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Performing Arts Journal, Inc and MIT Press are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to PAJ: A
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Seeing Double Eleanor Antin's Roman AllegoriesAuthor(s): Thomas ZummerSource: PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art, Vol. 28, No. 2 (May, 2006), pp. 80-88Published by: on behalf ofMIT Press Performing Arts Journal, IncStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4140074Accessed: 28-11-2015 06:57 UTC
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SEEING
DOUBLE
Eleanor Antin's
Roman
Allegories
Thomas
Zummer
Roman
Allegories,
n
exhibition
of
photographs
by
Eleanor
Antin.
Ronald
FeldmanFine
Arts,
New
York
City, February
2-March
12,
2005.
All
the
ephemeral
s
only
allegory.
Goethe
Allegory
nd
allusion re
among
the most
difficult
of rhetorical
forms,
a
point
not to be
lost
in
viewing
EleanorAntin's
recentseriesof
large-scale hotographs.The title itself
is an
allusion:Roman
Allegories.
ook-
ing
at
these
works,
all
of
them
created
in
SouthernCalifornia
landscapes,
ne
is
instantly
aware hat
something
s
go-
ing
on,
that the rich
precision
of
pos-
tures and
places,
both
excessive
and
overwrought,
harbors
something
hid-
den,
a
secret,
one
which
alludesto the
virtualities nd
atencies
f
photographic
representation
y,
first
of
all,
naming
itself as
allegorical.
Roland
Barthes
claimed that it
is
impossible
to
see a
photograph,
ince
we
characteristically
look
at,
and
for,
what
it
represents.
Photography,
almost
invisible,
is
sub-
sumed
by
its referent-a
face,
a
person,
or a
place,
but also a
character,
type,
a
pretense.
In Antin's
ableaux here is a
remarkabletillness o the
images,
as if
they embody,
even
proclaim,
a
perfect
moment
of
representation.
n
this re-
spect
they
aremonumental
and
descrip-
tive,
precious
and
ephemeral,
raits
hey
share with both
portraiture
and
por-
nography.
At the
same time
they
are
also excessive,anotherattributeof the
allegorical,
not
only
in their
orna-
mentality,
but
in their
figural
range
as
well.
But
perhaps
heir
most
surprising
effect
is
that
they
bring
about
an
unex-
pected
reflection
on the
photographic
itself.
Photography,
ormented
by
the
ghost
of
painting,
bearsa secret
n
every
frame.
Is The
Triumph f
Pana referenceo the
painting
f
Signorelli,
r
Rubens,
Snyder,
or Poussin?'
Does
it refer
o
the
legend
of
Pan, who,
as the issue
of
Hermes
(and
a
nymph),
is
a
figure
n
need
of
interpretation?
Or
does
Antin
refer to
the doubled
figurality
f
Baroque
paint-
ing
and
allegory
(and
so also
to Ben-
jamin
or
Deleuze)?
An
actor
in
a
film
(or a photograph), or example, s alle-
gorical
o the
extent,
that
he or
she is a
doubled
being,
one
standing
for,
and
80
n
PAJ
83
(2006),
pp.
80-88.
?
2006
Thomas
Zummer
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before,
another.There
is a
commensu-
rability,
at the
level of
identification,
between the
traits of actors
and the
characters
they
play;
both
biography
and
pretense
are
mediated
to
such a
degree
that
they
are
almost
indistin-
guishable,
and the
secrecy
of
the
private
life of
celebrity
becomes
highly
com-
modified:what is
[fill
in
name]
really
like?
Photography's
onceit,
that there is
a
single,
perfect,
moment,
which,
through
the
intercession f the
camera,
ne
might
capture,2
arrest,
or fix, is belied by a
phenomenological
and technical flaw:
the
camera,
as Walter
Benjamin
notes,3
does not
see,
and
consequently
ts
sec-
ond
sight apprehends
n
event within
a
purely
echnical
nterval,
o which
the
eye
is
at best
an
enabling
and
external
supplement.
This is
most clear
in
the
current
generation
of
consumer-level
digital
cameras,
where
the
instantaneity
of sightandtouch enablean automatic
process
which
introduces
a
gap-a
de-
ferred
nterval-between
perception
nd
recording:
push
the
button,
and
a few
moments
later the
images
is
taken.
