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<p>Just wanted to share my story about Carolee Schneeman, as I have been so moved by what others have presented:</p>
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<p style="margin:0px; font:12px Helvetica">When I was an undergraduate student at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, many years ago, in the mid 1990s, somebody managed to organize a visit from Carolee Schneeman.<span class="x_Apple-converted-space">
</span>It’s hard to describe the wave of excitement that rippled through the art scene in that little city by the sea.<span class="x_Apple-converted-space">
</span>This was the mother of performance art!<span class="x_Apple-converted-space">
</span>For us it was like Lady Gaga and Beyonce and Glen Close and Aunt Lydia from The Handmaid’s Tale were all converging into one great, stern being, and she was descending upon us. And we would array ourselves before her like gems on velvet.<span class="x_Apple-converted-space">
</span>We hoped.<span class="x_Apple-converted-space"> </span>We hoped we would shine like that. I hoped, fiercely.</p>
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<p style="margin:0px; font:12px Helvetica">She spoke twice, first at the Mount Saint Vincent Art Gallery and then again in the big auditorium at my school.<span class="x_Apple-converted-space">
</span>I went to both talks.<span class="x_Apple-converted-space"> </span>This was a person I had patterned myself after—strong, with a reputation for spotlight-seeking, and best of all, a way to achieve sanction for seeking that light.<span class="x_Apple-converted-space">
</span>It was what I wanted too.<span class="x_Apple-converted-space"> </span>I was so resentful then of the way that the spotlight was ceded to boys without question, while as a girl I felt accused of neediness for wanting the same thing.<span class="x_Apple-converted-space">
</span>There was something ugly, appetite-riddled, when a girl wanted the spotlight.<span class="x_Apple-converted-space">
</span>For boys it wasn’t even a thing, the wanting.<span class="x_Apple-converted-space">
</span>They just strode in.<span class="x_Apple-converted-space"> </span></p>
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<p style="margin:0px; font:12px Helvetica">But there was Schneeman, earning it.<span class="x_Apple-converted-space">
</span>Refusing to shirk the mantle, to shy or shimmy out of it.<span class="x_Apple-converted-space">
</span>Refusing to be coy about her place there.<span class="x_Apple-converted-space">
</span>Demanding and rigourous and militant and blazing glory!<span class="x_Apple-converted-space">
</span>In my hometown!</p>
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<p style="margin:0px; font:12px Helvetica">Not only that, she also liked cats.<span class="x_Apple-converted-space">
</span>I myself was cat-mad.</p>
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<p style="margin:0px; font:12px Helvetica">My practice then was telling lies persuasively.<span class="x_Apple-converted-space">
</span>I told one about the curator from a local gallery getting a long shard of wood lodged in her eye and having to leave it there because to remove it would damage the eye further, so attending openings with the spear jutting out, surrounded by a donut-bandage.<span class="x_Apple-converted-space">
</span>Another one was about attending a fancy cat show at the civic center.<span class="x_Apple-converted-space">
</span>I had photographs.<span class="x_Apple-converted-space"> </span>They came from a book I had of cat breeds.<span class="x_Apple-converted-space">
</span>I’d rephotographed them on the copy stand at school.</p>
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<p style="margin:0px; font:12px Helvetica">When Schneeman spoke at the gallery, I approached her afterwards and told an incredibly improbable tale about my cat, Turbine, finding an injured baby bird at the base of a tree across the street from my house and
bringing it to me in her mouth unharmed.<span class="x_Apple-converted-space"> </span>
She carried it, I told her, like a little egg.<span class="x_Apple-converted-space">
</span>Schneeman seemed at first skeptical, but then delighted.<span class="x_Apple-converted-space">
</span>She allowed herself to be carried away by the image of this white cat gleaming in the light, carrying a bird in its mouth like an egg.</p>
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<p style="margin:0px; font:12px Helvetica">When she spoke at the auditorium at my school, she spotted me in the crowd and after her talk she called me up to the mic.<span class="x_Apple-converted-space">
</span>She asked me to tell the assembled students and faculty about my cat, the bird.<span class="x_Apple-converted-space">
