Lives in Exchange: The Collaborative Video Tapes of Lynda Benglis and Robert Morris

Abstract

In 1972 the artists Lynda Benglis and Robert Morris swapped videotapes made collaboratively in each other’s studios to create new works that negotiate their personal and professional relationship. This article argues that, taken together, these works question the common tropes of early video art, especially what art historian Rosalind Krauss called the ‘aesthetics of narcissism’, and point to the emergence of a form of fractured subjectivity borne from technological mediation.

Keywords

• Lynda Benglis
• Robert Morris
• video
• collaboration
• Rosalind Krauss
• aesthetics of narcissism
• technological mediation