Tony Conrad “Window Enactment”

Tuesday, Oct. 30^th, Greene Naftali Gallery, New York

“A special live performance Tony Conrad, known for his pioneering work in music and underground cinema.” So, at least, it says in the program. Well, the performance wasn’t anything special, nor pioneering. In fact, the work seemed like an undergraduate course assignment on Hitchcock’s “Rear Window,” as seen from the backwaters of washed-out postmodern film theory.

Since barely anything happened, here’s a summary of the first few scenes:

Scene 1: We see nothing but a white drywall with a projection of a half-opened window.

Just in case we don’t get that it indeed is a ‘projection,’ we have to stare at it for about 10 minutes. Gradually, another window within the set appears, right behind the projected one—of course.

Scene 2: A door in the drywall opens a crack, and we see a very bright light shining through this door. Again, we wait, finally this door shuts.

Scene 3: We sit in darkness. At last, an additional window opens in the back of the set.

Yes, it is about windows, thank you for reminding us again. And, yes, even the title tells us that.

We see what looks like 3 young students, walking around inside of the set, pretending to be looking for something. Through loudspeakers, we hear the sound of squirting Windex across the imaginary floor and corners. Immediately, it’s obvious we are looking at people with no training in acting nor any careful instruction. Their movements hold no tension, are utterly self aware, and of course don’t look at all like the intended representational imitation of ‘regular people’ walking.

Then we have to listen to female heavy breathing coming out of the speakers.

To top all embarrassment, the chick gets naked. Well, at least we have something to look at. To keep things un-sexist, the boy gets naked too. Though he doesn’t have to wind around, caressing lightbulbs and cables, like she does. She wears a headset. Oh, so the heavy breathing might be hers. “Or is it just an illusion? Is life an illusion? Are we merely voyeurs?” Give me a break!

We go on seeing more young people, as well as an old man, getting naked, pseudo-modern dance, more projections, and even a Hitchcock-ish sound score. Well, here’s when I almost threw up: implying that the audience must be a crowd of utter idiots who still didn’t get the “Rear Window” reference, not only once, but twice, do we have to look at the actors staring at us through the window with binoculars! The second time was especially painful, because they just wouldn’t stop. Moreover, when people giggled in the audience, one of the actors couldn’t help but fall out of what pathetic little was left of her role, and giggled back.

All was accompanied by constant camera clicking. Why is it that the worst performances are the best documented?

I’ve endured for nearly an hour. I get up to leave.

The event is well visited, mostly by people in their twenties. The gallery reeks like the L-train, but only during its section from Chelsea to Williamsburg, maybe Bushwick if you want to be generous. Hipsters—and I mean hipsters, not artists—and other wannabes scan my outfit and pick at their faux-hawks. The Midtown view through the gallery windows is spectacular. We are being served homemade punch, water, and neatly arranged mini donut balls. I grab another one of those and flee.

Was this performance an underage, pretentious, busy-bee version of Performa’s disastrous opening event? (See a couple of posts below on Francesco Vezzoli’s “Cosi E (Se Vi Pare)/Right You Are If You Think You Are.”) It certainly was shallow, pseudo-intellectual, predictable, didactic, and painfully boring. In the case of the opening event, at least, the concern with topics such as the aura of fame/cult was acted out up by hired, experienced professionals. The night at Greene Naftali Gallery was held at the cost of naive, enthusiastic youngsters who didn’t get any credit whatsoever.

I can’t help but understanding the motivation for hosting this event as staying fresh (meat), though what I saw was as moldy as certain influential somebody's midlife crisis. I feel embarrassed for the poor amateur actors who had to be exposed to this scenester vampirism. I’m angry at Tony Conrad and the host for wasting people’s time and insulting their intelligence, but most of all for exploiting these poor kids for their underground capital.

Michael Portnoy at the Swiss Institute

Melissa Brown and I show up right on time for M.P.'s performance at the Swiss Institute.

Melissa has seen him perform before - after her band played in Miami.

She said she thinks he might have jumped up on stage without anyone's permission.

But tonight he seems to have gone through the right channels.

We run into Sam Gordon - he has seen M.P. perform before too.

"Be careful in the front row," says Sam. "We might get food on us."

