Description
Re – Artistic Reenactment, the Art of Reenactment was published as the catalogue accompanying MODEM’s exhibition of the same name in Debrecen (22 April – 17 September 2023).
Focusing on artistic reenactment, the exhibition sought more than simply to bring together works related in some way to its central theme. Through its selection, it aimed to present the range of phenomena encompassed by the term in as nuanced a manner as possible and, where possible, to offer a fresh understanding of them. Accordingly, the publication goes beyond reproductions of the exhibited works and suggested interpretations: the authors of its studies and critical essays seek to define artistic reenactment more precisely and to contextualise this artistic strategy as thoroughly as possible.
In her widely cited essay, previously unavailable in Hungarian, Inke Arns examines the conceptual foundations and typology of reenactment, its relationship to history and various forms of historical role-playing, and the mechanisms through which it operates, drawing on analyses of iconic works. Flóra Gadó’s study, based on her doctoral dissertation, explores, among other things, artistic reenactment’s relationship to the archive, performativity and temporality. Gergely Tamás Fazakas’s expanded exhibition opening address contextualises the questions raised by the exhibition through the perspectives of authorship, memory, sites of memory and tradition.
The catalogue seeks to explore how artistic reenactments operate and exist, together with their anthropological, sociocultural, historical, art-historical and theoretical contexts.
