reading5

Taussig, Michael. “The Language of Flowers.” Walter Benjamin’s Grave. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2006, pp.189-218.

Michael Taussig is an anthropologist and a professor at Columbia University, who has a background of medical education which is shown by his engagement of human body and plants throughout the essay.

Taussig begins his essay by explaining how violence is depicted in visual representations. In cartoons, characters get mashed in wars then get right back up again but in real life, this is a jive which never happen. But those cartoons exist because the real is too troubling.[1] He says that this maneuver is to put us back into war and is a strategy he sees relating to a Colombian artist Juan Manuel Echavarria’s photographs, which the artist places human bones like plants to make them appear to be botanical drawings, titled Corte de Florero, The flower vase cut, in reference to the Colombian violencia. Each photograph has own hybrids species names in Latin suggesting the grotesque.[2] I better understood this example of Echavarria’s work with what Campbell said in his essay ‘Horrific Blindness’ –“The meaning of image is produced by the intertextual relationship of captions, titles, surrounding arguments and sites for presentation.”[3] Without the title, and the captions the photographs lose what they intend to deliver to the viewer.

Throughout the essay, he posits a few different examples of images that have significance in delivering ideas around death and violence. The one that particularly interested was Barbara Stewart’s description of the scene of flooding flowers being “heartbreakingly bright and fragile’ throughout the city after the attack on the World Trade Center. Campbell argues that ‘the dominant social understandings existing at the moment of production and reception are more important than the specific form or content of the image for the creation.’[4]

By posing these examples, Taussig draws a point that actual visual images we encounter can be interpreted totally differently within political context. I think we need to be aware of the way we use visual representation of political issues, especially of violence, and of the possible impact the outcomes can bring out as creators/presenters of images which bring ‘a particular kind of power to the portrayal of death and violence.’[5]

[1] Taussig, Michael. “The Language of Flowers.” Walter Benjamin’s Grave. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2006, p.190

[2] Taussig, Michael. “The Language of Flowers.” Walter Benjamin’s Grave. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2006, p.191

[3] Campbell, David. “Horrific Blindness: Images of Death in Contemporary Media”, Journal for Cultural Research Vol.8 No.1, January 2004, p.70

[4] Campbell, David. “Horrific Blindness: Images of Death in Contemporary Media”, Journal for Cultural Research Vol.8 No.1, January 2004, p.71

[5] Campbell, David. “Horrific Blindness: Images of Death in Contemporary Media”, Journal for Cultural Research Vol.8 No.1, January 2004, p.71

reading4

Matt, Gerald. “Amal Kenawy”, Gerald Matt ed., Interviews 2, Vienna: Kunstalle Wein, 2008, pp. 134-141.


The interviewer, Gerald Matt is the director of Kunsthalle Vienna has worked as a curator for a long time. This interview is from his book, Interviews, which he interviewed many prominent artists around the idea of power and exchange. His interest in that issue shows well in the interview with Amal Kenawy as he carries out the interview around the issues of her identity, her background as an artist and the situations within her county of birth, Egypt.

Amal Kenawy is an Egyptian artist who is interested in the same issue with Matt, ‘the influence of society on humans, on how society affects their understanding of certain events or feelings.’[1] She argues that certain identities and ‘values and codes of conduct’[2] incorporated by the society are expressed naturally in the outcome. She thinks that her art reflects Egyptian society ‘as an individual cannot remove or separate himself from his social and cultural environment, his perception of events is no doubt tied to them.’[3]

She explains about the situation in Egypt that the government mainly owns the institutions and the galleries. This is problematic because it tends to limit the ways of articulating ideas in a lot of different perspective and resulted in lack of research. A Spanish sociologist Manuel Castells says that ‘institutional systems reflect power relations’[4] and this is probably why Kanawy prefers to produce independent films rather than getting institutional support which can result in controlled and censored environment of making art. This example of the Egyptian government shows how the power interferes with an individual’s way of thinking to keep the dominance over because ‘the way people think determines the fate of norms and values on which societies are constructed.’[5] This was something to think about as a student of an institution, which I guess gets funding and support from the government, although the situation here in New Zealand and in Egypt might be quite different. I think people in the position of power should realise that bounding control can only result in degradation. What eventually would gain them the power in the future are the new and different ideas flourishing in the generalized and even more globalised world from individuals’ distinctive research.



