Towards a Feminist Practice: notes on listening / Marisa C. Sánchez
Informed by the motivations and focus of the Second Shelf project, this talk pursues questions including: how do we listen? What tone is set by providing a space for something to be heard? Is there a politics of hearing? Emerging from an interest in listening as a mode of feminist practice, this lecture situates listening alongside the voice, which has occupied a primary role within feminist thought and theory. In thinking through feminist interventions made by visual artists since the 1950s and the implications of making minor histories audible, this talk will also discuss pedagogical concerns that arose when teaching a feminist art history survey course of modern and contemporary art taught within an art school setting.
Marisa C. Sánchez is a PhD Candidate in Art History, Visual Art and Theory at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada. Her dissertation, The Beckett Effect: The Work of Stan Douglas, Paul Chan, and Tania Bruguera examines the uses of Beckett’s discursive reverberations within these artists’ visual practices, locating the “Beckett Effect” as politically and artistically significant in contemporary art. Prior to her doctoral studies, Marisa was Associate Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Seattle Art Museum, where she curated exhibitions, including love fear pleasure lust pain glamour death – Andy Warhol Media Works, and solo projects with artists Sandra Cinto, Trenton Doyle Hancock, Corin Hewitt, Heide Hinrichs and Mika Tajima.
Sánchez holds an MA in Art History, Theory and Criticism from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where she wrote her thesis Globe Trotting: Gabriel Orozco’s Global Nomadism. Her writing and criticism have appeared in exhibition catalogues and journals, including a recent interview with Stan Douglas in Samuel Beckett and Contemporary Art (2017). Marisa has taught art history as Sessional Faculty at Emily Carr University of Art + Design, Vancouver. She serves as Chair on the Public Art Committee for the City of Vancouver. She is currently a member of Doryphore Independent Curators Collective, Vancouver.
This lecture is part of the shelf talks lecture series in the library of the Royal Academy.
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ABOUT SHELF TALKS / SECOND SHELF
Our frame of reference is very important in the way we think and in the way artists create. By supporting this research project, the Academy is exploring the diversity of (art) books in the library and broadening this frame. In Heide Hinrichs’ project “second shelf” books are being integrated into the Academy’s collection with a special code so you can track this invisible thematic series. In addition to the acquisition of books by non-white, non-male and non-heterosexual artists, and interventions in the library, second shelf is hosting a series of "shelf talks”. The book selection, interventions and talks are curated in collaboration with partners in Germany, UK, US and Canada.
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Read more: www.second-shelf.org/about/