This past year, a first ever book on the curatorial process was published by Independent Cu-rator... more This past year, a first ever book on the curatorial process was published by Independent Cu-rators International. Words of Wisdom: A Curator's Vade Mecum on Contemporary Art, contains the advice of sixty-one curators, edited into one slim volume by Carin Kuoni. A Vade ...
This year’s Summer Solstice Performance Art Festival, “Alchemy and Intention,” would have been a ... more This year’s Summer Solstice Performance Art Festival, “Alchemy and Intention,” would have been a wonderful event on any occasion. The weather was perfect, the cost of entry (and parking) a mere five dollars, and the refreshments plentiful and inexpensive. A beautiful, lush park, full of native plants, trees, and large, site-specific sculptures, served as the setting for the thirteen commissioned performances. The artists and artist collectives performed in, around, and even on top of sculptures as the sun slowly set on the newly minted federal holiday, Juneteenth. Although billed as a summer solstice event, the festival, which concluded after midnight with a ritual bonfire, took place a half-day shy of the actual solstice.
A hagiographic version of video history, promulgated by anthologies of video criticism such as th... more A hagiographic version of video history, promulgated by anthologies of video criticism such as that of Gregory Battcock and John Hanhardt, and mythologizing the likes of Nam June Paik, Bill Viola, and Chris Burden is too familiar.(1) That video art coincided with the end of modernism and the beginning of postmodernity, with its de-emphasis on master narratives and totalizing discourses in favor of the particular, creates a troubling slippage between the hagiographic version of video history and alternatives such as those of guerilla or community-based work. From a post-postmodern perspective it has become clear that the real "pioneers" of video art were not the male "innovators" whose videos were basically extensions of post-minimal art world concerns, but the feminist video artists who dispensed with formalist concerns in favor of more personal and political explorations, Although feminist critics of video art such as Martha Gever, Martha Rosler, Marita Sturken, Christine Tamblyn, and Liz Kotz have begun to reinscribe the herstory of video into its history, a comprehensive treatment of feminist video history has yet to be written. Early feminist video might have been, as Ann-Sargent Wooster has suggested, the "fulcrum between modernism and post-modernism,"(2) Unfortunately, it is a body of work that was not archivally stored and is therefore difficult to access. Discussions of feminist video have been limited to short articles, while exhibitions of feminist video art have been based largely on work of the '80s and '90s. This state of affairs is beginning to change. Concerned that an important corpus of early feminist work would simply be forgotten, curator JoAnn Hanley organized a traveling exhibition of this early feminist work in conjunction with Independent Curators Incorporated of New York City. "The First Generation: Women and Video, 1970-75," is a collection of omnific feminist video, much of which was curated for the first time. The importance of the work in "The First Generation" was underscored by its serendipitous conjunction with "Bad Girls Video," curated by Cheryl Dunye as the video portion of "Bad Girls," a show curated by Marcia Tucker and Marcia Tanner for the New Museum of Contemporary Art and UCLA's Wight Gallery. The curatorial premise for "Bad Girls Video" was that much current feminist work employs humor as a transgressive strategy. In spite of the 20-plus years separating the work in the two shows as well as the different curatorial premises, the work in "Bad Girls Video" had much in common with "The First Generation." After viewing both shows, the degree to which contemporary video is indebted to early feminist video is manifestly obvious. Equally obvious is the degree to which contemporary feminist video has evolved as a result of changing social concerns, an enhanced awareness of the way television functions, and the availability of more sophisticated equipment. Viewed in relation to "Bad Girls Video," which showed earlier in the year, "The First Generation" looks like a long lost relic. This is due to the poor production value of the work, which was recorded with the first available black and white portable video equipment on reel-to-reel tapes. The scratchy black and white images, coupled with the outdated clothing and hairstyles of the video protagonists, give "The First Generation" an aura of distance that is misleading. As Wooster states in her catalog essay, "one would see that the insistence on including women's voices, issues, and a distinctly female language has lessened over time. However, the innovations in subject matter introduced by women artists - language and personal narrative, discussion of the self, sexuality, women's experience in the world, and the presence of everyday life - have now become part of general art practice."(3) In the '70s, a woman's decision to produce video was considered to be a feminist act. Some of the work in "The First Generation" would not be included in an exhibition of feminist video were it produced today. …
For Peggy Phelan, writing about performance, an ephemeral art form that disappears even as it is ... more For Peggy Phelan, writing about performance, an ephemeral art form that disappears even as it is appearing, is an impossible task as the performance cannot be re-instated, but only vaguely remembered. As she argued in her 1993 book Unmarked: The Politics of Performance, performance derives its strength from its unique ontology of non-reproducibility. Performance’s ability to elude what Phelan has termed “the politics of visibility” places it outside of the (phallic) Law and therefore outside of the domain of patriarchal and oppressive representation. Performance can never be re-presented; it is thus in the domain of performance that Phelan finds “Hope,” the trace or indication of a place from which a revolution might take place. Writing towards disappearance, as Phelan proposes to do, is an inherently optimistic act, one that does not so much “fix” the performance as re-position it to mean something new and exciting.
