Just Some Old Weird Work

Video Performance Work From The Welsh Coast

Just returned from England and The Netherlands. I spent part of my trip on the lovely Welsh coast making new work.  Look for it soon on my website. (Which is in the process of being updated.) I am looking forward to upcoming performance dates in New York, Atlanta and Connecticut this fall. More info to follow.

Anya As Marina Abramovic--Photos By Keith Sullivan

Anya in Burnaway.org

Two great Artistic Atlantans, Joey Orr and Karen Tauches, just published this article about my visit to the Big Peach at Burnaway.org. They also talk about a piece by the Atlanta Poet's Group...a poetry collective that I love. 

http://www.burnaway.org/2010/07/anya-liftig-and-atlanta-poets-experiments-in-emptiness/

Some Thoughts on Photography--circa 1999

My grandmother dug this scrap of paper up the other day. It is the photocopied text of an artist statement from one of my first art shows. I think it was a show of black and white street photographs made it Scotland and England. At the time I was obsessed, and I mean obsessed with the work of Robert Frank, Lee Friedlander, Robert Adams, Helen Levitt and company. The images were printed straight, with no major manipulations in the darkroom, save for a few filter changes and burns and dodges. Saying that this was a statement from a "show" is a bit of an exaggeration. These pictures were hung in on a bulletin board of sorts in a lighted hallway space. My mom came up from home with a car load of boxed wine and assorted cheese and crackers and we threw a little party. Still, at the end of my senior year, it felt like a declaration that I was going in a different direction. 

Here is the text:

A photograph is a strange thing. It is both a tool to jog the memory of the events of our lives and an object on its own. A photograph is portable. It's able to be ripped, faded, burned, tacked up on a wall, or thrown in a drawer. Mostly we take snapshots of silly family events, great rites of passage, ad drunken college escapades. But something happens to people when they are aware of the photographer, aware of the impending photograph as a document of their beauty, weight, current hairstyle. People become self-conscious, their smiles turn to big crooked grins, eyes become squinty, and a little powerless. Each of the photographs on these walls is about what happens when the camera is hidden, when the click of the shutter is a surprise, unheard in a crowd. I have never spoken to these people. I didn't even ask any of them if I could take their picture--but I know them and I live with them and they are my new strange friends who stare back at me late at night..I carry them around with me in an old Ilford photo paper box and I don't even know them. Photography is special that way.  

Atlanta--Coming At Ya

I will be headed to Atlanta to give an Artist Lecture at the Atlanta Contemporary Arts Center on June 10th  7-8pm...

I am very excited for this talk. "The Contemporary" as it is known among locals, was the first place to formally show my performance work when I lived in the south from 2001-2005. 

More info forthcoming...

but here is a pic from my recent trip to England, take that DOUBLE DOWN

Anya In The New York Times

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/05/23/sitting-with-marina/

Hey, Check out Arthur C. Danto's piece in today's New York Times about the Marina show. He mentions my intervention and the second pic in the series is of yours truly.