Reading Response 9

Catching up from last week: Christie Milliken, "The Pixel Visions of Sadie Benning"

1. How is Sadie Benning's work related to general trends and characteristics in Riot Grrl subculture? How is Riot Grrl subculture similar to and different from punk subculture?

Her work is done in a girl power, just do it sort of way. She promotes the idea of girls in punk and breaking away from their gender stereotypes both in her videos, as well as her own punk band and zine. Riot Grrl is similar to punk in that it’s more about the doing than the final product. One doesn’t need to know how to play an instrument in order to form a band. However, Riot Grrl subculture favors the females and encourage them to “get tough, get angry”.

2. Why does Milliken refer to Benning's work as visual essays? What are the advantages of viewing the work in relation to this genre? What is meant by "radical feminist essayistic" form?

Benning’s work can be considered a visual essay in the way that they are similar to adolescent diaries. Many young girls write in diaries, and Benning was able to bring that written word to life in her videos. They also follow the many forms of the written essay, which generally resist generic classification into one category or another.

Radical Feminist Essays are those in which the author, or filmmaker, sets out not only to persuade or answer a question, but they serve more to pose a question and make the reader/viewer think. The topic is also very often political, and the essay is used as a jumping off point from words to action.


Keller and Ward, "Matthew Barney and the Paradox of the Neo-Avant-Garde Blockbuster"

3. What has changed in the gallery art world that allows Barney to describe his work as “sculpture”? In other words, how has the definition of sculpture changed since the 1960s, and why?

The definition of “sculpture” has become a lot more broad and unstable, and it now ranges from media based works, to performances, to architecture. After Kranuss defined sculpture as an “expanded field” in 1979, art historians have been more open to the interpretation of the medium of sculpture.

4. Tricky but important question: Why was minimalist sculpture seen as a reaction against the “modernist hymns to the purity and specificity of aesthetic experience”? In other words: Why do they say that minimalist sculpture is post-modernist?

Minimalist sculpture worked to make the viewers of the piece more reflexively aware of themselves and their interaction with it. This goes along with the idea of postmodernism in that the role of the artist is questioned because “anyone could do this”. Medium specificity is brought into question and more mixing of medias is seen.

5. Describe the role of the body in the works of Vito Acconci and Chris Burden. You may wish to consult the following links to supplement the descriptions in the readings:

Acconci and Burden used their own bodies as minimalist sculpture. They would treat their bodies as objects, doing masochistic things to them (such as letting a volunteer from the audience put push pins into Burden’s skin)

5. In the opinion of the authors, what are the key differences between performance art of the 1960s/1970s and Barney’s Cremaster cycle? What do they mean by the term "blockbuster" in relation to the gallery art world?

The Cremaster films are deemed blockbusters in the gallery art world, because it (rumored) takes on the qualities of blockbuster films such as costing a lot of money to make, merchandise, and making a lot of money at the box office, which, by avant-garde and gallery standards, Cremester did.

His work is also very different from the performance art of the 60s and 70s because it didn’t have an underlying cause or purpose. Much of the performance art from the 60s/70s was a commentary on Vietnam, or atomic weapons.


Walley, "Modes of Film Practice in the Avant-Garde"

6. What is meant by “mode of film practice”? Give two well known examples of non-experimental modes of film practice. Why does Walley argue that the concept of the mode of film practice can help distinguish between the experimental film and gallery art worlds?

Modes of film practice refers to the cluster of historically bound institutions, practices, and concepts that form a context within which cinematic media are used, both in production, distribution and exhibition. Some non-experimental modes of film practice include art cinema by auteurs such as Godard and Fellini.

The mode of film practice may help distinguish between the experimental film and gallery art films because modes go beyond the general aesthetic qualities of the medium and look at the circumstances which they were made and in which they can be understood.

7. What are some of the key differences between the experimental and gallery art worlds in terms of production and distribution?

In the world of experimental film, collaboration between artists is not super common, and the distribution of work or “division of labor” between the director, cinematographer, sound mixer, etc. are all given credit at the end. In the art gallery world, however, collaboration between artists is common, and rarely is anyone given credit by the means of credits in a traditional film.

In distribution, avant-garde films aren’t given wide releases in theaters, and because funding comes mostly from private investors or grants, the artists no longer have enough money to strike many prints of the film in order to make money from distribution. In the art gallery world, however, having very few prints of a piece is something that is done on purpose, for the fewer prints there are, the more valuable it is seen in the art world.