In her essay A Politics of
Interpretation (featured in the publication Curating Subjects edited by Paul
O’Neill) Sarah Pierce locates arts agency in the micro-alterity of
collectives invested in the local, a position which appears to activate a
dialogue with Marsha Meskimmon’s alternative macro-call for a global
mapping or Anglophone of feminist practices in her essay Chronology through
Cartography: Mapping 1970’s Feminist Art Globally (which was located in
the 2007 catalogue for the global feminist show WACK!: Art and the Feminist
Revolution). Both Pierce and Meskimmon advocate a ‘cut-through’ or
rupture with the present and look to the reactivation of past subjects. They
both aspire to create a historical future but at first glance they appear to be
advocating different spatial operations and curatorial/critical strategies.
However, Pierce asserts that her employment of the term local is not an attempt
to assume a position of authenticity or to restrict arts agency to an immediate
locality. Instead it is used to define a practical platform on which ongoing
connections within the locality can extend to places outside their immediate
geography. With this in mind there appears to be a commonality between the two
female positions that is worth pursuing.
Pierce cites the collective
Donostiako Arte Ekinbadeak (DAE), as an exemplification of a decentralised
group who collaborate with different institutions and localities within the
city of Basque. DAE’s political permissiveness is typified through the
group’s 2004 project Film Ideal Siempral; which consisted of a) the
re-presentation and installation of Nestor Basterretxea’s 1963 film
Operacion H and b) a handout that situates their gesture as a reflexive
counter-point to the political issues of representation that occur within BIG
exhibition formats, such as the Manifesta 5 within which the piece was
situated. Operacion H had largely (in the 60’s) been identified as a
promotional film for its commissioner’s (Juan Harte’s) company and
had been overlooked as an artwork. Pierce denotes that its re-installation
enabled the viewer to contemplate on the title given by Basterretxea’s,
which instigates a critique of the work’s own purpose/functionality
‘within’ rather than ‘outside’ the system of
capital/commissions. The term ‘Operation’ highlights the films
existence as an assignment whilst the ‘H’ is an abbreviation of the
commissioner’s surname, which signifies whose intellectual property it
has become. DAE registers that agency occurs within their re-presentation of
the marginalised and subsumed work, as the recent screening highlights its
self-reflexive integrity and through insisting in its credibility as a critical
and cultural object they question issues of representation/value.
Meskimmon’s essay opens
with a reference to the public and revolutionary 1977 work In Mourning and in
Rage organised by Leslie Labowitz, Suzanne Lacy and Bia Lowe; in which nine
women dressed in veiled mourning clothes and stood on the steps of the Los
Angeles City Hall. The act vocalised a) their grief and anger at the rape and
murder of ten women in the city, b) the sensationalist media coverage of the
murders and c) the violence against women internationally. Meskimmon
establishes agency in the contemporary/active engagement with past feminism(s)
and in correlation with WACK! interrogates the 1970’s, as a decade that
simultaneously advocated a place for politics in art but also one that was
accused of universalising and co-opting wider/international female discourses
for an Anglo-American agenda. In order to re-think the tired, progressive and
therefore problematic historical canon that was previously used to map
feminism, Meskimmon suggests a temporal-spatial model termed Anglophone that
traces the co-ordinates of international female practices in order to create a
pivotal/transnational frame.
Meskimmon’s reference to
the 1970’s feminist revolution (a predication for the whole WACK! show)
combined with Pierce’s championing of a collectives revisit to a past work,
appears to suggest a contemporary curatorial strategy/want to locate a point of
agency in the past and to activate it within the present. The curatorial
conceit attempts to cause a rupture with the postmodernist cyclic momentum in
order to challenge the existing system of representational habits. However, is
this identified trend of ‘looking-back’ in order to forge a
future/present practice perhaps a symptom of nostalgia, which is consistent
with - rather than actually escaping or challenging - postmodern anxieties? Or
is it a pragmatic way of mobilising co-ordinates with which to challenge the
current system and its critique - the ironic change agents of which merely
establish an already established system?
kirstensylviacooke@hotmail.co.uk
Locating Agency: Glocal(?)