" An edited volume that explores the work of the innovative, experimental and internationall... more " An edited volume that explores the work of the innovative, experimental and internationally acclaimed performance artist Marilyn Arsem, with 200 images. She is an important contributor to the international performance community through her site-specific, one-to-one performances in alternative spaces which carry a political or feminist message. " -- Publisher's website
B eautifully written and extensively researched, the two books under review have much in common. ... more B eautifully written and extensively researched, the two books under review have much in common. Both writers discuss the work of
IMAGE LINK= IMAGE LINK= IMAGE LINK= IMAGE LINK= In 1975, before she had shaved her head and becom... more IMAGE LINK= IMAGE LINK= IMAGE LINK= IMAGE LINK= In 1975, before she had shaved her head and become a famous performance artist, Rachel Rosenthal purchased three segments of time in Barbara Smith's performance A Week in the Life Of . . . The performance, which ...
Books Reviewed: Hannah Higgins, Fluxus Experience, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002... more Books Reviewed: Hannah Higgins, Fluxus Experience, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002; Alison Knowles, Footnotes: Collage Journal 30 Years, New York: Granary Books, 2000; Alison Knowles, Spoken Text, Barrytown, NY: Left Hand Books, 1993; Dick Higgins/Paul Woodbine, Life Flowers, Kingston, NY: McPherson and Co., Publishers, 1996/2002; Dick Higgins/Paul Woodbine, Octette, Kingston, NY: McPherson and Co., Publishers, 1994.
Before beginning this book review, I have to confess that Laurence Senelick's The Ch... more Before beginning this book review, I have to confess that Laurence Senelick's The Changing Room was not quite what I expected. Published by Routledge, which has the reputation for publishing trendy, post-colonial/post-feminist/queer theory texts that have been criticized for being ...
ite-specific artwork developed out of the art world's reaction against selfcontained modernist sc... more ite-specific artwork developed out of the art world's reaction against selfcontained modernist sculpture as a means of acknowledging the factors that are extraneous to the work of art, including environment, history, memory, and geography. Performance, which appeared in the art world at around the same time as site-specific art, was also concerned with reintroducing the extraneous into the hermeneutic environment of modern art through the agency of the artist's body. Although site-specific art and performance share an intellectual and ontological genesis, there has been very little attempt to link them conceptually until recently. I propose to explore the implications of site for the performing body and vice versa in order to make a case for the centrality of the body as carrier, interpreter, and transformer of the meaning of the site through an examination of work made for the ANTI Festival, an annual event of site-specific time-based performance art that takes place in Kuopio, Finland. The ANTI Festival (Anti means "gift" in Finnish) is a unique festival that is premised upon site-specific performance art made outside of traditional institutions and spaces. Audience members who come specifically to attend the ANTI Festival become performers themselves as they traipse through the city and its environs in the wake of the performing artists. At the same time, the site marks the body of the artist in some way, so that there is a mutual exchange between the artist and the site. The first ANTI Festival, sponsored by the Arts Council of North Savo, took place in 2002. This festival was