HARTmagazine Issue 3

HART magazine dilettante n.f. personne qui pratique une activité, un art pour le plaisir III

february 2013

Around the World

Features Long Live South Bank | Lessons from Morocco | Remember the Dragon // Reviews Facing the Modern | Lieux de Mémoire | UCL Art Museum // Photobook Paris, je t’aime

intro betwe ducing a pa en HA r RTma tnership Ecole gazin du Lo uvre m e & the agazin e

Louvr

’Boit

e

HARTMagazine Editors

ANNA TOMLINSON AZMINA ABDULLA

Sub Editor

WILL JOHNSON

Louvr’Boîte 4 FREEDOM FOR FRIDA Cassandre Mbonyo-Kiefer Translated by Will Johnson

Features 6

LONDON SOUTHBANK Kitty Whittell

8 MOROCCO Taylor Bickford

10 LJUBLIANA Agnes Valencic

Reviews 12 FACING THE MODERN VIENNA

Editorial We would like to start by thanking the contributors,

writers and photographers, to this issue!

HARTmagazine is introducing a collaboration with Louvr’Boite, the magazine of the Ecole du Louvre, in Paris. In each edition, we will publish one of their articles translated in English, likewise they will select one of our articles, translating it into French.

In addition, we would like to introduce our lovely new Sub Editor, Will Johnson, and thank him for his input and hard work.

As this is a learning process for us as well, we’ve decided to forgo having a dedicated theme for each issue.

Instead, we’d like to be able to consider the breadth of our subject and invite individual explorations.

In this issue, you will find features focusing on cities around the world, reviews of Facing the Modern at the National Gallery, Lieux de Mémoire at the Sumarria Lunn Gallery and Time Based Media at the UCL Art Museum. Further, we’re having a look at Paris through photography, focusing on the Parisian cityscape. Finally, we’re presenting our usual Kitty’s Choice.

The Society is currently planning a variety of events for the end of term, so keep an eye out!

Anna Tomlinson

14 LIEUX DE MEMOIRE Emily Mangione

16 TIME BASED MEDIA Roxy Blake

Heart from HART, Anna and Azmina

Photobook 18 PARIS, JE T’AIME Azmina Abdulla

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Kitty’s Choice uclarthistorysociety.co.uk

Image Credits Cover - Paris, Azmina Abdulla, 2013 Left - Morocco, Taylor Bickford, 2013

Louvr’Boîte

o f m o d

e e Fr

by Cassandre Mbonyo-Kiefer

Translated by Will Johnson Illustration by Chloé Gérard

Prisons without bars, with invisible walls – punishments handed out not by a court, but which strike just as powerfully as a guillotine; instruments at the caprice of chance. Sometimes, you don’t need four walls to feel incarcerated. Your own body can be your prison guard.

Frida Kahlo already knew these things on the 17th September 1925, when she took the bus home after her day at the National Preparatory School of Mexico. 19 years old, she belonged to a petit bourgeois family who lived in the suburbs of Mexico City. Her friends called her “Crippled Frida”; polio, contracted at the age of eight, had left the longhaired girl lame. This perpetual pain would soon be replaced by another: the bus that she took hit a tram. In the storm of metal that followed the collision, Kahlo was struck by a bar which struck through her body. She came out alive but broken; pained, sterile and made a prisoner of her pulverised bones, subjected to the embrace of plaster corsets, turned into a statue.

She had never painted in her life, never even much considered the fine arts besides the watercolours that her father painted to keep himself from boredom.

Such a drama, a death averted in a gust of wind, was necessary for her to start painting. The year following the accident, Kahlo made a small pencil drawing of her near-fatal moment in the

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bus. In the sketch, kept in the collection of Juan Coronel, the elements of her style are already perceptible. For example, the inscription: the artist’s canvases are often accompanied by a small banner, giving the date and title of the

a d i r F or

work, or even a few words explaining the scene represented. Such is the case here: we read “17 de Septiembre de 1926. Frida Kahlo. (Accidente)”.

The body of the young woman lies as if mummified on the debris. Above her float small characters, books, the bus, the tram and a picture of her own face. Like a byzantine idol, it watches the dying body.

