Leah Modigliani

Whether theorized as a puncture in one’s emotional life, as a mediation compelling or protecting from empathic response, as an indexical trace, or as manifestation of ideological construct, photographs are most often understood as evocative markers of the past; evidence of lost loves or labors. However, as Kaja Silverman has recently reminded us, photographs also present viewers with an image they can relate to now, an image analogous to our own condition. In this paper Leah Modigliani discusses her process of using historic photographs and texts as raw material for new creative works that engage new audiences in critical discourses about history and politics.

Friends, permit me to say that I believe you are mistaken. True, there is
no actual disorder to your way of life; but it has entered deeply into other
men’s minds. See what is preparing itself amongst the working classes,
who, I grant, are not yet breaking down your doors. No doubt they are
not disturbed by social passions, properly so called, to the same extent
that they have been; but can you not see that their passions, instead of
social, have become political?3 Do you not see that they are gradually
forming opinions and ideas that are destined not only to upset this or
that law, ministry, or even form of government, but society itself, until the
foundations upon which it rests today crumble into sand, ready to be mixed
anew into structures you cannot even imagine, yet alone fund?4 Are you not
able to hear what they say to themselves each day because of the plethora
of voices always on the horizon, none seemingly more immanent than the
next, each one canceling out what the other seems to say?

The Snake and the Falcon is an adapted version of Emma Goldman’s 1933 speech ‘AnAnarchist Looks at Life’, edited to conform to contemporary parlance and inclusive of contemporary political references. Goldman’s message of believing in a freedom unencumbered by dogma and financial servitude remains relevant nearly eighty-five years later and inspires anew. A work of personal reflection and political quotation, this new text cannot easily be characterised as art or scholarship, but nonetheless exists
as labour in the present and begs for continuity with such labours of the past. Readers are challenged to imagine whether they, as artists and intellectuals, are the snake or the falcon in the twenty-first century parable suggested by Goldman’s ongoing speech act, itself an appropriation of Gorky’s poetics. If the snake represents an acceptance of the
world as-is, and the falcon is the image of a risky and idealistic drive towards a better future, the text asks: What work does our collective labour perform? What work does criticism do? What can art be?

Rather than being idiosyncratic local memories, the Vancouver occupations of 1971 proved to be actions connecting the past to the present in salient ways. Urban landscape is emerging as the central visual imagery of global contemporary politics, as youth, savvy to the existing ideological connections between land and power, attempt to take the landscape back in political protest over global austerity measures. Vancouver artists have become known for mining local history for the subjects of their artworks for many decades, so it's not surprising to find representations of the "politics of urban conflict" in their work. When artists associated with vanguard art production use strategies of political reenactment in the construction of their artworks, they raise questions about whether or not these works have the potential to generate political agency in their viewers.

In the many papers and presentations given by a range of artists and historians over three days, the already referenced "centre vs. periphery" debate proved as resilient as ever, as did historians' continued interest in conceptual artists' use of networking and mapping. More relevant to this essay, however, was the notable self-conscious awareness of a younger generation of art historians that their subjects - the artists themselves, who are now in their late sixties and early seventies - were there in the audience to hear themselves spoken about, and if necessary, to offer an alternative version to those being proffered by their junior peers. That the latter was a subtext of the whole event is evident in the abstract of a talk given by artist Paul Woodrow, which addressed the ethical stakes of "getting things 'right'": "Writing about the past becomes an aesthetic of the impossible since representation inevitably fails to represent those who were present in the past." Woodrow went on to characterize his recollections of his participation in the 70s art scene of Calgary as those based on faulty memories and a privileged and biased point of view - recollections that thereby contribute to what he called "the creation of a fiction."

Book Abstract:

Through analyses of public artworks that have taken the form of blockades and barricades since the 1990s, this book theorises artists’ responses to global inequities as cultural manifestations of counter-revanchism in diverse urban centres.

