SO - IL, “Pole Dance” (2010) (photo by Wade Zimmerman, courtesy MoMA/PS1) (click to enlarge)

We perceive architecture, Walter Benjamin thought, in two ways: by look and by touch. Optical and tactile. Our optical perception of something develops over time: looking at something for a long time leads us into contemplating it. Black scratches become letters become an idea. But Benjamin didn’t think there was a tactile analog to this process. There is no ‘contemplation’ when it comes to perceiving something through touch. Tactile perception begins and ends at the fingertip. It’s surface-based, superficial. We come to know buildings, he continues, and, by extension, architecture not just by looking but also “by a way of habit.” A way of habit that develop as we sleep, work in, or repeatedly walk through the spaces created by architecture, day after day. It’s through the repetition of this tactile, getting-to-know-you-by-touch that we learn how rough the concrete is, how soft the hammock is, how sticky the inflatables are on humid days. Our perceptions of architecture based on touch unfold over time and through memory as a kind of spontaneous “casual noticing,” which seems to me like  the ideal way to get to know the strange collection of shapes and materials spliced together by Brooklyn-based design firm Solid Objectives – Idenburg Liu (SO – IL) for their PS1 courtyard installation: “Pole Dance” (2010).

The setting is the walled-in concrete and gravel courtyard of PS1. Here, alongside those attending the PS1’s Warm Up summer concert series, an equally spaced matrix of PVC poles does a lot of the dancing.

White mesh netting stitches the poles together, forming a dynamic, stretched and stretchy geometric grid that caps the space at ceiling height. Inflatable rubber balls, rest like clouds suspended on top of the netting in shapely pale clumps of purple, orange, and green. (Possible cloud formation: cumulus inflatabilis?). Throughout the installation are different ‘activators’ — a rope, a hammock, holes in the mesh — that taunt visitors to tug on a string, nap in the sun, or try to pull one of those orange inflatable clouds back to the gray gravel earth from the white mesh sky.

***

SO - IL, “Pole Dance” (2010) (photo by Wade Zimmerman, courtesy MoMA/PS1) (click to enlarge)

SO – IL was one of three firms asked to submit proposals for the final round of MoMA/PS1 Young Architects Program (YAP), now in its eleventh year. Each year some 20 YAP contenders must travel a long way before a design question even gets asked. After nomination by a panel of architecture school deans and glossy architecture magazine editors, and after a portfolio review that whittles twenty down to three and is in part overseen by art world arbiters like MoMA Director Glenn Lowry, the challenge is to take $85,000 worth of mostly repurposeable (read: not so sexy) material, and spin it all with a bit of spit, insight, and sweat into a maximum of fun and chic that fills the triangular PS1 courtyard.

Responding to PS.1’s call for “a much-needed refuge in an urban environment” as well as Pole Dance does is great for a firm like SO – IL since it adds another big, fat institutional stamp of approval from MoMA/PS1 to the firm’s list of accomplishments. What’s more, their concept for “a participatory environment that reframes the conceptual relationship between humankind and structure” actually gets built, too.

***

SO - IL, “Pole Dance” (2010) (photo by Wade Zimmerman, courtesy MoMA/PS1) (click to enlarge)

In their concept write up, SO – IL talks about a “choreography of situations rather than object making.” And this explicit focus on “choreography” over “objects” lends Pole Dance the appearance of a gumball machine, smashed to pieces and scaled up to the size of a fever dream, rather than the more straightforward appearance of a conventional structure or building.

The choreographed objects are mostly cheap, pre-made stuff — rubber balls and PVC, stretchy string, some fasteners and joints – but their arrangement makes them elegantly  shift and sway in sequence. Pole dancers and museum goers alike will  quickly recognize that even resting in a hammock affects the dynamics of the structure as a whole (an apt lesson for any audience). Instead of becoming detached from the action because of a nap, a person in search of refuge who climbs into a hammock creates system-wide sag that ripples out through the white mesh sky, broadcasting to all that someone has hopped into the hammock while simultaneously causing all the other pieces of Pole Dance to bristle in a series of actions and reactions that plays out like — well, it might be a stretch to call it a dance — but in this case, purpose bolsters the metaphor since the commission is based on a concert series.

The restriction of sound-play to those present creates both an incentive and a focus on people actually in the courtyard. Aside from this there-or-not distinction, though, Pole Dance lacks partitions, rooms and internal barriers (beyond the big green pool where the white mesh sky touches the ground – but that’s different). There’s no clear or segregating focus beyond PS1′s concrete walls. So the free flow from space to space is consistent with the design’s emphasis on participation and Pole Dance makes offers instead: here are some balls, pull on this cord if you’re bored, lie down over there if you’re tired. It bundles sticks and string and cheap tech gadgets to create an environment where something is always happening.

The always on feeling evokes an arcade, full of suggestions blinking in neglect, waiting for their spontaneous “casual noticing” with a token and another, higher score. Simple geometry and the bright monochromatic elements further reinforce Pole Dance’s video game feel since they call to mind the digital primitivism of early arcade landscapes circa Asteroids or Tron or Tetris or Pac Man. Pole Dance is appealing the way one of these games is appealing; as Steven Johnson has observed of the most successful video games, Pole Dance lacks a “fixed narrative path” or one proper solution to its suggested uses so it rewards “repeat play with an ever-changing complexity.”

We play the game because there is no story; there is no surprise ending because there is no ending. Push or be pushed. Play or be played. The premise of Pole Dance is simple: the whole pole-and-mesh structure is a giant game where the only rule is interaction. Tug the string, redistribute the clouds, dance for a while, rest in the hammock, get up, do it again. We play the game as long as there’s music.