[1] Matt, Gerald. “Amal Kenawy”, Gerald Matt ed., Interviews 2, Vienna: Kunstalle Wein, 2008, pp. 135

[2] Matt, Gerald. “Amal Kenawy”, Gerald Matt ed., Interviews 2, Vienna: Kunstalle Wein, 2008, pp. 135

[3] Matt, Gerald. “Amal Kenawy”, Gerald Matt ed., Interviews 2, Vienna: Kunstalle Wein, 2008, pp. 135

[4] Castells, Manuel. “Communication, Power and Counter power in the Network Society”, International Journal of Communication 1 (2007), p.239

[5] Castells, Manuel. “Communication, Power and Counter power in the Network Society”, International Journal of Communication 1 (2007), p.238

reading3

Catherine David and Irit Rogoff, “In Conversation”, in Claire Doherty ed., From Studio to Situation, London: Black Dog Publishing, 2004, pp.82-89.


Catherine David is a curator, who has been working since the 1980’s and now working as director of the Witte de With centre for contemporary art in Rotterdam, and Irit Rogoff is a professor at Goldsmiths, University of London in the Visual Cultures department, theorist, and curator. Both of them share interest in political issues within contemporary art.

In the conversation David and Rogoff talk about geography, politics and contemporary visual practices. An interesting point for me was what Rogoff said about site-specific work, that she thinks it ‘functions in the model of rapport.’[1] She further explains this by presenting an example of ‘field work’ –a process done through a mode of rapport to fully engage with the place and investigate to gain understanding. She suggests that for a necessary translation of a site-specific work can differ variously to how one understands of that place.

An art education professor Dipti Desai argues that the relationship between representation and power ‘needs to be analysed in terms of historical moments, particular locales, and subject position.’[2] Desai’s idea corresponds with what David said about locality that ‘most of the processes have to do with idiosyncrasy,’[3] the sense which has to do with 'time, priorities, resistance to a dominant system of representations and values.’[4] It is something that I think New Zealand lacks as a fairly new country made up with indigenous people, settlers, and immigrants, and which makes it difficult to have site-specific work. It can also be said that there is no certain national since the country is very multicultural and from those different ethnicities’ view, what they think of ‘New Zealand art’ and the level of ‘rapport’ they have to specific places within the country would vary in many different ways, therefore it requires ‘a thoughtful self-consciousness about the politics of who speaks, how and whom,’[5] when having a creative practice in this country around the idea of socio-geo-politics, site-specific work.




[1] Catherine David and Irit Rogoff, “In Conversation”, in Claire Doherty ed., From Studio to Situation, London: Black Dog Publishing, 2004, p.86

[2] Desai, Dipti. “Imaging Difference: The Politics of Representation in Multicultural Art Education” Studies in Art Education, Vol. 41, No. 2 (Winter, 2000), p. 127

[3] Catherine David and Irit Rogoff, “In Conversation”, in Claire Doherty ed., From Studio to Situation, London: Black Dog Publishing, 2004, p.87

[4] Catherine David and Irit Rogoff, “In Conversation”, in Claire Doherty ed., From Studio to Situation, London: Black Dog Publishing, 2004, p.88

[5] Desai, Dipti. “Imaging Difference: The Politics of Representation in Multicultural Art Education” Studies in Art Education, Vol. 41, No. 2 (Winter, 2000), p. 127

reading2

Medina, Cuauhtémoc. “Contemp(t)orary: Eleven Theses.” E-flux journal: issue #12, January 2010, accessed from http://www.e-flux.com/journal/view/103.


Cuauhtémoc Medina is a Mexican art historian, critic and curator. He holds a PhD in Art History and Theory from the University of Essex, UK and now works as a researcher at the Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas at the National University of Mexico.

In the text, Medina posits eleven theses in regard to ‘contemporary art.’ He says that the word ‘after’ is emphasized in signifying ‘contemporary art’ as a movement that comes to mark the death of ‘modern.’[1] Then he goes on to explain that contemporary art is to ‘demand a double reception’; as part of general culture and as an attempt at sophisticated theoretical recuperation.[2] Where the movements of the past have been a kind of theory or a concept ‘contemporary art’ seems to belong in a culture. A dictionary defines the meaning of the word ‘culture’ as ‘a collection of ideas and symbols that is generally distinguished in the discipline from social structure’[3] Further on in the text, he says that art has been set up by the modern capitalist society, financed by that social elites and maintained by the academic industry.[4] Questions were raised for me as I read this point. Do I belong in this category because I live at present which instantly place me in the era of contemporary? Do I consider my work as contemporary because I am part of this culture?

