Sight and Sound
In his essay of the early 1960s, "The Poetics of the Open Work," the
Italian writer and theorist Umberto Eco found music to be a perfect
model for a more dialectical, even ethical, relationship between artist,
object, and audience. A musical score is not the original, nor is any
one performance a copy. Music therefore provided a way of thinking
repetition with difference, conceiving a structure that did not also
structure everything in its wake.
To some, Eco might seem an unlikely source for feminists. But his
political investments resonate with our own: after all, this desire for
a model (but one that resists stagnation) inspired the editors of this
issue to also choose a musical metaphor—polyphony—as its theme. For this
same reason, his theory of the open work has many affinities with the
aspirations and critical projects of feminism and feminist art more
broadly. Looking across this history, the paradigm of the open work
seems almost implicit: from the performance art of the 1960s, to the
appropriation art of the 1980s (not to mention many other practices in
between and after), feminist artists have sought to dissolve the
universal claims of modernism and assert the "poly" whenever monotony
was assumed. But the meaning of music for feminism goes beyond method or
metaphor. Music scenes, styles, and cultures have been a central part of
its movements—from folk, to riot grrrl, diy, and punk. Even this short
list illustrates that when it comes to the cultural practices that
incorporate and politicize our everyday lives, feminism has always
already been polyphonous.
In this spirit, the current online exhibition brings music that
resonates with the metaphorical power of polyphony together with visual
works of art that do the same. Whatever the form—video, photography,
performance, song—each strives to imagine what a more expansive practice
of feminism could look, sound, and/or feel like. Because these are
artworks, this appears less as a singular goal than a continual
experiment. It is this experimental quality that is precisely what art
has to offer, what distinguishes it from activism. Art often is, after
all, a politics that does not always look like politics, at least when
we limit our notion of politics to a goal-oriented, literal, or even
easily legible practice. This is not an open call that anything goes,
however: when polyphony devolves into cacophony, the danger is that it
may produce a sound barrier that cuts off any engagement with those not
already in the know. By including works that are self-conscious of their
status as works of art, the exhibition tries to tread this line
carefully. Of course, it is not the works alone that do this, but the
active viewership of its audience. The exhibition is also an alternate
space within the issue where we are encouraged to question what we mean
when we say a work of art is feminist and open up this constellation of
terms to new ideas, criteria, and debate.
Feminist art is intertwined with the category of political art
(engaged with its history, as well as critical of it from within) and
the work shown here is no exception. As such, the individual pieces
employ two dominant categories that are often seen in tension: the
poetic and the utilitarian. Take, for example, a comparison of Barbara
Kruger's poster slogans and Kiki Smith's abject figural sculpture.
Similarly, some of the works, such as Moya Bailey's Obsidian
Project and Lina Bertucci's Women in the Tattoo Subculture,
utilize a style of deadpan documentary photography that seems
straightforward. Works like Larissa Sansour's A Space Exodus and
Anida Yoeu Ali and Mary Jane Villamor's In Transience are more performative, expressive, and
elusive in comparison. And yet juxtaposed, the clear, contrived
aesthetic of Bertucci's work, to take one example, is used to undermine
the clarity of its message, while Sansour's distant and blurry images
suddenly appear more apt for addressing the highly-charged issues of
nation and nationalism. Jasmeen Patheja's Taaza Samachar / Hot
News video suggests a similar inversion, as we watch a presumably
clear-cut narrative dissolve, its linear arc opened to a more ambiguous
and subjective meaning. This push and pull (and overlap) between poetic
and utilitarian work, between art and activism as languages and
structures of possibility, reveal polyphony to work best when it
functions simultaneously as a metaphor and methodology, a productive if
not provocative assemblage that does not sacrifice dissonance but also
refuses just to stop there.
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