FEBRUARY 22 - JUNE 9, 2019 BCA CENTER, BURLINGTON, VERMONT
The skin preserves the balance of our inner environment from exogenous disturbances but in its form, texture, coloring, and scars it retains the marks of those disturbances. — Didier Anzieu, The Skin-Ego
Karl Grabe, Courtmacsherry/Kilbrittain Whale, Internet image capture, January 17, 2009, Co. Cork, IrelandÂ
FOREWORD
Artist’s studio, 2018. Courtesy of BCA Center
Skin Ego is Rebecca Weisman’s most significant work to
The globe of fleshy whale intestines was provocative in its
date. It is the culmination of past projects, such as Cadere
contradictions of innate beauty and grotesque inspiration.
and the Weal (2014) and Ethan Allen Nights (2010-13), as
What I found most intriguing was the convergence of creative
well as more temporary site-based installations such as An
process and psychoanalytic theory that informed Weisman’s
Order (2015) which were fleeting in duration. In Skin Ego,
proposal for Skin Ego, an installation that evokes larger
Weisman has impressively realized her vision to intertwine
discussions about the conscious and unconscious realms that
the image of an enigmatic event with past iterations of
form our identities. Skin Ego didn’t exist beyond a conceptual
her artistic practice creating a multi-faceted and intensely
idea, some preparatory drawings and an intestine sculpture,
process-based art installation. For those who venture on
yet Rebecca’s ideas, and artistic vision compelled me to help
the personal and philosophical journey offered by Skin Ego,
support the work being shown at the BCA Center. While it
prepare for a sense of transformation and mystery.
was experimental and had an inherent level of risk for both artist and curator—it was also captivating, and innovative.
Nearly two years ago, when I met with Rebecca Weisman at
Rebecca Weisman: Skin Ego would be the third installment of
her Richmond, Vermont studio, I was struck by her passion
BCA Center’s Project Vermont series.
to realize Skin Ego. Her studio was filled with drawings and quotes, all centered on an image capture from the
internet of a fisherman taking part in a whale necropsy.
Experimentation. Creation. Risk. These ideas are the foundation of Project Vermont, a series dedicated to providing
Near the front of the studio, one sculpture of suspended
a setting for contemporary Vermont artists to push their
intestines had been completed, and further back in the space,
artistic practice while creating new work. BCA Center’s
the artist had begun to experiment with the wood armature
Project Vermont is conceived as a means to help artists
and foam materials that would eventually form the whale.
realize new, often complex, and thought-provoking projects
It was obvious that Weisman’s vision for the installation
for their development and for the benefit of the greater
was bold in its proposed complexity and scale. Skin Ego
community. As Vermont’s leading contemporary art venue,
had developed conceptually and was now at a critical
BCA Center is dedicated to supporting Vermont artists
moment: it required time, materials, and a public space
through original exhibitions and commissions. We strive to
for its realization.
create a dynamic and accessible center for art, artists,
Preliminary drawing and quote, artist’s studio, 2018. Courtesy of BCA Center
Artist fabricating skin of whale, artist’s studio, 2018. Courtesy of Rebecca Weisman
and audience while also fostering critical dialogue and
Karl Grabe, Mark Prent, Rob Ray, Jacob Royer, Dr. Joy
placing our community within a global context.
Reidenberg, Pádraig Whooley, Dana Heffern, Clark Derbes, Lakshmi Tinker, and Amanda Duane.
Rebecca Weisman: Skin Ego was made possible by a generous grants from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts
And my final warm and sincere thanks extend to the artist,
in support of innovative and challenging work created by
Rebecca Weisman, for the inspiration, talent, patience, and
contemporary artists and the National Endowment for the
collaboration she exemplified in bringing Skin Ego to BCA
Arts’ Art Works program to enrich the public’s understanding
Center and our community.
of art and its role in our community. In addition, our thanks for the ongoing support provided to BCA by the Vermont
Heather Ferrell
Arts Council.
