[-empyre-] abstraction an multiple possiibilities

Wed May 1 01:46:22 AEST 2019

Dear empyre list,

I wanted to thank Rachel, Emily and Jessica for sharing their work! Some
quotes from the last few days of conversation really stick out to me:

— jessica (also quoted above by rachel!): “The first time I saw Barbara’s
work was in the year I first made love to another woman, and the aesthetics
of her work—particularly work with optical printing, doubling, mirroring,
layering and her playful edits—looked the way very good queer sex  feels
(which I can only describe as a liberatory revelation)”

—rachel’s relation of her own sexual experience: “Sex that made me feel the
way that Fuses has. It wasn't the first time I had been with another girl,
but something about it attached me so deeply and joyfully to Fuses. I
thought about the unapologetic body asserting existence amongst a visual
cacophony, the body that I was a sole owner off, and the ways in which my
body could multiply, and lay itself upon another body, and hold on so
deeply to this joyous queerness I was so apprehensive to acknowledge.”

—Emily’s tale of encountering Carolee Schneeman, and Carolee’s generosity
in thrusting Emily into the spotlight to tell her lie to an audience

I felt a very similar generosity in your pieces as you describe feeling
with Carolee’s and Barbara’s work and presence. The videos each traced out
joyful, confident, empowered inhabitations of the body, and of the desires
that shape the body’s relation to other bodies and to the world around
them. But most importantly these are bodies and desires that defy
heteronormative / capitalist expectations — they are multiple, queer,
self-reflective, layered and assertive, and refuse oppressive forces that
would seek to define them otherwise.

I see a lot of work that explores these issues in various forms, but the
works you guys presented this week made a particular impression on me. They
did so through their editing and production to create a layering of
presentations and representations of bodies, voices, texts and narratives
that created time and space for me, a viewer to these works, to feel the
qualities just described. And by feel I really mean feel and sense, rather
than just understand. In my body too, perhaps, rather than as ideas or more
abstracted intellect.

For example: The various girls/women/people that narrate throughout
Elizabeth’s video ‘You Were an Amazement on the Day You Were Born’ decenter
the idea of a stable or monolithic protagonist of this biographical story,
and presumably any biographical story. Similarly the frequent shots of
animals create constantly shifting associations with a wide variety of
embodied vulnerabilities (puppy) and aggression (eagle/vulture/whatever
bird of prey), not to mention stereotypes and conventional allegories
attributed these animals. And of course they expand the view of the human
body beyond the social codes that might restrictively define ‘human’.

And Rachel’s piece Referred Pain creates a sense of intimacy with many
bodies—organisms under the microscope, the person practicing on the pole,
the person under examination in the doctors office (the latter two always
in partial view), the dead bird, the family that cleans the bird up. I
think the sound editing contributes to unifying these disparate forms of
embodiment, and different forms of gazing at these bodies. It’s a slow and
spacious environment for rendering and sensing bodies and bodily relations
that seek to chart their own place in the physical and social world,
perhaps partly in communal relation to each other.

I wish I had time to write more about all of this work!

It’s really interesting to see how Carolee, Barbara and Agnes’ work has
contributed to opening up thought processes, creating modes of
representation, and creating confidence to produce these works today
(though I do not give too much credit to your predecessors for your work).
Thank you Emily, Jessica and Rachel for creating your own new paths in
relation to that history.

A little bit about me: I’m an artist based in New York. I work with
performance and video, often in relation to the idea of self-broadcast
(like on community access TV and YouTube) and imagined audience. My work
often seeks to establish uncertain landscapes between performer and viewer
that explore fragile forms of power, trust, solidarity and autonomy. I’m on
the editorial board of Empyre and moderated a month last year that looked
to build an archive of video works and feedback from the community based on
some of the same themes around multiplicities of body, voice discussed
here. I teach video art, art theory, art history and visual culture at SVA
and St Johns University.

