749/futuante.15.2.0081","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5749/futuante.15.2.0081","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:The surge of interest in architectural archives coincides with the development of the historic preservation profession in the United States. Indeed, successive federal laws establishing guidelines for preservation in the twentieth century explicitly mandate the collection of documentation. As public as a finished work of architecture can be, the architectural archive—the one maintained by the architect, not the publicly mandated building records—is a variable beast, subject to many internal and external factors: from the care the architect gave to the material, to the time between creation and collection, and the number of players involved. How do architectural archives develop, what are some of the variables of collecting, how might historic preservationists engage in this process? In the end, the story is less professional and more personal, less like Walter Benjamin and more like the psychological novels of Henry James.","PeriodicalId":53609,"journal":{"name":"Future Anterior","volume":"84 1","pages":"80 - 93"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2020-06-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"82599743","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-06-28DOI: 10.5749/futuante.15.2.0033
Leen Katrib
Abstract:When archaeologists work to preserve a monument, a values-based system is employed to determine what is worth preserving and what will be destroyed in the process of allocating monuments as abandoned "ruins." To think of "ruin" as a noun emphasizes the artifacts of empire as passive remnants of a defunct regime, effectively implying that imperial governance is over. To focus on processes of ruination, however, allows us to trace the lingering effects of empire, what people are left with—or without. This essay proposes to shift the reader's gaze away from the "ruins" of monument and toward processes of ruination that produce a category of remnants that has largely slipped the attention of scholarship and has remained absent from imperial archives—rubble. Unlike the "ruins" of monument, the "rubble" of monument is formless, bearing no trace of its original creation. Examples in the history of archaeological restorations point to a consistent pattern in the management of rubble, where it's obliterated rather than preserved, documented, or archived. This pattern has yet to be addressed as more monuments face processes of ruination beyond just archaeology: economic, natural, terrorist. This essay seeks to unpack the implications of obliterating the "rubble" of monuments on the process of historical production, and to argue for novel management and the potential afterlife of rubble. It concludes by hypothesizing the archivization, as opposed to the museumization, of rubble to reframe this historically marginalized, formless material as an agent of ruination that can open history up for reexamination and can democratize the storage, retrieval, production, and indexing of new forms of knowledge.
{"title":"On Archiving Rubble","authors":"Leen Katrib","doi":"10.5749/futuante.15.2.0033","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5749/futuante.15.2.0033","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:When archaeologists work to preserve a monument, a values-based system is employed to determine what is worth preserving and what will be destroyed in the process of allocating monuments as abandoned \"ruins.\" To think of \"ruin\" as a noun emphasizes the artifacts of empire as passive remnants of a defunct regime, effectively implying that imperial governance is over. To focus on processes of ruination, however, allows us to trace the lingering effects of empire, what people are left with—or without. This essay proposes to shift the reader's gaze away from the \"ruins\" of monument and toward processes of ruination that produce a category of remnants that has largely slipped the attention of scholarship and has remained absent from imperial archives—rubble. Unlike the \"ruins\" of monument, the \"rubble\" of monument is formless, bearing no trace of its original creation. Examples in the history of archaeological restorations point to a consistent pattern in the management of rubble, where it's obliterated rather than preserved, documented, or archived. This pattern has yet to be addressed as more monuments face processes of ruination beyond just archaeology: economic, natural, terrorist. This essay seeks to unpack the implications of obliterating the \"rubble\" of monuments on the process of historical production, and to argue for novel management and the potential afterlife of rubble. It concludes by hypothesizing the archivization, as opposed to the museumization, of rubble to reframe this historically marginalized, formless material as an agent of ruination that can open history up for reexamination and can democratize the storage, retrieval, production, and indexing of new forms of knowledge.","PeriodicalId":53609,"journal":{"name":"Future Anterior","volume":"21 1","pages":"32 - 45"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2020-06-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"83500424","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-06-28DOI: 10.5749/futuante.15.2.0113
A. Gabrielian, Aroussiak Alison B. Hirsch
Abstract:Can landscapes be moved? What does it mean for a landscape not to have a place when the former is often equated with the latter in geographical terms? The essay considers the relevance and resonance of place (and space) as related to landscapes of memory. By considering the increasing digitization of memory via the burgeoning geoweb, the authors aim to explore the future of memorial-making, which has long been a physical and material practice that treats site as a remnant of authenticity. While monuments often commemorate events that occurred elsewhere, landscapes themselves are frequently all that remains of histories long forgotten. The essay considers whether these landscapes can be captured, transported, and inscribed in the social imagination (as cultural memory) as an ex-situ experience. It concludes with three illustrative memorial propositions and emphasize how geospatial media might be harnessed in contemporary memorial-making to transport us virtually to sites of memory and transport memorial landscapes into the space of our everyday lives. These propositions rely on the adaptability and accretional nature of new media technologies to commemorate ongoing processes of loss. Rather than commemorate the singularity of sites as uniquely sacred, these technologies enable awareness of larger networks of memory that draw people together across geographies and "chasms of difference."
