ATC@UCB:
The Bad Infinity / The Longue Duree
Pamela Lee, Stanford Art History
The Art, Technology, and Culture Colloquium
Mon, 28 Apr, 7:30-9:30pm: UC Berkeley,
Location: 160 Kroeber Hall
All ATC Lectures are free and open to the public.
Prof. Lee will discuss the almost compulsive desire to register time
in numerous examples of sixties art, taking as case studies the
1963-4 films of Andy Warhol, specifically Empire and the "Today"
series of the Japanese-born, New York-based artist On Kawara. Such
practices are considered in light of the rise of technological
forecasting and future studies in the 1960s, themselves linked to the
emergence of systems theory and cybernetics associated with the war
effort. Neither Warhol nor Kawara were intentionally engaged with
future studies, but Lee argues that their work – which internalizes
boredom and waiting at both an organizational and thematic level –
can be read to critique its ideological imperatives. Indeed, future
studies explicitly informed a number of art critical accounts of that
moment, most notably the video artist Douglas Davis' Art and the
Future, a book concerned, in part, with predicting developments in
new media art.
In both Warhol's films and Kawara's conceptual gestures, however, such
notions of futurity and progress are undermined by an insistence on
repetition, duration and endless projection, as if ironizing the
claims made by technological forecasting. Instead Lee reads their
practices through two seemingly incompatible models of history:
Hegel's "Bad Infinity" on the one hand and Fernand Braudel's "Longue
Duree" on the other. She argues that both artists endlessly belabor
the present as a particular comment on the status of "futurity" in the
1960s, opening onto critical practices of postmodernism.
–
Pamela M. Lee is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Art and
Art History at Stanford University where she teaches the history,
theory and criticism of art since 1945, with a particular emphasis on
the 1960s and 1970s. She is the author of Object to be Destroyed: The
Work of Gordon Matta-Clark (The MIT Press: 2000). Her second book,
Chronophobia: On Time in the Art of the 1960s (to be published next
year by The MIT Press) explores the relationship between time and
technology in the art of that decade, considering the emergence of
cybernetics, systems theory and automation relative to the new
temporalities of a range of aesthetic practices and discourses. Her
interest in technology's radical compression of time and space in the
postwar era informs her current research, which reflects upon the
changed status of the art world and its objects under the pressures of
globalization.
–
Greg Neimeyer will introduce Pamela on Monday; Tiffany and I will be at
home, reflecting on the status of futurity with Odessa Simone Goldberg,
born 4-19-2003.
**********************************************************************
The ATC Colloquium continues our partnership with the Berkeley Art
Museum and the Walker Art Center to present online video of ATC talks,
available both in QuickTime (highlights) or MP3 audio. For links and
the full 2002-2003 series schedule, please see:
http://www.ieor.berkeley.edu/~goldberg/lecs/
**********************************************************************
ATC@UCB: Pamela Lee, Stanford Art History, Monday 7:30pm
-
Type: discussion
Comments
ATC@UCB:
The Bad Infinity / The Longue Duree
Pamela Lee, Stanford Art History
The Art, Technology, and Culture Colloquium
Mon, 28 Apr, 7:30-9:30pm: UC Berkeley,
Location: 160 Kroeber Hall
All ATC Lectures are free and open to the public.
Prof. Lee will discuss the almost compulsive desire to register time
in numerous examples of sixties art, taking as case studies the
1963-4 films of Andy Warhol, specifically Empire and the "Today"
series of the Japanese-born, New York-based artist On Kawara. Such
practices are considered in light of the rise of technological
forecasting and future studies in the 1960s, themselves linked to the
emergence of systems theory and cybernetics associated with the war
effort. Neither Warhol nor Kawara were intentionally engaged with
future studies, but Lee argues that their work – which internalizes
boredom and waiting at both an organizational and thematic level –
can be read to critique its ideological imperatives. Indeed, future
studies explicitly informed a number of art critical accounts of that
moment, most notably the video artist Douglas Davis' Art and the
Future, a book concerned, in part, with predicting developments in
new media art.
In both Warhol's films and Kawara's conceptual gestures, however, such
notions of futurity and progress are undermined by an insistence on
repetition, duration and endless projection, as if ironizing the
claims made by technological forecasting. Instead Lee reads their
practices through two seemingly incompatible models of history:
Hegel's "Bad Infinity" on the one hand and Fernand Braudel's "Longue
Duree" on the other. She argues that both artists endlessly belabor
the present as a particular comment on the status of "futurity" in the
1960s, opening onto critical practices of postmodernism.
–
Pamela M. Lee is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Art and
Art History at Stanford University where she teaches the history,
theory and criticism of art since 1945, with a particular emphasis on
the 1960s and 1970s. She is the author of Object to be Destroyed: The
Work of Gordon Matta-Clark (The MIT Press: 2000). Her second book,
Chronophobia: On Time in the Art of the 1960s (to be published next
year by The MIT Press) explores the relationship between time and
technology in the art of that decade, considering the emergence of
cybernetics, systems theory and automation relative to the new
temporalities of a range of aesthetic practices and discourses. Her
interest in technology's radical compression of time and space in the
postwar era informs her current research, which reflects upon the
changed status of the art world and its objects under the pressures of
globalization.
–
Greg Neimeyer will introduce Pamela on Monday; Tiffany and I will be at
home, reflecting on the status of futurity with Odessa Simone Goldberg,
born 4-19-2003.
**********************************************************************
The ATC Colloquium continues our partnership with the Berkeley Art
Museum and the Walker Art Center to present online video of ATC talks,
available both in QuickTime (highlights) or MP3 audio. For links and
the full 2002-2003 series schedule, please see:
http://www.ieor.berkeley.edu/~goldberg/lecs/
**********************************************************************