ON THE CONTINGENCY OF MODERNITY AND ‘THE PERSISTENCE OF CANONS MONICA AMOR, Here it becomrer evident ha the fallmark ef the new ype of researches not the ee for the*all encompassing whole” norte eye fer tie"comprohensinecontexs” pnien med czrey has chimed or se bute the apscky tobe at home in marginal domains, Wiles Banari "Rigorous Stay of Ar While theoretical proposals critical of blind belief in the uamediated referen- tialty of historical discourse arc iatrinsic to the modern—one has only to think of Walter Benjamin's contempt for tradition, for the kind of historical tradition that tupefies the past throuigh 2 corrosive order, an approach that he countered with a practice of violent decontestualization and deadly interpretation’ — contemporancity has gone blithely further, deploying @ relentless attack on the ideological categories of history and its grand recits? In thisattempt to map the spasmodic terrain of history, solid ground hes been left behind, For ert histor scal discourse this has meant a degree of unpredictability, a methodological freedom somehow lacking in the social sciences. This situation might allow us to dismiss comfortable identities—regional categori , for example—s orga~ nizing matrixes. It mightenable us toattempt an understanding of neighboring smodernit acsthetic redefinition. Canonical histories of postwar art have systematically privileged Minimal- jsmas the most radical break with the conventions of modemist sculpture and. ss mediated by artists’ common interests and by artistic strategies of,previous art in general But recent research on the parallel occurrence of experiments with space, industrial materials, and the reductionist morpholo- gies of geometry by artists in the United States, Europe, and the rest of the ‘Americas constitutes a long overdue reexamination of the complex artistic landscape of the sixties, aseismic terrain that is not limited to the SoHo seene, New York, Moreover in what is an explicit effort to expand a twentieth-century art canon curcently limited to the experimental practices of Europe and the United States, the use of comparative methodologies willing to breach genera. tional and cultural gaps might prove to bea di an enterprise that does not rely on an empirical model dependent on evidence ‘nd accumulated information, but that instead operates om the basis of nu anced historical intersections, malleable subjective configurations, and dls persed anil sometimes misunderstood legacies. Why not, for example, lok at cult but rewarding tack This is the work of German-Venezuelan artist Gego in tandem with that of American FBva Hesse, both of whom were Jewish women émigrés in the Americas, natives of Hamburg, who reinterpreted modernist seulpture’s legacy of drawing in space while experimenting with and diverting from the prominent sculptural positions oftheir male counterparts: the Kineticists and the Manimalists respec tively. Any such example, Mira Schendel (Switzerland/ ‘and Lygia Clark (Brazil A work such as Gego’s Reticuldrea, an environment made of tr avestigation would also include the work of other artists, for il), Hanne Darboven (Germany), ngular meshes and nets of metal, created in 19¢9 for a sinall room at the Museo de Bellas Artes de Caracas, generates enriching and astonishing associations when placed in dialogue with Eva Hesce's canonical Right Ajter alo from 1969, Along, ‘with later, more compact installations ofthe seventies, the Keticuldrea exploited the mutational potential of sculpture (a medium both Gego and Hesse con- tesied from within) 0 explore space as it becomes body and vice versa, a transformation mediated not by the fictitious ideality of geo artistic language of the time), but by the in ship had already been explored by Gego in her drawings: in these, a sort of scriptural nothing ing form, and vice versa. Ifin her spatial practice Gego undermined geometti- cal exactitude, architectural spa ‘ural space and its associations with volume, in her drawings she layered lines ry (the current srminacy of line. This relation 13s, alincar abyss, pointed to the possibility of line becom- e and its associations with enclosure, sculp- in indefinite configurations that resembled a nonsensical language of graphic traces and marks while bypassing line's capacity of definition, In the work of both artists, i is reliance on line (on drawing first, then on. seal space later) that on them the operative element that alle 1. Gego, The Reveiraa |r Photograph by Paolo isa Venezia. to undo media speci toward the literalist ar for anticompositionsl rials such as papier-m