Anodyne
Wednesday, February 12, 2014
 
You, Sir, Are a Mouthful

"In 'visual autofiction' impersonation will remain an important stratagem, albeit no longer exclusively related to institutional critique. 'Impersonation' transforms the artist in an amateur practitioner of different aesthetic means of expression (from silhouette-cutting to stripping) - not as mere role-playing, but as a manner of situating the artistic self by means of a fictional expansion of his/her operative field. The use of impersonation in autofiction has a double objective: on the one hand, it exposes the impossible liaison of artistic agency and critique (rather than establishing it, as conceptual photography desired); on the other hand, it seeks the productive endorsement of the same impossibility. 'Visual autofiction' thus offers what can be described as a participatory critique through role-playing (i.e. the photographic works of Cindy Sherman or Tracey Moffatt)."

(My emphasis.  This exhaustively detailed essay comes as close to summarizing the basis for my "turn to the visual" as anything I have ever found, though the profoundly clunky & tone-deaf phrase "visual autofiction" will never pass my lips.)
- posted by cjb @ 7:39 PM


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