ABSTRACTS OF PRESENTATIONS

Monday, June 6

LECTURE:

Joseph Beuys
Christopher Phillips

Tuesday, June 7

KEYNOTE ADDRESS:

Photography and Museum Education
Deborah Willis

ARTIST PRESENTATION:

Falling Between Chairs
Charles Harbutt

Slides from 40 years of non- "ism" photography.

DISCUSSION:

Modernism/Postmodernism Dilemma: A Point of Departure
Participants: Barbara DeGenevieve, Elaine Mayes, Gary Metz,Barbara DeGenevieve

Postmodernism seems to have developed a bad reputation, primarily through an over theorizing of what it is. I would prefer to think of it as a paradigm shift, a coming of age, a disturbance in established thought, a wake up call. Post-modernism is a resulting consciousness which seems to have solidified in the intersection of the civil rights, feminist, and anti-war movements. Its influence on the arts and particularly photography has been enormous, and some would even say it was photography itself that ushered in the notion of the postmodern. But many artists are still torn in their desire for originality of thought and wholeness of self, when all we can reasonably hope to achieve is intelligent synthesis and non-conflicted fragmentation.

Elaine Mayes

Modernism has been discredited and deemed a relic of a past paradigm. As a nearly self-taught photographer and pursuer of the straight photographic image, I have found the various art "isms" to be interesting philosophically, but I have had trouble connecting my work to any of these naming procedures. However, my interest in "seeing" and in "vision" has remained intact for more than thirty-five years. If I am a modernist, so be it. Charles Simic has said, "Modernism in art and literature gave unparalleled freedom to the individual to invent his or her own world from the parts of the existing one. It abolished the hierarchies of beauty and allowed an assemblage of styles and openness to daily experience. Only such all-inclusive aesthetic could make sense of American reality." Another quotation I find meaningful - "We have to have a devilish amount of vanity to believe that what comes out of out brain is more valuable than what we see around us." (August Renoir)

Gary Metz

"A painting, before it is a nude, a battle scene, or an anecdote, is an arrangement of patches of color in a certain order on a two-dimensional surface." Maurice Denis' pronouncement of 1890 declared the new agenda of high-modernist art, wherein formal terms became reciprocal with content, and by the 1950's became identical with content. Since the 1960's, the so-called "post-modern" reaction has successfully reinstated the priority of content overwhelming form. This reaction has been so forceful that for many contemporary artists, formal issues seem strangely irrelevant, unnecessary, or at best useful for ironic or nostalgic effect. Indeed, for some critics, it would seem that the ability to recognize or appreciate metaphorical, non-linear and formally complex works may well be a lost cause.

ARTIST PRESENTATION:

My Life In Photography: Whose Story Is It?
Joanne Leonard

My hope is to provide an account of my more than 30 years of engagement with photography while avoiding what a colleague calls "myths of artistic genius and hyper-individualism." In some instances, I've reproduced and some instances critiqued the culture and times in which I've lived and the aesthetics in which I've participated. My recent investigation of overlapping biographic and autobiographic forms engage some notions of truth and reality (notions supposed to be engaged in telling of one's life story/stories). Memory and memory loss are themes in my work as are fantasies, feminism and twinship. Because it may be instructive to me and to the group, I shall also try to tell something of my life (in photography) within "the politics of caring," i.e., romantic dreams, childbearing at thirty five, a career sandwiched between child-raising as an older, single parent, the decline of aging parents and a career with faults and falterings that has nevertheless had rewards.

Wednesday, June 8

DISCUSSION:

Higher Education Round Table
Moderator: Cheryl Younger
Panelists: Ruth Behar,Barbara DeGenevieve,Joanne Leonard,Gary Metz,Fred Ritchin

Ruth Behar - Dare We Put Ourselves in the Picture?

Where does the story of the observer end and the story of the observed begin? Autobiography, photography, and ethnography share a concern with constructing meaningful representations of the self and of the other expressive form. In my presentation, I will discuss the possibilities and limitations of putting ourselves in the picture. I will reflect on my own experience in higher education, addressing the issue of identity politics and the current debate about the value of personal positioning in academic work.

Barbara DeGenevieve

Photography has always been the step-child of art in academia. Its acceptance has been slow in coming but the work, theory and representational strategies developed within photographic discourse have influenced and disrupted the art world and academia alike. Philosophically, most important to higher education is the continuing dialogue about issues of representation, meaning and language which has grown through photography's embracing of linguistic, psychoanalytic and postmodern theory. Pragmatically, the field is changing as job market pressures and the move to incorporate new technologies becomes a more insistent presence in academic consciousness. How we maintain the connection between theory and practice, between critical analysis and the technology itself, without totally succumbing to a market demand for vocational skills will be crucial to the manner in which photographic education enters the 21st Century.

