Ron Mueck

Η δημόσια μνήμη των γεγονότων της Κομμούνας του Παρισιού και η μνημόνευση των νεκρών μαχητών στον τόπο της εκτέλεσής τους στο Νεκροταφείο Père-Lachaise, ο Τοίχος των Ομόσπονδων ως μνημονικός τόπος των χαμένων αγωνιστών και το παράδοξο "αγιολόγιο" της Αριστεράς.
The public memory of the events of the Paris Commune and the commemoration of the dead fighters at the place of their execution in the Père-Lachaise Cemetery, the Mur des Fédérés as a memorial site of the defeated and the paradoxical "hagiography" of the Left.
https://jacobin.gr/teleytaia-machi-ton-kommoynaron-o-toichos-ton-omospondon/

Through the many reinterpretations of Freud's essay Das Unheimliche (1919) within French Postmodernism, in recent decades, the uncanny has become a vague synonym for the methodology of deconstruction. The article aims to disambiguate the uncanny by reestablishing its characterizing nucleus and relocating it within the aesthetics through the philosophy of Stanley Cavell. The American philosopher claims that this feeling can be generated by drawing attention to the ordinary, which is so close and familiar to fade out of focus. Cavell and the German Philosopher Juliane Rebentisch following him show that artistic practices can reinforce this experience, as through displacements and dislocations, they deprive objects of daily use and ordinary matters of their familiarity and force us to look more closely at their material, sensorial, and phenomenological dimensions. In this way, Cavell and Rebentisch offer a path to reconstitute a stable conceptual framework for defining the uncanny, linking it to Freud's definition of something familiar appearing in an unfamiliar light. At the same time, they also propose a novelty by interpreting the uncanny not as inherently frightening and disturbing but as a compelling affective state that encourages a willingness to reappropriate and rediscover the ordinary.

, Charles Darwin recorded the Beagle's move into St. Stephen's harbor. Remarking on the abundance of reptilian and avian life on the island, he ends with the observation, "the birds are Strangers to Man & think him as innocent as their countrymen the huge Tortoises. Little birds, within 3 or four feet, quietly hopped about the Bushes & were not frightened by stones being thrown at them. Mr King killed one with his hat & I pushed off a branch with the end of my gun a large Hawk." 1 Among the many details Darwin observed on the islands, the naïve birds were hardly the most significant, yet their lack of fear sufficiently caught his attention that he would remark on it in later works. The birds practically offer themselves to slaughter because they have had no encounter with humanity through which to develop the protective emotion of fear.

Patricia Piccinini’s work has been described as disquieting, compelling and grotesque. Other adjectives often used include disturbing, visceral, monstrous, chimerical but also cute and beautiful. The reason for the encounter of such descriptions which are typically found in separate realms is precisely that Piccinini seeks to fracture unitarian conceptualisations of humanness as she strives to materially debate issues of posthuman ethics. Her concerns relate to issues of breeding, mutation, biotechnology, motherhood/childhood, eco-philosophy and speciesism. In this paper, I will set off from the works of Donna Haraway and Rosi Braidotti to discuss Piccinini’s posthuman aesthetics and ethics. I propose to investigate the affirmative posthuman predicament which she has creatively designed for the art gallery space, reflecting the technocultural fabrications of our natureculture continuum. I will focus my attention on three posthuman propositions as they relate to the discourses of mot...

The uncanny is an unstable concept, and since Freud’s seminal essay Das Unheimliche scholars have attempted to identify its specific qualities and distinguish it from the eerie and the frightening. The feeling arises when something familiar, ordinary, and well-known suddenly appears strange, unfamiliar, and even disquieting. Rather than a strong shock reaction, the uncanny involves intellectual and emotional uncertainty, blurring stable
categories of truth and fiction, reality and imagination. This relationship with the potentialities of fiction made the uncanny immediately attractive not only for psychoanalysis but also for aesthetics; then, since
the beginning of the century, the concept has branched out into various disciplines. Besides a sense of menace, the uncanny also exercises fascination and attraction. It is never totally repulsive, but its
disturbing potential is also intriguing, and this feature differentiates it clearly from other aesthetic categories such as the abject or the disgust. Thanks to its capacity to defamiliarize the expected, the uncanny results as an ambivalent feeling, which, undermining habitual modes of thought and perception, can also foster alternative ones.

