Eleanor Antin, "The King," 1972. Video (black and white, silent), TRT: 52 min. Courtesy of Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI), New York.
If you missed Eleanor Antin (Season 2) at Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI) last night, you can catch her at the Drawing Center this evening. Antin will be reading from her memoir entitled, Conversations with Stalin. An excerpt:
I was what was called in the days of the old left, a red diaper baby. My mother was a Stalinist and though I had a father, nobody ever listened to him because he was just a socialist and everybody knew they were wimps. It was hard in those days, senator McCarthy was putting people in jail, people were losing their jobs, but we were strong because we always knew what was right. Comrade Stalin told us. Or he would have told us if he wasn’t so far away…These are my recollections, more or less, about growing up with the many romantic, economic and psychological problems young people face in our country and how by the end of the day, Comrade Stalin always solved my problems in his own inimitable way, by fucking them up.
The reading begins at 6:30pm and is held in conjunction with the Drawing Center’s current exhibition Unica Zürn: Dark Spring.
