Counter-Memorial Aesthetics: Refugee Histories and the Politics of Contemporary Art

Description

Restrictive border protection policies directed toward managing the flow of refugees coming into neoliberal democracies (and out of failing nation-states) are a defining feature of contemporary politics. In this book, Veronica Tello analyses how contemporary artists-such as Tania Bruguera, Isaac Julien, Rosemary Laing, Dinh Q. Le, Dierk Schmidt, Hito Steyerl, Lyndell Brown and Charles Green-negotiate their diverse subject positions while addressing and taking part in the production of images associated with refugee experiences and histories. Tello argues that their practices, which manifest across a range of contexts including Cuba, the United States, Australia and Europe, represent an emergent, global paradigm of contemporary art, 'counter-memorial aesthetics'. Counter-Memorial Aesthetics, Tello argues, is characterized by its conjunction of heterogeneous signifiers and voices of many times and places, generating an experimental, non-teleological approach to the construction of contemporary history, which also takes into account the complex, disorienting spatial affects of globalization. Spanning performance art, experimental 'history painting', aftermath photography and video installation, counter-memorial aesthetics bring to the fore, Tello argues, how contemporary refugee flows and related traumatic events critically challenge and conflict with many existing, tired if not also stubborn notions of national identity, borders, history and memory. Building on the writings of such thinkers as Michel Foucault and Jacques Ranciere, this book offers a useful concept of 'counter-memory' for the twenty-first century. It shows how counter-memorial aesthetics is not only central to the nexus of contemporary art and refugee histories but also how it can offer a way of being critically present with many other, often interrelated, global crises in the contemporary era.

Veronica Tello is Vice-Chancellor's Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the National Institute for Experimental Arts, UNSW Art & Design, University of New South Wales, Australia.

Counter-Memorial Aesthetics is accomplished, moving, fluent and challenging. Tello's command of the pertinent theoretical literature, her sense of the key projects inflecting the potential of hermeneutics to frame the meaning made by and received from a recent tradition of the aesthetic of refugee histories in nations such as Australia, Cuba, the US and the UK, and her keen ability to pinpoint those forms of counter-memory, bare life, and perpetual aftermath immanent, manifest, or implicated in the art projects that provide the structure and thrust for her analysis are all very impressive. This is an inspiring, rigorous, complex and necessary piece of work that makes a real contribution to its fields of inquiry. * Eric Rosenberg, Associate Professor of Art History, Tufts University, USA * Veronica Tello's book constitutes a substantive and original contribution to knowledge within the field of contemporary art history. She takes as her topic a subject central to contemporary experience, and of growing importance within contemporary art: the enforced migration of those who have been displaced from their homes by natural disaster, war, political and ideological struggles, or the impacts of economic globalization, and the complex responses within the polity of advanced societies to such people. Focusing on certain artist's treatments of the latter aspect of the topic, she advances an original argument that these artists are developing what she terms 'counter-memorial aesthetics.' This is an approach that is not only highly relevant to the artistic handling of this particular topic, but is an interesting contribution to what I believe is an emergent paradigm within contemporary art practice and theory more generally. * Terry Smith, Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Contemporary Art History and Theory, University of Pittsburgh, USA * At a time in which the political discourse on migration moves further and further away from humanitarian perspectives, and entrenches itself in ever narrowing forms of nationalist self interest, it is refreshing to see how new visions of global interconnectedness are being launched by artists. Tello's lucid and original book presents a new paradigm for understanding the relationship between refugee histories and contemporary art. It has an interdisciplinary approach and a global scope that will definitely capture attention. * Nikos Papastergiadis is Professor in the School of Culture and Communication, University of Melbourne Australia *