{"title":"Balancing on shifting ground: Migratory aesthetics and recuperation of presence in Ori Gersht’s video installation On Reflection","authors":"Hava Aldouby","doi":"10.1386/cjmc_00001_1","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"This article looks at On Reflection, a video installation by the London-based artist Ori Gersht, in light of the artist’s transcultural or ‘travelling’ position between the United Kingdom, where Gersht has been residing and practising art since 1989, and his\n native country of Israel. Through close analysis of a single video installation by a British/Israeli ‘radicant’, to adopt Nicolas Bourriaud’s suggestive nomenclature, the article asks how the global migratory condition is affecting contemporary art and aesthetic experience.\n Focusing on sensory and motor aspects of viewers’ engagement with the installation, the article proposes an approach to the political through the prism of aisthêsis, or sensory engagement. It further suggests that On Reflection evinces a cautious effort to augment\n observers’ sense of bodily presence, which, however, does not outlast the brief duration of the gallery visit. The multidisciplinary approach offered here combines close attention to aesthetics, in Jill Bennett’s sense of ‘what art does’, with insights from phenomenological\n film theory and from cognitive neuroscience. It is argued that this is a productive critical gateway through which to investigate the migratory turn in global art.","PeriodicalId":38038,"journal":{"name":"Crossings","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0000,"publicationDate":"2019-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"3","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Crossings","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1386/cjmc_00001_1","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"Social Sciences","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 3
Abstract
This article looks at On Reflection, a video installation by the London-based artist Ori Gersht, in light of the artist’s transcultural or ‘travelling’ position between the United Kingdom, where Gersht has been residing and practising art since 1989, and his
native country of Israel. Through close analysis of a single video installation by a British/Israeli ‘radicant’, to adopt Nicolas Bourriaud’s suggestive nomenclature, the article asks how the global migratory condition is affecting contemporary art and aesthetic experience.
Focusing on sensory and motor aspects of viewers’ engagement with the installation, the article proposes an approach to the political through the prism of aisthêsis, or sensory engagement. It further suggests that On Reflection evinces a cautious effort to augment
observers’ sense of bodily presence, which, however, does not outlast the brief duration of the gallery visit. The multidisciplinary approach offered here combines close attention to aesthetics, in Jill Bennett’s sense of ‘what art does’, with insights from phenomenological
film theory and from cognitive neuroscience. It is argued that this is a productive critical gateway through which to investigate the migratory turn in global art.
期刊介绍:
Crossings: Journal of Migration & Culture situates itself at the interface of Migration Studies and Cultural Studies. The terminology and key concepts in use in discourses on migration have yet to be sufficiently theorized or understood from theoretical perspectives linked to cultural studies, although migration is intrinsically linked to questions of culture. The course of cultures at both local and global levels is crucially affected by migratory movements. In turn, culture itself is turned migrant. This journal''s scope will be global, with a predominant focus on migration and culture from the latter half of the twentieth century to the present-day. Apart from the inclusion of refereed articles, Crossings: Journal of Migration and Culture will include a section of reviews of films, music, photography, exhibitions or books on migration-related topics, interviews with cultural practitioners who focus on migration-related topics, and oral histories of migrant cultural experiences.