9 - Ghostwriting and Artists’ Texts: Raqs Media Collective’s We Are Here, But Is It Now?

Summary

Abstract

Contemporary artists’ texts are often composed of an amalgam of disparate voices: they are fragmented, layered, multivocal projects frequently referring to those “ever returning to us, the dead.” Much like W.G. Sebald’s writings, artists’ writerly projects use specific textual strategies enabling them to speak in the name of or on behalf of another human being, resulting in the internalization or incorporation of what is invisible, mute or lost. A Sebaldian form of ghostwriting is at stake in contemporary artists’ texts, I want to argue. The paradoxical emergence of unspeaking, silent voices in both artists’ writings and Sebald’s works, is not only predicated on the recognition of a “complex personhood”—it happens in various ways as well. In this paper I study both what the visual artists’ textual procedures look like in order for wordless presences to return and how they express the notion of complex personhood, comparing Sebald’s ghostwriting as a “Poetics of History,” concentrating on Vertigo and The Emigrants, with Raqs Media Collective’s We Are Here, But Is It Now?. Reading Sebald’s and Raqs’s writings through each other, this paper intends to get a firmer grip on the specificity of the guiding spirits (ghosts) lending shape to Sebald’s works, simultaneously shedding light on the relevance of his textual gestures for current artists’ texts and art writing alike.

Keywords: Sociopolitical, Environmental, Transdisciplinary, Deconstruction, Heterogenous and Hegemonist Narration

Introduction

“What manner of theatre is it, in which we are at once playwright, actor, stage manager, scene painter and audience?”

—W.G. Sebald, The Rings of Saturn

A few years ago, a visual artist brought W.G. Sebald to my attention. It soon became clear to me that they were not the only artist interested in the German author, as I discovered other responses to Sebald’s writings, including films, drawings, paintings, texts, and installations. Sebald’s influence is widely acknowledged, yet the diversity of artists’ complex, sensuous and material approaches to his multifaceted work and the links among them continue to surprise.