Welcome to The Golden Door … the summer fundraising experiment. (click to enlarge)

The Golden Door is the anachronistic nickname of Jersey City, which acquired the moniker at the turn of the 20th century when it was a magnet for newly arrived Ellis Island immigrants. Today, “Golden Door” is the name of a new temporary mini-golf course-cum-art exhibition at Hamilton Square in downtown Jersey City organized by the Jersey City Museum as an innovative new summer fundraising venture.

Those who follow the travails of the New York-area museum scene know that the Jersey City Museum has had it tough recently. The only contemporary art museum in a city of 250,000 has been forced, due to budgetary limitations, to open only once a week (Saturdays, 12 – 5pm). Yet the museum won’t give up without a fight and the institution has invited local artists to create an entertaining ten-hole mini-golf course that explores the always relevant theme of immigration.

Upon arrival to the Golden Door mini-golf course installation, the show’s curator, Christina Vassallo, guided me to the first hole. “What better way to become familiar with the concept of the installation than to actually play the game,” I thought. She handed me a putter and a ball and I prepared myself for the first game of mini-golf I had played in years. I was ready to embarrass myself. The first hole, aptly titled “Arrival,” is the work of artist Asha Ganpat, and it includes a steep incline that leads to a curved plateau, which in turn leads to three separate pipes that shuttle the ball onto to the green where the hole sits behind a small sand trap.

Asha Ganpat’s “Arrival” hole (click to enlarge)

As Christina began to explain how the hole works, I quickly putted my ball; it climbed the green, bounced kitty-corner off a wall into one of the three pipes, escaped the sand trap, and … hole. in. one. First hole, first shot. Even I accepted that it was a fluke. Christina chalked it up to “beginner’s luck” and her assessment proved correct as I proceeded to hole after hole without the same good fortune. I suspect that most people who play the course won’t have my luck. My serendipitous first hole-in-one exemplified the overall theme of the mini golf installation. I had “arrived,” and it put a little bounce in my step. On to a new challenge … Nyugen E. Smith’s “The Glass Ceiling.”

Welcome to America!

Nyugen E. Smith’s “The Glass Ceiling” (click to enlarge)

Bluntly speaking, I am far enough removed from my relatives who immigrated to America that I have no familial exposure to the “immigrant experience.” You could say, I didn’t “experience” the difficulty of the course, and yet I was still afforded the achievement of earning a hole-in-one, but I don’t want to push it. Blind luck? Sure, but I didn’t earn it, yet I was still rewarded it. However, even with my “arrival,” I still had to labor through every subsequent hole, never again fairing as well as I did in the beginning.

The American Dream that continues to attract people to this country places so much emphasis on the rewards of hard work, and is entirely blind to the role of luck and chance. It’s the paradox that the course emphasizes; people like me, who didn’t have to endure the labor that many did to get where I am, could be rewarded, while those who put the most effort into striving for opportunity were continually struggling. Am I reading too much into this course? Can mini-golf really be this deep?

The back of Hiroshi Kumagai’s “The Long Narrow Way to Heaven” (click to enlarge)

Make no mistake; the holes appear to be very difficult at first. However, this does not detract from the fact that they were designed with fun in mind. It was a joy actually being able to interact with the golf-turned-art sculptures. To be able to “play” a piece of art in this way lends an interactivity to the pieces. Players experience a simulation of the themes of the show through their interaction with the game rather than being fed an interpretation or explanation as to why each sculpture means what it does.

Back to Analog?

Amanda Thackray, “High Road vs. Low Road” (click to enlarge)

It feels slightly anachronistic to focus on the participatory aspects of a mini-golf course installation as a form of interactive art if for the only reason that we are living in an era of increasing interactivity through higher forms of technology. However, it is just that context that makes this type of installation so vital.

I believe we are still in the fledging stages of a time when audiences have a much stronger influence on not only the creative process but in the distribution and exhibition of art of all forms. It is an influence that must be communicated via artworks that converse with their audiences rather than speak their ideas at them.

In conversation with Christina, we discussed the importance of the interactive aspect of the installation. I spoke of how important technology is becoming in making art a more participatory experience. I mentioned that it interests me how that experience is represented in the Golden Door mini-golf course in a lo-tech way.

Riso Puno’s “Leap of Faith” (click to enlarge)

She said that the show provided a kind of “analog interactivity” that allows people not only to interact with each work of art, but also to socialize in a real space rather than via technology. It is a requirement of the work that to experience it in full you must actually visit the course and play the game. In an era of digital over-saturation, to apply interactivity in an analog manner provides incentive not only to participate, but also to interact with people vis-à-vis an art work. It seems fitting that the exhibition designer Risa Puno is also the architect of the course’s bonus hole, titled “Leap of Faith.” Puno believes that if you ask something of the audience, they will get more out of it. She called it the “personal investment” that an audience has in art that demands participation.

Incentivizing comes from not treating a spectator as a passive consumer of a genius work, but as someone whose contributions to the work are just as important as the artist’s. Technically speaking, the show lacks any of its themes and narratives without the players. The artists have provided a forum, but it is the audience who must labor through each hole to fully understand what each artist is trying to say.

Below is a video taken An Xiao of me taking a shot at Risa’s bonus hole:

Gallery of photos from The Golden Door mini-gold course via my Picasa account.

