I was hoping someone might follow up Chris' excellent deconstruction
of the binary I surfaced (offhand, but nevertheless....) and there are
many interesting points of departure in those stories in the US.
I would just take one example which is that, returning to teach in an
art school after some time away, our gender ratio is 75% female to
25% male. So, for example, I (with some self-consciousness) facilitate
an entirely female 11-person Hons/MFA reading group - which I think
factors into the career viability issue raised below.
Chris, sorry not to engage your post more fully but I really enjoyed
it and can't get into all the things I find valuable.... However, I
thought I'd list some questions around gender that remain present as
important theoretical concerns in my work:
1) Gender is fundamental to our understanding of the binary. [In very
different ways in different cultural environments - I completely agree
with Caroline Langill's point that heterogeneity (or I would say
difference) is critical here.]
2) Those working on transgender politics are asking the most pertinent
questions about the reality of crossing borders, when those borders
are not a category of thought but embodied.
3) And more sociologically, the history of feminist work seems to me
to have the most valuable archive documenting the possibilities and
limits of collective action; and the category of "experience" raised
in that work has much relevance to many aspects of curatorial practice.
If you'll excuse some linkage, I raise some of the above (and related
issues around indigenous knowledge) in a recent book chapter that some
of you might be interested in, which I've put up on my website.
<http://www.dannybutt.net/acp/2008/03/15/local-knowledge-and-new-media-theory/
>
Butt, Danny. "Local Knowledge and New Media Theory." The Aotearoa
Digital Arts Reader. Eds. Stella Brennan and Su Ballard. vols.
Auckland: Aotearoa Digital Arts and Clouds, 2008. 30-35.
Cheers
Danny
On 14/10/2008, at 6:53 AM, Christiane Robbins wrote:
> Hello to everyone,
>
> I’ve been following this discussion with curiosity. I have been
> unable to participate to the extent that I would like, however I
> found Danny’s and Janis’s posts as flash points for a brief response
> – albeit a non-theoretical response – although the notion of sewing
> velvet curtains gives rise to brilliant images and unfolding
> narratives!
>
> Danny’s example of the all-male artist group did not strike me as
> unusual at all – nor did Tyler Green’s "Curator as caretaker, guide,
> encourager" (unfortunately, this link/ post seems to have been taken
> down.) They stimulate a necessary follow-up - as this framing of
> the genderization of both the role of a curator and the artist has
> long been in play – at least in the States and I suspect elsewhere.
> When Danny asks: "What is at stake in the shift in the ideal model
> of curatorial practice from judgement to midwifery?" I ask - Is
> this a false binary - ? Are judgement and mid-wifery simply various
> functions of institutional hybrid role ... or does it say more as to
> how we, as various cultures, look at the role of the "artist " as
> well as the curator. Genderization is certainly one category to
> examine -
>
> In ferreting out a historizing example, I understand that there was
> an early study conducted by the NEA (National Endowment for the Arts
> in the USA) in the late 1970’s, which categorized the field of art
> practices as a “pink collar ghetto.” This tag line concretized
> many of the points long associated with the collective (rather
> Calvinist) misgivings hovering above the suspect culture milieu of
> the times, as well as to the subtext of a very real biases and
> devaluation of culture within our respective socio-economic realms.
> These ranged from economics (the plethora of low paying positions)
> to the disproportionate number of curators, registrars and
> administrative support staff positions that were inhabited by
> women. Apparently, the directorships of the museums were not.
> These executive positions that spoke of money and power were heavily
> (if not exclusively at that point in time) inhabited by male
> directors/chief curators. The curators (especially of smaller
> institutions and non-profits orgs.) were ostensibly in the positions
> of caretaking (conventionally inscribed as maternal) the museum
> collections, the museum directors, and the exhibiting artists - who
> at that the time were, again, primarily men.
>
> An incisive historical example of this would be the Guerrilla Girls
> actions of the 80’s. More critically pertinent to this discussion
> was a poster they produced which pointedly critiqued the overtly
> support “ caretaker” relationship of middle aged women gallery
> owners to young male artists – their covert support took on a
> different cast! It is with ease (and wicked fun ! ) that we are
> able to extrapolate and draw analogies of these relationships of
> curators to artists.
>
> These museum stats were simultaneously cast within the afterglow of
> the rather startling stats that as women progressed through the post-
> secondary educational realms of art practice studies their number
> decreased enormously by the time they graduated with an MFA and
> entered and advanced through the professional realm of practicing
> visual and media artists. In other words the “successful” artists
> were disproportionately male. And…. I believe that there were a
> striking number of seldom-noted husband and wife - boyfriend/
> girlfriend artist teams that were publicly known solely under the
> name of the male partner - thereby playing out conventional roles.
> However, hybrid practices - cross-disciplinary practices did much to
> dismantle these conventions and the hierarchy. And arguably, as
> women progressed through their career paths into institutionalized
> roles and systems, it appears as if artist/curators eventually
> follow one discreet path over another - that one often being that
> being of a curator/programmer, as it offers more career viability -
> the reason for which goes to the heart of this discussion.
>
> Further to the point, this genderization is easily extended to that
> of media “ producer “ and “director” when framed by the conventions
> of cinematic articulations. To this day only 4% of women are
> directors (this stat varies over the past 20 years from 3-7%) with
> an exceedingly high number of women who are media producers
> (ensuring that the project gets done and the creative vision of the
> (male) director is realized.)
