[HN Gopher] 50 years ago, an artist exhibited an invented Iron A...
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50 years ago, an artist exhibited an invented Iron Age civilization
Author : benbreen
Score : 88 points
Date : 2022-11-06 23:39 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (theconversation.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (theconversation.com)
| gumby wrote:
| What a marvelous story. Daly's project was also thoughtful (as
| presented here, anyway) rather than a 1960s "shock" piece.
|
| I was a little disappointed that the historical section was not
| more detailed, especially as the beginning of the article talks
| about today being a tie of misinformation. All cultures invent
| historical precedent, of course. But this work brought to mind a
| series of Nazi "documentaries" produced in the 1930s and 1940s
| trying to justify the bogus "Aryan origin" narrative and in
| particular to claim that the so-called "Aryan" German culture
| they were asserting was in fact indigenous to German territory.
| (Of course, like all cultures, it both is and is not).
|
| I find this kind of thing particularly interesting and,
| separately, hilarious, as I personally couldn't care less about
| the idea that one's ancestry justifies one's own self. Thus its
| importance to others makes it worth learning about.
|
| (On the amusing side, I was particularly struck by a supposed
| artifact, a sculpted head, that looked remarkably like Dilbert. I
| told Scott Adams about it and he was suitably amused. But looking
| now at his writing over the last six years or so one has to
| wonder...:-).
| bklaasen wrote:
| A film of the exhibition captures the multimedia aspect well:
| https://vimeo.com/721486048/description
|
| (Via https://civilizationofllhuros.org/)
| lolidk890 wrote:
| Why do humans so often exaggerate their perception of
| credibility?
| swayvil wrote:
| Because the emotion comes first, reason second. The primary
| purpose of reason is to rationalize emotion.
|
| In fact, I suspect that the entire sensorium (sight, sound,
| etc) is an abstraction of emotion.
| hirundo wrote:
| Falling in love is often or even usually an example of that,
| and has the result of increasing fertility, giving the
| credulous a fitness advantage. A tribe with more credulous
| warriors may have a military advantage by being more cohesive
| and easier to lead.
| adolph wrote:
| The willing suspension of disbelief has been a successful
| genetic mutation. Genes learned to meme.
| vertnerd wrote:
| Reminds me of Damien Hirst's recent "Treasures from the Wreck of
| the Unbelievable," which was presented as a documentary film but
| was, in fact, mockumentary.
| swayvil wrote:
| >One of his tall sculptural works had been exhibited in a faculty
| dining room. But people kept mistaking it for a hat rack, which
| frustrated Daly: He assumed that the value of an artwork was
| self-evident and that it should be able to "speak for itself."
|
| I'm of a similar view. I see 2 ways to overcome this.
|
| 1) Make more accessible art (in extremis, boobs and such)
|
| 2) Make more accessible people (massage, drugs...)
|
| But I'm with Norman on this point : posting an explanatory essay
| on the wall next to the piece is a very wrong turn.
| warbler73 wrote:
| Related is the amazing Museum of Jurassic Technology in Culver
| City California.
| JasonFruit wrote:
| I've often considered constructing a series of instruments and
| recording an album of "field recordings" of Ruritanian folk
| music, maybe with singing in Esperanto or another constructed
| language. That would be project enough, but it sounds like this
| guy went a lot further (even though I think his "artifacts"
| betray their origins a little too clearly for my taste).
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| I saw an early 'Etruscan' exhibit years ago. All the artifacts
| were so 'pat', so neatly calculated to be interesting that I had
| suspicions that they were fake.
|
| It can be hard to tell, especially when some folks _do fakes with
| the intent to deceive_
| wl wrote:
| Unless the artifacts were archeologically excavated and
| professionally conserved, they probably were fake to some
| degree. The art market treats ancient artifacts like more
| modern art, which are to be admired for their aesthetic
| qualities and rarity rather than what they can tell us about
| the past. They are to be bought and sold as an investment. They
| are to be displayed to demonstrate refinement, sophistication,
| and wealth. The result is that unscrupulous "restorations" that
| enhance the aesthetic value of and apparent condition of
| artifacts are par for the course.
|
| The Oriental Institute Museum at the University of Chicago has
| a really great exhibit[0] on this topic right now, comparing
| Roman marbles archeologically excavated by the university with
| similar items obtained from the art market. The exhibit opening
| lecture on YouTube is worth watching if you're interested in
| this kind of thing.
|
| [0] https://oi.uchicago.edu/marbles
|
| [1] https://youtu.be/DnMO5nYP-eo
| djur wrote:
| An exhibit is the outcome of multiple rounds of curation --
| which items are preserved through history, which are acquired
| by museums, which are retained, which are displayed, and the
| prominence with which they are displayed. This curation is
| always going to involve some kind of agenda, benign or
| otherwise. In a sense you are correct that the exhibit you
| viewed is fake in the sense of being a fabricated version of
| reality. But that doesn't mean it was fake in the sense of
| being fraudulent.
| the_af wrote:
| In case anyone is wondering: this wasn't a scam, but an art
| exhibit in an art museum about an openly fake civilization, done
| by an artist with mostly repurposed "found" objects.
|
| The "convincingly exhibited" of the title is misleading. It
| wasn't about deceiving people, it was about world-building. It
| wasn't shown at a history museum.
|
| It wasn't a hoax, but more of an artistic "mockumentary" for a
| made up civilization. Almost borgean...
| MarcelOlsz wrote:
| F for Fake by Orson Welles is in the same vein. Still don't
| know if it's a fiction or non-fiction.
| rtanks wrote:
| Agree
| ispo wrote:
| Borges and his men in that strange city...
| duxup wrote:
| That makes more sense as the detail and volume of information
| indicated in the article seems like more than I would expect.
| dang wrote:
| Ok, we've made the title not say convincingly and replaced
| 'fake' with 'invented'. Thanks!
| xhkkffbf wrote:
| Perhaps not an outright scam, but the tax-free structure of
| Cornell and much of the art world is certainly a benefit that
| most normal people and businesses don't enjoy.
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