Gedisciplineerd kijken

Vergelijkende beeldanalyse als epistemologisch gefundeerd alternatief (‘historisch formalisme’) voor zowel de traditionele kunstgeschiedenis als de postmoderne cultural en visual culture studiesKijken is voor alle wetenschappers die visuele artefacten uit de geschiedenis onderzoeken – fotografie, schilderijen, film, architectuurtekeningen, prenten en reclame – een eerste vereiste. Maar om te weten wat men ziet moet men beschikken over begrippen om gelijktijdig en gelijksoortig beeldmateriaal te kunnen vergelijken. Gedisciplineerd kijken vraagt dan ook om reflectie ten aanzien van het kunst- historisch taalgebruik: de woorden en de concepten die men gebruikt om beeldmateriaal te benoemen en te beschrijven doen er toe. Zonder kennis van de woorden en hun samenhang in historische teksten kan er geen kunsthistorische analyse van schilderijen plaatsvinden. De schilderijen zijn immers temidden van bepaalde opvattingen over kunst ontstaan. Hoe men de status van de kunstenaar aanduidt (in termen van ingenium of in termen van psychologische zelfexpressie), of men de imitatio van een schilderij vermakelijk noemt vanwege het vermogen lelijkheid en schoonheid weer te geven of vanwege de ideale schoonheid die het oproept, hoe over schilderen wordt gedacht, als een handwerk of een ars (waartoe naast een leerbaar systeem, ook aanleg en oefening behoort), dan wel als een systeem van academische schoonheidsidealen of als het product van een maatschappelijke voorhoede die per definitie culturele grenzen overschrijdt – dat alles is historisch gedateerd

Welsprekende waarschijnlijkheden

Epistemological analysis of the Dutch debate on documentary, concerning the documentary film FORD TRANSIT (2002) by the Dutch-Palestine director Hany Abu-Assad"Documentary in Dispute: A Reconsideration of Premises" In 2002 the VPRO, a critical Dutch cultural television channel sponsored the documentary Ford Transit made by the Dutch-Palestine director Hany Abu-Assad. The documentary, focusing on the white vans, originally Israeli, now used in Palestine areas as taxis, turned out to be partly based on a script, with (professional) actors in stead of social actors and with invented Israeli shooting. The fierce, but unclear debate that followed spoke in terms of truth or fake and was devoted to the question whether this film might be called a documentary or not. Academics and journalists on the one hand claimed that only social actors made a film a documentary. On the other hand directors confessed that they often artificially remade/ invented a situation for the benefit of the documentary. Be it the artificially produced smoke instead of morning mist on the meadow (Jos de Putter), be it the singer André Hazes who bought the birthday present for his wife twice (John Appel), be it that the director waited for the ‘right’ gesture of a social actor (Pirjo Honkasalo). Meanwhile, the VPRO has detached itself from Ford Transit. Up till now the documentary is sparsely shown, and if so with a reminder in advance that it is not a documentary. Perhaps ‘capturing the truth’ is – in terms of ‘recording the real’, ‘realism’, ‘non-fiction’, ‘social actor ’- not the right way to think about documentaries. Documentary as well as feature film have access to the same artificial cinematographic techniques and both are ‘manipulative’ and ‘fictitious’, although in different ways. Whereas feature film has been accepted as ‘dreamlike fiction’, the acceptance of documentary is based on the strong belief in the indexical bond between ‘reality’ and ‘film’, independent of the various aesthetic modalities. ‘Truth’ in documentaries, then, has to do with knowledge about the historical world we share, and the persuasive way in which the specific view is presented. Understanding ‘documentary truth’ in terms of ‘knowledge’, ‘rhetoric’ and ‘representation’ may be a more fruitful way in differentiate between documentaries that present a moral reassurance, confirming - in word and image - existing opinions, and documentaries that offer an ethical discourse, with discursive and visual arguments, ‘new facts’ and ‘fresh (re)interpretations’ that can be debated and criticized. Claims of ‘documentary truth’ in general invite to investigate the nature of the presented knowledge and the ethical boundaries of documentaries. What knowledge is offered by ‘(poetical) registrations of the harsh reality’ that won humanitarian awards, such as Checkpoint (Joris Ivens Award 2003) or The 3 Rooms of Melancholia (Amnesty International-DOEN Award 2004) in comparison with documentaries of Michael Moore (Oscar, Palme d’Or)? What is the role of intense emotion in (dis)approval documentaries by the (modern, Western) public? This given the fact that rage is often evoked by formal (‘rhetoric’, ‘lying’) features that are in fact applicable to all documentaries, and that approval is evoked by content (showing for instance severe circumstances in which an individual or groups of people live) with which people identify with compassion. In short, documentary as ‘Film for thought’ (IDFA 2004) urges for a clear frame of thinking

