Group Blog Post (Kelly, Jess, Jennifer)

“How true it is, that it is too late to catch the living form and face of our dear friends, and well illustrates the necessity of procuring those more than life-like resemblances of our friends, ere it is too late— ere the hand of death has snatched away those we prize so dearly on earth.”

Taking Portraits After Death. N. G. Burgess

From The Photographic and Fine-Art Journal Vol. 8, No. 3

March 1855 Page 80

The description of this item is brief. It is an ambrotype from the Woodward manuscript collection. The item is listed as an “interesting example of post-mortem portrait of baby along with a woven piece of hair.” Other images are listed as part of the collection, but these two objects, as they are listed in one sentence, are presented as a unit. Therefore, our group treated them as one item in two parts. In this way, the description scripted out treatment of the items (Bernstein’s idea of scriptivity; Phelan’s point that writing changes the performance) – we wouldn’t have considered them together otherwise.

Course Blog 12: 2nd Responder (Jennifer to Andrea)

Andrea: In what ways does the object incorporate untimely matter through supercession, explosion, and conjunction? (from Harris' analysis of the Archimedes Palimpsest)

Definition Notes: 

Supersession: New layering over old in a palimpsest of progress (21)

Explosion: Old is not lost – it can intervene and affect the present; “antagonistic”  (22)

Conjunction: current contains ancient in a way that “literally touches”  and engages in “untimely dialogue”

Analysis of Roach:  

Roach reads the practice of Mardi Gras krewe parades through a series of photographs and his memory of the last of the krewe parades. He claims that these krewes and other social clubs “promote a sense of timelessness based on their apparently seamless repetition of traditional roles” (Roach 18). Therefore, he is reading their performances as conjunctive. The costumes, schedule, route, and even reactions of the audience are scripted by the tradition: “Every year there is a new Rex and a new King Zulu, and every year they are supposed to look and act as they always have” (19). To this end, he chooses images from 1991 (19), 1971 (22), and 1940 (23). This implies that the date of the picture is irrelevant (one isn't even dated at all) – each of the images will be the same. However, they are conjunctive because they concurrently exist and interact with each other and the modern world in an “untimely dialogue” about issues of race relations in a contested space (Harris 22).

Course Blog 12 (from Derek)

1.

How does the object of analysis (opera|drama|scriptive thing|performance) encompass an expressive volatility that resists domestication or that threatens an uncontrolled signification, and how is this expressive volatility either settled or unsettled through performance?

Inspired by Levin’s discussion of the tension between the settling force of conventional opera and the unsettling force of a dialectic or polylogical staging; see pages 26-27 and 32.

2.

How is the object of analysis (opera|drama|scriptive thing|performance) being framed or mediated?

Inspired by Taylor’s discussion of how the windows of her apartment and then the TV screen framed the crisis of 9/11, and how she felt “the intensely mediatized seeing became a form of social blinding” (p.244) as the images of 9/11 were framed (ideologically) by the government and media, repeated and consumed endlessly, in the sense of a fixed masterpiece (Artaud, 253).

3.

How does the object of analysis (opera|drama|scriptive thing|performance) nudge the spectator out of the realm of having an experience and into a position of being forced to make a (moral) choice, thus affecting society?

Inspired by Brecht’s discussion of what happens to the social function of the theater when “text, music and setting ‘adopt attitudes’” toward content”, when “illusion is sacrificed to free discussion”, and when the spectator is “forced…to cast his vote” (39).

4.

How does this object of analysis (opera|drama|scriptive thing|performance) function as culture, reproducing and re-creating itself by surrogation (i.e. by offering “a substitute for something else that preexists it”)?

Inspired by Roach’s discussion of memory, performance, and substitution, in which he argues that “performance…stands in for an elusive entity that it is not but that it must vainly aspire both to embody and to replace” (3).

