Book Section
Tracing the complex history of the term ‘reenactment’, back to R.G. Collingwood’s philosophy of history, on the one hand, and popular practices of war reenactments and living history museums, on the other, a survey of its current contribution in art and museum practices highlights the importance of historicity — a category the postmodern was supposed to have vacated — in a wide range of examples, from Rod Dickinson and Jeremey Deller to Alexandra Pirici, Manuel Pelmuş, and Milo Rau. Performance reenactments, in particular, are premised on performance art having become historical, but also threaten to digest history in favour of a mere productivist mobilization for the needs of current attention economies. An alternative could be the attempt to counter historical with dramatic time in order to unlock unrealized possibilities and futures, as the term preenactment promises.
Keywords: reenactment; preenactment; performance; mediation; historicity
| Title |
From Re- to Pre- and Back Again
|
| Author(s) |
Sven Lütticken
|
| Identifier | |
| Description |
Tracing the complex history of the term ‘reenactment’, back to R.G. Collingwood’s philosophy of history, on the one hand, and popular practices of war reenactments and living history museums, on the other, a survey of its current contribution in art and museum practices highlights the importance of historicity — a category the postmodern was supposed to have vacated — in a wide range of examples, from Rod Dickinson and Jeremey Deller to Alexandra Pirici, Manuel Pelmuş, and Milo Rau. Performance reenactments, in particular, are premised on performance art having become historical, but also threaten to digest history in favour of a mere productivist mobilization for the needs of current attention economies. An alternative could be the attempt to counter historical with dramatic time in order to unlock unrealized possibilities and futures, as the term preenactment promises.
|
| Is Part Of | |
| Place |
Berlin
|
| Publisher |
ICI Berlin Press
|
| Date |
4 January 2022
|
| Subject |
reenactment
preenactment
performance
mediation
historicity
|
| Rights |
© by the author(s)
Except for images or otherwise noted, this publication is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
|
| Language |
en-GB
|
| page start |
1
|
| page end |
16
|
| Source |
Over and Over and Over Again: Reenactment Strategies in Contemporary Arts and Theory, ed. by Cristina Baldacci, Clio Nicastro, and Arianna Sforzini, Cultural Inquiry, 21 (Berlin: ICI Berlin Press, 2022), pp. 1–16
|
References
- Arns, Inke, and Horn Gabrielle, History Will Repeat Itself: Strategies of Reenactment in Contemporary (Media) Art and Performance (Frankfurt a.M.: Revolver, 2007)
- Arns, Inke, Igor Chubarov, and Sylvia Sasse, eds, Nikolai Evreinov & andere: ‘Sturm auf den Winterpalast’ (Berlin: Diaphanes, 2017)
- Auslander, Philip, ‘The Performativity of Performance Documentation’, in Perform, Repeat, Record: Live Art in History, ed. by Amelia Jones and Adrian Heathfield (London: Intellect, 2012), pp. 47–58
- Austin, J. L., How To Do Things with Words (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962)
- Bangma, Anke, Steve Rushton, and Florian Wüst, eds, Experience, Memory, Re-enactment (Frankfurt a.M.: Revolver, 2005)
- Bann, Stephen, Romanticism and the Rise of History (New York: Twayne, 1995)
- Benjamin, Walter, Gesammelte Schriften, ed. by Rolf Tiedemann and Hermann Schweppenhäuser, 7 vols (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1972–91), V: Das Passagen-Werk (1982)
- Bishop, Claire, ‘Delegated Performance: Outsourcing Authenticity’, October, 140 (Spring 2012), pp. 91–112 <https://doi.org/10.1162/OCTO_a_00091>
- Borggreen, Gunhild, and Rune Gade, eds, Performing the Archive/Archives of Performance (Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 2013)
- Collingwood, R. G., Human Nature and Human History, Proceedings of the British Academy, 22 (London: British Academy, 1937)
- Dray, William H., History as Re-enactment: R. G. Collingwood’s Idea of History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005)
- Dunca, Paul, ‘Public Collection: An Interview with Alexandra Pirici and Manuel Pelmu ş’, Rivista Arte, 14 December 2014 <https://revistaarta.ro/en/public-collection/> [accessed 23 March 2021]
