Dara Birnbaum at EAI

Marking the occasion of a new comprehensive catalog and retrospective on the prolific ouevre of Dara Birnbaum, a selection of the artist's early performance-videos were screened at Electronic Arts Intermix on March 30th. Editors of the new publication, Karen Kelly and Barbara Schröder introduced these early black-and-white, performance-based videos, which preceded her single channel works. Unlike the later works, which appropriated and critiqued mass media and TV culture, these direct, unmediated, and tautological performance-based works shed new insight by introducing themes recurring throughout her later work.

"In many of these works, Birnbaum appears on camera as the performer, investigating through the body intense emotional or psychological manifestations while also foregrounding the relation of the camera/viewer to the subject/performer. Such works reveal an unexpected link to the body-art and performance-video practices of artists such as Vito Acconci, Joan Jonas, and Bruce Nauman. Other early works incorporate disjunctive tactics and pop-cultural content, pointing to Birnbaum's later editing strategies and engagement with television as source material." (EAI program notes)

Following the screening, Birnbaum appeared in conversation with Lori Zippay, Executive Director of EAI, and participated in discussion with the audience.
I found Dara's citation of Vito Acconci's influence in the 1970s fascinating. Having never seen these early videos, I wouldn't necessarily have anticipated this parallel, although given their common interest in Architecture, the epistemologies of video space, and camera-viewer-performer dynamics, it makes sense. I would have expected a much stronger bond with say, Joan Jonas, who Birnbaum cited only after an audience member asked about her connection to pioneers in feminist video. She also cited early influence by Bruce Nauman and Dan Graham. (The latter whom she co-wrote a text on video/architecture in the early 80s if I'm not mistaken.) As well as the theoretical writings of Jacques Lacan, of course.

The question that resonated most with me was from EAI's Josh Kline, who asked the artist how she had conceptualized and weighed her role as a director in these early works. Since these works rest on a combination of the technical parameters of the cameras and the concept, he wondered to what extent she had directed the various players. Surprisingly, she admitted very little responsibility, saying that it was mostly a collaborative effort with her making aesthetic decisions.

Ladies Birnbaum and Zippay will also be in conversation at White Columns April 14th for the Second installment of the Skowhegan Conversations Series, (an ongoing series of collaborative dialogs between Skowhegan and White Columns)

The retrospective that was the impetus for the new catalog, is being exhibited at S.M.A.K., Ghent, in 2009 and Museu Serralves, Porto, in 2010. Hopefully after those two venues, it will come to New York!

Martha Rosler at EAI

Last night, Electronic Arts Intermix presented "Martha Rosler: Kitchen Theatre" to a very full house. The selection of Rosler's videos ended with the premiere of most recent project, which documented the re-performance of her 1975 work, 'Semiotics of the Kitchen,' the first work screened in the program. The original work, which features Rosler before a static camera listing off an alphabetized list of cooling utensils, as she "demonstrates" the objects' use with gestures, which depart from the traditional gestures associated with the tool.



The 2011 performance, held at Whitechapel in London, documented an open call, where women convened and re-performed the iconic video within the gallery space. A revolving cast of twenty-six women participated in the live restaging of Rosler's script. The 2011 work traces their auditions, rehearsals, and finally, the public event.

The program also celebrated Rosler's forthcoming publication The Art of Cooking, a rediscovered manuscript created by the artist on the rhetorics of cooking and art production, made up almost entirely of quotations from cooking manuals and books on gastronomy.


The program:

A budding gourmet
1974, 17:45 min, b&w, sound

Semiotics of the Kitchen
1975, 6:09 min, b&w, sound

The East is Red, The West is Bending
1977, 19:57 min, color, sound

Semiotics of the Kitchen: an Audition
2011, 10:26 min, color, sound

Gary Hill, George Quasha, and Charles Stein at EAI

A screening and conversation was held last night at Electronic Arts Intermix in celebration of the new book An Art of Limina: Gary Hill's Works and Writings. A panel consisting of Gary Hill, George Quasha and Charles Stein (authors of the publication) illuminated and discussed a selection of Hill's early single-channel videos, such as Around & About, Sums and Differences, Happenstance (part one of many parts), Tale Enclosures, and Why Do Things Get in a Muddle (Come on Petunia). Hill, Quasha, and Stein have collaborated for the greater part of the last three decades on this book and as artists. This created a formidable atmosphere where the three fluidly reminisced, shared memories and theoretical outlooks alike. At one point Charles Stein random broke out into semantic gibberish, concluding that through abstract primal expression, he could in fact create his own system of believable linguistics which convey a message. (A perfect segway into Hill's 1985 work Tale Enclosures where Quasha and Stein are taped performing rhythmic chants.)

Quasha gave a brief intro about the book, describing Stein and his efforts as enabling the "Further life of the work."

"Our primary interest is in what we call the further life of the work, which we have defined as an extension of the creative energy and interest that the work itself actually projects through its own instance. We will have more to say on this subject in the Prologue and elsewhere, as it speaks to something in Gary Hill’s work itself, as we see it. In short, we intend that our writing about his work contribute to the very possibility which the work opens up. The theory is that critical alignment with a work brings that work out, brings it forward to possible participation. The further life is also an active dialogue with the ongoing work itself."

I couldn't agree more with this perspective. The articulation and recognition of critical engagement and dialogue as a way of extending and facilitating a work's future agency is rarely specified, eventhough it is implicit in the act of writing. The articulation of this notion means a lot.

Much of the book's contents, including the forward by Lynne Cook, can be found here.

(above) Around &About, 1980

(above) Happenstance (part one of many parts), 1982-3 (made with a Rutt-Etra Video Synth!)

(above) Sums & Differences, 1978

(above) Tale Enclosure, 1985

(above) Why Do Things Get In a Muddle? (Come On Petunia), 1984

(all images courtesy of EAI)

I was also interested Quasha's belief that all concepts are working towards defining a principle, the latter of which cannot be quantified or defined, but only approached through various avenues and forms of access. A conversation with Quasha after the event revealed an interesting video project that he is conducting, entitled "Art is." His website describes the project:

"In this ongoing video work of speaking portraits begun in 2002, I put this impossible, but inevitable, question before other artists, poets, musicians…. Result: a close-up of the normally private space of art definition. To date some 800 artists of all kinds–sculptors, painters, filmmakers, video artists, poets, composers, performance artists, and so on–have been recorded in eleven countries and twenty-four languages. This ongoing and constantly changing work in multiple series- Art is- Music is- Poetry is- has been exhibited primarily as installations, but now online as single-channel works. This is just the beginning–and by it’s nature it will always just be beginning. The is the space of saying the impossible–a mission always in need of a poetics."

art is [Vol. I] from George Quasha on Vimeo.