sixties work, It paralic work. Although muct was ako a German € within a well-stablish ‘AS with Gego, the doxical capacity to or its freedom and its p Hesse with the perfectUl occurrence of tionist morpholo- ad the rest of the complex artisic othe Sole scene, twentieth-century Europe and the to breach genera~ ring task. This is ident on evidence Uhe basis of nu rations, and dis- example, look at thet of American Americas natives oy of drawing in vinent sculptaral inimalists respec other artists, for ven (Germany), de of triangular at the Museo de sseciations when from1s6e, Along culdrea exploited and Hesse con- ad vice versa. a ctr (the current This lation- these, a sort of yrofline becom- nied geometr- ndosure, sculp- the hyered lines uage of graphic ag first, then on atallowed them LiGega Toe Rees (bien, 1989. lesalaton view, Museo de Blis Arte, Caracas, Proto agh by Polo Gasper, Courtesy ofthe author andthe Gego Foundation, Cares, Venezia to undo media specificity, specifically that of sculpture. Hesse’: defiant articude toward the literalist and rigid geometric structuces of Minimalism, @ penchant foranticompositional all-overness, and a delight in the use of malleable maze- tals euch as papier-maché, latex, and fiberglass, is present in her mid- to late sixties work. It parallels the linear and geometric reversals operative in Gego's work. Although much younger than her South American counterpart, Hesse vwas also a German émigré negotiating her position 2s cultural producer within a well-established, mostly male artistic scene. ‘As with Gogo, the line—with its multiple topelogical possibilities, its para~ doxical capacity to order and derange, its mechanical and organic associations, its frcedom and its potential to embody opposites—seems to have provided Hesse with the perfect tool to disturb the conventional supports of painting andsculpture Later, bothartists used it to disturb the smooth geometries privileged bby somany astists atthe tim, From drawings to eliefsand then to suspended or placed objects, the transition from line into space was clear. By 1970 art critic Gindy Nemser would characterize Hess's work 2s “fallen from the edge.* Indeed, there is no bette evidence that Hesse and her work had already “allen from the edge” than Right fier, 1969, and its subsequent “ugly” twin, Untied, 2970. Although dated 1969, Right After, made ofllong wiees of fiber saturated in resinandsuspenéed fromhooks éistributedacross theceiling, had been banging an Hesse’ studio for some time, unfinished due to illness. Hesse complained that in coming back to it aftr a year she felt that the piece needed moze work. That wat a mistake, she wrote, because it was, the piece “was very, vory simple and very extreme because it looked like a really bie nothing which was one of the ‘things that | so much wanted to be able to achieve"” This nothingness, to which she sspired, and later deserved as “non forms, noa shapes, aon planned,” seems to have heen Hoste’: way out of the stractaral rigidity and geometric command overa world of objects that characterized the work of her Minimalist peers and sculptural representation in general Buin Hse’ work, asin Gego' ‘heoutcome was not an oppositional one buts marginal, peripheral relationship to the monamen‘alty and centrality ofstructure. In both artists’ works, speci cally in Reticuldrea and Right After, we see consiruction being replaced by accumulation, layering, and manipulation. This amounts to @ working method thot implies a kind of bodily abandonment that stands as the Other of the rational darityof the mind, an aspect that both artists did not so much reject as, complicate. At the heart ofthese investigations there was an implicic critique of the separation of mind and body advocated by the gsstaltie concorns of Mini snalism and the optical illusions of Kinetic art. In some recent writing on the history of contemporary art, the comparative ‘model—a slippery web in contrast to the structured columas with which we normally associate binary systems and dialectical models—has been contem. plated by even the most Eurocontric art historians (the result usuelly trauma- tizes the canon from within). In 2000 Benjamin H. D. Buchloh found himself struggling with the comparative method when applied to the wosk of artists who, when they arrived in Paris in 1949, shared only a generational proximity Discussing the pictorial practices of Simon Hantal and lacques de la Villeglé, Buchloh admits that “we might have to propose a thied context, a more nar- rowly focused, more dchistericized one” in order to attempt, in