But there doesn't seem to be anything on stage that will stain my pants.

The mission tonight is to crank call people from ArtReview's annual list of the 100 most powerful people in contemporary art,

and keep them on hold.

"Think of all the art that will be piling up while we waste their time." says M.P.

Sometimes the performance is pure slapstick.

And I forget myself in the audience.

But laughing out loud while we are on the phone with _____'s next door neighbor,

we are suddenly all implicated in the prank.

"Richard Prince #26. What a dick. I don't want to call him." says M.P.

He makes up dirty jokes instead,

He has his assistant bang them out on his ass.

Sometimes I am mad at him for the way he speaks to her,

although I know,I know... its all part of the act.

And he treats his other friends just as poorly.

He tries to get some high rolling officials from Waste Management on the phone,

but they prove to be more elusive than those in the art world.

He calls 311, impersonating Larry Gagosian, and tries to get a special waste pickup from 555 West 24th.

"Don't pay too much attention to what I say," says M.P. "it's all about the hold music, it's about expanding the way people approach hold music."

But its hard not to pay attention to the double entendre

and the uncomfortable poetic lapses,

and in the end they have expanded everything just enough.

He sings along karaoki style to Billy Joel's 'Always a Woman'.

"Isn't art and trash 'always a woman'" says M.P.

I see what he means when he points out the words :
Oh--she takes care of herself
She can wait if she wants
She's ahead of her time
Oh--and she never gives out
And she never gives in
She just changes her mind

She is frequently kind
And she's suddenly cruel
She can do as she pleases
She's nobody's fool
And she can't be convicted
She's earned her degree
And the most she will do
Is throw shadows at you
But she's always a woman to me

PS I asked Sam Gordon to tell me a little about Michael Portnoy. Here is what he writes:
Portnoy, or soy bomb as he is known to a larger public (google that if you don't know) is one of a kind, they broke the mold after making him. Infamous for numerous private salons and public freakouts, he threw his mic at one of Performa's patrons at their recent benefit, which got his act shut down. He's been adopted by the Swiss Institute, or maybe more like foster care, in Basel he served hors d'oeuvres though glory holes at their booth. When protest and action seem all quickly and totally commodified, his situations, which include spoken world, singing, and often screaming have an urgency with perhaps an agency that may not stop the tide of waste and taste, but will keep you laughing while they skin us alive.

Body Art on a Binge (Pre-thoughts on PERFORMA 07)

PERFORMA 07 is the latest of the biennials or international fairs to become part of the steady diet of art on a binge. Taking its moniker from Documenta perhaps, PERFORMA is different in that it’s tightly focused (or at least in jest) on performance art. As scholastic as this may sound, it could prove to be strictly insular and in being so, lose the ambition of the medium itself. For example, there is no strictly painting or sculpture biennial anymore and if there was: How many of us would really care? And if we did – could we find artistic integrity in its overall production, direction and relationship to the reality of contemporary art as an interdisciplinary function?

One can only guess that the idea for such a biennial could have spawned from the lack of full acceptance or integration of performance art in the mainstream contemporary gallery and museum scene. But then again, it was never supposed to be mainstream. As valid as the cause may be, to then charge more than a handful for entrance fees makes it more problematic to truly enjoy the “art” in performance. It puts us in a context of musicals, theater and dance recitals. Are visitors and audience members to judge the artistic worth of a work (that by its very nature is non-commercial) to the amount of money they paid to get in? And if it is treated like a rock show – Do the artists get half the door? I hope so...

In a time where contemporary art is so expensive to buy (in order to enjoy it for more than a few minutes), it’s comforting to know that you can at least visit a gallery without paying an entrance fee. The PERFORMA model seems to be working the other way. And I think that it has some of the artists participating in it thinking in the same way - two to three night performances of the same piece with a matinee for good measure.

I am curious to see if there will be any DIY and guerrilla performance artists taking claim of their medium and staging off-the-cuff works that combat the PERFORMA establishment in the next few weeks. This could be really exciting. If you are (even if you don’t know it yet), please let us know!

The next post will find performances that break the mold of the biennial host. Stay tuned.

Francesco Vezzoli at the Guggenheim

Francesco Vezzoli at the Guggenheim.

