Clio Nicastro co-edits book on reenactment in contemporary art

BCB faculty member Clio Nicastro has co-edited a book titled: Over and Over and Over Again, Reenactment Strategies in Contemporary Arts and Theory. The essay collection contains a contribution by Dr. Nicastro as well as Director of German Studies Dr. Ulrike Wagner.

The volume collects work by artists, scholars, curators and museum administrators discussing the role of reenactment in contemporary artistic production and theoretical discourse as a strategy to engage with history and memory. Its contributions discuss the mobilization of archives in the struggle for inclusiveness and cultural revisionism; the role of the body in the presentification and rehabilitation of past events and (impermanent) objects; the question of authenticity and originality in artistic practice, art history, as well as in museum collections and conservation practices.

Dr. Nicastro’s contribution is titled “Unintentional Reenactments,” and speaks about different levels of reenactment in the film Yella directed by Christian Petzold. In her essay “Everyday Aesthetics and the Practice of Historical Reenactment. Revisiting Cavell’s Emerson” Dr. Wagner uses the philosopher Stanley Cavell’s readings of Ralph Waldo Emerson as a starting point to explore Emerson’s engagement with contemporary debates concerning the historical reading of sacred and secular literature such as the Bible, Homer and Shakespeare.

The entire book is available as an open access pdf from the ici Berlin website >>

Post Date: 01-19-2022