a historico structural way, to flesh out the morphologies, histories, and parameters shared by the two artists. Buchloh’s response to the comparative conundrum, one that lead him to dismiss formalist analysis and “the mechanistic principle of ideol- Gogo, The Rees Protogrsph by Paolo Gaga Venezies.axtries privileged Mosuspended or By 1970 art critic Gum the edge.” sd already “fallen twin, U ‘ber saturated in adbeen hanging complained thet more work. That very simple and a was one of the agness, to which non planned, y and geometric ofher Minimalist ork, asin Gego's, reral relationship works, specifi- sing replaced by working method he Other of the so much reject as ppiicit eritique of ancerns of Mini- the comparative swith which we as been contem- usually trauma- bh fourd himedlf « work of artists ‘ional proximity. es de fa Villegie, cat, more nar: Gage The Reilrea (Amber, 1959 sean view: Miree de Bas Arts. Caracas ‘Photngrarh by Pablo Gaspari, Courses ofthe author andthe Gego Foundation, Cars, Verena > ina histarico- rameters shared drum, one that, sinciple of ideal-ogy critique” is indicative of the difficulties the art historian faces when con- capital, collection fronting the historical asymmetries and structusal/formal parallels that cannot the myth of abje beaccommodated by institutions, such as the museum, and disciplines art history, that have historically been driven by the nationalistic urges. A differ- ent methodology “would yet have to be elaborated,” writes Buchloh, “[one] in suchas discipline while lemmas isto em) implies that, fol which the structure of the historical experience and the structure of aesthetic standards involv production could be recognized within ses of complex analogies that are nei ther mechanistically determined nor conceived of as arbitrarily autonomous, ' but that req aking The apparently ithe specificity of understanding the multiple mediations place within each artistic proposition and its historical context” Two years late might encounter postcolonial can ;, Carol Armstrong would suggest another ground for com- parison by affiliating the photography of Tina Modotti, an ltalian-American ing possibilities + perpetuate hierat anda peripheral ‘The possbilit remote. Nor i it émigré working in Mexica in the 19205, to that of American Francesca Wood- rman, made while she was living in Rome in the late 970s, A generational gap and an almost insurmountable geographic distance separated the photographic strands develop i: vated by and exp ion and discours was Edward Weston’s model and lover. To Armstrong, the affinities of both photographic enterprises—in their subject matter, their formal and compoxi- tional straicgics, their metaphorical displacement of the image, and their evoca- tion of the material and the physical~“might flow from the cultural position- works and artis thatallow foray lished, produced models to be d ing and prychological constitution of the femal= subject.” Unconcerned with the essentialist charge that her feminist undertaking might provoke, Arm- strong, by aligning her project with that of French philosopher Luce Irigaray, underlined the subversiveness of feminism in its refusal to “uiterly sever culeure opaque mechani: conventions, nat from biology” and thus comply with the linguistic and philosophical litical agendas) tt cegories of Western logocentrism,* ‘But diffidence, in conventional art historical discourse, toward a compara tive, dialogical approach—one that attempis to bridge different moernities, to ks belonging to different cul- tural, generational, and netional contexts, even when an aesthetic proposition on, operation arbitrary nature trigger responsibl positions that are The persist in North Ameri: and Brazil—bout (which, seeking Greenberg. and p geometric abstr sculpruce taking biennials and gal | production ofboth women ¢ was mitigated somewhat by the fact that Modo | | bring together cinonical and noncanonical wor calls for such an approach—is not uncommon, Dislodging the North-versus- South axishas proven one of the most difficult tasks as it breaks.an institutional ‘taboo at best and might be seen asan unworthy enterprise at worst: An 2 1995 essay, art historian Keith Moxey tackles some of the real issues at stake in the discussion of canonical orthodoxy. He reminds us unat syllabi are organized and classes taught around figures considered key or major in the history of art; the majority of publications and exhibitions are dedicated to a small group of artists, styles, and movements, tradition is rarely challenged; notions of quality are never discuseds