We were very interested in Heresies, which was a group of women that published a feminist magazine. We wanted to be a feminist publication that also had men in it so that was a radical move at the time. We knew people who wanted to write away from the theory that was being written at that time, and also wanted to write about painting. We had art critics who couldn’t get published. SB: We had a lot of artists and poets who wanted to write. This was a forum for the voice of the artist. That is not what Artforum is doing, that’s not what Art in America is doing, or ARTnews, although, occasionally artists write for the magazines. That’s what’s so great about this magazine in toto: artists were speaking for themselves. MW: You wanted to reorient the critical discussion. In this way, we aim to extend the investigation of alternatives to predetermined styles of representation and configuration. Our focus is on art and writing about art that labors to deepen the visual articulation of meaning, how works of art re-substantiate rather than evacuate. And then we felt we had to do issue two.Ĭommitted to reorienting the critical discussion of contemporary visual art. SB: We thought nobody will ever pay that money. And also we just thought: we’ll try this we’ll send out a flyer, and see if we get any subscriptions. So that was one of the events that was inspiring us. In our first issue, we have excerpts from his diary. We didn’t realize it was the beginning of a huge amount of people dying. The first person who we knew that died of AIDS (in 1985), was Rene Santos, who was a wonderful, gay, Latino artist in our discussion group. So we were involved with this group, but meanwhile friends of ours were dying. My first panel appearance in 1982 as part of that group was at A.I.R. Susan Bee: From 1980, I had been in an art critics’ group of young artists and critics that initially met at A.I.R Gallery. Her studio was downtown on Canal Street near mine. We were trying to think of what to do and Charles Bernstein first suggested a tried and true, time-honored tradition of self-publishing pamphlets - and I had this vision of myself, standing at the corner of Canal Street and West Broadway going, “D avid Salle!” So I thought, that’s not going to work. And I had submitted it to Art in America, to October, and to the New Art Examiner and it was rejected everywhere. I had spent about two years writing this essay, “Appropriated Sexuality.” A number of people in the art world had read it, including you. Mira Schor Susan Bee Pratt Opening (photo courtesy the artists) I’m just wondering if it made you mad, and so you decided to go off on this crazy venture which turned out to be M/E/A/N/I/N/G magazine. And none of the art magazines would publish it. And Mira wrote an essay about David Salle, that basically showed the emperor has no clothes. I founded Franklin Furnace because I saw that the uptown institutions were not paying attention to the downtown arts community. And then they’ll start arguing and talking, and then after a while, you’re going to want to ask questions and I’m going to see people, moving their asses in the seats, and then I will ask if you have questions too. The way I want to do this is to start by asking some questions that will get them excited and maybe a little bit angry. So I’m going to prove that artists are well-rounded thinkers by talking to them. I believe artists are not given credit by the wider world for being well-developed and well-rounded thinkers. Martha Wilson: Mira Schor and Susan Bee are visual artists who are also philosophically-concerned (as we all are about our purpose on the planet) about the practice of art, about feminist theory and theory in general, the political environment in which we live, the fact that we are women, and some of us have children. and The Pratt Institute Libraries as part of the annual exhibition and events series. The exhibition was commissioned by Franklin Furnace Archive, Inc. M/E/A/N/I/N/G gave a voice to otherwise unrepresented perspectives on art making and aesthetics, motherhood and art, racism, feminism, resistance, collaboration, privacy, trauma, and artists-as-activists. M/E/A/N/I/N/G has been a collaboration between Susan Bee and Mira Schor, both painters with interests in writing and politics, and a community of over 200 artists, art critics, historians, theorists, and poets. The Pratt Library’s exhibition of M/E/A/N/I/N/G (1986–2016) included all the original issues along with photos, artwork, books, and ephemera from the 30-year run of the magazine. This dialogue with Mira Schor and Susan Bee, the co-editors of M/E/A/N/I/N/G, was moderated by Martha Wilson, and took place on March 6, 2018, at the Pratt Institute Library in Brooklyn. A vintage issue of M/E/A/N/I/N/G on display at the Pratt Institute Libraries (all images courtesy the artists)
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