Director and Curator of Exhibitions BCA Center
Skin Ego would not have been possible without the dedication of many individuals. In particular, I would like to acknowledge the talented BCA staff, especially Colin Storrs, Curatorial Assistant, who worked tirelessly with the artist and myself with to realize the project; Melinda Johns, Education Coordinator, Ted Olson, Design Director, Dr. Sarah Rogers, Editor, and Andrew Krebbs, Communications Director. I’d also like to acknowledge the support of our invaluable curatorial interns who worked on this project: Gemma Cirignano, Charlie Dayton, Quin Feder, and Barrie Knapp. On behalf of Rebecca Weisman and myself I would also like to thank the following people for helping the artist realize Skin Ego’s fabrication and installation: Wright and Misha Cronin, Rob Palmer, Alexander Grant, Roxanne Vought,
Installation view, Skin Ego, 2019, BCA Center
Installation view, Skin Ego, 2019, BCA Center
INTRODUCTION
Rebecca Weisman examines unconscious and psychological
scattered along the wall and floor. This seemingly grotesque
spaces of identity and the body. For Skin Ego, the artist
scene evokes a visceral, sensory reaction as well as an
combined film, installation, sound, and sculpture to create a
aesthetic appreciation for the strange beauty of something
fully immersive large-scale installation for the BCA Center
that “is at once poignant and pleasurable.”1
as part of the Project Vermont series. Skin Ego is a both a natural progression of Weisman’s Skin Ego centers on an immense, eight by twenty foot
earlier creative projects and a dramatic plunge toward a
sculptural reconstruction of a section of a Finback whale,
new chapter in her artistic practice. Beginning with a found
pink and red streaked intestines spilling from its split skin
image capture from the internet of a whale dissection,
onto the gallery floor. Swaying at intervals from hooks in
Weisman began incorporating research of this event with
the ceiling are two separate masses of intestines that draw
found footage, quotes and drawings, sculptures, filmed
our eye to the remnants of the fisherman. Entering the
re-enactments, and in the final weeks of the project, sound.
whale, one moves from an exterior into an interior realm.
Using a multidisciplinary approach, she rejects notions that
In the darkened space of the whale’s belly, four films feature
an artist must limit how they create work. The artist reveals
different scenes that layer found video footage of a whale’s
her process is akin to a form of eclectic cross-pollination
necropsy with the artist’s re-enactment of the event. An
steeped in 60s and 70s conceptual and performance art.
enigmatic score fills the space, conveying a mood that is as comforting as it is disquieting. Tonal tempos are punctuated
Since graduate school, Weisman’s creative production
by an Irish fisherman’s voice as he recites excerpts from French
has centered on ecology, land, and the intersection of
psychoanalyst Didier Anzieu’s book, The Skin-Ego (1985).
the figure with the environment. Her work is often sitespecific and is deeply influenced by feminism, film theory,
Leaving the whale’s interior one encounters the ephemera
and philosophy, especially as it relates to psychoanalysis.
of the artist’s performance – suit, boots, gloves, and flensing
She cites two influential artists to her practice: American
knife – accompanied by scores of whale teeth mounted and
pioneer video and performance artist, Joan Jonas (b. 1936),
1
Rebecca Weisman’s artist proposal for Skin Ego (2018).
and English filmmaker Tacita Dean (b. 1965). Jonas, an
Through this complex and ambiguous process, a deeper
acclaimed multimedia artist, creates experimental films
meaning emerges from within Skin Ego, one that utilizes
based on mythic narratives that are considered foundational
psychoanalytic theory and process-based exploration to
for contemporary video performance. Dean explores the
question the mystery of our inner nature. Our sense of
metaphorical richness of motifs, such as land and sea,
personal identity and our unconscious is shaped by our
through films complemented with drawing, photography,
experiences of the world as mediated by the skin – our
sound, and narration. Weisman also references the use
container and boundary between the inner and outer
of evocative materials, such as fat and felt, in the work
worlds. Skin Ego challenges us to look within and
of German Fluxus artist Joseph Beuys (1959-1986) as
pursue the mystery of one’s self: our ego.
significant to her practice. Heather Ferrell Skin Ego is comprised of several narrative threads that weave a story about the body’s corporeal nature: its permeability and messiness, as well as the physical and psychic viscera it strives to contain. Resonating within the installation is the voice of the fisherman/filmmaker as he recites Sigmund Freud’s original text and impetus for Didier Anzieu’s eponymous book and theory:
The ego is first and foremost a bodily ego; it is not merely a surface entity, but itself the projection of a surface. I.e. the ego is ultimately derived from bodily sensations, chiefly from those springing from the surface of the body. It may thus be regarded as a mental projection of the surface of the body...2
Weisman explores these concepts further through a series of dichotomous relationships: fisherman and whale; container and contained; mind and body; creator and creation; reality and performance. She refers to these associations as akin to Hegelian dialectics – a contradiction between ideas resolved through a synthesis between two oppositions, or as the artist describes, “where one things turns into its opposite.”3
2 3
Sigmund Freud, The Freud Reader. Ed. Peter Gay (New York: W.W. Norton, 1989). Based on the ideas of German philosopher G. W. F. Hegel (1770-1831).