The composition, whilst creating two superimposed horizontal registers, adds a vertical relationship between the realistic body of Frida and the apparitions that surround her. This configuration evokes how the young woman felt in her body; to help her paint, her parents installed a mirror above her bed. For her, liberation comes from above, although, paradoxically, the mirror persists in showing her the reflexion of a locked up woman.

Locked up and disabled.

A reflection on these two states proves enlightening, considered in relation to Kahlo’s work. Both words have Latin roots signifying “power”, as in the power to act. But disabled people, like prisoners, are denied such power. It was with her paintbrush in the catharsis of painting that Kahlo would come to express this power that had escaped her.

One of her most well known works, also one of the most evocative of her imprisonment, is The Broken Column. Painted in 1944 in a special technique applying oil paint to canvas which is then smoothed down on hardboard, it measure 40cm by 30cm and can be

currently found in the Museo Dolores Olmedo in the historic Xochimilco neighbourhood of Mexico City. A beautiful Frida faces us, dark hair, eyes full of white tears, which are also strewn across her face. There are nails all over her half-naked body, draped in a white cloth, reminiscent of a hospital gown. A complicated corset encases Kahlo from pelvis to chin, held together by a broken Greek column. The spectacular composition takes place in an oneiric atmosphere of green prairies and a rising blue sky.

Contrary to the surrounding landscape, swirling with the cloth of her body, Kahlo’s body is static, like a Mexican idol. A column, a symbol of antique art, replaces the iron bar that injured her. The column also evokes the weak spinal column of Kahlo. Her look is fixed, like the nails that hold her back, on the spectator. She cries, but her frank face betrays no sadness.

Frida Kahlo, stabbed and oppressed, grew up like a new Saint Sebastian. Far from an infirm woman gazing back at us, we see one full of dignity. The body that imprisoned her is made into the symbol of her power, and Kahlo never stopped painting it, making it the subject of 55 of her 143 paintings.

When we think of Frida Kahlo, we remember a woman standing, but she actually spent the majority of her life bedridden. Those who knew her, including Diego Riviera, her celebrated Pygmalion, all agree that she transcended her life of suffering, and her works leave the impression of her coloured world, populated with idols, votives, exotic animals and sensual forms, haunted by the image of a singular yet troubled woman. The colour that Kahlo’s days of stillness lacked today cover her canvases and show us her particular idea of freedom; one of changing appearances, of displaying a mutilated body and of painting the cynicism and beauty of life.

On the last pages of her journal, a few days before her death, having just had her right leg amputated, Frida wrote, “I hope that leaving will be happy, and I hope to never return.” She spent her last days waiting for the liberation that she expressed in her palette.

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Features

Long L i ve South Bank

By Kitty Whittell, Events Manager of UCLHoAS In 1981 Richard Serra’s Tilted Arc was installed in Federal Plaza, New York City. By 1989 it was decided that the work should be moved after several years of almost continuous complaint from authorities about the structure of the work and its engagement with the plaza. All this despite Serra’s arguably sensitive approach to the urban landscape and the utopian ideals of the Arc itself.

With its removal came a series of law suits from Serra who said that in moving a sculpture that is site specific the authorities were destroying its credibility and indeed validity as a work of art.

Serra eventually lost these court battles, on the grounds that he had fulfilled his commission and the work no longer belonged to him. The Tilted Arc was removed and destroyed but its legacy and the issues the incident raised remain highly relevant to contemporary artistic society, particularly in the realms of urban art.

Take for example the notable Banksy, depending on your outlook he either vandalises, or embellishes the urban landscape with satirical graffiti. But who does the painting belong to; surely the owners of the walls he

Š Kitty Whittell

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© Kitty Whittell

works on are perfectly entitled to clean the work away regardless of the protestations that he has created art. At what point does a spontaneous act of self-expression and in this case social commentary become something that must be preserved as a contribution to culture?

Beneath the Breton Brut tree trunks of the South Bank Festival Wing just such a situation is currently being played out between the authorities and the movement, ’Long Live South Bank’. The under croft has been a space used by urban artists and skate boarders alike as a space of spontaneous community. The walls are plastered in layer upon layer of tags and images, each a personal mark of someone’s existence. The intertwined lines and shapes, great sprawling narratives recording pop culture, music, satire, with each element being entirely unique.