The expression “human enhancement” could be placed in the ontological, cognitive, and symbolic dimension in which we conceive and experience the faculty, that is constitutive of human beings, of giving name and thus consistence to things, relations and phenomena in general. It is necessary to point out that this symbolic dimension of emerging technologies has been obstinately and jealously anthropocentric, at least in the modern Western world. In this contribution, I aim to develop a philosophical account of posthuman enhancement that allows us to conceive a future society of humanoids – humans, hybrids, artificial beings – who are free and equal. This expression – “post-human enhancement” – is to be understood as referring to symbols and phenomena different from those associated with “trans-human”. Posthuman is to be interpreted here as material, not anthropocentric but rather interspeciesist, osmotic and relational, horizon of effective sharing of experiences, dangers and challeng...

Anthropneuma, the thesis, is an exploration into intrinsic human spirituality as discussed through a contemporary, research-creation practice. Through this semi-creative document ideas surrounding spirituality from a Cultural Anthropological perspective, an Art Historical perspective, as well as through the studies of intuitive art-making and emotional interpretations of current spiritual experience. References include Hugo Ball, Wassily Kandinsky, Marina Abramavic, Bill Viola, Alicja Kwade, E. Adamson Heobel and Everett L. Frost, Carol Becker, Jill Bennett, Ann Carlson, Alan Watts, and more. This text takes the reader through a detailed description and exploration into the art-making practice of the author, as well as a quasi-autobiographical narrative of their childhood, providing emotional basis, as well as academic foundations regarding the research presented in this document.

Este artigo tenta compreender a obra do escultor Ron Mueck ( Melbourne, 1958 ) pela via do existencialismo de Jean-Paul Sartre (Paris, 1905 – Paris, 1980), abrindo espaco para questionar acerca de como a Arte pode lidar com os questionamentos do nosso mundo de hoje. Busca-se, aqui, desvendar as possiveis significacoes culturais que a escultura atual com foco extremamente humano pode nos trazer, adensando o debate sobre os mecanismos de criacao artistica atual e oferecendo elementos a melhor compreensao do valor estetico da escultura de cunho “existencialista”. Ainda, um ponto de grande valor critico e que detectei na exposicao de Ron Mueck no Museu de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro foi o jogo de proporcoes da qual se serve o artista para nos mostrar que suas esculturas nao sao seres humanos reais, mas uma mimesis da realidade interior do ser humano na atualidade.

Este escrito tenta subsidiar professores e estudantes a trabalharem com poesia brasileira em suas aulas e seus estudos. Tenta-se mostrar, aqui, as varias possibilidades sensoriais que um bom poema pode nos fornecer, estimulando-nos a sentir com mais intensidade, a viver com mais fervor e a pensar com mais inventividade. Como exemplo da riqueza estetica que a poesia pode fornecer, utilizo-me aqui das varias interpretacoes sobre “pedra” na poesia de Cora Coralina, uma das mais importantes e representativas poetisas de lingua portuguesa, uma mulher interiorana que soube descrever cada pequeno detalhe interior e exterior da vida humana. Em sua obra poetica a figura da pedra e recorrente e remete a uma grande variedade de referencias da memoria e interpretacoes de suas historias pessoais, dando-nos a dimensao criativa desta poetisa de primeira linha. Devo lembrar, ainda, que as interpretacoes dadas por este escrito sobre o uso da palavra "pedra" na poesia de Cora Coralina sao a...

De acordo com a concepção estética sartriana, o objeto artístico constrói-se a partir de movimentos desestruturantes que se deslocam da ideia à matéria, da tipologia da linha formal à libertação da linha vivente, da reprodução da forma à invenção do percurso. Por isso, será possível abordar, no presente ensaio, o conceito de revolução giacomettiana do espaço. No chassé-croisé engendrado por Sartre, as “Pinturas de Giacometti” encontrariam o contraponto nas “Esculturas do Tintoreto”: “Se Giacometti esculpia como pintor para traduzir a distância entre os corpos, o Tintoreto pintava como escultor para compensar os efeitos perversos da distância pictórica. Também é pelo movimento que Sartre aborda as esculturas de Calder. Ao desembarcar em Nova York, em 1945, o filósofo é tomado de um súbito fascínio pelo amálgama visual entre natureza e urbanidade, fluindo por vastos espaços amplos, recortados por ruas perpendiculares, que se encontram num ângulo reto. Imediatamente, se entusiasma com aquela arte ao mesmo tempo artesanal, produto do modernismo, mas de algum modo identificada com um mecanismo. No fio de arame que conecta a arte calderiana à filosofia sartriana paira certa imprecisão sublinhada por Sartre ao evidenciar a autonomia do objeto estético.

