Talkin' with Your Mouth Full

Book excerpt: Steve Fagin is an artist whose videos incorporate, challenge, and cross over into the realm of literary and cultural studies. Talkin' with Your Mouth Full includes not only scripts of Fagin's works but critical responses to--and meditations on--a variety of his influential videos by a distinguished, if intriguingly disparate, group of artists and scholars. Combining elements of criticism with various modes of artistic expression, these responses take the form of reviews, letters, interviews, and in one case an imaginary TV programming schedule. Interspersed with--and sometimes literally interrupting--the video scripts, these contributions interact with one another on multiple levels and complement Fagin's scripts. Historical, political, and theoretical issues dovetail, ricochet, and interplay in this book, revealing a multiplicity of voices, concerns, and cultural revelations. Unique in its structure and intellectual approach, Talkin' with Your Mouth Full will appeal equally to those who have seen Fagin's videos and those who have not. Students of art history and cultural critique, and anyone interested in the ongoing dialogue between artists and theorists, will find particular value in this book. Contributors. Gregg Bordowitz, Constance DeJong, Leslie Dick, Steve Fagin, Barry Gifford, Victoria Gill, Bill Horrigan, Bertha Jottar, Ivone Margulies, Patricia Mellencamp, Margaret Morse, Constance Penley, Vicente L. Rafael, Mark Rappaport, Andrew Ross, Vivian Sobchack, Trinh T. Minh-ha, John Welchman, Peter Wollen