Memorial Hunt (Derek) - Colonel Owen in the IMU

Figure 1. Monument of Col. Owen in entrance to IMU.
(Photograph by Derek DiMatteo)

Standing just inside the central entrance to the Indiana Memorial Union (IMU), this monument commemorates Colonel Richard Owen for his role as Commandant of Camp Morton Prison in 1862. My encounter with this monument on 2012.09.02 was entirely accidental, never having used this entrance to the IMU before, and only entering by virtue of its immediacy as I tried to escape the rain and go in search of a computer lab. The towering monument’s commanding presence within the vestibule arrested me. I felt compelled by the tall dark marble base, by the figure’s folded arms and draped cloak, by the contrast between his benevolent but worn face and his powerful forearms. I read the inscription, which declares the moment to be a “tribute by confederate prisoners of war and their friends for his courtesy and kindness.” I was surprised, never having seen a monument in honor of a prison camp commandant before, let alone a monument of thanks to such a man, made even more striking because it was the prisoners who were paying tribute “for his courtesy and kindness.” I knew nothing of the history of Camp Morton, neither where it had been nor what had happened there, but I felt the monument demand that I admire this person, this Colonel Owen, despite my ignorance. And I did feel some admiration for him, but I wasn’t sure why, other than the sense that we should probably all admire the virtues of courtesy and kindness. The brass plaque reads: “This replica has been presented to the University by classes of 1910, 1913, 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918, 1919, 1920, 1922, 1923, 1924, 1926, 1927, 1928, 1929, 1930, 1931.” It was clear that the committee members of those graduated classes had felt strongly enough about Colonel Owen and what he did to commemorate him. I gazed up at the figure of Colonel Owen and wondered what kind of man he really was, what kind of things he did, and whether I could trust the monument and the judgment of those graduated students. Then I remembered our assignment, and I snapped some photos.

At home, later, I tried to analyze this monument. The title of Joseph Roach’s book, Cities of the Dead, suggests one way to broaden our understanding. Our cities and towns are full of sites and monuments commemorating the dead, their deeds, and historical events. Taken to the Marxist extreme, any man-made structure or product could be considered a monument to the labor (people and power) that created it. Therefore, in addition to commemorating Colonel Owen and the thankful Confederate prisoners, this monument in the IMU also commemorates all of the graduated classes listed on the brass plaque (who presumably commissioned the project) as well as all of the laborers who actually produced the monument. The laborers themselves are unmentioned, uncredited, and are thereby rendered invisible and perhaps forgotten, which is ironic because of the insistence on remembrance that every monument demands.

One function of commissioning a monument as a gift or of donating money toward a campus improvement project is for the people making the donation to leave something of themselves behind for future students and members of the university community to see and remember them by. In this case, the classes listed on the plaque will be remembered, if only in the nameless, collective sense, by those who enter the IMU at that location and who also stop to read the plaque. (But what of the missing classes of 1911, 1912, 1914, 1921, 1925? Did they not approve of the choice of subject, or were their members unable to contribute money due to poverty or death?) The monument could be interpreted as an act of “surrogation” which those classes committed in an effort to fill an “actual or perceived vacanc[y] in the…social fabric” (Roach, 2). In other words, the graduated students of those classes felt the need to remind the university community of the importance of “courtesy and kindness.” It’s unclear what year this monument was created and installed in the IMU, but perhaps the surviving representatives of those graduated classes felt the virtues of courtesy and kindness were fading away in the later 20^th century. If so, how does this affect the spectator, the one who gazes at the monument? According to Guy Debord, “the spectator’s alienation from and submission to the contemplated object” occurs through the inverse relationship between contemplation and life: “the more readily he recognizes his own needs in the images of need proposed by the dominant system, the less he understands his own existence and desires. … the individual’s own gestures are no longer his own, but rather those of someone else who represents them to him” (Debord, 30). In the case of this monument, is the spectator being told the world needs more kindness and courtesy? Or is it more specifically exhorting us through commemorative example to be kind and courteous toward our vanquished foes? Again, I wonder when this monument was built and installed in the IMU, for knowledge of the historical moment would surely alter our understanding.

Finally, I would like to draw attention to the word “replica” in the plaque, which signifies the monument is not original; i.e., there is an original someplace else. Again, we are not told where or when or why. One might make guesses about all these mysteries. IU being a state institution, my guess is that Camp Morton is located somewhere in Indiana. The original monument is probably located at either the site of the old camp or else somewhere in the state capitol building in Indianapolis. The date of the original must be sometime after the Civil War ended (too easy? Okay, let’s say it was created during the war’s semi-centennial between 1910-1915). More seriously, this blog entry has been written without checking the history records, since I wanted to keep my analysis true to what I knew at the time I first encountered the monument. (I have since done some elementary research to learn more about Colonel Owen and Camp Morton, but still remain ignorant of many facts about the monument.)