D o you know why you're here?" Truth be told, I thought that was all I did know; that and the fact that in life I had been a physician. I certainly didn't know where "here" was, and wasn't too sure who "I" was … Can you remember who I was? can you still feel it? 1

1958 yılında Avustralya'da doğmuştur. Oyuncak yapan anne babasının yanında yetişen Mueck kariyerinin ilk yirmi yılında profesyonel kukla yapımcılığı ve oynatıcılığı ile uğraşmıştır. Çocuklar için hazırlanan bir televizyon programı olan Shirl's Neighborhood ve yine bir çocuk filmi olan Labyrinth, sanatçının hem kukla karakterlerini gerçekleştirdiği hem de seslendirmelerini yaptığı prodüksiyonlar arasındadır. Mueck seksenlerde Londra'ya taşınır, burada kendi firmasını kurup reklamlar fotoğrafları için modeller üretmeye başlar. BU süre içinde edindiği birikim onun tekniğinin temellerini oluşturur. Mueck, 1996 yılında Paulo Rego için yaptığı Pinokyo heykeli ile Londra'nın ünlü galericisi ve sanat koleksiyoneri Charles Saatchi'nin dikkatini çekmiştir. Saatchi, 1997 yılında Royal Academy'deki "Sensation" sergisinde Mueck'in Dead Dad isimli erken dönem heykeline yer vermiştir.

Mark Fisher begins his exploration of The Weird and the Eerie (2016) with a short explanation: 'My delay in coming round to the weird and the eerie had to do with the spell cast by Freud's concept of the unheimlich.' 1 The uncanny is a 'luminous' concept: while drawing attention to certain things, other things remain hidden; it implies both agency and magic. 2 A significant number of years spent researching the genealogy and the conceptualization process of the uncanny led me to a similar point of view. To my mind, the concept of the uncanny is a living being, an entity. It came into being in 1919, went through an incubation period for a large part of the twentieth century, to suddenly, massively emerge in the 1980s, and develop into a full-fledged aesthetic concept in the last decades of the twentieth century. This is why I see the uncanny not merely as a Freudian concept, but as a late-twentieth century aesthetic concept. 3 Although specific moments can be defined where you see the concept take a specific turn, the conceptualization of the uncanny also remains mysterious. It does not follow a straight teleological line but encompasses different dates, sites and languages of origin, including various longer periods of silence and near forgetting. Moreover, the process is to a large extent governed by what I have at the time called stickiness, but what might as well be regarded as a spell, a mysterious agency. My research began in pre-Google times, which meant that I had to manually look through a lot of obscure journals. My starting hypothesis was that one way to determine the conceptual status of a word from ordinary language is its appearance as keyword in titles and indexes, combined with a fixed number of references. In this case, the standard The Oxford Literary Review 42.2 (2020): 237-241

This paper explores the multiple significances (semefulness) of touch, as experienced by us as embodied subjects. Prompted by the development of a range of touch-based technologies and by new writings on the senses, I explore meanings of touchconnection, engagement, contiguity, differentiation, positioningfor their contribution to our understanding of the world and of our own embodied subjectivity.

This paper demonstrates one of the new directions in Cultural Studies, which is the study of the senses, sometimes called the 'sensorial turn'.  As David Howes notes, sensory studies questions the verbal focus of older models of analysis and the visual focus of some more recent models, arguing that neither acknowledges the complexity of our engagement with the world, which includes all of the senses.  As well, he argues, both the verbal and the visual model of analysis assume that our experience is consistent and coherent - that we see and feel and think about things and events and people in a coherent and consistent way - and yet our experience is far more "dynamic, relational … and conflicted" (Howes, 2006: 115).  In other words, our different senses and the understandings of the world they generate may be in conflict or may interrelate in a variety of ways, which means that we can simultaneously hold contradictory views of and ideas about things and events and people and the ideas and arguments associated with them.  This paper explores this understanding of the senses by reference to the work of sculptor, Ron Muek and focuses particularly on the sense of touch.

