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Allegory of the Cave Painting

 - Allegory of the Cave Painting
A multidisciplinary examination of the Gwion Gwion cave paintings' “living pigments” which are generating new articulations between “art” and “life.”
A 2010 archeological study found that the prehistoric Gwion Gwion paintings in Australia, whose chromatic vividness contrasts with their age and their exposure to sun and rain, are inhabited by “living pigments.” A symbiotic biofilm sustains a process of permanent self-painting, while also etching the pictures deeper into the quartz wall.
The various texts presented here evaluate the Gwion Gwion as an allegorical metabolism developping collaborative relations between antonyms, altered schemas of “origin” and “identity”, contamination and purity, prehistory and modernity, bacterial and human colonies, lost knowledge and scientific advancement.
Published on the occasion of the eponymous exhibition at Extra City, Antwerp, in 2014 and at Middelheim Museum, Antwerp, from October 2014 to March 2015.
Edited by Mihnea Mircan and Vincent W.J. van Gerven Oei.
Texts by Haseeb Ahmed, Ignacio Chapela, Justin Clemens, Georges Didi-Huberman, Jonathan Dronsfield, Christopher Fynsk, Vincent W.J. van Gerven Oei, Natasha Ginwala & Vivian Ziherl, Adam Staley Groves, Sean Gurd, Adam Jasper, Susanne Kriemann, Brenda Machosky, Mihnea Mircan, Alexander Nagel, Rosalind Nashashibi, Tom Nicholson, Jack Pettigrew, Raphaël Pirenne, Susan Schuppli, Lucy Steeds, Jonas Leonard Tinius, Marina Vishmidt, Christopher Witmore, Khadija von Zinnenburg Carroll.
 
published in June 2015
English edition
13 x 21 cm (softcover, dust jacket)
456 pages (b/w ill.)
 
ISBN : 978-88-6749-116-2
EAN : 9788867491162
 
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