Images Performing History
Subtitle: Photography and Representations of the Past in European Art After 1989
Publisher: Leuven University Press
Published: 2015
Language: eng
Number of pages: 304
ISBN-13: 9789462700291
Subjects: Europe, history
Description: History is increasingly made in images, not only because its records are largely photographic but also because our ideas about the past are formed in visual terms. This book offers a discussion of contemporary art practices which question the received notions of historical representations after the pivotal changes of 1989 in Europe. These art practices reveal, in different ways, the operative role of the photographic media in making and remaking history. Not limited to a particular artistic medium, they demonstrate how history is forged through enacting or re-enacting its past forms, while, on the other hand, they indicate how copying and quoting can contribute to creating a new, operative aesthetics. By foregrounding a performative character of images, art is shown to construct an alternative knowledge of the past.