Guest Presenter: Carla Gannis

"Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination...And don’t bother concealing your thievery—celebrate it if you feel like it. In any case, always remember what Jean-Luc Godard said: “It’s not where you take things from—it’s where you take them to."

-Jim Jarmusch

This is the quote with which Carla Gannis opened her presentation for our class. She spent much of the lecture talking about her career and the many directions it has gone. Some of the points I found particularly interesting were her takes on Appropriation Art, "Post-Human" effects and the "Fetish Finish."

The idea of a "Fetish Finish" is interesting because it starts to cross the boundaries between art and commercial production. It reminded me of the Takashi Murakami exhibit I attended at the Brooklyn Museum of Art last summer.



Her own personal work was very interesting. I like the way in which she blurs the lines between fantasy and reality through technology, the same way our everyday lives are injected with an element of science fiction/fantasy through the ubiquitous nature of technology.

Overall, I enjoyed her presentation, however, her interest in "non-linear narrative" made it hard to follow sometimes. Her voice was very clear and, at times, almost theatrical in nature.