Suspended Time - Contemporary Art and Time out of History
International Conference

Since 2009, ACTH has questioned the relationship between contemporary art and different regimes of historical temporalities - underlining how art, through its own critical tools challenges the conception of a linear and progressive historical time.

How can a work of art give form to contemporary historical experiences, moreover when the representation of a given historical event is impossible? How can a specific work of art allow experiences of elaboration and working-through? How can it seize the paradoxical temporality of certain historical “events”, in the sense given by Foucault to this word, as the “point of intersection” of different “speeds, lengths and lines of history”?

Contemporary art can be the laboratory for the exploration of these intersections through the inventive nature of forms, in a process opposed to the media handling of events that often turns them into mere icons. Art has often explored the experience of ‘suspended time’ typical of late modernity, far from any idea of progression or causality.

The conference will focus on artistic objects and it will encourage an open discussion rooted in the shared experience of the works of art and supported by papers and presentations.

INHA, Institut National d’Histoire de l’Art, Auditorium, December 15th and 16th, 2014
2, rue Vivienne and 6, rue des Petits-Champs 75002 – Paris

Open admission


PROGRAM

Monday December 15th

9:a.m. – Welcome

9:30a.m. – Opening Session
Giovanni Careri (CEHTA-EHESS Paris), Philippe Dagen (Labex CAP) and Emmanuel Tibloux (Dean Ensba Lyon)

Moderator: Giovanni Careri
10:a.m. – Ralph Ubl (University of Basel - eikones Bildkritik) Promiscuous Entropy

11:a.m. – Coffee break 

11:15a.m. – A Journey That Wasn’t by Pierre Huyghe. Projection Super 16 mm and HD Film converted to HD, colour, 2005, 22 min.
A Journey That wasn’t blends two events that were both initiated by Huyghe: an expedition to Antarctica with the aim of discovering an albino creature that, according to certain rumours, dwells on a hidden polar island, emerging only with the melting of the ice, and the reconstitution of this voyage according to a principle of equivalence. A symphonic orchestra “played” the form of this island, in this way reproducing the voyage by way of a concert and a light installation that took place on the Wollman ice skating rink in Central Park in October 2005.

11:45a.m. – Bernhard Rüdiger (Artist, Ensba Lyon) Transcoding and form : the Art of the Tangible

12:45p.m. – Lunch

Moderator : Angela Mengoni 

2p.m. – Schnittstelle by Harun Farocki. Projection, Beta SP Video, colour, 1995, 23 min.
Farocki produced an installation for two screens, “Le monde après la photo” in the Lille Museum of Modern Art in 1995. In Schnittstelle, Farocki questions his own documentary production and raises the problem of what it means to work with pre-existing images rather than producing new ones. The title plays with the word “Schnitt” or “cut”, referring as much to the film-maker's place of work, the editing table, as the place where man uses his computer by way of a keyboard and a mouse, the man-machine-section.

2:30p.m. – Marie Voignier (Artist, Ensba Lyon) Harun Farocki, Words Images. A discussion beginning with Schnittstelle (Section)

3:30p.m. – Philippe-Alain Michaud (Centre Pompidou, Paris) Qu’est-ce qu’un bateau?

4:30p.m. – Coffee break  /Break

5p.m. – La Région Centrale de Michael Snow. Projection in presence of the author. 16 mm film, colour, 1971, 180 min.
La Région Centrale was filmed exclusively by a camera fitted to a mechanical device that moves it in every direction, allowing it to rotate 360° on every available axis, filming a natural landscape in Quebec. The gyroscopic stand that moves the camera, devised by Pierre Abeloos, was designed to be activated by the soundtrack that accompanies the film. Due to technical considerations, it was controlled remotely by Michael Snow, following a general score, with the film-maker unable to see what the camera was filming. The film is thus presented as a series of long sequences that are only interrupted by the visual indicator of the end of each reel of 16mm film.
Presentation: Luca Acquarelli (Lecturer in Sciences of Information and Communication at the University Lille 3, ACTH research unit)


Tuesday, 16th December

9a.m. – Welcome

Moderator : Antonio Somaini (Université Sorbonne Nouvelle – Paris 3)

9:30p.m. – Discussion with Michael Snow (Artist)
Discussant: Thomas Léon (Artist, ACTH research unit)

10:30p.m. – Coffee break 

10:45a.m. – La Mesure Minérale by Fabien Giraud and Raphaël Siboni. HD Video Projection, colour, 2012, 52 min.
If cinema was invented as the recording of the movements of the world, regulating the cadence of its images on the frequency of the living, how then to film the mineral in the nature of its own unique timeframe? Filmed with the help of a super slow motion camera in the Gallery of Mineralogy of the Museum of Natural History, this film shows a museum become stone, and the possibility of our own absence.

11:45a.m. – Discussion with Fabien Giraud and Raphaël Siboni (Artists)
Discussant: Bénédicte Duvernay (Doctoral student in Art History in the CEHTA, ACTH research unit)

12:45p.m. – Lunch

Moderator: Bernhard Rüdiger 

2p.m. – Angela Mengoni (IUAV University, Venice) No meaning, no clemency, no compassion. Natural History and the persistence of meaning in the work of Gerhard Richter.

3p.m. – Markus Klammer (University of Basel) Traumatic Avant-Garde. Palindromic Time in Guy Debord’s In girum imus nocte et consumimur igni

4p.m. – Coffee break

4:15p.m. – Heiner Goebbels (Composer and Stage Director) It’s beautiful here, my eyes can wander, I’m alone with my thoughts (Adalbert Stifter, Indian summer)
Discussant: Jennifer Lauro Mariani (CEHTA-EHESS / Université Paris 3)

6p.m. – Closing session.

ACTH
Contemporary Art and Historical Temporalities is a research project composed of graduate artists from the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Lyon and doctoral students from the Centre d’Histoire et de Théorie des Arts (CEHTA/CRAL) of the EHESS, Paris. It is a varied group that associates the common thinking of artists and researchers, under the direction of Bernhard Rüdiger, Artist (Ensba Lyon), and Art Historian, Giovanni Careri (CEHTA-EHESS Paris).
The group was set up in 2004 around the issue of the construction of the real in contemporary art. Since 2009, its core research has been the study of the relationship between contemporary art and the shaping of “regimes of historical temporality”. This theme was further developed through workshops, conferences and seminars, organized with various partners: History shaped by the work of art (Ensba Lyon 2009) and The question of trauma in the interpretation of the past (along with Public uses of the past – EHESS Paris 2012).

The ensemble of the projects and publications of the ACTH research unit can be consulted at:
www.ensba-lyon.fr/recherche/acth