Shimon Attie''s Writing on the Wall - History, Memory, Aesthetics

List of contents

Contents: Introduction; Memory and the Scheunenviertel site; The space of forgetfulness; The archival apace; Spaces of exception; Allegory as a threshold space; Mediating signs; The tragic drama of Shimon Attie; Bibliography; Index.

About the author

Dr Peter Muir is a Research Associate with MIRIAD (the Manchester Institute for Research and Innovation in Art and Design): http://www.miriad.mmu.ac.uk/visualculture/locationmemory/ and an Associate Lecturer with the Open University.

Summary

Shimon Attie's Writing on the Wall: History, Memory, Aesthetics theorises images from Attie's 'The Writing on the Wall 1991-1993' installation as a memorial activity, and as an index or habitation for history. The images, which appeared in Berlin's Scheunenviertel district, are suspended by the palimpsestic associations established between the fixated dead of the past and their ghostly appearance in the present. Part of that palimpsest is a collective cultural knowledge of the impending obliteration of community (both the Jewish and non-Jewish citizens of Berlin) by mass-produced death. Peter Muir analyses Attie's work by responding to a series of propositions arising from Walter Benjamin's Thesis 'On the Concept of History.' Shimon Attie's Writing on the Wall: History, Memory, Aesthetics's presiding metaphor is that of loss - the central problem that the book addresses is that of forgetting.

Product details

• Authors: MUIR, Peter Muir, Peter (Professor of Small Animal Orthopaedic Surgery in the School of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Professor of Small Animal Orthopaedic Surgery in the School of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Wisconsin-Madiso Muir, Muir Peter
• Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd.
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 31.03.2017
• EAN: 9781138262256
• ISBN: 978-1-138-26225-6
• No. of pages: 204
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Art > General, dictionaries; Photography & photographs, Theory of art, European History, The arts: general issues, HISTORY / Europe / General, HISTORY / Social History, Social & cultural history, HISTORY / Jewish, ART / Criticism & Theory, PHOTOGRAPHY / General, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Jewish Studies, Jewish Studies, Social and cultural history, Relating to Jewish people and groups, Photography and photographs, Social groups: religious groups and communities, The arts: general topics