Summary of ' Once more...With felling: Reenactment in contemporary art and culture ' by Robert Blackson
Blackson is a curator who aims in researching and displaying the dependency between contemporary art and culture. He started to be curious about the reenactment since he curated an exhibition named ' We could have invited everyone '. This exhibition included a naturalization station where you could create and join your own country and infused with a spirit of independence and activism. The birth of a nation is often coupled with a self-awareness and a desire to document and historicize its creation, which results in a conceptual collapse between a country's creation and the creation of its ' history '. Blackson said the reenactment seemed to provide a contrast from creating history to copying it.
Reenactment has a signature quality to draw both practitioners and audiences to it again and again, and Blackson also tried to explain the differences among simulation, repetition and reproduction at first. Simulation is an artificial and prescribed projection often constructed to facilitate the prediction of a future conclusion. So simulation can be appreciated as a practice in service to theory. Repetition is an exercise often stuck in the present, all reenactments are repetitions but few repetitions become reenactments. To create a reproduction is to make an image of the original. Imitations and reproduction is to make an image of the original. Imitations and reproductions are stand-ins. Drawing personal motivation from either your past or historical references is the conventional element necessary to construct a reenactment. The reenactment don't need follow the path provided by historical evidence. It could be a free style or open style.
It's a confused issue that how can we define the past when we talk about the reenactment. Blackson mentioned a book named ' Re-thinking history ' by Keith Jenkins who determines that the past is not history in 1991. Blackson believe that it is important to uphold the separation of past and history when we discuss the reenactment. Jenkins maintains the former is a necessary ' construction site ' of facts on which the latter is built and facts impose no meaning in and of themselves. Jenkins's separation of the past and history extends an unspoken epistemological agency to art and memory so that these creative practices might use the past to build and replay their own constructed histories. Blackson also mentioned the scale of the past rests on two planes: personal past and history. Before 1970s, the ability of personal memory to accurately replay one's past was considered almost infallible. While in the mid 1970s, Dr. Elizabeth Loftus'sfalse-memory experiments such as ' Lost in the Mall ', proved that memory , like history, is a creative act and the difference between our memory and our past became well documented.
Some artworks place the emotional and psychological determination of the participating individuals in the foreground of the reenactments. In 2001 Jeremy Deller reenacted a period from the 1984-1985 British miners' strike and in so doing created a poignant perspective between personal and political histories. The English author George Orwell wrote in his noverl 1984 that ' those who control the present control the past and those who control the past control the future '. By allowing the personal memories to control the course of the reenactment, Deller made the artwork as a part of the strike's own history, as well as an epilogue to the experience.
Some reenactments are performed almost daily and are essentially moving memorials. The purpose of these theatrical performances is to instill general audiences with a dramatic sense.
Blackson also think that some of the national public holidays such as Thanksgiving, Independence Day, and Memorial Day in US are also a kind of reenactment which could serves to strengthen an increasingly commercialized narrative of a country's history and identity. Some festival, like Up-helly-aa in Scotland, is also a kind of commercialized cultural reenactment.
As the historian Mike Wallace said that memories fade and cultures step in and take over, Blackson also cited art critic Jonathan's sentence:' We don't have a critical grasp of history...Memory has become the most sacred and at the same time the most empty value in our culture.' the braiding of memory, history, and performance has inspired a number of exhibitions in the recent years, while many works are deeply personal and quite unique. These differences help to unbalance and challenge notions of the past, history, simulation, reproduction, and repetition that have been used to curatorially bind these works.
Blackson also mentioned Rod Dickinson, whose works reflects a sense of the power and tragedy of the historical events to his audience. Dickinson insures that the layers of mediatization surrounding the original event undercut his audience's conceptual experience of the contemporary reenactment. The connection between mediatized events and the reenactment of these events was extended by Marina Abramovic's 2005 performance series ' Seven Easy Pieces '. In this series, she reenacted five seminal performances from the 1960s and 1970s that she never witnessed. So it also raises important questions about the possibilities for and acceptance of reenactments that intentionally differ from their source. Even though, Blackson still think that reenactment is a creative act, and no definition of the genre should omit this element of artistic inspiration, no matter whether the artist has ever experienced, witnessed before.