In his first live performance, Francesco Vezzoli, the young Italian video artist whose work has revolved around an interest in celebrity, restaged Luigi Pirandello’s 1917 play ‘Right You Are (If You Think You Are). The play is an investigation and dissection of the character Signora Ponza, played by Cate Blanchett, by a group of provincial Italians. Signora Ponza is absent throughout the play, created for us through the multiple vantage points of the other characters – a character with no presence, defined only by the attention devoted to it.

Set on a black stage in the center of the Guggenheim’s main rotunda, the performance and its proceedings exceeded what I anticipated. It came complete with stars being ushered from black SUV’s past anticipatory crowds, an hour and a half wait, closed guest lists and color-coded tickets. The museum generously provided opera glasses to view the stars (Including Natalie Portman and David Strathairn) to those of us not lucky enough to be seated on the rotunda floor.

The actors, who were seated and in costume, read their lines from stands set before them. The acoustics were bad higher up and the text hard to understand. With the exception of seeing Natalie Portman in a mustache (playing the part of Laudisi) there was little to hold one's visual interest. The crowd, already on its feet for almost two hours to get in and still standing, thinned quickly.

The hook for remaining was the anticipated appearance of Cate Blanchett in a costume designed by John Galliano. Let in on the grand finale by a nearby Guggenheim employee ('she’ll take the elevator to the fifth floor and then walk the ramp down past the people while the strobe lights go off') and tired myself, I left after the second act.

It is always interesting to see what is revealed by an artist shifting medium. What is notable in Vezzoli moving from his earlier video that used socially popular types (‘Caligula’, which mimics a film trailer, and ‘Marlene Redux: a True Hollywood Story!’ an expose on his own death) to performance is that, where those media types allude comically to other experiences – a film about a film that was never made and a film about a life that was never lived - this performance made no allusions, it simply was. There was no imagined deferral, no shared laughter at the possibility or impossibility of it, no self-deprecation, and no medium to humorously buoy us above the exclusivity of the fame that was its true content.

It is troubling to note in relation to Vezzoli's preoccupation with fame and exclusion (and perhaps it’s the gleaming black stage and David Straithairn’s leather pants that brought it to mind) that amongst Pirandello’s many achievements he is remembered for having given Mussolini his Noble Prize in Literature to melt down for the war effort.

John Bock's 'Stapelung' at P.S. 1

Performance as video as performance as sculpture

John Bock “Stapelung” (Stack)

2007, P.S.1, New York

“Stapelung,” meaning ‘stack,’ is indeed a stack of videos, running on monitors sitting on shelving units. It shows 5 video films, each arranged as a loop of a different performance.

All the films combine performance footage that has been shot exclusively for the camera, and documentation footage of public performance and public sculpture. The piece, seen as film and as sculpture, takes performance as a starting point, as well as its backbone, and is loaded to the breaking point with cinematic elements.

The nature of John Bock’s performance originates in visual art, particularly in sculpture, and its dependence on the relation with the scale of the human body. The artist invents extensions for his physical limits, including the brain, both in logical and in associative thinking. All props are fabricated as sculptures, and after the performance and/or film has been shot, remain on display as sculpture within a visual-art context. In this aspect, the film becomes a documentation of kinetic art.

To review this John Bock piece in a descriptive manner is bound to fail due to the time limitation given to me as a visitor at an exhibition. In the content of the sculpture/performance/video, ‘stacking’ continues endlessly within each element. All visual elements appear colorful and compelling, as do the masses of associative chains in Bock’s monologues.

Bock’s characteristic use of an overwhelming mass of material comes combined with his gimmick of pseudo child-play elements within the performances. These seem to let him get away with ignorance of any of the individual topics that he uses in his writing. This is disturbing, especially when it comes to ignorance of racial politics. The same applies to the props’ visual solutions. However, Bock’s stylistic method of primary directness throws the viewer back to their own naivety—indeed, a good immunization against criticism.

Another good trick for ‘waterproofing’ art is coming to a full circle within an original associative chain. And for this one, I would like to give him full credit. “The world is the stage is the wood is the world.” (John Bock)

First review!

The first NAKED ATTIC review will be posted Sunday, October 28th, 2007.
It will be on John Bock's "Stapelung", which will take place at P.S.1, Long Island City, New York.