On Hannah Arendt Between Past and Future : Eight Proposals for Exhibition

"On Hannah Arendt is the complete catalogue of a 14-month program of exhibitions, sonic interventions, virtual talks, and events dedicated to the writings of German-born, American political philosopher Hannah Arendt (1906-1975). Organized by Richard Saltoun Gallery, London between January 2021 and March 2022, the series took as its inspiration a set of themes and questions put forward in the chapters of Arendt’s 1968 book Between Past and Future: Eight Exercises in Political Thought. Each of the eight chapters: “The Modern Age,” “The Concept of History,” “What is Authority?” “What is Freedom?” “The Crisis in Education,” “The Crisis in Culture,” “Truth & Politics,” and “The Conquest of Space,” was used as a framework to compose an exhibition. While the world has changed dramatically since Arendt published the final version of Between Past and Future in 1968, her call for thoughtful reflection on difficult subjects remains impressively relevant today. On Hannah Arendt rediscovers these important texts and one of the most exceptional and controversial philosophers of the postwar generation. This timely new publication includes the work of twenty-two internationally renowned artists alongside essays by Arendt specialists Roger Berkowitz, Professor of Politics, Philosophy, and Human Rights at Bard College and Academic Director, Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities; Lyndsey Stonebridge, Professor of Humanities and Human Rights, University of Birmingham; and a conversation between curator Gavin Delahunty and several the exhibiting artists on the intersection of Arendt’s thought and art practice. These three texts are complemented by special contributions from some of the world’s leading philosophers, scholars, historians, and poets, including Seyla Benhabib, Judith Butler, Martin Jay, Ken Krimstein, Ann Lauterbach, Shai Lavi and Griselda Pollock. Arendt’s subtitle, Eight Exercises in Political Thought, reflects her desire to avoid providing definitive answers, instructing the reader that the “only aim is to gain experience in how to think.” In this spirit, the artists selected for the exhibitions suggest, interpret, extrapolate, and elucidate ideas in Arendt’s book. Their engagement with these topics should not be approached as descriptive or explanatory, but as something with the potential to alter and inform our attitudes toward exile, agency, freedom, prejudice, and the spiritual. Artists included Eleanor Antin, Siah Armajani, Thomas Bayrle, Renate Bertlmann, Siân Davey, Aleksandra Domanović, Lili Dujourie, BRACHA (Bracha L. Ettinger), Véronique Filozof, Peter Kennard, Vivienne Koorland, Laima Leyton, Annette Messager, Everlyn Nicodemus, Sylvia Plimack Mangold, Elaine Reichek, Pamela Rosenkranz, Allan Sekula, Lerato Shadi, Jo Spence, Ulay and Carey Young. In a unique addition to the book, Brazilian sound artist and music producer Laima Leyton has created a series of new sound pieces that respond to each essay in Arendt’s publication. Collectively entitled Infinite past, infinite future and NOW, they will be available to listen by using your smartphone to scan QR codes interspersed throughout the publication. We are living through a period in history that is marked by a tremendous amount of instability. Driven largely by the COVID-19 pandemic, we have had to radically alter how we educate, socialize, consume, and care for one another. This has intensified our dependence on technology, as well as exacerbating violence, inequalities, and injustices in our society. Since the gallery’s inception in 2012, Richard Saltoun has been committed to Feminist and Conceptual artists working from the 1970s onwards— a strategy that has inevitably led it to explore the work of Hannah Arendt. Recent years have seen unprecedented interest in the writings of Arendt. This uptake in interest appears to be linked to Arendt’s first-hand experience as someone who fled Nazi Germany in 1933 and spent several years as an asylum seeker in Europe. She was granted resident alien status in the United States in 1941. These events shaped her understanding of human suffering, exile and displacement, defense of freedom, and insights into the dangers of a disconnected, atomized, and isolated population. In 2019 it prompted Lyndsey Stonebridge to say of Arendt: “I don’t think we’ve ever needed her creativity, rigor and political passion more than we do now.” While Arendt’s relevance to political philosophy and theory has been demonstrated in recent and forthcoming publications such as Richard J. Bernstein’s Why Read Hannah Arendt Now? (Wiley, 2018); Caroline Ashcroft’s Violence and Power in the Thought of Hannah Arendt (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2021); Samantha Rose Hill’s Hannah Arendt (Reaktion Books, 2021); Joke J. Hermsen’s A Good and Dignified Life: The Political Advice of Hannah Arendt and Rosa Luxemburg (Yale University Press, 2022); and Lyndsey Stonebridge’s Thinking Like Hannah Arendt (Jonathan Cape, 2022), this will be the first publication to consider the relationship between Arendtian thought and artistic practice. This publication was designed by A Practice for Everyday Life. Printed in an edition of 500 copies." --