Jennifer Sichel & Caroline Lillian Schopp - "Criticism Without Authority" & "In-action"
Schedule
Wed, 18 Feb, 2026 at 04:00 pm
UTC-06:00Location
5751 S Woodlawn Ave, Chicago, IL, United States, Illinois 60637 | Chicago, IL
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Jennifer Sichel & Caroline Lillian Schopp will discuss their new books, Criticism Without Authority and In-action, respectively. They will be joined in conversation by Matthew Jesse Jackson. A Q&A and signing will follow the discussion. At the Co-op
About the Books:
Criticism Without Authority: In the early 1960s, Gene Swenson and Jill Johnston began to imagine art criticism as something unruly and expansive, rejecting modernist appeals to purity and coherence that had overtaken the field. These critics were deeply enmeshed in New York’s avant-garde art scene, and both were explicitly and unapologetically queer. First working independently of one another, then later in dialogue, Swenson and Johnston demanded criticism become life-sustaining, subverting protocols and distorting its form beyond recognition. They utilized criticism as a means of navigating queer existence and reclaimed terms like lesbian, homosexual, mad, and psychotic as their own.
Jennifer Sichel follows the intertwined paths of Swenson and Johnston, providing a history of queer practices that were central to the development of avant-garde art but have been largely overlooked. Criticism Without Authority makes their work visible not just as criticism, but as its own form of art.
In-action: Viennese Actionism represents a notorious case within art history, often cited but little studied, especially in the United States. By carefully looking at the unsettling performances that define this movement, Caroline Lillian Schopp offers a vital corrective to the narrative. Schopp observes that contrary to the reception of their graphic violence, many performances explore passivity, vulnerability, and dependence in gestures of “in-action.” Decentering the traditional focus on the male protagonists of Viennese Actionism—Günter Brus, Otto Muehl, Hermann Nitsch, and Rudolf Schwarzkogler—Schopp draws attention to women who performed with them, including Anna Brus, Hanel Koeck, and Ingrid Wiener. In dialogue with feminist theory, In-action assembles a vocabulary for performance art without the standards of self-assertion, emancipation, and expressive action that continue to inform how art and politics are understood today.
About the Authors: Jennifer Sichel is assistant professor of contemporary art and theory at the University of Louisville, Hite Institute of Art and Design. Her work has been published in Selva, Oxford Art Journal, and in catalogs for museums including the Whitney Museum of American Art, Jewish Museum, and National Portrait Gallery.
Caroline Lillian Schopp is assistant professor of the history of art at Johns Hopkins University. She was previously guest professor of art history, art theory, and aesthetics at the Berlin University of the Arts (UdK) and a faculty member in art history at the University of Vienna.
About the Moderator: Matthew Jesse Jackson teaches in the Departments of Art History and Visual Arts at the University of Chicago. He is the author of The Experimental Group: Ilya Kabakov, Moscow Conceptualism, Soviet Avant-Gardes , which won the Robert Motherwell Book Award from The Dedalus Foundation as well as the Vucinich Book Prize.
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Where is it happening?
5751 S Woodlawn Ave, Chicago, IL, United States, Illinois 60637Event Location & Nearby Stays:
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