Old Themes, New Variations: The Work of Kate Gilmore

Abstract

women use their own bodies in their art work, they are using themselves: a significant psychological factor converts these bodies or faces from object to subject. --Lucy Lippard (1) Martha Rosler wrte that the history of video art is nothing more than a celebration of men by men, as it is told according to a single narrative with Nam June Paik as the hero: myths of Paik suggest that he laid all the groundwork, touched every base, in freeing video from the domination of corporate TV. (2) Museums and art scholars celebrate accomplishments of the male-dominated avant-garde of the twentieth century, with luminaries from Pablo Picasso to Jackson Pollock, and foundcrs of performative genres that include Paik and Allan Kaprow. What is missing from the narrative of video art's history is the role of feminist artists--contemporaries to Paik--in the development of this once renegade medium. These women, who may be familiar to some, include Joan Jonas, Carolce Schncemann, Hannah Wilke, and Rosler hetself. Hidden under a seemingly amateurish appcarance, their videos offered a complex counter-narrative to established cultural norms. In continuing this legacy, Kate Gilmore revitalizes and critiques the complex relationship of women and their reception within the art establishment. When Sony introduced the Protapak in 1967, female artists were among the first to embrace video technology and its democratic principle that anyone could use it, since it required no formal training or experience. Video was a highly effective tool in communicating an alternative vision of artistic genius and an ideal medium for the feminist agenda. Since there was no historical precedent for critiquing video, it was untouched by the visual rhetoric of academics and critics and guaranteed a certain freedom for feminist artists to explore the complexities of female subjectivity through a highly personal narrative, of performed in the privacy of their studio or home. What took place in the late 1960s was one of those rare events in the history of art in which a critically acclaimed practice originates at the margins. Roster explains that feminist artists used video art to rewrite art historical discourse and counter the dominance of painting and sculpture by effectively declaring it bankrupt: Video's history is not to be a social history but an art history, one related to, but separate front, that of the other forms of Video ... wants to be a major, not a minor art. (3) It can be broadcast on television screens simultaneously across the globe, denying the singularity of the artistic masterpiece that has endured fbr centuries. Fast forward forty years, and Gilmore's videos re-imagine Frmale agency in the post-postmodern world. As the lone protagonist in a series of self-imposed obstacles, she is always attired in a well-fitted dress with matching shoes that all loo quickly become soiled with the dust, dirt, and paint splatters of her struggles. In So Much It Hurts (2008) Gilmore has a video camera attached to a pendulum-like device that continually hits her in the abdomen. We do not see her face in the video, just hear ohh and ugh as the camera collides with her. This is typical of her strenuous performances where physical comedy meets exercises in endurance. In Between a Hard Place (2008), Gilmore wears a black dress with matching gloves to tear through six layers of drywall, eventually ending in a room painted the same bright yellow color as her heels. As the video fades to black she turns, exhausted, to the camera and smirks. The uncompromising quality of this destruction denies the passivity of reclaiming vulva forms -- think Georgia O'Keeffe or Judy Chicago--in favor of direct assault on the institutions of a male-dominated art world. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Critics have drawn parallels between the endurance qualities of Gilmore's work and Marina Abramovic's now famous masochistic performances that were highlighted in her 2010 Artist is Present exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. …