Re: [-empyre-] International Women\'s Day 0 Journee Internationale de la femme 00-00-0000

[Christina McPhee <christina112@earthlink.net>]

hi Danny,

Geeta Kapur recently made a point about how 2 artists she was writing  
about, were about  the testing of identity rather than the claiming  
and embodying of identity.
The artist testing against the fact that she was going to have to  
assume that identity  ( eg "muslim" or "hindu" ) and she was making a  
dialectical relation with that demand, which is the demand on a  
citizen, not a demand on an ethnic origin.    (in her recent lecture  
at MOMA, audio files : http://moma.org/visit_moma/audio/2007/pub_prog/ 
downloadAAPAA_2007.html )

This is how the artist creates from a position of (apparently  
powerless, actually powerful) autonomy.

The point is about the testing of the identity of the marginal not  
the claiming and embodying of the margin, thereby not over  
determining it as a structure. I feel this may be like a  
Baudrillardian tactic.

For me the media image is a residual marginality or relational  
detritus that is thrown off or scattered
from the action / intervention of filming.  The intervention is  
generative, makes a  'walking theory.' (the term is from Bojana Cvejic).

The problem I have with xavier cahen's juxtapositions of various  
shots of ads of models of consumer goods of paris streets of 2005  
(infinitely regressive)---- is surrounding   his action of photos,  
making the photo archive and then posting it on international women's  
day to the network, is that this complex of actions sort of futilely,  
guilt-ishly worries about how there must be!~should be! somehwere! an  
identity to be assumed, claimed, even embodied (as he may wish to  
possess bodies) (by him, as photographer, ethnographer, and by  
'woman') , maybe someone can explain through his photos what is  
WOMAN, wow!!. i mean just he's staying outside his own process. it's  
sterile.  he's tacking around the THEY (capitalist vectors)  
longingly, wondering, what does it mean??? if he could figure it
out (and this is the guilty part) he could be part of the THEY!!!-- 
but he can't admit to this, being probably a good leftist kind of  
guy.  (Apologies to Xavier, I am truly making all this up.)  To  
this,   Baudrilliard's tactics  are an exciting, beautiful, raucous  
antidote.

cm

On Mar 10, 2007, at 11:57 AM, Danny Butt wrote:

> To bounce over from another list, and given this convergence of  
> topics, does anyone want to say anything about the relationship  
> between Baudrillard and feminist theory?
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