The
perfect, unique,
moment is no
longer
mmediate,
but
mediate,
and the
enabling
eye
operates
at
best as a reso-
lute
approximation,
nd
most often
as a
familiariction.The presumption f the
intending
eye,
whether
factual or
po-
tential,
is
revealedas inessential o
the
technology,
and,
within this
recogni-
tion,
our
own
investment
n
the
visible
is rendered
problematic.
However,
t is
in the
very
moment that the
eye
re-
turns,
reinscribing
itself into the inter-
val within
which the
photographic
im-
age is to be apprehended, that the
position
of
the
spectator
is
naturalized
within
the technical
continuum.
In
its
passage
from
alterity
to
familiarity,
the
eye
once
again
takes
up
residence,
within
the
register
of
the
image,
as commensu-
rate
with
a
presumed
originary
subject-
position (e.g.,
the identification of
the
eye
that
initially
beheld
the
represented
event
and that
which
now
occupies
the
position
of a
previous
camera-operator
or
portraitist).
It is
in this
important
context, too,
that
Antin's
photographic
project
is
allegorical.
Allegory,
rom
the Greek
allos
+
agoreuein
( other
+
speakopenly,
in
public
com-
munity,
i.e.,
in
the
marketplace
or
agora)
is
a rhetorical term
meaning
to
speak
otherwise.
Agoreuein
has the con-
notation
of
public,
open,
declarative
speech,
a sense
inverted
by
the
prefix
allos,
thus
giving
something
like
other
than
open, public,
speech. Allegory
is
often understood
as
an inversion
wherein
there is couched
something
else,
some-
thing
different,
than
can
be seen
or
grasped
in the literal
sense.
It is
tradi-
tionally defined as an extended meta-
phor,
when,
for
example,
the
events
of a
narrative
obviously
and
continuously
refer to
another
simultaneous
structure
of
events,
ideas
or
phenomena.
Thus,
allegory
is
performative
in
that
it not
only
states
or
presents
something,
but
it
also
accomplishes
an
extension
of meta-
phors
carrying
over
from
one
register
of
sense to another.
Like
metaphor,
allegory
is also destruc-
tive;
it
destroys
the
normal
expectation
that
one
has of
language,
that
words
mean what
they say.
For words
to
mean
what
they say
while
saying
something
else,
implies
a
minimally
performative
disposition
within
their
specific
context.
Allegory
is
interactive,
and
requires
both the
(self)
conscious
collaboration
of an
audience and a
com-
mon
ground
or
context.
In
their
radical
ZUMMER /
Seeing
Double
N
81
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contingency
photography
and
allegory
share
common
attributes:
both
have a
proleptic
(cognitive, anticipatory)
as-
pect
and an
analeptic
recognitive,
ul-
minating)
aspect.4
In
both
cases the
proleptic (cognitive)
is sensible
only
within the
analeptic
(re-cognition),
as
something
already
past,
or as
occurring
or
having
occurred
elsewhere,
and
the
recuperation
f
sense s
re-mapped
nto
the
present
material
rmature.
n
Antin's
allegorical
works
he tensionof
heterog-
enous elements
trainsand
displaces
he
comfort
of
habitual reflexes
and con-
ventional
interpretations.
Her
photo-
graphs
present
an
aporia,
an irresolu-
tion and
apprehension,
n
representation.
Contrary
o
Barthes's
laim,
one
cannot
resolve the
tension
of the
visible to a
mere
reference;
ere,
the
photographic
is
not
entirely
invisible,
but
persists,
problematically,
hrough
a
combination
of traces.
In
its
mildest
form,
Antin
introduces n order
of a doubt or
suspi-
cion (that all is not as one might sus-
pect)
into
the
photographic
cene,
and
at its
most
vigorous,
her
works bril-
liantly
deconstructomeof
photography's
most
intimate
ecrets: hat
photographic
images
are,
n
order
o
be
evidentiary
t
all,
not
fixed and secured
from
the
world,
but
permeable,
suffused,
and
bound
up
in the
world.
