292 items

The Book Half OpenBook Section
Oren Margolis The Book Half Open: Humanist Friendship in Holbein’s Portrait of Hermann von Wedigh III
A small, blind-tooled volume sits on a table covered in green baize: one clasp is open, the other is closed; and a slip of paper emerges from it reading Veritas odium parit (truth breeds hatred). This detail occurs in the foreground of a portrait by Hans Holbein of a young man identified as the Cologne patrician Hermann von Wedigh III (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York). A study of the physical features of the book and of the history of the brief text — actually an ancient and then Erasmian adage — leads to a new interpretation of the painting in the context of humanist friendship. The book is seen to be a multivalent simile for the work of art authored by the artist as well as for the sitter himself, raising questions about the implications for these of a medium that can be opened and closed. The half-open condition of the book is understood to reflect the complementary pressures of openness and closedness, accessibility and intimacy, that characterized the Renaissance republic of letters.
2022. adages; books in paintings; classical reception; Erasmus of Rotterdam; Hans Holbein the Younger; Northern Renaissance; Terence
The Openness of the Enclosed ConventBook Section
Edmund Wareham The Openness of the Enclosed Convent: Evidence from the Lüne Letter Collection
This article draws on the nearly 1800 letters which survive from the Benedictine convent of Lüne, near Lüneburg in northern Germany, and were written between c. 1460 and 1555. It explores the textual and visual strategies which nuns in the later Middle Ages used to negotiate their enclosed status. It suggests that the language and imagery of openness were a means for the nuns to remind those outside the convent wall of their presence and purpose in life.
2022. convents; nuns; enclosure; letters; reform; Reformation; Lüne
The Monastic EnclosureBook Section
Benjamin Thompson The Monastic Enclosure
The moral and physical enclosure of monks and nuns is central to the founding documents of Western monasticism. But even there it encountered the need for monasteries to interact with their societies, through recruits, hospitality, and the monastic economy. The increasing intensity of this tension is traced through key reforming texts, until later English visitations open up religious houses to closer scrutiny, ironically aided by inmates’ quandary over whether to conceal or reveal their secrets.
2022. monasticism; enclosure; Benedictines; Cistercians; visitation; Benedict XII; reform
Highest OpennessBook Section
Damiano Sacco Highest Openness: On Agamben’s Promise
This essay follows the productive discussion of Giorgio Agamben’s The Open: Man and Animal that took place as part of the ‘Openness in Medieval Culture’ conference at the ICI Berlin. The essay attempts to develop a speculative notion of openness within Agamben’s work, in particular by connecting the question of openness to the question of the promise: the promise of the resolution of the question of man and animal (The Open); the promise of the Franciscans’ vow, or sacramentum (The Highest Poverty); and the promise of language (The Sacrament of Language).
2022. Giorgio Agamben; The Open; The Highest Poverty; The Sacrament of Language; promise; potentiality; language; Franciscans; eschatology
Openness and IntensityBook Section
Manuele Gragnolati and Francesca Southerden Openness and Intensity: Petrarch’s Becoming Laurel in Rerum vulgarium fragmenta 23 and 228
Our paper offers a comparative reading of Rvf 23 and 228, which describe the poetic subject’s transformation into (23), or implantation with (228), the laurel tree that normally represents the poet’s beloved, Laura. Bringing Petrarch’s poems into dialogue with philosophical works that consider the nature of plant existence as a form of interconnectedness and porosity to the outside, we argue that the becoming tree these poems stage is a form of desire to be understood not as lack but as intensity.
2022. Petrarch; desire; intensity; plants; metamorphosis; hybridity; pleasure
Including the ExcludedBook Section
Almut Suerbaum Including the Excluded: Strategies of Opening Up in Late Medieval Religious Writing
Practices of rewriting and mouvance are central to medieval culture, but have been neglected by contemporary scholarship. This paper highlights how collaborative forms of writing such as religious song engage with complex theological thought, opening up a discourse from which the laity had previously been excluded. Using forms which defy conventional author-based aesthetic norms, these songs explore poetic practices which are both collective and inclusive.