In her essay A Politics of Interpretation (featured in the publication Curating Subjects edited by Paul O’Neill) Sarah Pierce locates arts agency in the micro-alterity of collectives invested in the local, a position which appears to activate a dialogue with Marsha Meskimmon’s alternative macro-call for a global mapping or Anglophone of feminist practices in her essay Chronology through Cartography: Mapping 1970’s Feminist Art Globally (which was located in the 2007 catalogue for the global feminist show WACK!: Art and the Feminist Revolution). Both Pierce and Meskimmon advocate a ‘cut-through’ or rupture with the present and look to the reactivation of past subjects. They both aspire to create a historical future but at first glance they appear to be advocating different spatial operations and curatorial/critical strategies. However, Pierce asserts that her employment of the term local is not an attempt to assume a position of authenticity or to restrict arts agency to an immediate locality. Instead it is used to define a practical platform on which ongoing connections within the locality can extend to places outside their immediate geography. With this in mind there appears to be a commonality between the two female positions that is worth pursuing.
Pierce cites the collective Donostiako Arte Ekinbadeak (DAE), as an exemplification of a decentralised group who collaborate with different institutions and localities within the city of Basque. DAE’s political permissiveness is typified through the group’s 2004 project Film Ideal Siempral; which consisted of a) the re-presentation and installation of Nestor Basterretxea’s 1963 film Operacion H and b) a handout that situates their gesture as a reflexive counter-point to the political issues of representation that occur within BIG exhibition formats, such as the Manifesta 5 within which the piece was situated. Operacion H had largely (in the 60’s) been identified as a promotional film for its commissioner’s (Juan Harte’s) company and had been overlooked as an artwork. Pierce denotes that its re-installation enabled the viewer to contemplate on the title given by Basterretxea’s, which instigates a critique of the work’s own purpose/functionality ‘within’ rather than ‘outside’ the system of capital/commissions. The term ‘Operation’ highlights the films existence as an assignment whilst the ‘H’ is an abbreviation of the commissioner’s surname, which signifies whose intellectual property it has become. DAE registers that agency occurs within their re-presentation of the marginalised and subsumed work, as the recent screening highlights its self-reflexive integrity and through insisting in its credibility as a critical and cultural object they question issues of representation/value.
Meskimmon’s essay opens with a reference to the public and revolutionary 1977 work In Mourning and in Rage organised by Leslie Labowitz, Suzanne Lacy and Bia Lowe; in which nine women dressed in veiled mourning clothes and stood on the steps of the Los Angeles City Hall. The act vocalised a) their grief and anger at the rape and murder of ten women in the city, b) the sensationalist media coverage of the murders and c) the violence against women internationally. Meskimmon establishes agency in the contemporary/active engagement with past feminism(s) and in correlation with WACK! interrogates the 1970’s, as a decade that simultaneously advocated a place for politics in art but also one that was accused of universalising and co-opting wider/international female discourses for an Anglo-American agenda. In order to re-think the tired, progressive and therefore problematic historical canon that was previously used to map feminism, Meskimmon suggests a temporal-spatial model termed Anglophone that traces the co-ordinates of international female practices in order to create a pivotal/transnational frame.
Meskimmon’s reference to the 1970’s feminist revolution (a predication for the whole WACK! show) combined with Pierce’s championing of a collectives revisit to a past work, appears to suggest a contemporary curatorial strategy/want to locate a point of agency in the past and to activate it within the present. The curatorial conceit attempts to cause a rupture with the postmodernist cyclic momentum in order to challenge the existing system of representational habits. However, is this identified trend of ‘looking-back’ in order to forge a future/present practice perhaps a symptom of nostalgia, which is consistent with - rather than actually escaping or challenging - postmodern anxieties? Or is it a pragmatic way of mobilising co-ordinates with which to challenge the current system and its critique - the ironic change agents of which merely establish an already established system?