Director and Curator of Exhibitions BCA Center
Intestines, installation view, Skin Ego, 2019, BCA Center
Whale and Intestines, installation view, Skin Ego, 2019, BCA Center
INTERVIEW WITH REBECCA WEISMAN
AN EXPLORATION OF MATERIALS AND PROCESS The following interview was held on Friday, April 19, 2019 at BCA Center. It has been edited for clarity and brevity.
HEATHER FERRELL
Skin Ego is one of the largest projects, if not the largest project you’ve created to date. How long has this concept been in development?
REBECCA WEISMAN
This was a very long, drawn out project. I spent a lot of time thinking about this project before I did anything. I have been working on this project for about five years.
HF
Could you share an overview of Skin Ego’s development?
RW
The inspiration for Skin Ego came from an image I found on the Internet of a whale in the process of being dissected. That image really struck me. I put it on my wall and I stewed about it for maybe a year before I did anything. I was very interested in it, but I didn’t really know why. It felt important to suspend that awe of the image for a while and not do anything.
HF
But you placed it in your studio?
RW
Yes, to contemplate it, meditate on it. Then I decided that I was going to reenact the image in some way and that there would be a performance component to it, a sculptural component to it, and a video component to it. I started playing with the materials. How was I going to build this thing? What were the materials going to be? I did some tests and I made some small models. I made some of the intestines. I think the first intestine I made was spot on, but the skin took a lot longer to figure out. I knew it had to be layered in some way.
HF RW
The skin of the whale? The skin of the whale was much more structurally complex. I started building it and I developed a technique for the surface. I didn’t have the armature – how was it actually going to be engineered?
When some of those pieces were in place, I had my set for the film. By the time I was ready to film, I had been thinking about these different aspects of what the image means to me and the different narrative threads. A lot of those filmic images that you see were already constructed in my mind; actual filming was rather quick.
HF
Did you use storyboards?
RW
Yes. As I was scratching my head as to how the wood was going to fit in with the skin, which was all becoming very technical, I needed to keep the juiciness of the imagery alive. I was doing drawings, some small paintings, and story boarding in a very loose way for the films.
HF
As what point did sound become incorporated into Skin Ego?
RW
The sound was last. I’m very sensitive when it comes to sound. Sound can be very powerful and can easily overwhelm the experience, so for me the video element leads and the sound needs to support the ambience of the filmic images. I knew some of the tones and more ambient sounds that I want to have in there. The wind over the bottles made the tones that connected with the perforations of the whale, for example. Also, there was going to be some vocal element, and how to incorporate the text? That was a struggle to figure out how to bring the [narrated] text in but not to overwhelm [the viewer].
HF
How did you end up resolving that struggle?
RW
It happened in the [gallery] space. I wanted all of these different symbolic things to be represented in the sound, but they needed to come together and not compete against each other. There was a lot of trial and error.
HF
That brings me to my next question as well as observation. Skin Ego involves multiple components, several types of materials, and the exploration of materials. Were there any elements or materials that were new to your practice?
RW
There were some things that were new, like working in latex. It was really fun to use a material that is easy to use and immediately evocative. There were other things I wanted to use, resin for example. There wasn’t the time to do as much with resin as I wanted or originally planned. I experimented with some other [new] materials, like for the puddle.
HF
The puddle below the fisherman?
RW
The puddle below the fisherman. It’s supposed to evoke a combination of blood and seawater and sand. For that I used material that originally was developed as a theatrical adhesive. It mimics the effects of resin, but it’s much more flexible. I needed that kind of flexibility and to be able to apply it directly [to the gallery floor], pull it up, move it, and play with different tints. This was new to me. The armature of the whale was made from bendable plywood, which I had encountered before, but never had made a whole sculpture from it. The raw wood evokes a kind of bony structure so that felt really fun.