such a success that it has subsequently been held annually, with the most recent festival taking place in late September 2009. The ANTI Contemporary Art Festival was founded in 2005 and the organization of the festival transferred to the association. That same year, a seminar entitled Talks and Deeds, was held in April outside of the festival. Talks and Deeds was subsequently incorporated into the festival program itself, which has allowed for presentations by academics and artists to expand upon the theme of the festival that year. Although sited in Kuopio, which is about four hours north of Helsinki, the ANTI Festival has become an international event. The ANTI Festival was originally co-directed by Johanna Tuukkanen, a dancer and resident of Kuopio, and Erkki Soininen, a visual artist based in Helsinki. In 2007, Gregg Whelan replaced Soininen as co-artistic director. In the past three years, Whelan, a member of the successful British duo Lone Twin,
IN 1977. MARY BETH EDEISON, an artist and feminist activist, set out with her traveling companion... more IN 1977. MARY BETH EDEISON, an artist and feminist activist, set out with her traveling companion, Anne Healy, to visit the Neolithic Coddess Cave at Grapceva on Hvar island, Yugoslavia. Edeison was armed with the archaeological maps in Marija Gimbutas"s The Gods atid Goddess.es of Old Europe, 7000-3500 B.C.: Myths. Legends, and Cult Images as a reference source. Edeison managed to find an elderly tourist guide in the nearby town of Jelsa, who arranged for his son to take them up the mountain to the Neolithic site. The following day, carrying two Yugoslav tlashlights and a number of candles, Edeison returned to the cave, where she engaged in a ritual designed to connect her to the power and female energ) of the Neolithic Goddess worshippers. In an article about the experience that she published the next year in "The Great Goddess" issue of Heresies, Edeison documented both her journey and the indescribable feelings that she encountered while practicing her rituals in such an ancient and sacred setting. "I felt one long hand extending across time, sending a jolt of energy into my body. I began my rituals-The energy from the rituals seemed to pulsate from the vaulted ceiling to me and back again.'" The photo documentation of Edelson's ritual (fig. I), enacted with no artificial light other than the candles that Edeison had brought, show a nude figure that seems to glow from a spiritual fire that burns from within, seated in
This past year, a first ever book on the curatorial process was published by Independent Cu-rator... more This past year, a first ever book on the curatorial process was published by Independent Cu-rators International. Words of Wisdom: A Curator's Vade Mecum on Contemporary Art, contains the advice of sixty-one curators, edited into one slim volume by Carin Kuoni. A Vade ...
This year’s Summer Solstice Performance Art Festival, “Alchemy and Intention,” would have been a ... more This year’s Summer Solstice Performance Art Festival, “Alchemy and Intention,” would have been a wonderful event on any occasion. The weather was perfect, the cost of entry (and parking) a mere five dollars, and the refreshments plentiful and inexpensive. A beautiful, lush park, full of native plants, trees, and large, site-specific sculptures, served as the setting for the thirteen commissioned performances. The artists and artist collectives performed in, around, and even on top of sculptures as the sun slowly set on the newly minted federal holiday, Juneteenth. Although billed as a summer solstice event, the festival, which concluded after midnight with a ritual bonfire, took place a half-day shy of the actual solstice.
