Lynda Benglis, still from Mumble, 1972 Courtesy of Video Data Bank, Chicago, USA
PROJECT AND LECTURE
Lynda Benglis's Mumble (1972) and
Robert Morris's Exchange (1973)
Public Opening: Wed, 28 October
18:00 – 21:00
28 October – 19 December
Opening hours: Wed, Fri and Sat from
12:00 to 16:00 / Thu, from 12:00 to 18:00
AND
On Lynda Benglis's Mumble (An Instance of
Videosociality),
a lecture by Ina Blom
Wed, 28 October / 19:00
Office for Contemporary Art Norway
Nedre gate 7, Oslo
www.oca.no / info@oca.no
Ina Blom presents a lecture investigating the critical terms through which we approach the question of 'sociality' in art?' In 1972 Lynda Benglis and Robert Morris started an artistic dialogue through a collaborative project that, using video as a medium, seemed to turn, self-reflexively, around their evolving relationship. The two resulting works, Benglis's Mumble(1972, 20min, b&w, sound) and Morris's Exchange (1973, 36min, b&w, sound), suggest that this relationship is the unique result of the productive framework of televisual technologies, and has no self-evident correlate in any reality beyond this framework. Ultimately, this collaborative work opens up certain fundamental questions concerning the social art practices of the 1960s and 70s, and calls out for redefinitions of the very models of sociality that tend to underpin our discussion of such work.
The Project
In conjunction with Ina Blom's lecture, OCA presents Lynda
Benglis's Mumble (1972) and Robert
Morris's Exchange (1973), as part of the project
'Columns, Grottos, Niches: The Grammar of
Forms – On Art Criticism, Writing, Publishing and Distribution.'
The two videos are the result of a long exchange of videotapes
between Benglis and Morris, where one work was continually passed
back and forth between the two of them for individual reworking,
creating around 20 different versions. Summing up the exchanging of
tapes, Mumble and Exchange are
respectively Benglis's and Morris's individual response to their
video conversation. Mumble brings together
repeated scenes and gestures, featuring Morris and Benglis's
brother Jim, and a narrative of irrelevant, confusing and often
purposefully untrue statements. As Benglis's narration degenerates
into a meaningless, repetitive pulse, Mumble disrupts the
convenient fiction that the image presented on screen is complete
on itself. In Exchange Morris comments on the
nature of the collaboration, their interaction and what they
represent to each other. An asymmetry of elements forms as the tape
moves from the professional towards the personal – a shift that
gives the work humanity and, in relation to the development of
early Conceptual video, its unique historical importance.
About the Speaker
Ina Blom is an art critic, curator and art historian. Since 2001 she has been an Associate Professor at the Department of Philosophy, Classics, History of Art and Ideas at the University of Oslo, Norway, specialising in modernism and avant-garde studies, and contemporary art and aesthetics, with a particular focus on media art practices and media aesthetics. A former music critic, she has also worked extensively as an art critic and curator, contributing to frieze, Parkett, Afterall, Artforumand Texte zur Kunst. Selected writings include: On the Style Site; Art, Sociality and Television Culture (Sternberg Press, New York 2007); How to (not) Answer a Letter, The Postal Performance of Ray Johnson's (MIT Press, Oslo / Kassel / Sittard, 2003); Joseph Beuys (Gyldendal, Oslo, 2001).
About Lynda Benglis and Robert Morris
Lynda Benglis, born in 1941 in Lake Charles, Louisiana, is known for her poured latex and foam works. Benglis became prominent within the New York art scene in the late 1960s, when she responded to the male-led fusion of painting and sculpture that had dominated the North American art scene since the advent of Process art and Minimalism. Benglis produced a pioneering body of feminist video in the 1970s. Immediate and visceral, Benglis's video work confronts issues raised by feminist theory, including the representation of women, the role of the spectator and female sexuality.
Born in 1931 in Kansas City, Missouri, Robert Morris studied at the University of Kansas, Kansas City Art Institute and Reed College. Well known in the early 1960s for his Minimalist sculptures, Morris marked the transition to a post-Minimalist sensibility by reintroducing everyday processes into his sculptural works, and producing critical texts that provided the movement with a theoretical foundation. Through the E.A.T. (Experiments in Art and Technology) project, Morris worked briefly in film and video in the late 1960s and early 70s, employing structural devices such as layering, framing and mirroring in an examination of the medium's distinct features and its use as means of communication.
About 'The Grammar of Forms'
'Columns, Grottos, Niches: The Grammar of Forms – On Art Criticism, Writing, Publishing and Distribution' is a series public events, workshops and presentations that are taking place from autumn 2009 to spring 2010 at OCA's premises at Nedre gate 7, with the aim to look at language, writing, criticism and publishing in relation to contemporary art, exploring its diverse modes of operation and possibilities within historical and contemporary practices. In these public events, writers, artists, critics, publishers and theorists investigate different experiences of and approaches to writing and language, specifically in relation to art. These events have a pedagogical remit, and are accompanied by a series of projects including presentation of artworks and libraries of publications, made available to the public for consultation and reading. Other speakers this autumn include Will Bradley, Anne Hilde Neset and Stuart Bailey. For more details on the OCA semesterplan autumn/winter 2009, please click here.
For press inquiries and more information on the project, the lecture or the OCA semesterplan, please contact Marthe Tveitan at marthe@oca.no.