ABTRACTS OF PRESENTATIONS

Monday, June 3

WELCOME AND ORIENTATION
Cheryl Younger

KEYNOTE ADDRESS:
Challenging Values in the Sciences
Helen Longino

Philosophers of science have attempted to articulate values, called epistemic or cognitive, which they propose as constitutive of science (good science, real science) much as one might want to articulate values constitutive of art (good art, real art). This masks the social and political dimensions of such values which Helen Longino will make evident through a contrast with alternative values proposed by feminist scientists. The implications of the persistence of alternative, marginalized values will be discussed. The intention is that the seminar participants will consider the extent to which the analysis offered for the sciences has a parallel in the arts.

ARTIST PRESENTATION:

Investigating Contemporary Culture

Catherine Wagner

A slide lecture highlighting twenty years of work using cultural archetypes to investigate the construction of contemporary culture. Catherine Wagner’s projects have led to publications including American Classroom, organized by the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and Home and Other Stories, organized by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Currently working on a project which addresses philosophical issues that bridge the worlds of art and science, a publication entitled Art & Science: Investigating Matter will be coming out in the fall. Research generated by science produces new information that continually changes the course of humankind. What impact will these changes have on our culture socially, physically and spiritually?

Tuesday, June 4

LECTURE:

Documenting Behavior: The Photography Collection at the Kinsey Institute
Jennifer Pearson Yamashiro

During the late ‘30s, Dr. Alfred C. Kinsey, biologist, was asked to teach a marriage course to married and engaged college seniors at Indiana University. This experience led him to discover a complete void in current research on human sexuality. Dr. Kinsey began to fill that void by conducting interviews on campus. Shortly thereafter, he formed a research team which conducted 18,000 interviews to gather a wide range of data/experience about contemporary sexual practice in the United States in the forties. In addition, the researchers traversed geographical, chronological and disciplinary borders in order to acquire visual information. The photography collection which contains 47,000+ inventoried photographs was amassed partially by Dr. Kinsey and his three fellow researchers who collected donations made by individuals and institutions, and partially by William Dellenback, the photographer on staff at the Kinsey Institute. This impressive collection exists today as a most unique and invaluable resource for scholars from a variety of fields in the humanities. "Documenting Behavior" will address the unique role played by Dellenback and the issue of photography as document (truth, in this case scientific), as well as the politics of looking.

ARTIST PRESENTATION:

Constructing Meaning
Meridel Rubenstein

A slide/video presentation of projects over the past fifteen years challenges accepted notions of documentary photographic reality or "truth." History, culture and myth are overlaid to give a multifaceted "reading" of place. Materials, photographic and otherwise, are overlaid as well, to give multiple readings. Use of metaphor is presented as a strategy to link objective and subjective layers.

DISCUSSION:

Structure, Metaphor, Fact: Pushing the Edges of the Documentary Genre
Participants: Meridel Rubenstein, Catherine Wagner

Meridel Rubenstein and Catherine Wagner discuss common and divergent strategies in their work, their overlapping and divergent subject matter, and their diverse uses of photography to arrive at a similar destination.

ARTIST PRESENTATION:

Finding the Connections
Marilyn Nance

Artist and photojournalist, Marilyn Nance, talks about storytelling using combinations of photography, sound, and multi-media. She is interested in creating dynamic juxtapositions. Nance first reviews her photographs, then writes about impressions of events. She keeps a journal, often tying the past in with present day. Questions she will discuss focus on finding the connections between history and current events. What is the connection between photographs taken before her birth and photographs taken in the ‘90’s? Nance is claiming the history of her ancestors and giving them voice.

Wednesday, June 5

WELCOME:

Elaine Mayes

Elaine Mayes is the Chair of the Photography Program in the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University.

ARTIST PRESENTATION:

Feeling the Spirit
Chester Higgins, Jr.

A look at the African Diaspora and the effort to redefine the visual document as it relates to people of African descent. Depicted are the three elements Higgins believes are always missing in the media when representing people of color: decency, dignity and character.

LECTURE:

The American Landscape and African American Civil War Sites

William E. Williams

This presentation will explore the African American landscape tradition beginning with the painter Robert Duncanson and the photographer J.P. Ball. These visual artists used the landscape to make coded political statements about the social conditions of African Americans before the Civil War. This tradition has been the source for a group of photographs of African American Civil War sites using 70mm and 8 x 10 format cameras to comment on the social and political treatment of African Americans after the Civil War.

