CHHS Projects 2022: an / æsthetics

An/Aesthetics
A Sculpture Exhibit at Century House Historical Society

“If I am right, some works of art not only make us suggestible, and
with it susceptible, to new values, beliefs, and ideologies, but they
also anaesthetize us against the pain that often attends such
upheavals.”

— David Novitz “The Anaesthetics of Emotion,” in Emotion and the
Arts, edited by Mette Hjort and Sue Laver. New York: Oxford University
Press. 1999.

Opening Friday August 5th 4pm-8pm, 2022

In this, the latest outdoor sculpture exhibit to be held on the grounds of the Century House Historical Society, we wonder…

Can history be understood as a testament to a human capacity for unfeeling? While the history of medical anaesthesia has been well documented and explored, we seek to expand the generative possibilities of an anaesthetic interpretation of human (and
other-than-human) history, and towards this purpose we look to present work that engages with, avoids, supports, repudiates, touches upon, buttresses, undermines … the notion of anaesthesia in all of its diverse and various manifestations: as repetition and trance, hypnosis, the waking dream-state, the numbness of routine, reverie, Hypnos and the domain of sleep, the river Lethe and forgetting, amnesia, oblivion, the intentional protection of the senses (nepsis), asceticism, aestheticism….

In presenting this exhibit, we wonder “How can we pull the un-felt back into the realm of feeling?” We seek work that engages with the notion of salvage — as a rescue attempt — towards the retrieval of the insensible, the redemption of the dismissed, the recovery of discarded sensibilities.

The An/Aesthetics organizers: Michael Asbill, Jeff Benjamin, Lital Dotan, Maria Elena Ferrer-Harrington, Emilie Houssart

1. Steve Czerny
2. Michele Gabrielle Clark
3. Isabel Cotarelo Crisalidas
4. Renata Del Riego If rocks had no memory they would probably float
5. Kayla Gibbons Cippus II
6. Susan Graham Insomnia/Obscura
7. Raphael Griswold Mil-2 Encirclement
8. Sergey Jivetin Unmoored
9. Neal Hollinger and Kieran Kinsella Forest Spirits/mine spirits
10. Gary Kachadourian Oak Sapling
11. Meredith and Harry Kuhnhardt
12. Tali Levi
    12a. Eve Joslyn Madalengoitia a distant future
13. Tom Mangenero
14. Marko Marila Queerin’ the Hoggee
15. Laura McCallum Mystère
16. Mattias Neumann Basics Number 57
17. Joel Olzak No memories, no work
18. Kiersten, Ephraim, and Raivo Puusemp Gamma
19. Eliza Pritzger Archaeological Gatekeepers
20. Molly Rausch Mine Creep
21. Brian James Robinson
22. Greg Slick Space-Time Poem #2
23. Tony Stanzione Cold Water Flat
24. Roberta Trentin and Bosch Purvis EXTRACTOCENE
25. Andres San Millán Trial of Desire
26. Peter Lamborn Wilson Binnewater Ice Storage
27. Hope Windle We the Pilgrim
28. Robert The sANDals
29. Suvi Tuominen
30. The Center for the Study of the Relationship Between Words and Stones World Politics

Artists in An/aesthetics: