Re: <nettime> This artwork degrades women.

[Rachel Schreiber <rschreib@mica.edu>]

I would like to thank Simon Penny for his post which I felt 
eloquently represented the concerns of many of us who attended the 
exhibition at the Ecole Nationale Superieure des Beaux Arts in Paris 
during the ISEA conference.

I would also like to say that Wayne Myers' response might be the most 
childish reaction to serious criticism that I've seen in a long time. 
A mailing list is a perfect forum to respond to a work of art, which 
is not helpless or silent but has already had its chance to present 
its opinion. If the artist would like to respond to Mr Penny's 
criticism, he is free to do so. What I would really like to see is a 
response from the ISEA curatorial team, to at least attempt to make 
us understand the value they found in this piece.

Simon Penny's response to the work was not so much a way to stomp on 
a work that a lot of people would never see, but rather a way to give 
voice to the reactions felt by many that were there.

As for cyber- and other forms of feminism, they are not dead, despite 
the attempts of the ISEA organizers to disenfranchise artists whose 
work exhibits feminist and other political sensibilities. The reason 
the cyberfeminists were not out in droves protesting the Brandt piece 
is that they were crammed into a classroom, in that same building, 
for over 5 hours at the wonderful FACES meeting organized by Kathy 
Rae Huffman and Nathalie Magnan. Those of us present were lucky to 
see (however brief) presentations of work by over 40 women artists, 
many of whom applied to but did not make it onto the official ISEA 
program. The Brandt piece came up, but the (limited) time was better 
spent on presentations by the other artists, rather than discussing 
the obvious misogyny evidenced downstairs.

My experience in Paris was that there was no lack of outrage 
regarding Brandt's piece. Thanks again to Simon Penny for 
articulating that outrage.

Rachel Schreiber
Maryland Institute, College of Art
Baltimore, Maryland, USA



>On nettime, all over the world, Simon Penny presented his email 'This
>artwork degrades women', in which a work of art by Alexander Brandt
>lying face down is projected (life size) into a crumpled heap in the
>waste basket. The only way to interact with this email is to stomp on
>the work of art, and the only reward is that you can feel smug and
>self-satisfied about having made a judgement about something you have
>not seen. If you read it a lot, Alexander Brandt himself fades away. The
>work of art never objects or defends itself, but neither does it request
>this treatment. It is simply the only possible mode of understanding it
>presented to the user. If there is anything more to the email, it
>escaped me, though other people who have read it may not agree with me.
-- 

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