Cecelia Condit: Curated by Mary Lucier

Cecelia Condit

CUE Art Foundation

Cecelia Condit Curated by Mary Lucier

CUE Art Foundation September 6 – October 13, 2008

CUE Art Foundation

CUE Art Foundation is a 501 (c)(3) non-profit forum for contemporary art and cultural exchange that provides opportunities and resources for under-recognized artists. We value the astonishing diversity of creativity that artists provide and the importance of their activity in the social context of the city.

Board of Directors

Gregory Amenoff Theodore S. Berger Patricia Caesar Thomas G. Devine Brian D. Starer Thomas K.Y. Hsu

CUE provides artists, students, scholars and art professionals resources at many stages of their careers and creative lives. Our programs include exhibitions, studio residencies, publications, professional development seminars, educational outreach, symposia, readings, concerts and performances. Since 2002, we have operated from our 4,500 square foot storefront venue in the heart of New York’s Chelsea Arts District.

Advisory Council

Gregory Amenoff Bill Berkson William Corbett Michelle Grabner (TK) Jonathan Lethem Lari Pittman Marjorie Welish

CUE exhibiting artists are chosen by their peers and a rotating group of advisors and curators from across the country. This pluralistic process ensures that CUE consistently offers diverse viewpoints from multiple disciplines of artistic practice.

Staff

Executive Director Jeremy Adams Programs Director Beatrice Wolert-Weese Programs Assistant Ryan White

Simply put, we give artists their CUE to take center stage in the challenging world of art.

Development Assistant Talia Spetter Preparator Bill Bolton

Artist: Cecelia Condit

Biography

I consider myself a storyteller whose work swings between beauty and the grotesque,

Cecelia Condit studied sculpture at The Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in

humor and the macabre, innocence and cruelty. My videos explore the dark side of

Philadelphia, PA; received a B.F.A. in sculpture at the Philadelphia College of Art, and

female subjectivity and address the fear, aggression and displacement that exist between

an M.F.A. in photography from Tyler School of Art, Philadelphia, PA. She has received

ourselves and society; ourselves and the natural world. In the psychological landscape

numerous awards for her work including fellowships from The John Simon Guggenheim

of contemporary fairy tales, I have tried to chart a course free of stereotypes, addressing

Memorial Fellowship, the American Film Institute, the National Endowment for the

the ambiguities between personal identity and the external expectations which lie just

Arts and the Mary L. Nohl Fund. Her videos have been widely shown internationally

beneath the surface of everyday life.

at institutions and festivals including the Biennale de Paris; The Museum of Modern

Art, New York, NY; the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, PA; The Institute of

Over time, I find that I have carved out a somewhat uneasy terrain, where

commonplace experiences turn uncanny and the objective sense of what is “real” no

Contemporary Art, Boston, MA; and the Milwaukee Art Museum, WI. She is currently

longer controls the heart of the narrative. I have found my voice in that eerie space

Professor of Film and Video and Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of Film

between waking and sleeping, where the dark forest of dreams presents perils, unclear

at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Condit’s exhibition at CUE Art Foundation

guideposts and few to trust. Perhaps it is because of the importance of dreams in my

marks her first solo show in New York.

work that masks have been so significant. Masks can be put on or taken off. They can be funny or they can hide frightening possibilities — always suggesting insights into the

www.ceceliacondit.com

complexity and subtleties of human relationships.

Music also seems to come from a primordial space that sits just outside the frame,

always loaded with irony, danger or both. It sets the tone and clarifies what I want the viewer to experience. Formerly, writing the lyrics and putting them to music was the first and perhaps the most important part of my production process, often taking just as long as the shooting and editing combined. Recently, the songs have been replaced with instrumental or electronic compositions. I have begun to think of music as a strange language - both intimate and very foreign. It is able to express sensations that I cannot say with either spoken words or visual images.