RW
The whale layers are [created by] interspersed foam and laser cut cardboard. Learning how to map a pattern and cut on a laser cutter is not a complicated process, but having to envision making something so large out of such small pieces, that was a new process for me.
HF
Can you share some examples of the metaphoric as well as the aesthetic significance of the materials used in Skin Ego?
RW
I think any material you choose has meaning. It’s important to draw out and utilize the inherent meaning that is in a material and to find the metaphor, the story, that is already there. The latex is a perfect example of this and the way it intersected with the story of the latex gloves [in one of the films], and the fat of the whale leaking through the latex gloves, which was part of the original story that was told to me about the whale.
Also when incorporating video with sculpture it can feel so clunky, as if the image is somehow separate from its context and how it’s displayed is an afterthought. In this project, more than any other project in the past, I wanted the materiality of the filmic images and the physical objects to merge and feel synonymous, feel cross-referential—as if you couldn’t imagine the sculpture without the video, and you couldn’t imagine the video without the sculpture. HF
Your installation incorporates original video footage of a whale necropsy overlaid and combined with your own film reenactments. At what point do these two separate entities become one and the same – what was your intention?
RW
The original image I have of the event already appeared to me as an aesthetic experience. It was a document of a happening. I was interested in overlaying my own, second aesthetic experience on top of that [original]. Naturally, what is real about the happening is brought into question. We assume that the original whale is more real, but I wasn’t there. It only exists as an image, a document. It’s not any more real than anything else. Whereas my reenactment is more tangible,
Progression of video stills, Skin Ego, 2019, BCA Center
it’s more actual in its feeling. I was really there and the audience knows that I was there, and knows that the artist crafted it. Also, the audience experiences the tangible sculptures, the [installation’s] artifacts, so there’s something more real about it. These layers of experience converge and diverge at different points in the films and there’s a conversation between them. HF
You mentioned that when you saw this original film still about five years ago, you were very compelled by it. You said the image only asked questions. Do you continue to ask yourself ‘why this image?’ Has it’s meaning developed over time? Or does it remain a mystery?
RW
I think yes and no. It’s a very mysterious image. At the time, it felt like a cipher to me. I wasn’t sure what was happening in the image – but it felt profound. I really liked that weirdness and that awkwardness. I think I’ve come to treasure and hold close those moments that are almost like little tears in reality—when we are truly baffled and excited by something. That doesn’t happen very often. I think that there’s still more that can be uncovered [while] certain things have risen to the top.
HF
Could you share more of that idea with us?
RW
I think there’s this rupture that’s happening in the image. What’s inside the whale? Its intestines, its viscera, something that should stay hidden, and all of a sudden [it is] exploding out and it’s happening in a moment. I think that moment is symbolic of this kind of interplay between what we try to keep hidden in our own psyche, and in our own bodies ,and what leaks out. Then we try to put it back in, and it leaks out again. The skin is a very permeable, fragile thing. It’s not a strong boundary, so it’s constantly being challenged. Those moments feel important. They’re like little moments of failure. That’s where we come into being, in those moments. There is this man who is poking a whale with his flensing knife. What is he doing? What is his role? He’s instigating this happening, but what is he thinking? Who is he? What is his relationship with this carcass? Is he coming out? Is he going in? Is he an intruder or is he a conductor?
RW
I liked thinking about him as both. As somebody who was a little bit violent, but also in awe like me. So I am him, and he is me. He also feels insignificant. You can see that it’s a whale, even though you don’t see a fin, you don’t see a flipper, but you know it’s big. [The fisherman] all of a sudden he seems very small. He’s having a dramatic moment, but he’s also very insignificant.
HF
You talk about this idea of relationships: your relationship to the image and having it in the studio; your relationship between this figure and the whale; and the [relationship between] interior and exterior worlds – even the relationship that you capture between your film and the original image. What is the importance of relationships in Skin Ego?
