Amanda du Preez

The Routledge Companion to Digital Humanities and Art History offers a broad survey of cutting-edge intersections between digital technologies and the study of art history, museum practices, and cultural heritage. The volume focuses not only on new computational tools that have been developed for the study of artworks and their histories but also debates the disciplinary opportunities and challenges that have emerged in response to the use of digital resources and methodologies. Chapters cover a wide range of technical and conceptual themes that define the current state of the field and outline strategies for future development. This book offers a timely perspective on transdisciplinary developments that are reshaping art historical research, conservation, and teaching. This book will be of interest to scholars in art history, historical theory, method and historiography, and research methods in education. Kathryn Brown is a lecturer in art history and visual culture at Loughborough University, UK.

Selfies have become more dangerous than sharks, if the 15 reported selfie deaths in 2015 are compared to the eight shark attacks in the same year. Determining the exact parameters for a selfie death or death by selfie is difficult; in some cases, one may argue that the selfie is not the cause of death but in fact only occurs tragically before the event. The focus of this article falls on those selfies that were taken in pursuit of experiencing a sublime encounter with mortality and that in the end succeeded in evoking that looming encounter. It is argued that the obsession to experience the inexplicable is, however, not a recent endeavour, and the sublime is a useful aesthetic category to unpack the phenomenon of selfie deaths. In the analysis, three categories are identified to interpret the subject, namely, selfies unknowingly taken before death, selfies of death where the taker's death is almost witnessed and selfies with death where the taker stands by while someone else dies. The emphasis falls on the analysis of selfies of death that overlaps with the sublime experience almost entirely, and it becomes nearly impossible to distinguish between selfie and sublimity. According to the popular press, in 2015 it was more likely that you would die while taking a selfie than being attacked and killed by a shark. 1 The deadly 'monster' from the Jaws franchise has officially become less frightening than capturing one's image via a smartphone, that is, if the 15 reported selfie deaths are compared to the eight shark attacks of 2015. Determining the exact parameters for death by selfie or selfiecide is difficult , and in some cases, one may argue that the selfie is not the cause of death but in fact

Amanda du Preez the contemporary sublime and the culture of extremes: parkour and finding the freedom of the city biography Amanda du Preez completed her Doctoral studies at the University of South Africa in 2002 with the title Gendered Bodies and New Technologies. The thesis has one founding premise, namely that embodiment constitutes a non-negotiable prerequisite for human life. Over the past 15 years she has lectured at the University of Pretoria, University of South Africa, the Pretoria Technikon, and the Open Window Art Academy, on subjects ranging from Art History, Visual Communication, and Art Therapy to Open and Distance Learning. She is currently a Senior Lecturer at the University of Pretoria, in the Department of Visual Arts, and teaches Visual Culture and Art History. In 2005 she co-authored South African Visual Culture with J. van Eeden (Van Schaik: Pretoria). The following publications are forthcoming: Gendered Bodies and New Technologies: Rethinking Embodiment in a Cyber Era (Unisa Press) and Taking a Hard Look: Gender and Visual Culture (Cambridge Scholars Press). Her field of expertise includes gender and feminist theories, virtual and cyber culture, bio-politics, new technologies, and film and visual culture.

Ross Abbinnett Kiyoshi Abe Raja Adal Peter Adey Niels Albertsen Lori Allen Anne Allison Ash Amin Louise Amoore Jens Andermann Ben Anderson Ien Ang Gil Anidjar Floya Anthias Antonio Arantes John Armitage Karel Arnaut Rowland Atkinson Jonathan Bach Dirk Baecker Peter Baehr Patrick Baert Jennifer Bajorek William Balee Anne Barron Andrew Barry Zohreh Bayatrizi David Beer Fernanda Beigel Peter Beilharz Vikki Bell Debra Benita Shaw David Bennett Shaun Best Gurminder Bhambra Gregory Bird Ole Bjerg Claire Blencowe Anders Blok Thomas Boland Dave Boothroyd Christian Borch Georgina Born Rosi Braidotti Benjamin Bratton Andrea Brighenti Julian Brigstocke Vanessa Brown Antony Bryant Robin Bunton Peter Burke James Burton Robert Button David Byrne Matthew Calarco Kirsten Campbell Michael Campbell Elizabeth Carnegie Michael Carolan Ellis Cashmore Antonio Casilli Stephen Casper Genaro Castro-Vazquez David Cecchetto Iain Chambers Sébastien Chauvin John Cheney-Lippold Daniel Chernilo