In my most recent video, Annie Lloyd, I have discovered a voice where troubled

spirits do not haunt the gentle thoughts of either my mother or me. I focus on a very sturdy present tense and a past that is more forgiving. Working with my very old mother, we have come together to form a new relationship that may only have been possible during her last few years. In Annie Lloyd, we spin stories into a dance of identities between mother and daughter, weaving tales of remembering and becoming.

Curator: Mary Lucier

Biography

Cecelia Condit is a master of single-channel video. Since her first tape piece, Beneath

Mary Lucier has made work in many mediums including sculpture, photography and

the Skin in 1981, she has employed various recurring devices such as narration, mimicry

performance, but has concentrated primarily on video and installation since 1973,

and masks to present stories of profound dislocation and unease in women’s lives. As

producing numerous multiple and single-channel pieces. She arrived in New York City in

expressed through their relationships — to men, to other women (primarily mothers

1974 and has lived and worked there and in upstate New York since. Her work has been

and sisters), to children, and even to animals — these women’s tales dig deep into our

shown internationally in museums, galleries and festivals and is represented in many

own psyches. The work speaks powerfully of dysfunctional families, night terrors and a

public and private collections including the Whitney Museum of American Art, New

certain gnawing, horror-within-the-ordinary — the quality of a lingering nightmare one

York, NY; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA; The Museum of

can’t quite banish, even in the plain light of morning. The cinematic beauty of Condit’s

Modern Art, New York, NY; ZKM - Museum fur Neue Kunst in Karlsruhe, Germany; the

visuals works effectively in contrast to the narrative line which often recounts dark dreams

Museo Nacional Centro De Arte Reina Sofia in Madrid, Spain; and the Milwaukee Art

of pursuit and capture. There is a clear development in Condit’s early work of woman-

Museum, WI. Lucier has been the recipient of grants, fellowships and commissions from

centered themes, from the bizarre story of murder and deception in Beneath the Skin, to

public and private foundations including Creative Capital, the Rockefeller Foundation,

cannibalism in Possibly in Michigan, to the rather bitter tale of struggle between youth and

The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the National Endowment for the

old age in Not a Jealous Bone, to the more subtle depiction of middle class married life in

Arts, the New York State Council on the Arts, Anonymous Was A Woman, and the Nancy

Suburbs of Eden.

Graves Foundation. Recently, she was named recipient of the Skowhegan Medal for

Video for 2007. Lucier and Cecelia Condit met in 1981 and their dialogue about work has

Whether the leading persona is a lone narrator, still in shock and amazement at

her own (true?) horror tale, a cynical pair of young women bent on revenge, an older

been lively and ongoing.

woman at war with the narcissistic beauty for the prize of eternal youth, or the cool, sleek suburban couple trapped in “paradise,” Condit identifies the anxiety and apprehension that shadow women’s lives. She deals with that part of female experience — whether inculcated, remembered, or mythical — that invokes witches, nervous breakdowns, neurasthenia and despair. In what might be called her “middle period,” Condit addresses conflicted love between mothers and daughters in the multi-generational Oh, Rapunzel (2008); cross-species identification in Why Not a Sparrow (2002-2005) and All About a Girl (2004); and the betrayal and cruelty of pre-pubescent friendship in Little Spirits (2005). In her most recent work, shown for the first time at CUE Art Foundation, the aggrieved “Mother” of Oh, Rapunzel becomes the venerated “Mom” of Annie Lloyd (2008). Here, the narrative voice that addresses us throughout all of Condit’s work has modulated and it is a fonder, filial narrator who guides us through the work’s 18 minutes.

Condit still excavates the past and references dreams in this portrayal of her mother at 90. There are vivid memories, but all the demons have gone. We see Annie Lloyd and the artist-daughter in various stages of their lives, through diverse media — film, photography, video — in black and white and color, brilliantly edited into an affecting portrait of aging and acceptance. As Annie Lloyd says: “Maybe looking to the future, and going up through the steps of the past is how we learn to die.”

