Saturday, 28 May 2016, 06–08 pm

Lecture in English

During documenta 9 in 1992, Zoe Leonard had emptied a number of rooms of the city’s Neue Galerie of various male depictions, replacing them by nineteen close up black and white photographs of female genitalia. Simply affixed to the museum’s papered walls, they were installed between old master paintings of women from the Neue Galerie’s collection. This installation was an audacious gesture in institutional critique. It represents also a moment of epitomy in what has been called the „Sex Wars“ in America. I wish to retrace a few parts of its history, from the „pussy talk“ in literature and its filmic incarnations, to the moral panics in which homophobia plays a central role; and from the virulent debates in pro and anti-porn feminism to AIDS awareness raising. This lecture is part of my forthcoming book, What AIDS has done to me. Art and activism at the end of the XXth C.

Elisabeth Lebovici completed a PhD in Aesthetics in 1983. She has been writing art criticism since 1985, and was an arts and culture editor for Libération, from 1991 to 2006. She is currently a lecturer at Sciences-Po, Paris, as well as a freelance writer and has opened the blog: le-beau-vice.blogspot.com She has been involved since the 1990’s into writing on feminism, AIDS activism, queer politics and contemporary arts. In 1998, she edited L’Intime (Paris, ensb-a). She is the author, with Catherine Gonnard, of a history of women artists in France between 1880 and nowadays: Femmes/artistes, Artistes/femmes, Paris de 1880 à nos jours (Paris, Hazan, 2007). Her latest publication: What AIDS Has Done To Me. Art and Activism at the End of the XXth C, will be published in February 2017. She is in charge (with Patricia Falguières and Natasa Petresin-Bachelez) of a weekly seminar at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) in Paris titled: Something You Should Know: Artists and Producers (sysk-ehess.tumblr.com). Lebovici is a member of the research group: Travelling Féministe around the archives of the Centre audiovisuel Simone de Beauvoir, Paris (travellingfeministe.org).