New York boasts the Statue of Liberty, Rio de Janeiro takes cover in the shadow of the giant Cristo Rendentor atop the Corcovado, and nowthe city of Johannesburg is graced with its own 'street hero' (p. 82), namely Fire Walker — the figure of a female vendor in motion although stationed at the foot of the Queen Elizabeth Bridge in downtown Johannesburg's lively bustle. Even if Fire Walker does not share thesame utopian spirit (or perhaps she does?) as the colossal antecedents in New York or Rio de Janeiro - for she deals more with 'bare life' (p. 2) - the sculptural collaboration between artists William Kentridge and Gerhard Marx, commissioned for the World Soccer Cup event of 2010, did culminate in an impressive 'eleven-metre-high assemblage of laser-cutsteel plates' (p. 15).

Op 30 Junie 1952 is Woman's World vir die eerste maal uitgesaai vanuit die Kaapstadse ateljees van die destydse SAUK. Geskoei op die resep van die BBC program Woman's Hour wat vanaf 1946 uitgesaai is en gepoog het om vroue weer tuis te bring in die huis na die afloop van die wereldoorlog, het die Suid-Afrikaanse weergawe Woman's World ook elke moontlike onderwerp wat vroue mag raak op die lug aangepak. Vanaf 1995 is die program herdoop tot Woman Today en dit is dan ook die titel van die bundel saamgestel deur Hilary Reynolds en Nancy Richards. Die boek is soos die samestellers dit stel, "'n boek van die radioprogram" wat die eerste vyftig bestaansjare van die program dek vanaf 1952 tot 2002.

Traditionally considered to be the breeding ground of the monstrous, the limen is the non-place where hybrids congeal and mutate into extraordinary amalgamations. The latest cultural phenomenon of zef as embodied in the rap rave band Die Antwoord reveals precisely such a monstrous hybridity. Zef - a term describing white (predominantly Afrikaans) trash - automatically situates Die Antwoord as liminal outsiders and interlopers. In many ways, Die Antwoord resembles a circus troupe of freaks: front man Ninja is golem-like with his tattooed torso, Yo-landi Vi$$er resembles an acidic nymph and DJ High Tek plods along in the flanks. My analysis builds and expands on recognised correspondences between the monstrous, the liminal and the carnival. I show how liminal aspects (both monstrous and carnivalesque) are cleverly co-opted by Die Antwoord into a monstrous carnivalesque extravaganza, whereby the liminal is converted into a suspended moment of consumption. The extent to which liminality...

Peffer's collection of essays is shrewdly entitled 'Art and the end of apartheid' rather than, as one might expect, 'Art from the end of apartheid'. The choice to add 'and' was a wise one, as it helped Peffer to keep the two concepts apart and not to conflate them into the same historical moment. Peffer informs the reader that it is particularly the period from 1976 to 1994 that forms the scope of his analysis.

This volume captures the status of digital humanities within the Arts in South Africa. The primary research methodology falls within the broader tradition of phenomenological hermeneutics, with a specific emphasis on visual hermeneutics. Some of the tools utilised as part of the visual hermeneutic methods are geographic information system (GIS) mapping, sensory ethnography and narrative pathways. Digital humanities is positioned here as the necessary engagement of the humanities with the pervasive digital culture of the 21st century. It is posited that the humanities and arts, in particular, have an essential role to play in unlocking meaning from scientific, technological and data-driven research. The critical engagement with digital humanities is foregrounded throughout the volume, as this crucial engagement works through images. Images (as understood within image studies) are not merely another form of text but always more than text. As such, this book is the first of its kind in...

© Universit y of South Africa Press ISSN 0004-3389 pp 6–18 In the wake of Juliet’s untimely death, these short engagements with her work are perhaps not so untimely. It is always difficult to speak or write in the face of death, and therefore I am incredibly thankful to the authors who were prepared to contribute to this remembering of Juliet’s legacy at such short notice. In his contribution Terry King, former colleague and Head of the Department of Art History and Fine Art at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, provides some insights into recurring themes and materials in Juliet’s oeuvre. Jenny Stretton, curator at the Durban Art Gallery, reflects on the time spent with Juliet during the recent sculpture exhibition ‘All Fired Up’ at the gallery. Remembering Juliet Armstrong

The Mandela Poster Project Collective, in partnership with the University of Pretoria, presented an international exhibition of 95 posters celebrating the life of Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela between 17 and 26 July 2013. The exhibition was the first public display of the poster collection, which at the time of writing is also going to travel to various venues in Johannesburg and Cape Town. The exhibition is also going to travel internationally, including to Brazil, Canada, Egypt, Japan, Mexico, the UK, and the USA.

