Continuing Education Blog

Banks Violette’s second solo show at Gladstone Gallery:

IED prop from The Hurt Locker?

Or Conceptual Framework?

Chandelier! Next show: sconces!

Party in the Back

Q: What do you call it when an electric guitar goes on a weeklong drug binge?

A: Fender Bender

It all looks so bright when your Heart is so Black

What just happened? was the dominant thought as dumbstruck art kids shuffled out of a second-floor gallery at PS1.  To hear the varied accounts is like watching Rashomon.  Everyone saw the same events unfold, but every version is different.

As part of the new Saturday Sessions initiative at PS1, curators Sarvia Jasso and Andres Bedoya brought their Brooklyn is Burning faction to Queens.  After performance artist Georgia Sagri completed her self-hijacking fugue, most viewers were shocked when the next performer, Ann Liv Young, took the stage and verbally trashed Georgia’s romp.  Then it gets blurry (and messy).

Ann Liv Young urinated into a tray, Georgia left and then returned with middle fingers ablazing, both taunted each other, and then Ann Liv Young began masturbating on the floor, flopping and grinding her pelvis toward Georgia, her bare flesh flapping against Christian Marclay’s matrix of vinyl records.

Ann Liv Young, censored by me (Photo: David Shapiro/MUSEO)

Not sure what happened to Georgia after that, because most (wide) eyes were on Ann, who now appeared to be bleeding downstairs and staggering around with the tray of urine, only to spill a little and then dump it over herself like a Gatorade tank on Coach Paterno.  And now the lights are out.  ”Is this real?” some wondered aloud.  ”Is it part of the show?” “Maybe it’s like a Martin Creed sort of thing.”  No wonder the NY Times said of Ann Liv Young, “For the viewer it can be hard to tell if the show is unraveling or if Young’s behavior is the show itself.”

Who made the call to cut the power?  Many people blame the PS1 staff for silencing a daring performance.  That would be especially confusing if it came down from new Director Klaus Biesenbach.  The champion of the edgy and provocative Marina Abramovic wouldn’t be easily shocked; Ann Liv Young has nothing he hasn’t seen before, right?

(l-r) Ulay, some guy, Marina Abramovic; Marina Abramovic

After all, who can forget “the Vault,” which was the subterranean sex dungeon component of Klaus’ 2006 survey at PS1, Into Me/Out of Me?  How about the sensational Pipilotti Rist supervideo he brought to MoMA, Pour Your Body Out (7354 Cubic Meters)?  Rist’s psyche-sanguine content was risky (risty?) business, too – and one of the absolute coolest undertakings we’ve ever seen at the new MoMA.  He also brought us the mesmerizing Douglas Gordon: Timeline and at PS1, Fassbinder: Berlin Alexanderplatz. Hot!

That Marina photo reminds me of Man Ray's "Le Violin D'Ingres"

But then PS1 has compromised unusual projects for specious reasons.  One example comes from a few years ago, when PS1 support staff removed part of an installation by Jesse Bercowetz & Matt Bua: a dead chicken suspended from a window.

Artist and Brooklyn is Burning participant Julia Oldham might be the first to have blogged about the event.  We chatted about it over email and I spoke for the steady stream of dejected viewers upset about a repressive gesture that looked reactionary and hypocritical.  But don’t listen to me; I was just riled up after watching Keith Olbermann all day to help with my merciless winter depression.

Even if Klaus issued the cut-off directive, it might be unfair to wolf-cry censorship.  Censorship entails a greater degree of deliberation for the purpose of personal or political gain. If an aggressive performer is bleeding, flinging urine, and staggering around, maybe a prudent adult should hit the Panic Button.  Intervening into the escalating altercation might have prevented a catfight or worse.  Or maybe PS1 thought Ann Liv Young’s performance spilled over into uncooth hysteria, and censorship doesn’t apply, since antics aren’t really content.  Maybe Admiral Klaus ruled that Ann had jumped the shark when the mad clam bared its teeth.

nom nom nom meow

More Ann Liv Young (link NSFW)

UPDATE 1: From BiB co-curator Sarvia Jasso:
As one of the curators of BiB, I would like to take this opportunity to express my opinion about the event at PS1. Despite the fact that BiB is a collaborative project, my fellow curator Andres Bedoya and I have respectfully diverging opinions that have not necessarily been fully reflected in any of the statements posted thusfar.

While I do not claim to know the reason the museum turned the lights off, I can say that the perceived animosity and escalating verbal and gestural attacks in the room from one artist to another were absolutely antithetical to my understanding of what BiB represents. The situation ultimately compromised the participation of the other artists involved, causing the last artist to perform in the dark. Despite the unforeseen and unfortunate outcome, I remain committed to a completely open format for expression. I think the framework (content and context) for any ensuing discussions should take into account the complexities of experiencing a live performance within an institution, instead of jumping to the conclusion that the impetus for removing power during the event originated in an attempt at censoring the performers.