- Feldman, Avi, ‘An Interview with Milo Rau’, OnCurating, 28 (January 2016), pp. 50–53
- Fraser, Andrea, ‘Performance or Enactment’, in Performing the Sentence: Research and Teaching in Performative Fine Arts, ed. by Carola Dertnig and Felicitas Thun-Hohenstein (Berlin: Sternberg Press, 2014), pp. 122–27
- Glassberg, David, American Historical Pageantry: The Uses of Tradition in the Early Twentieth Century (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1990)
- Holert, Tom, ‘Exhibiting Investigation: The Place of Knowledge Production in the Visual Arts Dialogue/Discourse/Research, 1979’, in Troubling Research: Performing Knowledge in the Arts, ed. by Carola Dertnig, et al. (Berlin: Sternberg Press, 2014), pp. 28–81
- Horwitz, Tony, Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War (New York: Vintage, 1998)
- Iggers, Georg G., ‘Historicism: The History and Meaning of the Term’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 56.1 (January 1995), pp. 129–52 <https://doi.org/10.2307/2710011>
- Jameson, Fredric, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1991) <https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822378419>
- Kaiser, Céline, ‘Auftritt der Toten. Formen des Re-, Pre- und Enactment in der Geschichte der Theatrotherapie’, in Szenotest. Pre-, Re- & Enactment zwischen Theater und Therapie, ed. by Céline Kaiser (Bielefeld: transcript, 2014), pp. 44–58 <https://doi.org/10.14361/transcript.9783839430163.44>
- Lambert-Beatty, Carrie, Being Watched: Yvonne Rainer and the 1960s (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2008)
- Lütticken, Sven, ‘An Arena in Which to Reenact’, in Life, Once More: Forms of Reenactment in Contemporary Art, ed. by Sven Lütticken (Rotterdam: Witte de With, 2005), pp. 17–60
- Lütticken, Sven, History in Motion: Time in the Age of the Moving Image (Berlin: Sternberg Press, 2013)
- Lütticken, Sven, ed., Life, Once More: Forms of Reenactment in Contemporary Art (Rotterdam: Witte de With, 2005)
- Marchart, Oliver, SoDA Lecture 09.07.2014 ‘The Art of Preenactments’, Hochschulübergreifendes Zentrum Tanz Berlin (HZT Berlin), 9 July 2014, online video recording, Vimeo <https://vimeo.com/114242197> [accessed 10 March 2019]
- Mijares, Barbara, ‘Militants Reenact Escalante Massacre’, ABS-CBN News, 20 September 2017 <https://news.abs-cbn.com/news/09/20/17/militants-reenact-escalante-massacre> [accessed 10 March 2019]
- Rau, Milo, Das Kongo Tribunal, ed. by Eva Bertschy, Rolf Bossaert, and Mirjam Knapp (Berlin: Verbrecher Verlag, 2017)
- Schaerf, Eran, ‘Scenario Data #39’, in Life, Once More: Forms of Reenactment in Contemporary Art, ed. by Sven Lütticken (Rotterdam: Witte de With, 2005), pp. 9–16
- Schlaffer, Hannelore, and Heinz Schlaffer, Studien zum ästhetischen Historismus (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1975)
- Steyerl, Hito, Die Farbe der Wahrheit. Dokumentarismen im Kunstfeld (Vienna: Turia + Kant, 2008)
- Telesko, Werner, ‘Der Triumph- und Festzug des Historismus in Europa’, in Der Traum vom Glück. Die Kunst des Historismus in Europa, ed. by Hermann Fillitz, 2 vols (Vienna: Künstlerhaus Wien, 1991), I, pp. 290–96
- Thompson, Jenny, War Games: Inside the World of Twentieth-Century War Reenactors (Washington: Smithsonian, 2004)
- UMA Pilipinas, ‘“Cultural Revolution” Pursued in Escalante Massacre Memorial’, 20 September 2016 <https://umapilipinas.wordpress.com/2016/09/20/cultural-revolution-pursued-in-escalante-massacre-memorial/> [accessed 10 March 2019]
- Geldern, James von, Bolshevik Festivals, 1917–1920 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993)
- Ranke, Leopold von, Geschichten der romanischen und germanischen Völker von 1494 bis 1535. Erster Band (Leipzig: Reimer, 1824) <https://doi.org/10.1515/9783112438268>
- The Battle of Orgreave, dir. by Mike Figgis (Artangel Media, 2001)
Cite as:
Sven Lütticken, ‘From Re- to Pre- and Back Again’, in Over and Over and Over Again: Reenactment Strategies in Contemporary Arts and Theory, ed. by Cristina Baldacci, Clio Nicastro, and Arianna Sforzini, Cultural Inquiry, 21 (Berlin: ICI Berlin Press, 2022), pp. 1-16 <https://doi.org/10.37050/ci-21_02>