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Schizogenesis: The Art of Rosemarie Trockel
A deep analysis of an enigmatic artist whose oeuvre opens new spaces for understanding feminism, the body, and identity
Popular and pioneering as a conceptual artist, Rosemarie Trockel has never before been examined at length in a dedicated book. This volume fills that gap while articulating a new interpretation of feminist theory and bodily identity based around the idea of schizogenesis central to Trockel’s work. Schizogenesis is a fission-like form of asexual reproduction in which new organisms are created but no original is left behind. Author Katherine Guinness applies it in surprising and insightful ways to the career of an artist who has continually reimagined herself and her artistic vision. Drawing on the philosophies of feminists such as Simone de Beauvoir, Shulamith Firestone, and Monique Wittig, Guinness argues that Trockel’s varied output of painting, fabric, sculpture, film, and performance is best seen as opening a space that is peculiarly feminist yet not contained by dominant articulations of feminism. Utilizing a wide range of historical and popular knowledge—from Baader Meinhof to Pinocchio, poodles, NASA, and Brecht—Katherine Guinness gives us the associative and ever-branching readings that Trockel’s art requires. With a spirit for pursuing the surprising and the obscure, Guinness delves deep into a creator who is largely seen as an enigma, revealing Trockel as a thinker who challenges and transforms the possibilities of bodily representation and identity.
Popular and pioneering as a conceptual artist, Rosemarie Trockel has never before been examined at length in a dedicated book. This volume fills that gap while articulating a new interpretation of feminist theory and bodily identity based around the idea of schizogenesis central to Trockel’s work. Schizogenesis is a fission-like form of asexual reproduction in which new organisms are created but no original is left behind. Author Katherine Guinness applies it in surprising and insightful ways to the career of an artist who has continually reimagined herself and her artistic vision. Drawing on the philosophies of feminists such as Simone de Beauvoir, Shulamith Firestone, and Monique Wittig, Guinness argues that Trockel’s varied output of painting, fabric, sculpture, film, and performance is best seen as opening a space that is peculiarly feminist yet not contained by dominant articulations of feminism. Utilizing a wide range of historical and popular knowledge—from Baader Meinhof to Pinocchio, poodles, NASA, and Brecht—Katherine Guinness gives us the associative and ever-branching readings that Trockel’s art requires. With a spirit for pursuing the surprising and the obscure, Guinness delves deep into a creator who is largely seen as an enigma, revealing Trockel as a thinker who challenges and transforms the possibilities of bodily representation and identity.
224 pages, Paperback
Published December 10, 2019
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August 24, 2024some really interesting concepts (see below) that are elaborated only at a surface level (but productive insofar as there is room to build on them). i have two big problems with this book.
1) the concept of the “neutral” is weird and not really clearly distinguished from the universal. the specific debates about universality are alluded to but guinness does not describe how the neutral relates to them or why neutral is a more productive term than universal.(i don’t think it is.) she doesn’t acknowledge how the term neutral is already used in existing discourses (eg geopolitics), nor does she seem to realize that it implies singularity in a way that the universal avoids.
2) in 2019, had katherine guinness never heard of trans people?? why choose to efface that key part of claude cahun’s historical identity? why ignore the many productive intersections this feminist reading could have had with queer and trans theory? how does one rely heavily on wittig as a source while not acknowledging the place of lesbianism in her work whatsoever? this excision feels deliberate and i can’t understand why she would do this.
key concepts:
schizogenesis (productive multiplicity) vs schizophrenia (pathological/subjected multiplicity)
montage / the dialectical image /nonsynthesis (benjamin)
the self as the “schizo-object of desire” in trockel’s work
adolescence as the becoming into sex and death
absent subject
comparison w minimalism
woman as ego-extension/mirror, destruction of the body, part objects
cutting/excess
meaning bait symbology
funny terrorism
cutting and absorbing vs splitting and multiplying
1) the concept of the “neutral” is weird and not really clearly distinguished from the universal. the specific debates about universality are alluded to but guinness does not describe how the neutral relates to them or why neutral is a more productive term than universal.(i don’t think it is.) she doesn’t acknowledge how the term neutral is already used in existing discourses (eg geopolitics), nor does she seem to realize that it implies singularity in a way that the universal avoids.
2) in 2019, had katherine guinness never heard of trans people?? why choose to efface that key part of claude cahun’s historical identity? why ignore the many productive intersections this feminist reading could have had with queer and trans theory? how does one rely heavily on wittig as a source while not acknowledging the place of lesbianism in her work whatsoever? this excision feels deliberate and i can’t understand why she would do this.
key concepts:
schizogenesis (productive multiplicity) vs schizophrenia (pathological/subjected multiplicity)
montage / the dialectical image /nonsynthesis (benjamin)
the self as the “schizo-object of desire” in trockel’s work
adolescence as the becoming into sex and death
absent subject
comparison w minimalism
woman as ego-extension/mirror, destruction of the body, part objects
cutting/excess
meaning bait symbology
funny terrorism
cutting and absorbing vs splitting and multiplying
Displaying 1 of 1 review