{"title":"Prosthetic Landscapes: Place and Placelessness in the Digitization of Memorials","authors":"A. Gabrielian, Aroussiak Alison B. Hirsch","doi":"10.5749/futuante.15.2.0113","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5749/futuante.15.2.0113","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:Can landscapes be moved? What does it mean for a landscape not to have a place when the former is often equated with the latter in geographical terms? The essay considers the relevance and resonance of place (and space) as related to landscapes of memory. By considering the increasing digitization of memory via the burgeoning geoweb, the authors aim to explore the future of memorial-making, which has long been a physical and material practice that treats site as a remnant of authenticity. While monuments often commemorate events that occurred elsewhere, landscapes themselves are frequently all that remains of histories long forgotten. The essay considers whether these landscapes can be captured, transported, and inscribed in the social imagination (as cultural memory) as an ex-situ experience. It concludes with three illustrative memorial propositions and emphasize how geospatial media might be harnessed in contemporary memorial-making to transport us virtually to sites of memory and transport memorial landscapes into the space of our everyday lives. These propositions rely on the adaptability and accretional nature of new media technologies to commemorate ongoing processes of loss. Rather than commemorate the singularity of sites as uniquely sacred, these technologies enable awareness of larger networks of memory that draw people together across geographies and \"chasms of difference.\"","PeriodicalId":53609,"journal":{"name":"Future Anterior","volume":"1 1","pages":"112 - 130"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2020-06-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"78265097","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-05-22DOI: 10.5749/FUTUANTE.15.1.0III
Chad Elias, M. Coffey
{"title":"Introduction to Contemporary Art and the Deconstruction of Heritage: Preservation By Other Means: Contemporary Art and Contested Heritage","authors":"Chad Elias, M. Coffey","doi":"10.5749/FUTUANTE.15.1.0III","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5749/FUTUANTE.15.1.0III","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":53609,"journal":{"name":"Future Anterior","volume":"11 1","pages":"iii - xiii"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2019-05-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"87307566","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-05-22DOI: 10.5749/FUTUANTE.15.1.0065
Akram Zaatari
Abstract:Akram Zaatari is one of the founders of the Arab Image Foundation, a nonprofit organization established to collect, preserve, and study photographs from the Middle East, North Africa, and the Arab diaspora. Over the past two decades, Zaatari has used material from this collection as the basis for a larger artistic inquiry on archival practices and the social and material life of photographic images. In this text, Zaatari questions the desires and motivations that underpin the established preservation protocols. As opposed to the impulse to protect photographs from deterioration, he asks what it means to embrace their ephemerality. Zaatari looks for what remains after something inadvertently vanishes in a photographic negative, or what gets reconfigured by environmental and chemical processes over which we have no ultimate control. He tries to learn from these accidents or phenomena and deploys them as tools into the making of what he calls "informed objects," or things that can speak of what they have been through. Here, it is not simply the image that bears historical information but the material on which it is ingrained.
{"title":"Artist Intervention: All That Refuses To Vanish","authors":"Akram Zaatari","doi":"10.5749/FUTUANTE.15.1.0065","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5749/FUTUANTE.15.1.0065","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:Akram Zaatari is one of the founders of the Arab Image Foundation, a nonprofit organization established to collect, preserve, and study photographs from the Middle East, North Africa, and the Arab diaspora. Over the past two decades, Zaatari has used material from this collection as the basis for a larger artistic inquiry on archival practices and the social and material life of photographic images. In this text, Zaatari questions the desires and motivations that underpin the established preservation protocols. As opposed to the impulse to protect photographs from deterioration, he asks what it means to embrace their ephemerality. Zaatari looks for what remains after something inadvertently vanishes in a photographic negative, or what gets reconfigured by environmental and chemical processes over which we have no ultimate control. He tries to learn from these accidents or phenomena and deploys them as tools into the making of what he calls \"informed objects,\" or things that can speak of what they have been through. Here, it is not simply the image that bears historical information but the material on which it is ingrained.","PeriodicalId":53609,"journal":{"name":"Future Anterior","volume":"33 1","pages":"65 - 68"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2019-05-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"91210065","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-05-22DOI: 10.5749/FUTUANTE.15.1.0001
Mya Dosch
Abstract:Lecumberri prison in Mexico City housed inmates from 1900 until 1976. Among the incarcerated were over 460 political prisoners held after the 1968 massacre of student protesters and bystanders by government officials, transforming the site into a potent symbol of the repressions of the era. In 1982, Lecumberri reopened as the Archivo General de la Nación (National Archive), the most important repository in Mexico. I argue that the preservation and renovation of the structure provided an opportunity for the PRI (Institutional Revolutionary Party) to reclaim the narrative of Lecumberri from the activists who used it as a symbol of state excesses and a node of resistance during and after the 1968 student movement. Through the preservation of Lecumberri as a cultural institution, the Mexican government claimed progress by rhetorically "opening" and "inverting" the site, yet the fundamental power structures of the institution, and their related architectures, remained unchanged. I then show how interventions by artists Gina Arizpe and Ángela Bonadies escaped, exceeded, or confounded these official narratives, staging what Cristina Moreiras-Menor calls "alternative notions of temporality." Their artworks underscore the fact that the repressive, carceral functions of Lecumberri also serve the Archive, questioning the moral narratives implicit in historical preservation.
