“Contemporary art is often obsessed with the new, but it has recently begun to turn to projects centering on research and delving into archives, all in the name of seeking and questioning historical truth. From filmmakers to sculptors to conceptualists, artists of all stripes are digging into the rubble of the past. In this catalog that accompanies an exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago in the fall of 2013, Dieter Roelstraete gathers a diverse range of international artists to explore the theme of melding archival and experiential modes of storytelling – what he calls “the archaeological imaginary” – particularly in the wake of 9/11. The Way of the Shovel offers a well-constructed balance among excursions into the situation of contemporary art, broad philosophical arguments around the subjects of history and the archive, and cultural analysis. Roelstraete’s opening essay maps the critical terrain, while Ian Alden Russell explores the roots of archaeology and its manifestations in twentieth-century art, Bill Brown examines artistic practices that involve historical artifacts and archival material, Sophie Berrebi offers a critique of the “document” as seen in art after the 1960s, and Diedrich Diederichsen writes on the monumentalization of history in European art. The book features work by both established and young artists, and thoughtful entries by Roelstraete accompany the exhibition catalog, along with statements from artists Moyra Davey, Rebecca Keller, Joachim Koester, Hito Steyerl, and Zin Taylor. The first exhibition to showcase this innovative approach to some of the most intriguing art of the past decade, The Way of the Shovel is indispensable for anyone seeking to understand the forces driving contemporary art.”
By walking the ancient landscape of Britain and following the wheel of the year, we can reconnect to our shared folklore, to the seasons and to nature. Let this hauntological gazetteer guide you through our enchanted places and strange seasonal rituals. SPRING- Watch the equinox sunrise light up the floating capstone of Pentre Ifan and connect with the Cailleach at the shrine of Tigh nam Bodach in the remote Highlands. SUMMER- Feel the resonance of ancient raves and rituals in the stone circles of southwest England’s Stanton Drew, Avebury and the Hurlers. AUTUMN- Bring in the harvest with the old gods at Coldrum Long Barrow, and brave the ghosts on misty Blakeney Point. WINTER- Make merry at the Chepstow wassail, and listen out for the sunken church bells of the lost medieval city of Dunwich. The first book by iconic zine creators and cultural phenomenon Weird Walk. This is a superbly designed guide to Britain’s strange and ancient places, to standing stones and pagan rituals, and to the process of re-enchantment via weird walking.
In the seventeenth century antiquarianism was a well-respected profession and antiquarian works were in demand, particularly amongst the gentry, who were especially interested in establishing lineage and the descent of land tenure. Although intended primarily as a source of information about who owned what and where, they often contained fascinating descriptions of the English landscape. Charles Lancaster has examined the town and county surveys of this period and selected the most interesting examples to illustrate the variety and richness of these depictions. Organised by region, he has provided detailed introductions to each excerpt. Including such writers as John Stow, William Dugdale, Elias Ashmole, Daniel Defoe, Gilbert White and Celia Fiennes, this is a book that will appeal to anyone with an interest in both national and local history and to lovers of English scenery.
“Britain in the early eighteenth century: an introduction that is both informative and imaginative, reliable and entertaining. To the tradition of travel writing Daniel Defoe brings a lifetime’s experience as a businessman, soldier, economic journalist and spy, and his Tour (1724-6) is an invaluable source of social and economic history. But this book is far more than a beautifully written guide to Britain just before the industrial revolution, for Defoe possessed a wild, inventive streak that endows his work with astonishing energy and tension, and the Tour is his deeply imaginative response to a brave new economic world. By employing his skills as a chronicler, a polemicist and a creative writer keenly sensitive to the depredations of time, Defoe more than achieves his aim of rendering ‘the present state’ of Britain.”
“Dedicated to the Unknown Artists 1972–6 consists of fourteen panels containing over three hundred original postcards depicting waves crashing onto shores around Britain. A large map annotated with each of the locations featured in the postcards is included in the first panel. The remaining panels have been subjected to what the artist has described as her ‘methodical-methodological approach’ (quoted in ‘Second Sight’ 2007, accessed 14 June 2018) and are organised into grids of postcards and tabulated details such as location, caption, legend, in vertical or horizontal format. Accompanying these panels are two additional components: a copy of a postcard-sized artist’s book and a dossier with supporting material, in which the artist describes herself as a curator presenting an exhibition of these overlooked cultural artefacts.
In 1977 Hiller discussed the work in the following way:
Dedicated to the Unknown Artists was designed as an exhibition piece with myself in the role of curator, collaborating with/extending the work of the unknown artists who created the Rough Sea ‘set’ of postcards. The ‘coincidental’ pairings of alternative descriptive languages – verbal and visual – are sustained as levels of presentation throughout the piece. While the charts may look like models of objectivity and the visual images like expressions of subjective internalizations, they lead to a series of paradoxes involving the unexpressed but intended vs. the expressed but unintended. (Quoted in Tate Britain 2011, p.76.)
The work illustrates Hiller’s interest in the subject of memory and memorials. The title identifies the work as a tribute to the overlooked and forgotten artists who painted, photographed or hand-tinted the numerous seaside images in the postcards she collected. By making such commonplace objects the subject of a dedicated and extensive presentation, Hiller gives new status to the mundane and provides the viewer with a familiar access point from which to engage with the work. Dedicated to the Unknown Artists has also been described as a work about invisibility (see ‘Second Sight’ 2007, accessed 14 June 2018). The group of postcards only came to exist as a ‘set’ by the artist’s act of collecting them, and the visual correspondences that the collection highlights would have been previously unseen.
Hiller’s choice of sublime or picturesque seaside motifs – with their subtext of romantic desire, the soul in turmoil, and a longing for nature – contrasts with a strict conceptual methodology. Coloured images in particular were generally excluded from contemporaneous conceptual artworks, and yet for this work Hiller opted to make the genre of popular colour postcards of the British seaside her prime focus. However, the grid formation, the serial presentation and the typed labelling all recall the language of conceptualism. Writer Brian Dillon has noted: ‘That Hiller effected a study of the invisible precisely by exhibiting objects of such ravishing (and also kitsch) visual texture is surely exactly what made the work, at the time, such a scandal for adherents of an austerely linguistic Conceptualism.’ (Brian Dillon in Tate Britain 2011, p.52.)”
Further reading Susan Hiller, exhibition catalogue, Tate Liverpool 1996, reproduced pp.12–13. Susan Hiller, exhibition catalogue, Tate Britain, London 2011, reproduced pp.52–5. ‘Second Sight’, Frieze, no.109, September 2007, https://frieze.com/article/second-sight-1, accessed 14 June 2018.
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