Looking In the Shadows

Andy Warhol, “Self-Portrait” (1986). Mugrabi Collection. © 2010 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc./Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY (via BrooklynMuseum.org) (click to enlarge)

The first gallery is covered with repeating images of a cartoonish self-portrait on purple wallpaper. And you think … well, I did anyway … “There is the Warhol I know and love!” However, upon closer inspection, the works adorning the walls, such as “Self Portrait (Strangulation)” (1978) and “Self Portrait with Skull” (1978), form a drastic change in subject matter from the sixties. This is not the Warhol from the sixties which is one of the many reasons why this period is so significant and why this is not just another Warhol exhibit. Presenting Warhol’s treatment of his own death is a very clear way of presenting this to the unsuspecting museumgoer right off the bat.

This is the first time such an extensive exhibition has tackled Warhol’s late works, it is a period during which he created over 3,500 new works. This is an awkward period to treat because it is so expansive and it might be easy to suggest that his talent was waning and that he was trying to too hard. The exhibit doesn’t portray this frenzy in its numbers (of the 3,500 only approx 50 are present) but in the speed in which he ate up and served out styles.

We see Warhol’s undertaking of abstraction in which he is very successful. The abstract lends itself more readily to the ephemeral and to otherworldliness, so it is no wonder that figurative artists often flirt with abstraction towards the end of their lives (think Titian, Cézanne, Bonnard, and Monet). There are a couple works from Warhol’s abstract Oxidation series in which the canvas is primed with copper-based paint and then is urinated on by either Warhol himself or other people in the Factory. Surprisingly, the effect is quite beautiful. The wall text explains that these series are evidence of his fascination with and envy of the Abstract Expressionists. We see his fascination with these artists on several occasions during the exhibit but I do not, however, agree that Warhol was envious.

Andy Warhol, “Oxidation Paintings (in 12 parts)” (1978), Acrylic and urine on linen, 48x49 inches. Lent by the Andy Warhol Museum, Pitssburgh, Founding Collection, Contribution The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. (via BrooklynMuseum.org) (click to enlarge)

This gesture, urinating on the canvas, recalls a painting by Francis Bacon, “Blood on Pavement” (1988), which looks similar to a late Rothko, split into several, horizontal bands of color and yet in the center is a smear of red paint. Some believed that this was Bacon’s way of saying, “Just by smearing red paint on the canvas and calling it blood, my painting has more emotion than your hazy, abstract forms will ever possess.” Warhol’s “piss-paintings” — to steal a common nickname used to describe the works — seem to work in the same way. Pollock, Kline, de Kooning and others inserted themselves, visually, into their works. The Oxidation series seemed to say, you want gesture? You want physical presence? You want the mark of the artist?! I’ll show you the mark of the artist! Warhol’s other abstractions in the gallery as just as mysterious and handsome as the Oxidation series despite being sans bodily fluids.

The next room is filled with his Yarn (1983) series, paint with silk-screens, and Pollock on acid. He takes the very deliberate and forceful gesture of Pollock, freezes it, and turns it into rainbow doodles. In the same room are his Egg (1982) series that recall enlarged fragments of Larry Poons’s work. Warhol clearly had a fascination with the Abstract Expressionists, but envy had nothing to do with it. He isn’t making fun but having fun, taking something very serious and deep and exploring it in the flatest way possible, erasing any sense of physical depth.

Connecting With the World

The exhibition includes a group of paintings that Warhol collaborated on with artists Jean Michel Basquiat and Francesco Clemente. The style of each artist complements Warhol’s art very well, so when they visually overlap and converse it is attractive. It is easy to pick out the marks of each artist, but not in a way that makes the work distracting or disjointed. More so, it heightens each artist’s approach and productively revealed the influences they had on one another.

Not touched upon here in this article, but laced throughout the exhibit, are videos of the various recordable ventures Warhol took through the last decade. He produced several TV programs, including Fashion: The Express and the Commissioner (1980) and Andy Warhol’s Fifteen Minutes (1985), they not only provide a visual break from the continuous paint-on-canvas work in the exhibit, but present the work Warhol was doing outside of painting during this time.

Warhol was such an enigmatic character that no wall text will be able to explain him fully. And with an exhibit this expansive and diverse, it can be difficult to make sense of it all but the catalogue provides a strong foundation to fully profit from the show. It productively adds to the thousands of pounds of ink that has been written about Warhol. Joseph D. Ketner II does a wonderful job of both critically discussing the works and examining the persona of Warhol during this late period.

Andy Warhol with Jean-Michel Basquiat in 1986 (screenshot via YouTube)

Warhol’s Rorschach paintings came about in a typical Warhol fashion, he asked around to as what he should paint and one day someone suggested the Rorschach ink blocks. The paintings themselves appear flat opposed to the wall text description that they evoke “deep mysteries lurking beneath the surface.” I do think many of Warhol’s abstractions induce deeper sentiments than what remains on the surface of the canvas, but let’s not push it — these do not. There is a nice conceptual layer to them however; the idea that the supposed patient viewing the forms is evaluated on their responses to them … but who is evaluating me?

During my second visit to the exhibit, I encountered what may be evidence of the exorbitant copyright laws of the Andy Warhol Foundation, a security guard told me that I wasn’t allowed to take notes. As in, whatever I was writing down on my little pad of paper, I had to stop. I questioned, “I’m not allowed to … take notes?” “Not with this exhibit,” she replied. While no other security guard had a problem with my, supposedly, blatant infringement of the King of Appropriation’s foundation copyright laws, it would be interesting to know where the fire is to this smoke.

The last two galleries contain the religious pieces that Warhol completed towards the end of his life. And to be honest, they are very impressive. “The Last Supper” (1986) (only shown at Fort Worth and now Brooklyn. Sorry, Baltimore and Milwaukee, you missed out!) uses his tried and true technique of repetition. The Last Supper series, for which he made over a hundred variations, was a commission for the inaugural exhibit at Alexander Iolas’s new Milan gallery, located across the street from Leonardo de Vinci’s “Last Supper” fresco.