RW
From a conceptual or mystical standpoint, things are only defined by what they are not. Where one thing ends and another thing begins is a very gray and liminal space. We talked about rupture, of failure, and suspending those moments just long enough so that a viewer, or the artist, can have the aesthetic experience of it, because they are very fleeting moments. So often the mind comes in and says, ‘Oh, that doesn’t fit with my idea of reality so I’m just not going to allow that in.’ The mind works in such a way that we want to have everything be very cohesive, and of course we are experiencing these ruptures and failures all the time. How do we savor those moments?
HF
So these moments [or ruptures] are more like relationships—a means to understand whom we are [as placed] in opposition to something else. Is it more a dichotomy where you’re purposefully contrasting opposites – gross and beautiful, whale and human?
RW
I think that one thing turns into its opposite over time. Essentially a Hegelian idea. We like to say, “they are in opposition to each other.” The mind likes to make those kinds of separations. There’s another idea about things being in a state of flux. We like to think of ourselves as cohesive, clean beings. Yet there is all of this messiness, and all of these things that we don’t even understand about ourselves and the unconscious. There’s this unknown within. I love that messiness.
HF
This leads me to my last question: would you feel comfortable sharing your own personal experience with psychoanalysis?
RW
Yes, it has been crucial. I think it [psychoanalysis] has been so important for me as an artist to understand ‘what is my process?’ Being in a moment of excitement, a moment of awe, of bafflement, mystery, and being comfortable staying in that messiness – this has been a huge new period of learning in my artistic process.
Storyboard drawings and production photo stills, Skin Ego, 2018. Courtesy of Rebecca Weisman
‌representations of the surface of an object that show it as permeable and fragile (things that are flabby or insubstantial, without clear boundaries, transparent or with a withered, faded, diseased or damaged surface). – Didier Anzou, The Skin-Ego
Interior of whale with videos, installation view, Skin Ego, 2019, BCA Center
(Left) Detail of intestine, Skin Ego, 2019, BCA Center (Right) Iintestine, installation view, Skin Ego, 2019, BCA Center
Visitors on Church Street viewing Skin Ego, 2019, BCA Center
... turning the skin inside out like a glove, making the content into a container, the space inside into a model for structuring the outside and what is felt inwardly into a reality that can be known. – Didier Anzou, The Skin-Ego
(Left) Fisherman and whale teeth, installation view, Skin Ego, 2019, BCA Center (Right) Detail, fisherman and whale teeth, Skin Ego, 2019, BCA Center
ARTIST ESSAY The following essay has been condensed and edited by the artist. It was originally presented as an artist talk on March 6, 2019 at BCA Center.
Skin Ego began with an image that I found on the internet of a man in fisherman’s garb, prodding the belly of a whale, its skin rippling behind him, and it’s intestines, larger than the man himself, spilling out at his feet. Everything about this image was evocative: it’s shapes, colors, and textures. The image only asked questions and as I sat with its mystery, it became apparent that its riddle would reveal something meaningful if I could get underneath its surface. I decided to reenact the image, to build the scene, to insert myself, in the
cohesiveness, is determined by the feelings and sensations
fisherman’s stead. I wanted to understand the relationship
we record on our skin. Anzieu writes that the process of
between the human body, ie my body and this body of the
formulating our inner world, and then projecting it back out
whale, this Other. I wanted to feel the moment of rupture,
again, “consists of turning the skin inside out like a glove,
the event, breaking through the skin, dissolving the
making the content into a container.”2 The experiences
separation between inside and outside. Around the same
we record on our skin create this first container, the
time I came across the following statement by Sigmund
cohesiveness of which we then project back out. Inner and
Freud, a brief declaration in his famous paper,“The Ego
outer experiences are intrinsically linked, aiding each other
and the Id:” “the ego is first and foremost a bodily ego; it
in a process of becoming. This process can all too easily
is not merely a surface entity, but itself the projection of a
become disrupted, the skin being a permeable and fragile
surface.”1 This statement was a launching point, to begin
thing. We develop holes, tears, a sense of things leaking out,
navigating the relationship between the skin of the whale
or outside forces penetrating in. Thus the skin is permeable,
(our skin), that ultimate boundary of one’s internal life,
open to damage and scarring.
and what remains hidden, or is intended to remain hidden but nonetheless leaks out.
As we enter the whale in Skin Ego we hear these bits of Freud’s and Anzieu’s text through the voice of Karl Grabe.