A hagiographic version of video history, promulgated by anthologies of video criticism such as th... more A hagiographic version of video history, promulgated by anthologies of video criticism such as that of Gregory Battcock and John Hanhardt, and mythologizing the likes of Nam June Paik, Bill Viola, and Chris Burden is too familiar.(1) That video art coincided with the end of modernism and the beginning of postmodernity, with its de-emphasis on master narratives and totalizing discourses in favor of the particular, creates a troubling slippage between the hagiographic version of video history and alternatives such as those of guerilla or community-based work. From a post-postmodern perspective it has become clear that the real "pioneers" of video art were not the male "innovators" whose videos were basically extensions of post-minimal art world concerns, but the feminist video artists who dispensed with formalist concerns in favor of more personal and political explorations, Although feminist critics of video art such as Martha Gever, Martha Rosler, Marita Sturken, Christine Tamblyn, and Liz Kotz have begun to reinscribe the herstory of video into its history, a comprehensive treatment of feminist video history has yet to be written. Early feminist video might have been, as Ann-Sargent Wooster has suggested, the "fulcrum between modernism and post-modernism,"(2) Unfortunately, it is a body of work that was not archivally stored and is therefore difficult to access. Discussions of feminist video have been limited to short articles, while exhibitions of feminist video art have been based largely on work of the '80s and '90s. This state of affairs is beginning to change. Concerned that an important corpus of early feminist work would simply be forgotten, curator JoAnn Hanley organized a traveling exhibition of this early feminist work in conjunction with Independent Curators Incorporated of New York City. "The First Generation: Women and Video, 1970-75," is a collection of omnific feminist video, much of which was curated for the first time. The importance of the work in "The First Generation" was underscored by its serendipitous conjunction with "Bad Girls Video," curated by Cheryl Dunye as the video portion of "Bad Girls," a show curated by Marcia Tucker and Marcia Tanner for the New Museum of Contemporary Art and UCLA's Wight Gallery. The curatorial premise for "Bad Girls Video" was that much current feminist work employs humor as a transgressive strategy. In spite of the 20-plus years separating the work in the two shows as well as the different curatorial premises, the work in "Bad Girls Video" had much in common with "The First Generation." After viewing both shows, the degree to which contemporary video is indebted to early feminist video is manifestly obvious. Equally obvious is the degree to which contemporary feminist video has evolved as a result of changing social concerns, an enhanced awareness of the way television functions, and the availability of more sophisticated equipment. Viewed in relation to "Bad Girls Video," which showed earlier in the year, "The First Generation" looks like a long lost relic. This is due to the poor production value of the work, which was recorded with the first available black and white portable video equipment on reel-to-reel tapes. The scratchy black and white images, coupled with the outdated clothing and hairstyles of the video protagonists, give "The First Generation" an aura of distance that is misleading. As Wooster states in her catalog essay, "one would see that the insistence on including women's voices, issues, and a distinctly female language has lessened over time. However, the innovations in subject matter introduced by women artists - language and personal narrative, discussion of the self, sexuality, women's experience in the world, and the presence of everyday life - have now become part of general art practice."(3) In the '70s, a woman's decision to produce video was considered to be a feminist act. Some of the work in "The First Generation" would not be included in an exhibition of feminist video were it produced today. …
For Peggy Phelan, writing about performance, an ephemeral art form that disappears even as it is ... more For Peggy Phelan, writing about performance, an ephemeral art form that disappears even as it is appearing, is an impossible task as the performance cannot be re-instated, but only vaguely remembered. As she argued in her 1993 book Unmarked: The Politics of Performance, performance derives its strength from its unique ontology of non-reproducibility. Performance’s ability to elude what Phelan has termed “the politics of visibility” places it outside of the (phallic) Law and therefore outside of the domain of patriarchal and oppressive representation. Performance can never be re-presented; it is thus in the domain of performance that Phelan finds “Hope,” the trace or indication of a place from which a revolution might take place. Writing towards disappearance, as Phelan proposes to do, is an inherently optimistic act, one that does not so much “fix” the performance as re-position it to mean something new and exciting.
" An edited volume that explores the work of the innovative, experimental and internationall... more " An edited volume that explores the work of the innovative, experimental and internationally acclaimed performance artist Marilyn Arsem, with 200 images. She is an important contributor to the international performance community through her site-specific, one-to-one performances in alternative spaces which carry a political or feminist message. " -- Publisher's website
B eautifully written and extensively researched, the two books under review have much in common. ... more B eautifully written and extensively researched, the two books under review have much in common. Both writers discuss the work of
IMAGE LINK= IMAGE LINK= IMAGE LINK= IMAGE LINK= In 1975, before she had shaved her head and becom... more IMAGE LINK= IMAGE LINK= IMAGE LINK= IMAGE LINK= In 1975, before she had shaved her head and become a famous performance artist, Rachel Rosenthal purchased three segments of time in Barbara Smith's performance A Week in the Life Of . . . The performance, which ...
