Books

CDs

Events/Exhibits

Film/Video

Edited by Alexandra Kostic, Peter Tomaz Dobrila
Association for Culture and Education KIBLA (Maribor, Slovenia), June 2000.
ISBN 961-6304-02-X
Reviewed by Paul Hertz, U.S.A.
E-mail: paul-hertz@northwestern.edu


This collection of essays covers approximately the last decade of Eduardo Kac's artistic production. It concludes with an essay by Kac himself, on his "GFP Bunny," Alba. Arranged roughly in chronological order, the essays cover numerous telepresence works and conclude with Kac's more recent experiments in genetic manipulation. Some of the essays, such as Ed Shanken's discussion of agency and robotics, range well beyond the work. Others serve more as descriptive texts. Over all, the quality of the essays is excellent. If they lack anything, it is a sense of what it feels like to experience these works, and how closely the experience evokes the ideas which the essayists extract from them--always an issue when writing about art.

Kac's work can be viewed as a series of carefully crafted provocations. The best of them are marked by a clarity of concept that is at once illuminating and perverse. In some instances--"A-positive," for example--the technology seems to overburden the concept. In others, the ease with which the art can be reduced to a flattened gesture--a bunny glows, a man walks around with a chip in his leg--belies the complexity of the issues. This collection of essays should prevent us from thinking that the issues can be reduced to art-world buzz. In this sense, Kac's own essay is particularly welcome. Indeed, its scholarly construction and extent suggest that Kac is thoroughly aware of the dangers inherent in producing a work that can catch attention in international venues, as he has done. In his essay he insists that the ideas behind the work are integral to the work, and provides ample references to attest to the care he has invested not only in his craft but in his meaning. Let us hope that his ideas will travel with his work.

top