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Dialogic Materialism

Bakhtin, Embodiment and Moving Image Art

by Miriam Jordan-Haladyn (Author)
©2014 Monographs XII, 144 Pages
Series: American University Studies, Volume 215

Summary

Dialogic Materialism: Bakhtin, Embodiment and Moving Image Art argues for the relevance of Mikhail Bakhtin’s theories of dialogism as a means of examining the interdisciplinary nature of contemporary moving image art forms. The volume comprises six chapters divided into two sections. The first section, Part I, illustrates the key concepts in Bakhtin’s multifaceted dialogism and develops these ideas in relation to moving image art. The main focus of this first part is the proposal of what the author terms dialogic materialism, which builds upon the Marxism inherent in Bakhtin, examining the material processes of cultural exchange with a particular emphasis on multi-perspective subjective relations. Part II consists of case studies that apply dialogic materialism to the moving image artwork of three artists: Stan Douglas, Jamelie Hassan and Chris Marker. Applying Bakhtinian theory to the field of the visual arts provides a means of examining the fundamentally dialogic nature of moving image art making and viewing, a perspective that is not fully developed within the existing literature.

Table Of Contents

  • Cover
  • Title
  • Copyright
  • About the author(s)/editor(s)
  • About the book
  • This eBook can be cited
  • Contents
  • List of Illustrations
  • Acknowledgments
  • Introduction Bakhtin and Moving Image Art
  • Bakhtin, Art and the Plastic Body
  • The Plastic Body as a Living Material Screen
  • Bakhtin and Moving Image Art
  • PART I
  • Chapter 1: Dialogism and Its Material Context
  • Artistic Speech and Its Embodied Forms
  • The Body Takes on Flesh
  • Inner and Outer Dialogue
  • Chapter 2: Dialogic Materialism: Artist – Artwork – Observer
  • Dialogic Bridge between World and Experiential Self
  • The Sensible Materiality of Inner and Outer Speech
  • Dialectical or Dialogical Materialism?
  • PART II
  • Chapter 3: Given and Created: Stan Douglas Subject To A Different Response
  • The Aesthetic Object and the Givens of Speech
  • The mise-en-scène of Difference
  • Material Performance of Plastic Speech
  • Chapter 4: Chronotopic Bodies and the We of Aesthetic Discourse: Jamelie Hassan’s Films and Videos
  • Drawing the Lines of Our Chronotopic Bodies
  • The Semantics of Material Discourse
  • Speech and the Material World
  • The Plastic Bodies of Aesthetic Culture
  • Chapter 5: Polyphonic Screens: Chris Marker and Embodied Memory
  • The Body and the Amorphous Construction of Memory
  • The Observer as a Polyphonic Screen
  • A Multitude of Bodies
  • Form as a Field of Living Possibility
  • Conclusion Dialogic Materialism: Aesthetic Language and Its Multi-medial Forms
  • Endnotes
  • Bibliography
  • Filmography

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List of Illustrations

1. Stan Douglas, Overture, 1986; installation view in Witte de With, Rotterdam; © 2013 Stan Douglas, Courtesy Stan Douglas Studio, Vancouver, British Columbia

2. Stan Douglas, Der Sandmann, 1995; installation view in Künstlerhaus Wien, Vienna; © 2013 Stan Douglas, Courtesy Stan Douglas Studio, Vancouver, British Columbia

3. Stan Douglas, Subject to a Film: Marnie, 1989; installation view in Minima Media: Mediabiennale, Leipzig; © 2013 Stan Douglas, Courtesy Stan Douglas Studio, Vancouver, British Columbia

4. Stan Douglas, Subject to a Film: Marnie, 1989; still of Marnie re-entering empty office; © 2013 Stan Douglas, Courtesy Stan Douglas Studio, Vancouver, British Columbia

5. Jamelie Hassan, Olives for Peace, 2003; still of Marwa’s hands holding olives; © 2013 Jamelie Hassan, London, Ontario

6. Jamelie Hassan, The Well, 2001; installation view in Museum of Health Care, Kingston; © 2013 Jamelie Hassan, London, Ontario

7. Jamelie Hassan, Boutros al Armenian / Mediterranean Modern, 1997; installation view in 2381 Windermere, Windsor; © 2013 Jamelie Hassan, London, Ontario