This book is the first to analyse artworks as forms of counter-revanchism in the context of the rise of the global city. How do artists channel the global spatial conflicts of the 21st century through their behaviours, actions, and constructions in and on the actually existing conditions of the street? What does it mean for artists—the very symbol of freedom of personal expression—to shut down space? To refuse entry? To block others’ passage? The late critical geographer Neil Smith’s influential writing on the revanchist city is used as a theoretical frame for understanding how contemporary artists engender the public sphere through their work in public urban spaces. Each chapter is a case study that analyses artworks that have taken the form of walls and barricades in China, USA, UK, Ukraine, and Mexico. In doing so, the author draws upon diverse fields including art history, geography, philosophy, political science, theatre studies, and urban studies to situate the art in a broader context of the humanities with the aim of modelling interdisciplinary research grounded in an ethics of solidarity with global social justice work. Collectively these case studies reveal how artists’ local responses to urban revanchism since the end of the Cold War are productive reorientations of social relations and harbingers of worlds to come.

By using plain language and avoiding excessive academic jargon, the book is accessible to a wide variety of readers. It will appeal to scholars and graduate students in the fields of studio art, modern and contemporary art history, performance studies, visual culture, and visual studies; especially in relation to those interested in conceptual practices, performance art, site-specificity, public art, political activism, and socially engaged art. Cultural geographers and urban theorists interested in the social and political ramifications of temporary and everyday urbanism will also find the analysis of artworks relevant to their own studies.

Introduction from Counter Revanchist Art in the Global City
Walls, Blockades, and Barricades as Repertoires of Creative Action (Routledge, 2024). 9781032195117

Book Abstract: Through analyses of public artworks that have taken the form of blockades and barricades since the 1990s, this book theorises artists’ responses to global inequities as cultural manifestations of counter-revanchism in diverse urban centres.

This book is the first to analyse artworks as forms of counter-revanchism in the context of the rise of the global city. How do artists channel the global spatial conflicts of the 21st century through their behaviours, actions, and constructions in and on the actually existing conditions of the street? What does it mean for artists—the very symbol of freedom of personal expression—to shut down space? To refuse entry? To block others’ passage? The late critical geographer Neil Smith’s influential writing on the revanchist city is used as a theoretical frame for understanding how contemporary artists engender the public sphere through their work in public urban spaces. Each chapter is a case study that analyses artworks that have taken the form of walls and barricades in China, USA, UK, Ukraine, and Mexico. In doing so, the author draws upon diverse fields including art history, geography, philosophy, political science, theatre studies, and urban studies to situate the art in a broader context of the humanities with the aim of modelling interdisciplinary research grounded in an ethics of solidarity with global social justice work. Collectively these case studies reveal how artists’ local responses to urban revanchism since the end of the Cold War are productive reorientations of social relations and harbingers of worlds to come.

By using plain language and avoiding excessive academic jargon, the book is accessible to a wide variety of readers. It will appeal to scholars and graduate students in the fields of studio art, modern and contemporary art history, performance studies, visual culture, and visual studies; especially in relation to those interested in conceptual practices, performance art, site-specificity, public art, political activism, and socially engaged art. Cultural geographers and urban theorists interested in the social and political ramifications of temporary and everyday urbanism will also find the analysis of artworks relevant to their own studies.

Engendering an avant-garde is the first book to comprehensively examine the origins of Vancouver photo-conceptualism in its regional context between 1968 and 1990. Employing discourse analysis of texts written by and about artists, feminist critique and settler-colonial theory, the book discusses the historical transition from artists' creation of 'defeatured landscapes' between 1968-71 to their cinematographic photographs of the late 1970s and the backlash against such work by other artists in the late 1980s. It is the first study to provide a structural account for why the group remains all-male. It accomplishes this by demonstrating that the importation of a European discourse of avant-garde activity, which assumed masculine social privilege and public activity, effectively excluded women artists from membership.

Note: Introduction only