{"title":"Temporalities of Progress and Protest: Renovation and Artist Interventions at the Mexican National Archive","authors":"Mya Dosch","doi":"10.5749/FUTUANTE.15.1.0001","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5749/FUTUANTE.15.1.0001","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:Lecumberri prison in Mexico City housed inmates from 1900 until 1976. Among the incarcerated were over 460 political prisoners held after the 1968 massacre of student protesters and bystanders by government officials, transforming the site into a potent symbol of the repressions of the era. In 1982, Lecumberri reopened as the Archivo General de la Nación (National Archive), the most important repository in Mexico. I argue that the preservation and renovation of the structure provided an opportunity for the PRI (Institutional Revolutionary Party) to reclaim the narrative of Lecumberri from the activists who used it as a symbol of state excesses and a node of resistance during and after the 1968 student movement. Through the preservation of Lecumberri as a cultural institution, the Mexican government claimed progress by rhetorically \"opening\" and \"inverting\" the site, yet the fundamental power structures of the institution, and their related architectures, remained unchanged. I then show how interventions by artists Gina Arizpe and Ángela Bonadies escaped, exceeded, or confounded these official narratives, staging what Cristina Moreiras-Menor calls \"alternative notions of temporality.\" Their artworks underscore the fact that the repressive, carceral functions of Lecumberri also serve the Archive, questioning the moral narratives implicit in historical preservation.","PeriodicalId":53609,"journal":{"name":"Future Anterior","volume":"19 1 1","pages":"1 - 15"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2019-05-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"91312810","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-05-22DOI: 10.5749/FUTUANTE.15.1.0017
Hannah Quaintance
Abstract:The Freedom Wall (2017) is a mural in Buffalo, New York, commissioned by the Albright-Knox Art Gallery. Planned for the northern entrance of the Michigan Street African American Heritage Corridor, it was proposed that the mural should consist of a series of large-scale portraits of local and national African American civil rights leaders. The combination of its commemorative characteristics and dialogic positioning within this protected landscape framed the project as a potential site of memory for the African American community. However, the initial proposal was met with frustrated public opposition. Led by a renowned art gallery that remained distanced from Buffalo's African American community, the project created an arena for conversations that challenged the role of authorized narratives and cultural organizations in identifying and shaping heritage. Following expansions of its authorship and content, the Freedom Wall provided a valuable demonstration of what Laurajane Smith describes as "heritage as cultural process." Amending the historic landscape of the Corridor, the mural became a place that connects the past with the present, encouraging the passing on of community knowledge.
