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The Mark of the Work of Art and the Object’s End

16/1/2011

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‘Nobody knows when a painting ends’, remarked Mark Cousins at the Architecture Association recently, in a lecture from his ‘Technology and the First Person Singular’ series. Cousins’ discussion of an object or work of art’s replication, life-span and patina, resonates for the Dead or Dying Objects of the Autopsies Project. You can watch a video of the lecture here. 
Here are a few post-thoughts.  

Cousins begins with a dissection of Walter Benjamin’s oft cited essay, ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,’ to cast doubt on the basic category of reproduction ‘as some sort of tidy order’. The Work of Art, for Benjamin, is a ‘substantive duration’ that exists in and through time, and whose ‘essence’ depends on its authenticity. Any reproduction will fall short of this first instance of ‘aura’. 

How then can the enigmatic category of the ‘aura’ be stabilised as a fixed quantity or quality to be reproduced? Reproduction, Cousins argues - like representation, or reality itself - is a complex process. The reproduced copy depends on the ‘aura’ of the original work of art, but this ‘aura’ is  always absent from the mimetic piece. The copy might possess a different formation of aura, but the patina of the first is not replicable. 

In fact, Cousins cannot remember the correct term, ‘patina’, to describe the phenomenon of object-ageing. This, though, is the word that is on the tip of his tongue - a surface layer of ageing, tarnish, scuff, rust or sheen - that is constitutive of character, of ‘aura’, or ‘authenticity’.

As witnessed in fake antiques or kitsch souvenirs that are made to look old, an object’s patina, equally, cannot be recreated. Mechanically produced objects are not all works of art - though it is possible to have an imitative reproduction of a mass-produced object, when the ‘original’ is a desired design piece, for example. 

An object is a time capsule that carries its own history and embedded information, from production to obsolescence. This information is unique to each object, dependent on its working life, owner treatment and movement through setting, use and possession. The object’s patina tells a singular story - and at Autopsies, this is the story we care about, as we ask when, where and how, does an object end?

Hannah Gregory
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Objects under surveillance

6/1/2011

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Click here for information about our first event of 2011.
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UCL Film Studies event tomorrow

30/11/2010

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We like the poster for the UCL Film Studies* event on 1 December entitled 'Intent to Speed: Cyclical Film Production Topicality and the 1950s Hot Rod Movie'.

6-8pm
Engineering Building, room 1.03, Malet Place, UCL.


*not to be confused with The Film Studies Space, to which the Autopsies group belongs!
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Pier Paolo Pasolini: Poet of the Cinema who Championed the Damned of Rome

20/11/2010

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Forthcoming event

A City Centre Lunchtime Seminar by Ian Thomson, Royal Literary Fund Fellow, UCL.

Ian Thomson is a writer, critic and journalist. His book about Haiti, Bonjour Blanc, was described by the late J.G.Ballard as ‘hair-raising but hugely entertaining’. His subsequent book, Primo Levi: A Life, won the Royal Society of Literature’s W.H.Heinemann Award in 2003. His most recent book, The Dead Yard, is an account of contemporary Jamaica.

1pm Tuesday 14 December 2010
Foster Court 243, UCL.
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Besides the Screen International Seminar

2/11/2010

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The Autopsies Group Work of Film project is interested in this international seminar on 'all modes of cinema that are not film.'

See this website for more information about the forthcoming Besides the Screen International Seminar held at Goldsmiths, University of London, on 20-21 November 2010, and for details of how to register.



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Joint symposium at Goldsmiths, University of London

1/11/2010

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See here for information about the forthcoming joint symposium at Goldsmiths, University of London on 27-28 November 2010. Prof. Beatriz Colomina will give the key-note address on 'Multi-screen architecture' at the first event, organised by the Goldsmiths Leverhulme Media Research Centre.





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Architecture and Comics

20/10/2010

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If you are in Paris, head to the Cité de l'architecture et du patrimoine at the Palais de Chaillot (métro Trocadéro) to see this exhibition. 'Archi & BD, la ville dessinée' examines the fascinating relationships between architecture and comic strips from the beginning of the twentieth century to today.

The exhibition runs until 28 November 2010.

For more information, see the Cité de l'architecture et du patrimoine website (in English) and the exhibition blog (in French).