A claim of censorship could easily develop into a self-serving mythology with its own inertia, which could then quickly become detached from the event itself. I think we need to be very clear that no one was asked to leave and all of the planned performances occurred during the course of the event.
From a curatorial point of view, a broad range of performances is vital to the program, but the underlying message always stays the same—BiB is forging a community that respects and celebrates diversity in all its complexities. Anybody who has ever attended a BiB event can attest to the fact that we try to create a positive environment in which to present work that can be challenging and, at times, difficult to digest.

UPDATE 2: From PS1:
The decision by the Director of PS1 to curtail the performances near the end of Saturday Sessions was made to safeguard the audience, performers, and PS1 staff from an escalating and potentially volatile situation. The performers’ actions were not previously discussed with or planned by PS1.

The Man. The Legend.

“He’s totally crazy!” an insider confided to me. “He wrote this insane book all about himself” (which said insider admits he has never read) “and gets all his friends together to read it. That’s crazy!”

But good crazy, right?

1. Adam McEwen 2. Matthew Higgs 3. Richard Phillips 4. Stefania Bortolami 5. Sean Landers

At an event produced by Art Production Fund and White Columns, an all-star roster of art world veterans read from the revised edition of Sean Landers’ SIC, originally printed as (sic) almost twenty years ago. The daisy chain of old friends read nonstop till 2am, by which time the audience had been whittled down to a few concrete devotees, who were rewarded with delicious pizza and the remnants of the vodka open bar.

(l-r) Artists Richard Phillips, John Currin; Jonathan Horowitz, Rob Pruitt

Readers included the old bachelor-pad studiomates John Currin, Richard Phillips, and brother Kevin Landers; the stately art-world incarnate Clarissa Dalrymple; former Landers dealer Andrea Rosen; new Landers dealer Friedrich Petzel; and of course, Sean Landers himself.  Rob Pruitt was lined up to read, only minutes after the signing party at nearby Gavin Brown for his new book, Pop Touched Me.  He didn’t get to read, however, as the event’s schedule required some trimming for brevity.

The Fab Forties

Star-studded? Indeed, there was even a portrait station to capture each of the shimmering pulsars participating.

White Columns' Matthew Higgs ready for his close-up

Like a teen dunking his little brother while swimming, SIC plunges its readers into the neurotic cesspools of Sean Landers’ polarized self-evaluations. His ruminations, mostly phallocentric, regularly cover masturbation, getting laid, and the shortcomings of his own anatomy.

(l) Clarissa Dalrymple and reclining Matthew Higgs; (r) Andrea Rosen

But he also circles the pithy topics of an old friend hopelessly lost in poetic misanthropy, the welcome gentrification of his neighborhood and himself as he turns 30, a revitalizing yet anticlimactic love affair in Greece, and the gradual, painful sinking of his relationship with Michelle, his girlfriend of three years at the time.  She is now his wife, but that break-up nearly pushed him over the edge.  Luckily, there is a dramatic deus-ex-machina rescue by the tender memory of Sean’s long dead sister.

(l-r) New SIC, new SIC, old (sic)

The new version of (sic) is so heavily revised that it was difficult for me to read along in my 1993 print.  But revisions might be helpful.  The 1993 version frustrated readers because of its protagonist’s recurring self-flagellation, the manic-depressive pace, and the aimless march of unresolved conflicts. But the funny parts are hysterical and the intimate candor seems touching; and doesn’t retouching the text compromise the stream-0f-conscious spontaneity that makes it so gripping?

The ageless, sexy Cecily Brown reading SICDa

I love the book. But did the evening’s stream of readers dissipate into an arduous drone? Was there nothing to look at, something frustrating for an audience of visual artists? The projection cast behind the reader added nothing but scale and light. How about an accompanying slideshow? Or intermittent projections of the handwritten manuscript?

cockwise from top left: Gavin Brown, Jessica Craig-Martin, same, Adam McEwen

And did the absence of young artists participating seem to wall up Sean Landers and his peers from the great flea market of influence? This blog praises without reservation Sean Landers as a titan of 1990s art, and for some critics, he is THE FACE of that period’s slacker art. But the phalanx of mostly heterosexual 40-somethings seemed to deny the intergenerational fertility of Sean Landers’ work…

…which should be extruded through the channels of more mixed 30- and 20-somethings. Once a 90s artist, always a 90s artist? (I sure hope not! I wish there were more artists like Sean Landers.)  What will a decade with Petzel produce?

Get out of the studio and into the sunshine!  Absorb the vitamin D while you can.  Mercurial March is still ahead, so stock up on selected Serotonin and stash some in the freezer, next to the Chubby Hubby and 11 or 12 cigarettes left dormant since you resolved to quit smoking (but you saved them, just in case).

Major League Baseball Spring Training is now under way.  Pitchers and Catchers (no, not you, Chelsea boys) reported last week, and everyone else will show up in the coming week. The rest of us can start thinking about our white pants – can we pull off that sprightly look for one more Spring?