Best wishes,
Daniel Lichtman

On Sun, Apr 28, 2019 at 11:53 AM Jessica Posner <jlposner at gmail.com> wrote:

> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
> Thank you, Rachel and Emily, for sharing these stories. It’s amazing to
> connect to these works and artists as templates for feelings and
> intimate/public encounters—particularly feminist and queer ones.
>
> How lucky to have these works and artists as models.
>
> Chantal Ackerman’s “je tu il elle” was an important text for me too. Still
> mourning her loss.
>
>
> Jessica Posner
> jessicaposner.com
>
>
> On Apr 26, 2019, at 10:21 PM, Emily V Duke <evduke at syr.edu> wrote:
>
> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
>
> So into this.
>
>
> Thank you for the stories.  This is the gift of these artists, to allow us
> to reimagine, repeat, repair our own stories.
>
>
> E
>
>
> Emily Vey Duke
> Pronouns: she/her/hers
> Associate Professor | Department of Transmedia | Syracuse University
> ------------------------------
> *From:* empyre-bounces at lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au <
> empyre-bounces at lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au> on behalf of Rachel
> Fein-Smolinski <rfeinsmo at syr.edu>
> *Sent:* Friday, April 26, 2019 8:58:29 PM
> *To:* soft_skinned_space
> *Subject:* Re: [-empyre-] abstraction an multiple possiibilities
>
> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
> I feel privileged to be reading these descriptions of your experiences and
> relationships to these works, and I want to respond to a few things
> mentioned that I deeply connected to:
>
> As Jessica said:
>
> "The first time I saw Barbara’s work was in the year I first made love to
> another woman, and the aesthetics of her work—particularly work with
> optical printing, doubling, mirroring,layering and her playful edits—looked
> the way very good queer sex feels "
>
> I relate to this on an unbelievable level. In an anecdotal experience, I
> have been thinking about the first time that I watched Carolee Shneemann's
> Fuses. I was 14 years old and it hurt me and held me in way I never
> imagined was acceptable. This was when I started to feel less like a
> passive object when watching something, and more like a productive,
> consumption, machine. I was in Ithaca College for the New York State Summer
> School of the arts, and it was part of our nightly screenings. I sat in the
> dark of the theatre next to another student, a girl who I was supremely
> attracted to, and supremely ashamed of for desiring so genuinely.
>
> Shortly after this screening, one of the male students in the program was
> kicked out after multiple female-identifiy students in the program reported
> him to the director for repeatedly groping and inappropriately touching
> them in the darkroom. He later claimed that he was confused, because it was
> so dark. After he was asked to leave, our teacher, a powerful woman who
> intimidated me and made me feel small and big at the same time, took me,
> and the girl who I was attracted to aside, and told us that she was
> concerned that we were the only ones who didn't report his behavior, yet
> when she asked us both later, we admitted that we had experienced it, and
> hadn't said anything because it didn't feel "bad enough" to bring up.
>
> I felt like I had been told that I had a curse of quiet and was ashamed of
> it. This feels connected to something Emily said
>
> "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."
>
> That night, the girl and I who were pulled aside had sex. Sex that made me
> feel the way that Fuses has. It wasn't the first time I had been with
> another girl, but something about it attached me so deeply and joyfully to
> Fuses. I thought about the unapologetic body asserting existence amongst a
> visual cacophony, the body that I was a sole owner off, and the ways in
> which my body could multiply, and lay itself upon another body, and hold on
> so deeply to this joyous queerness I was so apprehensive to acknowledge.
>
> Thanks all for the amazing reads. Continuing to catch up on the
> conversation!
>
> -
> Rachel
> _____________________________
>
> Rachel Fein-Smolinski
> Digital Services Coordinator
> Light Work
>
> 316 Waverly Avenue, Syracuse, NY 13244
> lightwork.org
>
>
> ________________________________________
> From: empyre-bounces at lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au <
> empyre-bounces at lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au> on behalf of Emily V Duke <
> evduke at syr.edu>
> Sent: Friday, April 26, 2019 9:27:08 AM
> To: soft_skinned_space
> Subject: Re: [-empyre-] abstraction an multiple possiibilities
>
> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
> _______________________________________________
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>
> _______________________________________________
> empyre forum
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> _______________________________________________
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