"While reading an old issue of the art journal Frieze, I came across the American poet Kevin Killian's 2019 stunning and intimate obituary of the artist Lutz Bacher. His appreciation of this artist's persona prompted me to message Kevin. I conveyed my gratitude for his deeply moving memorial. Then I asked if he might write my obituary, too. "Oh Lynn," he wrote. "I will email you and it will be obvious that something of the beautiful has been mixed up with the bad, like a Vincente Minelli melodrama.""
"A few days later his email arrived. "About your offer," it began. "Wow, thanks! But my dear, you are going to outlive me by miles. The last four weeks have proved a trying time. I have been confronted with intimations of cancer. "I know you are away," Kevin continued, "but I have an idea of how we might collaborate. In the meantime, thank you for showing me how to dream, how to make work, how to perform activism, and how to stick with things even when everything looks scary and awful. You are our hero in many ways.""
Lynn reads a 2019 obituary of Lutz Bacher by Kevin Killian in Frieze and messages him, asking if he will write her obituary. Kevin replies warmly, predicts she will outlive him, and reveals recent intimations of cancer. He thanks her for inspiring dreaming, work, activism, and persistence, and calls her a hero. A planned meeting shifts from June to mid-August because of deadlines. Carolee Schneemann invites Lynn to choose a sculpture as part of a decades-long attempt to trade artworks. Deadlines continue to press amid these personal and artistic exchanges.
Read at Hyperallergic
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]