At the
Edgeof Night
captures
he
dying
light
of
sunset
on a
scale
that
cannot be
approximated
by
manual
lighting
or
digital
simulation,
even
though
we of-
ten take
such
special
effects
as real
by
default.
nstead,
what focuses
our atten-
tion on the
globalaspect-landscape-
is
the intrusion of artificeof the most
localsort.Within the clamorof ephem-
era,
Antin
alludes to the hidden alle-
gorical-figural
etwork
n
photographic,
and
subsequent,
media.
Small
details,
such
as the fact that amidst
he
pretense
of active
life around a Roman
bath,
there
s no indication
of real
motion,
no
ripples carring
he surface
of
the
water,
provide
us with
a renewed
ense of the
uncanny.
In
early photographicpro-
cesses,
ong
exposure
imes
produced
a
blurring
of
the
motion of
water,
a
pho-
tographic
error
hat
simultaneously
e-
cured
both
the
evidentiary
tatus
and
the
artifactuality
f the
image.
Contem-
porary
concern
with
the
relation
be-
tween evidence
and artifice-think
of
JeffWall,
Matthew
Barney,
ik Muniz-
has
always
been
latent
n Antin's
photo-
graphic
(and
cinematic)
works.In Ro-
man
Allegories
these
interests
are
foregrounded
n
order
to address
and
make
salient
other,related,
questions
of
reference,
consequence,
access,
and
meaning.
Much
of the
wit and
whimsy
in these works
resides
in the
play
on
notions
of scale
and
place-swapping
out
one
place
for another
n a
kind
of
spatialparonomasia.n Antin'scase the
swapping
out
of
landscapes-Southern
California
or
Mediterranean-plays
on
the
long
history
of
Hollywood-type
ub-
stitution.
In a recent
correspondence
(January
006),
the artist
writes:
Southern
California
s not un-
like southern
Italy.
We shot
a
numberof the Allegories, nd
almost
all of
Pompeii,
at
my
friend
Marianne McDonald's
villa.She's
classicist
who
trans-
lates
the Greekdramatists
nd
adapts
and transforms
them
into
a
racy
modern diom.
She
happens
to have a
very large,
uncultivated
estate which
she
offers
o us
for
our
work.
I
have
still
to
figure
out how to
make
use
of
her 20 or so
peacocks
who
unfortunately
ave
always
82
U
PAJ
83
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lost their
splendor
by
the
time
I
shoot
in
the
summer
...
The
remaining
images
were shot at
Torrey
Pines Beach at
7
AM,
he
pool
and the caves of
my
friend's
house
in
the fallen rock
zone
in
the
wild's of
Jamul
close
to
the
Mexican
border,
indoors
in
the
University
of
California-San
Diego
Mandeville
gallery
which
was
happily
closed for the
sum-
mer
and
so
available to us.
The
Players
s
a
hilarious
misregistration
of ancient
and
contemporary
tropes
and
topologies,
a concatenation of
signs--contemporary
copies
of Roman
copies
of
Greek
stone craft
coupled
with Roman
copies
of
contemporary
sport/leisure
craft-strewn
about
a
lush,
arboreal,
tennis
court.
In
Going
Home
five of the six
figures present
walk out
into
the
gray
sea,
while the
sixth,
a
young
girl,
sits on
a steamer
trunk
accompanied by a doll and a crow. All
of
the
figures
hold
open
umbrellas. It
is
a
moving
and
mysterious
image,
a
rhe-
torical
inversion,
a
witty
play upon
dadaist
tropes.5
In
The
Gamblers,
a
young
man
in
Ro-
man
dress sits
opposite
a skeleton
loosely
wrapped
in
a linen cloth
while
the
empty gaze of the eyeless skull appar-
ently
rests on
the
shard
of
bone
in
his
hand;
there
are
other
bones, vertebrae,
strewn
about
the
stone
steps
between
them.
Whose bones
are
being wagered?
Or
played?
It
would
seem that
such
fragments
would be
integral
to the struc-
tural
integrity
and
stability
of both
the
young
man,
and
the skeletal
figure.
Are
they
the bones of an absent other?
Whose? Are there
proper
names to be
assigned?
