The New Aspidistra (3,715 Minutes/1,488.94 Kilometres / 39,680 Calories)
- Submitting institution
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The University of Huddersfield
- Unit of assessment
- 32 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
- Output identifier
- 64
- Type
- T - Other
- DOI
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- Location
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- Brief description of type
- Multi-component: Essay, Exhibitions, Artefact, Performance and Book including Contextual Information
- Open access status
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- Month
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- Year
- 2018
- URL
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- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
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- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
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- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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0
- Research group(s)
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- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- This project explores the work and life of the art theorist, critic and political radical, Carl Einstein (1885 – 1940) through artistic research. Einstein is a conspicuous figure in the cultural and political developments of the early twentieth century. His writings on African sculpture, Cubism and the works of Georges Braque and Paul Klee were marked by the contrary positions they mapped out in relation to contemporary interpretations of these subjects. The contested and unreliable nature of Einstein’s biography, the future orientation of his thought and the turbulence of the period in which he lived, as an archetypal migrant moving constantly across borders, make Einstein’s work and life more relevant now than ever.
The aims of this project were to investigate Carl Einstein’s work through contemporary art production and to explore his biography in relation to the political and cultural conditions of our lived experience of neoliberalism. The objectives were to make contemporary art that investigated Einstein’s notions of Simultaneity and the Hallucinatory, Totality and the S/O (sub/objective) Function. This was achieved through developing a range of artistic research methods. In particular, long distance cycling as a durational performance art, collaborating with specialist fabricators to create artefacts that expand painting practice, and working with artists, writers and critics on an anthology of writing that coproduces auto-fictions and alternative histories.
Through the development of new research methodologies, the project extended the existing work and research in the field of Einstein studies beyond the historicising of Einstein’s contributions, found in Art History and Museum Studies/Curating (e.g. Zeidler, 2015; Quigley, 2007; Haxthausen, 2011) and putting Einstein’s work into political and creative discourses of contemporary art practice.
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
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