Trace
THE SINCERITY OF A COPY, THE INSINCERITY OF IMITATION
I sleep deeply when not on a bed … just on a mat on the floor. I feel secure without the extra cushion, like a flower that is flattened between the pages of a thick book: paper thin, yet retaining complexity. When the book is reopened (the break of morning), light will shine through me and I am fragile and honest.
Wolfgang Tillmans has taken such photos: the x-ray vision of a new day starting. In a couple of his pictures, bodies conform to the surface of the earth beneath them, lost in a solid sleep with dreams full of stillness. I like these images for the way they try hard to feel the surface of things like: regeneration and second-hand information … the punkness of photocopies, the brutal beauty of exposing sleeping things to light.
A few days before I saw the opposite of this revealing transparency at Berlin’s new Temporary Art Hall. The exhibition featured multiple wide-screen monitors, but the images in them remained opaque. They were not vulnerable, but calculated, arranged, and produced. Candice Breitz has done brilliant video installations in the past. It was a mistake (both hers and the curator’s) to not feature a wider range of work.
What is on display shows off high-production on all ends to tell one old joke with the punch line botched. This regeneration (in this case, songs filtered through their fans) should have had that same punk grit that Wolfgang is in love with, but instead the work was weak and limited, and part of that limitation came from one idea being overplayed. A wall of fans sang each song, so that the grit of any one honest voice was blended into an amateur chorus and robbed of the nuance and sincerity of the individual.
Here's a review that disagrees.
It was fitting that the music was all pop, because the effect was like hearing a known song in a muted grocery-store version. The original is not celebrated--as it is in, say, photocopied zines--but neutered through mass production … such as what happens with knock-offs.
These weren’t the only two shows in town. Berlin had itself a week full of art: three or four art fairs, this new space on museum island, multiple gallery openings with multiple after parties and multiple next-day hangovers. But I didn’t go into the fray.
Billy (Miller) came by on Tuesday (last week) and we went to the Art Hall opening to find the high budget karaoke on view crowded with people dressed in black and knocking back free wine. Instead of hanging out to join the blah blah blah, we decided to see the new Hellboy film … after all, if you are going to watch over-budgeted entertainment, at least choose the brand that calls itself "entertainment" openly. The film didn’t thrill me, but neither did it disappoint, since I never expect more from big budget action films than a large helping of dessert without much substance.
Maybe that’s why I liked Wolfgang’s new works, which had their opening on Friday. Those “simple” stills of his were packed with information. A full meal (and a full meal to follow at the after party)! While he is perhaps entertained in the making of these works, entertainment is not his goal. Maybe once upon a time it was? But now there’s a very personal exploration going on. His work has always been personal, but more and more it’s not just a document of the world around him; he is tugging at something inside himself. I don’t know what for sure … that night it was impossible to chat with him. The dinner afterwards had something like 150 attendees. After dinner more people flooded in, so I couldn’t even say a proper goodbye, but I’ll visit him soon.
On Sunday Exile Gallery featured a talk by Mark Siegel that was humorous, thoughtful, and on the subject of entertainment. His topic was Boyd McDonald’s Cruising the Movies (to tie in with Billy's titillating exhibition on Straight to Hell magazine). Boyd’s life work was aimed at preserving the true history of homosexual men, as opposed to the desexualized males featured in the gay press of his time. I say “of his time” not because I feel today’s press features a more sexual gay, rather because I no longer read any gay press and am willfully out of touch.
Coco suggested my rejection of gay popular media was part of a “modern trend.” He argued (and I paraphrase) that young queer men today are apolitical because they refuse all and any identity politics as “uncool” and use this as an excuse to build a new type of closet. I disagreed-though since we are both in our forties, no authentic voice was present--I thought that it made sense to reject the press’ paper doll images of gayness because their limitations made “being gay” bankrupt in terms of any honest representation.
From what I gleam from it, the (GLBT) press is still obsessed with types. When asked why I thought that was, I said most likely it is capitalistic laziness; by tagging types the press has an audience to market to, and if new presses buy into these types, they have the cushion of a pre-created market. It’s a no-brainer for the sales department. And while it doesn’t require political savvy, rejecting these visible types could be seen as a political act. The body politic is not just an expression of where you stand by what you wear, it is also an expression of what you refuse to play part in by what you don’t wear.
Fittingly the next morning I watched the documentary Paris is Burning, which I hadn’t seen since it first came out about 20 years ago. Aykan invited me to sit in on his class that is currently going over some works by Judith Butler. The film was an odd version, not dubbed, but with German translation spoken over the English dialogues. The very colorful and funny language of the Ball attendees was condensed down to short, dry sentences.
This seemed to be an aural example of what the press does, and of the reason for the emptiness I walked away with from the Art Hall opening; both take a diverse and interesting pallet and boil it down to sum up the general idea. In doing so, they misdirect it and make the message seem naive because it is drained of all the nuances of the way it was preformed.
Today is another Tuesday; this week the program turns towards the American election. I'm off to a party with mostly Americans, all hopeful that the polls are right. We'll know soon enough.
