PERSPECTACLE (version 1.5)
Guest-curated for The New Museum of Contemporary Art: February 6, 2009
90 Minutes

Originally curated for MIX NYC (see VERSION 1.0)

The works in this show can present an argument about the conscious nature of narrativity in relation to a subject proper (as in the difference between “we are the people” and “we are a people”).  Here, the unifying word I will choose to name these subjects is “Queer.”

The Queer subject doesn’t necessarily have to have anything to do with sexual predilection; “Queer”, here, can simply mean a subject with the experience of being outside of banal normality and passivity and endless deferment. 

“The singulier universel is a group that, although without any fixed place in the social edifice (or, at best, occupying a subordinated place), not only demands to be heard on equal footing with the ruling oligarchy or aristocracy (that is, to be recognized as a partner in political dialogue and the exercise of power) but, even more, presents itself as the immediate embodiment of society as such, in its universality, against the particular power interests of aristocracy or oligarchy…”  --Slavoj Zizek, “A Leftist Plea for ‘Euro-centrism’”, Critical Inquiry, 1998.

The Queer (ad)vantage is circular, wide open; it is in the looking awry, in the enjoyment that occurs when you are either horrified or you laugh knowingly at subtextual information that for most everyone else in the theater, unless they too have perspective, remains and must remain (for their egos to remain solid) hidden; it is in the constructing and recycling and molding of our own cultural comprehension.  We have had to encode/decode media and meanings in order to be able to enjoy ourselves through the bogs of our cultural “common denominator” and create images of ourselves, those who are compelled to live for ourselves. 

“[Our] inner sky may remain autonomous and depend only upon itself, but on condition that by means of [our] wisdom, which is also knowledge, [we come] to resemble the order of the world, take it back onto [ourselves] and thus recreate in [our] inner firmament the sway of that other firmament in which [we] see the flitter of the visible stars.  If [we do] this, then the wisdom of the mirror will in turn be reflected back to envelop the world in which it has been placed; its great ring will spin out into the depths of the heavens, and beyond; [we] will discover that [we] contain ‘the stars within [ourselves]…’“ – Michel Foucault, The Order of Things,” 1970.

We are the people.

--Preshow--

CONE
Matthew Robert Lutz-Kinoy, 2005, USA, video, color, stereo, 21 min loop.

Lutz-Kinoy’s performance based work is comprised of objects made in his studio that he interacts with in dance.  He extensively manipulates the performance documentation video to make new singular pieces.  In this video, he re-performs, in proximity to his object, dance sequences from Band of Outsiders, Badlands, and Metropolis.

--Main Show---

excerpt from SYNESTHESIA
Tony Oursler, 2002, USA, video, color, stereo, 3 min.

An excerpt from Tony Oursler’s “Synesthesia” compendium, this section features Tony Conrad discussing television and the idea of creating one’s own entertainment.

CAT ZOOM
Brett Levin, 2007, Youtube video, color, silent, 1 min.

The Infinite Cat Project is a website dedicated to the phenomenon of cats watching other cats watching cats watching other cats over the internet, revealing a kind of feline-o-morphized allegory of what it is to post our lives on Youtube—Shroedinger’s Mandelbrot feedback loop; cats consuming cats, cats in a box, cats who are both alive and dead at the same time, for infinity.

WAYNE'S WORLD
Ryan Trecartin, 2003, video, color, stereo, 8 min.

Trecartin and his collaborator/co-star Lizzie Fitch ponder the messages delivered by the most banal forms of mass media and pop culture in their own unique version of a music video. They voice questions in song and dance segments that feature a deliberately ill-fitting pastiche of discarded fashions of the past two decades and recycled pop-music clichés. Totally immersed in their meticulously crafted private universe, Trecartin and Fitch coyly point at the gaudy artifice surrounding us in our own.

OVER MY DEAD BODY
Dale Hoyt, 1983, video, color, mono, 15 min.

Hoyt visits a neighborhood, insinuating himself and his party as a news crew, to interview its residents about a horrible series of murders recently committed (when in fact no murders had been committed and the entire event has been fabricated).  In Hoyt fashion, this is inter-cut with Holiday flavored audio samples, Sharits inspired strobing, interviews with a pre-internet swinger couple and a man running a telephone dating service in the S.F. Bay area.

HAARP's RAINBOW AEROSOL'S JULY 6, 2007
Dboots, 2007, youtube video, 2min.

HAARP stands for "High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program," which is a program run by the Pentagon in Alaska. Its many speculated uses include changing weather patterns, making entire populations confused, and, here, a theory that connects the frequencies in rainbows occurring in common lawn sprinklers, a relatively new phenomenon.

THE DRAMA OF THE GIFTED CHILD
Cecilia Dougherty, 1992, video, black & white, stereo, 6 min.
 
This tape is about the idea of narcissistic transference, sexual dependency, and the failure to distinguish between the self and the loved one. It is also about using love to create a border between oneself and political and psychological oppression.

THE WOMAN WHO WENT TOO FAR
Colin Campbell, 1984, video, color, stereo, 10 min.

The Woman Who Went Too Far follows an acrimonious TV gossip reporter as she drags a weather girl’s name through the mud… Campbell made a number of dense, shorter tapes that thrillingly deconstruct narrative into fragmented, unreconciled points of view… [and] described his interest in making work that is “about the thought process of producing it” more than a finished linear narrative.
--Jon Davies/John Greyson, People Like Us: The Gossip of Colin Campbell Exhibition Catalogue, Oakville Galleries, Oakville, Ontario, 2008.

excerpt from LOVER COME BACK
Delbert Mann, 1961, 35mm/video, color, stereo, 10 min.

This sex comedy starring Rock Hudson and Doris Day uses subtext and innuendo to comment upon the artifice of the romance and the hidden real.

LOVE COMIX
Barry Shils, 1982, video, color, mono, 8 min.

A theatrical re-enactment, starring Ann Magnuson, of a comic book about woman whose life is changed drastically when she gets married and must begin to negotiate her new hetero-normative existence with her history of transgression and reluctance to give it up.

AWAKENING OF DESIRE
Simon Hughes, 1997, video, color, stereo, 4 min.

“We, the viewers, [have to choose] which scenario we prefer: the mechanical, monotonous, morbid melancholy evoked by the figurines or the sudden erection of fluid-filled extremities in need of release; at least the latter is capable of sweeping us off our feet, into deeper dimensions of black holes.” –George Kuchar from Magnetic North, 2000.

PROTEST RUSHES
Artist, 2008, S8/video, color, mono, 3 min.

Super-8 rushes of a lone man protesting the ugly intrusion of capitalism in idiosyncratic NYC locations; an homage to S8 protest films.

NEW REPORT ARTIST UNKNOWN
K8 Hardy & Wynne Greenwood, 2008, video, color, stereo, 12 min.

Newscasters Henry Stein-Acker-Hill and Henry Irigaray, “pregnant with information”, present this special in-depth news analysis of a alleged occurrence where a female artist has thrown away her paintings into the trash.  New Report analyzes and responds to the role of female identity in the art world and the lack of support for women artists today.

excerpts from OFF
Tony Oursler, 1999, video, color, stereo, 2 min.

Two excerpts from Oursler’s compendium of 1990s cable access programming featuring a self-help gurus; one who likes to position her camera as well as herself, and the other a singing chant of self-healing for New Yorkers.