the role of nationélism (or chauvinism), artist will make it David Hopkins’‘aes when con- les that cannot ciplnes, such as ongor A dior :hloh, “one! in ue of aesthetic ies that are nei ly autonomous, ditions taking -wund for com- alian-American ancesca Wood- caerational gap sephotographic uctthat Modo Tities of both {and composi- tndtheir evoca- ltura position- concerned with, provoke, Arm- Lace Irigaray, ‘y sever culture hical categories da compar mmodernities, to » diferent cule sic proposition North-versus- sn institutional ve real isues at that syllabi are «major in the dedicated toa ely challenged + chowvinism), ite, collections, and museums in the formation of canons is ignored and the myth of objectivity is tacitly fostered by the empirical foundations of the 1/8 solution to these di iscipline while personal agendas are repressed. Mos Temmas is to embrace o rsativiet and contingent notion of cultaral value that implies that, following the poststracturalist gambit of social construct, “the andards involved in making. ...judgments [of artistic merit] differ according to the attitudes and interests of different historical groups and individuals.” ‘The apparently benign but in my view disastrous result is that “[students] might encounter a Marxist canon, a feminist canon, a gay and lesbian canon, 2 postcolonial canon, and so forth." This could indicate 1 them the ever chang ing possiblities ofthe canon, at Moxey hopes, but it could also reinforce and perpetuate hierarchical relations between a canonical (or mainstream) canon, and « peripheral (or substandard) canon, ‘The possibilty of conceiving an art history without canons is, of course, remote. Nor is it nccescarily useful 1 just i the case that some intellectual strands develop in tandem with epochal events, tha artistic strategies re inno- vated by and ecperimented with, in certain works, that paradigms of produc tion and discourses of interes to the ert historian are developed by both specific works and artists, providing compulsory but contingent frames of references that allow for ¢ synchronic analysis of a historical topic. Canons are also estab lished, produced, and institutionalized by artists, cither because they become models to be defied, to b ‘opaque mechanisms (imposed by taste, professional allegiances, institutional , social habits, cultural assumptions, and po- litical agendas) that arrest the expansion and mutation or displacement of the if we consider its rather emulated, or to be challenged from within, Bat the conventions, nationalistic feeling canon, operations that should come naturally to aubitrary nature—these should be conftonted and not silenced; they should trigger responsible discussions about value jadgment and the specificity of the positions shat are taken, “The persistence of canons has perpetusted a history of contemporary art— in North America, Europe, and even in Western peripheries such as Slovenia, and Brozil—bound, on the one hand, by the seminal status of Minimalism (which, seeking 2 tabula rasa, raged against the conservatism of Clement Greenberg and painteriy abstraction, denying any connections to historical geometric abstraction and overlooking all other experiments with geometric sculpture taking place inthe rst of the world) and, on the other, by a circuit of biennials and gallery exhibitions thet determine which African or Mexican artist will make t into the next survey book of contemporary art. A recent text David Hopkins’ Art after Modern Art, includes examples of both celebratedNigerian artist Yinka Shonibare and Mexican Gabriel Orozco. Unfortanately, however, in this text Gabriel los mysteriously reincarnated backward in time to ‘become an impartant Mexican muralist from the 19308" If the most current canon is at least bent by market forces, even our meat recent histories of art resist the variables that could cnrich our view of pest innovations and aesthetic structural interfaces—here T am referring to works that cannot be excluded on the basis of “(a transferring ofthe locus of interest] to more form or structural features," nor on the basis of stylist cal discrepancies. License to draw parallels between mainstream and marginal and techni- works of art ie rarely granted in art history. [fw want to look for disciplinary antecedents, at least in theory, the obvious frame of reference has been gener- ated by comparative literature, which, since its constitution as a diveipline, has been typified by the displaccancat of centers to the margins by its antinational ist sance, and by the vagaries of (cultural and literal) translation. Emily