{"title":"Jane Blocker","description":"Jane Blocker is associate professor of art history at the University of Minnesota and the author of What the Body Cost: Desire, History, and Performance (Minnesota, 2004) and Where is Ana Mendieta? Identity, Performativity and Exile.","products":[{"product_id":"seeing-witness-visuality-and-the-ethics-of-testimony-paperback","title":"Seeing Witness: Visuality and the Ethics of Testimony - Paperback","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eUnearthing the meaning of witnessing in contemporary art and politics\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe act of bearing witness can reveal much, but what about the figure of the witness itself? As contemporary culture is increasingly dominated by surveillance, the witness--whether artist, historian, scientist, government official, or ordinary citizen--has become empowered in realms from art to politics.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eIn \u003ci\u003eSeeing Witness, \u003c\/i\u003e Jane Blocker challenges the implicit authority of witnessing through the examination of a series of contemporary artworks, all of which make the act of witnessing visible, open to inspection and critique. Considering such artists as Marina Abramovic, James Luna, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Eduardo Kac, and Ann Hamilton, Blocker investigates the artists and spectators who look, the technologies they look with, and the forms of power and moral authority that permit their viewing. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eGoing beyond particular traumatic or sensational events, Blocker contemplates the politics of witnessing and argues that the witness represents a morally unique--and even problematic--position of privilege. Separating \u003ci\u003eSeeing Witness\u003c\/i\u003e from previous literature on the subject, she finds that the visual is inherent in witnessing and asserts that contemporary art is integral to questioning and understanding how witnessing is mobilized in culture today. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"BooksCloud","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50123237949663,"sku":"9780816654772","price":50.4,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0813\/8958\/4607\/files\/FvRLhdqJK39780816654772.webp?v=1781690460"},{"product_id":"where-is-ana-mendieta-identity-performativity-and-exile-paperback","title":"Where Is Ana Mendieta?: Identity, Performativity, and Exile - Paperback","description":"\u003cp\u003eAna Mendieta, a Cuban-born artist who lived in exile in the United States, was one of the most provocative and complex personalities of the 1970s' artworld. In \u003ci\u003eWhere Is Ana Mendieta?\u003c\/i\u003e art historian Jane Blocker provides an in-depth critical analysis of Mendieta's diverse body of work. Although her untimely death in 1985 remains shrouded in controversy, her life and artistic legacy provide a unique vantage point from which to consider the history of performance art, installation, and earth works, as well as feminism, multiculturalism, and postmodernism.\u003cbr\u003eTaken from banners carried in a 1992 protest outside the Guggenheim Museum in New York, the title phrase \"Where is Ana Mendieta?\" evokes not only the suspicious and tragic circumstances surrounding her death but also the conspicuous absence of women artists from high-profile exhibitions. Drawing on the work of such theorists as Judith Butler, Joseph Roach, Edward Said, and Homi Bhabha, Blocker discusses the power of Mendieta's earth-and-body art to alter, unsettle, and broaden the terms of identity itself. She shows how Mendieta used exile as a discursive position from which to disrupt dominant categories, analyzing as well Mendieta's use of mythology and anthropology, the ephemeral nature of her media, and the debates over her ethnic, gender, and national identities.\u003cbr\u003eAs the first major critical examination of this enigmatic artist's work, \u003ci\u003eWhere Is Ana Mendieta?\u003c\/i\u003e will interest a broad audience, particularly those involved with the production, criticism, theory, and history of contemporary art.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003ch3\u003eBack Jacket\u003c\/h3\u003e\u003cp\u003eThis book offers a more rigorous historical and cultural analysis than earlier texts on Ana Mendieta. It adds usefully to one's understanding of Mendieta's work and will contribute to her insertion into history.--Mira Schor, author of \"Wet: On Painting, Feminism, and Art Culture\"\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"BooksCloud","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50123269079263,"sku":"9780822323242","price":28.03,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0813\/8958\/4607\/files\/4ra6NNJWIH9780822323242.webp?v=1781693874"}],"url":"https:\/\/blackandbarhe.com\/collections\/jane-blocker.oembed","provider":"Black \u0026 Barhe Bookstore","version":"1.0","type":"link"}