</span>She reminded me to tell the part about the egg.</p>
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<p style="margin:0px; font:12px Helvetica">I felt like I’d been knighted.<span class="x_Apple-converted-space">
</span>I felt seen.<span class="x_Apple-converted-space"> </span>I felt the heat of the spotlight on my shoulders, and god, it felt great.</p>
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<p style="margin:0px; font:12px Helvetica">I wouldn’t be the artist I am if it weren’t for that visit.<span class="x_Apple-converted-space">
</span>She was an idol and she showed me kindness.<span class="x_Apple-converted-space">
</span>She knew I was lying, this scrappy, star-struck art-school girl with a story, but she gave me what I hungered for.<span class="x_Apple-converted-space">
</span>She put me before an audience.<span class="x_Apple-converted-space"> </span>
It was an act of sheer generosity.<span class="x_Apple-converted-space"> </span>
She could have shut me down.<span class="x_Apple-converted-space"> </span>She could have been indifferent.<span class="x_Apple-converted-space">
</span>But she saw my appetite and thought “That’s good,<span class="x_Apple-converted-space">
</span>She should be hungry.<span class="x_Apple-converted-space"> </span>She should be hungry and she should get dinner.”<span class="x_Apple-converted-space">
</span>She nourished me.</p>
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<p style="margin:0px; font:12px Helvetica">Such a tiny moment, but with such a great effect for me.<span class="x_Apple-converted-space">
</span>How many times did she do this?<span class="x_Apple-converted-space"> </span>
How many of us are there, I wonder, fed from her hand like this?</p>
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<p style="margin:0px; font:12px Helvetica">If people are interested in taking a look at what I do, this is my most recent work, finished just last month.
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<p style="margin:0px; font:12px Helvetica">It’s called <i>You Were an Amazement on the Day You Were Born</i>.</p>
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<p style="margin:0px; font:12px Helvetica; color:rgb(0,0,0)"><span style="">https://vimeo.com/311950513</span></p>
<p style="margin:0px; font:12px Helvetica; color:rgb(0,0,0)"><span style="">password: lenore</span></p>
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Emily Vey Duke</div>
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Pronouns: she/her/hers<br>
<div><font color="#993300">Associate Professor | Department of Transmedia | Syracuse University</font></div>
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<div id="x_divRplyFwdMsg" dir="ltr"><font face="Calibri, sans-serif" color="#000000" style="font-size:11pt"><b>From:</b> empyre-bounces@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au <empyre-bounces@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au> on behalf of Rachel Fein-Smolinski <rfeinsmo@syr.edu><br>
<b>Sent:</b> Thursday, April 18, 2019 6:38:51 PM<br>
<b>To:</b> soft_skinned_space<br>
<b>Subject:</b> Re: [-empyre-] abstraction an multiple possiibilities</font>
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<div class="PlainText">----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------<br>
First of all, I want to thank Renate for the invite to participate in this discussion. I am humbled to be privy to such thoughtful dialogue that intersects with the work that I make.<br>
<br>
As an artist raised in Buffalo, NY, Renate’s earlier mention of Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center and Squeaky Wheel moved me. I was raised going to openings at Hallwalls, processing super 8 in the basement of Squeaky Wheel as a 13 year old intern, and spending
summers through the New York State Summer School of the Arts at Ithaca College learning from Ghen Dennis, and Tania Palacios. I moved to San Francisco to go to art school when I was 17, and then back East to Syracuse, NY for graduate school in the Transmedia
Dept. at Syracuse University where I now teach.<br>
<br>
I make installations that include videos, photographs, and objects about courage and pain using bio-medical imagery. I integrate appropriated materials from hospital archives into my work, and use the sci-fi format to explore pain, sex, power, and neuroses
through the lens of science.<br>
<br>
I have been thinking about being queer, and femme, and sick in the context of this conversation. I have a lot of thoughts that I want to expand upon about influence, but for now I want to say that I’m thankful for the link to Barbra Hammer’s performance/lecture