Joanne Leonard

Joanne Leonard will discuss an undergraduate course co-taught with Ruth Behar at the University of Michigan: Photography, Ethnography and Autobiography, as well as some thoughts on photographic education and its various possible locations within university settings.

Fred Ritchin

With the merging of media due, among other factors, to the increasing sophistication and accessibility of digital tools does it make sense to think of individual artistic traditions in the same way? Are new hybrid forms emerging, or forms that rely more upon digital possibilities than mechanistic ones? For example, does it make sense to teach photography without considering its various relationships to other media or its new relationships to itself? Will the diminishing sense of photography's proximity to reality eviscerate its essential strategies based upon resemblance (as happened with painting)? Is it outmoded, as McLuhan might have put it, to think of ourselves as being loyal to the medium of photography rather than to the medium of communication?

ARTIST PRESENTATION:

Eduardo Aparicio and Ruth Behar
Eduardo Aparicio

Eduardo Aparicio will present several of his projects from the last few years, including a visibility campaign for the 1993 March on Washington for Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual Equal Rights and Liberation, and current work on Cuban national identity. He will discuss how he combines text and image in his work in an effort to offer alternatives to the dominant discourses about masculinity and about Cuban nationhood.

Ruth Behar

Ruth Behar will discuss the project, Bridges to Cuba, a special double issue of the Michigan Quarterly Review about second generation Cubans on the island and in the diaspora, which will feature Eduardo Aparicio's work.

Thursday, June 9

LECTURE:

Enclosures, Frames, Cultural Practices
Lawrence Chisolm

Reflections on forms of property, fields of knowledge, transnational and indigenous cultures, and some modest proposals for continual decolonization.

DISCUSSION:

Readings from: Bulletproof Diva
Lisa Jones

LECTURE:

Negotiating Difference in a Changing American: What's at Stake In Interpretation
Margo Machida

This presentation will address the curatorial methodology, interpretative strategies, and theoretical issues involved in curating ASIA/AMERICA: Identities in Contemporary Asian American Art, for the Asia Society Galleries in New York. This national traveling exhibition represents the first venture by The Asia Society into the area of contemporary visual art produced by Americans of Asian descent.

ASIA/AMERICA highlights the work of twenty foreign-born visual artists originally from China, India, Japan, Korea, Laos, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam. These artists have each turned to their art to negotiate a complex sense of identity informed as much by a contemporary Asian background as by an evolving affiliation to the West. Whether they came here as voluntary immigrants, children brought by their families, students, expatriates or refugees, these artists were not chosen to "represent" or "speak for" their homelandw or cultures of origin, but rather to suggest an array of personal viewpoints concerning the growing Asian presence in this nation. In doing so, they underscore the increasingly fluid and hybrid nature of relationships between Asia, and America, and between Asia and people of Asian descent in expanding communities around the world. Moreover, by contributing to a plural discourse in a nation that is fast becoming the first fully multicultural society on earth, they will, as with every wave of immigration, redefine what it is to be American.

However, with the significance of race and ethnicity in the arts increasingly a matter of sharp debate within mainstream as well as alternative circles, in organizing an exhibition like ASIA/AMERICA, a curator must inevitably contend with competing and overlapping pressures from segments of the mainstream art world as well as a host of Asian American groups and individuals with differing and sometimes antagonistic agendas. This paper will also examine the tensions in treading through such a dense political and intellectual minefield, in which the validity of framing exhibitions in terms of race and ethnic identity is being actively interrogated.

ARTIST PRESENTATION:

Film as Autoethnography: Memory, Imagination, Politics and Visions of The Other
Marlon Fuentes

In 1904, the Louisiana Purchase Exposition (also known as the St. Louis World's Fair) became the cultural locus of a policy that articulated the racial evolution, material growth and national harmony of the United States during the turn of the century. Its central objective was to create an anthropological landscape that validated the acquisition of the Philippine Islands and continued overseas expansion, an integral part of the nation's manifest destiny.

The highlight of this massive undertaking was the Anthropology Department, whose main purpose was to illustrate a theory of racial progress through the exhibition of "barbarous and semi-barbarous peoples of the world, as nearly as possible in their ordinary and native environments." It was aimed at presenting an ethnological display rack of racial "grades" among non-white "types."

The center of this display was the "Philippine Reservation," the "exposition within an exposition," where close to twelve hundred native Filipinos, most of whom were transplanted from their tribal villages back home, were placed on exhibit. This federally supported venture was supposed to affirm the value of the Islands to America's economic growth and create scientific proof of the Filipinos' racial inferiority and incapability for self-government. The Philippine exhibit was the most popular attraction in the exposition, visited by close to nineteen million spectators.

