Antin image

Antin image

Antin image

Antin image

Antin image

forthcoming: Cathy Lebowitz interviews Josefina Ayerza
on
Eleanor Antin



Cathy: In the Eleanor Antin photographs of the declining Empire, Who is the quiet woman that appears on the side of many of the pictures, looking on the scene, but not part of it. In the picture you have posted, she is on the left side in a wheelchair like thing with a white dress.

Josefina: In "Drudsilla and the elders " again there is the woman in a wheelchair...with the same long dark hair, dressed in white. .. What first comes to mind in concern with your question is that Antin not only is painting structures... in repeating the image of the woman, identical, she wants you, the viewer, to notice it. And I could go as far as to say the woman could represent you, the viewer, in the process of "looking on the scene, but not being part of it."

C: So she may be the one that knows of the decline. The others are just indulging in their usual decadence without realizing the decay in their world.
Is there any intersubjectivity?

J: She knows... that is she has stopped looking (searching). Her knowledge, accounting for the field of speech Ð for the "this" and the "that," for her and the others... she "sees" decline here, decadence there, decay in the others - in their world...
With Lacan, you - the viewer - situate yourself in the picture as stain, a stain that is a screen. Facts are therefore articulated in the dimension of the overview in which you situate yourself as such.

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