In the inner city such spaces where individuality is celebrated in such a way are few and far between and yet the prospects for the under croft are currently bleak.

In early March 2013 plans were unveiled for the redevelopment of the Festival Wing

of the South Bank Centre. This would involve the Skate Park being filled in and replaced with commercial spaces along the river front. Most certainly an economical enterprise for the centre but at what cost, not only to the community but to the credibility of the centre itself. How can an institution dedicated to creative expression be blind to the negative connotations of their actions?

Perhaps it is simply indicative of institutions undermining their own principles for the sake of commercial gain.

All aspects of contemporary urban culture are represented at South Bank, the National Theatre and the Hayward Gallery all showing innovative and forward thinking works of cultural importance. Surely the presence of the skate park as a spontaneous coming together of community only serves to enhance this image. But instead the proposal is to create a purpose built park to replace the existing one. Again the issues raised by the Tilted Arc are called to mind.

What makes the South Bank under croft so significant is its site specificity, it is an iconic image of the area, and if you remove the heart then ultimately you lose the soul.

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Features

Cats & Kebabs lessons from morocco

By Taylor Bickford At 17:37 I finally stepped off the tiny Ryanair plane that faithfully transported me from London to Morocco, and for the price of a Topshop dress I found myself standing in the capital, Rabat. I spoke no Arabic, and my French was rusty to say the least, but with the help of some friendly strangers, perhaps not the safest course of action, I hailed a ‘grand taxi’ to meet my best friend at the vague and elusive destination of Rue de France.

The Moroccan man with whom I shared a cab not only paid for my bus ticket from the airport and cab from the bus station, but he also escorted me safely to my destination. Lesson 1: don’t be excessively naive, but trusting people is not always to your detriment, and we need not so quickly dismiss humanity as a lost cause. My time in Rabat was short, but long enough for my illusion of Morocco, established by the study of Orientalist paintings by Renoir and Delacroix, as an exotic and old world place to be shattered by buildings such as the national library with its tall white walls glittering in rainbow spotlights. Lesson 2: while I am an Art Historian at heart, I must concede that art cannot teach you everything about the world as it is filtered through the artist’s vision; I think firsthand experience is the only way to overcome the boundaries of prejudice. My best friend, being a true English citizen, found probably the only pub in Morocco, and that is where we spent our evening. Although adorned with flags, it was far from the ‘traditional’ Irish pub it claimed to be. Yet, this ‘pub’ served alcohol, something hard to come by and very expensive in Morocco, and therefore it was packed from wall to wall. Lesson 3: As an exchange student from the United States, I’ve been told that Moroccans are very similar to American college students; not allowed to drink, struggling to find alcohol and paying what seem like, because of their meager part-time incomes, outrageous prices for it.

After a brief introduction to Rabat, we took

the train across the country and back in time to Marrakech, a destination that corresponded with my exotic illusions and touristic desires. I cried tears of joy at how cheap a cab ride was: approximately £2 for a 25-minute ride, miraculous compared to the exorbitant prices of London.

Our hotel, equally budget-friendly, was adorned with beautiful crystal chandeliers, a pool and a welcome tea service upon arrival. Lesson 4: Morocco is the perfect place to travel on a student budget if you desire a little bit of warmth and tropical vibes. However, be wary of diabetes in consuming large amounts of their delicious tea, as I am fairly sure it’s brewed from 98% sugar. As a blonde, fair skinned girl in Morocco it couldn’t have mattered less if I spoke Arabic or not, as I easily stood out. But whereas in New York City catcalls consist of things I wouldn’t dare to repeat, in Morocco harassment consisted of being called ‘beautiful,’ ‘blonde,’ and ‘strawberry.’ Lesson 5: Undeservingly bad reputation aside, no matter how rebellious Moroccan men think they are, it is no worse traveling alone as a girl in Morocco than it is in New York City.

