Andrea Fraser
29 Nov 2014 - 24 Jan 2015
ANDREA FRASER
Men on the Line
29 November 2014 — 24 January 2015
Andrea Fraser’s performance Men on the Line: Men Committed to Feminism, KPFK, 1972 (2012) is based on a live radio broadcast from 1972 in which four men discussed a variety of issues related to the feminism. Fraser transcribed and edited the broadcast and performs all four participants, re-enacting in her own performance their struggle to experience empathy across the boundaries of gender identity. By voicing and embodying these multiple male perspectives, the performance engages long-standing debates about gender and women’s liberation, and in doing so, it recalls some of the key concerns of feminist movements, past and present. Among these concerns are issues of essentialism, separatism, and the relationship between feminist struggles and other forms of domination, along with questions surrounding the construction, internalization, and reproduction of social norms and identities.
Men on the Line: Men Committed to Feminism, KPFK 1972
Men on the Line: Men Committed to Feminism, KPFK, 1972 is based on an audio recording of a live radio broadcast in which four men discuss their experiences with the feminist movement. Andrea Fraser transcribed and edited the dialogue and performs all four participants, re-enacting, in the process of performance, their struggle with identification and empathy across the boundaries of gender identity. The performance also incorporates three short segments of audio from the original broadcast.
Men on the Line: Men Committed to Feminism, KPFK 1972 was originally developed for Trilogy, a series of performances curated by Emi Fontana and produced by West of Rome for the Pacific Standard Time: Art in Los Angeles 1945-1980 Performance and Public Art Festival, organized by the Getty Research Institute in conjunction with LA><ART. For Trilogy, Emi Fontana invited Fraser, Vaginal Cream Davis, and Mike Kelly to develop new performances inspired by the Woman’s Building. One of the central institutions of the feminist art movement, the Woman’s Building was founded in Los Angeles in 1973 by Judy Chicago, Arlene Raven and Sheila Levrant de Bretteville. Among its programs was the Feminist Studio Workshop, which incorporated feminist consciousness raising group practices into studio art education.
KPFK is the Southern California affiliate of Pacifica Radio, a network of listener-supported radio station based in Berkeley, California. Pacifica Radio served as an important public forum for the development of feminist art and politics in the United States in the 1970s. Recording of the 1972 broadcast and other programs can be ordered from www.pacificaradioarchives.org.
Men on the Line premiered January 23, 2012 at the National Center for the Preservation of Democracy in Los Angeles and was subsequently performed at the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston; the Corcoran Gallery, Washington D.C.; and the Museum Ludwig Cologne, 2013.
Andrea Fraser is a Los Angeles-based artist whose work has been identified with performance, feminism, context art and institutional critique. She was a founding member of the feminist performance group The V-Girls (1986-1996), the project-based artist initiative Parasite (1997-1998) and the cooperative art gallery Orchard (2005-2008). Her books include Andrea Fraser: Works 1985-2003, DuMont Buchverlag, 2003;Museum Highlights: The Writings of Andrea Fraser, MIT Press, 2005; and Texts, Scripts, Transcripts, Museum Ludwig Köln, 2013. The Museum Ludwig Köln presented a retrospective of her work in 2013 in conjunction with her receipt of the Wolfgang Hahn Prize.
Men on the Line
29 November 2014 — 24 January 2015
Andrea Fraser’s performance Men on the Line: Men Committed to Feminism, KPFK, 1972 (2012) is based on a live radio broadcast from 1972 in which four men discussed a variety of issues related to the feminism. Fraser transcribed and edited the broadcast and performs all four participants, re-enacting in her own performance their struggle to experience empathy across the boundaries of gender identity. By voicing and embodying these multiple male perspectives, the performance engages long-standing debates about gender and women’s liberation, and in doing so, it recalls some of the key concerns of feminist movements, past and present. Among these concerns are issues of essentialism, separatism, and the relationship between feminist struggles and other forms of domination, along with questions surrounding the construction, internalization, and reproduction of social norms and identities.
Men on the Line: Men Committed to Feminism, KPFK 1972
Men on the Line: Men Committed to Feminism, KPFK, 1972 is based on an audio recording of a live radio broadcast in which four men discuss their experiences with the feminist movement. Andrea Fraser transcribed and edited the dialogue and performs all four participants, re-enacting, in the process of performance, their struggle with identification and empathy across the boundaries of gender identity. The performance also incorporates three short segments of audio from the original broadcast.
Men on the Line: Men Committed to Feminism, KPFK 1972 was originally developed for Trilogy, a series of performances curated by Emi Fontana and produced by West of Rome for the Pacific Standard Time: Art in Los Angeles 1945-1980 Performance and Public Art Festival, organized by the Getty Research Institute in conjunction with LA><ART. For Trilogy, Emi Fontana invited Fraser, Vaginal Cream Davis, and Mike Kelly to develop new performances inspired by the Woman’s Building. One of the central institutions of the feminist art movement, the Woman’s Building was founded in Los Angeles in 1973 by Judy Chicago, Arlene Raven and Sheila Levrant de Bretteville. Among its programs was the Feminist Studio Workshop, which incorporated feminist consciousness raising group practices into studio art education.
KPFK is the Southern California affiliate of Pacifica Radio, a network of listener-supported radio station based in Berkeley, California. Pacifica Radio served as an important public forum for the development of feminist art and politics in the United States in the 1970s. Recording of the 1972 broadcast and other programs can be ordered from www.pacificaradioarchives.org.
Men on the Line premiered January 23, 2012 at the National Center for the Preservation of Democracy in Los Angeles and was subsequently performed at the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston; the Corcoran Gallery, Washington D.C.; and the Museum Ludwig Cologne, 2013.
Andrea Fraser is a Los Angeles-based artist whose work has been identified with performance, feminism, context art and institutional critique. She was a founding member of the feminist performance group The V-Girls (1986-1996), the project-based artist initiative Parasite (1997-1998) and the cooperative art gallery Orchard (2005-2008). Her books include Andrea Fraser: Works 1985-2003, DuMont Buchverlag, 2003;Museum Highlights: The Writings of Andrea Fraser, MIT Press, 2005; and Texts, Scripts, Transcripts, Museum Ludwig Köln, 2013. The Museum Ludwig Köln presented a retrospective of her work in 2013 in conjunction with her receipt of the Wolfgang Hahn Prize.