Guest host Wendy Webb interviews Stephanie Snyder, John and Anne Hauberg Curator and Director of the Cooley Memorial Gallery at Reed College, about the current exhibit, BRUCE NAUMAN, BASEMENTS, on view until MARCH 9th.
The studio films of American artist Bruce Nauman, created between 1967 and 1969 with both 16 mm film and emerging video technology, are rarely exhibited in consideration of the essential qualities of their nature as films. Typically, the works are exhibited in relationship to Nauman's sculptures and photographs, burdened with the responsibility of assuming a documentary voice, and positioned as evidence of Nauman's intellectual evolution. But how do we experience the films when we are able to fully encounter their presence as phenomenological entities, and to absorb them as such, embracing Nauman's investigations into language, philosophy, and the experience of his own body? To be with the films in keeping with the terms of their own making is an entirely different experience altogether.
- KBOO