Papers by Anthony Marcellini
This artist's book comprises drawings and a text concerning the coming into being of a Magpie... more This artist's book comprises drawings and a text concerning the coming into being of a Magpie as a parable of the connection between an individual’s notion of self and their overall understanding of their role in society. The Magpie (or Skata) was chosen due to the performativity of this mischievous bird, ubiquitous in Gothenburg, Sweden. Magpies are also one of the only birds that has been shown to recognize itself in a mirror. This text imagines what a magpie might be thinking when it sees its reflection for the first time, asking questions such as, could this recognition of selfhood lead the Magpie to an understanding of its role in society? The text should be read as a kind of fable, paraphrased and influenced by a number of thinkers who examine self-awareness, performativity, and social engagement. The book also features a text comparing Lacan's mirror-stage with Freud's Fort / Da Game by Samo Tomsic, a Slovenian philosopher and researcher at the Jan van Eyck Academ...
Self Published, 2020
The normal is a fantasy, a dream of a life free of consequences, for within lies discrimination, ... more The normal is a fantasy, a dream of a life free of consequences, for within lies discrimination, ignorance and exploitation. A call for a return to normal is a call for an economy of the able-bodied, an economy of inequality, a call for global capitalism to accelerate, for the depletion of natural resources, for increased climate change, for BIPOC bodies, disabled bodies and the working poor to be brutalized, disregarded and neglected, amidst calls for greater sacrifice. It is call for discrimination of all that falls outside the normal paradigm, and a pledge to ignore problems that contradict the dream.
Ultimately, the combination of forms and their seemingly competing associations are so strange th... more Ultimately, the combination of forms and their seemingly competing associations are so strange that the object stands alien and unfamiliar. It is not a didactic work, it does not lecture or preach. In fact it does not care about you. Understanding is your job. It is your job to approach the artwork, to recognize it. It is a subject that stands apart, that refuses to respond to the hail of authority, to the profiling of “hey you there”, and, thus, remains completely an object.
The transcript from a lecture examining the idea of Obsolescence as a paramount twenty-first cent... more The transcript from a lecture examining the idea of Obsolescence as a paramount twenty-first century concept and perhaps a trauma, and a sketch for what a Museum of Obsolescence might look like.
The most dominant presence in this exhibition is the past, bearing down on the present. It become... more The most dominant presence in this exhibition is the past, bearing down on the present. It becomes a subject, an aesthetic and the stage set. This is not the nostalgic or glorified past, but one of breakdown, strife and disregard, a past that ignored the future and is lost within it.
At a time when our non-virtual world is almost infinitely reproducible in the digital, this situa... more At a time when our non-virtual world is almost infinitely reproducible in the digital, this situation, which Walter Benjamin describes about the work of art, is extended to all objects. Not only do we produce copies of objects that lack an aura, but the aura of the analog, no matter how non-digitally reproducible, also becomes highlighted and amplified. Our attempts to make all objects in life easily accessible by bringing them closer, also causes our non-virtual life to become somehow more distant, weirder and unapproachable. That which is not touched by the virtual, or stands against it, becomes increasingly fetishized perhaps even ritualized.
A short play as a dialogue between John Cage and a sofa on causality and the nature of human and ... more A short play as a dialogue between John Cage and a sofa on causality and the nature of human and object relations, but kinda funny.
It is a seeping awareness of an institution so big, with a market demand so large, to require two... more It is a seeping awareness of an institution so big, with a market demand so large, to require two shifts. It is a sudden recognition of an industry with roots extending out to five other equally colossal factories in Detroit, to hundreds of factories and sub-factories stretching through the country, and coursing across oceans to cities around the world. It is a moment of awareness at the millions who depend on and take pride in this industry. It is a jolt from the unfathomable force of energy which this industry puts in motion, in manpower, electricity and natural resources, to produce millions upon millions of cars: gasoline ignites, creating a cycle of explosions one hundred times per minute, propelling high precision pistons, moving lubricated crankshafts, driving chains, spinning axels, the four wheels of my car turn. But above all it is the awareness of a behemoth in decline.
If subject-object oppositions indicate the problematics of social practice, how do we rethink and... more If subject-object oppositions indicate the problematics of social practice, how do we rethink and reorganize this concept?
Clement Greenberg stands in an abyss of his own making, a boundlessness that extends all around h... more Clement Greenberg stands in an abyss of his own making, a boundlessness that extends all around him. He wanted to steer the course of the future, but above all he was motivated by a relentless desire for flatness. Now the plane stretches out in front of him, expanding like a pool fed from a broken water main with an infinite supply. The pool, the abyss, the realization that this is what he wanted yet somehow exactly the opposite, gets larger and larger, deeper and deeper, darker and more opaque, and he wonders how this happened. He has led the charge to this border region and now everything has shifted, the point of no return, the point at which the pull becomes so great as to make escape impossible
Nowiswere, 2012
An reflection on the character of shadows in the work of Roberto Bolaño, Hans Christian Andersen,... more An reflection on the character of shadows in the work of Roberto Bolaño, Hans Christian Andersen, Marcel Duchamp, Mario Perniola
Octavio Paz, Plato, Charles Howard Hinton, Jean Baudrillard, Nietzsche and Alenka Zupancic.
Books by Anthony Marcellini
This is the second chapter to the essay “Becoming Real: A Magpie’s Reflections on Self”. This ear... more This is the second chapter to the essay “Becoming Real: A Magpie’s Reflections on Self”. This earlier text written five years before was a kind of anthropomorphic fable imagining a philosophical chain of reactions occurring in the mind of a European Magpie (Pica Pica) after recognizing its own reflection in a Mirror.
The Eurasian Magpie (Pica Pica) is one of the few birds that have been shown to recognize themsel... more The Eurasian Magpie (Pica Pica) is one of the few birds that have been shown to recognize themselves in mirrors. This fictive text and series of drawings imagines what a Magpie might be thinking when it sees its reflection for the first time, and could this recognition of selfhood lead the magpie to an understanding of its role in the world?
An additional text by Samo Tomšič “Psychoanalysis in the Mirror”, focuses specifically on the birth of subjectivity in the infant, as depicted by Sigmund Freud in the fort/da game contrasted with Lacan’s example of the mirror stage.
This book was published in 2010 by Gothenburg University to coincide with the exhibition "Becoming Real" at Etc. Galerie in Prague, Czech Republic.
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Papers by Anthony Marcellini
Octavio Paz, Plato, Charles Howard Hinton, Jean Baudrillard, Nietzsche and Alenka Zupancic.
Books by Anthony Marcellini
An additional text by Samo Tomšič “Psychoanalysis in the Mirror”, focuses specifically on the birth of subjectivity in the infant, as depicted by Sigmund Freud in the fort/da game contrasted with Lacan’s example of the mirror stage.
This book was published in 2010 by Gothenburg University to coincide with the exhibition "Becoming Real" at Etc. Galerie in Prague, Czech Republic.
Octavio Paz, Plato, Charles Howard Hinton, Jean Baudrillard, Nietzsche and Alenka Zupancic.
An additional text by Samo Tomšič “Psychoanalysis in the Mirror”, focuses specifically on the birth of subjectivity in the infant, as depicted by Sigmund Freud in the fort/da game contrasted with Lacan’s example of the mirror stage.
This book was published in 2010 by Gothenburg University to coincide with the exhibition "Becoming Real" at Etc. Galerie in Prague, Czech Republic.