From: Shelly Silver (email suppressed)
Date: Mon Feb 16 2004 - 12:33:07 PST
In terms of Anthology in '77, it is a difficult situation when there are few
or only one institution promoting or preserving a wider field. I think of
John Thompson's comments about curating. If I look at the range of
Electronic Arts Intermix's artists, one of only two video art distributors
in the US, they are clearly trying to support the range of what's going on
in the field at any given time. If I look at what the individuals working
at EAI are doing in their own curatorial practice, then the choices become
much more particular and personalized, as it should be. The
responsibilities are different.
Below some responses to Matt Teichman, written before James Kreul's
additional comments, which point out, among other things, what a difference
a woman curator can make....
> The point of asking it was that the question of how to interpret these
> sorts of stats is a very deep one...the matter is an
> inordinately complicated one, leading to labyrinth upon labyrinth of
> chicken-egg regressions....
I don't think what I'm talking about is so complicated. I have not done a
study of women in the experimental film world, but I can't imagine that the
situation was that much different in the 60's and 70's for women than in
other male dominated worlds. I didn't use the word 'discrimination' in my
e-mail, I was talking about a phenomenon that I've noticed of identification
and privileging of a certain experience/viewpoint. This is often not done
consciously. From the curating I've done, I find that the more conscious
one is of imbalances of all kinds, the more one can address this question in
an interesting way, usually to the benefit of the artists, the community and
the show. I would still hold that of crucial importance is the necessity
for more diversity in terms of those in power, especially as one approaches
the top.
This imbalance as well as the phen. of identifying with those in power is
something I know quite well from my experiences in the art and video art
world. For example, the art school that I attended had 90% female students
and over 90% male faculty and much of the attention the women got was
related to 'non-art' activities. This is complicated by the fact that many
first generation women curators and dealers had the tendency to also select
only male artists. Certainly we are in a different situation today,
although I would still hold, not one of equality.
The mathematics question - I assume you would not say that there have been
historically fewer women in mathematics because we're just no good at it, so
the solution must be found elsewhere. I would hazard that it is based on
lack of encouragement and support at early ages as well as outright
discrimination and lack of role models at university level and onward.
There is still such a thing as an old boys network. Affirmative action has
done quite a bit to help this, where those in power are forced to
consciously change their previous means of selection.
I would still hold very strongly to my statement on invisibility. It is
very difficult to recognize that such a thing as bias exists, even for those
that are negatively impacted by it. Discrimination is most often seen as
natural, the air we breathe, the workings of the world, just the way things
are.
'Sociology is rarely more akin to social psychoanalysis than when it
confronts an object like taste, one of the most vital stakes in the
struggles fought in the field of the dominant class in the field of cultural
production.... Here the sociologist finds himself in the area par
excellence of the denial of the social.' P. Bordieu, Distinction, A Social
Critique of the Judgement of Taste
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For info on FrameWorks, contact Pip Chodorov at <email suppressed>.