{"title":"The Freedom Wall: Public Art and Negotiations of African American Heritage in Buffalo, New York","authors":"Hannah Quaintance","doi":"10.5749/FUTUANTE.15.1.0017","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5749/FUTUANTE.15.1.0017","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:The Freedom Wall (2017) is a mural in Buffalo, New York, commissioned by the Albright-Knox Art Gallery. Planned for the northern entrance of the Michigan Street African American Heritage Corridor, it was proposed that the mural should consist of a series of large-scale portraits of local and national African American civil rights leaders. The combination of its commemorative characteristics and dialogic positioning within this protected landscape framed the project as a potential site of memory for the African American community. However, the initial proposal was met with frustrated public opposition. Led by a renowned art gallery that remained distanced from Buffalo's African American community, the project created an arena for conversations that challenged the role of authorized narratives and cultural organizations in identifying and shaping heritage. Following expansions of its authorship and content, the Freedom Wall provided a valuable demonstration of what Laurajane Smith describes as \"heritage as cultural process.\" Amending the historic landscape of the Corridor, the mural became a place that connects the past with the present, encouraging the passing on of community knowledge.","PeriodicalId":53609,"journal":{"name":"Future Anterior","volume":"15 1","pages":"16 - 29"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2019-05-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"77405876","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-05-22DOI: 10.5749/FUTUANTE.15.1.0031
Irit Carmon Alona Popper, Alona Nitzan-Shiftan
Abstract:Bar'am National Park in Israel contains both the remains of an ancient synagogue and the ruins of a Palestinian village. The architecture of the synagogue is restored as the central structure of the park, while the remains of the Palestinian village—a closed military area—are restricted and neglected. The existing architectural fabric on site does not reflect a consolidated agenda of preservation but rather a political policy of occupation and discrimination by turning the history of demolition of the agrarian Palestinian land into a seemingly pacified site of national heritage. The village descendants are allowed to enter for ephemeral activities, which they use to perform social and artistic activities on site.The study examines a series of site-specific installations of a contemporary artist and architect, a descendant of the villagers, on site. Through their inherent impermanence and nonrecurring characteristics, the art interventions succeed to break through the fixed boundaries of the dominant heritage and allow hidden layers to surface. We analyze the art practices in light of recent preservation theory. In the context of an intractable national conflict, we further argue, such participatory action opens venues to discuss preservation as an act of civil rights, which challenges the official history as an alternative creative-performative model of preserving heritage.
{"title":"Participatory Art in Kufr Bir'im: Fissures for Suppressed Histories","authors":"Irit Carmon Alona Popper, Alona Nitzan-Shiftan","doi":"10.5749/FUTUANTE.15.1.0031","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5749/FUTUANTE.15.1.0031","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:Bar'am National Park in Israel contains both the remains of an ancient synagogue and the ruins of a Palestinian village. The architecture of the synagogue is restored as the central structure of the park, while the remains of the Palestinian village—a closed military area—are restricted and neglected. The existing architectural fabric on site does not reflect a consolidated agenda of preservation but rather a political policy of occupation and discrimination by turning the history of demolition of the agrarian Palestinian land into a seemingly pacified site of national heritage. The village descendants are allowed to enter for ephemeral activities, which they use to perform social and artistic activities on site.The study examines a series of site-specific installations of a contemporary artist and architect, a descendant of the villagers, on site. Through their inherent impermanence and nonrecurring characteristics, the art interventions succeed to break through the fixed boundaries of the dominant heritage and allow hidden layers to surface. We analyze the art practices in light of recent preservation theory. In the context of an intractable national conflict, we further argue, such participatory action opens venues to discuss preservation as an act of civil rights, which challenges the official history as an alternative creative-performative model of preserving heritage.","PeriodicalId":53609,"journal":{"name":"Future Anterior","volume":"35 1","pages":"30 - 43"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2019-05-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"84531149","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-05-22DOI: 10.5749/FUTUANTE.15.1.0045
E. Thompson
Abstract:The destruction of archaeological sites in Syria and Iraq by the Islamic State has been widely covered in the Western media, and has launched a flurry of projects with the goal of combatting the destruction through the use of digital technologies. Technologies such as 3D modeling and printing have been hailed as salvific, and their ability to preserve threatened sites, reconstruct destroyed ones, and disseminate knowledge of the past cheaply and easily all over the globe have been called the only possible remedy for destruction by the IS. This article surveys the work of a number of contemporary artists who are questioning these narratives and pointing to potential downsides to digital reconstructions of threatened cultural heritage.
{"title":"Recreating the Past in Our Own Image: Contemporary Artists' Reactions to the Digitization of Threatened Cultural Heritage Sites in the Middle East","authors":"E. Thompson","doi":"10.5749/FUTUANTE.15.1.0045","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5749/FUTUANTE.15.1.0045","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:The destruction of archaeological sites in Syria and Iraq by the Islamic State has been widely covered in the Western media, and has launched a flurry of projects with the goal of combatting the destruction through the use of digital technologies. Technologies such as 3D modeling and printing have been hailed as salvific, and their ability to preserve threatened sites, reconstruct destroyed ones, and disseminate knowledge of the past cheaply and easily all over the globe have been called the only possible remedy for destruction by the IS. This article surveys the work of a number of contemporary artists who are questioning these narratives and pointing to potential downsides to digital reconstructions of threatened cultural heritage.","PeriodicalId":53609,"journal":{"name":"Future Anterior","volume":"49 1","pages":"44 - 56"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2019-05-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"76218205","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}