Andy Warhol (American, 1928–1987). The Last Supper, 1986. Acrylic and silkscreen ink on linen, 116 x 390 in. (294.6 x 990.6 cm). The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh; Founding Collection, Contribution The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. © 2010 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York (via BrooklynMuseum.org) (click to enlarge)

I thought it was amusing. A presentation of the Big C, the man himself, complete with motorcycles, the Wise owl (from the snack company) and an eagle! What’s not to love? Americana, baby. And all this is yours for $6.99.

Yet, it doesn’t feel like it has religious weight, right? And many critics are wary of trying to dig out the religiosity in these series, like trying to talk politics about Jasper Johns’s flags. But Warhol approaches religion like he does almost everything else; why should he treat religion any different than his beloved advertisements or celebrities? He treats it with nonchalance and casualness; this is part of his America, his notion of reality. To Warhol you don’t have to search for the religiosity and the spiritual, it is right there! The Big C! How can you miss it? No digging necessary, which is why the quote on the wall from Warhol in reference to the series seems irrelevant: “I painted them all by hand — I myself; so now I’ve become a Sunday painter … That’s why the project took so long. But I worked with a passion.” The curator appears to be trying to convince the viewer of Warhol’s religious passion, to convince them to take these works “seriously”.

In the last room there are two more Last Supper works: “The Last Supper” (1986) and “Detail of the Last Supper (Christ 112 Times)” (1986). The repetition of the fragment, Christ’s head outlined in Byzantine gold, is exceptionally beautiful. From the front it appeared as if it was a segment of a film strip and if it were sped up Christ would appear be in motion. From the edges of the painting, looking at it from an angle, the heads of Christ begin to evolve and morph into different forms as they recede into the distance. The room also includes two of his last self-portraits, both which are penetrating and slightly ghostly.

This exhibit reiterates the complexity of Warhol during a specific and profound time period in the artist’s life. The late period of any artist always holds a kind of curiosity and wonder. We see a new vulnerability in Warhol; an almost panicky need to create something of worth. This doesn’t debase the work nor is it evidence of him losing his cool. He remains a complete conundrum which can be discomforting to the viewer There is no doubt that Warhol created some of his best, most interesting work during this period and it is how you choose to approach this period, with all its contradictions and idiosyncrasies, that will affect your view. Do you believe him? Does it matter? And let’s face it, being a mystery will never go out of style.

Marina Abramović takes her final bow. Photograph © 2010 Marco Anelli (via moma.org/explore/inside_out)

Senior editor of Antiwar.com and editor of BushwickBK Jeremy Sapienza unpacks some of the history of artist Marina Abramović to understand the power of her recent performance. He writes:

To those unfamiliar with Abramović’s past and past work, this is just a woman in a chair. But to know her background is to unlock the meaning of all this nothing.

And he gives us a taste of the historic legacy she is grappling with:

The artist’s influences are chiefly the air of Yugoslav nationalism in the postwar years — both parents were popular WWII figures; her great uncle was the patriarch of the Serbian Church — and the stark and dreary oppression of Tito’s communist regime. Abramović came of age under this anti-individualist orthodoxy; might this lead one to experiment further with self-denial, self-imposed stress positions — a popular tool in the torturer’s repertoire — and self-inflicted pain? She participated in a student protest that forced the dictator to convert a military building into an artists’ school, but Yugoslavia proved too stifling …

I never really thought of freedom as an important and crucial part of Abramović’s work, but it seems to make sense. Sometimes only when we are robbed of our freedom do we appreciate its worth.

Also, for those who may have missed it, MoMA’s Inside/Out blog has an extensive interview with Abramović. And in light of this post’s discussion of freedom and her background, I found this line particularly poignant:

What do you make of the fact that so many people became emotional?

What is very new about this performance is that we always perceive the audience as a group, but a group consists of many individuals. In this piece I deal with individuals of that group and it’s just a one-to-one relationship. So, when you enter the square of light and you sit on that chair, you’re an individual, and as an individual you are kind of isolated. And you’re in a very interesting situation because you’re observed by the group (the people waiting to sit), you’re observed by me, and you’re observing me — so it’s like triple observation. But then, very soon while you’re having this gaze and looking at me, you start having this invert and you start looking at yourself. So I am just a trigger, I am just a mirror and actually they become aware of their own life, of their own vulnerability, of their own pain, of everything — and that brings the crying. [They are] really crying about their own self, and that is an extremely emotional moment.

A view of the last day of Marina Abramovic’s “The Artist Is Present” (2010) in the MoMA’s atrium. (via @manbartlett)

Everyone at MoMA and their social media mavens need to be given a raise. I don’t know of any show that has ever ended with such a big and dramatic IRL & online frenzy like the Marina Abramović three-ring circus (I know, I know, there was only one ring). The crew at MoMA has this social media thing totally under control and I suspect everyone will look to them from now on to set the pace.

I didn’t plan to watch the last day online — I had a whole list of other things to do — but alas I was sucked in. The Internet has a way of doing that.

There was so much action it was dizzying. If it wasn’t the tweets about the scene, photos of the crowd, tumblogs comparing Abramović to “Whistler’s Mother,’ then it was artist Jason Polan’s drawing of the MoMA line from the night before, or artist Nina Meledandri, who has been documenting the whole experience as a potential participant (she visited the museum over 36 times during the show) on a tumblog and she was even tweeting about her final sitting with Abramović on the last day.