While we're on the topic of drawing the city, have a look at the blog of Autopsies group member Hannah Gregory, which features a recent entry on Books and Buildings.


Jacob Paskins


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The Disintegration Loops

7/9/2010

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William Basinski, experimental composer from New York City, explores through sound the reverberations of memory and the nature of time. 

His work, ‘The Disintegration Loops’, paid serendipitous homage to the demise of physical tape when in 2005 he set about re-recording some analogue tape loops he had produced twenty years earlier. As the melodies were transferred from analogue to digital, he realised that the tape itself was disintegrating. As the iron oxide particles turned to dust, they dropped onto the tape machine, chipping away tiny sonorous sections from the sweeping pastoral soundscapes contained therein. By the end of each piece, the tape’s body had been stripped to a clear plastic skeleton. 

Basinski continued to record the sound of this decay to produce six meandering loops of haunting sound. Each loop begins brightly, warmly, before becoming a muddled melody, fading into fragmented distortion, static, or quiet. Some of the loops decline within fifteen minutes, whilst others fade for more than an hour. The loops play like accidental improvisation, irregular sound patterns created by the decline of matter over time. 

The story goes that he finished his re-recording in September 2001, at the time that the Twin Towers came down. From his Brooklyn rooftop, he watched the smoke of downtown Manhattan whilst listening to his played back loops, hearing and viewing the ruins of both sound and space. 

The demise of the tape loops marks the beginning of a new musical document, while the notes themselves, scattered and divided by the simultaneous processes of physical ageing and technological renewal, produce an ethereal haze in which personal memories might also be effaced. Silence is engraved where symphony once was. 

Though his ‘Disintegration Loops’ embody an analogue death, there remains something eternal about the sound of their heaving last breaths. 

 
Hannah Gregory
Autopsies Group Participant, London Consortium 2010-11

Read more on 'The Disintegration Loops' here.
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The end of the road

3/9/2010

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These photographs, taken in August 2010 in Paris, show a row of buildings awaiting demolition. Until recently, these provided accommodation for housing, a hotel, shops and workshops. The empty shops and the almost entirely abandoned apartments will soon be bulldozed to make way for a large new structure.

The project to redevelop the buildings between numbers 1 and 9 rue Bichat and 43-45b rue du Faubourg du Temple in the 10th arrondissement of Paris has been planned for some time. The council of the 10th arrondissement approved the project on 9 May 2006.  

Presenting a technical report to the council, Sylvie Scherer described the buildings proposed for demolition as of 'mediocre quality'. Some of the buildings already had been condemned dangerous. Cracks were visible in floor boards and on ceilings and the wooden structure was judged fragile and full of woodworm. Inhabitants of the buildings also risked lead poisoning, according to the technical report.

The council proposed to demolish the existing buildings and build a new structure to house 80 subsidised flats, a creche, gardens and an underground garage. Space would also be allocated for the insulation of shops on rue Bichat. The council approved unanimously the project, which had projected cost of 21,228,000 euros in 2006. [1]

The development was due to begin in 2008 and be completed in 2010, but the process has taken somewhat longer than originally planned. Most of the tenants of the existing apartments and shops only moved out in July 2010, and demolition work had not commenced in September 2010.

The likely demolition of the rue Bichat buildings led a Paris history blog to place the area on its list of urban heritage in danger. The blog believes the Bichat buildings represent an important part of nineteenth-century working class history, and that the building at 45 rue du Faubourg du Temple dates from the eighteenth century.

Judging by the recent exodus of tenants from the buildings, it seems the preservationists' pleas to preserve the area have fallen on deaf ears. In my view, the real problem is not the demolition of the crumbling buildings but the fact local businesses have been forced to move out of the area. The restaurants and cafes in rue Bichat were bustling centres of the community, and the little shops provided specialist services to locals. The artisanal shops offered knowledge to their customers that is almost impossible to find in large chain stores. At a time when ironmongers, electrical bazars and shoe repairers are vanishing from our streets, it seems unlikely that any of these local businesses will return to the area, even if new premises are provided for them several years down the line in the redevelopment.
 