My film, Bontoc Eulogy, is set in this context. It is an experimental documentary that uses archival footage and photographs, along with live action dramatized segments, to tell the story of the Filipino experience in St. Louis. My presentation will include a screening of a work-in-progress reel of the film. I will then discuss the methodology used in making the film. This will cover two primary areas: (a) historical, and (b) aesthetic/formal strategies.

The first area will cover issues of representation, vis a vis the historical climate of the turn of the century politics. I will discuss briefly the context of the "World's Fair" in American history, particularly as it relates to geopolitical issues of manifest destiny and Empire. I will cover the role of colonial anthropology, specifically as it relates to the Filipino experience prior to and during the Philippine exposition.

The second major area of my discussion, i.e., formal strategy, will focus on the aesthetic issues relating to the critique and re-representation of history. I will show examples of "artifacts," both visual and aural, which have served as my raw material for the film. I will present not only my working methods, (i.e., how I approach and manipulate both visual and sound) but more importantly, how I use narrative as a commentary to history/ ethnography as "surface." I will show how I articulate, dissect, comment, and critique upon the historical and political subject, and the process by which I tie my personal agenda as a maker with the modalities and conventions of the film language.

ARTIST PRESENTATION:

Kreolization, Cross-Fertilization, or Cultural Imperialism?
Fred Ho

Cultural miscegenation, the borrowing from and cross-influencing of many cultures in United States society, while an on-going and prevailing reality has nonetheless not been among equals and has been a site of oppression and struggle between oppressed nationalities (so-called "people of color") and the oppressor nationality (Europeans who subscribe to being "white"). Eurocenticism, or white supremacy in cultural and artistic hegemony, is dominant not for anything culturally or intellectually intrinsically superior, but as a consequence of capitalism, colonization and conquest. Since the European invasion of these continents, for 502 years, entire peoples have been repopulated, wiped out, and new nationalities and cultural identities have been forged.

By the year 2060, so-called minorities in the U.S. will be numerically majority, and in many urban centers are already so. Yet white domination in the arts, as in most of the society, is maintained through a combination of exclusion, oppression, and cooptation. Yet, new, multi-, hybridized, cross-fertilized forms and works from the oppressed are exploding just as fast as they are co-opted, appropriated and attacked. Is genuine cross-culturalism possible without struggle against white privilege and power? Can there be art and beauty without justice and cultural equity?

Friday, June 10

ARTIST PRESENTATION:

I never tell the truth because I know there isn't any.
Daniel Martinez

ARTIST PRESENTATION:

Reimagining Indigenous Reality
Jolene Rickard

Probed pores, plucked hairs, sucked bone marrow and still no one knows who we are. We got this Indian thing bad and no one knows how to itch it. Let's scratch. Culture rags scope identity rap and buzz on post-colonial bounty. Postmodern theorists reconfigure the landscapes of power negotiations to cloak their continued control. How can it be postmodern without being post-colonial? Until indigenous peoples globally are recognized as sovereign, it is not post-colonial but neo "c." It's time for indigenous people to leapfrog over 502 years of loss, and claim our future: visual makers of all ideological constructions, show me the road.

ARTIST PRESENTATION:

Alfredo Jaar

ARTIST PRESENTATION:

Exercising the Colonial Ghost From the Body of the Museum
Fred Wilson

Using my work as a reference, I will focus on just how museology, curatorship, collecting, art dealing and museum display are emblematic of the past and contribute to a continued colonial aura inhabiting the museum in the present.

DISCUSSION:

Colonialism
Moderator: Eduardo Aparicio
Panelists: Alfredo Jaar, Daniel Martinez, Jolene Rickard,Robert Reid-Pharr

Sunday, June 12

TAPES:

Bill Adams, Peter Hite, Ron Jude, and Lyle Ashton Harris with Ike Ude

Bill Adams

This video concerns the making of photographic collages in which Bill Adams plays all of the characters. The scene is a bachelor party and the different roles he assumes from the groom to the stripper raise numerous questions about masculinity and in particular the contrast between female and male exhibitionism and the different reactions that they elicit coupled with the shifting identifications and uncertain points of view challenge the viewer to consider the various aspects of looking and gender.

Peter Hite

I will reflect on the creation of the series, Passages From an Unfinished Legacy, and thoughts behind the images.

Ron Jude

I will be showing and discussing photographs from the installation project, Executive Model. Through a spurious typological study of the white, urban, professional, American male, I hope to question the very notion of defining or re-defining masculinity and the nature of white male identity. This work will no doubt stimulate academic discourse on this topic, but will ultimately find its strength in private experience.