There seems to be no exception in escaping the cover when Medina insists that fine art now is somewhere between ‘elite entertainment’ and ‘mass culture.’ He also said that ‘the hunger to be part of the global art calendar has more to do with the hope of keeping up with the frenzy of time than with any actual aesthetic pursuit or interest.’[5] I think the sentence was too much generalized. There are still a lot of people pursuing their own ways of creating a look, for example, photographers who use alternative processes in their practice. However, the unknown force of the culture which set a standard of what is in the main stream and what is not. I agree with what Dieter Roelstraete, a German curator, had to say in his essay ‘What is Not Contemporary Art?’ – ‘We must stand up against the gradual encroachment of this generalized culture upon the domain of art.’[6]



[1] Medina, Cuauhtémoc. “Contemp(t)orary: Eleven Theses.” E-flux journal: issue #12, January 2010, accessed from http://www.e-flux.com/journal/view/103

[2] Medina, Cuauhtémoc. “Contemp(t)orary: Eleven Theses.” E-flux journal: issue #12, January 2010, accessed from http://www.e-flux.com/journal/view/103

[3] "culture" A Dictionary of Sociology. John Scott and Gordon Marshall. Oxford University Press 2009. Oxford Reference Online. Oxford University Press. Auckland University. 21 June 2010 , accessed from http://www.oxfordreference.com.ezproxy.auckland.ac.nz/views/ENTRY.html?subview=Main&entry=t88.e484

[4] Medina, Cuauhtémoc. “Contemp(t)orary: Eleven Theses.” E-flux journal: issue #12, January 2010, accessed from http://www.e-flux.com/journal/view/103

[5] Medina, Cuauhtémoc. “Contemp(t)orary: Eleven Theses.” E-flux journal: issue #12, January 2010, accessed from http://www.e-flux.com/journal/view/103

[6] Roelstraete, Dieter. “What is Not Contemporary Art?” E-flux journal: issue #11, December 2009, accessed from http://www.e-flux.com/journal/view/106

reading 1

Jones, Amelia. “Meaning, Identity, Embodiment: the uses of Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology in Art History”, Art and Thought, ed.s Dana Arnold and Margaret Iverson, Oxford: Blackwell, 2003, pp.71-90.


The article was written by Amelia Jones, who is an American art historian, critic and curator. I could relate to this reading well as she specializes in body art, which I consider my body of work belongs, her other interests include feminist art and Dadaism.

In the text she talks about how an interpretation of an artwork can be made. She uses the example of Gustave Courbet’s painting ‘the origin of the world’ and brings up the concept of Chiasmus by Maurice Merleau-Ponty, who was a French phenomenological philosopher. She explains that a viewer of an artwork tries to interpret the work as they subject themselves into what they see. It is a reciprocal process. “The identity we ascribe to a particular image and object is intimately connected to our own psychic desires, fantasies, and projections.”[1] I think this is a valid point which explains why each individual’s interpretation and experience from a same art work varies. I agree with the point she makes that with some extent that we all project our own subjection towards what we see and I think it is a totally natural thing that can happen.

Another concept that I think relate closely to the issue she draws in the text is the Lacanian term ‘gaze.’ The gaze happens when a subject project himself onto an object and from that gaining his own subjectivity.[2] While explaining the theme of double, anxiety and peculiar behaviours aroused by its image, in the essay “I shall be with you on your wedding-night: Lacan and uncanny”, Mladen Dolar says that the double “appears only to the subject; the others don’t see it and therefore don’t understand the subject’s peculiar behaviour. It cannot become a part of accepted intersubjective space”[3]

Although she is not a practising artist, she used the theoretical material provided by another scholar and interpreted and adapted to make me understand how this theory can be applied to a creative practice. The issue she talks about in the article is something that, as an artist, should be considered carefully into account when making art work. Artists need to understand that art work they produce cannot always be interpreted and perceived as they like them to be.



[1] Jones, Amelia. “Meaning, Identity, Embodiment: the uses of Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology in Art History”, Art and Thought, ed.s Dana Arnold and Margaret Iverson, Oxford: Blackwell, 2003, p.78

[2] Felluga, Dino. "Modules on Lacan: On the Gaze." Introductory Guide to Critical Theory. 28 November 2003. Purdue U. 20 June 2010 http://www.purdue.edu/guidetotheory/psychoanalysis/lacangaze.html

[3] Dolar, Mladen, “I Shall Be with You on Your Wedding-Night: Lacan and the Uncanny” October, Vol.58, Rendering the Real(Autumn, 1991), p.14