Vito Acconci. Spaces of Play

This article offers an investigation of Vito Acconci’s writings and art from the point of view of play, understood as game and performance. Various examples are analyzed, both literary and artistic (early texts, the emblematic Following Piece, which was one of the earliest examples of performance art, and The American Gift, combining sound and sculpture in a museum space). Acconci strikes a balance between freedom and constraint, playing with existing models according to set protocols in game-like fashion and offering a constantly renewed artistic practice.Cet article explore les écrits et l’art de Vito Acconci sous l’angle de la notion de jeu, au sens ludique et théâtral. Plusieurs exemples sont analysés, choisis parmi ses œuvres littéraires et artistiques (des textes écrits au début de sa carrière ; Following Piece – exemple inaugural de l’art de la performance, ainsi que The American Gift, qui combine son et sculpture dans un contexte muséal). Acconci trouve un équilibre entre liberté et contrainte. Il joue avec des modèles existants selon des protocoles préétablis à la façon d’un jeu et réinvente continuellement sa pratique artistique

Vito Acconci. Spaces of Play

This article offers an investigation of Vito Acconci’s writings and art from the point of view of play, understood as game and performance. Various examples are analyzed, both literary and artistic (early texts, the emblematic Following Piece, which was one of the earliest examples of performance art, and The American Gift, combining sound and sculpture in a museum space). Acconci strikes a balance between freedom and constraint, playing with existing models according to set protocols in game-like fashion and offering a constantly renewed artistic practice.Cet article explore les écrits et l’art de Vito Acconci sous l’angle de la notion de jeu, au sens ludique et théâtral. Plusieurs exemples sont analysés, choisis parmi ses œuvres littéraires et artistiques (des textes écrits au début de sa carrière ; Following Piece – exemple inaugural de l’art de la performance, ainsi que The American Gift, qui combine son et sculpture dans un contexte muséal). Acconci trouve un équilibre entre liberté et contrainte. Il joue avec des modèles existants selon des protocoles préétablis à la façon d’un jeu et réinvente continuellement sa pratique artistique

“How to do words with things”: on Dawn Raffel’s The Secret Life of Objects

　This article offers a reading of contemporary American writer DawnRaffel’s memoir entitled The Secret Life of Objects, published by Jade IbisPress in 2012, focusing on the affective, mnemonic, narrative and symbolicsignificances that it attaches to objects. My reading seeks to embed Raffel’sbook in a larger reflection on the meanings of objects in literature and moregenerally in art, and the ways in which they function as extensions of the selfand connectors between people, generations and time periods. The articledraws on the history of objects in art in order to understand the specificityof Raffel’s approach. Surrealism appears as an important landmark due itspromotion of the banal object to the status of carrier of tremendous symbolicmeaning. Raffel is remotely indebted to the Surrealist celebration of objects,but her focus is on the affective and social dimension that characterizesour relationship with certain objects and on the role the latter play in theconstruction of identity and memory. Personal identities and historiesare seen as intertwined with and inferable from the familiar objects thatsurround us. The object appears as a “psychic mediator” (Tisseron) thatstimulates reminiscence and storytelling. The title of the article (an inversionof Austin’s well-known How to Do Things with Words) captures precisely thisdiscursive and mnemonic potential of objects in Raffel’s text. Raffel invitesus to think about how we can do “words with things,” that is start fromobjects in order to perform a linguistic exploration of memory, temporality,self and intersubjectivity

Imagining the Lagoon in Helen Mayer Harrison and Newton Harrison’s The Lagoon Cycle