>
> In any case, I'd like to say that, yes, there are no simple answers
> as we are dealing with an increasingly (re) entrenched and
> institutionalized power dynamic. And yes, I have encountered
> similar dynamics – throughout my entire career as a curator and
> practicing artist/director and professor. I suspect that I am not
> alone in that experience. And, I have engaged in a lot of hopeful
> discussion about post-gender - but the stats/data speak of a
> different reality. Although I have always appreciated Spivak's
> "To introduce the question of woman changes everything " In the
> case of new media practices, specifically in relation to the
> pragmatic strategies of entrenched institutions, the introduction
> appears to have offered some degree of change .... at least somewhat
> in the hyper-temporal space of new media and cultural practices.
> How this orchestrates itself in the larger material realm remains a
> pressing question.
>
> This all leaves so much more to be unpacked as we wade through
> these complexities - thanks for the discussion!
>
>
> Ciao,
>
> Chris
>
> .
>
>
>
> On Oct 13, 2008, at 4:55 AM, Danny Butt wrote:
>
>> Hi everyone
>>
>> A relatively quiet discussion (with many good points already
>> though :) ) and I can't help wondering if this is because the
>> relationship between technology and masculinity is (on the surface)
>> so entrenched that we are just used to it whether we blindly accept
>> it or actively resist it. I would add my own support to Janis'
>> suggestion that this is a function of a relatively underdeveloped
>> discourse, rather than any sense that gender is not an important
>> issue or that we are in some space of post-feminism. My experience
>> is that the feminist problematics that have been productive in
>> other fields have so often not been considered in new media
>> discourse, and it's hard not to see the "post-gender" talk as
>> fairly tired repetition, when those who are most committed to
>> investigating gendered practice in new media show us continually
>> that gender is always "at work" in new yet not completely
>> unexpected ways. As Spivak succinctly puts it, "To introduce the
>> question of woman changes everything."
>>
>> It seems important to me to keep that as a *question* - discursive,
>> not able to be adequately solved by discussions of physical bodies.
>> "Well, there seem to be more women than men in our department", as
>> if Condoleeza Rice as Secretary of State displaces racist
>> patriarchy in the US.... By keeping gender as a question, we are
>> always impelled to ask: how is gender being produced?
>>
>> To step into the field of curatorial practice, I had the
>> interesting experience last week of participating in a great
>> interview with a representative of an all-male artist group with
>> experience in the new media scene. In response to a question from a
>> female co-interviewer about the group's engagement with women, he
>> noted that they have had a number of ongoing, successful
>> collaborations with women, almost always women curators. Then, the
>> other day, there is a post on Tyler Green's blog <http://www.artsjournal.com/man/2008/10/curator_as_caretaker_guide_enc.html
>> > titled "Curator as caretaker, guide, encourager", referring to
>> LACMA photography curator Charlotte Cotton sewing velvet curtains
>> to protect some fragile works. This was presented by Green as a
>> "neat-o story", but I couldn't help but think, what is this story
>> (and Green's title) saying about the feminisation of the curatorial
>> role? What is at stake in the shift in the ideal model of
>> curatorial practice from judgement to midwifery? Is the female
>> curator an instance of Irigaray's 'envelope' for the self-
>> originating masculine artistic force? Of course I am not expecting
>> that there are simple answers here, but I am interested to know if
>> others are encountering similar dynamics?
>>
>> Cheers,
>>
>> Danny
>>
>> --
>> http://www.dannybutt.net
>>
>> On 13/10/2008, at 5:24 AM, Janis Jefferies wrote:
>>
>>> Dear All,
>>>
>>> A little late to add into the discussion but I hope to add in some
>>> ideas
>>> concerning the theme that has been established by Verina and Crumb.
>>>
>>> By way of introduction I should add that I have spent 30 years in
>>> art
>>> school/higher education/university art departments including fine
>>> art,
>>> cultural studies and most recently computing. The themes that
>>> have driven
>>> my practice and commitment to teaching during this time has been
>>> around
>>> feminism and textiles which I believe most people know. The
>>> debates, or
>>> rather an absence of them around gender and technology save for
>>> standard
>>> texts like Harraway, Hayles, Stone and Turkle and the women's
>>> media group
>>> that Erica Matlow established in the 90s at Westminster, would
>>> appear to
>>> suggest that we are in a post feminist era. Identities and
>>> subjects can
>>> change in the virtual but on the other hand there remains the
>>> complex
>>> questions of sexual, racial and class differences which are in
>>> productive
>>> tension to that proposed through an uncritical relation to
>>> technology. The
>>> argument proposed by Simone de Beauvoir in The Second Sex, that
>>> "one is not
>>> born, but rather becomes a woman" holds in so far as gender
>>> categories are
>>> constructed (they may be played with, subverted or fantasized).
>>> Culture is
>>> central to gender formation. Art practices, including those that
>>> work with
>>> technology and from within cultural and social discourse, do not
>>> simply
>>> represent given gender identities, or reproduce already existing
>>> ideologies
>>> but rather participate in the very construction of those identities.
>>>
>>> I make one more observation which is that the shifts in the ways
>>> in which
>>> art practice was taught and organised meant that there is a
>>> predominance of
>>> women in art education. This has happened over the last 30 years.
>>> I think
>>> the programmes that cite technology in their titles are at a
>>> similar stage
>>> of development to art education in the 1970s, mostly men involved,
>>> lab
>>> lectures, not enough group team workshop teaching and not enough
>>> senior
>>> women programming them (there are as always notable exceptions).
>>> What and
>>> how programmes are established remain on gender lines (as are the
>>> areas
>>> covered, more women interested in physical and social computing than
>>> gaming). Without a critical mass the curatorial debate is reduced
>>> only to
>>> statistics.
>>>
>>> .
>
> Christiane Robbins
>
>
> - JETZTZEIT -
> ... the space between zero and one ...
> Walter Benjamin
>
>
> LOS ANGELES I SAN FRANCISCO
>
>
>
> I
>
>
>
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