Apter has revently given us her account of the origins of global trans- lario in comparative literature by surveying the pedagogical practices and di asporic experiences of Leo Spitzer, a German-Jewish literary scholar in Turkish, exile during the thirties. Under the sway of the Turkish Republics modernizing agenda, which forthrightly opened its university posts 10 Jewish scholars, German-based philology transformed itself perforce, by confronting Istanbul as a locus between tradition and innovation, Paster and Western cultares, local and international intellectaal agendas, “into a global discipline that came to be known as comparative literature when it assumed its institutional foot hold in postwar humanities departments in the United States”? In Spitzer's isrespect (in his seminars and publicstions) for “narrowly constructed Bast- West dichotomies,” in his deference toward Turkish as a language worthy of philological inquiry, and in his insistence (in his texts) on maintaining the ‘opacity of the original (untranslated) citation, Apter sees an “explicit desire to isturbs monolingual complacency acknowledge what she calls the “pulse-quickening thrill of dangerous Tiai- ‘sons. Risking the integrity of the literary/artistic sign, with its implied em- bodiment of a (usually nationalistic) zeitgeist, comparisons generate anxicty while retrieving the enriching vulnerability of the textiobject. It is no wonder that exile, diaspora, and migrancy (of people, ideas, and objects) have become willingness to confront foreignness and privileged loci to think tcansnational jastapositions that espose the repressed counternarratives of cultural history.© Compsrative methodologies strive to- ward an unavoidable lack, the impossible presence of the siga, that, never seeking tobe all-encompassing but, on the contrary, 10 be topical structural, tropological, and morphological, Indeed, the analysis of conceptually central but geographicall prone co glitches tional teleology ol ‘This Hine of think ‘that context fas thing we make, s comparison with itates morpholog boundaries thet | ambitions, idcal, Recent attempi the ight of mores 6 not particular! begin from the « incomplete. tis: ation is, nits critics working w ical foundation fe bby German socio ‘iqne of European Old-Europeart h ‘antimetaphysical © tional principles? ‘contingent and ¢ J order to argue th Jogical operation thingelse. Ye ch hes been lefUnfortunately, ward in time to even our most tr view of past tring to works cus of interest] ticand techni ‘and marginal ot disciplinary as been gener discipline, has santinational- global rane ices and di- larin Turkish modernizing, ‘sh scholars, ting Istanbul rm cultures, ine that came tional foot- In Spitzer's ructed Fast worthy of | taining the ict desire to Sgnness and agerous liai- implied cm- rate anxiety rnp wonder ave become ve repressed 2s stive t0- that, never structural, ally central but geographically displaced practices dispenses with totaling systems and is one to glitches and gaps that underline the unending possiblities and fe- tional teleology of narratives, including those bound to the politics of academia ‘This line of thinking calls attention, as Nommian Bryson has donc, to the faet that coatex: has ne “legidlatve force” ie not naturally given, since it is some- thing we make, something we might not be able ta recover, and that pales in comparison with the persistent materiality ofthe works. This disposition facil~ tates morphological, structural, and topical interfaces across geographical boundaries that take into account the radiating structure of modernity, its ambitions, deals, and permeable systems. Recent attempts to retrieve the work of noncanonical actists such as Gego, in te ight of more visible and legible aesthetic practices such a8 Postminimalism, do not particularly aspire to produce center-periphery reversal. Instead, they begin from the conceit that modernity itself is inherently discontinuous and incomplete Its ao coincidence that this project of recovery and recontextual ization ig, n ts early sages, usually undertaken by younger art historians and critics working within the interstices of instirutional permissibilty. A theoret- jaa foundation for an open-ended conception of modernity bas been offered by German sociologist Niklas Luhmann. He has elaborated systematic cri~ tique of European transcendentalism (or, in Hans Herbert Kégle’s words, “of ‘Old European’ habits of thought")” in terms of system theory’ which, in its antimetaphysical and antitranscedentalis stance, opposes “natural laws,” “ra~ tional principles” and “indisputable facts,” instead presenting modernity as a contingent and changeable structure whose characteristics vary in time. In order to argue the latter, Luhmann introduces the activity of observation as a logical operation of modernity that enacts distinctions that are contingent rather than necessary and which oblige theobs tion and vot the other, thereby creating form from the making of distinction as such. This theory of observation was inspired by G. Spencer Brown, whose ‘work on the calculus of form, published as Laws of Fortin 1969, developed the idea that to drew a distinction is to mark space, to establish and cross the boundary between a marked and an unmarked state. Most important, systems theory is further predicated on second-order observations, the latter being directed at first-order observations and the blind spot fiom which they deploy rer to use one side of a distine- their distinctions Observations, Luhmann points out, are asymmetrical. In making distne- tions, they differentiate one particular mark as form, differentiating it from everything else Yet this indication, or designation, has o take into account that which has been left unseid, animavked. splitting ofthe world into marked and‘unmarked states is necessiry to observe, describe, and ultimately generate ob- jects of observation study, then “[the] unity [of the world) becomes unobserv- able: There is, therefore, always a blind spor, becouse an obsecver observing an observer cannot observe him/herself. Furthermore, maving toward the un- ‘marked space (observing it) implies # new distinction that severs this un- ‘marked space. Inevitably, one reproduces the world as a unified, unobservable entity. And so on. This capacity of observation systems to create and recreate their boundaries (between system and environment) relies on “loose coup: lings” and “random links? with its environment. It is contingent. At the center is a “narrator who stages the narration—whether of the novel or of world hisory—in which he no longer appears?’ an observer who draws distinctions and who remains unobserved, who distinguishes what he observes from every- thing alse, leaving that, consequently. 2s “unmarked space,” indeed, who ob- serves from this “unmarked space": “The person, whom one could ask: why ths and not another wey?” “This “dual-value lagic” presupposes a society of consent judged from pos tions of authority within the system, “that i, from the top or centre.” positions of privilege that reconfigure the rest as “corruption, error, blindness”™® To challenge these Detantly inequitable arrangements Lunmann proposes in his systems theory to operate on the basis of only one distinction: that between ‘gstem and environment. Such a strategy, he claims, “calls for consistently “autological’ concepis, since the observer must elso recognize himself as a .dconnects sgystem-in-the-environment as long as he carries out observations: them recursively. The narrator appears himself in what he narrates. He is observable as an observer. He constitutes himself in his own fick’—and thereby necessarily in the mode of contingency, that is, with an awareness of other possibilities” Most important, Luhmann’s concept of modernity might encourage recon- sideration and resignification of the vulnerable processes of production of historical nacrative and canons. Ifwe begin from the premise thateach account, judgment, evaluation, model, and aesthetic structure is contingent, namely, thatitis the result ofa process of observation within a reestablished system we call art history, then we might be open to accepting the inextricable partislity of these accounts. What the Enlightenment posits as the various spheres af spe- cialization and differentiation that make up modernity, Luhmann considess as social systems, which, in order to survive and proliferate, absorb change and ‘conflict while rejecting unity, eedemption, and transcendentalism, in the pro- cess constituting their fragile order. This is a challenge to art historians who might like to remain within the gratifying and reassuring confines ofthe canon, within the limited ho fortable within the pr ion remains undistw it not this programm avant-garde asa falls avant-garde as suecut ‘Many of these que Gego vis-a-visthe éor seriously a body of » production (she was periphery), maleartis avant-garde (she was ‘n itself dismissed uni Te as Gogo's Ret ‘meshes that the view that framed the mak spectatorship that fie ‘viewing and judgmen work is strikingly evic © ture visitors and the possibility that Retia position of