Books Reviewed: Hannah Higgins, Fluxus Experience, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002... more Books Reviewed: Hannah Higgins, Fluxus Experience, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002; Alison Knowles, Footnotes: Collage Journal 30 Years, New York: Granary Books, 2000; Alison Knowles, Spoken Text, Barrytown, NY: Left Hand Books, 1993; Dick Higgins/Paul Woodbine, Life Flowers, Kingston, NY: McPherson and Co., Publishers, 1996/2002; Dick Higgins/Paul Woodbine, Octette, Kingston, NY: McPherson and Co., Publishers, 1994.
Before beginning this book review, I have to confess that Laurence Senelick's The Ch... more Before beginning this book review, I have to confess that Laurence Senelick's The Changing Room was not quite what I expected. Published by Routledge, which has the reputation for publishing trendy, post-colonial/post-feminist/queer theory texts that have been criticized for being ...
ite-specific artwork developed out of the art world's reaction against selfcontained modernist sc... more ite-specific artwork developed out of the art world's reaction against selfcontained modernist sculpture as a means of acknowledging the factors that are extraneous to the work of art, including environment, history, memory, and geography. Performance, which appeared in the art world at around the same time as site-specific art, was also concerned with reintroducing the extraneous into the hermeneutic environment of modern art through the agency of the artist's body. Although site-specific art and performance share an intellectual and ontological genesis, there has been very little attempt to link them conceptually until recently. I propose to explore the implications of site for the performing body and vice versa in order to make a case for the centrality of the body as carrier, interpreter, and transformer of the meaning of the site through an examination of work made for the ANTI Festival, an annual event of site-specific time-based performance art that takes place in Kuopio, Finland. The ANTI Festival (Anti means "gift" in Finnish) is a unique festival that is premised upon site-specific performance art made outside of traditional institutions and spaces. Audience members who come specifically to attend the ANTI Festival become performers themselves as they traipse through the city and its environs in the wake of the performing artists. At the same time, the site marks the body of the artist in some way, so that there is a mutual exchange between the artist and the site. The first ANTI Festival, sponsored by the Arts Council of North Savo, took place in 2002. This festival was such a success that it has subsequently been held annually, with the most recent festival taking place in late September 2009. The ANTI Contemporary Art Festival was founded in 2005 and the organization of the festival transferred to the association. That same year, a seminar entitled Talks and Deeds, was held in April outside of the festival. Talks and Deeds was subsequently incorporated into the festival program itself, which has allowed for presentations by academics and artists to expand upon the theme of the festival that year. Although sited in Kuopio, which is about four hours north of Helsinki, the ANTI Festival has become an international event. The ANTI Festival was originally co-directed by Johanna Tuukkanen, a dancer and resident of Kuopio, and Erkki Soininen, a visual artist based in Helsinki. In 2007, Gregg Whelan replaced Soininen as co-artistic director. In the past three years, Whelan, a member of the successful British duo Lone Twin,
IN 1977. MARY BETH EDEISON, an artist and feminist activist, set out with her traveling companion... more IN 1977. MARY BETH EDEISON, an artist and feminist activist, set out with her traveling companion, Anne Healy, to visit the Neolithic Coddess Cave at Grapceva on Hvar island, Yugoslavia. Edeison was armed with the archaeological maps in Marija Gimbutas"s The Gods atid Goddess.es of Old Europe, 7000-3500 B.C.: Myths. Legends, and Cult Images as a reference source. Edeison managed to find an elderly tourist guide in the nearby town of Jelsa, who arranged for his son to take them up the mountain to the Neolithic site. The following day, carrying two Yugoslav tlashlights and a number of candles, Edeison returned to the cave, where she engaged in a ritual designed to connect her to the power and female energ) of the Neolithic Goddess worshippers. In an article about the experience that she published the next year in "The Great Goddess" issue of Heresies, Edeison documented both her journey and the indescribable feelings that she encountered while practicing her rituals in such an ancient and sacred setting. "I felt one long hand extending across time, sending a jolt of energy into my body. I began my rituals-The energy from the rituals seemed to pulsate from the vaulted ceiling to me and back again.'" The photo documentation of Edelson's ritual (fig. I), enacted with no artificial light other than the candles that Edeison had brought, show a nude figure that seems to glow from a spiritual fire that burns from within, seated in
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