Monica McTighe
Time Warp: Nostalgia As Critique in Contemporary Installation Art
With video and film installations filled with the whir and click of old-fashioned film projectors and the groovy music of the 1960s, artists such as Diana Thater, Tony Oursler and Renée Green continue to use outmoded technologies and dated music in their work. Meanwhile, the fashion industry continues to advertise flared jeans, retro furniture and “Jackie O” sunglasses. Nostalgia abounds. For theorists such as Fredric Jameson, nostalgia has always been considered reactionary. Now nostalgia is being reexamined. Is it possible for nostalgia to be a critical tool? By examining the way Green and other artists employ outmoded technologies and cultural practices such as slide shows and vinyl LPs in their work, Monica McTighe work the possibilities for nostalgia in a critical artistic practice.
Monica McTighe created a publication based on her research and dissertation. Her book framed spaces—Photography and Temporality in Contemporary Installation Art was published in 2012. It also includes texts completed during her stay at Künstlerhaus Büchsenhausen.
Monica McTighe: framed spaces—Photography and Memory in Contemporary Installation Art
Dartmouth College Press, Hanover, New Hampshire, 2012
254 pages, English, ISBN 978-1-61168-206-9
Monica MCTIGHE (*1972) is an Assistant Professor of Art History in the Department of Art and Art History at Tufts University, Boston, Massachusetts. She received her PhD from the University of Virginia in 2005 and wrote her dissertation on the politics of memory and history in installation art.