READ Eflux Journal #24 –

Hito Steyerl – In Free Fall: A Thought Experiment on Vertical Perspective about Art

  • thinking about contemporary
  • post – modernism -had currency, doubted, not useful way of thinking
  • is our own work contemporary?
  • Field of Fine Art diagram again -think about this to contextualist my own practice – crossovers and divergence
  • 2016 – think of Turner painting – it is difficult/problematic for us to contextualise contemporary art as we are in it
  • think of being in a field and seeing from our perspective – but to observe in ariel form we can see the plan
  • therefore – really can only historically contextualise
  • Proposition – when thinking of the FA diagram – consider one of timelessness
  • Time is normally thought of as linear and dividable – causing problematic terms
  • Michael Serres – philosopher – talking about time and history – Historical Time – cause of many problems
  • The idea of stability for artists
  • idea of foundation is obsolete
  • idea that there is no foundation
  • that our beginning of practice is unstable – distinguishes between classical and modern – now

    FREEFALL

  • WHAT is contemporary Post Modern? – Freefall?
  • look at Hito Steyerl writing
  • Epistime – rigorous way of thinking – style of way of thinking
  • think of pictorial space – importance of vanishing point mirrored by viewing spot
  • Steyerl discusses entwinement of viewer and maker – robs viewer of freedom – suggests we need to see negative aspects of this

– Michel Foucault – philosophical aesthetics – look at chapter on Diego Velazquez (1656) – Las Medians

las_meninas_01

  • our experience of this is problematic as the viewing point is already occupied – complications of perspective arise
  • this is the first painting to question and unravel possibilities, open up the uncanny
  • implied stability is becoming unstable – lack of foundation