Are
there stories or lessons to
be derived?A
riddle to be
deciphered
or
an
epiphany
to be
earned?
Or do
we
simply
apprehend
the
presence
of
the
ineffable:
an
allegory
secret
as
to
the
dignity
of its
origin
. . .
public
as to
the
range
of its
validity
(Benjamin)?
Perhaps
the
superfluous
bones
are
present
precisely
as
an
excess,
a
supple-
ment
(and
a
metonym)
for
the
allegori-
cal
figure
of
mortality.
So,
the
allegory
is
doubled,
coming
back,
as a
citation,
to
address
the
image
from
an
unexpected
region.
There is
a structural
symmetry
between
the
notion
of
posing,
and
the order
of
looking.
It is not a
simple
relationship,
nor
is
it
necessarily
circumscribed
as a
closed
theoretical
accomplishment,
but
stands out
in
these
works
as a
palpable
disturbance.
In
Antin's works
we are
invited,
even
induced,
to consider
anew
the nature
of the
pose.
To
pose
is
to
cease,
to
pause
or
to
rest,
but
it also
means to
suppose
or
to
assume,
or
set
forth (for the sake of an argument, for
example),
or to
place
in
a
difficulty.
When
it refers
specifically
to
an
artist's
model,
the
meaning
of
pose
is
to
place
in,
or
assume,
an
attitude.
There
is also
the
accompanying
sense
that
such
an
attitude
is somehow
inauthentic,
or that
it masks
or
impedes
authenticity,
or,
as
often as
not,
that
it is a simulation.
It
may be intentional or accidental, but
the
photographic
pose
is
always
marked
a
posteriori
by
its
status
as
an artifact.
Reference
is
both arrested
and set
forth
in
photographic
representation.
Antin's
doubled
artifice
underscores
questions
of
reference
by
introducing
an
economy
of
possible
secrets
into the
photographic
artifact.
Photography
is
always,
pro-
foundly, allegorical, always outside,
lit-
erally
cut
off,
from its referent.
It
is with
the return
of the referential
field,
its
doubling
mobility
and
virtuality
that
ZUMMER /
Seeing
Double 0
83
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At the
Edge of Night
(2004).
Photo:
Courtesy
Ronald Feldman Fine
Arts,
New York.
84
U
PAJ
83
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Above: 7he
7i'iumph
of'Pan
('after
Poussin)
(2004);
Below: ihe
Gamblers
2004).
Photos:
Courtesy
Ronald Feldman Fine
Arts,
New
York.
ZULMMER
See'ig
)Double
85
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the
photographic
s
rendered
allegori-
cal.
Is
there some
significance
to
a
certain
figure,
such that we
should rec-
ognize
him
or
her,
as an
actor
playing
a
figure
from
classical
mythology,
or
Ba-
roquepainting?
Antin's
models
are
in-
terstitial
figures,
n
that
they
are
neither
assigned
to the
register
of
identity-
who
these
people
might
be-nor
to
that
of
identification-who
they
repre-
sent-but
remain both
linked
and
ir-
resolute
as
a
visual artifact.'
Is
there a
hidden
meaning
o be
discerned
n
that
relation?
n
pointedly
not
stabilizing
or
resolving
uch
matters,
and
in
spite
of
the massiveand evident ndex of
labor,
Antin
introduces
just
enough
unease
into
the
process
of
reading
a
photo-
graph
to cause the
viewer
to
reflect
upon
the conditions of
apprehension
and
consumption
of
photographic
m-
ages
in
general.
Is
Comic
Performance
performance
f
aperformance?fso,what sperformed?
For
whom?
Without
a
paratextual
lue
to
its
interpretation
the
title does
not
immediately
uggest
a
specific
allegory),
we
are
eft to
our own devices o discern
what
might
be
at
stake
within
this
scene.
A
fragment
of an iron
gate
sug-
gests
ncarceration
r
containment,
and
the
central
figure, caught
in a
vulner-
able and somewhatinelegantpose, is
mirrored
y
another
figure,
n
the
lower
left
quadrant
of
the
scene,
whom
we
must
assume is next. It is
unclear
whether
the
posed
figures
are
also
pre-
tending--within
their
pose-to
some
distress r
trepidation,
r
they
are
merely
playing
a
game
within a
game.