Skin Ego borrows its name from the text by French
An amateur filmmaker and whale enthusiast, Grabe
psychoanalyst, Didier Anzieu, who expands on Freud’s
spent a windy, cold January day on the coast of Ireland
speculation that the ego, our own internal sense of
documenting the dissection of a Finback whale, from which
the aforementioned still image that inspired my project
In the original film, a hole was cut large enough for the
was extracted. It became important to my project that this
viscera of the whale to spill out onto the salty mixture of
event, this disturbance, really happened, an enactment
water, blood, and sand pooling around the whale. The skin,
of Freud and Anzieu’s ideas. I watched Mr. Grabe’s film
removed in one giant sheet, was pulled across the beach by
and began a process of creative research into the whale’s
heavy excavators. The intestines too were carted off. My
necropsy, eventually interviewing three individuals: Karl
second and third videos show my handmade intestines being
Grabe; Joy Reidenberg, the head anatomist; and Padraig
lifted away by the excavator with the dissector/fisherman
Whooley, the “fisherman” from the image, a volunteer
(the artist) on board, and the cutting open of the whale’s skin
with the Irish Whale and Dolphin Group. I realized that
revealing its intestines inside. In my telling, the dissector/
our processes, though different, were intrinsically linked
fisherman actually enters the whale, merges with it, and
and that their stories would became fodder for my own
the two images, human and whale, original and reenacted
reenactment, eventually resulting in the layering of my
dissolve into each other. The rupture occurs not just on the
own video performance over bits of Grabe’s original footage.
surface of the skin but within the structure of the filmic image itself.
As you enter the whale in Skin Ego, you encounter four videos. The first is my reenactment of the removal of the
The fourth video shows the hands and gloves as crucial
animal’s skin through a process of small perforations.
instruments, both in the original event as the dissector/
These holes reveal images of the weeping wounds of
fisherman penetrates the skin with his flensing knife, and
the real whale bleeding through and Dr. Reidenberg, the
also within the construction of the image, the artist’s hands
anatomist, is seen perforating the circumference of the
pushing through the image searching for something that lies
whale’s skin, each hole emitting gas, a sound like a church
beyond it. We see the blubber of the whale bleeding through
organ, until a symphony of sounds are emitted from inside
hands and image in a kind of endless loop.3 We can read the
the decaying space of the whale’s interior. You hear my
holes in the whale as ruptures or tears, but also as portals
own imagining of the tones the whale emitted, like wind
bringing us back into the unconscious itself. When inside the
over the opening of a glass bottle, or steam coming from
belly of the whale, feeling its enclosure, we are in, “the belly
somewhere deep within.
of the Other,”which is really a metaphoric space for our own Rebecca Weisman, video stills, Skin Ego, 2019
Conceptual rendering of placement of four videos within the whale for Rebecca Weisman’s Skin Ego, 2019, BCA CenterÂ
inner mystery.4 In his 1948 essay, “The Jonah Complex,”
and regurgitated as a redemptive act, we, like the
the French thinker Gaston Bachelard inverts the biblical
fisherman, are pulled back inwards in order to find
Jonah myth in analyzing collections of historical children’s
something more essential to being. What is left of the
stories and folk tales. These stories inevitably involve a
whale inside its dead shell is some magic, some remnant
child or creature being swallowed by something else, which
of self that animates the skin-ego and is then projected
is then swallowed by something else, and so on and so forth
back out from within. We are left too with a sonic remnant,
in an endless progression of interiorities, what Bachelard
a woman’s voice singing the same tones we hear coming
calls a, “phenomenology of cavities.”5 We are alive inside the
from the steam holes in the whale’s skin; it is a funeral
already deceased space of the whale, acting out this fantasy
dirge, the song that carries us from one world to another.