these abs ‘model at stake. Unab ‘occupy an unmarked: sor 1 we apply La © ion, “constitutes [he | mode of contingency, Incapable of emi Siance of etractore pr ineseapebiy occupyin “tion. Or, to retumnto sent, bat it is one "observes in a commen “the oro sides of Form side is the ‘other of “haos, the unlimited? Reticuléres, witherate ob- unobsery observing ind the un- s this un: observable 1d recreate reve coup the center of world, ‘stinctions omerery- 1 whe ob, kewhy this om posi- * pestions ress” To ves in his t between vnsistently reef. as a loonnects cs. He is 4d thereby of other gerecon. uation of| »namdly, ysiem we siality of s of spe widers as ange and the pro- ans who ‘within the limited horizons of the discipline. And to those who remain com- | factable within the prescribed perimeter of an avant-garde project whose mis- "sion remains undisturbed despite our appeal to contextuality and history. Was itnot this progtammatic sense of Cnality that foreed Petes Buirger to read the avant garde asa failure? Isit not this thatleads Buchloh to finally deem the neo- avant garde as succumbing to disappointing assimilation? Many of these questions arose as | set out to study and interpret the work of Gego vis-a-vis the dominantaesthetic models ofthe time. How could I consider ‘seriously « body of work that defied the conventions of hegemonic cultural production (che was a Jewish émigré working in a cultural and geographic periphery}, male artistic supremacy (she Wasa woman), the myth ofa youthful avant-garde (she was in her fifties at the peak of her artistic career), end which initedlE dismissed unity and consistency? It wes Gegn’s Rericuldrea of 1969, an environment of metal wire nets and meshes that the viewer could enter, and the conditions of artistic production that framed the making of the work, which soemed to deliver a model of gpectatorship that figured forth an observer caught in the contingencies of viewing and judgment. The importance of the observer for the meaning of the works strikingly evident from the pliotographic reord. All photographs fea ture visitors and their interaction with the work. The images point to the possibility that Rericulérea addressed not one but many spectators. But the position of these observers is important to our understanding the spectatoral model at stake, Unable to distance themselves from the work, viewers cannot cecupyan unmariced space,a removed point of view from which to desctibe the world. If we apply Luhmann’s operative figure, the observer reenters obstrYa- tioa, “constitutes {herself} in [her] own fielé—and thereby necessarily in the mode of contingency, that is, with an awareness of other possibilities.” Incapeble of embodying wholeness, Reticulérea's implicit infinity and de- fiance of structure prescribes this incapacity. The viewer finds him or herself inescapably occupying, while constantly unfolding, the blind spot of observa tion. Or to retura to Lakmann again, the system operates within the environ ment, but it is one that is accessible only from the inside, As David Roberts observes ina commenton Luhmana: “The World divided by a distinction gives thetvo sides of Form. On the oneside arcall theformsof the world, on the other side is the ‘othe? of rationslity, the ‘unmarked state'—God, world, chance, chacs, the unlimited” [t is in the artificial margin between the two that the Reticuldrea, with its geometrics gone awry, seems to operates thus its careful attention to ste, its pliant behavios, but also its concern with an infinite effect that might suggest this otherness to the world as form.To adopt con tion of our histo fart history: it “ Itisto opt fora "permanent rede tosimply embra internationals © perhaps, might! ‘xceted by conce “Son, anachronis published) an Bande der Kx ppeeudonyin D 4 See Arend "| 2 Seelyotsrd, 7 3 Within conte | and cohasive period Minim that nether 4 ‘which sterche ities, nor Re | ter in her © shake More uniqueness of | Tbs Angeles © 4g, 2004 10 0 Msenm of C Gogo, The Retclrs (nbintadér), 1989 Inmalsion view Musso de Bes Ares, Caracas. Photograph by Plo Gasparbi, Courtesy ofthe aur ané ‘he Gego Foundation, Caracas, YerezueaBelae ‘To adopt contingency, and the polities of impure interfaces, as the founda- tion of our historical semantics isto revisit and resist the indisputable positions fart history: its eraditions, its ext, its objects its institutions, and ibs canons ‘tis to opt for « methodology of displacement, and to think of one’s space 2s a ‘permanent redefinition of boundaries. To accept the fragility of nominalism is tosimply embrace the legacy of deracination in modernism and modernity: the internationalism of the avant-garde and, lter i avowed homelessness. This, _ pethaps might be the destiny ofthe émigré who thinks of home a the space treated by conceptual deterritorialization, the fluid sites of postnational disper- sion, anachronism, and the pricking insistence of other possibilities. ores ‘The epigraph is fom Thomas ¥. Levin translation, interpolating the fist (an- published) and the second (fra) version of "Stenge Kunstwissenschafl. Zum ersten ‘Bande der Kunstwisenschaflicen Fursshungen,” which appeared, under Benjamin's penudonym Detlef Holz, en Tuly 50.13 Ser Arend, “latzoduction?” 