I sleep deeply when not on a bed … just on a mat on the floor. I feel secure without the extra cushion, like a flower that is flattened between the pages of a thick book: paper thin, yet retaining complexity. When the book is reopened (the break of morning), light will shine through me and I am fragile and honest.
Wolfgang Tillmans has taken such photos: the x-ray vision of a new day starting. In a couple of his pictures, bodies conform to the surface of the earth beneath them, lost in a solid sleep with dreams full of stillness. I like these images for the way they try hard to feel the surface of things like: regeneration and second-hand information … the punkness of photocopies, the brutal beauty of exposing sleeping things to light.
A few days before I saw the opposite of this revealing transparency at Berlin’s new Temporary Art Hall. The exhibition featured multiple wide-screen monitors, but the images in them remained opaque. They were not vulnerable, but calculated, arranged, and produced. Candice Breitz has done brilliant video installations in the past. It was a mistake (both hers and the curator’s) to not feature a wider range of work.
What is on display shows off high-production on all ends to tell one old joke with the punch line botched. This regeneration (in this case, songs filtered through their fans) should have had that same punk grit that Wolfgang is in love with, but instead the work was weak and limited, and part of that limitation came from one idea being overplayed. A wall of fans sang each song, so that the grit of any one honest voice was blended into an amateur chorus and robbed of the nuance and sincerity of the individual.
Here's a review that disagrees.
It was fitting that the music was all pop, because the effect was like hearing a known song in a muted grocery-store version. The original is not celebrated--as it is in, say, photocopied zines--but neutered through mass production … such as what happens with knock-offs.
These weren’t the only two shows in town. Berlin had itself a week full of art: three or four art fairs, this new space on museum island, multiple gallery openings with multiple after parties and multiple next-day hangovers. But I didn’t go into the fray.
Billy (Miller) came by on Tuesday (last week) and we went to the Art Hall opening to find the high budget karaoke on view crowded with people dressed in black and knocking back free wine. Instead of hanging out to join the blah blah blah, we decided to see the new Hellboy film … after all, if you are going to watch over-budgeted entertainment, at least choose the brand that calls itself "entertainment" openly. The film didn’t thrill me, but neither did it disappoint, since I never expect more from big budget action films than a large helping of dessert without much substance.
Maybe that’s why I liked Wolfgang’s new works, which had their opening on Friday. Those “simple” stills of his were packed with information. A full meal (and a full meal to follow at the after party)! While he is perhaps entertained in the making of these works, entertainment is not his goal. Maybe once upon a time it was? But now there’s a very personal exploration going on. His work has always been personal, but more and more it’s not just a document of the world around him; he is tugging at something inside himself. I don’t know what for sure … that night it was impossible to chat with him. The dinner afterwards had something like 150 attendees. After dinner more people flooded in, so I couldn’t even say a proper goodbye, but I’ll visit him soon.
On Sunday Exile Gallery featured a talk by Mark Siegel that was humorous, thoughtful, and on the subject of entertainment. His topic was Boyd McDonald’s Cruising the Movies (to tie in with Billy's titillating exhibition on Straight to Hell magazine). Boyd’s life work was aimed at preserving the true history of homosexual men, as opposed to the desexualized males featured in the gay press of his time. I say “of his time” not because I feel today’s press features a more sexual gay, rather because I no longer read any gay press and am willfully out of touch.
Coco suggested my rejection of gay popular media was part of a “modern trend.” He argued (and I paraphrase) that young queer men today are apolitical because they refuse all and any identity politics as “uncool” and use this as an excuse to build a new type of closet. I disagreed-though since we are both in our forties, no authentic voice was present--I thought that it made sense to reject the press’ paper doll images of gayness because their limitations made “being gay” bankrupt in terms of any honest representation.
From what I gleam from it, the (GLBT) press is still obsessed with types. When asked why I thought that was, I said most likely it is capitalistic laziness; by tagging types the press has an audience to market to, and if new presses buy into these types, they have the cushion of a pre-created market. It’s a no-brainer for the sales department. And while it doesn’t require political savvy, rejecting these visible types could be seen as a political act. The body politic is not just an expression of where you stand by what you wear, it is also an expression of what you refuse to play part in by what you don’t wear.
Fittingly the next morning I watched the documentary Paris is Burning, which I hadn’t seen since it first came out about 20 years ago. Aykan invited me to sit in on his class that is currently going over some works by Judith Butler. The film was an odd version, not dubbed, but with German translation spoken over the English dialogues. The very colorful and funny language of the Ball attendees was condensed down to short, dry sentences.
This seemed to be an aural example of what the press does, and of the reason for the emptiness I walked away with from the Art Hall opening; both take a diverse and interesting pallet and boil it down to sum up the general idea. In doing so, they misdirect it and make the message seem naive because it is drained of all the nuances of the way it was preformed.
Today is another Tuesday; this week the program turns towards the American election. I'm off to a party with mostly Americans, all hopeful that the polls are right. We'll know soon enough.