Feministiese kunst bestaat niet

Epistemologische analyse van de verschillende kunstbegrippen die in Nederland zijn gehanteerd in de (feministische)kunstkritiek.Analyse van de kunstbegrippen die gehanteerd zijn in de Nederlandse tentoonstelling Feministische Kunst Internationaal (1978-1979) en in de kritieken op de tentoonstelling zoals verschenen in kunst-, dag- en weekbladen aan de hand van de marxistische kritiek van Nicos Hadjinicolaou op de kunstgeschiedenis

From Goya to Afghanistan. An essay on the ratio and ethics of medical war pictures

For centuries pictures of the dead and wounded have been part and parcel of war communications. Often the intentions were clear, ranging from medical instructions to anti-war protests. The public's response could coincide with or diverge from the publisher's intention. Following the invention of photography in the nineteenth century, and the subsequent claim of realism, the veracity of medical war images became more complex. Analysing and understanding such photographs have become an ethical obligation with democratic implications. We performed a multidisciplinary analysis of War Surgery (2008), a book containing harsh, full-colour photographs of mutilated soldiers from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Our analysis shows that, within the medical context, this book is a major step forward in medical war communication and documentation. In the military context the book can be conceived as an attempt to put matters right given the enormous sacrifice some individuals have suffered. For the public, the relationship between the 'reality' and 'truth' of such photographs is ambiguous, because only looking at the photographs without reading the medical context is limiting. If the observer is not familiar with medical practice, it is difficult for him to fully assess, signify and acknowledge the value and relevance of this book. We therefore assert the importance of the role of professionals and those in the humanities in particular in educating the public and initiating debate. © 2010 Taylor & Francis

"Women's rights, the European Court and Supranational Constitutionalism"

This analysis examines supranational constitutionalism in the European Union. In particular, the study focuses on the role of the European Court of Justice in the creation of women’s rights. I examine the interaction between the Court and member state governments in legal integration, and also the integral role that women’s advocates – both individual activists and groups – have played in the development of EU social provisions. The findings suggest that this litigation dynamic can have the effect of fueling the integration process by creating new rights that may empower social actors and EU organizations, with the ultimate effect of diminishing member state government control over the scope and direction of EU law. This study focuses specifically on gender equality law, yet provides a general framework for examining the case law in subsequent legal domains, with the purpose of providing a more nuanced understanding of supranational governance and constitutionalism

'They’ve Got Their Wine Bars, We’ve Got Our Pubs’: Housing, diversity and community in two south London neighbourhoods

This chapter explores how housing policies and the nature of housing stock have conditioned residential geographies and diversity patterns in two south London neighbourhoods, Bermondsey and Camberwell. The key drivers are policy changes to social housing allocation and the post-industrial reconfiguration of urban space expressed in processes of gentrification and the redevelopment of riverside docklands into expensive housing units. These developments have challenged existing narratives of community, but they have also shifted the focus of analytical enquiry towards emerging us-them divides based on class and generation. Within the context of diversity and social cohesion, both neighbourhoods are characterized by a comparatively unproblematic day-to-day muddling along with difference, but also a generally declining level of civic engagement and neighbourhood cohesion, expressed by a sense of ‘living together apart

The complete 1/N expansion of colored tensor models in arbitrary dimension

In this paper we generalize the results of [1,2] and derive the full 1/N expansion of colored tensor models in arbitrary dimensions. We detail the expansion for the independent identically distributed model and the topological Boulatov Ooguri model