38>. See Iyotard. The Postmodern Cordition and The Potraodern Explained 43 Within conteraporary archisory few artistic eategorisshave sustained the privileged and colesve status that Minimalism bas achieved. In old and new histories of the period Minin that nether Allan Kaprow’s propietic reading of “The Legacy of Jackson Pollock" ‘whic sketches an image ofthe Relerogencous landscape of contemporary atin the is posited a the see of ell subesquant artiste experiments, are Sinties, nor Resiind Kravis’ significa critique of the mevernent thirty-one years later in her esay “Te Calta Logic ofthe Late Capitalist Museum? did mach to shake, More recently, two exhibitions opened up the path for a reconsideration ofthe tusiqueness of Minimalism: “Beyond Geometry: Experiments in Form, 940708!" Los Angeles County Mustum, carated by Linn Zelevansky and presented ftom June 19, 2904 to Gctaber 3, 2904, and “A Minimal Future? Art as Object 058-1068" ‘Mascum of Contemporary Art, Los Angels, curated by Anne Goldsein and pre- sented from March 14 2004 to August 3, 2004 4 In Nemser, "An Inrerviow with va Hee" 65, 5 Lippard, Ba Hers 26. 6 Thisishowshe described Untitled 970 inher diary; quote in Lippard, Eve Hes 172 7 Buchlob, “Hants, Villegls, nd the Dalecties of Painting’ Dispersal. 8 ° Amstrong, “This Photography Which Ts NotOne”” Moxey, “Motivating History? 397 10 Moxey, “Motwating History” 400. i “Pollock exper sents in pictrial scale partly derive from his enthusiasm for mu- rals by socaly committed Mexican painters ofthe 19308 and 1990s such» Gabriel [se] Oreaen, David Siqueiros and Diego Rivers": David Hopkins, After Modern Art 1545-2000,15. The correct name othe muralist is foxé Clemente Cruzeo.se MoNieX MOR 1 Smit, “Contingencies of Va 1h Apter “Global Trowatio;” 263-70. The quoted sentence ens with a footnote, where Apter darfic that “when comp it tock root asa pestwardisiplinein the US. the Forepean traditions were dominant tke Turkish chaptsr ofits life ws effaced, What attracted the American cesdemice was Furopean erudition.” Se als Apter, “Com- parative Exile” 86-56; are Cooppan, "World Literatre end Global Theory” ay Apten, “Global Trnlria” 278-8. te “One could say” writes Apr, “thatthe new-wave pos.olonial Kteracy bears certais distinct resemblances to its Eusopean antecodens imbued sit often with echoes of rrelancholia, Heimlosglet, catural ambivalence, consciousness of linguistic Toss, Confasion induced by worlding or globel transference, amnesic of erigins fractured subjectivity, border trauma, the desire to belong t ‘narration’ as asubstitste ‘nation! the experience ofa polities of linguistic and cultural wsurpation’” According Apte: ‘concludes, “he theorization of Heimiosighe, es 9 mode of ertigue, emerges, pa onically w= the country of comparative terture. A substitute ometand, 2 plaeless place that is homely in is unhoretiness, comparative liveratre becomes the instit- ‘onal and pedagogical space of not-eing-there” (Apter, “Comparative Ex” go and 93 respectively 16 “Extendabilty of context, a an idea, provides a conceptual space ftom which preblernatizecontect as having any kindof legidative force. Te highigh's that ‘context Is nover naturally given: itis something wera, whether weare viewersata Salon or arthistorlas working in eur insitational contests” (Bryson, “Ax in Context.” 3). a7 Ragler,"Beview of Sovil Syetoms by Niklas Lubmana.” 27, E 438 Luhmann, “Deconstruction Second Order Observing” 770. ‘was principally k ty Lohmann, “European Rationality” 67. | public become av maa, “European Rational” 6. OE sted duch 2 Luhmann, “Earopean Rationality’ 73 22 Borger, Theory of the Avant-Garde and Buchlob, Neoowantgarde and dhe Culture POLITICS OF THE EVENT) B SUELY ROLN DP tpansiaren “practice of this k Indu, “maintaining the’ 2 Lulman, “European Rationsity 73. 24 Roberts, “Sublime Theories” i "Self 1975-1988), “attstic “propos! ons” between 2 “tered about in the These objects,