Preposterous histories

This article explores maternal desire, loss, and control by reading Carolee Schneemann's performance Interior Scroll (1975) through Tracey Emin's photographic print I've Got It All (2000). More specifically, I consider Schneemann's work on the energy of female sexuality and maternal desire through Emin's recurrent visualizations of sexuality and maternal loss. The artists' refusal to disengage with the commodified (dis)pleasures of femininity leads me to consider the differently contextualized handling of these issues in each artwork. I explore the mediation of the body of each artist by positioning Emin's work as a "source" for my reading of Schneemann's performance. Invoking the notion of "preposterous history" (Bal 1999), I argue that the concepts of the "live" and the "mediated" are differently intensified by operating outside of the constraints of chronology. Hence the inter-generational dialogue between these particular female artists, whose work has been produced at different historical moments, is itself generative of thoughts and ideas that are irreducible to the individual works. © 2010 Taylor & Francis

Review of Program 5: Education & Technology Adoption

Established and supported under the Australian Government’s Cooperative Research Centre Progra

Waiting for Marina: Generosity and shared time in Marina Abramovic's 512 Hours

This presentation examines Marina Abramović’s performance, 512 Hours (Serpentine Gallery, London, 2014) as a catalyst for thinking about forms of criticality needed to respond to contemporary conditions of neoliberal culture. I ask what kind of criticality, if any, is generated by the project and how this is informed by the artist’s history of ‘endurance performances’, which test the limits of her bodily and emotional strength. In this pared down performance Abramović was present in the gallery between 10am-6pm, six days a week between 11 June and 25 August. Building on her critically acclaimed 2010 performance at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, The Artist Is Present, much was made in the weeks preceding 512 Hours of the idea of doing nothing with Abramović. However, as with many performances in which it appears that nothing is happening, 512 Hours was replete with expectation and reminded participants that not being busy is not the same as doing nothing. In this presentation, I examine what this realization can offer as a critique of neo-liberal imperatives to produce tangible outcomes, act in a purposeful way and measure productivity. 512 Hours is an intensely affective performance. It invited participants to slow down and dispense with the pressures of everyday life. Drawing on Jennifer Doyle’s brilliant critique of art criticism’s derogatory attitude towards ‘feelings’, my intention here is to fold argument into experience of the performance and to suggest that the emotional aspect of 512 Hours is not detached from its critical potential. By focussing on one performance in detail, my aim is to explore Abramović’s use of slowness as a medium with which to engage affectively with others. My hypothesis is that this slowness opens up a new approach to criticality, which takes generosity and shared time as its key drivers

Review of Program 5: Education & Technology Adoption

Established and supported under the Australian Government’s Cooperative Research Centre Progra

Emin is screaming: Empathy as affirmative engagement in Tracey Emin's Homage to Edvard Munch and All My Dead Children (1998)

This article explores the concept of empathy as an affirmative feminist engagement with Tracey Emin’s short film Homage to Edvard Munch and All My Dead Children (1998). I consider the ‘work’ that art does in terms of empathic possibility asking why the film triggers this response and what this means for empathy research as an extension of the cross-disciplinary turn towards affect. I argue for empathy as the ethical negotiation of differences made possible by the affirmation of ‘what-is’. In particular, I focus on the status of the scream, which retains an ambiguous relation to what Barbara Bolt has called the ‘regime’ of representation (2004) yet remains a crucial aspect of the experience of Emin’s film

Maternal art and post-natal wellbeing: Proximity and separation in Lena Simic’s Contemplation Time (2007-8) and Eti Wade’s Jocasta (2008)

This article discusses two photographic artworks that challenge popular narratives of failed or achieved maternal femininity. My readings of Lena Simic’s Contemplation Time: a document of maternity leave (2007-8) and Eti Wade’s Jocasta (2008) are informed by interviews with six women in their first year of motherhood. I am interested in the ways in which these artworks articulate complex maternal relations and their potential to be used to increase the wellbeing of first-time mothers. The article includes discussion of the research method and proposes ‘empathic affirmation’ as an extension to previous work on interviewing mothers. An overriding concern has been to write the embodied experience of mothers back into readings of artworks that speak in their name. With this in mind the responses of my participants provide the backbone to my analysis of the artworks and why they matter to discourses of maternal subjectivity