In Marrakech I sated my tourist desires. I rode a horse-drawn chariot to the camel park, where I then rode a camel around in circles just outside of the Old Medina (sadly not dressed in whimsical flowing pants and a head scarf). I was decorated in lacy henna, and witnessed monkeys dressed in skirts and snake charmers, doing nothing other than charming snakes. I ate couscous on Friday and drank fresh orange juice, making sure I watched them make it so that they didn’t add the harmful ‘filler’ liquid. I ate kebabs at a street market, and navigated the souks; stalls with vibrant colored ant hills of spices, carefully beaded slippers, gritty yet glittering lanterns in the iron casting area, and all the shining silver a girl could desire. Lesson 6: Yelling is an accepted method of advertising in Morocco, and

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the prices and goods that they are advertising can always be bought for half the price advertised. I witnessed my friend get the shop owner down from 700 dirhams to 250 dirhams (more than ÂŁ50 down to less than ÂŁ20) on a silver bracelet, a combination of skill and determination on her part and exasperation on his part.

Souvenirs and gifts filling every pocket in my single rucksack and a bag of twenty coco-

nut cookies from the street vendor handy in my purse for the return plane trip, I was prepared to board. However, I was not ready to leave such a magical place, and most of all not ready to leave behind all the poor kittens that inhabited every corner and needed my love and affection.

Final Lesson: Love all the cats, and, it goes without saying, try new things.

Š Taylor Bickford

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Features

Remember the dragon Constructing the city

By Agnes Valencic A little bit of Slovene word play can quickly transform the name Ljubljana into “the beloved”, a nickname now used widely to promote its small size, warmth and hospitality. Having been raised in Ljubljana, I want to share the city’s beauty.

And as much as I love the city, I don’t want this to turn into a call to all tourists. Instead, I want to look at the city to understand its spatial and constitutional distinction.

To begin with some basic facts, Ljubljana hardly qualifies as a “city”. Its 280,000 inhabitants and area of only 164 square km make it more a town of average size and population.

However, its central position and historical importance gives it the credentials to be capital of the small twenty-three-year old Republic of Slovenia.

This presents us with an interesting gateway into the city’s nature. It is situated on a diagonal line between Trieste, once one of the most cosmopolitan ports of the Adriatic Sea, and Vienna, city of Habsburg emperors and one of the biggest artistic and architectural stages in Central Europe. Arguably, no other city has the same mixture and symbiosis of different architectural styles and eras more evident that in the city whose symbol is a Dragon, killed by mythological figure Jason who sailed the river Ljubljanica with his Argonauts.

“Diversity” is therefore the principal word to use when discussing Ljubljana as an architectural and urban entity. A plunge into its history will help explain why the city was constructed through the flow of almost 2,000 years, with material traces still evident and actively involved in urbanist planning even today. Its natural position places Ljubljana under a low hill (the “Castle Hill”) and the city is divided by a river, Ljubljanica, a natural barrier which enabled the great architectural minds to produce the city’s significant bridges, a topic to which I will later return.

The first urban settlement in this area was a Roman town called Emona, an urbs quadrata whose walls are today integrated into the city’s latest addition, an underground parking lot in Kongresni Square, and with their almost invisible presence indicate some of the widest streets in Ljubljana’s centre. Centuries after Emona was destroyed, the area started developing again as a flourishing medieval town on the left bank of the river. The so-called “Old Town” under the castle hill nowadays attracts the most tourists, as well as being a lively part of the city centre, preserving its vibrant spirit throughout time.

A quick jump in time again: lying on the crossroads between two big centres of baroque art, Venice and Vienna, Ljubljana unfortunately never had a real opportunity to welcome great masters of the Baroque as it was considered a rather provincial town where artists stopped but did not stay and work for long. A bright exception to this is a Venetian sculptor Francesco Robba, who produced, among other works, Ljubljana’s central fountain. The style of the fountain makes his sculpture seems almost weightless, making it comparable with the European baroque-art elite.

150 years later, in 1895, there was a turning point in the life of the city. The city space was radically transformed and the modern Ljubljana that we know today was created. On the Easter Sunday of that year, the city was hit by a destructive earthquake, which caused extreme damage and destroyed about 10% of all the old buildings.

What seemed like a catastrophe at the time consequently enabled the city to undergo radical renovation works; it allowed the city to rise from the ashes and become a modern metropolis comparable to Vienna or Trieste.

If I had to pick my favourite part of the city’s architecture, it would most definitely be the post-earthquake Miklošičeva cesta, connecting the main square in the city (Prešeren Square)

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© Katja Lorencic

and the railway station. Almost all of its architectural constructions were designed under Secessionist influence, an artistic movement of a younger Viennese generation, famous for their liberal approach toward pre-established artistic rules and canons. These young trend-makers included Gustav Klimt and enabled art to develop in unique manner, notable in the usage of soft bent lines, rich ornamentation and vivid colours.

