On 6 December 2012, the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam hosted the symposium, Afterlives: Living the Past in the Present. The smal event was organized in honor of Prof. Dr. Deborah Cherry, who will be leaving the position of Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art at The University of Amsterdam but the end of this year.
The American artist Lisa Oppenheim is fascinated by old photography, both in terms of its technique and import. She attempts to recapture the photographic images of yore in her work by considerably expanding the photographic moment, once considered so historical.
Four months prior to this writing, in mid-July, I'd come home from a workshop in the Czech Republic. It had been a small gathering of artists, critics, curators, and academics from Eastern Europe, Greece, Spain, Southeast Asia and Latin America for an event that took place alongside the launching of a book called The Transformation Atlas (published by the Prague-based not-for-profit organization 'tranzit').
Berlin Former Stasi Headquarters 20/06/09 - 20/07/09
It is there another story hiding behind ‘history’? Might it be that ‘history’ consists of nothing more than an intricate accumulation of narratives, fragments, and footnotes?
Recently, Dieter Roelstraete stated in e-flux journal that the current obsession with history amongst artists is nothing other than an excuse to avoid dealing with troublesome issues concerning our future. Anselm Franke disagrees, arguing that an understanding of history is essential to contemporary art practice.
