Confinement and Déjà-Vu: 1969 Reenactments in Art and Society

Richard Leydier's article in artpress draws parallels between the 2020 COVID-19 lockdown and the year 1969, highlighting a pervasive sense of déjà-vu. He notes that the pandemic-induced queues outside stores evoked memories of Eastern Europe in the 1980s, but the deeper temporal rift leads back to 1969, a pivotal year for space exploration, civil rights, and contemporary art. The SpaceX launch of the first crewed flight by a private company, led by Elon Musk, echoes the Apollo 11 moon landing in 1969, with the spacecraft's design reminiscent of Stanley Kubrick's '2001: A Space Odyssey' (1968). Simultaneously, the protests following George Floyd's death mirror the civil rights movements of the 1950s-70s, including the Stonewall riots in 1969. In art, 1969 saw landmark conceptual exhibitions like 'Op Losse Schroeven' at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam and 'When Attitudes Become Form' at the Kunsthalle Bern, curated by Harald Szeemann. The trend of 'reenactment' in contemporary art, such as the 2013 recreation of 'When Attitudes Become Form' at the Fondazione Prada in Venice (curated by Germano Celant), reflects a nostalgic desire for stability. The article also references Woodstock (1969) and the song '1969' by The Stooges, as well as Mark Tansey's painting 'Action Painting II' (1984) and Andy Warhol's 'Race Riot' (1964), to illustrate the cyclical nature of history.