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• Keith Bresnahan, OCAD University

This session solicits reflections on the links between emotion and disaster or ruins in the histories of art, design, urbanism, and visual culture more broadly. From Romantic meditations on ancient fragments of sculpture or architecture, to dramatic evocations of disaster (natural or human-made) in art, to debates on the fate of ruined buildings, to acts of intentional destruction and their reception, to fears of impending climate disaster: how have feelings – anger, fear, ecstasy, sadness, outrage, despair, love, admiration, hope, and more — been mobilized, represented, or otherwise engaged by artists, architects, and audiences in response to disaster and ruins? Presentations dealing with any aspect of this topic are encouraged, from any historical period, medium, or theoretical perspective.

keywords: emotion, feeling, disaster, ruins

session type: panel (double)

Ana is Here: Active Remembrance through Public Mourning

• Rachelle Sabourin, McMaster University

In June 1992, the new SoHo Guggenheim Museum of Art opened its first exhibition, featuring Carl Andre. The works were acquired three years before the opening, and less than 10 years after his wife Ana Mendieta’s untimely death. At the opening, the Women’s Action Coalition held a banner that read “Carl Andre is in the Guggenheim. Where is Ana Mendieta?” Mendieta’s death, and the answer to this lingering question, have unsatisfying conclusions. As Jane Blocker writes in her text, Where is Ana Mendieta? “Remembrance is a process, not a task to be completed.”In this paper, I consider approaches to active remembrance and permanence in the light of violent absence. Mendieta’s visceral artworks often make visible the absence of the body, of a person once removed. Eerily indicative of her own passing, Mendieta’s land art, photography, and performances evoke her own commemoration - only mirrored by the activist art groups who continue to ask “Where is Ana?” in the spaces occupied by Andre. By engaging with both Mendieta’s work and the protest work of groups such as the No Wave Performance Task Group, the Women’s Action Coalition, and the Guerilla Girls, this paper will consider the power of the public gallery as an active memorial site. By mourning the dead in the physical exhibitions of those (allegedly) responsible, protestors and visitors refute the expected interiorizing of the “other” and instead display publicly their grief, in active pursuit of remembrance.

keywords: activism, mourning, contemporary art, Ana Mendieta, protest

Considering Photographs of Ruins as the Material Culture of Dreams

• Susan A. Crane, University of Arizona

One historian’s dream, 2022: a couple has a lot of goods for sale, all of them old and decrepit, and I am expected to buy the lot. But I am in a group of people, each of whom is attracted to different items, so I decide to make an offer based on what each person is willing to pay for one or two things. It’s time to pay the couple. Should I pay for the whole lot (I will be making a profit) or ask for each item to be sold individually?

I realize that each item has a story or meaning attached to it, which has drawn the buyer to it. The story is what makes it valuable (dreaming, I realize I’ve made this point in writing so I’m drawing on my own archive as well as memories of every time I’ve had this thought). Each item supports possible stories. Each is a fragment of the past; we never have the whole lot, and each of us wants different pieces, ruins of the never-intact past.

I wake up in the midst of the sale.

Thinking about ruins as the material culture of dreams requires not only letting go of singular or homogeneous historical narratives (“the lot”) but contextualizing heterogenous, changing meanings and reaching across disciplines for critical support. I propose looking at mid-19th-century photographs of ruins as material objects upon which dreams, histories, memories and other stories about the past have been inscribed, resisted and revised – and which can speak for themselves.

keywords: ruins, historical photographs, material culture, memory, dreams

Commodifying Tragedy: Contemporary Souvenirs to Commemorate Difficult Knowledge

• Christopher Moore, Concordia University

Souvenirs invoke powerful symbolic representations of regional identities, histories, and events, propagated when tourists purchase and experience these evocative artifacts. They commemorate and confirm encounters with unfamiliar landscapes, cultural rituals, and distinctive artistic practices, but they also have emotional resonance. Frequently, souvenirs present narrow or superficial understandings of regional identity that can prevent certain communities from feeling welcome—a contentious situation in a world with rising nationalistic tensions.

As sociologist Zygmunt Bauman asserts, “[Tourists] pay for their freedom; the right to disregard native concerns and feelings, the right to spin their own web of meanings.”¹ If the typical function of souvenirs is to commemorate and memorialize personal and collective histories, could we not envisage contemporary forms that move beyond the grand narratives of regional and national identity? Can we speculate on new forms of souvenirs and representations that challenge the typical souvenir genre? Contemporary souvenirs have the potential to subvert existing phenomena or present new perspectives on culture and identity, depicting difficult knowledge and historical events. Representations of tragedy and trauma merit equal attention to those of Mounties, beavers, or scenic vistas. Je me souviens.

This paper addresses an ongoing research-creation project aimed towards developing speculative souvenirs that commemorate Canadian disasters and disquieting truths. How do we reconcile the commercial nature of the tourist economy with more frank and honest depictions of a troubled nation?

1. Zygmunt Bauman, Postmodern Ethics (Oxford: Blackwell, 1993), 241.

keywords: souvenirs, Canadian identity, tourist economies, tragedy, design