Gawker reported that someone “ran up to the outer ropes stuck his fingers down his throat and threw up. He then stumbled back and tried to throw up again, but not much came out. The guards grabbed him and kicked him out. Marina didn't move the whole time.” What a pro. (via Gawker)

Then there were the more dramatic moments on the last day, like the person who vomited at the performance (a form of critique?), the woman who stripped down in front of the artist (and was removed), and the person who threw fliers critical of the performance from the balcony — all of these were reported by Gawker in excruciating detail. Hell, there was even the renegade twitterfeed @marinaschair, which kept things interesting and light — though things started to get surreal when Marina’s chair began to virtually chat with the MoMA itself. Let’s say this whole thing was social media’d up the fuckin’ wazoo. The only thing they didn’t do was create a real Foursquare badge or document her gastrointestinal functions — though one online pundit did propose a theory.

I’ve been dying to know how it would end and — as expected — it was a dramatic conclusion. The final sitter was chief curator Klaus Biesenbach, who sat with the veteran performance artist and then kissed her before leaving.

Abramović does her final twirl at the conclusion of “The Artist Is Present” (2010) … and curtain … (screenshots from MoMA’s online came) (click to enlarge)

After Biesenbach left, she fell to the floor and then got up, did a twirl (a little reminiscent of Wonder Woman a la 1970s TV show intro) and worked the crowd, just like a R-O-C-K-S-T-A-R. I really think Abramović and her performance tapped into something very deep and powerful in the consciousness of the public. The myth of the artist was an integral part of “The Artist is Present” (2010), and there is nothing more powerful than myth to ignite the public imagination.

There was also something pseudo-religious about seeing her in MoMA’s atrium surrounded by lights, crowds, cameras, and what felt like an unnatural hush — at least the time I was there. I went to the museum a few weeks ago hoping to sit with her one day but I got there late and after witnessing the scene I realized that I may not even had the nerve to do so. I somehow felt unprepared.

MoMA and Marina’s chair have a moment online (my screenshot)

New York Times reviewer Holland Cotter wrote that over 1,400 people sat with the artist (some of whom became micro-celebrities because of repeat sittings), the show’s website had 800,000 hits (whatever that means), and the Flickrstream of sitters has been viewed 600,000 times (not bad for a social media experiment). But then Cotter criticized restagings of “Imponderabilia” (1977/2010) and other famous early Abramović works for “falling flat,” and honestly, I don’t understand why. I found them powerful and moving. Other critics, like Art Fag City’s Paddy Johnson, seem as yet undecided about the whole affair.

While some of the video works in the retrospective were hard to emotionally connect with, others were stunning, including the Balkan series which lived on in my imagination for days and weeks afterwards. The Abramović retrospective proved to me that some of the works will easily transcend her life, the artist needn’t be alive to make them work and breathe.

Abramović works the crowd post-performance (click to enlarge)

Greg Allen of Greg.org was tweeting the last day as he watched it online. I asked him if he had any thoughts about the conclusion of the Abramović performance:

“The Artist Is Present” definitely caught me off guard with the ending. When Klaus sat down, I knew he’d be the last one. But I thought it’d end at 5:30 pm, then I’d catch Marina standing up in the few minutes when the museum was closed, and the Marinacam was still on.
When they kissed, and clapped and bowed, and all the performers in their labcoats filed in, suddenly the whole piece stopped being unreal and distanced, and it became this thing these people have done. Which, I admit, had kind of slipped my mind.

The performance appears to have marked a seismic shift for performance in general and rumors are that even longtime performance art historian and curator Rosalee Goldberg has called the whole affair, “the Abramović tsunami” — my email to Goldberg was unanswered by the time of this posting.

If arts writer Mira Schor first brought up the “pee” issue, New York Magazine illustrator Mark Nerys made it come to life (via nymag.com)

I asked Defne Ayas, director of Arthub Asia and a curator of the Performa performance art festival since 2005 , what she thought of the Abramović phenomenon:

A museological coup d’etat, especially for an elephant like MoMA. No doubt Marina Abramović is the eternal Goddess of the performance world, But the recent ceremonies she orchestrated at this temple were more of an homage to the history of performance. The tools she is using are absolutely from the Egyptian temple culture as if she is the daughter of Isis or something. Though, it didn’t do much to change the perception of what performance could be in the future.

Hello, micro-celebrity, “Day 65, Portrait 6” (copyright flickr.com/themuseumofmodernart)

She mentioned that people in Shanghai, where she lives part of the year, were discussing the piece as if it was taking place a few minutes away from the city. She confirmed that it became an international phenomenon.

On the last day, artist Meledandri sat with Abramović one final time. The show has consumed her life. Yesterday, she was tweeting in line and I asked her via Twitter to comment on the conclusion. She replied to my request just after stepping away from her final sitting with the artist. Her tweet read, “sat a little bit ago- honestly still overwhelmed with emotion that i cant yet qualify- strong ending” and then the following note ended up in my inbox, “Came to say thank you ended up having shortest yet most emotional sitting yet.”

New York — and the art world — seems divided into the Abramović believers and the “unbelievers,” to borrow Cotter’s term, yet the power of performance art to galvanize an audience is part of its appeal. One thing is certain, the Abramović cult is in full-swing and considering there is talk of her scripting a theatrical show with director Robert Wilson, we can be sure that we haven’t heard the last of her yet. I, for one, am elated.