8. Jamelie Hassan, Boutros al Armenian / Mediterranean Modern, 1997; still of painted ceiling by Boutros; © 2013 Jamelie Hassan, London, Ontario ← ix | x →

9. Jamelie Hassan, Mom, youre gonna blow it, 1990; still of Aly Aly Hassan, artisan in Cairo; © 2013 Jamelie Hassan, London, Ontario

10. Chris Marker, Owls At Noon Prelude: The Hollow Men, 2005; installation view in Peter Blum Gallery; © 2013 Chris Marker, Courtesy Peter Blum Gallery, New York

11. Chris Marker, Owls At Noon Prelude: The Hollow Men, 2005; still of T.S. Eliot quote; © 2013 Chris Marker, Courtesy Peter Blum Gallery, New York

12. Chris Marker, Owls At Noon Prelude: The Hollow Men, 2005; still of face; © 2013 Chris Marker, Courtesy Peter Blum Gallery, New York

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Acknowledgements

I wish to express my gratitude to my colleagues, friends and family for their support and encouragement during this project.

This book began as a dissertation in the Department of Visual Arts at the University of Western Ontario. I am grateful for the critical feedback and guidance given to me by my doctoral committee: Christine Sprengler, Janelle Blankenship and David Merritt. As my supervisor, Christine was particularly generous with her commentary and erudite advice. In addition, I would like to thank Margaret DeRosia and Susan Schuppli for their early support of my work, as well as Elizabeth Legge, Chris Gittings and Joy James for their invaluable advice. For their help in opening up the world of Bakhtin to me I thank Michael E. Gardiner, Clive Thomson, Anthony Wall and Mireya Folch-Serra.

I am indebted to Ron Benner for his meticulous reading of and moving response to my work. I cannot express the depths of my gratitude to Jamelie Hassan for allowing me access to her work and for being such a wonderful friend. The same is true for Janice Gurney and Andy Patton, with whom I had endless conversations and challenging discussions on art and dialogue that directly shaped my approach in this book. My profound gratitude for the continual support and encouragement of key individuals in my life: my father-in-law Andy, my mother-in-law Susan, my sister Kim, Donovan, Maureen, Madeline Lennon and Louise Hull.

Throughout the process of publishing this book I have benifited from the assistence and support of a number of individuals. I thank my editor Heidi Burns for believing in this project, as well as the many people at Peter Lang who helped me with my manuscript. For allowing me to reproduce images of their work, I am extremely grateful to Stan Douglas and Stan Douglas Studio, most notably Linda Chinfen, as well as Jamelie Hassan. Peter Blum Gallery provided images for Chris Marker, and I thank in particular David Blum for making this possible. Finally, I would like to thank Christine Van Assche and Alain Dubillot at the Centre Pompidou.

I am deeply grateful to my partner Julian for his endless support, love and encouragement, his willingness to read and comment on my manuscript. Without Julian this project would not have been possible and I thank him from the depths of my heart.

A version of chapter 4 previously appeared in my co-authored book with Julian Haladyn The Films and Videos of Jamelie Hassan (London: Blue Medium Press, 2010).

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Introduction

Details

Pages
XII, 144
Year
2014
ISBN (PDF)
9781453912270
ISBN (ePUB)
9781454197348
ISBN (MOBI)
9781454197331
ISBN (Hardcover)
9781433124457
DOI
10.3726/978-1-4539-1227-0
Language
English
Publication date
2014 (August)
Keywords
dialogism Marxism cultural exchange
Published
New York, Bern, Berlin, Bruxelles, Frankfurt am Main, Oxford, Wien, 2014. 145 pp., num. ill.

Biographical notes

Miriam Jordan-Haladyn (Author)

Miriam Jordan-Haladyn is a First Nations writer and artist. She received her PhD in art and visual culture from The University of Western Ontario and is currently a SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellow in the History of Art and Visual Studies Department at Cornell University. Her writings on art, film and culture have appeared in numerous publications, including the collections Visual Representations of Native Americans: Transnational Contexts and Perspectives (2012), Cultivating Canada: Reconciliation through the Lens of Cultural Diversity (2011) and Stanley Kubrick: Essays on His Films and Legacy (2007). With Julian Haladyn she co-authored The Films and Videos of Jamelie Hassan, a publication that accompanied their curated project that brings together for the first time the moving image works of Hassan, a prominent Canadian artist of Arabic background.

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