The Interrupted Life

With forty-two participants, including Anotin Artaud, Sophie Calle and Kiki Smith, this catalogue explores the theme of death in the Western world and its myriad historical, social and cultural practices. The catalogue, compiled by curator France Morin and designed by Massimo Vignelli, is a compilation of essays, interviews and projects by artists, writers, historians and others, questioning our differentapproaches to a timeless topic. Peter Greenaway, bell hooks and Sylvere Lotringer are among twenty-four contributors. "In our house we had a special room for the sick and the dying; it was called the 'middle room,' probably called this because it was a room close enough to the kitchen...so that one could hear a cry of pain, a call of need. This room was a space one could enter alive and leave dead. When I recall and examine those experiences of childhood, it is in those moments in which I watched the dying that made the deepest and most profound imprints on my psyche. I have thought of death as 'my witness' because it was staring down death always as a young girl that taught me to rebel without fear. If death could be faced, all dreaded experiences could be confronted, lived through, overcome." -bell hooks, "death is my witness," p.38. Artists: Gwen Akin and Allan Ludwig, Hilton Als and Darryl Turner, Antonin Artaud, Joseph Beuys, Nayland Blake, Christian Boltanski, Victor Bouillon, Genevieve Cadieux, Sophie Calle, Mary Carlson, Sarah Charleswroth, Larry Clark, Hans Danuser, Jimmy DeSana, Eugenio Dittborn, Orshi Drozdik, Marlene Dumas, Jimmie Durham, Laura Fields, Adam Fuss, Peter Greenaway, Mona Hatoum, Ronald Jones, Tadeusz Kantor, John Lekay, Amalia Mesa-Bains, Donald Moffett, Bruce Nauman, Elaine Reicheck, Bastienne Schmidt, Jeffrey Silverthorne, Cam Slocum, Kiki Smith, Mladen Stilinovic, James Van Der Zee, Andy Warhol, Benjamin Weil, Frederick Wiseman, David Wojnarowicz. Exhibition Catalogue.