This article addresses the representations and practices of space in American artists Helen Mayer Harrison and Newton Harrison’s The Lagoon Cycle, a pioneering multimedia work of environmental art completed between 1972 and 1985, currently in the collection of the Centre Pompidou. The work explores the lagoon as topos that stands in between the concreteness of site and the abstraction of metaphor. The article discusses the genealogies of the artists in relation to their use of site and their inscription in a critical reflection on landscape, it elucidates their use of fieldwork as a cultural practice and it uncovers the performative and conceptual dimensions of the lagoon. The main objective of The Lagoon Cycle is not to successfully restore degradation, even if a lot of speculative energy is channelled towards imagining the technological, economic and pragmatic frameworks that would make it possible. As a conceptual project whose utopian ambitions prevent it from materializing, The Lagoon Cycle asserts the role of art in elaborating an ethics and aesthetics of attention, in reflecting critically on the present and in projecting the future that might result from perpetuating the current situation.Cet article analyse les représentations et les pratiques de l’espace dans l’œuvre The Lagoon Cycle des artistes américains Helen Mayer Harrison et Newton Harrison, œuvre hybride et pionnière de l’art environnemental réalisée entre 1972 et 1985, qui se trouve actuellement dans la collection du Centre Pompidou. Cette œuvre explore le lagon en tant que lieu privilégié qui se situe à l’intersection du site concret et de la métaphore abstraite. L’article se penche sur les généalogies des artistes en ce qui concerne leur usage du site et leur inscription dans une réflexion critique sur la tradition du paysage. Il étudie la manière dont les artistes s’emparent de la pratique culturelle du travail de terrain. Enfin, il explore les dimensions spéculatives et performatives de la représentation du lagon. L’objectif principal du Lagoon Cycle n’est pas de réparer la dégradation, même si beaucoup d’énergie spéculative est dépensée pour imaginer les cadres technologiques, économiques et pragmatiques susceptibles de rendre cet objectif possible. Ce projet conceptuel dont les ambitions utopiques l’empêchent de se réaliser matériellement affirme le rôle de l’art dans l’élaboration d’une éthique et d’une esthétique centrées sur l’attention à l’environnement, dans la réflexion critique au sujet de notre présent et dans la projection de l’avenir qui pourrait attendre l’humanité si la situation actuelle perdure sans aucun changement d’attitude

Larisa Dryansky, Cartophotographies. De l’art conceptuel au Land Art

Larisa Dryansky’s Cartophotographies is an original and ambitious exploration of the intersections between cartography and photography in the period that extends from the 1960s to the beginning of the 1970s. Her analysis focuses on the work of five American artists: Ed Ruscha, Robert Smithson, Dennis Oppenheim, Douglas Huebler, and Mel Bochner. What are the cartophotographies in the title? They refer to artistic practices that combine photographs and maps in a variety of ways: artists taking ..

A tour of Nancy Holt’s ruins: from entropic monuments to system works

This article explores the evolving meaning and nature of ruins in American artist Nancy Holt’s practice. A concern with entropy and monumentality was shared by many American artists of the 1960s and 1970s, but Holt developed an original artistic reflection on ruins and the paradigms that frame their construction and interpretation, moving in directions inspired by ecology, as well as myth and ritual. Discussions of selected works (Ruin View: The Temple of the Sun, 1969; Stone Enclosure. Rock Rings, 1977-1978; and Sky Mound, 1984, unfinished) show distinct approaches over time. Site-specific sculpture and land reclamation consecrate ruins as critical and inspirational objects situated in the landscape that allow Holt to develop artworks with ramified temporalities, committed to the history of the site and aligned with celestial phenomena. Versions of contemporary ruins such as waste are embedded in an ecological approach to reclamation that relies on advanced technology to limit environmental damage and produces “system works” that connect the reclaimed site to larger ecosystems and the cosmos.Cet article explore la nature et la signification changeantes des ruines dans la pratique de l’artiste américaine Nancy Holt. Beaucoup d’artistes américains des années 1960 et 1970 se sont intéressés à l’entropie et aux monuments, mais Holt a élaboré une réflexion originale à ce sujet et a intégré certains paradigmes liés à la construction et à l’interprétation des ruines dans son propre travail, avec un intérêt marqué pour l’écologie, les mythes et les rituels. Plusieurs œuvres aux approches distinctes sont analysées : Ruin View: The Temple of the Sun (1969), Stone Enclosure. Rock Rings (1977-1978) et Sky Mound (1984, projet inachevé). La sculpture ancrée dans le site et les projets de réhabilitation consacrent les ruines en tant qu’objets critiques et porteurs d’inspiration situés dans le paysage, qui permettent à Holt de créer des œuvres aux temporalités multiples, ancrées dans l’histoire du site et alignées aux phénomènes célestes. Des ruines contemporaines telles que les déchets s’insèrent dans une approche écologique de réhabilitation qui utilise des technologies de pointe pour limiter les dégâts sur l’environnement et qui produit des « œuvres systèmes » reliant le site aux écosystèmes et au cosmos