Sculptures have been used to document and express views on gender roles in society during the time of their creation. Ancient cultures created fertility sculptures which represented their views on the importance of reproduction (Zygmont., 2018). Contemporary sculptures model the female form, relying on symbolism to communicate the body image women are made to conform to. The Palaeolithic era and the 21st century are both similar in the ways that society centralises women's roles. The Venus of Willendorf expresses how the female body was objectified for fertility in its era (Kettlewell, 2016); In comparison, "Woman with Shopping" by Ron Mueck showcases the restrictions modern society puts on women as a result of their objectification. It represents role of the workingclass female after fertility. Both artworks make statements that reflect on their time period, proving that the role of women has not fully changed since the Palaeolithic era.

Este artigo analisa algumas questões levantadas pelas exposições de Ron Mueck e Patricia Piccinini realizadas na cidade de São Paulo entre 2014 e 2016, que apresentam características em comum. Foram recortados trabalhos que evidenciam a maneira como ambos os artistas ficcionam a realidade humana com objetivo de problematizar seus valores culturais, desde pressupostos cotidianos à ética nas biociências. A partir desse recorte é possível traçar linhas gerais sobre as exposições e sobre o objeto de pesquisa de cada artista, com destaque para o imaginário sobre o corpo. A análise se faz por meio de uma interlocução com teóricos e críticos contemporâneos, em especial com o conceito de profanação, segundo Giorgio Agamben, e o de real ficcionado, conforme Jacques Rancière.

PALAVRAS-CHAVE
Arte contemporânea. Ficção, real e realidade. Humanidade. Teoria e crítica de arte. Estética e política.

Abstract
From earth to heaven.
The influence of the Aldeia da Terra project in the conception of a new artistic lan-guage.

The barrística, also the art of the figured in clay, although with previous manifestations founded schools in Portugal, namely in Barcelos, Caldas da Rainha and Estremoz, from the middle of the 18th century. This happened from consolidation of the introduction of the Nativity representation in Portugal, by the construction of the Palace of Mafra and from its Italian influences. Today as a manifestation of folk art is a tradition. How-ever, and especially since the 1970s, many contemporary craftsman / artists look for different expressions in this art. These manifestations, which go beyond the themes of the sacred and profane, of rurality and traditions, often also cross the boundary of what is conventionally called Craft, entering into the universe of erudite or more sub-jective Art and its languages and symbols.
Aldeia da Terra was a project that consciously used the themes of tradition but intro-duced others: The caricature, the social portrait, the humor and the irreverence, ex-ploring new limits. One of these limits, which I propose to explore better in this Mas-ter's work, with the proposal of a new language in barrística, is precisely the indefinite frontier that eventually separates the so-called "Craftwork" from "Art".

In this paper, I assess Žižek's article " No Sex, Please, We're Post-human! " as a provocative injunction to signal the posthuman ecstasy and deterrence. I seek to expose, rather than express, Žižek's posthumanist perspective as a paradoxical intertwining of different aspects of perspectivizing a post-human being from the view of the end of sexuality – the background that informs a posthuman future. Žižek's eluding the subject's confrontation with the question of sexual difference to the apex of the genome project touches the delicate coalescing of the notions of 'objectivity and subjectivity' and 'virtuality and reality' in the fate of the body. Ultimately, he renders this inception of this tarrying as a traumatic encounter that informs us of the existential birthright of a true posthuman.

La imaginación escultórica de Xavier Mascaró abreva en los mitos de civilizaciones antiguas como la egipcia y las culturas del Egeo. No se trata únicamente de los referentes temáticos —la barca fúnebre, las máscaras micénicas—, sino que también la selección y el tratamiento de los materiales participan de esta evocación de una afectividad religiosa eterna.

A propósito de Talismán,
Proyecto H Contemporáneo, 18 marzo-15 de junio 2016,
Colonia Roma, Ciudad de México.