The full text of the Kruger’s “Untitled (It)” (2010) for AGO (via scotiabankcontactphoto.com)

The façade of Toronto’s Art Gallery of Ontario has been overtaken by a massive block-long banner created by propaganda-inspired artist Barbara Kruger. Titled “Untitled (It)” (2010), the Kruger billboard is very much unlike her all-over installation last year at Lever House in Manhattan, Between Being Boring and Dying, which warped and wallpapered text around the ground floor of the landmark Park Avenue skyscraper. In contrast, AGO’s Dundas Street installation feels polite and subdued — two words, strangely, often used to describe the city of Toronto itself.

If truth be told, I don’t know if I would’ve thought it was an art work at all or something dreamt up by the museum’s corporate advertising team trying to come across as edgy and cool. My only tip that it was by Kruger was the ubiquitous chatter in Toronto publications that the American artist had touched down in the city.

The billboard, which stretches from McCaul to Beverly Streets, looks like many museum advertising campaigns that attempt to solicit strong reactions from viewers, but its placement up against the street, and with no clear sweeping view, makes it hard to read — does that make it “art”?

In an interview with Toronto art critic Leah Sandals, who asked the propaganda artist what her new Toronto work was about, Kruger replied:

Basically, it’s large-scale images and words that directly address the viewer. I never feel comfortable saying “This is what the work is about,” because it closes down potential readings. The Contact Festival this year is about pervasive images, so I thought it could deal with that image-world we all live in — whether it’s driving down streets and seeing billboards, or going home and seeing sites online. It could even be for those few people who still go to the theatre and see movies! These kinds of images influence all of us. It’s gotten even more so in the past 40 years, because everyone’s become a photographer. Is it even possible for people to live their life today and not do it through a lens? Not do it through a screen?

Her answer may dodge the “meaning” of her latest work — and I really think her claim in a later question that “sustained narrative is in a real crisis” is unclear to me, does she mean master narratives are on the wane? — but I have to say that the new Kruger billboard feels more corporate appropriation than artistic exploration.

A view of Kruger’s “Untitled (It)” on the glass skirt of Frank Gehry’s AGO building as seen from the corner of Dundas and McCaul Streets. (click to enlarge)

A view of Kruger’s “Untitled (It)” at the corner of Dundas and Beverly Streets. (click to enlarge)

Barbara Kruger’s “Untitled (It)” (2010) installation at the Art Gallery of Ontario continues until August 30, 2010. It is part of the city’s Contact Photography Festival, which is taking place throughout the month of May.

The postcard image for “Escape From New York”

Blogger-cum-curator Olympia Lambert has opened an ambitious project in of all places, Paterson, New Jersey.

Organized in collaboration with Paterson Arts Council, Lambert’s Escape From New York exhibition includes work by 45 contemporary New York artists. The artists include such 2010 Whitney Biennial talents as Bruce High Quality Foundation and Kate Gilmore, but there are some emerging and even some relatively unknown names in the mix that are sure to surprise even the most art worn observer.

Though, while Escape … may be the one getting most of the press, it is only one of three exhibitions — the other two are Great Fallings and Making Wave — that have taken over the massive Industry Mill (Fabricolor) at 24 1/2 VanHouten St in what is known as Paterson’s Great Falls Historic District.

Lambert has transformed her part of the warehouse takeover with large installations (Nicholas Fraser, Thomas Lendvai … ), performance works (An Xiao, Man Bartlett … ), video projections (BHQF, Gilmore … ), and small works (which in all honestly I don’t think fair as well in the huge cavernous spaces).

Enjoy some images I snapped from the opening event last weekend.

Escape From New York will be open to the public each weekend 11 AM – 6 PM, from May 15 through June 19, 2010. The exhibition is located on the second, fourth and fifth floors of the building.

Everyone had their cameras ready for the sights inside the Paterson Silk Factory building (click to enlarge)

Joanne McNeil or Tomorrow Museum takes part in An Xiao, “The Artist Is Kinda Present” (2010) (click to enlarge)

Installation by Nicholas Fraser (2010) with Tamas Veszi’s “Dark-matter” in background (click to enlarge)

Micah Ganske, “The Full Picture” (200?) (click to enlarge)

Sculptures by Stephan Fowlkes (click to enlarge)

Thomas Lendvai, “Untitled” (2010) (click to enlarge)

People watching Kate Gilmore, “Walk This Way” (2008) (click to enlarge)

Man Bartlett “#cleandream” (2010) performance (click to enlarge)

Installation by Sean Slemon (click to enlarge)

Detail of Jennifer Dalton, “Would You Rather Be a Pig or a Loser?” (2006) (click to enlarge)

Photo of video, Bruce High Quality Foundation, “Isle of the Dead” (2009) (click to enlarge)

For more photos from the exhibition, visit here.

Full disclosure: Escape From New York was a sponsor of Hyperallergic earlier this month, and Lambert has contribute to this blogazine.

Kent Monkman, “Charged Particles in Motion” (2007), Private Collection (Image courtesy Glenbow) (click to enlarge)

Gender issues and neo-colonialism are having a fine frippery field day courtesy of Kent Monkman, a gay First Nations Manitoba Swampy Cree Canadian artist. Monkman’s mother is English and Irish. His father is a Christian Cree who delivers sermons from a Cree language bible, so the man has got First Nations, British, Irish and gospel blood pouring through his latticed veins. Whether waving his pink boa feathered headdress around as his performance art alter ego, Miss Chief Eagle Testickle (punning “mischief” and “egotistical”), filming much more serious documentary subjects concerning First Nations issues, or painting a faux gender bending 19th Century tableaux, he is part of a small, but burgeoning contingent of Canadian First Nations artists who are engaging in sociological and scatological commentary on the state of the nations, First or otherwise.