“Proposals for change”: Art, Ecology and Intermediation in Helen Mayer Harrison and Newton Harrison’s The Lagoon Cycle, Breathing Space for the Sava River and Endangered Meadows of Europe

This article discusses intermediation in three artistic projects by American artists Helen Mayer Harrison (1927-2018) and Newton Harrison (1932-2022). Entitled The Lagoon Cycle (1973-1984, based in Sri Lanka and the United States), Breathing Space for the Sava River (1989-1990, in the former Yugoslavia) and Endangered Meadows of Europe (1996, in Bonn), these projects defy commodification and openly assert the well-being of ecosystems and ecological change as their main objectives. How is intermediation achieved from these intellectual positions and in these circumstances? The projects have an exhibition component and a performative component of interaction with the social, academic, administrative, institutional or industrial frameworks that surround them (more or less successful depending on the project). They benefited from collaborations with museum institutions, science laboratories, politicians, decision-makers, associations and ordinary citizens. While capital is a major issue for funding these projects and museums represent significant venues where exhibitions were presented, a larger conversation with many of the actors involved was initiated, including the ecosystem itself, which, through the work and beyond it, becomes an agent of its own further dissemination

Françoise Palleau-Papin, Ceci n’est pas une tragédie. L’écriture de David Markson

Avec Ceci n’est pas une tragédie. L’écriture de David Markson, Françoise Palleau-Papin nous offre la première monographie sur l’auteur, publiée chez ENS Éditions en 2007. Écrivain prolifique et versatile, qui a fait la preuve de sa complexité et de sa capacité à manier des genres divers, à inventer des formes nouvelles (notamment dans ses romans discontinus, qui se nourrissent d’une intertextualité compulsive), Markson méritait une étude de ce genre, ample, méticuleuse, patiente et, surtout, ..

Françoise Palleau-Papin, Ceci n’est pas une tragédie. L’écriture de David Markson

Avec Ceci n’est pas une tragédie. L’écriture de David Markson, Françoise Palleau-Papin nous offre la première monographie sur l’auteur, publiée chez ENS Éditions en 2007. Écrivain prolifique et versatile, qui a fait la preuve de sa complexité et de sa capacité à manier des genres divers, à inventer des formes nouvelles (notamment dans ses romans discontinus, qui se nourrissent d’une intertextualité compulsive), Markson méritait une étude de ce genre, ample, méticuleuse, patiente et, surtout, ..

Tours de Babel et lettres de feu : motifs bibliques dans le Berlin de Vladimir Nabokov

When examining the critical responses to Vladimir Nabokov’s representations of Berlin in his Russian fiction, it is quite surprising to notice that two antithetical positions have been formulated, one which stresses the absence of Berlin as a city in Nabokov’s texts, and a more recent position emphasizing, on the contrary, the substantial presence of the city in terms of references, landmarks and recognizable sites. This article adopts a different stance, focusing on two Old Testament motifs that appear in Nabokov’s last Russian novel (The Gift) and in his autobiography, namely the Tower of Babel and the letters of fire from the book of Daniel. Starting from these motifs involving shop signs, letters and light, I attempt to connect the urban scene of exile with the issue of bilingualism, and to show in what ways Nabokov’s use of these two biblical topoi points to a vision of literary creation as transgression. The problem of Berlin’s existence or non-existence in Nabokov’s work is therefore shifted from the domain of mimetic representation onto a different plane, where the signs of Berlin are closely examined and decoded, thus giving access to a possible understanding of the writer’s change of language and of his larger aesthetic project