[-empyre-] Legacies, and heritage

[Renate Ferro]

Hi Patrick, Emily, and Jessica and our –empyre- subscribers, 
Thanks so much for posting these past few days.  I have been traveling in NYC since Wednesday so have been lurking. 

As you all probably recall that my point in organizing this particular month on –empyre was certainly not to just memorialize these artists nor to recount our individual encouters with them, but instead to think about how they have changed the way we think about the art we practice and write about.  
   
I was struck by Jessica’s recounting earlier this week: 
<snip>
From Agnes I learned that art happens in fields, that discarded lumps are forms too. That material and form are language that nourish the body and soul. That implicating yourself in the process of looking is an ethical apparatus. 

From Carolee I learned that tenderness, big expressive energy, sexiness, self-abjection, cats, and humor can all exist at the same time in the same artist in the same work. They don’t always have to… 

From Barbara I received the aesthetics of being a joyous lesbian.
<snip> 
and Tim Murray’s accounts of Grace Quantanilla as a community builder
<snip> 
Grace had that kind of magnetism both in her presentation of her projects and in her impact on artistic minds across cultures and communities.  As proud as she was of her inventive and playful art projects (more on those in another post), Grace Quintanilla was most fiercely proud of the community building she achieved with the youth and the disadvantaged who flocked to her Center for Digital Culture.  
<snip>

As I wrote just a few weeks ago, these artists and many with them have located their discourse within feminist presence, persistence, struggle and cultural resonance. Through discourse, action, and the use of technology these artists taught us about life and living. I am interested in the broad resonances you all have revolving around the body, memory, and culture through screen, moving image, virtual reality and more. Gifts that these artists left through their practices and work. 

But I do not feel the need to defend what we are doing here. And further I do not see where nice or not comes into the picture here.  I think Tim Murray has dedicated months of writing and discussion on our forum.  Here is a link to one of our earliest discussions on the archive from 2010 
http://lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au/pipermail/empyre/2010-September/003243.html