MEDIUMS OF HISTORY

The artistic research project MEDIUMS OF HISTORY aims to create a series of works that match Walter Benjamins dialectical images. Benjamin defined the dialectical image as dialectics at a standstill. Although it is a central category in Benjamins philosophy of history the dialectical image remains conceptually elusive. MEDIUMS OF HISTORY assumes that there are certain imaging procedures, i.e. mediums, that in a literal sense create dialectical images whose complexity is not purely visual but is due to the process of their manufacture. Examples of this are the imprint, the photogram, and other mediums whose imaging is based on direct contact with its object. For Benjamin, the dialectical image alone is genuinely historical. The dialectical images which comprise the MEDIUMS OF HISTORY project aim not to reduce the complexity of history but to reveal and develop this complexity in the medium itself. It is the intention of the project to create a series of works that will evoke in the viewer the same exhilarated excitement the historian feels when s/he comes across an auspicious historical source. The dialectical image is characterized as that wherein what has been comes together in a flash with the now to form a constellation. In his book La ressemblance par contact Georges Didi-Huberman shows, that the same is true also for the impression: the footprint in the sand shows the contact with the foot as well as the loss of this contact and thus forms a constellation of what-has-been (the past moment of contact that has left the imprint) and the present (the impression remains even when the foot is no longer there). If, according to Benjamin, the dialectical image is the object of history and, following Didi- Huberman, the impression is a dialectical image, then it follows that history is essentially a question of the medium. The MEDIUMS OF HISTORY project, as the title itself indicates, identifies the medium instead of the image as the agent for the flash-like constellation of what-has-been and the present and experiments with different mediums to create dialectical or genuinely historical images. It is this attention to the medium that holds the ground-breaking potential for artistic research: the reference of contemporary art to history is usually reduced to a question of the relationship between visuality and history, thus relegating it to a question for Bildwissenschaften or visual studies. The emphasis on the connection between the dialectical image and the mediality, however, opens up a perspective in which the question of the representability of history is not necessarily decided in the visual regime but in the medium. Compared with visuality alone the medium offers more complex forms of relating to reality that art is especially competent to explore.

The works created and presented as part of the artistic research project MEDIUMS OF HISTORY exemplify how abstract concepts such as Walter Benjamin's "dialectical image" can be approached with the means of art. The dialectical image at the heart of Benjamin's philosophy of history is characterized, among other things, by the fact that "the what has been comes together in a flash with the now to form a constellation." In La ressemblance par contact (1997) Georges Didi-Huberman shows that the same is true also for the impression: the footprint in the sand shows the contact with the foot as well as the absence of this contact and thus forms a constellation of "what has been" - the past moment of contact that has left the imprint - and the present - the impression remains even when the foot is no longer there. If, according to Benjamin, the dialectical image is the "object" of history and, following Didi-Huberman, the imprint is a dialectical image, it follows that 'history' is essentially a question of the medium. Accordingly, the project MEDIUMS OF HISTORY experimented with imaging procedures - i.e. mediums - to facilitate correspondences to dialectical images whose complexity is not purely visual but is due to the process of their manufacture. Techniques used included nature printing, photogram, rubbings, or partial fading by ultraviolet light: all procedures based on actual physical contact with the objects depicted. The dialectical images that MEDIUMS OF HISTORY aimed for do not try to reduce the complexity of history, but to reveal and develop this complexity in the respective medium itself. The aim of the works created is to give viewers the same joyful excitement that historians feel when they come across a promising historical source. As the title MEDIUMS OF HISTORY suggests, the project identifies 'the medium' instead of the image as the agent for the encounter between what has been and the present. The potential for artistic research lies in this turn to the medium: instead of narrowing the reference of contemporary art to 'history' to the relationship between visuality and history, the series of works emphasize the connection between the 'dialectical image' and mediality. This opens up a perspective in which the question of the representability of history is not decided solely in the order of visuality, but in the medium. Visual art thus proves its special expertise in the use of various media of "similarity through touch" to produce complex forms of relating to reality beyond the purely visual.