Every year I collect an arsenal of contemporary and relevant examples from the mass media and other cultural activities to convince my postgraduate students (mostly female) that feminism and gender are indeed relevant topics for a scholar of art history and visual culture. Last year, for instance, I contrasted a photograph of the four rag princesses at the University of Pretoria wrapped in nothing but tin foil on the cover of a leading newspaper with the victorious face of one of four alleged rapists on the same campus.

If one of the leading media theorist of the twentieth century, Marshall McLuhan's dictum, namely that 'the medium is the message' holds true, how does it apply to the medium of art? Does McLuhan's statement reveal something of the matter of art by commenting on the complex relationship between the message and the medium through which it is sent? McLuhan (1994 : 17) explains the close relation between medium and message as follows: 'For the "message" of any medium or technology is the change in scale or pace or pattern that it introduces into human affairs.' According to McLuhan, it is therefore not only a question of how the content of the message interacts with society and brings about new ideas, but, more importantly, the revolution that comes through the medium itself. In terms of art, it means that we are advised not only to judge art in terms of its content (what it means), but that we should also take into account the vehicle or materiality th...

The Afrikaner - the only white tribe of Africa or a lost volk caught between an unmentionable past and an uncertain future? One only has to mention recent public statements by Minister Lulu Xingwana about Afrikaner young men and their supposed problematic relationship with women as a response to the Oscar Pistorius saga, to gauge existing negative sentiments about Afrikaner culture. Clearly, to be an Afrikaner is to embody a contested identity that has become synonymous with apartheid, confining nationalism, unbridled racism and a general melange of conservatism.

This article uses a philosophical hermeneutic perspective to present a reading of selected astronaut space selfies by drawing on ideas of Michel Serres, Paul Virilio, Hannah Arendt, Bonnie Mann, Joanna Zylinska, Nicholas Mirzoeff, and W. J. T. Mitchell. The image of the astronaut is unpacked as a visual apocalyptic trope that embodies collective dreams of going beyond Earth in post-Earth projections. Michel Serres distinguished between two regimes of pollution, namely “hard pollution” and “soft pollution.” The author uses Serres's distinction between hard and soft pollution to investigate the image of the astronaut as an agent of post-Earth dreams. The essay asks: Are space selfies potential soft pollution in Michel Serres's terms? The conclusion drawn after considering evidence of space travel on human physiology and psychology is that although astronauts may be “marvelous messengers,” their images mostly act as soft pollution that positions viewers in a particular way towa...

This chapter examines the affordances of information and communication technologies (ICTs) and the different intergenerational practices of oversharing online. Using the concepts of ‘aesthetics of appearance’ (representation that endures over time and space) and ‘aesthetics of disappearance’ (constant presentism), it asks what prompts oversharing, what oversharing reveals about our life stages and the state of being human in an age of over-acceleration dominated by ICTs, and how oversharing affects our embodied phenomenology. The chapter first provides an overview of ideas about acceleration and the resulting aesthetics of disappearance, as proposed by philosopher and urbanist Paul Virilio, before discussing how the phenomenon of oversharing is mediated by social media platforms such as Facebook and Snapchat. It then considers whether posting selfies on a Facebook page constitutes oversharing and whether oversharing (real-time presence) achieves what Virilio calls an aesthetics of d...

Abstract: Op 30 Junie 1952 is Woman's World vir die eerste maal uitgesaai vanuit die Kaapstadse ateljees van die destydse SAUK. Geskoei op die resep van die BBC program Woman's Hour wat vanaf 1946 uitgesaai is en gepoog het om vroue weer tuis te bring in die huis na die ...

Abstract: Extracted from text ... Brenda Schmahmann. Through the looking glass: Representations of self by South African women artists. 2004. Johannesburg: David Krut Publishing. R250, 00. Every year I collect an arsenal of contemporary and relevant examples from the mass ...