Jacob Paskins


[1] Mairie du 10e arrondissement, Compte rendu du conseil d'arrondissement en date du 9 mai 2006, pp. 16-18.
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Reflections on a dead object

13/8/2010

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The Lucas 45D Distributor Rotor Arm (c. 1960)
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Image above: Rover 100 (1960)

Modernity has brought with it cars which can reasonably be expected to start and stop upon demand and can be owned and operated by the non-mechanically minded. One of the developments which made this possible was the widespread introduction in the 1970s of electronic ignition which now provides the ‘spark’ to internal combustion engines in all modern cars. Prior to this, engines were fired by a ‘distributor’, which was the means of routing high-voltage from the ignition to the sparking-plugs in the right firing order.

At the heart of the distributor is the ‘dead-object’ which has focused my attention this month: the Lucas 45D Distributor Rotor Arm [see image below]. It is a small cylindrical moulding about the size of a wine-cork and made of plastic and brass. During the 1960s, a rotor arm could be obtained new for about 5 shillings (25 pence). They are now available from specialist dealers to owners of old cars for £5 to £10. Although technically obsolescent, this tiny component is essential to keep an old car running.
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The manufacturer of the rotor arm was the Lucas Electrical Company, founded by Joseph Lucas in Birmingham in 1872, the same year that the petrol engine was first patented and a decade or more before the introduction of the first motor-car. In spite of its dominant market-share for over a century in electrical components for motor vehicles, the Lucas company had a poor reputation for the reliability of their light bulbs and other electrical car accessories. For this reason, the company was known among British motorists as ‘The Prince of Darkness’ and spawned a host of rueful jokes among customers about the dependability of their products. (Sample: ‘Lucas, the inventor of the intermittent windscreen wiper’).

‘My’ dead-object (the Lucas 45D rotor arm) qualified incontrovertibly as deceased on a recent visit to France in my 1960 Rover 100. It failed on a country road not far from Alençon as dusk was falling one Sunday evening last month. In Lucas tradition, the rotor arm gave no hint of impending failure. It just stopped sending current to the sparking-plugs and the engine died instantly. Trying to trace the fault was vexing and unproductive as night fell and dinner in Bayeux looked increasingly unlikely. It is now that the Deus ex machina intervenes. A French registered Jaguar E-Type Coupé c. 1964 pulled up beside our stricken Rover. The owner transpired to be British and, within minutes, had not only diagnosed the fault but produced from his tool-kit a spare 1960s Lucas 45D rotor arm which was fitted and fired the engine into life immediately. As I write this, it still seems to me to be a very improbable story that a fifty-year old obsolete British electrical component should find its way to a roadside in rural France on a Sunday evening at the precise moment that it was needed.

All of this set me thinking about the role played by Jaguar E-Types in films. They are invariably driven by heroes who save situations or put wrongs to right. Cool operators including Sean Connery in Thunderball (1965) and Michael Caine in The Italian Job (1969) drive E-Types. The car makes an appearance in The Big Sleep (1978), The Odessa File (1974) as well as featuring in contemporary episodes of The Saint and The Avengers TV series. An E-type Jaguar is also one of the stars of Just Jaecken’s Emmanuelle (1974). [Source: Internet Movie Cars Database]

Rover 100 cars play a very different role, often as background vehicles in street-scenes to evoke the 1960s period, as in Quadrophenia (1979) where ‘Sting’, who plays a bell-boy at a Brighton hotel, unloads luggage from a Rover 100 driven by a dapper hotel guest [see IMCDb]. The Rover represents professional, middle-class, well-heeled middle Britain in the 1960s [see Rover P4 videos] and was driven typically by doctors, solicitors and bank managers [1]  It epitomised a set of values and a way of life which may be said to have disappeared in the years following the events of May 1968 in Paris and their international repercussions. Film appearances include The League of Gentlemen (1959) and The Spy who came in from the Cold (1965) as well as providing the authentic period back-drop for recent films (An Education, 2009) and for the TV series Agatha Christie’s Marple.

So there they were by the side of a French country road. The E-Type Jaguar driven by the hero who solved all our problems and vanished into the night, and the Rover 100, with its stately image and erratic British electrics. And deep in the heart of the broken-down Rover was a dead-object: a Lucas 45D rotor arm manufactured in Birmingham England 50 years ago by ‘The Prince of Darkness’.


Simon Rothon
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