fragmentation of perception / perception of fragmentation:
a queer perspective on art and archaeology.
marjolijn kok & suzanne van rossenberg eds.
marjolijnkok@gmail.com
suzannevanrossenberg@gmail.com
After the successful session ‘fragmentation of perception / perception of fragmentation’ at the ‘17th
archaeology and theory symposium’ in Leiden, the session organizers are convinced that a publication would
be a good way to continue the momentum gained.
background
The aim is to approach the theme of ‘perception of fragmentation / fragmentation of perception’ from both
disciplines, art and archaeology, in order to give alternative insights to artists, archaeologists, (art)
historians, and anybody who is interested.
Both art and archaeology deal with material culture. Artists, curators, (art) historians, cultural producers
and archaeologists talk, research, write and gossip about their (fragmented) objects: how they are perceived
and by whom, from what position and under what circumstances. Perception/spectatorship is a fragmented
experience continuously influenced by all kinds of different aspects.
Along with the question of what the (fragmented) objects are or mean, we investigate why they are made. For
what religious, aesthetic, social, philosophical, therapeutic, economic, decorative, amateur etc. reasons? With
this publication we want to give account to our own positioned questioning and to create a basis for not only
epistemology, but also political awareness.
Examples of questions:
Archaeologists are performers who produce narratives, books and exhibitions. Who are the audiences of
these research products? Who are their financers? What influence do different financial resources have on
research products and criteria of research?
Contemporary artists have produced (invisible) objects, performances, happenings, transdisciplinary
processes, stories in between, subversion, and infiltration in other fields like community work, commercial
businesses, politics and archaeology. Artists have aimed to make products for an audience outside an art
context. What is their motivation? What can we say about its economic structures?
Art and science (the production of knowledge) needs communicating to its audiences.
Do artists and scientists imagine their audiences, while researching, writing and making products? Do they
view their own work through the eyes of their imaginary audiences in order to establish communication? Do
they desire themselves to be the audiences of their own work? Do they desire to transform their own
subjectivity?
invitation
The organizers share a queer approach towards fragmentation and perception and are aiming to put together
a publication in which subjects like positioning, (trans)gender and cultural differences, discourses between
objects or between audiences, and desire as methodology will not be omitted. We invite archaeologists,
artists, art historians and others to propose a contribution for the publication ‘fragmentation of perception /
perception of fragmentation’ approached from their own discipline. Proposals that incorporate a queer
perspective will be favoured, but alternative viewpoints can be proposed.
format
Contributions should fit into the format of a book. The editors leave space open for specific desires
concerning the content and visuals of the contribution. Contributions can be textual or visual or a
combination of both. Please keep in mind that due to the budget full-colour printing will be limited.
Participation is voluntarily. The publication will be published by us, and if we get any funding for or revenue
from the book it will be shared with all the participants. You will keep the right to publish your contribution
elsewhere.
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timepath
Please submit proposals of 200-500 words by 16 January 2009.
We will respond before 9 February 2009.
Contributions are due on 1 June 2009.
abstracts of contributions presented at the symposium
To give you an idea of what happened at the symposium please find the abstracts of the contribution below.
Do not feel constrained to fit within these texts. They are meant to inspire you.
Linking and Stitching: Patchworking Collective Knowledge in Hypertext Fiction
Annabel van Baren
The body is not one, though it seems so from up here, from this privileged viewpoint up top.
(Jackson, “Stitch Bitch: the Patchwork Girl” 527)
Through the medium of Shelley Jackson’s 1995 hypertext fiction Patchwork Girl this paper engages in a
three-fold dissection to gauge how fragmented embodiedness pairs up with engaged subjectivity to produce
collective knowledge. The first point of dissection cuts deep into the materiality of the Patchwork Girl’s body,
whereas the second stage of this paper decodes the medium of the hypertext. Lastly, the role of the
spectator/reader is brought into focus, as she/he constructs his/her own, subjective, narrative by choosing
the navigatory path through the fragments of text and images.
The interplay of texts stemming from various sources and dictions combined with striking images creates a
quilt of multiple truths; in this manner, Patchwork Girl expresses a non-hierarchical stance between truth
and untruth, as well as fact and fiction. The dichotomy between that which is visible and that which fails to be
seen is reflected in the Patchwork Girl’s body, as it is simultaneously a clear-cut site of horror, as well as a
fluid, culturally-specific, temporally-specific representation. Her body is horrific as it is composed of other
people’s body parts; it is culturally and temporally-specific by its mediation through computer technologies,
the use of hypertext and the narrative function of showing the analogy between fragmented text and
fragmented body, which is patched together by the reader. Simultaneously, Patchwork Girl appears to
incorporate a critique of vision as a primary site of knowledge production, as other senses are brought to the
fore as valid sites of knowledge.
For Freddie
Deric Carner and Roddy Schrock
For Freddie proposes a slideshow with soundtrack and newspaper publication evoking the story of Freddie
Herko, an obscure and queer artistic figure from the early 60’s. He died young and left very little
documentation. The slideshow is an un-captioned presentation of drawings and documentary images relating
to his biography. A poem by his friend Diane Di Prima is read at the end. The newspaper contains original
research writing on Herko's life and death (now published on Wikipedia). This project was presented in a
different format at Artist's Television Access in San Francisco in March 2007 along with a screening of Andy
Warhol's Haircut #1.
