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Jenny Holzer's 'Lustmord' and the project of resonant criticism

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journal contribution
posted on 2011-08-24, 08:37 authored by Marsha Meskimmon
Responding to the systematic rape and murder of thousands of women in brutal acts of ‘ethnic cleansing’ during the Bosnian War, Jenny Holzer produced the powerful Lustmord during 1993 and 1994. The project is complex and thought-provoking, not least because its texts, images and objects call to observers’ own bodies, insisting that they participate in the work rather than stand outside it. Lustmord thus redefines the conventional relationship between desire and the gaze, which locates the encounter between subject and object as a unidirectional function of lack. This work creates a different space, one which is troubling and powerful precisely because it sets up reciprocal, intersubjective relationships through spectatorship. Thinking about the implications of this project, its strategies and modes of making ‘history’, will concern me throughout this essay, but a few introductory comments by way of description are necessary first.

History

School

  • The Arts, English and Drama

Department

  • Arts

Citation

MESKIMMON, M., 2000. Jenny Holzer's 'Lustmord' and the project of resonant criticism. n.paradoxa: International Feminist Art Journal, 6 (Desire and the Gaze, July 2000), pp. 12-21.

Publisher

© KT Press

Version

  • AM (Accepted Manuscript)

Publication date

2000

Notes

This article was published in the journal n.paradoxa: International Feminist Art Journal [© KT Press]. The published version including images is available from KT Press.

ISSN

1461-0424

eISSN

1462-0426

Language

  • en

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