LECTURE:

The Invisibility of African Americans in Walker Evans’s American Photographs and Robert Frank’s The Americans
William E. Williams

American Photographs, published in 1938, and The Americans, published in 1958 have become landmarks. Both are recognized as classic photographic books. Each has the American people and the vernacular landscape as its subjects. Both books have been the subject of numerous articles and books which have commented upon their photographic style, content and layout. Yet no critic has explicitly commented upon the way African Americans are portrayed and how this portrayal affects photographic meaning and the intentions of Evans and Frank. Their books have had a profound influence on how contemporary photographers make photographs of the American experience. The meanings and implications of Evans’s and Frank’s inclusion of African Americans has to be understood in order to fully appreciate the originality of their most influential work.

ARTIST PRESENTATION:

Kurdistan: In the Shadow of History
Susan Meiselas

Documentation of a mass grave site in Northern Iraq led to five years of research to uncover, from Western archives and regional family albums, the photographs of travelers to Kurdistan over the last century. The book and exhibition look at how the Kurds have been represented by the West and how they have seen themselves. It raises issues involved in looking at the "other," as well as those created by how the work is contextualized by the production and distribution of images throughout the century——historical images and contemporary photojournalism, authored vs. anonymous photographs.

Thursday, June 6

LECTURE:

Robert Frank’s Memory Box
Sarah Greenough

This presentation will examine the role that memory has played in Robert Frank’s photographs. While it will address how his publications, including The Americans, explore the idea of memory through sequences of photographs. Greenough will focus on the issue of autobiographical memory in Frank’s works made after 1970.

FILMS:

Robert Frank
Photographer/filmmaker, Robert Frank will show several of his films and engage discussion.

Friday, June 7

FELLOW PRESENTATIONS

Saturday, June 8

ARTIST PRESENTATION:

I Remember Viet Nam
Paul Owen

The subject of this presentation, Visual Memory, is illustrated by photographic work and text of Viet Nam from ‘67 and ‘68. Comparisons will be made of images taken by an "insider" with those of photojournalists who were also there.

ARTIST PRESENTATION:

Lost Time: Returning to Vietnam
An-My Le

The photographs to be shown result from two trips to Vietnam; the first in ‘94 being An-My Le’s first trip back since she left at the end of the war. The photographs represent the artist’s search for culture and tradition which she had been denied. It is an exploration that has been influenced by memories of growing up in South Vietnam, and inspired by folktales and stories of North Vietnam as recounted by her mother and grandmother.

ARTIST PRESENTATION:

Images of Experience: Memory and the Word

Pat C. Hoy

This presentation will focus on images of Pat Hoy’s own experiences of the Vietnam War–images from the state side and the war zone. Hoy’s inquiry, in the form of a familiar essay, will consider the curious relationship between truth and representation as it applies to the fragmentation and written reconstruction of memory. Can truth, whatever that has come to mean, withstand the ravages of time’s passing? Just how substantial, how ephemeral is the word?

Sunday, June 9

LECTURE:

The Legacy of Distant Witnessing
Andrea Liss

With the always accruing distance from the events of the Shoah and from those who survived and those who were completely effaced, it is largely through testimonies, artworks, museum presentations and other forms of representation that Holocaust memory reverberates. As survivors and direct witnesses pass on, a special responsibility arises to appropriately ensure that the ineffable suffering as well as the spirit of survival lives on. For those born in the generation after the survivors, the ability to respond and to take in these precious testimonies becomes an imperative, yet risky, task.

In her presentation, Andrea Liss will address the problems and the urgent possibilities of contemporary representation to bear witness to the authenticity of testimonies and the extreme, almost unrepresentable experience of others. She proposes a new category for these responses and representations: "The Legacy of Distant Witnessing." Contemporary forms of witnessing must create new pathways of accessibility to the daunting and traumatic memories. Although there can be no definite "solutions" to the imperative to respectfully memorialize, yet unflinchingly confront the realities of the Shoah, Liss will discuss the promises invested in some contemporary representations that focus on the inevitable experience of distant witnessing. These may include The Tower of Life (Tower of Faces) photographic installation at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and a few contemporary art and documentation projects. The presentation hopes to offer empathetic approaches toward what Liss calls translucent mimesis of the events: "The Legacy of Distant Witnessing" as a pathway toward keeping the memories and the trauma at once approachable, yet unmasterable.

