Rémi Labrusse opens the Atelier 2025 Spring seminar series
Rémi Labrusse visits us from EHESS to deliver two in-depth presentations exploring his research on the concept of Prehistory.
Date and time: Both presentations will take place on the second of Februrary (2025.02.17.), the first one from 10:00-12:00 and the second from 14:00-16:00.
Location: ELTE BTK, Múzeum krt. 6-8, 247.
Presentation abstract
Prehistory is a modern invention. The word and the idea itself were created around the middle of the 19th century. This brutal shift in the perception of time cannot be understood without reference to a conflictual relation to historicity, characteristic of modern times. It began with the development of so-called natural history and ended up in the division of “prehistoric” times between Palaeolithic and Neolithic cultures. Rather than completing the theories of the origins of human cultures, as originally hoped, however, the concept of “prehistory” instead became an insuperable stumbling block for the contemporary obsession for the origins. By shedding light on this paradoxical situation, we will reflect upon the deconstructive power of “prehistory” when it comes to the ideologies of the progress of “civilisation”. Concurrently, we will see how a retrospective approach converted itself into a revolutionary one, based on the idea – or the fancy – that late modern societies were on the brink of putting the Neolithic relation to the world to an end. Visual arts, in these contexts, always played a major role, that will deserve special attention.
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Ceiling of Altamira Cave (Santillana del Mar, Cantabria), Magdalenian, ca. 15-13 000 B. P. (discovered by Marcelino Sanz de Sautuola, 1879; authenticated by Emile Cartailhac, 1902). |
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| Hans Mühlestein, « Des origines de l’art et de la culture. I - Remarques préliminaires », Cahiers d’art (dir. Christian Zervos), Paris, 1930, n° 2, p. 57. |
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| Caspar David Friedrich, Spaziergang im Abenddämmerung, ca. 1830-1835, oil on canvas, 33,2 x 44,7 cm, Los Angeles, The J. Paul Getty Museum. |
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