of being swallowed, and of returning to a primordial oceanic state, which as Bachelard notes has, “the great securities of
Rebecca Weisman
a belly.”6 This kind of security remains even in a dead belly, the “oneiric maternity of death,” or in other words, death as a kind of warm push towards the infinite unconscious. As one leaves the intimacy of the whale’s interior and returns to the remainder of the installation, we encounter detritus from the filmed reenactment and the partial form of the whale’s exterior. Due to its scale, and the limitedness of our field of vision, we can never see the whale in its entirety. Just as in Karl Grabe’s footage of the dissection, the cohesiveness of the whale breaks down and there is nothing recognizable left except colors, textures, objects, ephemera—digested and metabolized. Surrounding the whale are two hanging bundles of intestines and the fisherman’s splayed suit, like a digested remnant, washed up alongside the whale’s teeth, as if he himself was consumed, and remains inside the whale. Again we might think of Jonah and the whale, though in my story rather than being consumed by the whale as punishment
Sigmund Freud. The Freud Reader. Edited by Peter Gay (New York: W.W. Norton,1989). Didier Anzieu. The Skin-Ego. Trans. Naomi Segal (London: Karnac Books, 2016). Kindle Edition. The anatomist Joy Reidenberg recounted that the fat of the whale is so powerful that is can seep through latex and into one’s skin, and is absorbed by our own fat cells.The only way to remove it is to let the body absorb and evaporate it out. Personal communication, August 31, 2018. 4 Lacan denotes this as a site in which meaning accumulates, and spills out when struck by something from outside. See his, The Seminar of Jacques Lacan: The Other Side of Psychoanalyis. Trans. Russell Grigg (New York: W. W. Norton, 1991). 5 All citations in this paragraph from Gaston Bachelard, Earth and Reveries of Repose: An Essay on Images of Interiority. (Dallas: Dallas Institute Publications, 2011). 6 Bachelard calls this, the “dream of really living ‘in your own place,’ ‘at the center of your own being,’ and ‘in your own belly.’” 1 2 3
Detail, fisherman and whale teeth, Skin Ego, 2019, BCA Center
REBECCA WEISMAN (b. 1982, Natick, MA)
EDUCATION
GROUP EXHIBITIONS
MFA 2011 Interdisciplinary Art: Film/Video, Critical Theory, Goddard College, Plainfield, VT 2009-10 Integrated Electronic Arts (iEAR) Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY
2018
ScreenWorks, University of Vermont, Burlington, VT
2017
Pink on Pink, Superfine! Art Fair, Miami, FL Tap Lessons, Garner Arts Center, Garnerville, NY
2016
6X HOWL, University of Vermont, Burlington, VT
2015
An Order, St. Joseph’s Orphanage, Burlington, VT Glitch…a parallax of fantasy and failure, Zizek Studies Conference, University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, OH (multimedia intervention in collaboration with Megan Flocken, featuring Cadere and the Weal)
BA
2004 Studio Art and Art History Reed College, Portland, OR
GRANTS/AWARDS
Conceal/Reveal, 339 Pine Street, Burlington, VT (site-specific installation in collaboration with Dana Heffern and Overnight Projects)
2012
Full Residency Fellowship, Vermont Studio Center, Johnson, VT
2004
Reed College Presidential Endowment Grant, Reed College, Portland, OR
2014
2003
Initiative Grant in Undergraduate Research, Reed College, Portland, OR
2013
Excavations, Design Center, Goddard College, Plainfield, VT (multimedia installation in collaboration with Dana Heffern)
Kaspar T. Locher Creative Scholarship, Reed College, Portland, OR
Feminist Shorts, BCA Center, Burlington, VT (screening of Flag)
2012
Intensities and Lines of Flight: Deleuze and Guattari and the Arts Deleuze, Guattari and the Arts, King’s University College and The University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada, May 4-6 Conference (multimedia intervention in collaboration with Megan Flocken)
SOLO EXHIBITIONS 2019
Rebecca Weisman: Skin Ego, BCA Center, Burlington, VT
2017
Collected Works, Building Imagination Center, California State University (CSU), Stanislaus, CA
2014
Plastic, Body, Dirt, and Squirrel…recent video works, Living/Learning Gallery, University of Vermont, Burlington, VT