Cecelia Condit

Annie Lloyd 2008, Video still

Annie Lloyd 2008, Video still

Annie Lloyd 2008, Video still

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Mom in Fall 2008, Video still from Annie Lloyd

Leaves and Hands 2008, Video still from Annie Lloyd

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top: Maybe looking to, 2008, Video still from Annie Lloyd bottom: Going up, 2008, Video still from Annie Lloyd (b/w)

How we learn to die 2008, Video still from Annie Lloyd (b/w)

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Little Spirits 2005, Video still

All About a Girl 2004, Video still

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Why Not a Sparrow 2003, Video still

Oh, Rapunzel 1996, Video still

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Lost in the Badlands: Cecelia Condit’s Ephemeral Collection

By Kerrie Welsh

This essay was written

“Here, indeed, lies the whole miracle of collecting.

as part of the Young Art

For it is invariably oneself that one collects.”

Critics Mentoring Program,

—Jean Baudrillard

a partnership between AICA USA (US section of

“Collecting … originates in the need to tell stories,

International Association

but for which there are neither words nor other

of Art Critics) and CUE Art

conventional modes.” —Mieke Bal/Susan Pearce

Foundation, which pairs emerging writers with

Mummies swing toward us. Gnarled hands caress

AICA mentors to produce

smooth skin. A crow turns its head in surprise. “I have

original essays on a specific

an identification with the crow, because it’s a scavenger,”

exhibiting artist. Please visit

Cecelia Condit tells me. She describes herself as a collector

www.aicausa.org for further

of images. “I’m driving down the road and I see a man

information on AICA USA.

digging a grave. So I stop and ask if I can film him. If they’re not my stories, they’re other people’s and I connect with them.”

Condit’s work can be unnerving. Her early video

pieces, Beneath the Skin, Possibly in Michigan, Not a Jealous Bone and Suburbs of Eden, won critical acclaim Not a jealous bone 1987, Video still

cracking the boundaries between reality and fiction, artifice and documentary. But the reception was mixed: Possibly in Michigan was vilified on Pat Robertson’s 700 Club and denounced as “lesbian and anti-male” in the congressional

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Lost in the Badlands: Cecelia Condit’s Ephemeral Collection

debates on the National Endowment for the Arts (Condit is a two-time award recipient).

breeze. Ghostly laughter surrounds us; we barely hear the faint echo of wind-chimes

behind it. There’s a magical quality to this evocation of the wind—of forces we look at

What some condemn, others celebrate. Laura Kipnis, the culture and media

critic, describes Condit as “the most serious practitioner of the grotesque in video art.”

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but cannot see. Soon Condit tells us in her characteristically intimate and unsettling

Condit’s work is often positioned with a group of feminist media-makers, which includes

voiceover “My mother collects leaves. I collect stories. Mother’s stories.” The last

Kipnis, Dara Birnbaum, Vanalyne Green and Jeanne C. Finley. If early feminist media

statement is offered with the teasing intonation of one who likes to open doors that

is sometimes associated with austerity and theory, this postmodern group, engaged

others would prefer left closed.

with popular culture and television conventions, is known for pastiche, ambiguity and

On its translucent surface, Annie Lloyd is a portrait in which Condit and her mother

pleasure. “I wasn’t trying to make a feminist statement,” Condit says, “I was just trying to

collide in a dreamlike tapestry that confuses parent and child—a theme that runs

figure out what I thought about the world. At that point few feminist pieces were being

throughout Condit’s work. It is also, like many of her videos, an exploration of “the space

made, there were just pretty girls. I was trying to create a world that had more to do with

between when people are dead and alive.” Condit, whose mother describes herself as an

what women really go through. It became feminist, and it was a surprise to me.”

artist who didn’t practice, asks, “Is it the provocativeness of knowing in 30 years I may

In Possibly in Michigan, two women shop for perfume in a suburban mall. “Smells like

look exactly like her?” When we see high contrast footage of a younger Annie Lloyd

mother’s crazy sister Kate,” asserts one of the women in sing-song. We see a frenetic

rolling toward the camera out of darkness, there’s a sense of déjà vu. For a moment we

