K8 Hardy

K8 Hardy is a Brooklyn based artist working mainly in video and performance. She is represented by Reena Spaulings Fine Art. Hardy is one of the founding editors of LTTR, a radical gender-queer, lesbian-feminist art collective and journal. She also works as a fashion stylist for clients including Fischerspooner and has made music videos for bands such as Lesbians on Ecstasy and Le Tigre.

Her worked is influenced by second-wave feminist artists. She explains, "I’m not out to prove any theories. That’s a position I take. It’s one of anti-oppositional politics. I think it is often assumed that feminist work is trying to prove something, which is bizarre to me. The assumption that feminism is inherently didactic or polemic is so patriarchal” (White, 20). She has also referred to Chantal Mouffe's "Artistic Activism and Agonistic Spaces" as a source of inspiration. Mouffe writes that artists, "can play an important role in the hegemonic struggle by subverting the dominant hegemony and by contributing to the construction of new subjectivities" (5).

Early Influence

Hardy was born on October 27th, 1977 in Fort Worth, TX. She started spelling her name "K8" (as opposed to Kate) as a teenager, drawing from the street language of skateboarding culture and using the nicknames in zines.

She has a bachelor's degree in Women's Studies from Smith College with a focus on feminist and queer theory. It was during her time at Smith that Hardy was exposed to, and developed an interest in, contemporary art. This was facilitated by Elisabeth Subrin, whom she had as a professor.

At 19 she received a grant to work with Miranda July and the Northwest Film Center in Portland, Oregon. She has also worked at Artists' Television Access in San Francisco.

Selected Works

TV Lip Synch (2002)

K8 Hardy collaborated with Wynne Greenwood in the making of "TV Lip Synch", a video in which the two artists lip sync to various daytime-television clips including scenes from Oprah, a soap opera, and a Barbara Walters interview, all programs marketed towards women.

Beautiful Radiating Energy (2004)

"Beautiful Radiating Energy" is a performance piece in which Hardy, dressed all in white, makes gymnastic contortions in front of a projected video while shouting “I am happy; I am here; I am hurt. I’m ready!” in a variety of ranges that require a month of vocal training. The video projected includes images of Hardy's friend Math walking away from the camera, found footage of reactions to the burial of Baader-Meinhof terrorists, gay rights parades, and body building competitions.

New Report (2005-2007)

K8 Hardy and Wynne Greenwood play "Henry Stein-Acker-Hill" and "Henry Irigaray", fictional news reporters for the fictional news station WKRH, whose tagline is "pregnant with information". Their names are references to feminist theorists Luce Irigaray, Edith Stein, Joan Acker and Patricia Hill Collins. As Wynne Greenwood sometimes works under the name Wynne Ryan, WKRH is an acronym for Wynne K8 Ryan Hardy. The two, clad in berets, trench coats, and turtlenecks, report on news such as bra burning and running water and interview a friend suffering from anxiety. The press release states, "If traditional activist video was invested in the communication of clear messages to a target audience, the work makes politics by making television speak differently as it addresses the emergent qualities of a community for whom visibility is less a goal than a means of dismantling dominant images... If the revolution will be televised today it is only by queering TV in order to encounter the desires of the subjects and histories it addresses."

In 2007, Hardy and Greenwood performed "New Report Live" at the Tate Modern in London. Their report focused on the multiple meanings of power and they dubbed the Tate the “structure of power”. Other forms of power discussed were colonialism, slavery, capitalism, and the war in Iraq. “The artists invaded and occupied an iconic structure of power, symbolic of omnipresent patriarchal structures of power within the art world and society at large” (Dickinson, 5).

Hallmark Card (2006)

"Hallmark Card" is an installation in which a rear projection is displayed on a screen of cotton jersey. Hardy is shown overwhelmed by roses. The piece speaks "against the pressure of coupling" while portraying "singularity that is not totally single" (Wang, 104).

Poser Reel (2007)

A lifestyle piece, "Poser Reel" sees Hardy, as character Elise, walking around Brooklyn with artist Klara Liden and performing such acts as biting each other's arms and peeing into a glass. Hardy comments, "it’s glamorized a little bit—strategically—because it’s a marginal position" (Wang, 104).

Bare Life (2007)

In this performance project with musician and sound artist Stefan Tcherepnin, the two respond to Giorgio Agamben’s concept of “Bare Life” (White, 20).

COMPANY

Located in the storefront of [http://www.artingeneral.org/ Art In General] , this "everything shop" was created by sculptor Fawn Krieger and modeled after Claes Oldenburg's "Store". For it Hardy made a line of Performance Panties. Hardy explains, "there are ten pairs in the line. If you purchase a pair, you will be able to buy a one-of-a-kind video of my performance in that pair of panties. Now, it’s not about hanging out naked in my underwear, but rather selling myself as an artist" (White, 22).

Works Cited

cite journal
last = Burton
first = Joanna
authorlink =
coauthors =
title = Girl, Interrupted
journal = Artforum
volume =
issue =
pages = 107-108
publisher =
location =
date = Summer 2005
url = http://www.reenaspaulings.com/WK.htm
doi =
id =
accessdate = 2008-10-07

cite journal
last = Dickinson
first = Amy
authorlink =
coauthors =
title = New Team Under An Old Threat, Fictional Selves and Feminist Practice in the Collaborative Work of Wynne Greenwood and K8 Hardy
journal = Art Lies
volume =
issue = 56
pages =
publisher =
location =
date = Winter 2007
url = http://artlies.org/article.php?id=1552&issue=56&s=1
doi =
id =
accessdate = 2008-10-06

Citation
last = Cotter
first = Holland
author-link =
last2 =
first2 =
author2-link =
title = Wynne Greenwood and K8 Hardy
newspaper = The New York Times
pages =
year = 2005
date = May 20
url = http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9500E5DA1439F933A15756C0A9639C8B63&scp=1&sq=k8%20hardy&st=cse

cite web
last = Maddison
first = Melanie
authorlink =
coauthors =
title = k8 Hardy Interview
work = Coloring Outside The Lines Zine
publisher =
date = 07-19-2008
url = http://cotlzine.blogspot.com/2008/07/k8-hardy-interview.html
format =
doi =
accessdate = 2008-10-06

cite journal
last = Mouffe
first = Chantal
authorlink =
coauthors =
title = Artistic Activism and Agonistic Spaces
journal = Art & Research
volume = 1
issue = 2
pages =
publisher =
location =
date = Summer 2007
url = http://www.artandresearch.org.uk/v1n2/mouffe.html
doi =
id =
accessdate = 2008-10-07

cite press release
title = New Report
publisher = Reena Spaulings Fine Art
date = 2005-05-07-2005-06-05
url = http://www.reenaspaulings.com/WK.htm
accessdate = 2008-10-06

cite journal
last = Wang
first = Michael
authorlink =
coauthors =
title = Streaming Creature A New Generation of Queer Video Art
journal = Modern Painters
volume =
issue =
pages = 101-105
publisher =
location =
date = June 2007
url =
doi =
id =
accessdate = 2008-10-06

cite journal
last = White
first = Michelle
authorlink =
coauthors =
title = Opposition + Equivocation: K8 Hardy
journal = Art Papers
volume =
issue =
pages = 19-23
publisher =
location =
date = May/June 2008
url =
doi =
id =
accessdate = 2008-10-06

External Links

[http://www.youtube.com/k8hardy K8 Hardy's Youtube Channel]