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Uncertain Histories

Author: Kate Palmer Albers

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 2015-07-21

Total Pages: 224

ISBN-13: 0520285271

The compulsion to dwell on historyÑon how it is recorded, stored, saved, forgotten, narrated, lost, remembered, and made publicÑhas been at the heart of artistsÕ engagement with the photographic medium since the late 1960s. Uncertain Histories considers some of that work, ranging from installations that incorporate vast numbers of personal and vernacular photographs by Christian Boltanski, Dinh Q. L�, and Gerhard Richter to confrontations with absence in the work of Joel Sternfeld and Ken Gonzales-Day. Projects such as these revolve around a photographic paradox that hinges equally on knowing and not knowing, on definitive proof coupled with uncertainty, on abundance of imagery being met squarely with its own inadequacy. Photography is seen as a fundamentally ambiguous medium that can be evocative of the historical past while at the same time limited in the stories it can convey. Rather than proclaiming definitively what photography is, the work discussed here posits photographs as objects always held in suspension, perpetually oscillating in their ability to tell history. Yet this ultimately leads to a new kind of knowledge production: uncertainty is not a dead end but a generative space for the viewerÕs engagement with the construction of history.

The History and Uncertain Future of Handwriting

Author: Anne Trubek

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2016-09-06

Total Pages: 193

ISBN-13: 1620402157

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The future of handwriting is anything but certain. Its history, however, shows how much it has affected culture and civilization for millennia. In the digital age of instant communication, handwriting is less necessary than ever before, and indeed fewer and fewer schoolchildren are being taught how to write in cursive. Signatures--far from John Hancock’s elegant model--have become scrawls. In her recent and widely discussed and debated essays, Anne Trubek argues that the decline and even elimination of handwriting from daily life does not signal a decline in civilization, but rather the next stage in the evolution of communication. Now, in The History and Uncertain Future of Handwriting, Trubek uncovers the long and significant impact handwriting has had on culture and humanity--from the first recorded handwriting on the clay tablets of the Sumerians some four thousand years ago and the invention of the alphabet as we know it, to the rising value of handwritten manuscripts today. Each innovation over the millennia has threatened existing standards and entrenched interests: Indeed, in ancient Athens, Socrates and his followers decried the very use of handwriting, claiming memory would be destroyed; while Gutenberg’s printing press ultimately overturned the livelihood of the monks who created books in the pre-printing era. And yet new methods of writing and communication have always appeared. Establishing a novel link between our deep past and emerging future, Anne Trubek offers a colorful lens through which to view our shared social experience.

Unexplained

Author: Richard MacLean Smith

Publisher: Sourcebooks, Inc.

Published: 2019-10-01

Total Pages: 390

ISBN-13: 1492697729

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Chilling stories of unexplained events, perfect for true crime fans! In every corner of this earth there are secrets. They are hidden in the dark edge of the woods, nestled in the cold stars, and staring out from a stranger's eyes. And whether they be demonic possession or an unsolved murder, the unknown has always haunted our dreams. From the hit podcast Unexplained comes a volume perfectly crafted for the curious, the cynical, and the not-easily-frightened. Richard Maclean Smith is the expert in the unknown, and humbly offers up ten tales of real-life events that continue to evade explanation. With these chilling stories comes the missing key: a connection to our own beliefs in science, superstition, and perception. From cryptic accounts of spectral sightings to peculiar tales of time anomalies, Smith delves into each case with meticulous research, thoughtful insights, and a respectful approach. Unexplained encourages readers to question the boundaries of our understanding, proving that reality can be more extraordinary than we ever imagined. Embark on this gripping journey into the unknown with Unexplained: Supernatural Stories for Uncertain Times. Key Features: Thought-Provoking: Challenges readers to question their understanding of reality and embrace the inexplicable. Well-Researched: Offers meticulously researched accounts of paranormal phenomena and unexplained events. Engaging Storytelling: Features a narrative style that is both engaging and respectful, based on the popular Unexplained podcast. Wide Range of Topics: Explores a diverse range of phenomena from spectral sightings to time anomalies. Cultural Perspective: Includes historical, cultural, and scientific context for each story, adding depth to the mystery.

Uncertain Manifesto

Author: Frédéric Pajak

Publisher: New York Review of Books

Published: 2019-03-19

Total Pages: 193

ISBN-13: 168137286X

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An illustrated artist's memoir of the motivations, feelings, ideas, figures (including Samuel Beckett and Walter Benjamin), travels, and love affairs that have influenced his life. The writer and artist Frédéric Pajak was ten when he began to dream of “a book mixing words and pictures: snippets of adventure, random memories, maxims, ghosts, forgotten heroes, trees, the raging sea,” but it was not until he was in his forties that this dream took form as Uncertain Manifesto. The utterly original book that he produced is a memoir born of reading and a meditation on the lives and ideas, the motivations, feelings, and fates of some of Pajak’s heroes: Samuel Beckett and the artist Bram van Velde, and, especially, Walter Benjamin, whose travels to Moscow, Naples, and Ibiza, whose experiences with hashish, whose faltering marriage and love affairs and critique of modern experience Pajak re-creates and reflects on in word and image. Pajak’s moody black-and white drawings accompany the text throughout, though their bearing on it is often indirect and all the more absorbing for that. Between word and image, the reader is drawn into a mysterious space that is all Pajak’s as he seeks to evoke vanished histories and to resist a modern world more and more given over to a present without a past. With the support of the Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia

Children of Uncertain Fortune

Author: Daniel Livesay

Publisher: UNC Press Books

Published: 2018-01-11

Total Pages: 432

ISBN-13: 1469634449

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By tracing the largely forgotten eighteenth-century migration of elite mixed-race individuals from Jamaica to Great Britain, Children of Uncertain Fortune reinterprets the evolution of British racial ideologies as a matter of negotiating family membership. Using wills, legal petitions, family correspondences, and inheritance lawsuits, Daniel Livesay is the first scholar to follow the hundreds of children born to white planters and Caribbean women of color who crossed the ocean for educational opportunities, professional apprenticeships, marriage prospects, or refuge from colonial prejudices. The presence of these elite children of color in Britain pushed popular opinion in the British Atlantic world toward narrower conceptions of race and kinship. Members of Parliament, colonial assemblymen, merchant kings, and cultural arbiters--the very people who decided Britain's colonial policies, debated abolition, passed marital laws, and arbitrated inheritance disputes--rubbed shoulders with these mixed-race Caribbean migrants in parlors and sitting rooms. Upper-class Britons also resented colonial transplants and coveted their inheritances; family intimacy gave way to racial exclusion. By the early nineteenth century, relatives had become strangers.

Uncertain Histories

Author: Kate Palmer Albers

Publisher:

Published: 2015

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780520356016

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"The compulsion to dwell on history--on how it is recorded, stored, saved, forgotten, narrated, lost, remembered, and made public--has been at the heart of artists' engagement with the photographic medium since the late 1960s. Uncertain Histories considers some of that work, ranging from installations that incorporate vast numbers of personal and vernacular photographs by Christian Boltanski, Dinh Q. Lê, and Gerhard Richter to confrontations with absence in the work of Joel Sternfeld and Ken Gonzales-Day. Projects such as these revolve around a photographic paradox that hinges equally on knowing and not knowing, on definitive proof coupled with uncertainty, on abundance of imagery being met squarely with its own inadequacy. Photography is seen as a fundamentally ambiguous medium that can be evocative of the historical past while at the same time limited in the stories it can convey. Rather than proclaiming definitively what photography is, the work discussed here posits photographs as objects always held in suspension, perpetually oscillating in their ability to tell history. Yet this ultimately leads to a new kind of knowledge production: uncertainty is not a dead end but a generative space for the viewer's engagement with the construction of history"--Provided by publisher.

Caviar

Author: Inga Saffron

Publisher: Crown

Published: 2002-10-08

Total Pages: 288

ISBN-13: 0767911199

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In the tradition of Cod and Olives: a fascinating journey into the hidden history, culture, and commerce of caviar. Once merely a substitute for meat during religious fasts, today caviar is an icon of luxury and wealth. In Caviar, Inga Saffron tells, for the first time, the story of how the virgin eggs of the prehistoric-looking, bottom-feeding sturgeon were transformed from a humble peasant food into a czar’s delicacy–and ultimately a coveted status symbol for a rising middle class. She explores how the glistening black eggs became the epitome of culinary extravagance, while taking us on a revealing excursion into the murky world of caviar on the banks of the Volga River and Caspian Sea in Russia, the Elbe in Europe, and the Hudson and Delaware Rivers in the United States. At the same time, Saffron describes the complex industry caviar has spawned, illustrating the unfortunate consequences of mass marketing such a rare commodity. The story of caviar has long been one of conflict, crisis, extravagant claims, and colorful characters, such as the Greek sea captain who first discovered the secret method of transporting the perishable delicacy to Europe, the canny German businessmen who encountered a wealth of untapped sturgeon in American waters, the Russian Communists who created a sophisticated cartel to market caviar to an affluent Western clientele, the dirt-poor poachers who eked out a living from sturgeon in the aftermath of the Soviet collapse and the “caviar Mafia” that has risen in their wake, and the committed scientists who sacrificed their careers to keep caviar on our tables. Filled with lore and intrigue, Caviar is a captivating work of culinary, natural, and cultural history.

An Uncertain Dream (Postcards From Pullman Book #3)

Author: Judith Miller

Publisher: Bethany House

Published: 2008-06-01

Total Pages: 384

ISBN-13: 1441202935

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When Pullman Car Works employees walk out in protest of their wages and high rent, Olivia Mott is torn between her loyalty to the company and her love for Fred DeVault. Amidst the turmoil in Pullman, Fred is asked to act as a local delegate to the national convention of the American Railway Union, but when the delegates vote in favor of a nationwide boycott of the famous Pullman sleeping cars, Olivia wonders if Fred will ever be able to return to the company town. What will become of their growing affection for each other? Who will prevail in the company strike?