October 2004

Engaging the Speculum

Featuring works by: Vito Acconci, Valie Export, Matthias Müller, Gina Pane , L.A. Raeven, Lucile Risch

Video Still Image: Lucile Risch, You Won't Escape My Love, 2002/03. Courtesy of LMAKprojects, New York, NY

Guest curator, Louky Keijsers, has assembled this exhibition of international video / film artists whose works address the faith in, but also the loss of, a belief in Utopia. They address issues of identity, gender, and sexuality, in a manner that reflects the psychoanalytic ideas of Jacques Lacan -- and how they apply to the "uncanny magic of film images." These images maintain a distance, no matter how close they are. As the critic Georges Didi-Huberman notes, "something has appeared from out of the hidden, but its manifestation will stubbornly retain every trace of distance or depth that condemns it to eternally work at concealment." A speculum is an instrument for dilating a bodily passage or cavity, throwing light within them in order to examine the interior; or a mirror--especially one made of polished metal--for use as an optical instrument. Keijsers sees art as a similar tool which functions as "the practical component of philosophy" in exploring the concealed, the esoteric, and the deepest recesses of human experience. The related October Series - Engaging the Speculum: Film/Video/Media will present speakers on the manifold threads of discourse about media and meaning in reference to our past and future. This exhibition and related events were organized through the cooperation of : Richard Weiner, dean of arts and sciences, R.I. College; Thomas Erben, director, Thomas Erben Gallery, New York; Louky Keijsers, independent curator and art-historian; Dennis O'Malley, director, Bannister Gallery; Bret Rothstein, associate professor of art and director of Film Studies, R.I. College; and Claudia Springer, professor of English and director of Media Studies, R.I. College. Opening Lecture @ 5:00 p.m. Forman Theatre, Nazarian Center for the Performing Arts