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Ludden Lecture 2013: Margaret Iversen

Headshot of Margaret Iversen
April 4, 2013
All Day
Jennings Hall room 0001

Ludden Lecture 2013: Margaret Iversen

"Rubbing, Casting, Making Strange"

 

Lecture Description:

Rubbing and casting are in some respects like photography. We regard these forms of representation as indexical imprints of an individual person or thing, but also as lowly arts of reproduction. They involve a moment of proximity, intimate contact with something, yet they are easily turned into multiples. This double-valence perhaps helps us to characterize the peculiar psychodynamics of these processes. Rubbing and casting involve making a trace of something that is assumed to be transient, connecting them with the anticipation of loss and absence. They are acts of both preservation and multiple reproduction. If they have a psychic mood, then, it must surely be a melancholic acknowledgement of loss and a refusal to mourn, that is, to give up the object. The paper proposes that our interest in these modes of indexical art-making is related to anxieties concerning representation and memory precipitated by digitalization. Artists considered in this context include: Max Ernst, Marcel Duchamp, Jasper Johns, Bruce Nauman, Masao Okabe, Gabriel Orozco, Rachel Whiteread and Anna Barribal

Bio:

Margaret Iversen is Professor in the School of Philosophy and Art History, University of Essex.  She is author of Beyond Pleasure: Freud, Lacan, Barthes and Alois Riegl: Art History and Theory. Recent publications include Chance and Writing Art History (with Stephen Melville).  From 2008-2011, she was Director (with Diarmuid Costello) of a research project, “Aesthetics after Photography.”  She is currently writing a book on photography, trace and trauma. She will be presenting a talk titled Rubbing, Casting, Making Strange.

Event Details and Registration: 

Please note that this will take place on April 4, 2013 at 4:30PM Eastern Standard Time (EST) in 0001 Jennings Hall. 

Reception to follow in 214 Pomerene Hall. 

 

 

 

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