8-millimeter image of a mussy-haired woman running away from the camera on a snow-

aren’t sure whether we are looking at the filmmaker or her mother. In either case, we

covered country road. It is the perfect picture of madness. But as the image recurs

are reminded of the Victorian girls and boys rolling in epileptic fits that first appear in

throughout the tape, its meaning changes. As the women are chased out of the mall by a

Beneath the Skin. This 16-millimeter film footage of her mother rolling actually predates

masked man, the clip appears again while the operatic soundtrack asks “Remember the

her ‘first’ video: Condit began collecting long before she began sharing her visions.

time I kissed a guy who ate his women friends… is he following?” In this context, running

Condit worked in nursing homes throughout her 20s, accumulating stories that are

away doesn’t seem so crazy.

retold in her films. During this period she was printing life-size photographs of people

and placing them in landscapes. She met the American photographer William Larson,

This play with the signifier and signified runs through Condit’s work, connecting

the early pieces to what CUE exhibition curator, Mary Lucier calls Condit’s “middle

a pivotal figure in her life. “He encouraged me to go into film and video. He thought

period.” In Oh Rapunzel, Why Not a Sparrow, All About a Girl and Little Spirits, collected

I might be a storyteller.” She bought a 16-millimeter camera and shot images of her

visions of mummies, masks and Condit’s mother, Annie Lloyd, return again and again,

parents turning and rolling, holding photographic masks up to their faces — a film she

taking on new meanings in new contexts. In Oh Rapunzel, a close-up of Annie Lloyd’s

treasured, but never showed. “Mother is holding up her face as though her paper face

paralyzed foot is followed by a wide shot of a girl scurrying away with an unusual

might have more to say than the face she really wears.” Thirty years later, in Annie

hobble. The edit echos the video’s theme that stories unfold throughout generations.

Lloyd, we are treated to glimpses of these paper bodies, so uncannily like the real

In Condit’s work, stories also unfold throughout the ongoing collection. These recurring

bodies in Condit’s films.

specters are embedded within Condit’s unsettling visual strategies of layering images

(such as projections, images on TV, superimpositions); making still pictures appear

Condit’s hyper-real questioning of documentary truth; and Mary Lucier, whose “sense

uncannily alive either by turning or swinging the picture itself or by moving the camera;

of the female body in the landscape” resonates with Condit’s own “longing for a

and using off angles. These motifs continue to shock and inspire as they generate new

personal landscape.” Condit says, “For me it was the woods. The woods are mysterious,

meanings.

frightening and oh so alluring.” Though she describes the forests in her work as “civilized,

benign looking forests,” she points out that “there is that wildness just off the frame.” She

Annie Lloyd, the latest in this body of visceral single-channel pieces, marks a

departure from the tongue-in-cheek irony and barbaric glee of Condit’s earlier work.

Other influences include Leslie Thornton, whose Peggy and Fred in Hell, shares

tells a story of getting lost in the badlands of South Dakota:

“The world is different, there’s a gentleness to it,” she says. “It opens up whole new

“I thought I hadn’t gone far. But when I had gotten the footage I wanted, I

doors.” The video begins with a field of golden wildflowers swaying dreamily in the

found I was surrounded by nothing … there was to be a frost that night and all afternoon it was getting colder and colder. I found the road at dusk. There was one car in the distance with an older man and woman. It was a simple

1 “Female Transgression” in Resolutions: Contemporary Video Practices edited by Michael Renov and Erika Suderburg. University of Minnosota Press: 1995 p 342 22

dirt road and I realized that this was my only chance. I wouldn’t let them past. They were terrified actually. They thought I was MAD!” 23

Lost in the Badlands: Cecelia Condit’s Ephemeral Collection

It has all the elements of a traditional Condit tale: the mundane turned terrible,

a quiet country road, the family triangle and, of course, madness. “It is an important story to me,” she says, “because nature became no longer just a beautiful thing to walk through… but a force that was extremely dangerous.”

In Condit’s deft hands, many seemingly beautiful things are revealed to be dangerous, while mundane moments in life are shown to be truly beautiful. Annie Lloyd is filled with provocative moments that, she says, “most people would walk right past.”