WhoAre
We,
WhereAre
We
Going?
imilarly
re-
casts
allegorical
elements with minimal
clues to their resolution. Is
there an
appropriation
of the
allegorical,
recast
and
remapped
onto
the
hidden con-
tours of the
psychoanalytic?
Or is it
a
concatenation,
an admixture
of
myth
and
fairytale,
a
play
on the
ungrounding
of
common
tropes?
We
may
ask,
in
another
work,
who the
subject
of
Alice's
Dream
might
be.
Shall we
assume
that
the child
in
the
center
of the
composi-
tion bears that
proper
name? Or is it
the
name
of
another
Alice?
Is this
name
permeable
to
other
references,
inver-
sions,
or
derivations?
Or is
the
entire
mise-en-scene
the fabrication
(of
a
fab-
rication)
of an
absent
dreamer?
It
is,
in
every
sense,
impossible
to tell.
There is an unruliness to
allegory,
an
impossibility
to
set
to rest its
references,
tempered
only perhaps
by
unlikelihood,
or
the
index
of
labor
invested
in
making
sense. Antin's
allegories
operate
by
re-
vealing
that such
mimicry
covers
a
kind
of
hole,
or
lacuna,
a
negative
space
(mise-en-abyme)
around
which
various
discourses,
and
even
desires,
are
orga-
nized and articulated. It is only via the
claim
of the
absent
(and
therefore
phantasmatic)
source
of the
image
in
the
stains
of
the
photochemical
trace,
recu-
perated
through
the
engaged
presence
of
a
spectator,
that
the
evidentiary
sta-
tus of
photography
is
grounded.
Pho-
tography
as an
art of
memory
is
a
prosthesis
to our
own recall. Paradoxi-
cally, it induces recognition in us of
things
which
we
cannot
remember,
which
have
preceded
us,
or
taken
place
elsewhere,
which
we know
only
through
reflections,
reproductions,
and
rumors,
or
which we
might
suppose
or
imagine
to have
existed,
and
which
we
organize
as
such,
from
outside.
Allegory
is a
perennial figure,
and
there
are
many
contemporary
works
that are
richly
allegorical,
works which
accom-
plish
the containment
of
representation,
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and delimitation
of
interpretation,by
circumscribing
or
framing
their
se-
crets in
close,
often
authoritative,
proximities
(while
often
unintention-
ally
producing
other
figures,
e.g.,
an
allegory
of
means,
or of
production,
temperedby
an
array
of
carefully
on-
trolled
hermeneutic
keys 7).
Antin's
works,
on the
other
hand,
brilliantly
and
relentlessly
voke
the
profound
un-
ruliness
f
allegory,
nd the
uncontaina-
bility
of secrets.
NOTES
1. In this case it is given away from
outside,
by
the
title,
in
the
parenthetical
supplement
(after
Poussin).
2.
The German
erm
aufnamen,
sed
by
Walter
Benjamin,
means
literally
o
arrest,
apprehend
r
record;
t
has
substantive m-
plication,
eferring
lso
o that
which
records.
The German
word
for
snapshot,
or
ex-
ample,
is
instantaufnamen.
3. WalterBenjamin, The Workof Art
in
the
Age
of
Mechanical
Reproduction,
n
Illuminations,
Section
XII,
edited
by
H.
Arendt and
translated
by
H.
Zohn. New
York:
Harcourt,
Brace&
World,
1968.
4.
See
Joan
Ramon
Resina,
The Con-
cept
of
After-Image
nd the
Scopic
Appre-
hension
of the
City,
in
After-Images
of
the
City,
edited
by
Joan
Ramon
Resina and
Dieter Ingenschay.thaca:CornellUniver-
sity
Press,
2003.
Resinadiscusses
prolepsis/
analepsis
n
the
following
manner:
Between
the
prolepsis
of
the
impres-
sion-a
fore-sight -and
he
analep-
sis
of
recognition, seeing
organizes,
and,
in a
sense, creates,
perception.
