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Editorial

Nostalgia for 1968 and political commitment

Jean-Marc Poinsot
Traduction de Simon Pleasance
p. 11-13
Cet article est une traduction de :
Nostalgie de 1968 et engagement

Texte intégral

  • 1 Kramer-Mallordy, Antje. “The Art Critics’ Month of May: a matter of perspective”, in this issue p.  (...)
  • 2 Read “Histories of Language”, p. 149-157
  • 3 Read “Italian Art in Two Political Decades”, p. 167-173

1When she refers to France’s publishing output dealing with May ’68, Antje Kramer-Mallordy laments the fact that the lion’s share has gone to posters and photographs, instead of “re-situating events in a much wider chronology and geography”1. Her analysis has been shared by our editorial committees in formulating their choices for the contents of this issue around larger periods than simply the year 1968, and in the selection of politically committed publications. The heading “Revisiting History” takes care of this gap with the choice made for example by Mica Gherghescu of three publications covering the postwar years up until 1968, to do with poetry, primitivism, and de-colonization;2 that made by Jacopo Galimberti about the 1960s and 1970s around Fabio Mauri, Arte povera as seen by Ileana Sonnabend, and the choices of Gianfranco Baruchello, Pier Paolo Pasolini and Giosetta Fioroni, albeit unfamiliar to Parisians, even though she lived in their city3. The stuff of a shift from fascism to the far left in a period of great creativity.

  • 4 “Curating Activism: Art, Politics and Exhibitions (In, Around, and Beyond Institutions)”, p. 17-29
  • 5 Read “Defining a Space for New Art Genealogies – North-African and Middle-Eastern Modernities and C (...)
  • 6 Read “The Self in the Age of Design. From Human Enhancement to Machine Learning: Towards the End of (...)

2Juan Albarrán Diego4 has focused his attention on curatorial activism and the objects and methods within its action in the art space (Maura Reilly) governed by the production of exhibitions based on ‘area studies’ (women artists, African-American art, LGBTQ art…), and the fight against racism. He stresses the effort to transform the DNA of institutions associated with representative politics, without forgetting the street, the Internet and the social networks which have led to the formulation of the concept of activism (art+activism). In his article “The Use of Photography as a Mode of Social and Historical Investigation” (p. 45-55), Joerg Bader dwells on the reconstruction of memory with Akram Zaatari, the denunciation of ‘fake news’ by Wolfgang Tillmans, and the display of amnesia produced by the mass media in a book brimming with essays and pictures by Ludovic Balland about the election of Donald Trump. Emilie Goudal focuses on the complexity of forms of modernity and their memory in North Africa and the Middle East in a time of violent acts against heritages, in a noteworthy summation around the massive anthology of MoMA5. Tania Vladova, for her part, constructs an alternative to the disappearance of the Enlightenment under the effect of Artificial Intelligence in design, based on the watchword of the Istanbul Biennial, “Design is always human design!” and the form of freedom proposed by Foucauldian self-concern6. Her originality has to do with summoning a history of dance in the 1990s and a critical archival power. As for the portrait of an engaged figure, this is quite rightly devoted to Okwui Enwezor. In this selection of writings, two gems deserve a special mention: the translation of an excerpt from the unpublished thesis (2003) of Isabelle Graw about the women artists presented by Sophie Cras, and the very fine essay by Lilian Froger about Californian design, which does not overlook what this design owes to its exchanges with Mexico.

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Notes

1 Kramer-Mallordy, Antje. “The Art Critics’ Month of May: a matter of perspective”, in this issue p. 179

2 Read “Histories of Language”, p. 149-157

3 Read “Italian Art in Two Political Decades”, p. 167-173

4 “Curating Activism: Art, Politics and Exhibitions (In, Around, and Beyond Institutions)”, p. 17-29

5 Read “Defining a Space for New Art Genealogies – North-African and Middle-Eastern Modernities and Critical Legacies”, p. 57-69

6 Read “The Self in the Age of Design. From Human Enhancement to Machine Learning: Towards the End of the Enlightenment?”, p. 71-81

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Référence papier

Jean-Marc Poinsot, « Nostalgia for 1968 and political commitment », Critique d’art, 51 | 2018, 11-13.

Référence électronique

Jean-Marc Poinsot, « Nostalgia for 1968 and political commitment », Critique d’art [En ligne], 51 | Automne/hiver, mis en ligne le 27 novembre 2019, consulté le 29 mars 2024. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/critiquedart/37348 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/critiquedart.37348

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Jean-Marc Poinsot

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