Blackson is a curator who aims in researching and displaying the dependency between contemporary art and culture. He started to be curious about the reenactment since he curated an exhibition named ' We could have invited everyone '. This exhibition included a naturalization station where you could create and join your own country and infused with a spirit of independence and activism. The birth of a nation is often coupled with a self-awareness and a desire to document and historicize its creation, which results in a conceptual collapse between a country's creation and the creation of its ' history '. Blackson said the reenactment seemed to provide a contrast from creating history to copying it.
Reenactment has a signature quality to draw both practitioners and audiences to it again and again, and Blackson also tried to explain the differences among simulation, repetition and reproduction at first. Simulation is an artificial and prescribed projection often constructed to facilitate the prediction of a future conclusion. So simulation can be appreciated as a practice in service to theory. Repetition is an exercise often stuck in the present, all reenactments are repetitions but few repetitions become reenactments. To create a reproduction is to make an image of the original. Imitations and reproduction is to make an image of the original. Imitations and reproductions are stand-ins. Drawing personal motivation from either your past or historical references is the conventional element necessary to construct a reenactment. The reenactment don't need follow the path provided by historical evidence. It could be a free style or open style.
It's a confused issue that how can we define the past when we talk about the reenactment. Blackson mentioned a book named ' Re-thinking history ' by Keith Jenkins who determines that the past is not history in 1991. Blackson believe that it is important to uphold the separation of past and history when we discuss the reenactment. Jenkins maintains the former is a necessary ' construction site ' of facts on which the latter is built and facts impose no meaning in and of themselves. Jenkins's separation of the past and history extends an unspoken epistemological agency to art and memory so that these creative practices might use the past to build and replay their own constructed histories. Blackson also mentioned the scale of the past rests on two planes: personal past and history. Before 1970s, the ability of personal memory to accurately replay one's past was considered almost infallible. While in the mid 1970s, Dr. Elizabeth Loftus'sfalse-memory experiments such as ' Lost in the Mall ', proved that memory , like history, is a creative act and the difference between our memory and our past became well documented.
Some artworks place the emotional and psychological determination of the participating individuals in the foreground of the reenactments. In 2001 Jeremy Deller reenacted a period from the 1984-1985 British miners' strike and in so doing created a poignant perspective between personal and political histories. The English author George Orwell wrote in his noverl 1984 that ' those who control the present control the past and those who control the past control the future '. By allowing the personal memories to control the course of the reenactment, Deller made the artwork as a part of the strike's own history, as well as an epilogue to the experience.
Some reenactments are performed almost daily and are essentially moving memorials. The purpose of these theatrical performances is to instill general audiences with a dramatic sense.
Blackson also think that some of the national public holidays such as Thanksgiving, Independence Day, and Memorial Day in US are also a kind of reenactment which could serves to strengthen an increasingly commercialized narrative of a country's history and identity. Some festival, like Up-helly-aa in Scotland, is also a kind of commercialized cultural reenactment.
As the historian Mike Wallace said that memories fade and cultures step in and take over, Blackson also cited art critic Jonathan's sentence:' We don't have a critical grasp of history...Memory has become the most sacred and at the same time the most empty value in our culture.' the braiding of memory, history, and performance has inspired a number of exhibitions in the recent years, while many works are deeply personal and quite unique. These differences help to unbalance and challenge notions of the past, history, simulation, reproduction, and repetition that have been used to curatorially bind these works.
Blackson also mentioned Rod Dickinson, whose works reflects a sense of the power and tragedy of the historical events to his audience. Dickinson insures that the layers of mediatization surrounding the original event undercut his audience's conceptual experience of the contemporary reenactment. The connection between mediatized events and the reenactment of these events was extended by Marina Abramovic's 2005 performance series ' Seven Easy Pieces '. In this series, she reenacted five seminal performances from the 1960s and 1970s that she never witnessed. So it also raises important questions about the possibilities for and acceptance of reenactments that intentionally differ from their source. Even though, Blackson still think that reenactment is a creative act, and no definition of the genre should omit this element of artistic inspiration, no matter whether the artist has ever experienced, witnessed before.