J. (Julia) Alting, MA

PhD project: Transgression and Recitation. Nonlinear Experiments with Art Historical Time

Promotores: Prof. Dr. Ann-Sophie Lehmann (RUG) and Prof. Dr. Hanneke Grootenboer (UvA)

Keywords: politics of time - nonlinear historical time - exhibition histories - feminist art history - decolonial theory

The question of the authority of linear chronology has recently been taken up again by art historians, yet I argue that more conceptual research is necessary to address what understanding art historical time as nonlinear could mean, and how it could be put in practice. In order to answer this question, I have looked at experiments with art historical time that challenge a linear ordering of the discipline, combining object-focused art history with exhibition histories. The first chapter of the dissertation thinks with Fiona Tan’s video work Footsteps (2022) and addresses the question of historical time as always nonlinear and relational. After this first “positioning” chapter the dissertation is divided into two parts. The first part, TRANSGRESSION, studies two transhistorical exhibitions and looks at specific artworks in those exhibitions. I argue that the artworks show a more complex relationship to historical time than the disrupted chronology of the exhibitions, and that a mere transgression of the linear framework does not result in a nonlinear art history, while the objects point to nonlinear temporality. The second part, RECITATION, starts with two different feminist exhibition histories to show how an attempt to define a historical feminist present becomes a disorienting and impossible task. I then argue that we can find an active engagement with nonlinear art histories in the citational practice of feminist artists.

You can read an interview about my research here.