Ron Mueck, Jamie Salmon e Sam Jinks são alguns dos artistas contemporâneos que trabalham com a estética hiper-realista em esculturas. Notamos em suas obras a intenção de apresentar corpos humanos próximos a um estado " natural " que se afasta dos padrões estéticos do corpo jovem e perfeito tão longamente explorado pelas mídias de massa. Os trabalhos expõem a fragilidade do corpo por meio da representação das marcas do tempo e de expressões de dor e angústia. Neste trabalho, interessa-nos compreender o potencial estético-político que tais obras carregam. Nossa hipótese é que o biopoder que age sobre os corpos na sociedade contemporânea global e desmaterializada seja um agente que contribua para um maior engajamento sobre imagens que aguçam o sentido háptico (ligado ao tato), como acontece no caso das esculturas citadas.) mostram que o sentido háptico carrega em si um potencial de transformação por estimular o corpo, retirando-o do lugar de espectador passivo, de desengajamento e de distanciamento para um estado ativo, de contato e de proximidade. Nossa intenção é refletir sobre as poéticas das esculturas hiper-realistas contemporâneas em sua relação com a desconstrução da imagem corporal.


ABSTRACT: Ron Mueck, Jamie Salmon and Sam Jinks are some of the contemporary artists who work with hyper-realistic aesthetics in sculptures. It is noted in their works the intention to present human bodies close to a "natural" state distant from the aesthetic standards of the young and perfect body so long exploited by the mass media. The works expose the body fragility through the representation of aging signs and expressions of pain and anguish. This paper focus in understanding the aesthetic-political potential that such works carry. The hypothesis is that that biopower acting on bodies in contemporary global dematerialized society is an agent that contributes to a greater engagement in images that sharpen the haptic sense (connected to touch), as in the case of the sculptures cited. Several authors (Deleuze and Guattari, 1997; Marks, 2000; Paterson, 2007) show that the haptic sense carries within itself a potential to transformation.

Ron Mueck (Melbourn, 1958-) is a sculptor living and working in London, known to the wide public for his pieces Boy (1999), Big Man (2000), A Girl (2001) and In Bed (2005) amongst other. Birth, death, age, loneliness and companionship are recurring themes in his work. His narration escapes from his traditional sculpting methods. He is not a realistic sculptor, he goes way beyond that: his figures undergo various scale transformation. Either they are scaled down to miniatures or up in a monumental scale in order that their inner life and state of mind is reinforced.
In an era of digital and abstract art, the lifelike sculptures of Ron Mueck express a unique tenderness and sympathy for humanity, for the man, the body – a shell of sensations, emotions, memories and passions. Mueck caresses the flaw, the debility, the vulnerability, the attrition. Ηe knows how to attract and repel: the detailed depiction invites the observer to a mental, an existential journey, leaves an intermediate space for reflection and simultaneously averts any need for personal identification.

RESUMO Este artigo tenta compreender a obra do escultor Ron Mueck (Melbourne, 1958) pela via do existencialismo de Jean-Paul Sartre (Paris, 1905 – Paris, 1980), abrindo espaço para questionar acerca de como a Arte pode lidar com os questionamentos do nosso mundo de hoje. Busca-se, aqui, desvendar as possíveis significações culturais que a escultura atual com foco extremamente humano pode nos trazer, adensando o debate sobre os mecanismos de criação artística atual e oferecendo elementos à melhor compreensão do valor estético da escultura de cunho " existencialista ". Ainda, um ponto de grande valor crítico e que detectei na exposição de Ron Mueck no Museu de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro foi o jogo de proporções da qual se serve o artista para nos mostrar que suas esculturas não são seres humanos reais, mas uma mimésis da realidade interior do ser humano na atualidade. ABSTRACT This article tries to understand the works by sculptor Ron Mueck (Melbourne, 1958) via the existentialism by Jean-Paul Sartre (Paris, 1905 – Paris, 1980), opening spaces to question about how Art deals with the questions regarding our actual world. Here we seek to reveal the possible cultural significations of actual sculptures representing the extremely human can bring to us, trying to intensify the debate about how art is produced today and offering elements to better understand the aesthetic value of " existentialist " sculpture. Also, a point of great artistic value that I notices at Ron 1 Professor assistente da Universidade Federal do Tocantins, Doutor em Humanidades pela Universiteit Leiden (Países Baixos), Mestre em Estudos Latino-americanos e Ameríndios (2009) e Mestre em História da Arte Moderna e Contemporânea (2007), ambos mestrados da Univeristeit Leiden. Pós-graduado lato sensu em Educação Infantil (2012) pelo Centro Universitário Barão de Mauá (SP) e Licenciado pleno em Educação Artística (1999) pela UERJ. Áreas de interesse: Arte-Educação, Artes e Culturas Indígenas, Arte Atual.

