AR-v.5 (1-27):Layout 1 - Hutchins Center - Harvard University

I want to see into history, championing a new placewhere women can be seen.” 3 Weems has trainedher body to switch fluidly between submission andpower. The artist admits: “I find this materialfascinating as it relates to the role of dance, carnivaland theatre in maintaining social privilege.” 4Weems is visiting and inspecting. Like EveHarrington, Weems the protagonist, is also thehopeful understudy, waiting at the sidelines,counting on chance and never letting up. After all,understudy and star are stuck with each other.In 1950, Newsweek magazine critic, Leonard Slatervisited Bette Davis on the set of All About Eve toask Miss Davis to explain Eve, to which Miss Davisreplied : “She’s the golden girl, the cover girl,the girl next door, the girl on the move. Time’s beenvery good to Eve, life goes where she goes. She’sbeen profiled, covered, revealed, recorded as to whatshe wears and where and when, whom she knows,where she was and when and where she’s going.Eve has insatiable ambition and talent . . . Animprobable person with a contempt for humanity,an inability to love or be loved.” 5 Slater responds:“But how can such a woman fool so many?” 6To which Bette Davis answers: “How does any Evedo it?” 7Like Davis, Weems is an insider, slippinginside history as it switches between power andsubmission.Cheryl Kaplan is an artist,writer and producer based inNew York. Two films Kaplanproduced were OfficialSelections at the Tribeca FilmFestival 2006: Hidden InsideMountains, written and directedby Laurie Anderson, andMariners & Musicians: RosanneCash. Hidden was also an OfficialSelection at the Locarno;Toronto, Telluride, Prague andEdinburgh Film Festivalsas well as Japan’s Expo 2005.Mariners is also an OfficialSelection at the Sydney FilmFestival. Kaplan is also a producerof The Rape of the SabineWomen, directed by EveSussman that debuts in NewYork in 2007 at the IFC Theateras well as Sussman’s 89Seconds at Alcazar that debuted atthe Whitney Biennial 2004.Kaplan has written extensivelyon contemporary photography,including a recent booktitled Th(e) Influencer, edited byformer Interview magazinecreative director Marc Balet andBeatrice Dupire which isnow part of the permanentcollection at MoMA.Essay © Cheryl Kaplan 2007. All rights reserved.Installation view of the work of Carrie Mae Weems, at the Du Bois Institute’s Rudenstine Gallery1 Carrie Mae Weems in conversationwith Cheryl Kaplanat the American Academy inRome, Italy, July 20062 Ibid3 Ibid4 Ibid5 Bette Davis in conversationwith critic Leonard Slateron the film set of All About Eve.The film premiered in October,1950 by Twentieth Century-Fox. Produced by Darryl F.Zanuck; written for the screenand directed by Joseph L.Mankiewicz. For the trailersee: http://www.movie-list.net/classics/all-about-eve.mov6 Leonard Slater in conversationwith Bette Davis onthe film set of All About Eve.7 Op.Cit.21