Dr. Jennifer Vanderpool
Title of paper: Eleanor Antin: Performing Imaginary Life.
Affiliation: Independent researcher and artist, Liverpool, UK.
Abstract: My presentation "Eleanor Antin: Performing Imaginary Life," emphasizes her early Seventies' non-theatrical life performances and their legacy. During the Second-wave Seventies Feminist movement in the U.S., Antin constructed subcultural personas, formed similarly to those analyzed by Hebdige, to confront structural hegemonies and cultural mythologies subjugating women in addition to a misguided protest of how the movement marginalized their own based on race, class, religion, and sexual orientation. Antin slipped between her coded gender, class, and religious viewpoint as a working-class New York American Jewess casting a shadow over her characters imagined social, gender, and racial identifiers. She stylized herself and the costumes of her archetypical personas including "the ballerina," "the king," "the actress" and others as symbolic modes of resistance. Their costumes functioned as political masks accentuating their dark play challenging gender, racial, and class equity issues. Antin oscillated between performing the artifice of her personas and herself "the artist" on the streets of New York City and in Southern California, where she relocated in 1972 with her husband art critic David Antin when he joined the faculty at UC San Diego.
Often disrupting the day-to-day lives of others walking beside her on sidewalks or sitting at cafes, Antin sometimes persuaded baffled onlookers to join her performances. Antin "the king" in his new romantic ruffled shirt, floppy hat, cape, and pirates' boots, for instance, marshaled his army of surfers and retirees to charge corporate office builders. The king demanded environmental justice for a rare grove of Torrey Pines slated to be razed for an apartment complex. "He" failed spectacularly, but with panache. Antin's life-performances were practice for today's equity and ecological justice revolutions. I will discuss contemporary artists who create an intertext with her work, including Trans artist Cassils and social practice artists, along with my own.
Biography: My work thematizes the social construction of place based on the influences of history, race, class, gender, and labor. I investigate these ideas through community-specific and site-responsive installations. Some recent exhibitions include Super Natural, National Centre for Contemporary Art, Moscow; Flores Para El Trueque, Mercadito & Mentidero, Bogotá, and No Lugar-Arte Contemporáneo + La Huerta y La Maquina, Quito; Garment Girl, Hà Nội. I recently presented artist talks at the United Nations regional headquarters, Hà Nội; Universiteit van Amsterdam; California College of the Arts; Virginia Tech University. The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs, Ohio Arts Council, Kunstrådet: Danish Arts Council, and Kulturrådet: Swedish Arts Council have awarded my work grants. Currently, I am a US-UK Fulbright Artist Fellow at the University of Liverpool. I hold a Ph.D. in Art Critical Practices from UC Santa Barbara + UC Regents, co-chaired by Dick Hebdige.