"Raised as I have been with this century's Western notions of adversarial aesthetics, I continue to have difficulty in accommodating my latest articulation of the narrative "problem"-- i.e., according to Teresa De Lauretis's conflation of narrativity itself with the Oedipus complex, whereby woman's position is constantly reinstated for the consummation or frustration of male desire. The difficulty lies in accommodating this with a conviction that it is of the utmost urgency that women's voices, experience, and consciousness--at whatever stage--be expressed in all their multiplicity and heterogeneity, and in as many formats and styles--narrative or not. In relation to the various notions of an avant-garde, this latter view, in its emphasis on voicing what has previously gone unheard, gives priority to unmasking and reassessing social relations, rather than overturning previously validated aesthetic positions. My personal accommodation becomes more feasible when cast in terms of difference rather than opposition, and when the question is asked: "Which strategies bring women together in recognition of their common and different economic and sexual oppressions and which strategies do not?" The creation of oppositional categories begs this question."

--Yvonne Rainer, filmmaker

from "Thoughts on Women's Cinema: Eating Words, Voicing Struggles," in Blasted Allegories, An Anthology of Writings by Contemporary Artists.
The New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York, New York.

"...the book and the projector as machines delivering the artist's minds to their viewer/reader; the page and the screen as sites where these interactions occur; and the gallery/theatre as the threshold space inside and outside."

--from Gallery statement by Trinh T. Minh-ha and Lynn Marie Kirby in their collaborative installation, "nothing but ways", presented at the Yerba Buena Arts Center in August of 1999, San Francisco.

"The writings of a critic like Perloff, however, are more interesting when treated like extended essays which are trying to do something, rather than just say something. In other words, Perloff's work can be better understood if it is read the way she reads poetry -- as an enactment in language of a particular aesthetic and ideological stance in which the question of how language is employed matters more than 'what is being said.' "

-- David Zauhar "Perloff in the Nineties", electronic book review9 <www.altx.com/ebr/>