Auto/Biography Redux
or
A Series of Quotations, Numbered and Footnoted, to First Explain and then Critique the Artwork titled “Auto/Biographical Video,” by Jesse Aron Green, First Shown February 9, 2007

 

Untitled (Installation Shot of Auto/Biographical Video with Unidentified Model), April 25, 2007

1.
“Auto/Biographical Video, 2007
Installation: monitors, crates, VHS player, DVD player, headphones, four VHS videotapes (titles listed below), chairs

The part of this work that might be termed the ‘video program’ was first screened, in a slightly different form, as part of a lecture at the California Institute of the Arts, April 17, 2006, under the title Bio-Pics: Performance, the Body and the Document in Women’s Biographical Video.

Lisa Steele
Birthday Suit with Scars & Defects, 1974, 12:00m

Howardena Pindell
Free, White and 21, 1980, 12:00m

Alex Bag
Untitled, Fall ’95, 1995, 57:00m

Elisabeth Subrin
Shulie, 1997, 36:00m


Please play the tapes at will. After viewing, please rewind the tapes and return them to their respective cases.” ⁱ

2.
“So, it’s difficult for me to explain the work to you because really, to explain it is to work against it. Which is to say that to explain how the work works, how it functions, would be the wrong tack, would give it away somehow. So I think I just have to explain it formally first, and from there we’ll keep going. There are two monitors side by side, each on top of a plywood crate, the first monitor bigger than the second, and the second placed slightly at an angle to the first. There are two chairs in front of the big monitor, which is hooked up to a VCR that is accessible to the viewer. The four pieces of video art in the title (Steele, Subrin, etc.) are piled there too, also accessible to the viewer. So in this way the viewer can play them in whatever order, and so on. The smaller monitor plays a looping DVD of commentary that I wrote about the four pieces of video art, and control of this DVD is inaccessible to the viewer. The commentary scrolls up the screen, but it doesn’t do this by means of a text-generator or some other computer effect. I printed the text on acetate, and I moved these sheets of acetate one by one along the surface of an overhead projector, the projection from which was thrown onto a wall and then shot by a video camera. So, finally, the footage on the screen is footage of this performance of manually scrolling text.” ⁱⁱ

3.
“Where is the synopsis? How am I supposed to understand this if there’s nothing here?”ⁱⁱⁱ

4.
“Is it significant that all of the people I study with are the grande dames of the art-world? And, in the piece I’m making this week for reviews at UCLA, based on the lecture I gave and told you about, all of the biographies I quote from, or re-frame or what have you, are not only seminal pieces of feminist video art, but are also about women; important seminal tapes, and important powerful women.” ^iv

5.
“- the supposed control we have to play the feminist video-art tapes at will on the first monitor is lost to the domineering power of your written commentary on the second monitor

- the phallogocentric “I” of the critic dominates the “I’s” of the women in the tapes; and that “I” is you Jesse

- where is the feminism?” ^v

6.
“Porter, David, ed. Between men and feminism. London; New York: Routledge, 1992.

Schacht, Steven P., & Doris W. Ewing, eds. Feminism and men: reconstructing gender relations. New York: New York University Press, 1998.

Jardine, Alice & Paul Smith, eds. Men in feminism. New York: Methuen, 1987.

Gardiner, Judith Kegan, ed. Masculinity studies & feminist theory: new directions. New York: Columbia University Press, 2002.

Digby, Tom, ed. Men doing feminism. New York: Routledge, 1998.” ^vi



Endnotes

i: This quotation is the wall text that appeared next to the artwork at its premiere, and should be taken as the full title for the piece. While I refer to the piece by its handle – “Auto/Biographical Video” – this handle is to be understood as not the whole title, but only the beginning of it. ^

ii: Jesse Aron Green as quoted in conversation during a studio visit at UCLA with a professor (name withheld) known for her work around issues of feminism, institutional critique, psychoanalysis, performance and autobiography, February 22, 2007. It should be noted that the quote is from memory, is paraphrased, and is likely inaccurate in some way. Furthermore, it is important to note that it is beyond the scope of this short article to publish the entire text that appeared on the second channel – or commentary track – of the piece “Auto/Biographical Video;” and anyway, I would not do so, because to do so would be to allow the commentary to be read outside of the context of its accompanying video program, which is exactly that which the commentary is intended to be in service of. However, I recognize the need to somehow explain what the commentary was, or what it consisted of. So, I will do that now. It consisted of personal associations with the tapes, or responses to sections of the tapes, sometimes with quotes from secondary sources to illustrate or provide background information for the association being constructed (eg., text and sound from an opera that I was thinking about in regard to the Pindell tape); quotes from websites, books, etc., about the artists who made the tapes; technical information about the structure (and breakdown) of video-tape (and by extension, film), also taken from the web; and so on. ^

iii: A professor (name withheld) quoted during a studio visit that lasted five minutes, February 9, 2007, as he turned the video-tape boxes over to see if the back-covers had any informational text that would allow him to understand the tapes quickly, and so avoid the need to watch them. It might be noted at this time, to give this professor his due, that it would in fact take over three hours to watch the entire video program and accompanying commentary track. Furthermore, his comment may have been intended as a kind of critique, or possibly even a joke. ^

iv: Jesse Aron Green in conversation with his psychoanalyst (name withheld), February 8, 2007. ^

v: Jesse Aron Green’s notes, taken as a record of a conversation with two graduate students (names withheld) in the UCLA Department of Art, after the premiere of “Auto/Biographical Video” on February 9, 2007. ^

vi: A list of recommended reading, as culled from multiple online library catalogues using the search terms “men” and “feminism.” ^

x: This is a footnote with no referent in this article, but planned as a footnote in a future article in which I quote this article; which is to say, I am about to quote something I have not said yet; which is to say that in the future I expect that I will describe this article in the following way: “It is an artwork itself, or at least an extension of the artwork that it, in turn, attempts to describe and critique. In this way, it operates according to, or in an analogous way to what I consider the central critical operation of feminism, which is a critique of the self, or a critique of itself. That is, the foundational operation of feminism is to keep in play the critique around subjectivity and its political, cultural, economic, sexual, social and psychoanalytic formations, especially by means of trying to figure out one’s own position in the discourse. This self-reflexive move in critique is akin to autobiography itself.”

Jesse Aron Green