2022. aesthetics; courtly culture; inclusion; lyric; mouvance; mysticism; textuality
Unlikely MatterBook Section
Johannes Wolf Unlikely Matter: The Open and the Nomad in The Book of Margery Kempe and the Middle English Christina Mirabilis
In The Book of Margery Kempe, the protagonist shifts between identities and geographies as a nomadic subject, dispersed across compassionate responses to violence that unusually include a recognition of animal suffering. The Life of Christina the Astonishing also seizes on the nonhuman aspects of extreme affective experience as her bodily transformations participate in a process of becoming-animal. Both texts reflect a medieval fascination with the devotional body as a zone of closure and opening where transhuman and interspecies associations can be safely explored.
2022. Margery Kempe; Christina Mirabilis; Rosi Braidotti; animal studies; affect theory; devotional literature; spirituality
Enclosure and ExposureBook Section
Annie Sutherland Enclosure and Exposure: Locating the ‘House without Walls’
This chapter explores medieval exegetical and affective characterizations of the birthplace of Christ. It focuses in particular on evocations of this birthplace as an exposed, liminal location and argues that the radical exposure endured by Christ at the moment of his birth was crucial to medieval understandings of the significance of the Incarnation. But it also points out that its condition of openness is always in a dialectical relationship with its capacity to enclose and protect.
2022. enclosure; exposure; vulnerability; Latin; Middle English; the Nativity; exegesis
Merlin’s Open MindBook Section
Monika Otter Merlin’s Open Mind: Madness, Prophecy, and Poetry in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Vita Merlini
This essay considers the observatory in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Vita Merlini, with its seventy doors and seventy windows, as a structuring emblem of the title character’s state of mind and, by extension, the poem’s poetics and epistemology.
2022. Merlin; prophecy; madness; mental illness; Tristan; shelter; observatory; allegory
Medieval Denmark and its LanguagesBook Section
Alastair Matthews Medieval Denmark and its Languages: The Case for a More Open Literary Historiography
This chapter makes the case for a literary history that accounts for the multilingual nature of medieval Denmark, giving particular attention to Danish, German, and Latin. It relates such a project to current research interests such as crossing the boundaries of national philologies; demonstrates the need for it by reviewing existing surveys of the period; and outlines some lines of enquiry, including the translation and transmission of texts, that it could pursue.
2022. Danish; Denmark; German; Latin; literary history; Low German; Middle Ages
Interrupted and UnfinishedBook Section
Nicolò Crisafi Interrupted and Unfinished: The Open-Ended Dante of the Commedia
This essay interprets Dante’s Commedia as an ‘open work’ (Eco). It grounds its open-endedness in its representations of interruption: from fictional obstacles in the protagonist’s path in the Inferno to the narrator’s anxiety over unfinishedness in the Paradiso. Taking its cue from Boccaccio’s creative rewriting of Dante’s life, the essay resists the pressure of ‘total coherence’ embedded in (and often projected onto) the Commedia, in order to reclaim the material vulnerability of the text and of its author.
2022. Umberto Eco; open work; open-ended; interruption; unfinished; vulnerability; textuality
Speech-WranglingBook Section
Brian McMahon Speech-Wrangling: Shutting Up and Shutting Out the Oral Tradition in Some Icelandic Sagas
This chapter considers the role of prolegomena and authorial interventions in constraining and contextualizing orally derived saga narratives in high medieval Iceland. It examines the question of whether prolegomena were intended to be included in oral renditions of the sagas and, if so, in whose ‘voice’ they were understood to be spoken. The ‘openness’ of a saga text — the extent of editorial freedom enjoyed by those concerned with extracting it from the oral milieu — has been much discussed; however, less attention has historically been paid to the freedom which the written texts then afforded any would-be reciter for emending or adapting their content when reading them aloud to a live audience. Prolegomena provide our most instructive source of contemporary commentary on how the written sagas should be understood and transmitted, and they therefore represent distinct and important critical texts in their own right, which inform our understanding of how ‘open’ or ‘fixed’ medieval Icelanders understood these extant written sagas to be.
2022. oral tradition; prologues; epilogues; authority; recitation; Old Norse
What Was Open in/about Early Scholastic Thought?Book Section
Philippa Byrne What Was Open in/about Early Scholastic Thought?
This chapter examines the meaning of the term aperire (to open) in the schools of the twelfth century and within early scholastic thought. It argues for a shift from a traditional understanding of opening as a revelation received from God, towards a more technical definition of opening as applying dialectical logic to a text. The act of opening was employed polemically, both in debates between scholastic masters and to distinguish Christian from Jewish exegetical practices.