All these features have been applied to a renovated part of Ljubljana, giving it an opportunity to show off in the spirit of the fin-de-siècle.

If there were one name to be picked from the circles of Slovenian architects and creators of the city as we know today, it would be Jože Plečnik (1872 - 1957). This ingenious architect with cold conservative views, while creating an oppressive relationship towards his students, set himself a task to re-create Ljubljana in the image of Athens. Due to his efforts the city now has a symbolic “agora” (the Ljubljana Market), “necropolis” (the cemetery of Žale) and an unrealized plan of creating an “acropolis” on the Castle hill, a project requiring the demolition of parts of the castle itself. However today we see that it was definitely better for this plan to remain only a plan. What is more, though his urban ideas seem rather classical, his style involves a modernist twist. The usage of strict, straight lines very much reflect his inner tendency towards order while classical elements such as arcades, balustrades or pillars reflect his in-depth knowledge of timeless architectural canons.

After the Second World War, change was afoot not only in Ljubljana, but in the whole of

the newly formed Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. New order brought new rules to the construction of the cities where the infamous functionalist style was employed. While it represented a reflection of the socialist lifestyle, it simultaneously symbolized a kind of aesthetic shock when compared with the old glorious buildings of the past. What perhaps saved Ljubljana from being transformed into a functionalist city was the fact that it was luckily not bombed during the WWII. Therefore, the new socialist buildings coexisted with, but did not replace, the old ones. This architecture is now forming another part of the mosaic, enabling us to read the history of city’s rich style.

There is no better way in which to conclude this visual stylistic introduction to the city than by dedicating a couple of sentences to its bridges, each of which bears its own story. There is Plečnik’s Triple Bridge similar to Venice’s Rialto, then the Cobbler’s bridge originally intended to become a “market on the water” and is now popular for artistic performances, and then the recently realised plan for Bucher’s bridge, now a popular place to hang ‘love’ padlocks. Last but not least, a mighty Dragon Bridge reflecting the architectural excellence of the Secession, simultaneously the most representative postcard of the city and of its people.

To summarize what makes Ljubljana so special, I agree that it is difficult to find stylistic elements that have not been employed elsewhere.

Yet at the same time Ljubljana is a mosaic of different styles and historical eras: a truly special place.

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Reviews

Facing the Modern Vienna

By Anna Tomlinson, Editor of HARTmagazine Some would go on to be exhibited in Hitler’s degenerative art exhibits. Some would go on to be forgotten in middle class corridors.

Hidden, forgotten, lost, and mocked: this is the history of Vienna’s first decade in portraiture.

We start with portraits from 19th century Austria, embodying the idea that to face the modern, we must simultaneously and, paradoxically, face the past. In stoic oil paintings we see the assumed nobility of a rising professional middle class. The emphasis on child portraits is key. Anton Romako’s “The Artist’s Nieces, Elisabeth and Maja” shows two healthy girls wearing pinafores, one holding a bouquet of wild flowers and looking into the distance. Their unkempt hair suggests the immediacy of their arrival onto the scene before, one supposes, they return to their romps in nature. However, their haunting eyes gazing into the unseen distance, as opposed to at the viewer, suggest the ambiguity of what is to come. The subjects are not innocent tabula rasa onto which adult sensibilities of childhood can be imposed. Change has already been set in motion. These are the children who will define the exhibit we are about to enter into – the adults of the new century.

Gustav Klimt (1862-1918), ‘Posthumous Portrait of Ria Munk III’, 1917-1918. Oil on canvas, 180.7 x 89.9 cm © Property of The Lewis Collection

We never truly leave the significance of family behind. Passing into the second room, we are confronted with Schiele’s 1918 portrait, “The Family.” It depicts Schiele’s self-portrait, placed behind that of a young woman and a child. They are nude, yet there are no suggestions of overt sexuality. Instead there is a realism embodied within the work despite the contortions and colours of the image. It evokes an unexpected emotional response from the viewer due to the quasi-disfiguration and spatial relations within the work. Compared to the ‘wholesome’ and symmetrical portraits that have been placed before it, “The Family” appears chaotic, almost upsetting. The lighting is dark, creating

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Egon Schiele (1890-1918), ‘The Family (Self-Portrait)’, 1918.