Freddie (Fred) Herko was an avant-garde dancer and choreographer trained at Juilliard. He was member of
the Judson Dance Theater, performing at its inaugural concert on July 6, 1962. He performed in Frank
O'Hara’s Love's Labor, and several of Andy Warhol’s earliest films including: Haircut (No. 1), Kiss, The
Thirteen Most Beautiful Boys, and Rollerskate (also known as Dance Movie). Herko became a dramatic
victim of drug excess and artistic passion, leaping to his death in 1964 at the age of 29.
No apologies: archaeology and theory, or science fiction?
Erik van Rossenberg
My contribution is an attempt to position myself with respect to the perceived intangibility of structures and
structuring principles in the field of archaeology and theory conferences. It will take shape as a series of
apology letters to imaginary audiences. I have chosen this particular epistolary genre as an appropriate
medium to fictionalise attempts at perfect communication, as it leaves room for secondary rationalisations
and (re)positioning. Addressees might include the field of archaeology and theory, the annual Dutch
“Archaeology & Theory” (A&T) symposium, “Stichting Archaeological Dialogues” (SAD), the annual British
“Theoretical Archaeology Group” (TAG) conference, the activist group “theorie leeft!” (theory is alive), and
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various other stakeholders. Any resemblance between fictional addressees and real audiences is purely
coincidental.
Brushing dusty bodies: the archival, the archaeological, and the queer imagination
Francesco Ventrella
My paper is an attempt to criticize the methodology applied by the ‘queer disclosure’, as it has been
structured during the last fifteen years of queer scholarship in the field of vision, art and culture concerning
the body. The very becoming of queer studies in historical research has been closeted within the gay-male
orientation, and ruled by the anxiety of the phallic time-scale. This trend, on my opinion, is responsible for a
reinforcement of the homosocial bonds both in the archival past, and the present of our cultural analysis. The
hypothesis of fragmentation of historical perception could be a strategy for the historian and the cultural
analyst to manage desire-for-difference as a rationale for a re-reading and re-management of the archival
knowledge. Arguing about the fragmentation of perception of the body, rather than the dissection of a corpse,
I will analyze the treatment of the archeological body in Winckelmann’s drafts for the Geschichte der Kunst
des Altertums (1764), and the passage from the axiomatic to ‘the epistemology of the closet’ (1990) in the
leading essay of Eve K. Sedgwick, producing a writing of art history in a ‘tense’ which supposes the necessity
of reflexivity in turning any archive into a narrative. How can we as archivists and connoisseurs take the body
out of the archive rather than a corpse?
Archaeologists as queer viewers and narrators.
marjolijn kok
In this paper i want to explore how archaeologists’s view differs from other viewers, and how our perception
affects our narration. Archaeologists mainly deal with fragments, but we have come to see these fragments as
wholes. In our work we mostly become essentialists. The fragmented is mended, the difference is taken away.
Through typology everything is placed in it’s proper position. An artefact is this type or that type and nothing
in between. A good archaeologists knows where what belongs. A good archaeologists knows how to name the
objects studied. Not belonging, difference, fragmentation are things to be solved.
But the question is does everything fit needly into categories? Is fragmentation a deformation from
completeness. Following Brück, Joyce, and Chapman and Gaydarski, i want to argue that if we embrace our
queer view, and embrace the fragmented, the difference, new research questions will arise. The materials and
their contexts should be more fully explored. And our interpretation and narration should turn away from
essentialists exclusionist stories to embracing stories of difference.
Queer art is about creating the possibility to say no to the dominant hetero-normative
economic and political structures of art. Or yes. But to at least write a story about it that
replaces an older one.
Suzanne van Rossenberg
Contemporary art consists of (invisible) performances, painting, tapestry, video, installations, lectures,
stencil graffiti, books, hacktivism, digital art, interactive projects, community art and more. There is art that
uncovers power structures, which determine contemporary art theory and taste. Similar appearances of art
and science aren’t unthinkable; let alone the similarities in methodologies.
A contemporary artist can challenge art economy, blur borders between art and politics or break the rules of
aesthetics over and over again, but can she/he also find the door to leave the dominant fiction? Art can be
institutional critique, but can it also change hetero-normative economics and politics in the exhibition and
perception of art?
“It is, of course, hard to climb when you are holding on to both ends of a pole, simultaneously or
alternately. It is, therefore, time to switch metaphors.”
(D. Haraway in 'Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and Privilege of Partial
Perspective', 1991)
Guiding the spectators along two bodies of work of mine entitled ‘A Room with a Lesbian View’ and ‘If I was a
painter, I would be painting short stories’ that consists of paintings, drawings, short stories, a performance
and a happening, I want to inform them of (un)conscious artistic, economic and political decisions in the
exhibition and publication of a queer artist’s work. The paper will include five minutes of performance and
the reading of written fiction.
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