Carolyn Lazard, Resident Artist Lecture 2023

Carolyn Lazard gives a lecture at Skowhegan talking about their interdisciplinary practice which spans video, installation, sculpture, writing, photography, sound, among others. Lazard begins their lecture by reflecting on the importance of repetition, and how this has allowed them to approach the way they think about their practice. One such way has been through their exploration of images; particularly with the ways in which images are withheld, the opacity and inclusion of images, and how photographic documentation is not the only way in which an image, memory, or moment in history can exist. Lazard then moves on to talk about subject matter in their practice such as the relationship between exploitation and co-dependency, luxury, excess and wealth, and different conceptual frameworks to approach our understanding of time. Another part of Lazard’s practice is durational performance, and they talk about  the ways in which aesthetic value is produced through testing the physical and psychological stamina of the artist. Lazard asks the participants how we can rethink durational performance and the kind of work artists can do to stay alive and reproduce themselves in the economic system that we are in. Lazard also reflects on how studying the black body has been critical to the development of modern medicine, particularly with the ways in which black people’s reproductive capacity has been the very engine for the United States economy. Lazard continues to focus on economies of care in their work, asking the participants how the media views disabled and chronically ill people, and what it can mean to bring hospitals to museums as a therapeutic gesture. Lazard then speaks about the importance of opacity. For Lazard, opacity means to create art work that feels fundamentally unknowable, which is something they wants to protect. Lazard continues by stating the frustrations they feel as a marginalized artist, due to the demands on them to be more available, legible and clear. Lazard ends their lecture with the hope that art can transform society.