Since the 1990s, an increasing number of artists, curators, dancers, choreographers and other professionals of the cul-tural panorama have looked at reality with an extractive ap-proach: they have ...used objects already in circulation in the artistic context and re-proposed them in the present by ad-justing them on a formal and/or content level. With the aim of analysing the consequences of these reactivation strategies, the essay intends to outline the importance of the so-called “re-enactment studies” which have hitherto dealt with the subject, and it then discusses the utility of a novel analytical model called “migratory cycle of images”. The latter propos-es to approach a generic act of reactivation in operational terms, identifying the role that images play in the various phases of the process. Finding proper support in contempo-rary philosophical theories such as Object-Oriented Ontology and in the analysis of some exemplary artistic productions, this operation allows to: question the terminology currently used in the field, arrive at the formulation of new nomencla-tures, and, finally, outline the boundaries of the “enactment studies”, along with different prefixes to differentiate the mul-tiform methods of re-generating the existing.
This paper aims to demonstrate how Laure Prouvost’s artistic practice requires an immersion of the viewer in intermedial installations composed of objects from the most disparate spatial and temporal ...origins. Since the early 2000s, the French artist has intentionally created surreal mise-en-scenes which, by blending video, painting, drawing, sculpture, and performance, can be understood as compositions or collages made of visual references taken from different contexts such as pop culture, the web, and private photo albums. Prouvost’s works are “unstable visual entities,” made of images that aggregate in heterogeneous configurations, generating eccentric atmospheres and cancelling every hierarchical order between the observer and the observed. Viewers are encouraged to fill the space by becoming objects among other objects. By using the Object-Oriented Ontology (OOO) as philosophical and methodological support, this paper will focus more closely on the analysis of Deep See Blue Surrounding You / Vois Ce Bleu Profond Te Fondre (2019), the project Prouvost produced for the French Pavilion at the 58th Venice Biennale. On this occasion, her work They Parlaient Idéale (2019) – a video documenting the Mediterranean Sea journey that brings her to the Venetian lagoon – was the cornerstone of a multifaceted environmental installation. Assuming a critical and analytical approach, this contribution then discusses the role Deep See Blue Surrounding You plays as a “hyper-enactment:” it is a mise-en-scene that consists of interrelationships between “things/images” that aggregate as objects, but it is also a composition in which the viewers are “viscously” asked to generate their personal, non-linear narration.
This paper aims to demonstrate how Laure Prouvost’s artistic practice requires an immersion of the viewer in intermedial installations composed of objects from the most disparate spatial and temporal ...origins. Since the early 2000s, the French artist has intentionally created surreal mise-en-scenes which, by blending video, painting, drawing, sculpture, and performance, can be understood as compositions or collages made of visual references taken from different contexts such as pop culture, the web, and private photo albums. Prouvost’s works are “unstable visual entities,” made of images that aggregate in heterogeneous configurations, generating eccentric atmospheres and cancelling every hierarchical order between the observer and the observed. Viewers are encouraged to fill the space by becoming objects among other objects. By using the Object-Oriented Ontology (OOO) as philosophical and methodological support, this paper will focus more closely on the analysis of Deep See Blue Surrounding You / Vois Ce Bleu Profond Te Fondre (2019), the project Prouvost produced for the French Pavilion at the 58th Venice Biennale. On this occasion, her work They Parlaient Idéale (2019) – a video documenting the Mediterranean Sea journey that brings her to the Venetian lagoon – was the cornerstone of a multifaceted environmental installation. Assuming a critical and analytical approach, this contribution then discusses the role Deep See Blue Surrounding You plays as a “hyper-enactment:” it is a mise-en-scene that consists of interrelationships between “things/images” that aggregate as objects, but it is also a composition in which the viewers are “viscously” asked to generate their personal, non-linear narration.
This essay aims to analyse the ordering role that the frame plays in
Grosse Fatigue
(2013) by French artist Camille Henrot. Presented for the first time at the 55th Venice Biennale, the work is a ...'desktop documentary', which uses words and images to reconstruct the complex history of the evolution of the Universe and of humanity. With the help of some concepts taken from Object-Oriented Ontology, this article considers
Grosse Fatigue
as a ‘hyper-enactment’, a neologism used to describe the stage in which pre-existing images/objects (here well circumscribed by desktop frames) aggregate as both particle-weaves and event-objects, producing new narratives that prevent the punctual rediscovery of their references.
This essay aims to analyse the ordering role that the frame plays in Grosse Fatigue (2013) by French artist Camille Henrot. Presented for the first time at the 55th Venice Biennale, the work is a ...'desktop documentary', which uses words and images to reconstruct the complex history of the evolution of the Universe and of humanity. With the help of some concepts taken from Object-Oriented Ontology, this article considers Grosse Fatigue as a ‘hyper-enactment’, a neologism used to describe the stage in which pre-existing images/objects (here well circumscribed by desktop frames) aggregate as both particle-weaves and event-objects, producing new narratives that prevent the punctual rediscovery of their references.
This book brings together dance and visual arts scholars to investigate the key methodological and theoretical issues concerning reenactment. Along with becoming an effective and widespread ...contemporary artistic strategy, reenactment is taking shape as a new anti-positivist approach to the history of dance and art, undermining the notion of linear time and suggesting new temporal encounters between past, present, and future. As such, reenactment has contributed to a move towards different forms of historical thinking and understanding that embrace cultural studies – especially intertwining gender, postcolonial, and environmental issues – in the redefinition of knowledge, historical discourses, and memory. This approach also involves questioning canons and genealogies by destabilising authorship and challenging both institutional and direct forms of transmission. The structure of the book playfully recalls that of a theatrical performance, with both an ouverture and prélude, to provide space for a series of theoretical and practice-based insights – the solos – and conversations – the duets – by artists, critics, curators, and theorists who have dealt with reenactment. The main purpose of this book is to demonstrate how reenactment as a strategy of appropriation, circulation, translation, and transmission can contribute to understanding history both in its perpetual becoming and as a process of reinvention, renarration, and resignification from an interdisciplinary perspective.
Reenactment is a hypernym: it refers to a field with vast and ever-changing boundaries. Thanks to its interdisciplinary application, the very meaning escapes univocal analysis models, definitive ...standardisation, or even linear genealogies. For example, in the artistic field, anyone would find it difficult to trace the history of its use or, indeed, would struggle to navigate through the complex network of practical and theoretical references that it has produced. The term reenactment has alwa...
