Barbara Kruger has taken over the AGO facade for the Contact Festival. My interview with her about the work--and her longer 30 year legacy of incisive artmaking--is out today in the National Post. Here's an excerpt:
Q: How else has the power of images changed?
A: Well, I've been interested for a long time in the way pictures tell us who we are and who we want to be -- and who we can never be, too. But time online has changed people in incredible ways. I really see a difference in the attention spans that people have, particularly young people, who I teach at a university. Just look who goes to movies - a lot of people go to "event movies," but other kinds of narrative don't hold them. I think sustained narrative is in a real crisis. Sometimes I ask my students, "Do you ever think you'd be interested in going to a movie that's not about you?" They'd rather go on Twitter and talk about what they're doing. I don't say that judgmentally. It's just a way cultures have changed.
Q: Speaking of cultures, do you find working in Canada different than the States?
A: There's a phrase I've used before: "Belief plus doubt equals sanity." One without the other is sort of strange. For a while, doubt seemed like it was grounds for arrest in America. I'm sure Canadian politics has some of the same baggage. But maybe I'm wrong. I feel like Canada and the States share a particular situation, a geographical adjacency that spills over into various cultural and linguistic forms -- and now medical forms! And of course, where would American comedy, which is so important to me, be without Canada?
Image of Kruger's classic I Shop Therefore I Am 1987 from the National Post, Courtesy Mary Boone Gallery
Showing posts with label barbara kruger. Show all posts
Showing posts with label barbara kruger. Show all posts
Thursday, April 29, 2010
Barbara Kruger Q&A Out Today
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barbara kruger,
Contact Festival
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