| interReview's of Mary Kelly's Circa 1968 |
| Four emerging women speak out on Mary Kelly’s Circa 1968: Danielle Gustafson-Sundell, Cara Baldwin, Marisa J. Futernick, and Andrea Bowers. Danielle
Gustafson-Sundell on Circa 1968 Kelly’s use of layered structure, materials, and consideration of the viewer and viewer’s position within and to the work, feels fresh and challenging, working as rich pulls into a set of ideas. This differs greatly from my generations (born near 1968) fascination with the imagery of the same period but where, for the most part, the image is used as empty sign. Circa 1968 occupies a strange in-between place, being also not here and not then, but about then from here, and also then to here, a position familiar to Kelly (having been there) and one she pushes by literally blurring our view of the iconic image and/or the past. Her particular rigor (the fresh feeling) is also what quite literally, in the now, dates it. The hand-me downs of the Post Partum generations methodology: labor intensive process, collecting, mapping, im-printing, layered narratives, challenging the authority of the grid, references to what was called women’s work-craft, the hand, the home, the personal and the political, are as embedded in the production of Circa 1968, (circa 2004) as the image is in the lint- an equally nostaglic and necessary tautology. Circa 1968 feels anachronistic because it is intentionally so and also because it just is. It is to Kelly’s credit that this loop-back works beautifully. Danielle Gustafson-Sundell is an artist based out of Chicago. She shows with Kavi Gupta Gallery and is a graduate advisor at The School of The Art Institute of Chicago.
Cara
Baldwin on Circa 1968 In 1897, Méliès took an early prototype of an early motion picture camera into the streets of Paris to document daily life. During the shoot, a bus, or a baby carriage , passed in front of the camera lens, followed closely by a hearse. During this period, Méliès’ camera jammed, was repaired, and the shoot completed. When later printed and projected , his film showed the city bus transformed into the hearse. The time and truth of this event was not to be fixed in place, but expressed a spatial-temporal shift. The messages relayed here collapse into one another like the frames of the film: images represent lived experience rather than simply reproduce them, and death waits for no one. We are aware of the endless reproduction of reality, but what can we learn from this and from one another that we can’t learn in conversation with our own mortality? What interrogation or reproduction of lived experience doesn’t have this question as its center? My generation may occupy occupied territory with the hope that a renewed understanding of human communicability and intergenerational collaboration is imminent. In the expanded field and across generations, what collaborations might we collectively imagine? Cara Baldwin is a writer based out of Los Angeles. She is an Editor of The Journal of Aesthetics and Protest. Her interview with Mary Kelly appears in this magazine, which informed the above passage.
Marisa J.
Futernick on Circa 1968 In a way, it is a pop image. Youth, rebellion, the Sixties. It has all the makings of a rocknroll moment. The monochrome lends it a menacing air – something grim seems to be happening – perhaps Hell’s Angels wreaking havoc during the Stones’ set (which actually brings me back to contemporary art, via Sam Durant’s Altamont piece). The flickering, projected light alludes to cinema, to old cinema, to film reel footage of seminal pop culture days. But then, no. This is not a rock festival. It is a political rally. Yet even that seems so intertwined with pop history (a possible reflection on my generation, one which knows of such things from MTV ‘rockumentaries’). For the artist, is this nostalgia for an age never experienced? Mary Kelly has the ‘authenticity’ of having been alive in 1968, having been the right age in 1968, for the work to be more than a detached romanticization. And that authenticity is echoed in the way in which the piece is made. There is no hint of the glib, throwaway treatment that might be expected in a younger artist’s approach to the era. This piece took serious time to make, and feels as if it is on the verge of destruction, as if it could blow away at any moment and it is all the artist can do to preserve it. Even the title suggests an already-happening erosion – the memory is starting to fade and what was once a vivid moment is now a rough guess at a year. The use of the wonderfully ephemeral lint is a beautiful touch, full of linguistic and conceptual layers of possibility. From a filter, it suggests the filtering of memories, the filtering of history, and the artefacts, or rather bits of dust that are left behind. Marisa J. Futernick is a graduate of Yale University. She is an artist and writer based in London as well as the Assistant Curator for The Gallery at Sketch.
Andrea Bowers
on Circa 1968 "Removed from the library because of out-of-date and/or replaced by better material." Mary Kelly's Circa 1968, its’ precarious existence depending upon layers of dryer lint and light, speaks of the fragility of history, how easily historical events can be replaced, forgotten or buried in the layers of constantly streaming media of the information age. Kelly's biting humor compares the process of historicizing to that of a lint collection system in a dryer. However, her filtering system recuperates, in an endless loop, an emboldened image of a female demonstrator waving a flag in Paris during the May '68 uprising. Mary Kelly makes something out of nothing - all in a day's work for most women. The female protagonist is anonymous. So much collective action has been the result of women’s efforts. Although the political actions of women have changed our political structures and transformed our consciousness, their individual participation receives little recognition. Circa 1968 is a reminder that women's work and craft have always been intimately tied to politics. There is a subtle but significant difference between Mary Kelly's felt and that of Joseph Beuys and Robert Morris. Beuys's use of felt references his mythical heroic plane crash survival that was most likely only that - a myth. Morris's felt pays homage to this masculine heroic tradition. Kelly's dryer lint ‘felt’ is nothing if not based in the ordinary. It references menial labor, which even now circa 2005, is primarily the responsibility of women and minorities. The piece is hopeful because the result of a woman's efforts is a creative product rather than repetitive maintenance. Kelly's use of imagery is not a nostalgia trip but best used as a reflection on the present and our relationships to 1968. It insists upon a comparison of this historical event to our contemporary situation. Interpreting history can prevent a repeat of the past or be used to advance the work done by those who came before us. Understanding history allows us to understand the present. We are not beyond history. Circa 1968 is evidence that groups of people have imagined a different world and acted upon their visions. It is a reminder that political change is also an individual responsibility. Andrea Bowers is an artist based out of Los Angeles. She was also recently included in the 2004 Whitney Biennial. |