Gregg Bordowitz: Possibilities in Theory

During the 1980s and 1990s many New York artists felt a sense of permission granted by semiotic, structuralist, and post-structuralist theory read in English translations of works written in French by Roland Barthes, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault and many others. The wide-spread effects of these readings were both energizing and limiting. Artist Gregg Bordowitz recalls that so-called “French Theory” suggested artistic methods that did indeed result in genuine alternatives to established contemporary gallery practices. These alternatives were claimed by both artists and activists combining a variety of different approaches—including visual arts, writing, performance, street activism, and models for institution-building—that defeated inherited distinctions among disciplines. Are those developments relevant to present circumstances? What can we learn from the past?

Artist and writer Gregg Bordowitz will present a lecture followed by a conversation with Benoît Loiseau.