This essay argues that Freud’s theory pictures modern selves as coping with a new existential and social predicament: a sense of homelessness within their own home. More specifically, Freud suggests that individuals feel estranged from parts of their own psyche (their super-egos) as well as feeling distant from their own culture and tradition (as they are represented by this psychic agency); in modernity, neither one’s mind nor one’s community can promise any longer a sense of ground. Because of this sense of perpetual and irrevocable displacement, Freud feared that modern selves might become semi-psychotic, selves lacking an inner social-normative voice. He calls on moderns, however, to overcome this bleak prospect and the related danger of political chaos by accepting the social norms imposed by their super-egos. But Freud champions only a conditional acceptance of tradition, one that involves ongoing scepticism, ambivalence and emotional distance. Freud’s position could therefore be characterized as a unique type of communitarianism: it seeks a balance between admission of the constitutive force of tradition on the one hand, and the formation of an emotional detachment from its myths, practices and normative claims on the other.

While popular with the gallery‐going public, the hyperrealistic sculpture
of contemporary Australian artist Ron Mueck rarely attracts the attention
of prominent visual art theorists. This art theoretical neglect seems to
hinge on the microscopic verisimilitude of Mueck’s figurative sculptures,
for while some art critics venerate the virtuosity of his technique others
diagnose his hyperreal style as populist and conceptually impoverished.

This study forges a nexus between Mueck’s oeuvre and Sigmund Freud’s
psychoanalytic theory of the uncanny in order to ascribe deeper
conceptual import to the artist’s work. Employing Freud’s renowned
concept of ‘the return of the repressed,’ as well as his ideas about how the
(con)fusion of categorical divisions between the familiar and foreign, the
real and imaginary triggers uncanny feeling, I examine how Mueck’s art
generates uncanniness on two distinct levels. Firstly, I investigate how
certain formal, aesthetic and symbolic aspects of the works cultivate
uncanny feeling in the spectator. The second stratum of uncanniness in
Mueck’s work is tied to a much broader socio‐cultural field, inhabiting the
vicissitudes of the human body in contemporary posthuman culture. I will
argue that Mueck’s oeuvre can be read as a reaction to and a reflection of
the technologised, progressively unnatural being that is the posthuman
subject, carving an uncanny space wherein the familiar and unfamiliar, the
natural and the artificial, are in constant communion.

Two key aims have motivated this project. First, I sought to investigate
possible reasons for my own fascination with Mueck’s hyperrealist
sculpture, an attraction to his work echoed by its popularity with the
gallery‐going public. I also aimed to develop new knowledge on the work
of a contemporary artist who has achieved a relatively high profile in the
international art world but whose practice has received little serious or
sustained art historical and theoretical analysis.

Using Freud's essay on "The Uncanny" as a point of departure, I examine a selection of interactive new media art objects and installations and discuss how the dimension of uncanniness is present and contributing to our aesthetic experience of the works. Discussing examples in which the dimension of the uncanny adds an aesthetic ambivalence, without which the works discussed would be less aesthetically interesting, I argue for the particular relevance of this concept to the field of new media art. 1

This article analyses recent (2009) work of Australian-born, British-based hyperrealist sculptor, Ron Mueck, in order to show how it not only engages with a range of specific contemporary concerns and debates, but also operates as a visual deconstruction of Cartesian subjectivity. In order to identify Mueck’s deconstructive practice, the article uses a combination of multimodal, sensory and discourse analyses to situate Mueck’s work discursively and institutionally, and to explore the ways in which it provokes reader engagement. As the author identifies, each of the works – Youth, Still life and Drift – addresses specific issues and they all provoke a self-reflexive engagement that brings together all aspects of viewer engagement (sensory, emotional, intellectual, spiritual), challenging the mind/body dichotomy that characterizes the Cartesian subject.