Shelley Rice (ed.): Inverted Odysseys: Claude Cahun, Maya Deren, Cindy Sherman (1999)
Filed under book | Tags: · art, art history, film, literature, self
Claude Cahun, Maya Deren, and Cindy Sherman were born in different countries, in different generations—Cahun in France in 1894, Deren in Russia in 1917, and Sherman in the United States in 1954. Yet they share a deeply theatrical obsession that shatters any notion of a unified self. All three try out identities from different social classes and geographic environments, extend their temporal range into the past and future, and transform themselves into heroes and villains, mythological creatures, and sex goddesses. The premise of Inverted Odysseys is that this expanded concept of the self—this playful urge to “try on” other roles-is more than a feminist or psychological issue. It is central to our global culture, to our definition of human identity in a world where the individual exists in a multicultural and multitemporal environment. This book is an “odyssey” through historical, theoretical, critical, and literary perspectives on the three artists viewed in the context of these issues. Contributors include Lynn Gumpert, Lucy Lippard, Jonas Mekas, Ted Mooney, Shelley Rice, and Abigail Solomon-Godeau.
Central to the book is Claude Cahun’s “Heroines” manuscript, a series of fifteen stream-of-consciousness monologues written in the voices of major women of literature and history, such as the Virgin Mary, Sappho, Cinderella, Penelope, Delilah, and Helen of Troy. Translated by Norman MacAfee, these perverse and hilarious vignettes make their English-language debut here. This is also the first time that Cahun’s text has appeared in its entirety.
The book accompanies an exhibit cocurated by Lynn Gumpert and Shelley Rice at the Grey Art Gallery, New York University.
Publisher MIT Press, in cooperation with the Grey Art Gallery, New York University, 1999
ISBN 0262681064, 9780262681063
168 pages
Jim Ellis: Derek Jarman’s Angelic Conversations (2009)
Filed under book | Tags: · activism, aesthetics, art, biography, film, politics, punk, situationists
Best known as an iconoclastic, wildly inventive filmmaker, Derek Jarman was also an accomplished author, painter, and landscape artist. In Derek Jarman’s Angelic Conversations, Jim Ellis considers Jarman’s wide-ranging oeuvre to present a broad perspective on the career and life of one of the most provocative, engaged, and important artists of the twentieth century.
Derek Jarman’s Angelic Conversations analyzes Jarman’s work—including his famous films Caravaggio, Jubilee, Edward II, Blue, and Sebastiane—in relation to his critiques of the government and his activism in the gay community, from the liberationist movement to the AIDS epidemic. While others have frequently focused on Jarman’s biography, Ellis looks at how his politics and aesthetics are intertwined to comprehend his most radical aspects, particularly in films such as War Requiem and The Last of England.
Here Jarman is revealed as an artist who keenly understood the role of history and mythology in creating a personal and national identity: as an activist, he sought to challenge old histories while producing new ones to carve out a space for alternative communities in Britain late in the twentieth century.
Publisher University of Minnesota Press, 2009
ISBN 0816653135, 9780816653133
312 pages
Continent. journal, No. 1-7 (2011-2012)
Filed under journal | Tags: · art, culture, film, media studies, philosophy, poetry, politics, sound recording, theory
Continent. maps a topology of unstable confluences and ranges across new thinking, traversing interstices and alternate directions in culture, theory, politics and art.
Continent. exists as a platform for thinking through media. text, image, video, sound and new forms of publishing online are presented as reflections on and challenges to contemporary conditions in politics, media studies, art, film and philosophical thought.
Contributors to issue 2.3: François Laruelle, Andy Weir, Henrik Lübker, Berit Soli-Holt & April Vannini & Jeremy Fernando, Andrea Fraser, Sean Gurd, Paul Amitai, Sasha Ross, Thierry Geoffroy.
Contributors to issue 2.2: Vilém Flusser, Bonnie Jones, Eugene Thacker, Gary J. Shipley and Nicola Masciandaro, Vincent W.J. van Gerven Oei, Sean Joseph Patrick Carney, The Editors of Speculations & continent., Ishac Bertran, Duane Rousselle, A. Staley Groves.
Editors: Jamie Allen, Paul Boshears, Nico Jenkins
Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License
ISSN 2159-9920
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