Counter-Memory, Heterochronia, and “History Painting” (After Géricault): Dierk Schmidt’s SIEV-X—On a Case of Intensified Refugee Politics

Authors

  • Veronica Tello University of New South Wales, Australia University of Technology, Sydney

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.5195/contemp.2014.106

Keywords:

history painting, counter-memory, heterochronia, Dierk Schmidt, refugees

Abstract

This essay examines the disruption of linear time in experimental forms of “history painting” as represented by Dierk Schmidt’s SIEV-X—On a Case of Intensified Refugee Politics (2001-2005). It analyses how the aesthetics of heterochronoia—multiple temporalities—play a crucial role in the development of a new understanding of the politics of “history painting.” As Schmidt’s work reveals, a radical conception of history exists outside the “singular moment,” and in dialogue with heterogenous visual cultures (news media, art history, advertising). In attempting to understand the import of Schmidt’s work, this essay considers his methodologies for creating a heterochronous mode of history painting, particularly his anachronistic engagement with the work of Theodore Géricault and the iconic history painting, The Raft of the Medusa. Unlike previous critical responses to Schmidt’s work, this paper argues that (after Géricault) the artist’s use of investigative “journalistic” methodologies for SIEV-X—On a Case of Intensified Refugee Politics do not generate an aesthetics of exposé but rather an aesthetics of “fictionalization.” This aesthetic is defined by the recalibration of documentary and speculative data as a means to reconceive the landscape of the perceptual. The findings of this research demonstrate that the use of disparate fragments—or data—to visualize otherwise diminishing historical events underpins contemporary history painting’s capacity for advancing a distinct economy of affect that circumvents the limitations of the news media and its “monopoly on reality.”

Author Biography

Veronica Tello, University of New South Wales, Australia University of Technology, Sydney

Veronica Tello is Adjunct Associate Lecturer at the National Institute for Experimental Arts, University of New South Wales, Australia and Visiting Fellow at the Transforming Cultures Research Centre, University of Technology, Sydney. Her current research, funded by the Australia Council for the Arts, focuses on experimental forms of memorialization and historiography in contemporary art, with a focus on experiences of migration and exile. She is currently developing a book on this topic entitled, Counter-Memorial Aesthetics: Contemporary Art and Refugee Histories.

 

Downloads

Published

2014-06-05

How to Cite

Tello, V. (2014). Counter-Memory, Heterochronia, and “History Painting” (After Géricault): Dierk Schmidt’s SIEV-X—On a Case of Intensified Refugee Politics. Contemporaneity: Historical Presence in Visual Culture, 3, 21–37. https://doi.org/10.5195/contemp.2014.106

Issue

Section

Articles