2022. scholasticism; exegesis; dialectic; disputation; Christianity; Judaism; Hugh of St Victor
An Interminable Work?Book Section
Francesco Giusti An Interminable Work?: The Openness of Augustine’s Confessions
From opening books to read them, through the continuous effort at opening one’s heart to God, to the eventual disclosure of God’s mysteries to human beings, Augustine seems to trace an implicit conceptualization of openness in his Confessions. The words of Matthew 7. 7–8 underlie Augustine’s engagement with openness up to the very last sentence of the book, which ends with a sequence of verbs in the passive voice that culminates with the desired manifestation of the divine. The entire endeavour of opening oneself up undertaken in the Confessions aims at this final passive openness, which is (always) yet to come as much as human opera are (always) yet to come to completion.
2022. openness; Augustine; work; love; reading; interpretation; attunement
IntroductionBook Section
Manuele Gragnolati and Almut Suerbaum Introduction: Medieval Openness
Manuele Gragnolati and Almut Suerbaum, ‘Introduction: Medieval Openness’, in Openness in Medieval Europe, ed. by Manuele Gragnolati and Almut Suerbaum, Cultural Inquiry, 23 (Berlin: ICI Berlin Press, 2022), pp. 1-21
Resounding Difficult HistoriesBook Section
Juliana Hodkinson Resounding Difficult Histories
Prompt, Immediate, Now / Very Restrained and Cautious (2013), Defending Territory in a Networked World (2013) and Afgang 04.00 (2017) are three sound pieces that lean on events of historical proportions. They involve addressing the artistic challenge of letting difficult historical narratives resonate in the present. The artistic process for all three works involved finding fitting modes of reenactment and providing a present-day position on why and how these materials may be incorporated in artworks today, as well as contributing to historical revision and political resistance.
2022. History; resonance; sonic reenactment
‘We Are Gathering Experience’Book Section
Alethea Rockwell ‘We Are Gathering Experience’: Restaging the History of Art Education
In recent years, critics and art historians have pointed to an ‘educational turn’, a rise in participatory pedagogical art projects and artist-led experimental schools. This essay considers artist-led projects and museum programmes that restage or reenact educational experiments from the past, analysing their limits and possibilities in the study and presentation of modern art history. Much like performance art, pedagogy is ephemeral and contingent, and yet it differs in that it does not establish a fixed spectatorial role. To be understood it must be participated in, for, as Josef Albers described his teaching, ‘we are gathering experience’.
2022. Pedagogy; Teaching; Museum Education
‘Political-Timing-Specific’ Performance Art in the Realm of the MuseumBook Section
Hélia Marçal and Daniela Salazar ‘Political-Timing-Specific’ Performance Art in the Realm of the Museum: The Potential of Reenactment as Practice of Memorialization
Can reenactments be a way to create counter-narratives in and for the museum? Through the analysis of political performance (or what the artist Tania Bruguera calls ‘political-timing-specific’ artworks), this essay discusses the potential of reenactment as both a practice of materializing memories and narratives of oppression and of rethinking museum policies in terms of preservation and display. Its main argument is that, while the archive can be regarded as a form of materializing the memory of these works, reenactment is more than a way of recovering the past; it is also a device for reconstructing memories of activism and oppression. This essay further suggests that reenactments of political-timing-specific works demand a change in accessioning, conservation, and presentation practices, which might be inclined to erase decentralized art-historical and material narratives.
2022. reenactment; museum; activism; political-timing-specific art; memory
‘Repetition: Summer Display 1983’ at Van AbbemuseumBook Section
Michela Alessandrini ‘Repetition: Summer Display 1983’ at Van Abbemuseum: Or, What Institutional Curatorial Archives Can Tell Us about the Museum
The reactivation of Rudi Fuchs’ 1983 exhibition ‘Summer Display’ took place in 2009 as part of the collection series, ‘Play van Abbe part 1: The Game and the Players’, and was entitled ‘Repetition: Summer Display 1983’. The reconstruction questioned the codes and systems used within (but also consciously and unconsciously outside) the museum and raised several questions, including: what story did the original composers want to tell, and how can this piece of history be understood today? Is the new presentation a separate exhibition entirely or a copy of the ‘original’ one? What is then the difference between the idea of copy, repetition, and reenactment? And what is the role of the museum’s archive in the process of restaging? What can curatorial institutional archives tell us about the museum itself?