ARTIST PRESENTATION:

Barbara DeGenevieve

How do you proceed from the point at which you realize you've been duped, that there is no essential anything - whether it be identity, sexuality, gender, or pleasure? Traditional social institutions, including feminism, have belligerently reduced the complexities and the options of sexual behavior and the representation of sexuality, propagating a certain positional correctness. The work I will be discussing attempts to address those slippery areas between sexually suggestive representation and pornography, between subjectivity and objectivity, between being young and aging, between being a good feminist and a bad girl. In using the style of the "erotic/pornographic" story, I am interested in dismantling stereotypes of an "essential " feminine identity, particularly one of exclusive tenderness and passivity. I am attempting to move away from the exclusionary practices of feminist theory, particularly anti-pornography rhetoric, in order to amplify the discussion about the complexity of pleasure for women.

ARTIST PRESENTATION:

Mark Alice Durant

Durant founded the performance duo, Men of the World, who have performed public gestures in Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C. New photographic works explore the parallels of Modernism and Maleness.

DISCUSSION:

Masculinity and Photography
Moderator: Brian Wallis
Panelists: David Deitcher,Robert Flynt, Jonathan Weinberg

Monday, June 13

LECTURE:

Lost (and Found) in a Masquerade: Photographs of Pierre Molinier
Mark Alice Durant

ARTIST PRESENTATION:

John Coplans
Self Portraits: 1984-1994

ARTIST PRESENTATION:
Dale Kistemaker: Real Men-Dead Heroes

In this presentation, Kistemaker will discuss issues of masculine identity and personal history in his artwork. He will outline a search beginning with race drivers as his childhood heroes and will describe how his curatorial research and photography has enabled him access and experiences with sources of his obsession. Questions of the role of the warrior/soldier aspect of male identity evolved from the parallels of racing and war and led to his investigations and artwork based on his father's military experience during World War II. The soldier and the race car driver become complex personal symbols of male paradigms and through them he will address the subtext of violence and the risk of death implied in much of male behavior and identity.

Kistemaker will also describe his use of photographs, photographic constructions, slide projection/dissolve, audio, sculpture, and installation. He will discuss how his ideas co-evolve in different media and how they model his conscious and unconscious thought patterns.

DISCUSSION:

Masculinity
Panelists: Barbara DeGeneviev, Mark Alice Durant, Douglas Crimp, Barbara DeGenevieve

What is a man? To be a man, does one have to have a penis or just a certain level of testosterone? What is masculinity? Is there anything inherently masculine? Is everything about masculine behavior cultural? When FTM transsexuals take hormones, their sex drive increases body hair, muscle mass and strength increases and they report being more quick to anger. What are the implications of this to cultural construction theory? Transsexuality and transgender activity throws into question all aspects of bipolar gender identity. If drag queens can do "femme" better than most biological females, and FTM transsexuals can pass as convincingly as any biological male, why are we still trying to define and fix something that is so fundamentally unstable?

Tuesday, June 14

ARTIST PRESENTATION:
William Thomas

I will present slides from my current project, Suicide. In this series, I attempt to deal with this taboo social-psychological content in an ironic way, looking at suicide from both serious and humorous perspectives.

GUIDED TOUR OF THE WHITNEY MUSEUM OF AMERICAN ART:
Adam Weinberg

Wednesday, June 15

LECTURE:

Changing Roles of Museum Education Programs
Susan Cahan and Constance Wolf

Susan Cahan - Issues in Museum Pedagogy

Since their founding in the 19th Century, American museums have been chartered as educational institutions. Yet the relationship between education and curatorial work has varied over time. Presently, the role of the curator is defined as caring for objects and generating scholarships, while that of the educator is to make those objects and their meanings "accessible" to a broad public. The curator's interest in art is seen as distinct from the educator's interest in people. Museum education is defined as bridging the gap between the curator's accumulated knowledge and the assumed ignorance of the "average museum visitor."

Over the past two decades, this model has become increasingly problematic as scholars and artists have challenged the notion of "disinterested scholarship" and addressed ways in which cultural meanings are created within a matrix of social relations. Discussing the meanings of art is not simply a process of transmitting a message, but rather contextualizing artworks in ways that mobilize understandings of the world. In my presentation, I will argue for structural, institutional change that erases the distinction between education and curatorial work, citing key examples of this emerging model.

LECTURE:

Bookmobile: A Survey of Recent Publications in the Visual Arts
Christopher Phillips

In this session, we will examine a variety of recent books that deal with history, theory, and criticism of the visual arts. In addition, we will look at a range of the smaller magazines and journals that currently focus on images and ideas.

LECTURE:

Partial Recall
Lucy R. Lippard

Will discuss recent work.