Papers by Catherine Spencer
With contributions by Amelia Jones, Maura Reilly, Helena Reckitt, Sigrid Schade, Dorothee Richter... more With contributions by Amelia Jones, Maura Reilly, Helena Reckitt, Sigrid Schade, Dorothee Richter, Lara Perry, Elke Krasny, Hilary Robinson, Stella Rollig, Lina Džuverović and Irene Revell, Laura Castagnini, Susanne Clausen, Michaela Melian. Videoprogramme: Martina Mullaney, Szuper Gallery, Liv Wynter, Louise Fitzgerald, PUNK IS DADA;
The performance artist Allan Kaprow influentially declared that the Happenings – a form he pionee... more The performance artist Allan Kaprow influentially declared that the Happenings – a form he pioneered during the 1960s – were unrepeatable. This essay focuses on an overlooked calendar commission of performance photographs and scores entitled Days Off: A Calendar of Happenings that Kaprow worked on between 1968–1970, to argue that his understanding of the temporal relationship between performance art and its documentation is far more complex than has been fully accounted for to date. It situates the calendar within a network of contemporaneous initiatives spanning Fluxus and conceptualism, to show that Kaprow was actively re-thinking the temporal and spatial co-ordinates of performance towards the end of the 1960s, while moreover re-conceiving the Happening as a social, pedagogical tool with mass media potential. Through analysing Days Off, the essay re-assesses the interplay between performance, documentation and archive in time-based art from the 1960s and 1970s as inherently open to reproduction and recreation.
This conversation took place electronically in March 2016 between four art historians and curator... more This conversation took place electronically in March 2016 between four art historians and curators who have been involved with the Edinburgh-based reading group “Social Reproduction in Art, Life and Struggle”. Established in 2014 by Victoria Horne and Kirsten Lloyd, our discussions have so far ranged from witch hunting and the refusal to reproduce, to the politics of communal housing and debates about “dual systems theory” in feminism. Questions concerning the feminist commons have recurred, as has the theme of labour. In the exchange that follows we draw from the debates that emerged through both these meetings and a series of research workshops organised by Victoria Horne, Kirsten Lloyd and Catherine Spencer that dealt more explicitly with the practical and conceptual aspects of curatorship and exhibition-making: “Curating Materiality: Feminism and Contemporary Art History” and “The Fabric: Social Reproduction, Women's History and Art” (both University of Edinburgh, June 2015); “Archive Materials: Feminism, Performance and Art History in the UK” (University of St Andrews, October 2015); and “Writing/Curating/Making Feminist Art Histories” (University of Edinburgh, March 2014).
We each come to the topic of “curating in feminist thought” from different perspectives: Victoria and Catherine have a background in the university and their knowledge has been formed primarily through exhibition histories and academic discourse; Kirsten is an independent curator and contemporary art historian; Jenny Richards is currently the co-Director of Konsthall C in Stockholm. Together with Jens Strandberg she runs the programme Home Works responding to the institution’s location within a community laundry, and questions surrounding the politics of domestic work and the home.
Dandelion, Vol. 4, no. 2, Dec 2013
Book Reviews by Catherine Spencer
Review of Frazer Ward, No Innocent Bystanders: Performance Art and Audience
(Hanover, New Hampshi... more Review of Frazer Ward, No Innocent Bystanders: Performance Art and Audience
(Hanover, New Hampshire: Dartmouth College Press, 2012), and
Mechtild Widrich, Performative Monuments: The Rematerialisation of Public
Art (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2014).
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Papers by Catherine Spencer
We each come to the topic of “curating in feminist thought” from different perspectives: Victoria and Catherine have a background in the university and their knowledge has been formed primarily through exhibition histories and academic discourse; Kirsten is an independent curator and contemporary art historian; Jenny Richards is currently the co-Director of Konsthall C in Stockholm. Together with Jens Strandberg she runs the programme Home Works responding to the institution’s location within a community laundry, and questions surrounding the politics of domestic work and the home.
Book Reviews by Catherine Spencer
(Hanover, New Hampshire: Dartmouth College Press, 2012), and
Mechtild Widrich, Performative Monuments: The Rematerialisation of Public
Art (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2014).
We each come to the topic of “curating in feminist thought” from different perspectives: Victoria and Catherine have a background in the university and their knowledge has been formed primarily through exhibition histories and academic discourse; Kirsten is an independent curator and contemporary art historian; Jenny Richards is currently the co-Director of Konsthall C in Stockholm. Together with Jens Strandberg she runs the programme Home Works responding to the institution’s location within a community laundry, and questions surrounding the politics of domestic work and the home.
(Hanover, New Hampshire: Dartmouth College Press, 2012), and
Mechtild Widrich, Performative Monuments: The Rematerialisation of Public
Art (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2014).