Oil on canvas. 152.5 x 162.5 cm. © Belvedere Vienna

a dank atmosphere, suggesting the poverty of the artist. The piece is a social upheaval in itself.

Indeed, this social upheaval becomes a central theme throughout the exhibition, as the refracted details within the works are what haunt them. It is impossible not to take context and period into account; the turn of the century marked a flux period of intense patriotism paralleled by a subversive, avant-garde art movement of artists from varied European backgrounds. The inability to escape the structure of the family and of family life emphasises the fact that this was not an end point, but a point in transition. Conservative family paradigms were still the social structures by which the artist, literally in the case of Schiele, frames himself.

Referring to the artist as male is necessary, as throughout the exhibition the majority of artists are men, and the majority of subjects are female.

Whether this points to the canonical sensibilities of National Portrait Gallery curators, or the shift in focus at the turn of the 20th century is unclear.

Women are not the undisputed emissaries of sex or desire in these paintings. Klimt’s disembodi-

ment of women focuses on their faces, surrounded by ornate gilding and detail. We are not drawn to the women but presented with them. For example, in his painting “Posthumous Painting of Ria Munk III”, the subject wrests the forceful direction of her gaze onto the viewer. She is an empowered woman, but she is also fictional in the sense that the painting is posthumous and therefore not a direct representation. The 1910s was a decade of fierce women’s suffrage and activism. The complicated relationship between female subject and male artist is therefore given a medium. Another work by Klimt, “Portrait of Lady in Black” lacks the ambiguity in form that defined the “Posthumous Painting of Ria Munk III”. Painted twenty years prior, the work focuses on the sharp outlines of the subject, creating a classical representation of the female persona, anonymous in both name and representation. Yet still, one can sense the power of her character in the grandeur of the painting, her upright posture, and pre-occupied gaze. Through this constant comparison of works from pre-20th and post-20th century of the same artists, we are presented with a catalogue of the change taking place and the full-blown chaos of its arrival.

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Reviews

Lieux de Memoire Sumarria Lunn

By Emily Mangione The title of Sumarria Lunn’s current exhibition, Lieux de Mémoire, gestures towards Pierre Nora and his binary between memory as “a perpetually active phenomenon, a bond tying us to the eternal present” and history as a relentless process to suppress and simplify memory in the service of dominant social and political powers. Recently, however, critics and theorists—ranging from the likes of Jens Andermann, Ariella Azoulay, Bronwyn Law-Viljoen, Andrea Noble, and Diana Taylor—have complicated this distinction by elucidating the role of the visual and its institutions in the production of national memory and a making-material the idea of the nation-state. Memory is not only a way of relating simultaneously to the past and present, but can also be constructed by and in the service of those in political power as a bond that binds us to the nation. For the four artists shown in Lieux de Mémoire—David Birkin, Nadia Kaabi-Linke, Manuela Ribadeneira, and Nasan Tur—to appropriate the visual in service of destabilizing various national imaginaries thus becomes an act with subversive potential.

This radical undermining is perhaps most obvious in Birkin’s series “Iconographies” (2013). Graffitied with photo-editors’ marks, Cold War-era press portraits of national leaders on both sides of the Iron Curtain are blown up to the epic proportions of the cinema poster. Here we have (literally) writ large the processes by which the modern nation-state quasi-theatrically reproduces itself in visual form by figuring itself metonymically in the singular figure of its leader.

The performance of nationhood is also key to Nasan Tur’s 2011 video projection The Histories of Maraş/Varosha. The simultaneous projection of two channels of video in the work alludes to the doubling of the country in which it was shot— Cyprus. Following a bitter seven-year civil war,

Cyprus was divided in 1974 between the Greek Cypriot south and a semiautonomous Turkish Cypriot administrative area in the north. In Tur’s work, the (re)creation of these conflicting nations is carried out by tour guides describing abandoned tourist town of Maraş (Turkish)/Varosha (Greek) and its place within the longer narrative of Cyprus from either side of the fraught border. The maintenance of a state is shown to be just as much the work of the stories we tell ourselves and other as of diplomatic negotiations.