Condit lingers on these moments-- sometimes agonizingly. We watch Annie Lloyd walk up the stairs. She looks young to us--she was only 60 back then. She carefully pulls herself up the three huge stone steps, taking them one by one as a child would. Her pigeon-toed, paralyzed foot drags heavily. We almost feel her shoes scraping the stone until she reaches the top. The image is simple and heartbreaking in the best way— without one tinge of pity. The same image that in Oh Rapunzel whispered that wounds work their way through generations, now insists on people’s resilience and dignity.

If in Annie Lloyd, “the demons are all gone” as Mary Lucier suggests in her curator’s statement, they have been replaced by ghosts. Condit is an unyielding guide through such territory and is anything but lost.

Kerrie Welsh, Brooklyn, NY, July 2008 All quotes are from interviews with the author

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is a Brooklyn-based multimedia artist and educator interested in rethinking genre, mixing mediums and practicing alternative production paradigms. Her work has shown in venues including Performance Mix at Joyce SoHo, New York, NY; Raw Material at Dance New Amsterdam, New York, NY; Body Blend at Dixon Place, New York, NY; Coney Island Film Festival, New York, NY; LadyFest East, New York, NY; Rehoboth Beach Film Society’s sponsored Film Festival, Rehobooth, DE; the Inova Galleries, Milwaukee, WI; the Green Gallery’s Video Arcade, Milwaukee, WI; and the Philadelphia Live Arts Festival, Philadelphia, PA. Her current project, Trace Decay, was developed at the Swarthmore Project, a residency program sponsored by Swarthmore College, Swarthmore, PA. Kerrie holds an MFA from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s experimental media program; an MA in Women Studies from The Ohio State Univeristy, Columbus, OH; and a BFA in film from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, where she developed and taught Women in the Director’s Chair with the filmmaker Louise Tiranoff.

Kerrie Welsh

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The mentor was Michael Rush , the Director of The Rose Art Museum of Brandeis University, Waltham, MA. A widely published author and critic, his books include Video Art (2004, fully revised 2nd edition 2007) New Media in Art (2005), New Media in Late 20th-Century Art (2001), all published

by Thames and Hudson. Other books include monographs on artists Marjetica Potrč, Gunther Brus, Steve Miller and Alexis Rockman. Since the early 1990s he has contributed regularly to numerous publications including Art in America, Art on Paper, The New York Times, Artext, Bookforum, and many others. His numerous award-winning curatorial projects have ranged from international exhibitions of video art to thematic exhibitions on performance and surveillance and the legacy of Surrealism.

CUE Art Foundation’s operations and programs are made possible with the generous support of foundations, corporations, government agencies, individuals, and its membership.

Major program support is provided by:

Major program support is provided by: Accademia Charitable Foundation Viking Foundation Agnes Gund and Daniel Shapiro The Pollock-Krasner Foundation The Greenwall Foundation The Foundation for Contemporary Arts The Joan Mitchell Foundation Holland & Knight Charitable Foundation, Inc. The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts National Endowment for the Arts New York State Council for the Humanities

(a state affiliate of the National Endowment

for the Humanities)

New York City Department of Cultural Affairs New York State Council on the Arts (a State agency).

A ny views , findings , conclusions or recommendations e x pressed in this catalogue do not necessarily represent those of the N ew York Council for the H umanities or N ational E ndowment for the H umanities .

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CUE Art Foundation 511 West 25th Street New York, NY 10003 212-206-3583 f 212-206-0321 cueartfoundation.org

Cover Image: Annie Lloyd, 2008; Photo by Walter Condit All artwork Š Cecelia Condit ISBN-10: 0-9797964-6-6 ISBN-13: 978-0-9797964-6-3 Catalog design: eleventwelve.com Printed by mar+x myles inc. using 100% wind-generated power on FSC certified paper

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CUE Art Foundation 511 West 25th Street, New York, NY 10003 212-206-3583 f 212-206-0321 cueartfoundation.org