Jennie Klein &
Natalie Loveless
(with panelists)
Responding to Site: A Roundtable on the work of Marilyn Arsem
I Scream by Marilyn Arsem
Photo by He Chengyao
A Panel
This roundtable panel discussion is dedicated to the book Responding to Site: The Performance Work of Marilyn Arsem (Intellect Books, 2020). One of the most prolific performance artists working in the United States today, Arsem performs carefully choreographed durational actions that are developed site-responsively and range from deceptively simple interventions to elaborately orchestrated actions. Jennie Klein and Natalie Loveless, the editors of the volume, together with chapter authors Paul Couillard, Lucian O’Connor, and Kathy O’Dell, reflect together on the importance of Arsem’s oeuvre.
Short Bios of Panelists
Paul Couillard is a queer performance artist, curator, and scholar. He is a cofounder of FADO Performance Art Centre and the 7a*11d International Festival of Performance Art, both based in Toronto, and the editor of the book series Canadian Performance Art Legends.
Lucian O'Connor is a theorist who engages a range of topics that include philosophy, psychoanalysis, art, decoloniality, evolutionary biology, semiotics, and the social sciences. They hold a master’s degree in Performance Studies from NYU and a Ph.D. in History of Consciousness from UC Santa Cruz. O’Connor has taught graduate and undergraduate courses at Wesleyan University, the University of Michigan, and multiple California State University and University of California campuses.
Jennie Klein is an art historian and professor at Ohio University who writes on contemporary art, performance art and the intersection of gender and visual culture. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Southern California in 1998. She is the co-editor of Responding to Site: The Performance Art of Marilyn Arsem, published by Intellect Press in Fall 2020. Dr. Klein is presently working on two book projects.
Natalie Loveless teaches contemporary art and theory at the University of Alberta (Canada). She is author of How to Make Art at the End of the World: A Manifesto for Research-Creation, editor of Knowings and Knots: Methodologies and Ecologies in Research-Creation, and co-editor of Responding to Site: The Performance Work of Marilyn Arsem.
Kathy O’Dell’s research focuses on performance art, violence, and the importance of the esoteric. She teaches art history at University of Maryland, Baltimore County, is author of Contract with the Skin: Masochism, Performance Art, and the 1970s, and is currently writing a book titled The Dot: A Small History of a Big Point. O’Dell teaches art history at University of Maryland, Baltimore County.