Mapmaking as a necessary component of the creation of the visual form of the state as both a material landmass and a discursive category is a prevailing concern of Manuela Ribadeneira. Part of an edition of 40,076,000 (the length of Earth’s circumference), the arbitrariness inherent to her One Meter of the Equator (2007)—which meter of the equator is it? why is this section on display as opposed to any other?—mimics the essential arbitrariness of national borders, such as that which divides Cyprus (the resonances between One Meter of the Equator and Histories of Maraş/Varosha are firmly established by their positioning across from one another in the exhibition space). For the 2005 project Translado, similar one-meter sections were sold as souvenirs to exhibition visitors. This model of dissemination, in which a boundary—usually conceived as the property of the nation as opposed to its people— is brought into public ownership, evinces a spirit of radical democracy at the core of the work.

Nadia Kaabi-Linke’s Tunisian Americans (2012) takes up Tur’s concern with the relation of the individual to the production of national memory and identity. Instead of tour guides, Kaabi-Linke’s persons are American soldiers killed in action in North Africa and buried in the artist’s native Tunisia. They are brought into the space of the exhibition by four-hun-

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David Birkin, Ayatollah from the series ‘Iconographies’, 2013.

C-type print, 103 x 73 cm. © Sumarria Lunn Gallery

red bottles of soil each labeled with the social security number of the soldier from whose grave it was taken. The neat ordering of these bottles in four massive printing-type cases not only mirrors the constitutive national systematization of individuals made possible through systems of personal identification numbers but also alludes to the critical role of the institution and methodology of the archive in ordering and providing authority to a national imaginary.

Overall, the strength of the works in Lieux de Mémoire lies in the fact that they do not reside solely in “places of memory.” Instead, by complicating the relationship between memory and the production of nations, their vibrations can be felt expanding ever-outwards into the sphere of global geopolitics.

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Reviews

Time based media UCL art museum

By Roxanne Blake The artworks on display in this exhibition have been acquired by the museum through the William Coldstream memorial prize for outstanding achievement, which is an annual purchase prize. Artists include Dana Ariel, Tom Chick, Chris Cornish, Marcia Farquhar, Nicolas Feldmeyer, Reynir Hutber, Viveka Marksjo, Julia

“

This exhibition is a great chance to see how digital medium has been embraced in both teaching and artistic practice, and to see the UCL Art Museum’s more recent acquisitions in a wonderfully thought-provoking way.

“

Time based media at the UCL Art Museum is an exhibition that showcases a series of multimedia works by Slade students, from over a 10 year period. The exhibition demonstrates not only how the artists grappled with digital and time-based media in terms of artistic composition, but it also raises ethical and curatorial questions in a broader sense about time based media artwork itself. Time based media is a term used to describe media artwork that relies on the lifespan of the technology it is produced in to exist. In the current technological climate, this issue is an evocative one, particularly in archival terms, as technological mediums are constantly becoming obsolete and revolutionized.

This exhibition showcases the UCL Art Museums time based media collection in a way that really does transform the space of the museum.

Nicolas Feldmeyer ‘ I am unique and so is everyone else’ video still, 2012

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McKinlay, Eleanor Morgan, Nicole Morris, Tessa Power, Marianna Simnett and Georgina Tate. Whilst most of the artworks are video pieces, the multimedia piece ‘A printer’s symphony’ is also an interesting use of digital media, as it combines a digital sound recording of the printing process with a concertina style print book. This piece really does fit into the space well, as the UCL Art Museum was, traditionally, a print room. And yet, although the series of monitors that now line the room seem a slightly strange feature of the space, they are in fact very refreshing.

As well as this, work from artists such as Tessa Power and Nicole Morris and Viveka Marksjo use constructions of space situation in a way that creates a very real dialogue between viewer and artwork; one that makes an emotional reaction unavoidable. This exhibition is a great chance to see how digital medium has been embraced in both teaching and artistic practice, and to see the UCL art museum’s more recent acquisitions in a wonderfully thought-provoking way.

All of the artists deal with illusions and constructions of space, place and dimension in a range of interesting ways. For me, Nicolas Feldmeyer’s beautifully contemplative perceptions of natural and unnatural patterns in ‘My people, humble people’ and ‘I am unique and so is everyone else’ are great examples of the standard of work being produced at the Slade. Feldmeyer’s work looks at the deeper qualities of the quiet and still, in an aesthetically stunning way.

