Introduction: how to use this book, Part I Shorter Essays, 1. Country Life, 2. Folkert de Jong: serious history and black comedy, 3. Jimmie Durham: spoof museologist, ahistorical dreamer, 4. Progressive Tradition: Ariella Azoulay and Chloé Zhao (post-modernisms and Earthrise), 5. Sigrid Holmwood: history performed as a radical gesture, 6. Tacita Dean: seeing and believing (altermodern and veracity), 7. Robert Smithson and George Kubler: a bus ride in geological time, 8. Charles Baudelaire’s Salon of 1846: modern life and modern art as history, 9. Cao Fei, Yu Hong, Tie Ning, and Jia Zhangke: memory, return, and afterimage, 10. John Akomfrah: hauntological history and costume drama, 11. Pablo Bronstein: critiquing neo-Georgian aesthetics in a lingering postmodern paradigm, 12. Walter Benjamin’s Theses: history’s mental gymnasium, 13. Exploring the Outmoded: a fragment of Benjamin’s Surrealism, 14. Beguiling Memories: memory palaces, wunderkammers, Proust, and La Jetée, 15. A Melancholic Past-Present Tense: the novels of Kazuo Ishiguro, 16. Folk-Tales and Fairy-Tales: Calvino, cunning, and high spirits, hearts, chains, and liberties, 17. History or Dreaming: Wade Davis on Jared Diamond, 18. ‘I don’t believe in things’: Gilles Deleuze, history, and event, Part II Longer Essays, 19. Dark Horses and Hollow Men: Hew Locke and the monument – Part 1, 20. Dark Horses and Hollow Men: Hew Locke and the monument – Part 2, 21. A Personal History of New School Hip-Hop - Part 1, 22. A Personal History of New School Hip-Hop - Part 2, 23. Giving Form to History: History and story, Johannes Phokela, and the Soweto museums, 24. Forever Young: Elizabeth Price and the popular past, amateurism, fetish, and juvenilia – Part 1, 25. Forever Young: Elizabeth Price and the popular past, amateurism, fetish, and juvenilia – Part 2, 26. Reverb: a passion for the past in popular music – Part 1, 27. Reverb: a passion for the past in popular music – Part 2, 28. A Selfie Stick in the Charity Shop: history and the self, photography, video, and technology, 29. The Incident at Modane: what have we learned?, 30. Conclusion: what have I done?
Biography
Paul O'Kane is a lecturer in Critical Studies at Central St. Martin's College, University of the Arts, London. He specialises in histories and theories of art and popular culture.