ARTIST PRESENTATION:

Rescuers: Who are they? What do they look like? Can I be one?
Gay Block

Malka Drucker and Gay Block interviewed and photographed over one hundred rescuers from eleven countries, Christians who rescued Jews during WWII. They insist that they are not heroes. They did what every being should have done. Asked to relive the war during a videotaped interview, Block then asked to make a portrait. The pictures and the interviews had to make them accessible which they were in person, not icons, so that we don’t have to do today what they did then. They were as varied as any random hundred people, as were their reasons for rescuing. They leave us a legacy of moral achievement hard to emulate, but crucial in our time.

ARTIST PRESENTATION:

When They Came to Take My Father: Voices of the Holocaust
Mark Seliger

Chief Photographer of Rolling Stone, Mark Seliger will discuss images included in his current book, When They Came to Take My Father: Voices of the Holocaust.

PERFORMANCE:

Responding to Chaos and Denial of the Fittest
Judith Sloan

Comedian, performance artist and oral historian, Sloan will perform excerpts from two shows. In Responding to Chaos she has woven oral histories from older European Jews and Holocaust survivors into a monologue for the character of "Sophie" who combines an "old world vision" in a contemporary life. In Denial of the Fittest, Sloan’s autobiographical monologue travels from memory to transformation. A professional comedienne confronts the whispers, silence and lies surrounding her own grandmother’s life and suicide, leading her on a journey through haunted memories and outrageous humor in shaping a life. Sloan comes to terms with growing up American, female and obsessed with a history she was never alive to be a part of.

ARTIST PANEL:

The Trauma of the Real: Negotiating Documentary in Giving Voice to Holocaust Memory

Participants: Andrea Liss (Moderator)
Gay Block, Judith Sloan, Jeffrey Wolin

Monday, June 10

LECTURE:

Tower of Life (Tower of Faces)
Yaffa Eliach

Professor Yaffa Eliach will focus on her permanent exhibit at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC. The photos represent most of the Jewish population of the small town (shtetl) of Eishyshok (Ejszyszkl): the victims, immigrants and survivors. She will discuss how the photographs were gathered from around the globe: the history, style, skills, political, social and religious views of the town photographers; the major differences between the friendly orientation of the local photographers and the critical agenda of the outside photographers; the memories and tragic tales lurking behind the peaceful photographic images and the response of the public to this pioneering approach to Holocaust documentation. The lecture will be accompanied by a slide presentation.

ARTIST PRESENTATION:

Written on Memory: Survivors of the Holocaust
Jeffrey Wolin

Jeffrey Wolin will talk about his forthcoming exhibition and book Written on Memory: Survivors of the Holocaust, a collaborative effort involving some fifty Holocaust survivors. Prior to making portraits with his still camera he videotaped them talking about their war experiences, then selected a portion of each narrative and wrote the text directly into the surface of the photographic prints. He tended to look for small, intimate details in the narratives rather than grander, more generic experiences or statistical data. It is his hope that by opening a window to each individual through their image with a powerful accompanying story, an audience will be able to empathize with the survivors. Faced with the loss of home and family and confronting a future in a strange land with new language and customs, so many of the survivors he has met have learned to live with their pain. This work is a testament to the strength of the individual and to the resourcefulness and resiliency of Holocaust survivors who have an important lesson to teach us all.

CD-ROM PRESENTATION:

Via CD-ROM Arthur Spiegelman, creator of the comic book Maus, will address the burden of the memory thrust on a generation of children of survivors and their tales of struggle to honor their parents.

ARTIST PRESENTATION:

Fifty Years of Silence
Tatana Kellner

Tatana Kellner will present a slide lecture of her work based on the Holocaust. Kellner’s visual exploration of the Holocaust began as she worked on two artists’ books, both entitled, Fifty Years of Silence. They record her parents’ memories and experiences as survivors. The slides will focus on a large scale work based on the artist’s travels to Bergen-Belsen, Terezin, Auschwitz-Birkenau and Eastern Europe.

