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Home > Artists Space > Presence and Absence - Meredyth Sparks, Melissa Gordon, Ariana Reines
Podcast: Artists Space
Episode:

Presence and Absence - Meredyth Sparks, Melissa Gordon, Ariana Reines
Category: Arts
Duration: 01:33:57
Publish Date: 2015-10-12 23:49:57
Description: Talks & Readings Thursday, October 1, 7pm Artists Space Books & Talks 55 Walker Street Ariana Reines will open the evening with a reading of “Littoral Madness”, a section from Chris Kraus’ forthcoming critical biography of Kathy Acker, and will complete the evening with readings of her poetry. In between two talks will be delivered by Melissa Gordon and Meredyth Sparks on the value of presence in art in relation to gender, history and genius. Melissa Gordon will discuss her research into female artists who have “dropped out” of the art world, framing their actions within the wider context of feminist art’s expansion / rejection of authorship, and attempting to debunk the assumptions of failure surrounding the gesture of being absent. Touching on the fallible notion of ‘the original’ and the problematic gesture of “aggregating” as recently written about by David Joselit, Gordon will consider recent court cases around authorship in order to question where the boundaries of an artist persona / authorship are mapped in the contemporary playing field. She will discuss Cady Noland’s essay “Towards a Metalanguage of Evil”, published in the Documenta IX catalogue in 1992, as a key to understanding the “game” in which presence and absence operate. Meredyth Sparks will address the structural problems that arise in attempting to integrate “recovered” or “overlooked” artists into an art historical canon, as well as the complexities surrounding authorship as it relates to gender. Sparks will focus on two artists, the Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven and Eileen Gray, both of whom made significant contributions to modern art, poetry and architecture, respectively, but who have only recently begun to be recognized within primary historical narratives. The Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven (1874 – 1927) was a German-born poet, sculptor and proto-performance artist whose influence on and shaping of Dada have been, until recently, marginalized and misunderstood. New research by the Baroness’s biographer, Irene Gammel, among others, uncovers evidence to suggest that Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain (1917), arguably the most significant artwork of the 20th century, was perhaps a work by the Baroness. Eileen Gray (1878- 1976) was an Irish-born designer and architect whose house, E. 1027 (1926-29), had for many years been attributed to Le Corbusier. This misattribution stems, in large part, to an (in)famous act of “claiming” on Le Corbusier’s part, a physical and conceptual appropriation that has only recently begun to be reconsidered by historians. With this discussion, Sparks hopes to examine how these artists’ contributions have, in the best case scenario, been misattributed or, in the worse case, intentionally claimed. Re-visiting these placards might open a new art historical or studio-based space for production where, instead of merely correcting or righting a dominant narrative, we might conceive of art and history as an accumulation (rather than a singular realization or articulation) of ideas and methods. For more information click here artistsspace.org/programs/presence-and-absence This public event was part of We (Not I), a four-day program of discursive meetings, presentations, and events bringing together a wide range of female artists, writers, curators and thinkers identifying with feminist practices to exchange and produce content addressing questions around the role of "we" in contemporary art practice, held at Artists Space between September 30 and October 3, 2015. For more information click here artistsspace.org/programs/we-not-i By request of the author, Ariana Reines' reading of Chris Kraus' chapter "Littoral Madness" has been removed from this recording.
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