Hi,
I saw WACK! at PS 1 in New York. I won't attempt to answer your question
about "feminist discourse in relation to technology and network cultures" in
full, but I'd at least like to mention one work in the exhibition that
immediately came to mind upon reading your words.
I remember entering the little gallery within the exhibition dedicated
solely to the work of Hannah Wilke. I was struck overall by how the "thrill"
of her work sustains these decades later, how its sharpness and sensuousness
continues to spring forth. But then I was excited in particular by one work
I hadn't known before. I don't have the title on hand, but I recall it as
being basically a collection of messages left by friends, curators, lovers,
and her mom on her answering machine.
You could listen to the various voices, all calling for (in the sense of
invoking) Hannah in some form or another, while studying Wilke's phone log.
This work is dynamic in different ways, including in how it is prescient of
today's fascination with participatory art (which was also clearly being
practiced by Fluxus artists and others some decades ago) and as you say,
"network cultures." Using content of her everyday life--making the private
public--is a feminist trope, for sure, but the specificity of how Wilke does
it in this work is worth considering.
I also find compelling how she positions herself as a stand-in for
audience,--because of the various callers' sense of Wilke being on the other
end of the machine (both telephone and answering), they are affirmed in
talking to the space which is not her (she's absent, that's why they're
leaving a message) but which is delimited, or made representable, by her
(the framework created that makes her--Hannah in the flesh--the eventual
recipient of their words/voices). And now, because they talk to her, they
talk to us, or to anyone listening to her artwork.
Caroline Koebel
Brooklyn
On 10/6/08 10:06 PM, "Susan Kennard" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Hello all,
>
> Has anyone had a chance to see the exhibition WACK! Art and the Feminist
> Revolution?
>
> It just opened at the Vancouver Art Gallery. It is interesting to consider
> Verinas question in relation to whether or not gender in art making has become
> ossified in time. In the late nineties and into the turn of the century we
> know
> of the rich history of feminist discourse in relation to technology and
> network
> cultures, but did that work connect back and how is it connecting forward?
>
> +++++
> WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution
> The first comprehensive, international survey of a remarkable body of work
> that emerged from the dynamic relationship between art and feminism between
> 1965 and 1980, a time in which a majority of feminist activism and art-making
> occurred across the globe. The exhibition brings together the work of 120
> artists to examine the international foundations and impact of feminism on
> art.
>
> WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution is organized by The Museum of
> Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. The exhibition is curated by Connie Butler, the
> Robert Lehman Foundation Chief Curator of Drawings at The Museum of Modern
> Art, New York.
> ++++++
>
> Susan
>
>
> relevance "gender" currently has in field of art
> /technology
>
>
>
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