Leslie Labowitz & Suzanne Lacy: "The Performing Archive " (2007 / 2008) in the exhibition.
Photograph: Andreas Süß

Leslie Labowitz & Suzanne Lacy (USA)

Suzanne Lacy is one of the feminist cultural pioneers in Los Angeles who exposed the hidden themes of violence against women in mainstream culture during the 1970s. Leslie Labowitz is an artist who studied in Los Angeles and in Germany, where she developed her early activist performance work with other women artists. They have collaborated for several years since 1977 on large-scale performances involving political lobbying, media intervention, and grass roots organization around the issue of violence against women.

"The Performing Archive" Project began in 2006 and houses the entire paper archive documenting the performance work of Suzanne Lacy and Leslie Labowitz from 1971 to 1984. It includes their collaborative project "Ariadne: A Social Art Network", which is an organization designed by Lacy and Labowitz in 1978 to protest violence against women. "The Performing Archive" is an ongoing installation, performance and video project built around relevant themes to artists’ archives, including the historification of ephemeral art, institutional and professional memory, and the value of women’s work. In the first of several projects from "The Performing Archive", Lacy and Labowitz explore how past and present collide, are considered, and how they re-emerge through the perspectives of young women artists. Inviting the participation of twelve women, most born in or around the time period of the archive, Lacy and Labowitz demonstrate the open-ended inquiry that is characteristic of conceptual work in Los Angeles in the 1970s. After meeting with Lacy and Labowitzin the studio, the guest artists were videotaped as they went through the archives and selected items of interest. Samples of their choices are displayed in the exhibition, together with 12 video interviews and a selection of photographs documenting individual and collaborative works by Suzanne Lacy and Leslie Labowitz.

Leslie Labowitz & Suzanne Lacy: "The Performing Archive " (2007 / 2008) in der Ausstellung.
Photograph: Andreas Süß