Textile

Textil: Der Titel des Schwerpunkts der vorliegenden Ausgabe der ZMK kann ein Ding, ein Material oder eine Eigenschaft bezeichnen. Als Eigenschaftswort spezifiziert textil indes nicht nur bestimmte Künste näher (den Begriff der textilen Kunst gibt es spätestens seit Gottfried Semper) und umfasst so die Weberei, die Stickerei, das Flechten, Knoten, Stricken, Häkeln, Wirken und vieles andere mehr (Semper zufolge auch die Anfänge der Baukunst), sondern neuerdings auch Medien.

The remarks »On the Documentary« that are published here are not supposed to explain conceptually what exactly the documentary is and by which means it can be distinguished from the fictive, but what the film itself counts to be documentary and how the doc- umentary is produced by film. An essential difference between fictional and documentary film is the difference between an anticipating and a pursuing camera.

»On the Documentary« must be regarded as the last publication of the director, video artist and film thinker Harun Farocki. The observations contained in »Taking Pictures« see themselves as a commentary to this essay, which Farocki had to leave uncompleted. In addition to a reconstruction of the circum- stances and background of Farocki’s text, some of the characteristics of his perspective on the »documentary effect«, which can be explained most clearly with reference to spe- cific camera gestures, are considered.

What social effects does a tent architecture have, in which mode of collective existence do nomadic societies such as the Tuareg live? And what kind of fictionally instituted society is accompanied by an architecture that produces a non-gestalt of the collective – such as the buried houses in the Chinese Loess? Such analyses show the social positivity of architecture; and they show ex negativo, which kind of social life goes along with immobile constructions.

In certain artifacts, which can be classified as images, suspicious phenomena such as ›black highlights‹ have been spotted, and paintings are said to exist, in which black plays the role of a ›color of light‹. Who has persuaded himself that such phenomena are in fact detectable, and would like to find out by which operations they are produced, is referred to basic distinctions of image theory, such as the difference between ›image vehicle‹ and ›image object‹.

Gaëtan Gatian de Clérambault (1872–1934) war ein französischer Psychiater, Ethnologe und Fotograf. Clérambault studierte zunächst Jura und angewandte Kunst, begann dann aber ein Medizinstudium, das er 1899 mit der Promotion abschloss. Von 1920 bis zu seinem Tod war er Leiter am Pariser psychiatrischen Polizeikrankenhaus (Infirmerie psychiatrique de la préfecture de police). Einer seiner berühmtesten Schüler war Jacques Lacan. Ausgewählte Veröffentlichungen: OEuvres Psychiatrique (1942), 2. Bde. (Paris 1987).

Gaëtan Gatian de Clérambault (1872–1934) war ein französischer Psychiater, Ethnologe und Fotograf. Clérambault studierte zunächst Jura und angewandte Kunst, begann dann aber ein Medizinstudium, das er 1899 mit der Promotion abschloss. Von 1920 bis zu seinem Tod war er Leiter am Pariser psychiatrischen Polizeikrankenhaus (Infirmerie psychiatrique de la préfecture de police). Einer seiner berühmtesten Schüler war Jacques Lacan. Ausgewählte Veröffentlichungen: OEuvres Psychiatrique (1942), 2. Bde. (Paris 1987).

Gaëtan Henri Alfred Edouard Léon Marie Gatian de Clérambault (1872 – 1934): Versuchen wir, in aller Kürze ein Leben zwischen den beiden hier präsentierten Texten aufzuspannen,1 das am 2. Juli 1872 in Bourges beginnt und am 16. November 1934 sein selbstgesetztes Ende, mit dem Clérambault dem Erlöschen seines Augenlichts zuvorkommt, in Montrouge findet. Erst nach zwei Jahren des Studiums an der Hochschule für angewandte Kunst in Paris, wo seine Gabe, »wunderbar zu zeichnen«, auffällt, beugt er sich 1890 dem Wunsch seines Vaters, eines Verwaltungsbeamten, und erwirbt 1892 ein juristisches Diplom, nur um gleich darauf gegen den Willen der Familie das Medizinstudium in Paris aufzunehmen, das er am 25. Oktober 1899 mit der Promotion abschließt. Er spezialisiert sich in der Folge, vorab in der Klinik Sainte-Anne, auf die Psychiatrie und macht ab 1902 Karriere an der »Infirmerie Spéciale des Aliénés de la Préfecture de Police de Paris«, der psychiatrischen Spezialklinik der Pariser Polizeipräfektur, deren Chefarzt er 1920 werden sollte. Zwischen 1905 und 1934 verfasst Clérambault hier über 13.000 psychiatrische Internierungsgutachten, eine Quelle, aus der 1908 (Fortsetzung 1910) auch die drei bzw. vier Beobachtungen von Fällen der »Stoffleidenschaft bei der Frau« geschöpft sind, die eine der frühesten psychiatrischen Fachpublikationen Clérambaults darstellen. ...

The paper follows Gottfried Semper’s thesis that building – just like the textile – originates in practices of the knot. A comparison of the knot with dominant metaphors of the construction stone, the chain and the container shows how knotting is inscribed in the fields of material, movement, perception and human relations. But the knot connects things with each other, instead of simply adding them; it is a connection by sympathy rather than by joints. That leads to a comparison of tectonic and stereotomic aspects of building, especially of the wall. Is the wall constructed on the ground, like the skyscraper, or is it a fold in the ground itself, like the mountain? If one pursues the idea of the knot, one arrives at the latter conclusion.

For Viennese artist Florian Pumhösl »abstraction is a method«, not a category. Or rather, if abstraction is the defining category of modernism, the objective is to reproduce modernism’s problems and limits and exploit relationships among its parts. Considering what Pumhösl calls the »textile complex« of modernism, this essay examines the artist’s work in parallel with Charles Sanders Peirce’s diagram concept and Gottfried Semper’s use of textile diagrams throughout Style in the Technical and Tectonic Arts.

This essay considers medieval sewing in light of Austin’s speech-act theory. Analysing manuscripts, relics, indulgences, and even a bishop’s mitre, the article argues that stitching was a way to enact, or intensify, the ritual purpose of objects, whether that was ceremonial, devotional, or authoritative. Whereas a speech act functions by its utterance, stitches act by forming visible and often ceremonious attachments between materials in order to aggrandise, embellish, assert and layer authority, or swathe an object in textiles as if it were a relic.

Based on Greek mythology, the multiple relationships between singing and weaving, »Flechttanz« (»weaving dance«) and the structural similarities of forms of notation and principles of control in music and weaving are explored. It is found that the relationship between music (as a temporal art) and weaving (as a spatial art) goes far beyond that which the metaphor of »sound tissues« points at. Rather, the relationship between art forms and media expresses mythical and spiritual levels. The transformation of tissues in music or, respectively, music in tissues, makes the creative potential of transposition productive.

The invention of aniline and other synthetic dyes in the second half of the nineteenth century is the beginning of a new epoch. The new colors produced by the fledgling chemical industry are not only brighter than most of the traditional dyestuffs, but also much cheaper. They change the appearance of women on the streets of the modern city. Among the first media to notice and document this revolution are fashion magazines, realist novels, and Impressionist paintings. I argue that the bright colors on the new palette of Impressionist painters are a direct effect of the chemical industry.