2022. curatorial archives; curatorial practices; exhibition reactivation; Charles Esche; Van Abbemuseum
Living SimulacrumBook Section
Joanna Kiliszek Living Simulacrum: The Neoplastic Room in Łódź: 1948 / 1960 / 1966 / 1983 / 2006 / 2008 / 2010 / 2011 / 2013 / 2017 / ∞
The Neoplastic Room at the Muzeum Sztuki in Łódź was originally designed in 1948 by the avant-garde artist Władysław Strzemiński. Destroyed in 1950 and reconstructed in 1960, it became the focal point of the museum, with the ‘International Collection of Modern Art’ by the a.r. group being exhibited there. At the same time, it became a point of reference for contemporary artists and a strategy for building a permanent collection for the museum, as well as a reflection on how the past can give a vision of the future. This essay focuses on the gesture of ‘re-curating’ the Neoplastic Room in relation to the performative practice of the artists involved (e.g., Daniel Buren, Elżbieta Jabłońska).
2022. Neoplastic Room; reconstruction; simulacrum; reenactment; collection
Unfold Nan HooverBook Section
Vera Sofia Mota and Fransien van der Putt Unfold Nan Hoover: On the Importance of Actively Encouraging a Variable Understanding of Artworks for the Sake of their Preservation and Mediation
To support the practice of preservation and mediation of video works in the LIMA Collection (Amsterdam), the authors explore the possibilities of reinterpretation as a rather common practice in the performing arts. As a choreographer and a dramaturge, they establish a correlation between reinterpretation and dramaturgy — as a way to deal with non-objective or transitory aspects of the works — and describe their method in relation to the video and performance artist Nan Hoover.
2022. dramaturgy; preservation; reinterpretation; reenactment; mediation; choreography; non-objective; Nan Hoover; LIMA; video art; performance art; archive
UNFOLDBook Section
Gaby Wijers UNFOLD: The Strategic Importance of Reinterpretation for Media Art Mediation and Conservation
UNFOLD: Mediation by Reinterpretation is a research project and interdisciplinary network initiated by LIMA, Platform for Media Art in Amsterdam, that examines reinterpretation as an emerging practice for artistic production, presentation, and preservation of media works. New elements stretch the boundaries of traditional preservation methods and require insights from both the artist and the curator to decide how pieces can be restaged. This essay investigates how to deal with the changes of digital/media artworks over time, and how to preserve and mediate their performative aspects.
2022. reinterpretation; media art; conservation; digital art; preservation
Reconciling Authenticity and ReenactmentBook Section
Amy Brost Reconciling Authenticity and Reenactment: An Art Conservation Perspective
Locating authenticity in artworks that are remade (all or in part) or re-performed over time presents a unique challenge for art conservators, whose activities have traditionally been oriented toward caring for the material aspects of art objects. The paper offers a brief overview of perspectives on authenticity and discusses various theoretical models that have been developed to conceptualize how media, installation, and performance artworks are displayed and cared for over time. These include the score/performance model, the concepts of autographicity and allographicity, the concept of iteration, and authenticity as a practice. The author proposes a theoretical model based on the ritual aspects of presenting artworks, arguing that authenticity, repetition, and community participation can be reconciled within a ritual context.
2022. art conservation; time-based media; ritual
Re-Presenting Art HistoryBook Section
Cristina Baldacci Re-Presenting Art History: An Unfinished Process
Can reenactment both as reactivation of images and restaging of exhibitions be considered an alternative way of tackling the critical task to re-present art history (i.e., to present it anew) in the here and now, over and over and over again? The gesture of restoring visibility to something no longer present, reactivating or reembodying it as an object/image in and for the present, is here proposed as a (political) act of restitution and historical recontextualization. Examining the boundaries between past and present, original and copy (as well as originality and copyright), repetition and variation, authenticity and auraticity, presence and absence, canon and appropriation, durée and transience, the paper focuses on remediation, reinterpretation, and reconstruction as creative gestures and cultural promises in contemporary art practice, curatorship, and museology.
2022. re-presentation; contemporary art; postmodernism; curatorship; art history; Aby Warburg; museology