2013
Ethan Allen Nights, McCarthy Gallery, Saint Michael’s College, Colchester, VT
2012
My Human Being, Julian Scott Memorial Gallery, Dibden Center for the Arts, Northern Vermont University (formerly Johnson State College), Johnson, VT (artist residency in collaboration with students)
2009
In The Field Next To The Orchard..., East Dorset, VT
2007
There’s No House Like Home, East Dorset, VT
2011 Knotting Nature: Desire, Narrative and Art in Empty Environments, Goddard College, Plainfield, VT New Voices, Sadie White Gallery, Community College of Vermont, Winooski, VT 2010 Imagine Him Happy, Vermont International Film Festival, Burlington, VT (screening) Imagine Him Happy, Goddard College, Plainfield, VT (screening) My Human Being, Goddard College, Plainfield, VT 2009
RPI Graduate Show, Contemporary Artists Center at Woodside, Troy, NY
2008
RPI Graduate Show, West Hall Gallery, Troy, NY
2006 Dissemination, Philly Fringe Festival, Philadelphia, PA (interactive performance in collaboration with Brooklyn and Philadelphia-based collectives Saviour Scraps and HAAK)
2006
Dissemination, Gilded Pony Performance Festival, Troy and Valley Falls, NY
2002-04
Kaspar T. Locher Scholars Exhibition, Feldenheimer Gallery, Portland, OR
2005
New Work from O,D, Pacific Switchboard Gallery, Portland, OR
2002-03
Off-Alberta Street Gallery, Portland, OR
2004 New Work from O,D, Memorial Coliseum Arts Celebration, Portland, OR Reed College Thesis Exhibition, The Belmont Factory, Portland, OR 2003 Dim Sum with Red76, 16 Beaver, New York, NY New Work from O,D, the hall_ gallery, Portland, OR
PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE 2017
Visiting Professor, University of Vermont, Burlington, VT
2014-2016
Director, Institute for the Arts, Global Center for Advanced Studies, New York City, NY
2012
Program Director, Individualized Masters of Arts Graduate Program, Burlington College, Burlington, VT
2011-2016
Adjunct Faculty, Degree Project Instructor, Burlington College, Burlington, VT
2011-2014
Adjunct Faculty, Saint Michael’s College, Colchester, VT
2010-11
Teaching Assistant, Goddard College, Plainfield, VT
2006-Present
Director, Iyengar Yoga Center of Vermont, Burlington, VT (certified Iyengar Yoga Instructor)
2004
Artist’s Assistant, James Harrison, Portland, OR
Event Manager, Portland Center for Performing Arts, PNCA Time-Based Arts Festival, Portland, OR
2003-04
Coordinator, Reed College Arts Week, Portland, OR
2003
Docent and Youth Educator, Cooley Gallery, Reed College, Portland, OR
2002-04
Studio Assistant, Photo and Digital Media Lab, Reed College, Portland, OR
BIBLIOGRAPHY Cynthia Close, “Rebecca Weisman: Skin Ego at Burlington City Arts,” Art New England, March/April, 2019 Rachel Elizabeth Jones, “Trouble the Image: Art Review: ‘Rebecca Weisman: Skin Ego,’ at BCA Center,” Seven Days, March 13, 2019 Sadie Williams, “Local Artists Bring New Life to Former Burlington Orphanage,” Seven Days, August 5, 2015 Brian Healey, “Bhutanese Refugees’ New Voices,” The Defender (publication of Saint Michael’s College), February 15, 2011 Margot Harrison, “Short Takes on Film,” Seven Days, October 20, 2010 Anita Sandler, “There’s No House Like Home on Mad Tom Rd,” Manchester Journal, February, 2007
PUBLICATIONS “Glitch” and “Cadere and the Weal”, International Journal of Zizek Studies, Vol 9, No 1, 2015 Exhibition Review, “Guy Ben-Ner: Thursday the 12th,” C Magazine 108, Winter 2010 Book Review, “Yoga Sutras of Patanjali” new translation by Edwin Bryant, Namarupa (web), November 2009 “Reflections on the Ganga,” Namarupa, Issue 10 Vol. 3, September 2009 Published photographs from Near Elizabethtown, NC series, Reed College Creative Review, 2003
FEBRUARY 22 - JUNE 9, 2019
CURATOR: Heather Ferrell CURATORIAL ASSISTANT: Colin Storrs DESIGN: Ted Olson EDITOR: Dr. Sarah Rogers PHOTOGRAPHY: Sam Simon All photos courtesy of Sam Simon unless otherwise noted
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means (including photocopying, recording or information storage and retrieval) without permission in writing from the publisher. This catalogue accompanies the exhibition Rebecca Weisman: Skin Ego.
ISBN 978-0-9884238-6-2 ©2019 Burlington City Arts | BURLINGTONCITYARTS.ORG