Time-based Media at UCL Art Museum presents work produced between 2004 and 2013 by the following artists: Dana Ariel, Tom Chick, Chris Cornish, Marcia Farquhar, Nicolas Feldmeyer, Reynir Hutber, Viveka Marksjo, Julia McKinlay, Eleanor Morgan, Nicole Morris, Tessa Power, Marianna Simnett and Georgina Tate.

The series of talks and events Time-based Media in Conversation will run alongside the exhibition. It will include a lunch-hour talk by artist Marianna Simnett, winner of the 2013 Coldstream Prize, on February 18 and an evening performance-lecture by artist and recent Slade PhD graduate Kai Syng Tan on February 13.

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“If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast.”

Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast, 1964

Montmartre de Beaubourg

Notre-Dame de Paris du Quai des Grands Augustins

Beaubourg

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Photobook

Quai de la MĂŠgisserie

Conciergerie du Quai des Grands Augustins

Montmartre de Beaubourg

Montmartre de Beaubourg

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Kitty’s Choice St Dunstan’s Hill, London, Greater London, England, EC4 Buried amongst the towering buildings of the financial district of London lies an oasis for the men in suits. Situated in the bombed out medieval church of St Dunstan’s Hill a secret garden provides refuge from the bustling city centre.

After the Blitz of 1941 many of London’s civic centres were left in ruin, however the decision was made not to rebuild St Dunstan’s and instead leave it as a reminder of the war.

In 1971 the building was reopened as a public garden, a stunning and contemplative space in which the polar opposites of human character are represented, destruction and creation. Rambling climbing vines cover the surviving North and South walls and the soft scent of wisteria fills the space when in bloom. If you are in need of somewhere to escape this term then it is the perfect place, and within walking distance of Tate Modern and Borough Market.

Travelling to the Wonderland There is on a month left to see Xu Bing’s stunning installation in the garden of the V&A. The space has been transformed into an ethereal utopia based on the Chinese Fable Tao Hua Yuan. Dotted amongst spindly cherry blossoms and minute shrubbery tiny porcelain villages nestle within the crevices of large rocks, representative of the mountains of China. The John Madejski garden appears to be the exact perfect location for escapism in its current state and is definitely worth visiting before the end of the month.

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Swiss Cottage Library Designed by Sir Basil Spence in 1961 Swiss Cottage Library is the central library of the Borough of Camden. The space is both engaging and comforting, sensitively re-furbished in 2003 the simplistic geometric forms and black and white schematic of 1960s architecture have been retained whilst bringing the building into the electronic age.

Although this January the basement of the building was flooded resulting in temporary closure it is expected to reopen this month. The Library is a well-hidden architectural gem and a wonderful place to visit for work or simply pleasure. 88 Avenue Rd, London NW3 3HA

HART magazine HART magazine ISSUE 4 ISSUE 4

Dear fellow art historians, DearWe’re fellow art historians, starting to think ahead to Issue 3, coming out mid-february!

If you would like to get involved with writing, photography or illusWe’retrations, startingplease to think ahead 4, coming out at the end of term! If e-mail ustoatIssue editors@hartmagazine.net you would like to get involved with writing, photography or illustrations, please e-mail us atall editors@hartmagazine.net We welcome your ideas but here are a few suggestions: We welcome all your ideas for features, reviews, illustrations/photography.

Features

Pick a country/city and take us on a journey of its culture Any recent issue in the Art Market Heart from HART, Pick a period you’re interested in and raise an problematize it Anna & Azmina Profile an artist – either historical or contemporary The Art of Language … or suggest one!

Reviews

Hannah Hoch – Whitechapel Art Gallery Facing the Modern – National Gallery Lieux de Mémoire – Sumarria Lunn Paul Klee – Tate Modern Stanley Spencer – Somerset Body Language – Saatchi Gallery … or suggest one!

Interview

- If you know an artist, interview and profile them - If you want help getting in contact with one, contact us as well!

Profile

- If you have an interesting talent to share with us, music, art…

We’re looking forward to hearing from you,

Heart from HART, Anna & Azmina