<div dir="ltr"><span class="im" style="font-size:12.8px"><span style="font-size:13px">Re: “a feminist sensibility’ visualizes echoing pluralities beyond identity— so maybe implying another kind of ethics outside the authoritative practices of the InSite project"</span><div style="font-size:13px"><br></div></span><div style="font-size:13px">Dear Christina going back to your last words/email, I would certainly say that you got the main point of the Echo project: looking for pluralities, beyond identity, possibly in any art project. The inSite project was not particularly authoritative, although yes it was certainly planned as an 'intervention' of sorts, like many other art projects, especially since the 90s'. In art, we have been witnessing how a considerable number of biennials, fairs, museums, curators, artists have been framing their work through the so called 'social turn'. Many of those ambitious projects---carried out of course through good intentions towards the 'other' and towards identity-based communities, (often involving marginalized subjects including women, maquiladoras workers, etc)---ended up not changing much in their site of intervention and forgetting the lives of their interlocutors. Most often than no, it ended up being about the glory for the artist but not so much for the subjects involved in those projects. Ethics did become a problem, one that should be more at the center of the debate, not in a moralistic sense, but rather asking differently the question 'what is this intervention good for?'</div><div style="font-size:13px"><br></div><div style="font-size:13px"><br></div><div style="font-size:13px">Have a great weekend!</div><div style="font-size:13px"><br></div><div style="font-size:13px">Fiamma</div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Mon, Jul 11, 2016 at 7:17 PM, <a href="mailto:christina@christinamcphee.net">christina@christinamcphee.net</a> <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:christina@christinamcphee.net" target="_blank">christina@christinamcphee.net</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------<br><div style="word-wrap:break-word">In re a "<span style="font-size:13px"> </span><font size="2">but maybe yes a 'feminist sensibility’ “ — Fiamma, the ‘echo’ video project is online but has a password requirement </font><span style="font-size:13px"> </span><font size="2"><a href="http://www.fiammamontezemolo.com/#echo" target="_blank">http://www.fiammamontezemolo.com/#echo</a> Maybe you’ve already shared it?</font><div><font size="2"><br></font></div><div><font size="2">“A feminist sensibility” around the Narcissus/Echo relay is really interesting as a prompt…. Re-siting a historic InSite “beyond their expected ruins and remains” challenges a deep bias around identity— who can impose what kind of normativity on the historic record… who is Narcissus? who is Echo? This undoing of categorization as you call it, ‘border crossing’ , would you say that the Echo project even challenges the </font></div><div><font size="2">possible imposition of feminist norms? </font></div><div><font size="2"><br></font></div><div><font size="2">More the prompt suggests a sensibility or attitude on the part of maker(s) (participant-observer/artist)…. </font></div><div><font size="2"><br></font></div><div><font size="2">Can you develop this a bit more? “a feminist sensibility’ visualizes echoing pluralities beyond identity— so maybe implying another kind of ethics outside the authoritative practices of the InSite project—? </font></div><div><font size="2"><br></font></div><div><font size="2"><br></font></div><div><div>
<div style="color:rgb(0,0,0);letter-spacing:normal;text-align:start;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;word-spacing:0px;word-wrap:break-word"><div style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:Helvetica;font-size:12px;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;font-weight:normal;letter-spacing:normal;line-height:normal;text-align:start;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;word-spacing:0px;word-wrap:break-word"><br>Christina McPhee</div><div style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:Helvetica;font-size:12px;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;font-weight:normal;letter-spacing:normal;line-height:normal;text-align:start;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;word-spacing:0px;word-wrap:break-word"><br></div><div style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:Helvetica;font-size:12px;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;font-weight:normal;letter-spacing:normal;line-height:normal;text-align:start;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;word-spacing:0px;word-wrap:break-word"><a href="http://christinamcphee.net" target="_blank">http://christinamcphee.net</a></div><div style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:Helvetica;font-size:12px;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;font-weight:normal;letter-spacing:normal;line-height:normal;text-align:start;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;word-spacing:0px;word-wrap:break-word"><br></div><div style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:Helvetica;font-size:12px;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;font-weight:normal;letter-spacing:normal;line-height:normal;text-align:start;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;word-spacing:0px;word-wrap:break-word">insta: naxqqsmash</div><div style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:Helvetica;font-size:12px;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;font-weight:normal;letter-spacing:normal;line-height:normal;text-align:start;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;word-spacing:0px;word-wrap:break-word"><br></div><div style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:Helvetica;font-size:12px;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;font-weight:normal;letter-spacing:normal;line-height:normal;text-align:start;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;word-spacing:0px;word-wrap:break-word"><br><br></div></div>
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<br><div><blockquote type="cite"><div>On Jul 11, 2016, at 12:41 PM, fiamma montezemolo <<a href="mailto:fiammamontezemolo@gmail.com" target="_blank">fiammamontezemolo@gmail.com</a>> wrote:</div><br><div>----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------<div dir="ltr"><span style="font-size:13px">Thank you for your question Christina.</span><div style="font-size:13px"><br></div><div style="font-size:13px">Yes, I did work on the 'aftermaths' of the InSite project in the border between Mexico and the USA. As an artist and anthropologist - using an inter-medial methodology - I was particularly interested in making an attempt to understand what is left after a biennial, a curatorial project, an artist leaves a scene of intervention. InSite has been a very important art initiative that lasted many years in the Tijuana-San Diego border. In 2005 they had their last intervention and moved later to Mexico City. In 2013-14 I made a video called Echo based on their archive and an ethnography. By revisiting the scenes of these curatorial and artistic interventions, “echo” emerged both as a concept and a practice that enabled a reassembling of these art works, their futures, beyond their expected ruins and remains. </div><div style="font-size:13px"><br></div><div style="font-size:13px">Each work/artist and afterlife/echo of those works -after the artists completed them and left to focus on another work - raised different and enriching questions on social art, on ethics, on methods, on the people involved in the projects, on the city itself and its urban cycle, on the future of public sculpture, etc. The assemblage of archival images and current reverberations, of all sort of data visualization through video, text, voice over, drawings, interviews, of affects and representation has been a real challenge in this work, as you mention: especially in terms of methodology. </div><div style="font-size:13px"><br></div><div style="font-size:13px">The result is that more questions were opened after the initial ones. The conclusion was inconclusive: Narcissus (all of us working, representing, intervening on the border: anthropologists, artists, curators, etc.) and Echo (the context, the artists, the collaborators, the public sculptures, the objects, etc.) are clearly part of the same scenario and they are both plural and problematic in their own way...</div><div style="font-size:13px"><br></div><div style="font-size:13px">In this sense, I am not sure mine was a 'feminist methodology', but maybe yes a 'feminist sensibility', or as a long literature that started with Adorno would define it: an 'unmethodical method', an undoing of categorization, indeed a sort of ‘border crossing’. </div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><div class="gmail_quote">Best,</div><div class="gmail_quote">Fiamma</div>
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