Seeing,
then,
consists of
the time
intervening
between
impression
and
fixation, or rather,of the event or
sum of
events
allowing
us
to
focus
on
a
fragment
of
the
visual
field. But
since this
activity
begins
in
the
past
and
fully
holds hat
past
o the
present
of
vision,
it
comprises
not
only
the
memory
function but also a sublimi-
nal harmonization
of the
different
moments
in
the
visual take.In
other
words,
seeing
implies
a certain
ten-
sion within and resolution of the
image.
5.
The references to
any
variant
of
the
phrase
of Isidore
Ducasse,
Comte
de
Lautreaumont,
o
applauded
by
dadaists
and
surrealists,
concerning
a chance
en-
counter
ofan
umbrella
and a
sewing
machine
on a
dissecting
table.
6. In a recent
correspondenceJanuary
2006)
Eleanor
Antin
writes:
Some
of the
actors
had
been in
The
Last
Days
of
Pompeii.
Many
were
artist'smodelshere
n San
Diego,
and
occasional ctors
anddancers.One
of
my satyrs
is a successful
character
actorin
films,
usually
playing
Italian
mobsters.He came
down
from
L.A.
because
he
felt that
being
in
my piece
brought
him
closer
to his
Roman
roots.
As
you
know,
I invented
a
wandering
band
of
players
out
of a
supposed
Pliny
the
Younger
quote,
I
don't
re-
memberwhatthat
was
precisely,
ome-
thing
like That
summer,
there
ap-
peared
a
wandering
band of
players,
who met
with some
success
until
they
disappeared
ithout
trace,
eaving
be-
hind one
of their
number.
They
are
actors based
loosely
on
Commedia
types
who
began
back
then
in
the
Romanworld.
They
are
tropes,
cons,
whose
very
presence
projectallegory.
They
are
players,
o
they're
both real
and not
real,artists,
outsiders,
wan-
derers
hrough
an
alien
landscape
of
strangers nd ruins.The strongman,
the
trickster,
he
poet,
the
lover,
Col-
umbine,
and the child.
The
strong
man,
Nikolai,
s
my
chiropractor,
ho
ZUMMER /
Seeing
Double
0
87
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had
had a
featuredrole
in
my
film
The
Man
Withouta
World
back in
1990.
He
played
a
strong
man then
too,
only
he was a
gypsy
and not
a
Roman.
Like
all
of us
here
in
South-
ern
California,
he's a
gym
buff
and
looks it. The trickster sVan,a friend
also,
besides
being
my
assistant
Pam's
boyfriend.
He's a
sculptor
as
well as
an
artist's
model.
Charles,
the
lover
and
gambler,
s
an
actor
from
L.A.
whom I
met at a
friend's
party
and
signed
on then
and there.
Eric,
or
Erica
as he'sknown
professionally,
e
plays
the
poet,
is a well known
drag
queen
who works
drag
shows for
straights
in
Vegas
and San
Diego.
Sabrina,
he beautiful
Columbine
who
is also the child's
mother,
is a
belly
dancer and artist'smodel. She had
also been in severalof the
Pompeii
photographs.
choseNikki, the cool
beautiful hild
as,
for want of abetter
term,
the
watcher,
ecause atherhan
project
warmth
or
soul,
she
projected
interiority.
7.
Matthew
Barney
s a
good
example
on
all accounts.
THOMAS
ZUMMER s a
scholar,writer,
and
artist.
He contributed
o the
Whitney
Museum
catalogue
nto the
Light:
The
Projectedmage
n
American
Art
1964-1977
(2001)
and is
currently
completing
a
book
on
the
early
history
of
reference
ystems
entitled
Intercessionary
echnologies:
rchive/
Database/Interface.
e
exhibits
his
drawings,
culptural,
and
media
works
worldwide.Recent
exhibitions nclude
Museumvan
Hedendaagse
Kunst/
Antwerpen,
Mutter
Museum,
PA,
Frederieke
aylor
Gallery,
NY,
and the
Cleveland nstituteof Art.Zummer s currentlySeniorLecturern Critical
Studies at
Tyler
School of
Art/Temple
University
and
Regular
Visiting
Professor
n
the
Transmedia
Programme/post-graduate
t the
Hogeschool
Sint
Lukas,
Brussels/Associatie niversite
Leuven,
Belgium.
88
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