[iDC] Judith Rodenbeck Introduction

[Judith Rodenbeck]

Hello, all. I'm introducing myself in advance of the conference at the New
School a few weeks hence, where I'll be moderating one of the panels on
Saturday.

I'm an art historian working primarily on what I suppose you'd call
epistemological questions that circulate around certain post-World War II
artistic practices. My long-gestating book, Radical Prototypes: Allan Kaprow
and the Invention of Happenings, is coming out next year. The book is both
formalist and informalist, touching on art practices after Abstract
Expressionism but also on urbanism, behaviorism, and of course performance,
and trying to articulate these in relatively ordinary language. I'm
currently working on a project tracing the imbrications of latter two,
behavior(ism) and performance (art). Both projects probe configurations of
participation, mediation, and self-consciousness--hence the interest in
behavior(ism). 

I've been on and off iDC since its inception; like others, I find time and
very real labor constraints prohibit deeper engagement than a
barely-Jamesonian scanning; and like others I find the continuing gender
mesentendrance perplexing. But this problem of volume(s)--turned up to 11, I
guess--has been true, at least in my experience, for nearly 20 years now,
since the first days of Cybermind, Derrida-L, and the SPOON lists...

Judith