To prepare for our soap carving project, we were to watch a segment on artist Janine Antoni, creator of Lick & Lather (1993). I gleaned much from her Art 21 video, as I do from every episode of the series. My art teacher in high school often had us watch Art 21 segments; I actually still have my 10th and 11th grade notes about James Turrell, Mark Bradford, Laylah Ali, Maya Lin, Laurie Anderson, and Pepón Osorio, among others. It's an undeniably wonderful resource for expanding one's knowledge of contemporary artists and practices as well as finding inspiration.
Chocolate, left, and soap, right
"Cleaning the body with the body / Feeding oneself with the body"
Here's what I scribbled while watching Janine Antoni's video:
- Stories held in the material
- The taking apart of things - what things are made of. Taking apart to understand
- Body as a tool, the maker of experience
- CLUES
- Cow drinking from bath - reversal of relationship: breasts and the archetype of the Virgin Mary
- The importance of "holding"
- Our distance from the true source of things
- Submission / absence
- What is "me-ness"?
- Chunk from ear that falls off while she washes herself with herself, both sad and beautiful
- Loving = erasing?
- The tightrope, the horizon: balance comes from being comfortable with being out of balance
- Learning leads to learning leads to learning
One thing I love about the Art 21 series is that every episode is, in itself, a work of art. For example, in Antoni's segment, the editors used her found objects rope piece, Moor (2001), to link the episode together. By using images of the rope for transitions, they made the pragmatic and symbolic aspect of the object-to tie or bring things together-an essential part of the video. Moor reminds me why I am a bit of a packrat...I love collecting things and putting them together to create meaning. There's nothing quite like holding an item, especially a personal one, and feeling the electricity of all it's ever meant and will ever mean surge through your body.
Just a small segment of the rope, but it contains so many lives
"If I don’t have an experience with the object, how can I hope that the viewer will have an experience with the object?" - Antoni
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