SUMMATION PANEL:

Participants: Yaffa Eliach, Andrea Liss, Jeffrey Wolin, Tatana Kellner

Tuesday, June 11

LECTURE:

Artists’ Books From Women’s Studio Workshop
Ann Kalmbach

A founder of Women’s Studio Workshop, Ann Kalmbach will offer a slide lecture featuring artists’ books they have published since 1979.

LECTURE:

Artists’ Books: From Historical Precedents to Electronic Possibilities
Johanna Drucker

Artists’ books have proliferated in the latter part of the twentieth century, emerging in the art world from the context of conceptual and activist art of the ‘60s to combine with strains of independent publishing from the literary tradition. A wide range of media from letterpress to offset, and Xerox to rubber-stamps have been employed in the production of artists’ books. The definition of precisely what constitutes the form has been much debated. Establishing a vital critical framework in which to discuss books from a conceptual, as well as formal, point of view is a crucial challenge in an age in which electronic media extends the definition of "book" into a virtual realm.

LECTURE:

Visual Studies Workshop Press
Joan Lyons

The history of Visual Studies Workshop Press parallels the evolution of the artists’ space movement and the development of editioned artists’ books as a significant and widespread medium central to artists’ concerns for combining images and texts in narrative structures. A sampling of the books produced at the Press over the past twenty five years will be shown as representative of work in this field.

LECTURE:

Photographic Book Art in the United States
Susan kae Grant

This lecture will address the methodology and theoretical concerns involved in curating the traveling exhibition Photographic Book Art in the United States. Slides will provide a critical interpretation of contemporary book art by artists that utilize the photographic image in a multitude of ways. These works are situated within an intellectual and experiential context. They integrate methods and techniques from photography, printmaking, collage, and other visual art forms to make objects that innovatively transform notions of the book, moving from literary to visually creative realms. These artists use concepts of narrative sequence, interaction of text and image, intimacy, and discovery inherent in the book to produce handmade limited editions, unique editions, sculptural objects, as well as installations.

In selecting works for the exhibition, emphasis was placed on the traverse from the physical to the electronic, a shift in experience and comprehension which is commonplace in our everyday lives of telephones, televisions, radios and fax machines. The context of these works parallels prevalent tendencies and processes within contemporary art that concern specific political, social and cultural issues. The lecture is intended to provide a contemporary overview of photographic artists’ books, and to create a framework for the discussion and understanding of the practical, critical and theoretical concerns surrounding the medium.

ARTIST PRESENTATION:

Reconstructed Memory: Observation vs. Interaction
Susan kae Grant

This presentation will trace the evolution and development of several bodies of work which traverse back and forth between the photographic image and the limited edition artist’s book. Research combining these two mediums has focused predominately on the re-creation and documentation of memory and experience as it relates to private and public history. For the past twenty years, this work has theoretically confronted feminist and cultural issues of identity and gender by combining influences from film, literature, music, media and personal journals. A critical examination of working methodologies and philosophical constructs will articulate the diversity of approaches and materials used to move an idea from theory to physical form.

The presentation will conclude with a discussion of an ongoing current project, The Psychophysiology of Dreams. Since 1993, Grant has been working at the Southwestern Medical Center, in collaboration with Dr. John Herman, to pursue the scientific recording and artistic representation of the dream environment. This research will culminate in a multi-dimensional installation and artist’s book utilizing polygraphic brain charts, sound recordings and interpreted imagery made while sleeping in the medical center’s sleep laboratory and being awakened from REM sleep.

ARTIST PRESENTATION:

A Voice of One’s Own
Joan Lyons

Retrospectively, the evolution of one’s work over the years becomes a trace of the concerns and circumstances of an individual ‘s life and the cultural environment that charges it. The work, in this instance, has been the site in which to develop a woman’s voice.


Wednesday, June 12

LECTURE:

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

LECTURE:

The Business of the Business

Mary Virginia Swanson

During this session, participants will be given a broad overview of the diverse issues which relate to bringing their personal work into today’s commercial marketplace for usage within ad campaigns, as cover art (i.e book jackets, CDs) and illustrations within publications (i.e. magazines, textbooks). Among the many topics to be discussed: Implications of Commercial Application, Researching Clients, Presenting Yourself and Your Work, Being a Small Business Owner, Representatives, Overview of Today’s Publishing Realities, Overview of the Business of Being An Artist.