Andrea Fraser: This meeting is being recorded

Since the 1980s, Andrea Fraser has achieved renown for work that interrogates social and psychological structures with incisive analysis, humor, and pathos. While Fraser’s work often is associated with critical investigations of art institutions, her performances since the mid-2000s have turned toward examining the intersections between sociopolitical and psychological structures as these produce and reproduce individual and group identity as well as social systems. Fraser’s solo exhibition at Künstlerhaus Stuttgart brings this examination into focus with three performance-based video installations: Projection (2008), Men on the Line: Men Committed to Feminism, KPFK, 1972 (2012/2014), and her major new work, This meeting is being recorded (2021), a ninety-eight-minute video exploring the processes and formation of race, gender, and age within an intergenerational group of seven self-identified white women.

While they do not comprise a formal trilogy, Projection, Men on the Line, and This meeting is being recorded are clearly linked by process, method, and formal strategy. All three works build on the multivoice performance practice Fraser has developed since the early 1990s. All three are shot against black backdrops and projected life-size to affect the experience of being in the same room as the performer. All three are performed directly to the camera to include the viewer in the dialogue. All three are based on recordings of forms of dialogue with high emotional stakes that are usually very private but which Fraser brings into the public realm. And all three are informed by Fraser’s understanding of performance as a practice of capturing and framing the processes of internalization and projection, incorporation and enactment through which the social and the psychological intersect in the production and reproduction of social identity, groups, and institutions. Combining rigorous investigation and intimate self-exposure, Fraser explores how artistic, intellectual, and political positions are driven by emotional needs and how psychological forces both shape and are shaped by social and political structures.

This meeting is being recorded: Andrea Fraser is organized by curator Rhea Anastas and Eric Golo Stone, artistic director of the Künstlerhaus Stuttgart.

For more information, including the comprehensive exhibition pamphlet, all up to date COVID-19 related Public Health guidances, and accessibility policy, please visit the Künstlerhaus Stuttgart website.

Events:
Opening reception: September 25, 7pm
Public lecture with Andrea Fraser: September 28, 7pm
Andrea Fraser gives a public lecture, followed by a discussion with curator Rhea Anastas. Stuttgart State Academy of Art and Design, Am Weißenhof 1, 70191 Stuttgart. 
Workshop with Andrea Fraser: October 1 
Andrea Fraser conducts a workshop with students of the ABK-Stuttgart.
Public tour with Eric Golo Stone: October 16, 3pm
Eric Golo Stone gives a tour of the exhibition open to the public.
Workshop with Nikita Gale: December 4, 3pm
Nikita Gale conducts a workshop open to the public.
Workshop with Jamie Stevens: December 18, 3pm
Curator and psychotherapist Jamie Stevens conducts a workshop open to the public.

Fraser’s new work This meeting is being recorded (2021) is coproduced by the Hammer Museum and Künstlerhaus Stuttgart. Production was supported by a grant from the Mike Kelley Foundation, which also supported Hammer Projects: Andrea Fraser, a 2019 exhibition at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, which included a presentation of Men on the Line and an associated publication, Andrea Fraser: Collected Interviews, 1990–2018, edited by Andrea Fraser, Rhea Anastas, and Alejandro Cesarco (New York and London: A.R.T. Press and Koenig Books, 2019).