Eleanor Antin
Trip Start
Jun 16, 2007
1
4
18
Trip End
Sep 23, 2007
Kassel, Germany
Friday, August 17, 2007
Eleanor Antin explores the potential of identity and moves between reality and role, image and self, past and present in her photographs, films, performances, installations and literary texts. She invents histories, narratives and characters, yet also works with the experience of the body and the self within a conceptual context.
The Blood of The Poet was Antin's first work (1965-1968): the box contains blood samples of one hundred poets, among them John Cage, Allen Ginsberg, John Ashbery. The title is also an ironic homage to the surrealist film Le sang d'un počte by Jean Cocteau which examines and glorifies the inner life of an artist. With blood - that private but nevertheless anonymous human substance - Antin poses questions full of irony: Does the artistic reside within us or in the names? How are art and life connected, what can be made immortal?
