WTF! FAC Announces Truce with Artist LG Williams?
This press release stages a fake detente between Williams and the Feminist Art Critics, converting art-world hostility into a comic peace negotiation. The document's nastiness lies in its refusal to let conflict appear morally pure: feminist outrage, artistic arrogance, desire, insult, and aesthetic pleasure are all made to inhabit the same unstable room. By invoking Watteau and Lawrence Weiner, the text absurdly elevates a gossip-war into a theory of emotion, beauty, consciousness, and form. The truce is not reconciliation so much as another artwork, a theatrical pause in a system that feeds on outrage while pretending to transcend it. Its polemical force comes from treating criticism itself as a performative identity--one capable of screaming, posturing, softening, and still wanting the ride.
- DATE:
- April 1, 2009
- DOCUMENT TYPE:
- Press Release
- NAMED ARTISTS / FIGURES:
- LG Williams; Mama Mia Maria Rio Rancho; Antoine Watteau; Lawrence Weiner
- INSTITUTIONS / VENUES:
- Feminist Art Critics; New York City
- KEYWORDS:
- fake detente with feminist critics; conflict as artwork; desire and insult cohabiting; Watteau and Lawrence Weiner elevated to gossip-war; truce as theater; criticism as performative identity; outrage feeding on itself