17.1.11

On archival 'fever'

"Can its underlying cause be expediently diagnosed as a generic effect of globalization, as anxiety over theses on “the end of history” (from Alexander Kojève to Francis Fukuyama), or the failure of utopian paradigms and loss of faith in western notions of historical causality and progress? For art historians and critics, this is a deeply paradoxical state of affairs because the unraveling of historical paradigms, especially those beholden to a teleological, revolutionary temporal logic, suggests we should no longer put our faith in future retrospective viewpoints or judgments. However, we have yet to invent satisfying critical-historical alternatives to looking forward or looking back as we live in the present. A heightened historical, sense of self-reflexivity, in the spirit of the sort found in the work of Mona Vătămanu and Florin Tudor, is indispensable."

More of Vivian Rehberg's crisp essay in Jeu de Paume's Le Magazine this month.