South Africa on the topic of cyberfeminism and embodiment in 2003. She has coedited " South African visual culture " (2005); edited " Taking a hard look: gender and visual culture " (2009) and authored " Gendered bodies a new technologies: rethinking embodiment in a cyber-era " (2009). She served as assistant editor of two accredited journals, Image & Text and De Arte. Currently, she serves on the advisory board of VIAD (UJ). She is also a member of the International Scientific Board for the book series of Filmforum (Italy) and most notably, a member of the Governing Board of the International Association for Visual Culture. She has a NRF rating and received the Faculty of Humanities award as Researcher of the Year (Arts Cluster) in 2013. She ABSTRACT In what follows the idea of the online double is historically contextualised and analysed. Beginning with the contemporary idea of the 'selfie' as online self-induced double, I proceed to discuss the Doppelgänger's (double) mythical and literary roots, in order to expand the discussion of the selfie to include the online double. Two instances of the online double are unpacked, namely the double as shadow and the double as a stand-in or alter-ego, which correspond significantly with Marshall McLuhan's analysis of the Narcissus myth and technological use. McLuhan reveals the doubled nature of our technological engagement that leads to either self-amputation or self-amplification. In my analysis, the double as shadow is correlated with self-amputation and the double as alter-ego with self-amplification. It is argued that the double as shadow is evoked online through the mining of data regarding the self that is captured consciously and unconsciously to create what is known as the Data Doppelgänger. The figure of the Doppelgänger is further vividly conjured through virtual stand-ins or alter-egos that act on behalf of the self to create a tele-presence through examples such as Project Lifelike and rep.licants.org. 108 Du Preez: Performing the virtual double: Notes on self-amputation and self-amplification

Abstract: In a culture where we are "swamped by digital tsunamis" (Gitlin 1998:1), because our memories are nano-chipped and our bio-bodies genetically re-engineered, what happens to learning - that "old fashioned" activity of acquiring knowledge in an age of an information ...

By exploring selected, recent works produced by, amongst others, South African artists Zanele Muholi, Nandipha Mntambo, Tracey Rose and Leora Farber, I aim to trace a possible resurgence of the real through the depiction of the corporeal in their work. The artists have been selected because their works provide a fecundity of ‘corporeal realness’ or corpo(real)ity. The exploration is further layered by inquiring how the resurgence of the real corresponds to the aesthetic category of the material sublime. The material sublime dates from the 19th century, and has been regarded as a sub-theory within the broader classical sublime. It is argued that the material sublime, together with contemporary feminist theorists such as Bonnie Mann, Karen Barad, Elizabeth Wilson and Vicky Kirby, provide a useful lens for rethinking the engagement between matter and discourse. It is in particular through the resilient flesh represented in Muholi's, Mntambo's and Farber's work, that they and their subjects are turned into what can be playfully termed ‘material girls’.

According to the popular press, it was more likely in 2015 to die while taking a selfie than being attacked or killed by a shark. 1 This means that officially the deadly " monster " from the Jaws franchise has become less frightening than capturing one's image via a smartphone. That is if the 15 reported selfie deaths are compared to the 8 shark attacks in 2015. Determining the exact parameters for a selfie death or death by selfie is difficult and in some cases one may argue that the selfie is not the cause of death but in fact only occurs tragically before the event. In these cases, the selfies signify more as memorials for remembering and mourning the departed before their imminent demise. What interests me here, however, are those selfies that were taken in pursuit of experiencing a sublime encounter with mortality and that in the end then evoke that looming encounter. These are the selfies taken from the top of a skyscraper while dangling in mid-air or perched on the brink of an overhanging cliff just before the taker of the selfie's foot slipped. As such these images are breath-taking and awesome, and providing one does not slip, the taker of the selfie may be rewarded with hundreds of " likes " on social media. Takers of dangerous selfies are after all considered to be heroes who unflinchingly put themselves in harm's way to experience what should not be experienced. Even more what cannot be experienced as a viewer, namely one's death? But, perhaps unknowingly, that is what death selfies aim for, namely to become a witness to one's death. The obsession to experience the inexplicable is however not a recent endeavour, and the discourse on and of the sublime is a useful aesthetic category to unpack the phenomenon of selfie deaths. The sublime experience has been described amongst others as awe-inspiring, overwhelming and unrepresentable by its very nature. In what follows, the sublime as an aesthetic category is briefly unpacked before its relevance to selfie deaths is considered. Then the phenomenon of the selfie and the most significant research on the reasons why they have become so popular are explored, before the themes of selfie death, and sublimity are fleshed out. In the analysis, three categories are identified to focus the scope namely, selfies unknowingly taken before death; selfies of death where the takers death is almost witnessed; and selfies with death where the taker stands by while someone else dies. The emphasis falls on the analysis of selfies of death that overlaps with the sublime experience almost entirely and it becomes nearly impossible to distinguish between the two events.