Kent Monkman, “Si je t’aime prends garde à toi” (2007), Private Collection. (photo by Isaac Applebaum, courtesy the Glenbow) (click to enlarge)

Most people reading this review may not be that familiar with Calgary, site of the 1988 Canadian Winter Olympics, or as I like to call it, Houston in the Rockies. Oil, gas and beef are big here, so big that China just went on a shopping spree and scarfed up a big slice of the province’s controversial oil sands. The most popular yearly event is the Calgary Stampede, the largest rodeo in the world. For all its money and might, Calgary has just one museum in town, the Glenbow, given over to preserving both First Nations history as well as the history of the settling of the province of Alberta. The Mounties, those red coated constables of old who built the original Fort Calgary used the slogan, “The Mounties always get their man.” That slogan takes on a completely different meaning in the context of Monkman’s exhibition, one I suspect the beef oil and gas locals are not too thrilled about.

Monkman, whose show at the Glenbow includes oil paintings, sculptural spaces and objects, films, videos and photography, riffs off 19th century landscape painters like Cornelius David Krieghoff. Krieghoff’s painting in the Brooklyn Museum, “Following the Moose” (1860) or other work, “Indian Wigwam”(1848) puts him at the top of the heap of those who exoticized, romanticized, and fetishicized First Nations people as “noble savages.” With that style as a base he reconstitutes the grand nineteenth-century new world landscape painted by Albert Bierstadt, Frederick Church, and Paul Kane. Monkman’s work looks critically at Western art history, North American colonialism, and world Imperialism in an alternately light-hearted and heartbreaking manner.

Kent Monkman, “The Triumph of Mischief” (2007), Collection of the National Gallery of Canada. (image courtesy Glenbow) (click to enlarge)

He ravishes European Grand Manner painting by inserting “missing narratives and obliterated histories,” and turns young male Anglo cowboy colonizers into gay native sex fantasy objects of desire. As his alter-ego Miss Chief Eagle Testickle, he seduces his subjects with whiskey. When done with them he dresses them up as stellar examples of “authentic European males.” In his performance piece from 2007, “The Taxonomy of the European Male,” Monkman traveled to the Compton Verney, an 18th Century estate in Warwickshire, England. Dressed to the nine’s as Miss Chief (resembling Liza Minelli in Indian drag) replete with a pink, black and white feathered headdress and wicked white Donna Summer disco era platform high heels, Miss Chief discusses the physiology and phrenology of various “tribe of Europe.” Using a specimen at hand he intones “The English are well proportioned people in their limbs, and are quite good looking, being rather narrow in the hips and rather long in the groin. They are a little inclined to stoop.”

Take that, John Wayne.

*    *    *

It is worth noting that Monkman is not alone in exploring these themes through the perspective of a member of the First Nations. There are at least two other First Nations artists who are exploring similar terrain. The first, Lori Blondeau is a performance artist based in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan focusing on images of the Indian Princess and the Squaw. The other is Buffalo Boy who makes appearances at the Burning Man festival alternately as a shaman dressed in Buffalo robes or a campy drag cowboy.

Kent Monkman’s The Triumph of Mischief was at Calgary’s Glenbow Museum from Feburary 13 to April 25, 2010.

A Sequin Sequel to a Wilde Classic

Michelle Handelman's “Dorian” (2009)

“Dorian” commanded attention if only because of its four large video screens, high production values, and glamorous actors and actresses. The plot arc is familiar, and not just because Handelman used Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray as its foundation. Rather, it is a classic story of fame and hubris and the humiliation those two things seem to always entail. The main character is discovered, made famous, and then made to perform on stage while wearing pasties, a restrictive corset, and a giant fabric phallus covered in sequins. She then proceeds to spiral out of control with the help of copious amounts of cocaine and narcissism.

Most everything in the movie is visually interesting, which is necessary because the point of the story is easily understood (namely, fame can wreck people’s lives). Handelman created a burlesque underworld filled with eye candy of all sorts, most of which was covered in sequins (the sequins are not edible, don’t eat them). There are costumes that would make Lady Gaga jealous, including a recurring character wearing a black wig and a black bodysuit covered in sequins — sequins abounded, in case you were wondering.

Unfortunately, the video seems insistent on telling the viewer that they are watching “Art!” Sometimes this is literally spelled out, such as when a naked woman appeared, grimaced at the viewer, and then turned around. Painted on her back were the words “Real Art” with an arrow pointing to her rear-end. So that’s where real art comes from! I always wondered. I mean, here I am holding a paintbrush, looking like an idiot.

Another scene that screamed “Art!” (a little too hoarsely) involved the main character moping about her room after a crack binge. Her body language, combined with a screechy violin track, surprisingly resembled the independent film that anchorwoman Diane Simmons from the animated series Family Guy starred in during her college days. Family Guy’s send up of “avant-garde film making” is in this instance surprisingly apt. They may have even used the same violin track.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PD04f_4-K6E

Although Dorian is beautiful and the plot is not uninteresting, for me the video essentially remained at the eye candy level. The video has glitz, there is cross-dressing galore, and even a theremin player, but I didn’t find that the critical or analytical content of it could stand up to Kalup Linzy’s “Conversations wit de Churen III.” Linzy’s simple no-frills video involved such a tangle of gender roles, expectations, assumptions, and preconceptions that figuring out the plot alone occupied me for a long time.

Low Budget, Highly Gendered

The first thing I noticed as I left Handelman’s video and started watching Linzy’s piece is the decidedly low budget feel of “Churen III.” The lighting and video quality both look amateur, but this decision actually permits the massive amount of ideas and questions in the piece to come out, unfettered by technical and visual considerations.

