Re: [-empyre-] Lee, Susan, Bill, Matteo, more others

[G.H.Hovagimyan <ghh@thing.net>]

On Jul 21, 2006, at 4:14 PM, Aliette wrote:

> But there were several more ones in in these years of Lee Lozano (early
> sixties and a bit later), both and otherwise characterized by the 
> radical
> criticism or representative Arts as power of the value through a free 
> social
> conception of current life as proper Art work (the total coherence of 
> the
> value by denying the value): as/and the political criticism of Art,

gh responds:

Yes I think that Lee Lozano's practice may come closest to the 
Documenta's oddly poetic interpretation of bare life.  And Yes she was 
the 1960's artist that you are thinking of who just died recently. 
Indeed, the bare life question is very bizarre and cobbled together.
When you allude to Baudrillard's discussion of war pornography I 
believe he is partially correct but I also have to counter with two 
artistic examples; Andy Warhols' black and white silkscreen painting of 
an electric chair taken from a Daily News tabloid front page headlline 
and Waalid Rashad's photographs of mangled automobiles that he claims 
are from car bombings. There is some discussion as to whether or not 
the photographs are real and whether or not Waalid is actually in 
Beirut. The key factor is the information environment. How they are 
presented. The discussion of recent institutional critique within the 
art world assumes that anything presented within an art space, such as 
a museum, art gallery, art fair etc.. can be construed as art.  This 
email discussion list is art in some manner.  I'm not particularly 
convinced of anything, maybe the term should be an art-like activity.