The Art
of Social Protest and Commemoration
Session Coordinator and
Chair: Janis Breckenridge
Dept of Foreign Languages,
Hiram College
139 Hinsdale,
Hiram OH 44234
breckenridjb@hiram.edu
PAPER
ONE: When Memory is (Re)designed: Marcelo Brodsky’s Memoria en construcción: Debate sobre la ESMA
Conflicting notions of
memorialization surround efforts to convert Argentina’s
Escuela Armada de la Mecánica (ESMA
or Navy Mechanics School),
a notorious clandestine torture center and former Navy headquarters, into a
museum or, better stated, memory space “espacio
de memoria.” In an attempt to
stimulate reflection and encourage dialogue outside the circle of human rights
organizations, artists, and activists, Marcelo Brodsky has compiled a
collection of visual and textual reflections, Memoria en construcción: Debate
sobre la ESMA (2005), that situate (for a broad readership) the
memorialization project within a larger (artistic) context. Artistic works and
essays accentuate and contextualize an historical overview of ESMA that
includes archival documentation (architectural plans and photographs illustrate
an evolving use of this space) as well as proposals for future designations of
the site. Given this profound meditation
on architectural space, it remains somewhat surprising that Brodsky does not
situate the ESMA debate within a context of the recuperation and
(re)construction of other ‘sites of memory’ in Buenos Aires (most notably, Club Atlético and
Mansion Seré). For this reason, I would
in fact suggest that the compilation intentionally offers much more than a
“resignificación de la ESMA” (Victoria Ginzberg, Página 12); Memoria en
construcción necessarily re-contextualizes all of the selections presented.
In this paper I demonstrate that Brodsky’s “anthology” overtly or self-consciously
aims to (re)design contemporary memory works—especially visual representations
of disappearance—in Argentina’s
ever changing socio-political climate.
Janis Breckenridge
Hiram College
breckenridjb@hiram.edu
PAPER TWO: Signs of Memory: The Grupo
de Arte Callejero in Buenos Aires
This paper explores the
participation of the Grupo de Arte
Callejero (GAC) in construction of the Parque
de la Memoria in Buenos Aires. The GAC is a group of young artists who work
outside of traditional artistic spaces in order to promote social awareness,
and their participation in the officially sanctioned (and unchanging) memorial
park represents a departure from their trademark interventions in the streets
of Buenos Aires. Best known for their collaboration with
H.I.J.O.S during the escraches, or
outing of perpetrators of state terror, GAC plans to construct an installation
entitled “Carteles a la memoria” that consists of their trademark traffic
signs, each one calling attention to past atrocities or present troubles. They hope their participation in the Parque de la Memoria will undermine the
institutional nature of the space and provoke memory and reflection in the
“accidental observer.” My paper examines
the tension that arises when art meant to be experienced on the street is
placed in a more official space—how does the presence of their installation
dialogue with (or question) the formal vision of the park? How does the official nature of the park
affect the meaning of their series of signs?
In short, what in the charged context of post-dictatorship Argentina, are
certain types of artistic interventions more effective than others, and how can
one gauge the impact on the casual or accidental observer?
Nancy J. Gates Madsen
Luther College
gatesmadsen@yahoo.com
PAPER 3: Still Wild about Oscar Wilde: Centennial Commemorations and
Controversies
This paper
examines key centennial commemorations for Oscar Wilde and the controversies
that surrounded them. Particular
attention is paid to the political climate during each event.
The unveiling of Wilde’s
stained-glass window in Poet’s Corner in Westminster Abbey in 1995 occurred
during the OutRage movement’s attempt to lower the homosexual age of consent
laws. During their campaign, the group
attempted to get Wilde an official pardon, but the proposal was vetoed. This led to speculation about whether Wilde
would have still been found guilty in the last decade of the 20th
century.
The
unveiling of a statue for Wilde in London’s West End in 1997, the centennial of his release from
prison, elicited debate about its quality and significance. The unveiling was controversial due to Nigel
Hawthorne’s remarks on the BBC comparing the treatment of Wilde with the
hounding of Peter Mandelson. Just prior
to the event, journalist Matthew Paris publicly “outed” Mandelson by revealing
that Mandelson had frequented gay discos during a trip to Brazil. The BBC immediately banned any mention of
Mandelson, but Hawthorne
used the opportunity to demonstrate how little times had changed since Wilde’s
trials.
Three
museum exhibitions in 2000 commemorated the centennial of Wilde’s death,
including “Oscar Wilde: A Life in Six
Acts” at The British Library, “The Wilde Years” at The Barbican Gallery, and
“The House Beautiful” at the Geffrye
Museum. None generated the controversy of the 1995
Poet’s Corner memorial or the 1997 unveiling of the statue. Conservatives still
controlled the government in 1995 and the Labour Party had just taken over in
1997, but by 2000, the Labour Party motto of “all inclusiveness” had taken hold
in Britain.
Lorrie Carano
University of Missouri--Kansas
City
lorriecarano@hotmail.com
PAPER 4: American Exhibition:
Romare Bearden’s Democratic Imagery
Following the demise of the Spiral Group in 1963, which had
sought out an aesthetic capable of advancing the national cause of civil
rights, Romare Bearden developed a technique of photomontage to depict
localities ranging from rural cotton fields to the streets of Harlem and New Orleans. This exhibition of local imagery contests the
“imagined political community” (Benedict Anderson, 1983) of America, whose
historical narrative had deterred national popular support for the Civil Rights
Movement. Bearden’s photomontage
achieves this by reconciling what Ralph Ellison sees as a uniquely American
disparity between the democratic ideal of “unity-in-diversity,
oneness-in-manyness” and the “fractured, vernacular-weighted culture.” This disparity is traceable to the
grammatical change that occurs when print media proliferates within oral
culture. By amplifying the visual
faculty, and simultaneously diminishing the other senses, print establishes a
grammar of absolute space and binary logic, which “fractures” the synesthetic
bonds of the “vernacular-weighted culture” to produce an aggregate of detached
individuals in an empty and homogeneous public space. This numerical multiplicity is historically
consolidated into a national identity, which sustains itself through the
suppression of cultural difference. This
grammatical transition fosters the tradition of Western visual art, whose
emphasis on focal point and linear perspective abets the construction of the
national subject by fixing the individual as a detached viewer in absolute
space. This tradition is, however, challenged
by Bearden’s photomontage, whose severed syntax and radical parataxis restore
the synesthetic grammar of oral culture.
Supplanting focal point and linear perspective with a juxtaposition of
distorted proportions, Bearden’s art collapses the public space separating the
work from the viewer, involving the individual in the contrapuntal tensions of
the imagery. Because the imagery can be
sequenced in a variety of ways, the work operates as a site of unsuppressed
cultural difference; the same work will continuously generate a plurality of
imagery. Bearden’s photomontage thereby
removes the above disparity to create a grammar of “unity-in-diversity,
oneness-in-manyness” that serves as a perpetual resistance to the imagined
political community of official history.
Justin Hayes
Quinnipiac University
Justin.Hayes@quinnipiac.edu