at the Whitney The Art of Dying: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FMeoAx9dZkI">
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FMeoAx9dZkI</a>, and last Sunday, I sat in a library, with the intention of doing some work with her voice playing in the background. I ended up raptly watching the lecture twice through and openly weeping. How vital it is to
feel validated by the affective presence of others. The privilege of the intimacy of the public utterance of the phrase “I love you with all my heart.” This stunning metaphorical organ.<br>
<br>
I have been remiss in writing as I have been preparing an installation for a group show honoring the recipients of a Wynn Newhouse Award for artists who have disabilities:
<a href="https://www.wnewhouseawards.com/Pages/Awards.html">https://www.wnewhouseawards.com/Pages/Awards.html</a><br>
<br>
The works of the other five recipients feel particularly relevant to the use of the body within the history of feminist interventions on public understandings of subjective experiences.<br>
<br>
I also wanted to share my most recent video Referred Pain: <a href="https://vimeo.com/323993856">
https://vimeo.com/323993856</a>, shown as part of the Video in America exhibition at The Everson, another CNY institution Renate mentioned:
<a href="https://www.everson.org/explore/current-exhibitions/archives-video-america">
https://www.everson.org/explore/current-exhibitions/archives-video-america</a><br>
<br>
I look forward to talking more about my relationship to the work of these four incredible artists.<br>
<br>
_____________________________<br>
<br>
Rachel Fein-Smolinski<br>
Digital Services Coordinator<br>
Light Work<br>
<br>
316 Waverly Avenue, Syracuse, NY 13244<br>
lightwork.org<br>
<br>
<br>
________________________________________<br>
From: empyre-bounces@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au <empyre-bounces@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au> on behalf of Timothy Conway Murray <tcm1@cornell.edu><br>
Sent: Thursday, April 18, 2019 8:43:51 AM<br>
To: soft_skinned_space<br>
Subject: Re: [-empyre-] abstraction an multiple possiibilities<br>
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----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------<br>
For those of you who happen to be in the Central New York area today, I invite you to join us today, Thursday, at 4:30 p.m. in Willard Straight Hall for an event to pay homage to the late filmmaker Agnès Varda. A free screening of Varda's La Pointe courte will
be followed by a roundtable discussion featuring Laurent Dubreuil, Claire Ménard, Tim Murray, and Marie-Claire Vallois.<br>
<br>
Timothy Murray<br>
Director, Cornell Council for the Arts and Curator, CCA Biennial<br>
<a href="http://cca.cornell.edu">http://cca.cornell.edu</a><br>
Curator, Rose Goldsen Archive of New Media Art<br>
<a href="http://goldsen.library.cornell.edu">http://goldsen.library.cornell.edu</a> <<a href="http://goldsen.library.cornell.edu/">http://goldsen.library.cornell.edu/</a>><br>
Professor of Comparative Literature and English<br>
<br>
B-1 West Sibley Hall<br>
Cornell University<br>
Ithaca, New York 14853<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
On 4/17/19, 12:59 PM, "empyre-bounces@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au on behalf of Renate Ferro" <empyre-bounces@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au on behalf of rferro@cornell.edu> wrote:<br>
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----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------<br>
Interesting video featuring Barbara Hammer on Art Forum<br>
<br>
<a href="https://www.artforum.com/video/excerpts-from-an-interview-with-barbara-hammer-71388">
https://www.artforum.com/video/excerpts-from-an-interview-with-barbara-hammer-71388</a><br>
<br>
Living within abstraction and multiple possibilities.<br>
<br>
Renate Ferro<br>
Visiting Associate Professor<br>
Director of Undergraduate Studies<br>
Department of Art<br>
Tjaden Hall 306<br>
rferro@cornell.edu<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
_______________________________________________<br>
empyre forum<br>
empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au<br>
<a href="http://empyre.library.cornell.edu">http://empyre.library.cornell.edu</a><br>
<br>
<br>
_______________________________________________<br>
empyre forum<br>
empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au<br>
<a href="http://empyre.library.cornell.edu">http://empyre.library.cornell.edu</a><br>
_______________________________________________<br>
empyre forum<br>
empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au<br>
<a href="http://empyre.library.cornell.edu">http://empyre.library.cornell.edu</a></div>
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