Linzy’s video didn’t seem as self-aware or self-conscious as Handelman’s. Unlike Handelman’s, Linzy’s is not occupied with declaring itself “Art!” Linzy just gets on with it. Another advantage is that “Churen III”’s runtime of about seven minutes allows for several repeat viewings, which are necessary. Compared to Handelman’s piece, which is an hour long, “Churen III” can be seen over and over again, allowing the viewer greater exposure to Linzy’s ideas.

Kalup Linzy's “Conversations wit de Churen III: Da Young & Da Mess” (2005)

Linzy’s video is presented as a soap opera on steroids, complete with convoluted plot twists, melodramatic dialogue and questionable acting. Linzy plays the main character whose boyfriend has just proposed. He (if his character can even be classified as a he, as there is no direct comment on the character’s gender in the film, which causes pronoun problems for reviewers) lolls about in bed or in a bubble bath, typically wearing very little or nothing at all while making calls to friends, relatives, and a psychic to help him make up his mind. His character’s identification as a woman poses the biggest problem, and serves as the crux of the video. Linzy’s character talks, dresses, and acts in a way that society classifies as stereotypically female. Linzy’s character is grossly indecisive, which seems to be the result of him trying to fit into a certain category in order to be accepted. There are concerns about what the church group and the community will think of their marriage, raising questions about our society’s perception of relationships and the function of gender roles.

As Ariel Levy noted in a New Yorker article last fall about the controversy surrounding Caster Semenya, a world champion track athlete so strong and so dominant that other women began to question her gender, “Taxonomy is an acutely sensitive subject.” A more recent article on Slate.com explores a similar case with women’s basketball player Brittney Griner. But the most complicated and most controversial issue, the prime example of why taxonomy is a sensitive subject, is the case of the “Pregnant Man.” Thomas Beatie, born Tracy Lagondino, became a man through surgery and hormone therapy, but kept his female reproductive organs because his partner Nancy was unable to bear children.

Linzy’s piece and these articles ask an uneasy and often uncomfortable question: what makes a man a man, and a woman a woman? We think of our biological identities as solid and irreducible: you’re either one or the other. But medicine and science are changing that, in a similar way to how the formerly concrete ideas about heterosexuality were and still are being dismantled. When we take the case of Thomas Beatie, how do we talk about a woman who loves a woman, decides to become a man, but still holds onto her female sexual organs? There is no word in English to describe that person — science has outpaced language. Words can’t keep up, and we are left to struggle onward. Yet struggling the most are the people we (read “society”) want to shoehorn into a solid, specific category: namely, the transgender and transsexual.

In the climax to “Churen III,” there is a confrontation between Linzy and his boyfriend’s ex-girlfriend. Linzy tells her that if he were a woman, he would beat her up, which is a self-defeating return to heteronormativity: a woman can fight a woman but a man can’t fight a woman. Even if that man thinks of himself as a woman, if s/he is stronger, taller, has a deeper voice, (or runs faster, or plays basketball more aggressively) than how a “woman” normally should, then they are not seen as a woman by many in society.

Linzy’s boyfriend offers him love and understanding, but in the end Linzy can’t trust his own self-identification and can’t handle the ambiguity of his situation. The genius of “Churen III” lies in its earnest presentation of complex social issues. There are no answers here, but the viewer is given much to consider.

The simple plot and presentation of events in “Churen III” allows for an intense debate about gender and sexuality, whereas Handelman’s “Dorian” is much more straightforward in the way it presents its ideas. It is interesting how Handelman, equipped with what looked like the larger budget and more star-studded cast did something that is so typically Hollywood: create a sequel. Dorian relays similar messages as Wilde’s story, and ends up looking like The Picture of Dorian Gray with drag queens (and don’t forget the sequins). “Churen III” draws inspiration from soap operas, yet Linzy’s video feels less derivative because of the unconventional roles on display.

That said, I came away from the exhibit with the opinion that seeing these two videos in relation to each other was more valuable than seeing them separately. Seeing them in this way allowed me to compare, contrast, and open a mental dialogue between the two artists’ different conceptions of the issues of cross dressing, gender identity and gender roles. I believe issues like these will continue to appear with more and more frequency. I also hope that more and more people will have a chance to see videos that can prompt debate about such issues in the way Handelman’s and Linzy’s can.

Virtuoso Illusion: Cross-Dressing and the New Media Avant-Garde took place at the MIT List Visual Arts Center from February 5 – April 4, 2010.

A view of ink on paper drawings from 2009 by Charles Ray

A view of the “Self-Immolation in Afghanistan: A Cry for Help” (2005) series by Stephanie Sinclair

Detail of Curtis Mann’s “After the Dust, Second View (Beirut)” (2009)

Lesley Vance, “Untitled (21)” (2009)

A detail of Kate Gilmore’s “Standing Here” (2010)

A view of Sharon Hayes’ “Parole” (2010)

A view of The Bruce High Quality Foundation’s “We Like America and America Likes Us” (2010)

Storm Tharp, “Pigeon (After Shunsen)” (2009) and “Miss Cloud” (2009)

Maureen Gallace, “Summer” (2009-10)

George Condo, “Integrated Forms (Birnam Wood)” (2009)

A view of Edgar Cleijne & Ellen Gallagher, “Better Dimension” (2010)

There are other great photos and videos of the event at:

• Look Into My Owl;
• FuriousDreams;
• sokref1’s Flickr set here;
• James Kalm’s video of the show here; and
• a video by CultureGrrl of curator Francesco Bonami at the press preview here.