OUTHERE (FOR LEE LOZANO)

Maïder Fortuné, Annie Mac Donell
After Communicating Vessels (FID 2020) the artist-filmmaker duo Annie McDonell and Maïder Fortuné are back. Once again, the question is that of art, its teaching, the painful articulation between thought, practice and the living shell that embraces and brings it to life. An affair as ancient as the first Romantic period, its complexity fully intact, the challenge here is multiplied by the study of an extremely singular and insufficiently known figure of 20th century history: Lee Lozano. Painter, particularly radical conceptual artist and then recluse, for many years this woman filled similar small coloured spiral notebooks with her thoughts and plans for her work. Herein we read of a prime motive among others, that of a well-known obsession: to bring artistic production and existence to coincide, without any compromise, free of residue. These writings, the traces of class photographed and recorded in July 1971 and her horoscope form the rich matter of this short, dense film. “Information is content. Content is fiction. Content is messy. Like the universe, it is unfinished, quickly becoming obsolete once multiplied by time. Form can be repeated – content cannot”. With Lozano’s clear yet cryptic words as a guide, this film ventures to weave “ici au-dehors” (outhere) form and content, iteration and uniqueness, zoology and archaeology, archives and flashes from the present.
(Jean-Pierre Rehm)